How Firm a Foundation (98 page)

She glared at him, obviously
unhappy with his airy assurance, and he looked at Coris over her head.

“She’s your Princess, My Lord,” he said. “Personally, I’m not going to be all that impressed if she decides to throw a tantrum. If she does, though, are you going to be able to handle her?”

“I’m not a piece of luggage to be handled!”

“No, but at the moment you’re not thinking very much like a princess, either,” Merlin pointed
out, his tone suddenly much more serious than it had been. “Even assuming they were going to catch me—which they aren’t—it would be my job to lead them away and
your
job to make sure your brother gets to safety. Now, are you and I going to have to argue about this?”

She locked eyes with him for another moment. Then her shoulders slumped, and she sighed.

“No.” She shook her head unhappily. “No,
we’re not going to have to argue about it. But be
careful,
Merlin. Please!”

“Oh, I’m always careful, Your Highness!” He leaned forward and, before she realized what he had in mind, gave her a quick peck on the cheek. She reared back in surprise, and he grinned unrepentantly. “Just for luck, Your Highness,” he assured her, and nodded to Coris, who was trying very hard not to laugh.

“Take care
of her, My Lord.”

“I will,” Coris promised. “Well, Tobys and I will. And while we’re doing that, she’ll take care of Daivyn.”

“Are you going to tell him goodbye?” Irys asked quietly. He looked at her, and her smile trembled just a bit. “He’s lost most of the stability in his world, Merlin. Don’t just disappear.”

“A good point, Your Highness,” he acknowledged, and looked back at Coris.

“Straight
down the river, My Lord. There’s a waterfall about twenty-five miles downstream. The boats are supposed to be waiting just below it.”

“And if they’re not there?”

“If they’re not there, my advice is to continue downriver, anyway. If they’re not at the rendezvous by the time you get there, they’re probably still on their way. Charisian seamen don’t turn back easily, you know. So if you just keep
going, you’ll probably run into them.”

“‘Probably’ isn’t one of my favorite words when applied to desperate escapes,” Coris observed dryly. “Despite which, that sounds like the best advice.”

“One tries, My Lord.” Merlin bowed, then straightened, looking past him at Daivyn. “And now, if you’ll forgive me, I have to go tell a young man goodbye.”

*   *   *

“Is
Seijin
Merlin
really
going to be
all right, Irys?” Prince Daivyn whispered urgently. He was mounted in front of Irys now, since hers was the freshest horse and she weighed the least of any of the experienced riders. He twisted slightly, looking up at her, his expression hard to see in the rapidly fading light. “Tell me the truth,” he implored.

“The truth, Daivy?” She looked down at him and hugged him tightly. “The truth is that
I don’t know,” she admitted. “But if anybody in the whole wide world can do this, it’s probably him, don’t you think?”

“Yesssssss,” he said dubiously, then nodded. “Yes!” he said more firmly.

“That’s what I thought, too,” she told him with another hug.

“But how is he going to make sure they follow
him?
” Daivyn demanded. “I mean, it’s getting awful dark. What if they don’t even
see
him?”

“I
don’t know what he has in mind, Daivy, but from what I’ve seen of
Seijin
Merlin, I think we can predict it’s going to be something fairly … spectacular.”

*   *   *

Sergeant Braice Mahknash stood in the stirrups so he could massage his posterior. Hardened cavalryman that he was, he’d spent long enough in the saddle over the last two or three days to last him for months. But that was all right
with him. He
wanted
the traitorous bastards who’d massacred so many of the Royal Guard. And the news that Earl Coris had betrayed his trust—actually taken Cayleb of Charis’ bloodstained gold and sold his own prince and princess to their father’s murderer—filled Mahknash with rage. He hoped Bishop Mytchail was wrong, that Coris and the so-called “
Seijin
Merlin” wouldn’t really cut the prince’s
and princess’ throats rather than allow them to be rescued, yet surely even that would be better than letting them be handed over to the heretic emperor and empress to be tortured into proclaiming their allegiance to Prince Hektor’s killers.

And that wasn’t the only reason Mahknash wanted them. Delferahk had suffered enough at Charisian hands without accepting the insult of an attack on the king’s
very castle! Not enough to massacre the Royal Guards who’d thought they were there to protect Prince Daivyn, the treacherous sons-of-bitches had actually blown up two-thirds of the castle and set fire to the rest! King Zhames had taken Prince Hektor’s orphans in out of the goodness of his heart and a kinsman’s love, and his reward was to have his armsmen slaughtered and his home itself destroyed?
No, that couldn’t be allowed to stand, and it wouldn’t. Not with the pursuit so close upon them.

