A few minutes later the two of them were heading out of the tent, passing a small wineskin between them.
She led Allystaire to the western wall, and the two of them climbed the parapet, which was really a simple scaffold. Eyes followed Allystaire and his silvered armor as he walked. Torches reflected off of it, murmurs ran among the villagers, armed with spears and bows, who stood along the wall.
Too thin and too green a line to hold this wall, Allystaire thought, though he tried to keep his face calm, his manner casual.
The torches that spread out along the farmland outside the wall spoke to scores of men, but not the overwhelming host Allystaire had feared.
Awaiting him on the wall, Renard gave voice to the very thought. “Something troubles Delondeur that he can put only so many into the field against us.” He leaned, unworried, upon his spear.
“That is assuming we see all of them. Yet it matches with what the Will told us,” Allystaire offered. “Not as many as I had feared.”
“Probably enough,” Renard murmured, voice pitched for only Allystaire to hear.
“Maybe it is simply confidence, then. Lionel Delondeur has never lacked for that.”
“Should’ve killed him when you had the chance, Allystaire,” Renard said, not hiding the reproach in his voice. “Might be that his heir would’ve come after us anyway, but not with the backing the old man has.”
“Mayhap I should have. Yet it felt like the wrong time, and the wrong way. People need to see what he is. Had I killed him in the Dunes, then I would be a murderer, disposing of the rightful Baron in favor of a bastard upstart.”
“That’s what folk’d think. Don’t make it true,” Renard grumbled.
“Oh, but it does,” Torvul said as he made the top of the scaffold behind them. “And Allystaire’s got the right of it. Now, who wants to go on out there and get this over with?” There was a bit of laughter, most of it forced.
“What do we do now?” one of the village men asked, fingering the string of his bow, and the quiver of arrows on his hip.
“The thing a soldier does most,” Allystaire replied. “We wait. We wait for the sun to rise. We wait for Delondeur or his proxy to ride forward and make demands. We wait to laugh our answer in their poxy faces. Then we wait for them to attack, and while we do, we try to figure out where and how. Then we wait for it to be over and to see if we are still standing.”
“What’s t’stop ‘em from simply settin’ the whole o’the wall afire while we’re doin’ all this waitin’?” The villager couldn’t keep his hands still. Allystaire fought the urge to reach out and grab the man’s arm to quiet him.
“I am,” Torvul replied. “You mind the skins hangin’ every three span along the wall, and the barrels under the scaffold. No wall o’mine is going to burn, even if I did have to make it of wood rather’n stone.”
The villager swallowed hard and turned his eyes back towards the dim clumps of men that moved beyond the wall, straining to see them.
Allystaire did a bit of straining into the darkness himself, then snorted. “Torvul. Have you any of that potion of yours for the eyes?”
“Be specific, boy. I’ve got more than one.”
“The one for the dark.”
“Eh. Save it,” the dwarf said, as he swung his reclaimed crossbow up to rest upon the wall, and flipped up one of the sighting rings. Allystaire couldn’t see the color of the crystal that filled it, but he suspected it was a dark red.
“Well, I’ve got the Baron’s standard,” the dwarf said, as he swept the bow slowly and evenly back and forth. “A lot of spearmen. Not too many bows. I don’t see any engines, and we’ve done a number on the timber hereabouts. Heavy horse look few and far between.”
“More trouble than they are worth in winter,” Allystaire reasoned. “Not enough fodder, and the terrain turns bad for it in a hurry.”
Torvul grunted noncommittally and lowered the bow. “I don’t like it. Seems like too trivial a force, like we’re not worth the bother. There’s got to be more coming than this.”
“Gideon said there were some coming from the north, but not nearly as many. Swords-at-hire, perhaps a couple of warbands worth, with wains behind.”
“Don’t like the sound o’that. Got to be somethin’ we’re missing.”
“Patience will show us,” Allystaire said.
Torvul turned around, and Allystaire had the sense of being glared at, then he heard the dwarf’s voice in his thoughts.
You know Idgen Marte could simply sneak out there and slit the bastard’s throat.
