Peter Morwood - The Clan Wars 02

by Widowmaker

Finding out would have to wait.

  Bayrd turned his attention back to the map on the table, but he made a small mental note to himself. It was obvious that the talathen Shadowthieves had no scruples about working in Alba as well as in Drosul, and if one could afford their services, then they were more than just kidnappers and assassins. High though it would be, that cost might prove a worthwhile investment sometime in the next few months or so… Always assuming he survived the next few weeks. And, he told himself, fighting a rising tide of doubts, it was less dishonourable to employ them as spies if the ultimate intention of that spying was to keep the peace.

  Once something like peace was restored, of course.

  He watched Gerin setting up stacks of carved and inlaid counters along the decorated edges of the map. They were wooden, stained in several colours to show various allied and opposing sides, each with a horseman or footsoldier carved into the top and small metal numerals let into its edge to show how many troops it represented. The big man moved with all the speed and assurance of someone who had gone through this same routine many times before.

  Who had been the enemy last time? wondered Bayrd, because the friendly side was very obvious. Those were the red counters, each inlaid with a black bear mounted on a plaque of polished ivory. He lifted one of them to examine it more closely. Just a small disc of wood, coloured, carved, and inscribed. A playing-piece for a war game, or even for the Great Game, but little more than a toy for all that. Yet it had the same unsettling feeling in his hand as any one of Eskra’s sorcerous grimoires. Yes indeed, he thought, putting the piece back where he had found it. Who was that last enemy, Gerin? The one who prompted you to set your siege-lines, or someone else entirely. And who might it be again? Me?

  “So then,” said Gerin. He consulted a sheaf of scribbled notes and arranged green counters. “Erhal has…two thousand horse about… Here.” Click went the counters. “And three thousand foot with them.” Click again. They all studied the map some more while he started to organize the disposition of his own troops, muttering under his breath.

  “Clan ar’Diskan can match them for horse,” – click – “but we’ve only half that number of foot until Gyras ar’Dakkur gets off his fat backside.” Bayrd and Eskra exchanged glances but said nothing. That sort of comment was fairly rich, coming as it did from a man whose own rump looked as though he carried a pair of cushions down his breeches.

  “If he ever does, father,” murmured Arren ar’Diskan. “Hostages. You always forget about the hostages. Both of Lord ar’Dakkur’s youngest sons, and one of his daughters, sit in the Great Tower at Cerdor even as we speak. And their health depends entirely on how he behaves.”

  “Ah. Yes.” Gerin balanced those extra counters on the palm of his hand and stared at them, considering, before he reluctantly put them to one side. “Using women and children as weapons. That’s not an honourable way to make war.”

  “But it’s effective,” said Eskra. “I thought that was the whole reason behind using one weapon rather than another. Effectiveness.”

  Gerin looked at her, then sniffed. “It’s quite clear, lady, that you don’t understand.”

  “I’m a woman. I might have been a hostage, and a weapon to use against my own husband. So try me.”

  “All right. There’s no glory in threatening a man’s family—”

  “Ah. Glory. I was wondering when you’d mention that.”

  “—And forcing him to break his word of honour.”

  “About acting as an ally, you mean? Oh, my lord, I understand all that perfectly.” She reached over and picked up the counters that would have represented Lord ar’Dakkur’s men, then put them down near Erhal’s troops, red counters and green side by side.

  “They may not be fighting for the Overlord, but they’re certainly not fighting for you – and who knows what other demands Erhal or his advisors might make? Once a man’s been forced not to support his own honourable allies, it can’t be much of a mental jump before someone starts to realize the same threats could force him to fight against them.”

  She slid the two stacks of counters together, and whether by accident or for deliberate effect, they clicked as they met, then rattled quietly as the separate stacks ran together. The heap they made was ominously large, and the red ar’Diskan allies were on top. “That’s what I’d do.”

  Gerin gave her a long, cold stare that she met without blinking. “It’s an infamous suggestion,” he said.

  “Why? You claim to be a practical man, my lord. The first step’s already been taken. The second’s only going to be a matter of time.”

