Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (18 page)

‘Jilseth!’

Standing to lean over the table, Nolyen slapped her face with stinging violence. He reeled away, yelping at the pain he had inflicted on himself.

That shock of physical sensation ran through Jilseth like and yet unlike pain. It gave her an instant of realisation of her body’s boundaries. With all the strength that she could muster, she forced a division between her hands and the scrying bowl. She cried out with the agony of it. It would surely have hurt less to take a knife to her own flesh.

The amber magelight dulled. Emerald scrying magic brightened briefly before it was snuffed out by the rising gobbets of molten pitch. The golden magelight suffusing her own hands was far slower to fade.

‘What did we do?’ She stared across the table.

‘We found the Mandarkin’s lair,’ Nolyen said roughly.

That wasn’t what Jilseth had meant and she could see that Nolyen knew that.

But they had done it all the same; found a way through the renegade’s veiling magic.

Only Jilseth wasn’t at all sure that she would ever try working such a scrying again.

Planir had warned her about unruly magic. Like every other apprentice Jilseth had learned the names of those wizards who had succumbed to obsession and intoxication with the untamed element of their affinity. Those wizards who had died in disgrace, their stories a dreadful warning.

Jilseth had been so scared that her wizardry wouldn’t return. As she gazed at the scrying bowl, she realised she was far more fearful now that it had.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Halferan Manor, Caladhria

10th of For-Autumn

N
O WONDER
L
ADY
Zurenne had been so easily convinced that wizardry offered Halferan’s only hope of recovery, however rough and ready, this side of For-Winter with Aft-Winter’s even greater travails to come after the solstice.

Corrain contemplated the burned ruin of the gatehouse, not one wall left standing higher than a short man’s belt buckle. Where an archway had once admitted honoured guests, now a tangle of charred rafters perversely blocked his horse’s way into the manor’s courtyard without offering a defence that a curious rat couldn’t scramble over.

The lingering smell of burning was still strong enough to disconcert his fractious mount. Corrain soothed the horse with a firm stroke of its glossy chestnut neck as he considered the manor’s encircling wall.

Once it had been a solid bulwark of sturdy brick capped with ruddy tiles. Now it was scabrous inside and out with patches of plaster fallen away to reveal the brickwork beneath. Ominous cracks ran all the way down from the coping tiles to vanish into the foundations beneath the ground. If the corsairs were to attack with their grapnels now, Corrain judged that their ropes could bring down whole stretches of Halferan’s defences.

He closed his eyes, rejecting abrupt recollection of the scavenging hordes whom he and Anskal had discovered looting the abandoned buildings. Though that enabled him to picture more clearly the brutal blast of azure magic which had killed some corsairs outright and levelled buildings to crush the rest.

Corrain opened his eyes. That bell couldn’t be unrung. Wizardry was the Archmage’s concern and until Planir of Hadrumal chose to exact some retribution for his crimes, Corrain must turn this wasteland of broken brick, burned wood and shattered plaster into the reassuring, imposing heart of a barony. How could Baron Halferan command any respect from his noble neighbours as long as he was crammed into an inadequate hunting lodge with servants cooped up in store rooms and half the demesne folk sleeping on floors?

And coming here, Corrain himself would be relieved of Zurenne and Lady Ilysh’s constant questions. The physical trials and personal anguish of camping in a guardsman’s tent amid the ruins of his dead lord’s former honour was a small price to pay.

‘Ca—’ Master Rauffe managed a creditable pretence of a cough. ‘My lord baron? What are your orders?’

Corrain wanted to ask the man why he had not returned to Licanin once the parliament had decided Halferan now lay beyond his liege lord’s purview. Was Rauffe’s status as steward here so much better than whatever he might return to? Or was he still Licanin’s spy as the grey-haired baron played a longer game of white raven?

Such questions were currently moot. Rauffe was a most capable and efficient steward and no one else in this household could do nearly so good a job.

‘Clear this entry.’ Corrain gestured at the choked gatehouse. ‘We must be able to get wagons in and out. Then establish our accommodations.’ He nodded at the dray which had rumbled along at the rear of their ramshackle column, carrying bedding and food for their journey, tents and tools for their stay here.

‘My lord.’ Rauffe nodded and twisted in his saddle. ‘Sirstin! Gartas!’

Corrain urged his balking horse aside with insistent hands and heels as the blacksmith and the erstwhile reeve of the Halferan demesne answered the steward’s summons. The rest of the men and boys who had trudged across the barony from their Taw Ricks refuge spread across the unkempt grass between the manor and the brook.

The weariest dropped to sit slumped, heedless of lingering dampness after the night’s rain. Others were wound too taut by grief and outrage to stand still, walking instead in aimless, frustrated circles. A few stood motionless some distance downstream. They were looking at the broad black scar on the turf where funeral pyres had burned for all of those killed amid the manor’s destruction.

All of the Caladhrians, Corrain reminded himself. The corsairs executed by Anskal’s magic had been thrown into fellmongers’ wagons, driven to the edge of the marshes and dumped in a charnel pit.