And the bastards don’t know their ride isn’t coming, either
, he thought with grim satisfaction.

The discovery that the fugitives were headed for the Sarm Valley, where the West Sarm flowed through the gap between the Trevor Hills and the Sarman Mountains proper, had made sudden sense out of the mysterious
boats which had clashed with a troop of Earl Charlz’ dragoons two days ago. Clearly this plot had been organized far in advance, with plenty of forethought, but that didn’t mean it was going to work. Especially not when the boats they were counting on to rescue them had turned back the day before yesterday.

Mahknash smiled in satisfaction. The dragoons had suffered heavy casualties, but the Charisians
had been even more badly hurt. Their boats had been observed headed back downriver, heaped with wounded, running with their tails between their legs. Moving with the current, they’d easily outdistanced any pursuit, unfortunately, and it wasn’t like there were any warships or galleys on the river between them and Sarmouth, so their escape was virtually certain. But they’d managed it only
by cravenly abandoning the people they’d come to meet.

Still, what more could you expect out of heretics and blasphemers? Out of people who cut children’s throats as blood sacrifices to Shan-wei? Mahknash had read every word of the confessions the Inquisition had wrung out of the Charisians the Earl of Thirsk had handed over for their rightful punishment, and he’d been horrified by their crimes
and perversions, but not surprised. After all,
Delferahk
knew what Charisians were like. In fact, Delferahk knew better than anyone else, given what the bastards had done to Ferayd!

I wonder if they’ve got any sort of fallback plan?
he mused.
I don’t know where they expected to meet those boats, but assuming they manage to get past the patrols—Ha! As if
that
were going to happen!—they’re bound
to realize eventually that they’ve been left high and dry. So what do they do then? Try to head cross-country all the way down to Sarmouth on horseback? Fat chance! We’d be on them in—

Sergeant Mahknash’s thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a forty-five caliber bullet launched from one of the first two cap-and-ball revolvers ever manufactured on the planet of Safehold. It struck him squarely
at the base of the throat at approximately eleven hundred feet per second, driven by sixty grains of black powder, and blew out the back of his neck, knocking him back across his horse’s rump. He hung there for a moment, then thumped heavily to the ground, and his companions shouted in confusion as more gunfire rang out through the darkened mountain woods.

There had to be at least a dozen attackers.
Obviously the collision had been as unexpected for them as for Sergeant Mahknash’s patrol. The shots came in rapid succession, but they’d have come in a single, concentrated volley if the traitors had realized they were about to run into the pursuit.

Three more of Mahknash’s troopers were hurled off their horses, and a fourth swayed, wounded but sticking to his saddle, and they heard voices shouting
to one another in alarm. Then they heard the thunder of hooves as the fugitives turned, spurring their weary horses away from the patrol.

“Nyxyn, see to the wounded!” Corporal Walthar Zhud shouted, reasserting command. “Zhoshua, you’re on courier! Get your ass back to the Colonel! Tell him we’re in contact and pursuing to the northwest. It looks to me like they’re breaking back the way they came!”

“On my way, Corp!” Private Zhosua responded as he wheeled his horse around and slapped his spurs home.

“The rest of you—after me!”

*   *   *

“Mite showy, My Lord,” Tobys Raimair said judiciously, watching the lurid stab of pistol fire on the far side of the valley.

“Perhaps a
little,
” Coris allowed, holding one hand out palm down and waggling it from side to side. “Effective, though.”

“Wonder
how many he winged this time?” Raimair said. “I mean, shooting from a horse—critter has to be spooked, what with guns going off in its ear for the first time—and in the dark, and all, with no lanterns. Has to be less accurate than he was back at the Palace, wouldn’t you say, My Lord?”

“I’m not prepared to wager against the
seijin
under any circumstances, Tobys,” Coris replied dryly.

“Will you
two
stop
it?!” Irys demanded. “They’re probably chasing him over there right this minute!”

“Well, of course they are, Your Highness,” Raimair acknowledged, turning in the saddle to face her. “Whole point of the exercise.”

“But what if he was wrong about being able to sneak away from them?” Daivyn demanded, his voice tight with anxiety, and Raimair reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with
his hand.

