Warrior

by Jennifer Fallon

  “And if I don’t think about it too closely,” the Raider laughed, “I could probably convince myself I meant it as one.”

  Damin looked up and noticed Almodavar riding back towards the ford from the tree line on the Hythrun side of the border. He’d gone ahead with the scouts an hour or so earlier, to make certain the Defenders hadn’t slipped over the border and were lying in wait on the other side. Damin splashed across the ford to meet him, wondering what had brought the captain back. The plan was for them all to meet up at the permanent camp site several miles across the border where a small corral had been built to hold the cattle. That was one of Mahkas’s ideas. He was very efficient in everything he did. Even stealing cattle.

  “Is something wrong?” Damin asked, as he rode up to meet the old captain.

  “We found some fresh tracks,” Almodavar told him. “Medalonian tracks. About half a dozen of them.”

  “How can you tell they’re not ours?”

  “Their smiths work differently to ours. And their horses tend to be smaller.”

  “Six of them, you say? A raiding party perhaps?”

  “Don’t know,” Almodavar shrugged. “But I thought you might like to be in on the action.”

  Damin grinned. “Yes, please!”

  “Come on, then,” the captain said. “Raek can handle this.”

  Damin didn’t need to be asked twice. He urged his horse into a canter and was riding off in pursuit of a troop of Medalonian interlopers before anybody had a chance to change their mind and tell him he couldn’t go.

  The small Medalonian troop they pursued into Hythria made no attempt to conceal their presence, nor did they seem to have any doubt about where they, were heading. Almodavar’s face became more concerned with every mile they rode in pursuit of the invaders, obviously worried about what this tiny but barefaced invasion squad was up to.

  Their destination, it seemed, was the Raiders’ own camp some ten miles from the Border Stream. Damin wasn’t sure what was more worrying about that idea—that the Medalonians would so blatantly attack their enemy’s position, or that they knew where the camp was in the first place.

  That their purpose was to destroy the Hythrun base camp was obvious. In Almodavar’s opinion, a small, probably handpicked strike force had been sent across the border to dismantle the corral in an attempt to make it harder to hold stolen cattle after any future raids. They undoubtedly had orders to burn whatever supplies and shelter they found, too, a fact that seemed to be borne out as the Raiders approached the camp. Damin could taste wood smoke on the air long before the camp itself came into view.

  It was dark by the time Almodavar halted Damin and his small squad of pursuers about a mile from the camp to give them their orders. The Defenders probably didn’t number more than half a dozen, the old captain estimated, and they would have come upon a Hythrun camp that hadn’t been occupied for months. With luck, they would have let their guard down a little. The chance the Defenders would have sent a sortie of this nature over the border if they’d known there was a sixty-strong party of Raiders on their heels was highly unlikely. They were far too intelligent to make that sort of mistake.

  “We’ll attack from all sides at once,” Almodavar informed his men, after he’d allocated each Raider a position. Damin was to come at the camp from the western side, near the edge of the corral, spooking the Defenders’ horses into fleeing if he had the opportunity. The Medalonians may have decided to make use of the corral while they destroyed the camp at their leisure.

  “Try not to kill them if you can avoid it,” the captain added, almost as an afterthought. “I want to know what they’re doing here. Besides, the Sisterhood doesn’t have much of a sense of humour when it comes to dead Defenders and we can’t afford a war with Medalon right now.”

  “We can’t afford a war with anybody right now,” Damin pointed out grimly, thinking of the dire state of Hythria’s defences with the plague running rampant through the country.

  Almodavar nodded his agreement, then slapped Damin on the shoulder with an encouraging smile as the other four scouts slipped away into the darkness to take up their positions for the attack.

  “The God of War will smile on you some day, Damin. Don’t be too hasty to ask for Zegarnald’s blessing.”

  “It’s all right, Almodavar. I do understand that the chance for glory in sneaking up on a handful of unsuspecting Defenders is limited, you know. I can live with that. To be honest, I’m just glad of a chance to do something to relieve the boredom.”

