by Widowmaker
Gerin stared at her, and the fire in his eyes cooled and went out. “I think so,” he said. “I hope so.” Then he shook his head. “But as for you,” the heat returned just a little as he swung on Bayrd again, “I’m still not persuaded about the ar’Kelayr’n. The death of the son and the death of the father followed too close together. They were too… Too convenient.”
“For whom? Me? I lost my Bannerman—”
“I know the feeling.”
“—My respect, several of my own lord’s-men and two allied Houses. I gained nothing. If that’s convenience, my lord, I want no part of it.”
“I’ve heard three versions of the same tale,” Gerin persisted stubbornly. “And the one I find most convincing involves that damned sword, and black sorcery.”
“Not black,” Eskra corrected. “Sorcery isn’t black. Shades of grey, perhaps,” she said, remembering the morning. “But wizardry and the Art Magic… That’s another matter.”
Gerin shot her a look of disgust, as a man might when a normally dignified lady appears for the first time dirty, drunken and foul-mouthed. “I have no desire to know any of this,” he said coldly.
“Not even for your own safety’s sake? Then you’d better forget that knives are sharp, and falling off tall buildings is bad for your health. Because it’s all the same thing in the long run.”
“Peace, ’Skra-ain. There’ll be time for it later.”
“If we have a later.”
“Hush. My lord ar’Diskan, isn’t the fact that I came here to try and convince you of, all right, of my truth instead of yours, at least a demonstration of good faith?”
“Of arrogance, maybe. And a poor view of my intelligence.”
“Or maybe a truth that isn’t just yours or mine.”
“So we’re back to the truth again, are we?”
“Where else is there to go?” The hectoring tone was gone from Eskra’s voice, and she spoke quietly. “Either you believe what we’re trying to tell you, my lord, and something useful comes from all this wrangling – or you don’t, and Kalarr cu Ruruc devours us piecemeal in his own good time.” She eyed him thoughtfully, because there had been that same suppressed twitch as before to the mention of the sorcerer’s name. “Now, what about your son?”
“Ivern is dead.”
This time it was Eskra’s turn to jump, as sharply as if she had touched a hot coal. “What…?” That her voice could be so steady was a credit to whatever training sorcery and the Art required of its students, but Bayrd could see how white her face had gone. His own face couldn’t be much better, even though he had only heard Ivern’s death described. Eskra had seen it through Marc ar’Dru’s eyes, as closely as seeing it through her own. “What did you say?” she tried again.
“I have no younger son,” said ar’Diskan sombrely. “He was like Dyrek ar’Kelayr. He kept strange company. For the sake of his honour – and mine – I wanted him to stay here at Segelin. I asked him as his father, and he ignored me. I commanded him as his lord, and he defied me. I no longer have a son of that name.”
Bayrd Talvalin could feel the blood thudding in his ears, and he was certain that there was a tremor in his hands. Coincidence, so the scholars said, happened more frequently in life than in any of the storymakers’ tales, because life, they said, was never so tidily plotted. Bayrd could well believe it. But how much this bleak repudiation – which seemed to have worked both ways – might serve to soften the blow of Ivern’s real death, he didn’t know.
He had no proof that might serve to convince Gerin ar’Diskan. Bayrd turned away so that no-one could see, then closed his eyes, clenched his fists, gritted his teeth, and felt no better. There was never any proof – not of plotting, not of murder, not of usurpation in Cerdor. There was just his word; and that was worth little enough elsewhere, and nothing at all in Segelin.
But there was one other thing the scholars had said, when they weren’t busily squabbling over whose theory was to be the most favoured on any particular week. Every once in a while, to prove something they weren’t entirely sure of except the existence of irony, one of those coincidences made sense.
And though he didn’t know it when the alarm trumpets started to scream from the walls of the fortress, it was happening to Bayrd right now.