I do. And I will consider that at need.
This best not be about needin’ to do it yourself, or any other prideful nonsense.
I may not need to be the one to do it—but the folk need to see it, if they can.
Torvul grumbled and turned back to the wall, and they waited. Waiting, like the fighting earlier that night, was something Allystaire well knew how to do. He let his mind drift, let it seek out the connections and examine his assumptions about what was happening and why, let it work over old sieges and stratagems.
His body barely felt the cold, or the weight of his armor, though weariness yawned under him like a chasm. In time, before he really knew it, the sky was filling with the day’s paltry measure of light.
* * *
Dawn hadn’t fully broken when a small party of mounted figures rode forward, perhaps half a dozen. Three banners were held on equally long poles: the Delondeur Tower, gem-encrusted Fortune, and an even more opulent dragon, picked out in dark-blue gems on sea-green silk. Each banner had a sash of white drawn across its middle, holding it in.
Torvul grunted. “I would’ve that our reception last eve would’ve let us skip all this parley-under-drawn-banners rot.”
Allystaire shrugged, armor clanking as he moved. “It is the form of the thing, the show. Lionel always believed in forms. And showing off, even more.”
Chaddin and two of his knights had joined Allystaire and Torvul on the scaffolding, and the blond-haired sergeant-turned-Baronial-pretender nodded. “Seems like you know my father well, Coldbourne.”
“Stop calling me that, for the last time, Chaddin,” Allystaire grumbled. “I left that name behind. I will not own to it again.”
There was a rustling among the few militiamen within earshot, a whispering that Allystaire couldn’t catch. Torvul grinned but said nothing. Allystaire turned his attention back to Chaddin.
“And I do know your father. I should. I have fought with him or against him—mostly against him—for near as long as you have lived.”
He turned back to the waiting delegation and told Torvul, “We have no banner to answer them with. Can you tell them that the Arm and the Wit of the Mother come forth to treat with them?”
Torvul cleared his throat, pulled a small silver flask from one his many pouches, and took a careful sip, clearly savoring. He resettled the flask, drew in a deep breath, set his hands around his mouth, and bellowed in his deep and powerful voice. The sound that carried across the entire village behind, and to the host camping before them.
“We come forward to answer! Prepare to receive the Arm and the Wit of the Mother.”
Torvul cleared his throat when he finished, and looked to Allystaire. “We takin’ anyone else?”
“You needed a potion for that?” Chaddin’s derisive interjection was delivered with pursed lips.
“No,” Torvul said, his eyes narrowing. “I needed a drop of good dwarfish spirit. I also need you not to speak at me again unless spoken to.”
Chaddin opened his mouth to protest when Torvul suddenly lifted his cudgel threateningly, placing the brass cap against the man’s jaw. “Listen here, boy. You’re here as a guest, and that against my judgment. We’re going t’parley with your loving father now, and if I think for a moment that I can trade you for the lives of th
e people of this village, I won’t hesitate.”
Both of the knights flanking Chaddin looked to Allystaire, and he shook his head. “Have done, Torvul. Come on.”
Carefully, Allystaire descended the steep wooden stairway that led to the scaffold, the wood creaking under his armored weight. He heard Torvul descending behind him. They waited in silence as two of the Ravens unbarred the gate and dragged it back, then walked out to meet the delegation.
Before they’d even come within a dozen spans, Allystaire recognized Delondeur on the back of a charger that, while not quite as big as Ardent, was certainly prettier, its coat a sleek black. The Baron wore brilliantly green-enameled armor inlaid with gold leaf picking out the Delondeur Tower, a theme repeated in the horse’s tack and saddle. His bannerman Allystaire guessed to be the heir who’d come home to free Lionel, wearing armor made similarly to the father’s, if not quite as richly.
Allystaire also recognized, with a certainty that sank to his stomach like a rock, the delegation from Fortune. Despite the extravagant, spotless white fur robe that she wore, Allystaire knew that the Archioness Cerisia had returned before he could even see the pale green eyes behind the empty sockets of her golden mask. Beside her sat a temple soldier in gold-painted mail and conical helm, carrying the same gem-encrusted banner he had seen on the road to Thornhurst weeks before.