  “Ah, now that,” Almodavar declared, “is the true enemy of any warrior. Boredom. When you get down to it, most battles are ten per cent action and ninety per cent waiting around for something to happen.”

  “You mean all those years you spent making me practise with a sword were wasted, when in fact I should have been learning needlework or some other skill that would keep my hands busy?”

  Almodavar shook his head with a sigh. “You’ve obviously been doing something to keep your hands busy, my lad. You’re not going blind, too, are you?”

  Damin sighed mournfully. “You wound me, Almodavar.”

  Almodavar grinned at the prince in the darkness. “I’ll do more than wound that precious royal hide if you’re not in place by the time I give the signal, my lad.”

  “I’m going,” Damin assured him with a grin, swinging up into his saddle. “And never fear. I’ll be there when you signal the attack.”

  “Make sure you are. And while you’re at it, try not to get yourself killed, either. I’d have far too much explaining to do to your mother and your uncle if you do.”

  They left their horses some distance away from the base camp, so that no betraying nicker or rattle of tack would reveal their presence. Damin rounded the camp in the darkness and stepped carefully through the low scrub to ensure no snapped twig or startled rodent scurrying through the undergrowth betrayed his approach. Finally, after almost an hour of nerve-racking silence working his way forward, he was close enough to see the corral and a cloaked figure distributing hay ( Hythrun hay—

  our hay, Damin thought in annoyance) to the horses confined within.

  He hesitated, waiting to see what the trooper would do once the animals were fed. Perhaps he would come this way, giving Damin a chance to take him down silently, without alerting his companions to the presence of the Raiders. In the distance, Damin heard one of the other scouts give the hooting owl signal to indicate he was also in place and ready to attack. At the sound, the cloaked figure in the corrals looked up, pushing the hood back to reveal a distinctly feminine and disturbingly familiar profile.

  Damin stared at the figure for a moment, not sure he believed his own eyes, then hurried forward, no longer paying any attention to the noise he might be making. The woman in the corral didn’t notice him anyway. She turned back to the horses, completely unaware of the danger approaching until she felt the cold touch of steel upon her cheek from Damin’s sword.

  The woman screamed and spun around to face him.

  “Hello, Luciena.”

  She stared at him in disbelief. “Damin? ”

  Shocked and clearly stunned to find her adopted brother appearing out of nowhere in the darkness, she stared at him for a moment longer and then punched him angrily in the shoulder. “For the gods’ sake!” she snapped at him furiously. “Don’t sneak up on a person like that! You scared me half to death!”

  Damin sheathed his sword and smiled broadly. “Almost killed you did I, Luci? Well then, I guess that just about makes us even.”

  Chapter 66

  The rest of the troop had caught up with them by the time Adham, Luciena and Xanda had finished bringing Damin and Almodavar up to date on their travels through Fardohnya and Medalon.

  Emilie and Geris had fallen asleep, but Jarvan was too excited to rest and had ingratiated himself into the small gap between Damin and his father, probably hoping his royal uncle would overrule any notions his parents had of sending him to bed.
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  Damin sat with Almodavar and Raek as they listened to Xanda and Luciena tell of their voyage to Talabar, their reception when they arrived, and Luciena’s firm belief that Lector Turon was planning something dire against the family and that it had involved some sort of danger to her children. She wouldn’t tell Damin who had warned her about the threat, and she obviously hadn’t shared the information with her husband, either, which clearly irked Xanda. However, while Luciena’s tale of Hablet’s treachery was concerning, it was hardly surprising. It was Adham’s unconfirmed news that Fardohnya was massing troops behind her closed borders that really worried Damin.

  The stepbrothers left the group around the fire some time later, after Luciena and Aleesha had finally managed to get Jarvan to sleep. They walked towards the corral, away from any danger of being overheard. The Medalonian horses Adham and Xanda had purchased in Bordertown to get them back to Krakandar had been put with the Raider’s horses and the corral was now filled with their stolen Medalonian cattle.

