Count Scar - SA (32 page)

I had no idea if I had succeeded. I scooped the parchment, the rust-colored stones, and all the bags of powder back into Melchior's saddlebags, wrapped my cloak around me, and fell asleep beside
him.

Afternoon sun woke me. I rolled over, stiff and aching, checked first to be sure Melchior was still breathing, then sat up to look down the mountainside. There was no sign of Magians from the
Order of the Three Kings coming to rescue us, but then there was also no sign of heretic warriors coming to finish us off. I moved my shoulders back and forth, working out the knots, and put a
hand on my sword hilt. If the heretics came they would fine out that cold steel can be effective even against thost who wrongfully imagine they have the approval of God.

I stood up, feeling restless and impatient. My ankle hurt, but I made myself put weight on it. I had no desire to wait here until the heretics showed up—or, even worse, decided that as long as I
was out of Peyrefixade this would be the perfect time to assault it. Even that castle might prove vulnerable with a powerful magic-worker at the gates and none inside defending it. I contemplated
trying to move Melchior, tied to the saddle again or perhaps in some sort of improvised litter suspended between our horses, but could think of no way of doing so without reopening his wound.

Yesterday, with the arrow still in him, he had bled very little; today he could bleed to death long before we reached Peyrefixade.

Although I tried to be quiet, the sound of my pacing must have awakened him, for when I glanced down his eyes were open. I squatted beside him. "Feeling better?" I asked with an effort at
cheerfulness.

His lids drooped and lifted again. I could tell he was trying to say that he was but couldn't quite manage it. Agony was printed all over his face; I had seen it too often not to recognize the signs.

He might be a priest, but he was as brave against physical pain as any warrior. For a minute his lips moved in prayer, then he spoke at last. "My grandfather's telesma. It should still be inside my
cassock, close to my breast."

I found it, trying not to jostle him, and put it into his hand. The white shaft, cut deeply with diagonal lines and carved with the image of the Watercarrier, seemed to burn against my skin.

He moved it slowly until its tip touched the bandage on his upper arm, now dark with crusted blood. He winced but spoke clearly, the words of an incantation coming out one at a time with long
pauses in between. I surreptitiously rubbed the palm of my hand on the ground.

Then there was silence while I looked off across the mountain again. The mist was long gone, and I spotted a thread of smoke that must come from the old mans cottage. Melchior spoke at last,
and his voice sounded almost normal.

"I fear I have now exhausted all the magic lines I built up so carefully in this telesma. The effort has left me as helpless as a newborn kitten, but without the pain my mind seems clear again."

I brought him water and helped him drink; his limbs flopped as loosely as though there was no bone inside his skin. "I wrote in the powder on the parchment," I told him, "saying that we had
been ambushed and needed help but that the conviare was still safe. I couldn't tell your abbot where we were because I don't know myself— will he be able to trace the message back to us?"

"He will not be able to tell from whence the message was sent," Melchior Answered quietly, only his lips moving as he spoke. "But there is an ivory tablet always kept in readiness at the abbey,
and when a message is sent with the correct spells, the dust on that tablet shapes itself as though an invisible finger wrote. The abbot will then notify the priory of our Order in the duke's city of
Ferignan, in the same way."

Although I would have preferred not to have the duke know that I had been ambushed by heretics, losing my baggage, all my knights, and nearly my capellanus, having Duke Argave come looking
for us would at least mean help was on the way.

"Thank you for assisting me in my spells," Melchior said gravely. "If you followed my instructions strictly, no harm should have come to your body—or your soul." I did not answer, having had
no idea I was so transparent.

There was of course always the possibility that my sending of the message had been flawed, that there was some additional incantation that should have been said but hadn't been because I didn't
know it and Melchior; had fainted, but I didn't mention that. I also didn't mention food, but the priest and I had finished the chicken stew between us, and I had eaten what little else remained in
my saddlebags. My desire to face the old man's dog again was markedly low.

Melchior didn't say anything more about the pain in his arm, but I began to wonder if it might indicate a deep infection beginning to spread. And how long would the magical effects of his
grandfathers telesma last; before that deep pain broke through into his consciousness again?

But at the moment he appeared to be thinking hard. He couldn't move but he wanted to talk. "What has it been, Count, perhaps twenty-four hours since the warriors attacked?"

"Something like that." I sat beside him, trying to act as though this was a perfectly normal conversation, that we had decided for excellent reasons to be resting here among the long shadows of the
rocks, miles from anyone except for one man too aged to go up any more to the high summer pastures with the sheep.

"That they have not found us in that time indicates they may not be looking very thoroughly. Having captured the rest of our party and knowing me wounded, they may feel that you are for now
safely out of the way. They may thus be on their way to besiege Peyrefixade."

I tapped my fingers on my sword hilt, not liking this idea any better coming from him than from my own thoughts. Getting home safely to Peyrefixade would be complicated by coming up the
hill to find Perfected attackers encamped around it. "But I thought the masters of your Order had decided that the heretics wanted the conviare, that their whole purpose in getting into
Peyrefixade—and incidentally killing me—was to use the conviare to search for the great battle telesma their old magus hid there."

"If they have the lesser battle telesma, they may believe that that will be enough. As indeed in skilled hands it may be." Then he added, more loudly than he had spoken yet—almost, I thought, as
though trying to persuade himself—"But we must trust in the Lord, Who shall provide for us."