Their flesh would be slowly eaten by the silver reed lizards, their eyes pecked out by the crows, their bones stripped by the brindled marsh kites. Their shades should suffer a generation’s torment at the claws of Poldrion’s demons, so the Halferans told themselves with satisfaction, until that long-delayed day when no last scrap of their earthly bodies remained to tie them to this world.

Corrain had considered telling them that the Archipelagans didn’t believe in Saedrin or his judgement or his door to the Otherworld. But what good would that do anyone?

He watched as Sirstin and Gartas passed on their so-called baron’s orders. Some of the skills he’d learned as a guard captain served him well in this new role. He had learned long since that a wise commander let competent men get on without unnecessary interference

Corrain knew Gartas of old; a diligent man well respected by those who laboured in these fields surrounding the manor and supplying its needs.

Those families had lived in the village on the far side of the brook along with those of the manor’s servants who didn’t live within the encircling wall. It was now a pitiful sight; every thatched cottage burned, workshops and tithe barns ransacked, their doors and windows swinging on broken hinges. Rebuilding those homes and re-establishing men and women in their livelihoods was as important as restoring the manor. A baron’s honour was reflected in the prosperity his tenants enjoyed.

Corrain still didn’t know Sirstin beyond a passing wave of acknowledgement but his lad Linset was proving his worth to the guard troop. While a reliable hound could sire a troublesome whelp, it was far more uncommon to get a good-natured pup from a tainted bloodline. Besides, the blacksmith wouldn’t have been offered the manor’s forge if he hadn’t proved his skills with hammer and anvil. Nor would he have become so proficient in his craft without a good measure of common sense.

The physical contrast between the two men was marked. Sirstin’s shoulders and neck were thickened with the muscles of his calling and he strode ahead with the vigour of a man in his prime. Gartas had grown bald and stooped amid his ledgers and followed at a pace husbanding his strength.

The Halferan men gathered. Corrain knew most of their faces and could probably separate the craftsmen from the labourers but he would be hard-pressed to put a name to each and every one as his own dead lord had done. Though there was one face he couldn’t see.

‘Master Rauffe?’ He summoned the steward politely. His dead lord had been scrupulously courteous to his servants down to the humblest lackey.

‘Where’s Astirre?’ he asked with foreboding.

‘The mason?’ The steward shook his head with regret. ‘He died in the attack. May Saedrin see him safe to the Otherworld.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ Corrain contemplated the encircling wall and thought about winter’s approaching storms. If rain and frost got into the weakened brickwork to crumble the mortar, a gale sweeping in from the sea could all too easily bring down a calamity on someone’s unsuspecting head.

‘Did he have an apprentice?’ he asked. ‘When did he last send a journeyman out to another village?’

‘I will find out,’ Rauffe assured him.

Corrain nodded but wondered how many skilled craftsmen the barony had lost along with all the knowledge they hadn’t yet found time to teach their apprentices. He realised with growing misgiving that such deaths were likely to be all the more devastating as the most proficient in every skill naturally headed to a barony’s manor in hopes of their liege lord’s personal favour.

‘Captain!’ An alarmed voice hastily corrected itself. ‘My lord baron!’

Corrain turned his horse to see a small troop of horsemen emerging from the woodland framing the high road northwards.

Those men with swords or daggers drew them. The rest readied prybars and mallets.

‘Halferan colours!’ Corrain yielded to temptation and gave his chestnut mount its head.

The beast sprang forward, eager to escape the scent of burning. He let it gallop down the well-made track towards the curve of the brook, following the shining stream for a few plough lengths before veering away towards the high road.

Fitrel was at the head of the horsemen already cantering to meet him.

‘Sergeant!’ he called out as he reined in the eager steed. ‘Report!’

Fitrel was always the first to remind Corrain that he must keep his distance from his former barrack-room equals.

The old man rode forward, his weather-beaten face deeply lined with weariness. It had been many a long year since he’d last ridden the barony’s boundaries and that was a demanding task for younger men; long days in the saddle followed by comfortless nights with the ground softened only by the blankets rolled behind his saddle.

‘My lord baron.’ Fitrel saluted smartly nevertheless.

‘What’s the news from the east?’ Corrain braced himself.

‘Herdsmen from Wanflest and Antathele.’ Fitrel scowled. ‘Well inside our borders and all saying that they were searching for their own stock lost in the panic over the corsairs.’

Corrain was prepared to give the Antatheles some leeway. That barony flanked Halferan lands away to the south and east and if the marauding corsairs hadn’t reached that far inland, the populace could hardly be blamed for fleeing ahead of the fearsome threat. He had judged Antathele’s guard captains to be honourable men over the years.

‘How many of our own cattle and sheep were they driving home?’

‘A handful or so mingled in with their own.’ Fitrel glowered. ‘We checked the beasts’ brands, you may be sure of that. They swore to Ostrin they’d made an honest mistake and readily surrendered the animals,’ he allowed grudgingly.