The man brought into the citadel by Aymar ar’Haleth looked less like the saviour of sense, than he resembled something one of Gerin’s hunting-dogs might bury under a tree. For several seconds neither Bayrd nor Eskra could understand why Aymar treated this dusty, muddy, tattered ragamuffin with such concern, or why Gerin ar’Diskan threw his arms around the man and all but wept on his shoulder as he helped him to a chair.
It was only when the first coating of mire – mixed, as they could see, with spatters of dried, caked blood – had been sponged away that they realized he was Gerin’s elder son Arren.
A man who by all intents should have been in Cerdor.
He was injured in several places besides the long gash on the forehead that had made him so hard to recognize. None of them were serious, though that was only through good luck. Bayrd knew arrow-wounds when he saw one, and right now he was looking at four or five.
“Get the surgeon in here!” bellowed Gerin, raging about in an ecstasy of concern and getting in the way far more than he helped. It was strange for Bayrd to see how a man he knew was a cool, controlled warrior could act like a headless chicken where his own son was concerned. At least, when that was his obedient eldest son. “Fetch fresh clothing! Bring food and wine!”
“Enough for all,” added Eskra as the gaggle of servants hurried past her, and if Gerin heard, he didn’t countermand the request.
Arren ar’Diskan was hungry, thirsty, aching from hours in the saddle, and most of all he was exhausted; but like his father and his late brother, the family stubbornness was able to put everything else behind his need to explain what had brought him here. Bayrd and the others suspected that they already knew, and once Arren began to speak, they were sure of it. It was the same warning as before, but this time from a source that even Gerin would find impeccable.
“Erhal ar’Albanak,” he began, speaking carefully through a hoarse, dust-abraded throat that no amount of wine or water had yet rinsed clean, “has declared himself Overlord by a majority mandate of the High Council.”
For Bayrd at least, it was worth all the time and trouble and insults to see the expression on Gerin’s face when he heard those words, and resisted an overwhelming temptation to say What did I tell you? But only because Lord Gerin’s own mind was saying it for him.
“How did he achieve the majority?” Bayrd asked. “And why wasn’t it unanimous?”
Arren blinked at Bayrd as though realizing he was there for the first time. His eyes took in the blue and white Talvalin crest-coat, the silver spread-eagles at the shoulders, and above all the black hilt of the taiken Widowmaker rearing like a striking snake beside Bayrd’s head. He passed a dry tongue over dry lips, blinked again, then glanced sidelong at his father as though asking permission to answer the question.
“Hostages,” he said at last. Bayrd heard Eskra swear under her breath. “He holds hostages from most of the clans and Families and Houses, as surety for the good behaviour of their lords. If he had hostages from them all, then the mandate would have been unanimous.”
“And this good behaviour is of course whatever action he commands, or that his faction approves?”
“No faction, my lord.” Water, wine and food had arrived as he was speaking, and Arren paused to rinse the dust from his mouth. Then he looked at the circle of apprehensive faces. “He’s acting independently.”
“But he’s only seventeen!” Gerin burst out. “How would any lord on the Council—”
Arren thumped his fist on the arm of the chair, even though from the way he winced, the effort hurt him. “Didn’t you hear me, father?” he demanded. “He has hostages! When he was last in the Great Tower, he all but emptied old Albanak’s treasury to hire talathen
assassins from Drosul.”
“So now we know who was behind it,” said Bayrd in an undertone.
“Another precocious brat,” muttered Eskra. “Just the way cu Ruruc started.”
“And he sent them to take prisoners from everyone he might need to control. Not just the obvious ones, his opponents and the Undeclared – he sent them after his own supporters as well. To guarantee their loyalty. After that, nobody could oppose him.”
“Except for a couple of clans in the north,” said Bayrd savagely, “because his talathen failed to take any hostages from them. But they didn’t oppose him because they were too busy opposing each other. Isn’t that right, my lord Gerin? We’ve been playing dog in the manger here for far too long. You haven’t trusted me because you think I tricked you out of a fairly won domain, and so you routinely disbelieve anything I might say. As we heard not half an hour ago when I told you exactly this. And I haven’t trusted you, because years ago you made threats against me. Threats that you’ve been too honourable to carry out!”