He then fell silent, leaving me to turn over the possibility that after years during which followers of the True Faith had imagined that heresy was made rare if not indeed extinct, outside of one
stretch of mountainous territory, the Perfected might rise again, with all the magical strength they had wielded during the great war of two generations ago. And if this time they were led by
someone without the overweening pride of the old magus of whom I had learned in the abbey, someone better able to calculate how to defeat the unprepared defenders of the Faith—

"This lesser battle telesma," I said at last. "I understood it was preserved by one of the pupils of the last magus and went with him into hiding. But do you have any idea what happened to the
rest of his pupils?"

"According to Brother Endaris, the Spector General of our Order, there were three pupils, only one of whom went into hiding with the remnants of the Perfected at the end of the war. Of the other
two, he said that one repented and returned to the True Faith, and one clung to but attempted to hide his Perfected doctrine, living among the faithful until the Inquisition finally uncovered him.

I have been thinking over what Brother Endaris told us, his vivid information on the last moments of the life of the great magus, and have concluded that the first pupil, the one who renounced
the devil's pernicious doctrines, was Brother Endaris himself."

My first thought was that I had been right all along in my uneasy feeling that the Order of the Three Kings might be a disguised form of heresy. But I ought to have known better. Someone truly
repentant should be treated as a lost sheep, welcomed back into the flock. "And the other pupil, the one who would not renounce his beliefs?"

Melchior did not answer at once, and when he did his voice was so low I had to bend toward him to hear. "That man— I believe he was my grandfather."

I glanced toward the priests saddlebags. His grandfather had taught Melchior the first rudiments of magic, had given him the protective telesma he still carried, and had been burned to death for
refusing to renounce his heretical beliefs. Even though the heretics had wounded Melchior, if they came now, reminding him of his grandfathers loyalty to their perverted faith, promising to use
their magical arts to restore his wound, would he feel compelled to give them the conviare his grandfather had helped conceal in Peyrefixade?

At once I felt ashamed of the thought. I bustled around our camp for a moment, saying I would try to make him more comfortable, though there was little I could do besides bringing him a drink
of water and praying that he did not ask for food.

As I lowered him back down after helping him drink, he suddenly fixed me with his eyes. "They are coming."

I let him down the last few inches faster than I intended and ran to the edge of the stony hollow, my sword already out. "Who is it, Magians of your Order? The duke's men?" I spoke hopefully,
but I already knew.

"I can see them with my second eye," he said, sounding weaker, as though this new effort of magic was drawing out what little strength he still had. "Coming from the south. Three of the men
who attacked us yesterday."

I could see them now myself, tiny figures several miles away, down in the valley. "They may not even think to look for us here," I said, trying to be encouraging and not feeling at all encouraged.

These must have been among those furthest from us when the priest unleashed his terrible light. "Do they have their Magian with them?"

"Not the Magian," said Melchior softly, "nor their leader." The bare-headed man who had directed the knights yesterday had been, I thought, the same man who had appeared so abruptly before me
on my way back from meeting Prince Alfonso. He had warned me about a traitor, but then had cheerfully used that traitor for his own purposes. I now regretted bitterly not seizing him and
turning him over to the Inquisition.

"Take the conviare, Count, and go," said Melchior weakly. "The life of a wounded priest is not worth the—"

But I cut him off with a rude sound I probably shouldn't have made to my capellanus. I hadn't gone to all this effort to keep him alive just to abandon him now.

"If the Magian isn't with them," I said, still trying to sound encouraging, "chances are they will never spot us up here anyway." But the most likely explanation was that the leader and his chief
magic-worker were even now laying siege to Peyrefkade, having delegated a few knights to track us down in the meantime. For a horrible moment I wondered if Seneschal Guilhem might try to
get the heretics into the castle by passing them off as friends of mine, but Bouteillier Raymbaud would never allow in a strange band of armed men, no matter how convincingly the seneschal
vouched for them.

"I think—" Melchior hesitated. "I think they have been equipped with a finding knife by their Magian. I know it."

"And I've been armed with steel," I said shortly. No use then in waiting. An excuse for action at last was welcome. I saddled my horse and pulled on my helmet— still smelling faintly of
chicken. Best to meet them far away from Melchior and the conviare.

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Tracking spell or not, they didn't spot me at once. I circled around, trying to find a way to approach them without being silhouetted against the sky. And then I remembered Melchior following
the assassin in the duke's city and realized they must be following the traces of our passage up the mountain. If I didn't stop them, they would be led by the magically enhanced imprint of our
horses' hooves straight to where Melchior lay in hiding.

But this also meant I knew the exact route they would follow. There was one particularly steep slope we had ascended yesterday, with a group of stunted evergreens at the top. I worked around to
the spot and pulled my horse up there to wait. If they could ambush us, I could ambush them.

I waited half an hour, listening to the sigh of the wind in the trees above me and wishing I had a bow. All knights agree that a bow is a coward's weapon in war, and all armies march with a
contingent of archers anyway. My horse stamped and shook his bridle, but I stilled him with a hand on his neck. After a while I could hear the heretics' approach, the chink of horseshoes on stone,
the rattle of harness, and a few exchanged words.

The first rider's head came up over the edge, and I charged.

He was taken totally by surprise. When I rushed at him, screaming the imperial battle cry, he barely had time to swing up his shield before I was on him. He blocked my first stroke and had his
sword out by the time I whirled my horse around for a second, but I deflected his own stroke easily and drove in straight and unswerving to the neck.

But as I wrenched my bloody sword out of his body, the other two knights came at me from either side.

They might not have been trained in the emperor's army, but someone had drilled them well in fighting: two men on foot fight back to back, but two mounted men separate to try to trap their
enemy between them.