The priest of Braech he did not recognize, though he had expected either Symod or Evolyn. The man was young, with a blond and patchy beard, wearing blue robes over bronzed scales that he seemed unaccustomed to. The bannerman beside him was an Islandman straight out of a coastal villager’s nightmare: all fur and iron, wild-haired and bearded, with three throwing axes stuck in a bandolier across his chest.
The heart of Braech’s leadership is not in this, Allystaire thought, hoping Torvul would hear him. Or Symod himself would have come. They fear us.
They fear Gideon, and they’re smart t’do it, Torvul thought back.
They had time for only that much reflection, for as they approached, Delondeur rose up in his saddle and lifted the visor of his helm.
“Coldbourne!” he bellowed. “I have many grievances to express upon you. But first, I am persuaded by two-thirds of the Temples Major to give them time to persuade you to save some of those who’ve decided to follow you into oblivion.”
“That is not my name any longer, you slaving coward,” Allystaire spat back. “And at least one among your number knows that I will not be persuaded, for she knows what I am, and what is behind me.”
“I do,” Cerisia answered, nudging her palfrey forward a bit. Though her voice was muffled by the mask, Allystaire thought he heard an edge of desperation in it. “Which is why I would ask you to give yourself up—you and the other four among you who claim to have been Ordained by your Goddess. Do this, and the rest of your villagers will be offered clemency.”
“So long as they will be godsworn to the Sea Dragon and to Fortune, of course,” the priest of Braech put in.
“This does not include my bastard son or his followers,” the Baron quickly and heatedly added. “They will all die traitor’s deaths on the gibbets in Londray, and any crow-cages I feel like putting up along the road.”
“Archioness, you cannot possibly believe that any clemency will be offered, no matter what oaths these people take. You also cannot possibly believe that I will abandon them,” Allystaire answered, quietly and evenly.
“The Baron has sworn to it. The declarations are drawn up.”
“The Baron is a liar!” Allystaire’s shout, the heat and the volume of it, surprised even him.
“I will not stand for that abuse of my lordly father!” The Delondeur bannerman spoke up. Clumsily, the knight began trying to unstrap a gauntlet while holding the banner pole with one arm.
Allystaire rolled his eyes, but also set his shoulders and spread his feet, though before he could prepare a response, the Baron had reached over and grabbed his bannerman’s hand with his own. “Stop it, Landen,” the Baron growled.
“His abuse should not stand,” the bannerman protested, voice muffled by the visor. “Let me prove his lies upon him, my lord.”
“Landen,” the Baron said flatly, “I need you to remember something. Whatever it is you think, the man you were about to challenge is still Allystaire. Coldbourne.”
“What of it?”
“He’ll kill you,” the Baron replied. “You’ve some blood on your sword from your summer, but it’s too little, too fresh, and too seawater-thin. His blood is old mountain ice. Oyrwyn ice. He’ll kill you and yawn while he does it. Leave him to me.”
Landen’s hands wrapped back around the banner-pole.
“Allystaire, please listen,” Cerisia said, urging her horse forward a few more steps. “You have a chance to save—”
“Spare your words. You had a chance to see and do what was right, and you have chosen to save yourself, and to soothe your conscience with a pair of bright gems that cannot feed, house, clothe, or arm the people you now come to crush. Absent yourself or silent yourself,” Allystaire said. “But do it quickly.”
He heard her sigh, saw her eyes close behind the mask, then open again, perhaps slightly wet at their corners. But she turned her horse and rode back next to her bannerman, and she did not speak or seek Allystaire’s eyes again.
The priest of Braech straightened in the saddle, though he didn’t gain much height by doing it. It was hard to guess with him mounted, but Allystaire thought himself likely a head taller than the priest, who said, “The Sea Dragon’s Temple will not be as easily si—”
Allystaire swung narrowed eyes to the man. “I think the Sea Dragon has already been turned away from here once,” Allystaire said. “And that neither the Choiron Symod nor the Marynth Evolyn could find it in themselves to face us.” He turned from the priest, who paled beneath his boy’s beard, back to the Baron. “Are we done?”