“Now wait just a minute,” Gerin began.
“That was a compliment, man,” snapped Eskra. “Accept it and shut up.”
“So while we’ve been playing our own small, private version of the Game, we’ve been overlooking the Grand Moves made by everybody else. Gerin-eir ar’Diskan, do you need any more proof that we should forget past differences?”
“This isn’t exactly the reason you were giving me ‘not half an hour ago,’” said Gerin, stubborn and pedantic to the last.
“Fires of Heaven, man!” Bayrd’s fist came down on the arm of his own chair, and since he was not only unhurt but was holding a brimming goblet of wine, the result was much more impressive than Arren’s effort. “If this isn’t enough, then what in the Nine Hot Hells do you want for proof? A siege-train outside each of our Holds, each flying the same banner? Do you need to see the roof cave in before you’re convinced your house is on fire?”
“He’s right, father,” said Arren.
“You keep out of this,” Gerin snapped automatically; then blushed bright red at the enormity of what he had done. It was one thing for a man to keep treating his sons as children, but quite another when one of those sons had made a most un-childlike headlong ride from Cerdor to Segelin with enemy warriors in pursuit at least part of the way.
“I will not keep out of it,” said Arren, and for the first time, Bayrd could hear old ar’Diskan’s voice coming out of his son’s mouth. It was as hard and inflexible as Gerin had ever sounded, and perhaps wisely, Gerin heard it too and paid it heed.
“What, then?” he said, his façade of indifference crumbling under the weight of necessity. Arren stared at his father, then at Bayrd.
“An alliance,” he said simply. “Otherwise, just kill everyone, burn the fortress, and save yourself a great deal of time and trouble.”
“Don’t talk rubbish—”
“Have you seen Erhal’s army, father? No? Well, I have. Two thousand horse, three thousand foot. I’m talking sense.”
“And then there’s Kalarr,” said Eskra sweetly. “Did you forget him? Another three thousand men. No; probably more by now. And he owes you, my lord ar’Diskan. He owes you much more than—”
“Not now. You’re not being very encouraging, loved,” said Bayrd. The endearment had teeth in it.
“You want encouragement?” said Eskra, though she steered away from the other and far more sensitive subject. “All right. Here’s encouragement for you. Individually, you’re both dead. Damn it, individually, we’re all dead. Never mind Kalarr cu Ruruc for the moment, just consider Erhal.”
Her eyes flickered towards Bayrd’s; he met and held them for no more than a second, but in that second he gave her a nod that was approval for preparing the way, but also a warning not to go any further down that road. Without proof, which not even Arren could supply, the news about Ivern would be a pointless hurt, and one that could even destroy the pact that they were trying to build.
“How long will Arren survive you, my lord ar’Diskan? When you’re buried under the rubble of this citadel and these lands are under the Overlord’s hand, who’s going to make him give them up? No matter what he’s done to make himself secure, no matter how many hostages he holds from however many clans and Families and Houses, you aren’t dealing with Erhal alone. This seventeen-year-old boy has most of the High Council behind him. They’re still using him, even if it isn’t just as a figurehead to disguise the workings of their own clean white hands.”
She picked up a cup of wine and drank it down in two gulps. Bayrd watched her warily. He had seen his wife in a passion of annoyance before, overflowing with impatience at the sheer stupidity of people who seemed to be maliciously blind to what was happening around them, but he had never seem her teetering so close to the edge of real anger. When Eskra Talvalin got angry, she got quiet; and she was very quiet and controlled right now.
“The Council daren’t back down from any decisions he might make, any orders he might give – remember the hostages? But they can ‘advise’ him on those decisions. They can ‘make recommendations’, and hostages or no hostages, they’ll have that boy dancing to their tune all the more eagerly because he’ll still be convinced that he’s doing it of his own free will!”