  “The other lords would never—”

  “Listen to your son, Gerin-eir. The other lords have very little choice in this, as in so much else. Otherwise Erhal couldn’t have mustered such a force in so short a time. I doubt that many of them owe their fealty to him, except at one remove, through fear. How many of these other lords and

  Heads of House are in the same situation as Gyras ar’Dakkur? All of them. Except you, and Bayrd, and,” she paused delicately, “whoever’s now Clan-Lord ar’Kelayr.”

  “Which clan,” cut in Bayrd before Eskra could start another lecture, “since it’s now no more than a vassal House under cu Ruruc’s heel, doesn’t count for much any more. Except in the little matter of three thousand household troops. I don’t see those troops on your map, Gerin-eir. Hadn’t you better…?”

  For all that he clearly didn’t much care for the way Bayrd’s suggestion was made, Gerin was just as clearly relieved to be talking about something other than Eskra Talvalin’s ruthless approach to warfare. He drummed his fingers briefly against the map, but stopped abruptly as its stiff parchment transmitted enough vibration to make the sinister pile of counters at its centre shift over one another, a soft rustling sound like the scales of a snake in grass. Red mingled with green as the snake slithered.

  Red scales, for a Red Serpent.

  “Three…” Gerin ar’Diskan’s voice cracked on the word, and almost squeaked. Nobody smiled. He cleared his throat with unnecessary vigour, picked up a clattering handful of black wooden discs, and tried again. “Three thousand men, you say?” Bayrd nodded. “In what proportion?” Bayrd glanced at Eskra, who shrugged. He shrugged too.

  “Call it one thousand and two, horse and foot.” He watched as the numbers were counted out and arranged in the vicinity of Hold ar’Kelayr. “That’s just a guess. The disposition, anyway. But the numbers are right.”

  “Were right,” said Eskra. “They might have gone up, but hardly down. Not with that one.” For just a moment she looked sombrely at Bayrd. “What Kalarr has, he keeps, unless taken from him by force.”

  Perhaps fortunately, Bayrd missed the look. But he heard Gerin catch his breath, and saw an expression cross the other lord’s face, wondering all too plainly why Bayrd Talvalin didn’t see fit to keep some sort of curb on his wife’s opinions.

  Why couldn’t he make the blasted woman say something optimistic for once?

  As Gerin stumped off to refill his winecup, Bayrd almost smiled at the thought of trying such an impossible task. And besides, from what he had seen and heard since entering Hold ar’Diskan, what Eskra was saying was very likely the first unvarnished truth that Gerin had been made to listen to in a very long time. If he didn’t like the sound of it, then that was just too bad.

  “Three thousand with cu Ruruc, and five thousand with Erhal, and…damn it all, lord,” Iskar ar’Joren shook his head, grimly amused, “there are more armed men shown on this map than there were at the Landing!”

  Bayrd looked, counted, and gave him a lopsided grin. “We could have done with them then, right enough. There might not be this trouble now.”

  “But if you landed with so few,” said Eskra, “then where have they all come from?”

  “Besides the lords’-men?” Bayrd eyed the map, slid a couple of counters across the blue-inked sea to where the coast of Yuvan would have been, then shifted them back. “Renegades, mercenarie
s, late-comers of all kinds. You name them, they’ll be there. if you want to give them a kinder title, call them adventurers. They won’t be concerned over whether it’s Kalarr or any of these others leading them – so far as that goes, they might still be looking at the face of ‘Kurek ar’Kelayr’. Even if…” He hesitated, staring at the map. “Even if Marc ar’Dru isn’t. But there’s a chance for profit. Employment, plunder. Land. That always draws them.” He laughed shortly. “It drew us.”

  “But these are the sort of courageous bravos who always wait until it’s safe,” said Iskar, sneering. “They’ll never risk a gamble like the Landing.”

  Bayrd moved one of the counters idly, then restored it with finicky neatness to its proper place and glanced at Iskar. “Maybe. Some of them might also be the sort who didn’t know. They’d have been wading up through the surf besides us, if they’d had a chance to find out what old Albanak really had in that crooked mind of his.”