“Not till I’ve got you drawn and quartered and burning, Coldbourne, or Allystaire, or Arm of the Whore, or whatever you call yourself these days. Yet we are done treating.” The Baron turned his horse and spurred it, followed closely by Landen and the Braech priest and bannerman. Cerisia lingered a moment. Perhaps, Allystaire thought, she was waiting for him to say something, anything else.
Instead, he stared at the retreating Baron’s back, even as Torvul’s voice sounded in his head. I could shoot him from here. That’d be that.
Not under drawn banners, Allystaire thought in reply.
Finally, Cerisia turned her horse and her banner followed. Allystaire and Torvul turned and walked for the gate.
“Never seen a man more determined to repel a comely woman’s attempts to warm him up,” Torvul muttered. “You didn’t have your tackle cut off somewhere in your endless warring, did ya? Or does all that time in the saddle just deaden everythin’?”
Allystaire snorted. “I have no wish to be bound to that one. Too many games, too much at stake.”
“Stones above. If I hadn’t seen quite so much of your blood myself, I’d be inclined to think it was ice.”
“I think that was the highest compliment Lionel has ever paid me. Frankly, I am a little touched.”
“So long as it doesn’t stop you from killin’ him, you get the chance.”
“There is very little in the world that could.”
* * *
Allystaire and Torvul clambered quickly back up the scaffolding and watched the banners depart.
“How long d’ya think he’ll make us wait,” the dwarf muttered.
“Not long. Now that the form has been observed, Lionel will want to stamp on us, and fast.”
“Not sure he brought enough men t’stamp.”
“I think he brought as many as he could raise. None of Delondeur’s major lords, save the Baron himself, are present. Had Ennithstide or Tideswater Watch or Salt Towers been here, their
banners would have been present at the parley.”
“You people need t’think a little harder on the names of your fiefdoms.”
“Be that as it may, the fact that they are not brings us a little closer to understanding the constraints the Baron faces. He has the largest barony, half again as large as Oyrwyn and as big as Innadan once you consider the Telmawr fiefdoms Delondeur has swallowed up, and old barony Tarynth. He can field thousands of men. Why bring three hundred or so?”
“You’re forgettin’ that Idgen Marte sent them all running while you were a guest at the Dunes. They’ve gone to winter quarters now, and they’re not coming back out.” Torvul said.
“Yet some of them would have come, surely, if Delondeur commanded,” Allystaire pointed out. “He has not. And that can only mean that he does not trust them. Surely word that he was deposed and imprisoned spread. How many rode to his rescue? How many turned out their knights and men-at-arms? He has to show them something. Some strength, or power. The longer we can hold, the more his position erodes.”
“As if his lords and their knights don’t know about the slavin’? Who’s rowing their galleys, after all?”
“Mayhap,” Allystaire said. “Yet they surely do not know of the folk being cut to pieces in the dungeons of the Dunes to feed the power of a sorcerer. And even if they do, they cannot be seen to know it. The longer we hold, the more they are forced by circumstance to distance themselves.”
“How’ve you people let these wars go on so long, anyway? I’d’ve thought a war-loving son of a bitch like Delondeur would’ve been thrown off the parapet of his keep years ago.”
“I cannot answer that. I was on the wrong side of it for too long. Some sickness, mayhap, some malaise that settled over us.”
“Where’d you learn a word like malaise?” The dwarf turned to glare up at Allystaire with one eye, then sighed heavily. “I think it’s just power. Those who have some and want more of it, and those who’re afraid of it and do as they’re told. I’ll give ya two guesses who’re the ones with the spears in their hands marchin’ on enemy walls.” The dwarf spat, shook his head, and reached into a pouch on his belt, pulling free a brass-bound tube with glass on either end much like the one that had shattered in Allystaire’s hands back in the mountains. He held it up to his eye and moved it slowly across the camp on the farmland before them.
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