  “How reliable is this rumour about Hablet’s troops?” Damin asked, stopping to lean on the rough bark-covered rails of the corral. The cattle stood quietly in the chilly darkness, sleeping on their feet, a handy skill Damin had occasionally wished he owned.

  Adham shrugged. “I couldn’t really say, Damin. I first heard it from one of our spice agents in Testra. His daughter was visiting relatives in Talabar but when she tried to book a passage back to Medalon, she found it next to impossible to get a berth home. Supposedly, one of the booking agents in Talabar told her all the ships were busy shifting troops to Tambay’s Seat in southern Fardohnya.”

  “The perfect staging area if you’re planning to invade Hythria through the pass near Highcastle,”

  Damin pointed out with a frown.

  Adham nodded in agreement. “Normally, I wouldn’t have paid the rumour much attention. I’ve heard some fairly outrageous tales by shipping clerks trying to cover their own inadequacies in my time.

  But when I paid off the Karien crew in Bordertown, after they dumped my spices on the wharf, I asked them if they were heading home. The captain said he was, but the mate disagreed. They ended up having quite a heated argument about it. The captain wanted to head back to Yarnarrow. The first mate seemed to think they could recoup some of the cost of the journey by transporting Fardohnyan troops south.”

  “It starts to make you wonder what’s happening behind the closed borders at Winternest, too, doesn’t it?”

  “Can’t you contact Chaine Lionsclaw when we get back to Krakandar and ask him to investigate?

  If anybody in Hythria can find out what’s happening on the other side of the Widowmaker, it’s him.”

  “Chaine’s dead,” Damin told Adham, realising how much news his stepbrother would have missed, due to his travels in the north. “So is Rogan Bearbow. Terin is Warlord of Sunrise now. Tejay Lionsclaw is a guest at Krakandar, actually, waiting for things to settle down a bit before she attempts the journey home.”

  Adham absorbed that information silently for a moment, before he raised another point that Damin had desperately been trying not to dwell on ever since his stepbrother had told them of his suspicions about the Fardohnyan troop movements. “We’re in serious trouble, you know, if Hablet really is planning to invade us as soon as he reopens the borders.”

  “We can hold him off,” Damin shrugged, not willing to admit the unpalatable truth of what Adham was trying to tell him.

  “And if we can’t?”

  “Then we’ll fight him, Adham, and drive the greedy old bastard back over the Sunrise Mountains where he belongs.”

  “Nice idea in theory, Damin. Who’s going to fight him, exactly?”

  “We have seven Warlords and close to a hundred thousand troops if we call up every reserve in the nation,” Damin replied optimistically. “I’m sure we’ll find someone to do the job.”

  “Don’t kid yourself, my friend. Hythria doesn’t have anywhere near that many troops,” Adham warned. “Our fighting capability’s been decimated by the plague. And you don’t have seven Warlords you can count on, either. You have three provinces administered by the Sorcerers’ Collective, a regent ruling Krakandar and an untried, unconfirmed Warlord guarding the only two navigable passes into Hythria. Charel Hawksword’s all but bedridden these days. And the only reason Cyrus Eaglespike and Dregian Province would ever agree to stand behind you, Damin, is because that’s the best place to be if he’s planning to stab you in the back.”

  “And we’re one Warlord away from Alija Eaglespike gaining majority control of the Sorcerers’

  Collective,” Damin added, thinking of Rorin’s equally gloomy assessment of their current situation. He frowned at his stepbrother in the darkness. “You’re just a regular little ray of sunshine, aren’t you, Adham?”

  His stepbrother smiled humourlessly. “If you think that’s bad, consider this. Who normally leads Hythria’s combined troops in battle?”

  Damin had to stop and think about that one. Such a situation hadn’t arisen in living memory.

  “It’s been so long since it happened last . . . I don’t know . . . the High Prince, I suppose.”

  “So that renowned tactical genius we all know and love, the brilliant Lernen Wolfblade, is going to lead us into battle against Hablet of Fardohnya, eh? Now there’s something to look forward to. Good thing I already know how to speak Fardohnyan.”