  “Um.” Iskar drew complicated patterns on the map with his steel-hooked hand. “I suppose so, lord,” he conceded at last. “But if they’d known, then Daykin of Kalitz might have known as well. And there’d have been no Landing at all.”

  “What a shame,” said Eskra sardonically. As the only Elthanek present, and thus the only representative of the people whose conquest they had been discussing so idly, she was entitled, even expected, to make such remarks in just such a tone of voice. But there was still a warmth in the way she spoke that suggested some good might have followed the Landing after all.

  “At least you outnumber Kalarr,” Bayrd pointed out as Gerin returned, continuing the conversation as though the other man had never moved. “You won’t even have to rely on your levies.” He gestured to the counters on the map in case Gerin hadn’t noticed.

  He had; but there was another problem than just a matter of numbers. “But cu Ruruc’s a wizard.”

  Eskra bowed slightly and smiled. “Well, so am I. And so—” Bayrd almost kicked her there and then, but she caught her tongue just in time. He wondered what was making her so careless – and, with a crooked sort of amusement, what Gerin would have said had the truth slipped out. “So is many another good friend of ours.”

  “Yes. You would have such friends, I suppose,” growled Gerin.

  “Of course, my lord. Just as hunters keep company with other hunters and horsemen with other riders, so wizards keep company—”

  “Thank you, lady.” Gerin ar’Diskan looked and sounded thoroughly flustered by the turn any conversation with Eskra could take. “If I don’t need to know about such matters, then I’d be grateful if you didn’t enlighten me.”

  “As you please. But it might broaden your view of the world.”

  “’Skra-ain, enough,” said Bayrd. In common with so many other faintly scandalous secrets, it was mildly entertaining to watch the squirming of someone not privy to them. But the diversion too often gave way to uneasy embarrassment, and it was happening now. “What you might do, loved, is give us some idea of what we might do about Kalarr.”

  She thought for a few moments, studying the map and the faces of the other kailinin with equal care. “I can suggest a single stone to kill two birds,” she said finally, “if your honour allows you to stomach the taste.” They looked at each other, then at her, and carefully turned their attention back to the map.

  “And that is?” asked Gerin ar’Diskan, when the silence had dragged on long enough that it was beginning to irritate him. “Well, lady? We’re waiting.”

  “Kill Erhal.”

  Held breath came out in a chorus of sighs of relief that she wasn’t going to propose something shocking after all. In fact, there was a murmur of slight surprise that Lady Talvalin’s great scheme should have turned out so ordinary. There was going to be a battle between two armies, and Erhal ar’Albanak was – at least nominally – in command of one of them. That made him fair game. And whether he was truly acting on his own, or with the clandestine backing of members of the Council, he was still the cord that tied his disparate army together. Cut the cord, and…

  Yes, of course they would kill him! Or at least they would try.

  Only Bayrd and Iskar and Kian kept watching her, and of the three, it was only Bayrd who saw the freezing glitter in her eyes as she listened to the others babble. Kian and Iskar probably suspected they knew what she had really meant – but he alone was certain.

  “You mistake me, eirin, gentlemen,” she said, and there was a rasp of impatience in her voice that hadn’t been there before. “If I had meant ‘kill him in battle’ I’d have said so.”

  “Assassination?” The Bannerman Aymar ar’Haleth looked at her as if she had just said something particularly filthy.

  “Not assassination. Not if you’re thinking of poison in the cup, or a knife from the shadows – though I can’t see any difference between that and a taiken, except that you wouldn’t have to cut anyone else before you could reach him. I meant, kill him in such a way that not only do we get rid of him, but Kalarr cu Ruruc gets the blame.” She took a deep breath, and then the plunge. “Kill him by the Art Magic.”

  Bayrd was the only one of all the men in the room who didn’t swear, or flinch, or back away from her and make the ‘avert’ gesture with one hand, meant to turn aside the ill-luck of the suggestion. But it was Gerin who stared at her for a long, long time, and it was he who picked up one of the green counters that represented the Overlord’s forces, and turned it over in his big, blunt fingers, and voiced aloud what all the rest were surely thinking.