“You ever hear the story about the hunting hound that caught the slash lizard, Your Highness?” he asked. The prince looked up at him without speaking for a second or two, then nodded slowly, and the sergeant shrugged. “Well, there’s your answer. I’m sure they’re doing their damnedest—pardon my language, Your Highness,” he apologized to Irys, “to catch up with him this very minute. And
if they’re dead unlucky, they will.”

*   *   *

“We’ve got them now, Sir!”

“You think so?” Colonel Aiphraim Tahlyvyr looked up from the map to arch one eyebrow at his aide. The young man was holding the bull’s-eye lantern so the colonel could see the map, and he looked astounded by his superior’s question.

“Well … yes, Sir,” he said after a moment. “Don’t you?”

“I think we’ve got an excellent
chance
to catch up with them now,” Tahlyvyr replied. “On the other hand, we
ought
to have caught them well before now. Traitors or not, and heretics or not, this is an elusive fish, Brahndyn. I’m not going to count it as caught until I’ve netted it and got it in the boat.”

Lieutenant Maigowhyn nodded. His colonel’s passion for fishing was something he’d never understood, but the metaphor made
sense, anyway.

“The thing I’m wondering,” Tahlyvyr said meditatively, tapping himself on the chin while he thought, “is whether all that gunfire was really a surprise reaction.”

“I beg your pardon, Sir?”

“Well, whether running into our patrol was a surprise or not, it was pretty spectacular, wasn’t it? Would you care to bet a silver that every single picket and patrol out there isn’t headed
in the same direction right now? If you were leading one of those patrols, wouldn’t
you
have headed straight for the gunfire?”

“Of course, Sir!”

“Spoken like a good officer in training, Brahndyn. ‘Ride to the sound of the guns’—that’s what we teach you. And it’s
usually
the right thing to do, too. But suppose it wasn’t really all gunfire to begin with? Remember, these bastards blew up a sizable
chunk of King Zhames’ palace, according to the wyvern messages. What if they brought along a supply of firecrackers? One man with three or four of those double-barreled ‘pistols’ the Charisians seem so fond of and a couple of dozen firecrackers to go off in the underbrush, and all of a sudden every man we’ve got scattered around the hills is haring off like slash lizards that smell blood. And
meanwhile—?”

He arched both eyebrows at Maigowhyn this time, and the lieutenant frowned. Then his eyes widened.

“And meanwhile the rest of them sneak right past us to the river and meet up with their boats, Sir! You really think that’s what’s
happening?
”

“Frankly, what I think is almost certainly happening is exactly what Corporal
Zhud
thinks is happening, and even if it isn’t, their boats
turned back two days ago, so there’s no one to meet them anyway,” Tahlyvyr replied. “But I didn’t get to be a colonel by not hedging my bets.”

“So what do you want to do, Sir?”

“Given that anyone who can see lightning or hear thunder knows about that gunfire, and that all of our good, aggressive, competent junior officers and sergeants are going to be riding to the sound of the guns”—the colonel
smiled at his aide—“there’s not a whole lot we
can
do. About the only people we have who aren’t already off wandering through the woods, hopefully overhauling the miscreants even as we speak, are Lieutenant Wyllyms and his detachment.”

“Yes, Sir,” Maigowhyn said with a slight but discernible lack of enthusiasm, and Tahlyvyr chuckled.

“Not the sharpest pencil in the box, I’ll grant, although
I really shouldn’t say it,” he admitted. “That’s why I put him in command of our reserves and the extra horses. It let me keep him out of trouble. Now, unfortunately, it also means he’s the only one I can be sure isn’t off chasing gunfire in the gloaming.”

“Yes, Sir.”

Tahlyvyr gazed back down at the map for several seconds, then sighed.

“It’s a pity he doesn’t have more men, but we
are
talking
about a fairly unlikely eventuality. Take him a message, Brahndyn. He’s to leave half his men to look after the remounts. I want him to take the rest downstream as far as this waterfall.” He tapped the map. “I think it’s the first real fall in the stream, so wherever they were supposed to make rendezvous with those boats that aren’t coming after all, it has to be on the far side of that, which
means they have to get past it one way or the other. Tell him I want his men posted at the
foot
of the fall. And, Brahndyn—try to make him feel that I’m trusting him with this because of his competence, not because he’s the only person I can send, all right?”