  Damin shook his head; like Adham, he couldn’t imagine anything worse than Hythria’s incompetent High Prince let loose with an army at his back . . . in the unlikely event, of course, that any Hythrun army would actually follow him to war in the first place.

  Damin found it a little unsettling, however, to have Adham Tirstone point this out to him. These were all things he should have considered. He consoled himself with the thought that his stepbrother might be a trader rather than a soldier, but he’d had much longer to reflect on all the ramifications of this news.

  The young prince was neither slow nor ignorant of the politics of his nation, however. He knew what needed to be done. “We need to find ourselves a general.”

  “Marla won’t allow it.”

  “She may not have a choice, Adham.”

  “Your mother will never willingly invest that much power in someone who isn’t a member of the family.”

  “Then who does she think is going to . . .” Damin’s voice trailed off as the awful truth dawned on him. He pulled his cloak tighter around himself, but the chill he felt didn’t come from the still, clear night.

  Adham nodded as he saw Damin’s expression. “And now you see the problem, don’t you?”

  Damin sighed heavily. “If the High Prince can’t lead the Hythrun to war, then they’ll expect to follow his heir.”

  “There goes your precious ‘Let’s Convince Everybody Damin’s an Idiot Until It’s Too Late For Them to Do Anything About It’ plan, I suspect,” Adham pointed out with a faint grin.

  Damin cursed savagely for a moment, which did nothing to solve the problem, but did make him feel marginally better. “Why couldn’t this damn plague have hit Fardohnya instead of us?”

  “Maybe the gods want to give you a chance to prove yourself.”

  “Almodavar said much the same thing earlier. I thought he was just trying to keep my spirits up.

  I didn’t realise he was being prophetic.” He turned and leaned his back against the railing, scuffing at the loose dirt with his boot. “You realise, of course, that my entire practical experience of battle consists of capturing Luciena tonight? There hasn’t been a decent war in Hythria since I was born. Everything I know is just theory.”

  “I sat in on those same theory lessons, Damin,” Adham reminded him. “I know what you were taught. Trust me, if you remember even half of it, you should be able to muddle through without losing Hythria to the Fardohnyans.”

  “You think I can muddle through without losing the country, do you? Thanks for the resounding vote of confidence, Adham.”
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  “Well, I’ll follow you to war, brother,” Adham assured him, clapping his shoulder encouragingly.

  “And so will Almodavar, I daresay.”

  “Oh, well . . . that thought should keep Hablet awake at night. You, me and Almodavar.”

  Adham shrugged. “Like I said, I already speak Fardohnyan. If you lose . . . well, I’m adaptable. I’m sure I can learn to shout ‘Long Live Hablet’ with the same forced enthusiasm that I shout ‘Long Live Lernen Wolfblade’!”

  Damin smiled thinly, appreciating the sentiment. It was hard sometimes to get excited about the idea that Lernen was the rightful High Prince of Hythria when they all knew Marla was the actual ruler and that without her steady hand at the helm, Hythria would have descended into anarchy a long time ago.

  But he couldn’t let Adham get away with a remark like that without some sort of comeback.

  “You damn traders are all alike, aren’t you? You’d sell your own grandmother if you thought you could show a profit.”

  “Why do you ask?” Adham shot back with a hopeful grin. “Are you in the market for one?”

  Damin laughed. “Ruxton must be so proud of you.”

  “I think he’s more proud of Rodja than me. He’s the one who likes to sit up all night going through the books, looking for another rivet to squeeze out of somebody. And both Rodja and Rielle have given him grandchildren, which makes them seem so much more considerate than me. I suspect my father thinks Almodavar corrupted me when we were children and turned me from Patanan, the God of Good Fortune, and into a follower of the God of War.”

  “He may not be far off the mark,” Damin agreed. “Given half a chance, Almodavar would turn Aunt Bylinda into a follower of Zegarnald, if he could.”

  “It’ll be good to see her again when we get back to Krakandar,” Adham said. “Nobody ever spoiled us the way Bylinda did when we were children. Which reminds me, with all this talk of your new career as Hythria’s saviour, I forgot to ask after Leila and Starros.”