  “How could it be done,” he said, “without you getting the blame instead?”

  There was another murmur, a ripple of dismay among his kailinin that their lord could even consider such a proposal.

  “And what,” demanded Aymar ar’Haleth, “is to stop cu Ruruc using magic against us?” He was Gerin’s Bannerman and his lord’s public conscience, expected to protect that lord’s reputation from anything that might sully it. But neither his title nor his position had anything to do with the way he asked his question. His own honour had nothing to do with it either. The man was terrified.

  “Nothing.” It was Bayrd rather than Eskra who spoke, and there was the memory of old death in his eyes. “Remember Gerin’s uncle Goel, back in that first winter?” From the look on their faces, they remembered all too well. “I saw green fire eat out his brain. And he wasn’t the only one. There’s nothing to keep Kalarr from trying that again—”

  “Trying it, certainly,” said Eskra, sounding cheerful enough that she might really mean it. “You’re being too gloomy, my love. Remember something else about those killings? They were individual deaths, not some sort of mass slaughter like plague or fire. Or glorious battle.” She looked at the kailinin with slight disapproval. “Unpleasant, yes, especially if it happened to you. But you might fall off a horse and break your neck, and how many Horse Lords are so afraid of that they won’t ride horses…? Yes. I thought so.”

  She grinned broadly at Aymar, so that for an instant Bayrd thought she might have been on the point of patting his cheek. Perhaps it was just as well that she didn’t. But the grin didn’t go away either. “And what happened after those killings? This one was sent to find me – well, someone like me – by Lord Gerin himself, and by the late Overlord Albanak. And since deaths by sorcery stopped directly I came back, and since I’m still here…Well, eirin, I think I could be an adequate deterrent once again. Bayrd’s right. Nothing can stop Kalarr using magic. But I can stop it having any effect.”

  “But what if we face him in battle?” Arren sounded nervous, having caught something of Aymar’s mood. “Wouldn’t he try to blast us and the ranks of our soldiers?”

  Eskra shook her head, the grin growing into a quiet, throaty laugh. “Listen to yourselves,” she chuckled. “Like children telling nasty stories to keep from being frightened by a thunderstorm. And don’t look at me like that, my lord Gerin, I meant it kindly enough.”

  Bayrd wasn’t so sure; but kindly
meant or not, her cutting comparison was having some sort of effect.

  “Because you hate and fear the Art so much, you know nothing about it. And that ignorance gives it credit for being more than it can ever be. Blast you with fire where you stand? Maybe,” – there was a rustle of unease – “but he’d be more likely to hack at you with axe or sword. That would be just as fatal, but I don’t see you fretting about it. Sorcery, gentlemen, is exhausting, dangerous to the user, and not to be relied on when there are simpler ways of doing things.”

  “But the soldiers? Surely that would be the simple way to—”

  “Bows are simpler. Spears, too. To say nothing of a hole in the ground with a spike at the bottom. Just make sure to meet him on ground of your own choosing, not his – and I’ve been assured that’s one of the first requirements of a battleground, yes?” This time they actually laughed a little. “Otherwise he’d definitely try to work you mischief.”

  The laughter stopped abruptly.

  “But he could do it with or without magic. He could just plant lilies like the ones outside this fortress, then entice a charge across the prepared ground. Or he could try to charm destruction into the very substance of the ground.” The kailinin twitched and twittered like spooked horses. “But that would do him very little good unless he was certain that someone would be standing on that ground when the power of the spell was loosed. Blast your soldiers? No. If he even dared attempt it, he would tear himself apart.”

  It was Gerin who laughed this time. “That would be something to see,” he said. “And perhaps, when all this is done, I might even get Ivern back again.”

  Bayrd’s insides turned over. “No,” he said quickly, far too quickly. “You won’t.”

  “No…?” Gerin stared at him, not understanding. Or maybe not wanting to understand. “And what might you know of it?”

  Bayrd could have played the courtier’s part and been less blunt, have couched the news in some careful, roundabout phrases, and he knew that Gerin wouldn’t have thanked him for the trouble.