“I weep for him,” Gerin snarled.
“You should.” Eskra’s shoulders drooped, and suddenly she looked as weary as though she, too, had just ridden all the way from Cerdor. “Nobody else will. And somebody must, because what’s being done in his name will blacken it—”
“Then let it be blackened!” It was the usual ar’Diskan blaze of temper, but it looked to Bayrd like the last flare of resistance.
“Are we to be allies, then?” he wondered aloud, not asking a direct question just yet.
“Allies, ar’Talvlyn. Not friends.” Gerin had the harried look of a man not quite sure of how he had been manipulated into agreeing to this situation, and still less idea of how he was going to get out of it again. “I’m setting aside our differences. Don’t think for one minute that I’m forgetting them.”
For all that, there was general relief, and even Kian ar’Terel cracked one of his wintry smiles. “You’re a stubborn man, ar’Diskan,” said Bayrd, bowing acknowledgement more willingly than he had bowed greeting earlier on.
“Practical, ar’Talv—” Gerin hesitated, then shrugged. “All right. Let it be Talvalin, then. But yes. I’m just practical. I don’t trust you any more than you trust me, and if you do, then you’re a fool.”
“Then call me a fool.”
“You’re a fool.” There was a short, uneasy silence, broken at last by Eskra’s soft laughter at all the posturing she was being forced to witness. This was the second time in less than a month that Bayrd had invited someone to call him a fool, and let them get away with it. Bayrd looked at her, then at Gerin. Gerin looked at her, then at Bayrd. Slowly, they both smiled. “Yes,” said Gerin ar’Diskan. “You’re a fool indeed. But an honourable one for all that.”
10. - Endgame
We’ll meet them in open battle,” said Gerin, unrolling a great sheet of parchment across the dining-table in his private chambers and securing its corners with weights. The various ar’Diskan’r officers and kailinin who were present paid it little attention, but Bayrd, Eskra and their two retainers Kian and Iskar studied it with an interest they did their unsuccessful best to conceal.
It was when Bayrd saw Arren ar’Diskan smiling behind his hand that he gave up on the pretence, twitching his lips into an even thinner smile that he didn’t bother to hide. He let his head tilt slowly to one side as his eyes followed the courses of rivers, the edges of forests and mountain ranges, even the seashore that marked the limit of the Land.
Most of all, his gaze tracked along the red-inked boundaries of clan domains, noting how the parchment had been scraped and redrawn on several occasions to keep those boundaries current as they shifted with marriage, alliance and inheritance. That wasn’t too su
rprising: the features of a country didn’t change, the political borders did. But this, after all, was Gerin ar’Diskan.
That he might be one of the many Alban lords trying to make documentary sense of their new possessions wasn’t so unusual. Bayrd had such charts himself, more or less completed, some of them drawn in even finer detail than this in an attempt to keep track of which family owned which patch of grazing-land at any given time of year. But because of that very reason, they were small, each one covering only a couple of meadows at a time. To see a map of an entire province – in fact more even than that, since it showed the whole of Elthan and part of Prytenon as well – drawn in such detail was unusual, and disturbing.
Gerin commanded between three and four thousand ar’Diskan kailinin, even before any calculations started to include the allied clans and Houses. Various smaller families owed him an obligation of armed duty in his Household forces in exchange for their lands. When a clan-lord of Gerin’s known pugnacious temperament had so many soldiers under his banner, then neighbouring lords with fewer troops were well advised to look to their defences. When that same aggressive lord had a chart like this in his possession, he couldn’t help but worry.
And it was only one map. Bayrd wondered what the others might show him, if he dared to open the wooden locker and rummage through its contents. But there was an honour-guard of six men in the room, as a courtesy to the higher-ranked people such as himself and Gerin, and one of those six was standing nonchalantly right beside the chart-locker with its two keys on his belt. It was unlikely that any attempt to open it without permission would be well-received.