Irons in the Fire (2 page)

Dues and tolls paid along the river Rel enable Marlier to retain considerable numbers of mercenaries. Under the command of Ridianne the Vixen, these troops effectively curb Carluse ambitions along their common border. They also keep the peace in those riverside camps where unsworn mercenaries from across Lescar gather for rest and recuperation and customarily seek winter shelter. Rumours persist that Caladhrian lords pay Marlier to ensure such mercenaries do not cross the Rel to plunder their lands. This remains unproven.

It is beyond doubt that Caladhrian lords and merchants continue to profit from selling supplies to the mercenary camps, as well as from buying raw materials from Marlier and the rest of Lescar. They then return the finished goods that the disruptions and uncertainties of life prevent the Lescari from making for themselves.

Parnilesse
interests continue closely involved with the noble houses of Tormalin who hold lands across the river Asilor on their eastern border, most notably the princes of Den Breche and D'Otadiel. Parnilesse exiles continue to strengthen such ties and to support their relatives still living under Duke Orlin's rule. Tormalin merchants remain able to buy materials and sell their wares in Parnilesse under extremely favourable terms.

However Parnilesse pre-eminence as Tormalin's principal trading partner may soon be challenged by Draximal. Duke Secaris's envoys have been negotiating with the princes of Den Haurient, Den Breche and D'Otadiel.

Duke Orlin's ability to counter this threat to his Tormalin trade has been hampered by unrest within Parnilesse's own borders. Hostile pamphlets are appearing once again in all the ports and principal markets. Letters are nailed to shrine doors at night repeating the old calumny that the dowager duchess poisoned the late duke. Now the rabble-rousers are asserting that she did this with Duke Orlin's prior knowledge and full acquiescence. They cite the voluble dissatisfaction of the late duke's younger sons with the provision made for them on his deathbed as evidence of suspicions within the ducal family.

Duke Orlin has been using both mercenary companies and his own trained militiamen to suppress such rumour-mongering as well as paying handsome rewards to anyone identifying those responsible. All those discovered aiding and abetting the pamphleteers are closely questioned and flogged. The rabble-rousers themselves suffer far harsher penalties. There are rumours that the mercenaries of the coastal enclave of Carif have been selling prisoners to slavers trading with Aldabreshin warlords. Duke Orlin is inevitably accused of tacit connivance in this vile practice.

The princes of Tormalin are concerned both by the persistence of such accusations and the evident disunity between Duke Orlin and his brothers. There are indications that lords with border holdings are looking more favourably on trade with Draximal as a consequence.

Draximal
is intent
on making up losses of tolls thanks to the reduced trade along the Great West Road by increasing its trade with Tormalin. Ducal
envoys are known to have visited the junior princes of many noble houses holding lands along Tormalin's western border.

This past winter, the Duchess of Draximal paid extended visits to the principal residences of the Den Haurient, Den Breche and D'Otadiel families, accompanied by her elder daughters. A marriage alliance with a cadet branch of the Den Breche family is widely expected.

Since this will clearly provoke Parnilesse resentment, Duke Secaris continues to maintain significant mercenary forces along his southern border. Vassal lords in northern Parnilesse accuse these companies of raiding their lands as well as skirmishing with mercenaries retained by their own duke in pursuit of private quarrels of their own. The danger of such conflict breaking into open warfare remains potent.

Draximal trained militias regularly patrol his borders with Triolle and with Carluse. Duke Secaris remains suspicious of Duke Garnot's ambitions despite the current lull in hostilities between Carluse and Sharlac.

There have been rumours of Draximal forces encroaching into Sharlac territory to deter raids from Dalasorian clansmen. This has prompted much indignation among the vassal lords of eastern Sharlac but there has been no response from Duke Moncan.

Chapter One

Tathrin

The City of Vanam, Northern Ensaimin,

Spring Equinox Festival, Third Day, Evening

He stood still in the midst of the chaos. Fear threw his wits into utter confusion, robbing his legs of any strength.

"Make way! Make way!"

Voices bellowed, brutal with panic. Festival garlands of green leaves and spring flowers were knocked from doors and cornices to be crushed underfoot.

Sweat beaded Tathrin's forehead. His heart was racing, breath catching painfully in his throat. He felt as if he were choking.

This was how it had been when the gutters had run red and the agonies of the dying had echoed around the houses. Their cries had mingled with the murderous exultation of their assailants, so it was impossible to know which way to run for safety, or which way would take you straight onto the killers' sword-points.

Men and women, old and young, fought blindly to outstrip the others. There was simply no escape from the fleeing crowd confined between the tall wood and brick houses. Screams of pain pierced the hubbub. Tathrin saw a burly man trip on a loose cobblestone and fall to be trampled by uncaring boots.

A glimpse of a woman's stockings, petticoats hitched high as she jumped over the fallen man, recalled the dreadful sights he'd seen. The sobbing girl cradling the half-severed head of her lover, her brother or merely some friend. Whoever he had been, her skirts were sodden with his lifeblood, her bare legs exposed for all to see.

Hooves scraped on the cobbles. Horsemen were coming.

He'd seen what mounted warriors could do. Riding down the helpless and unarmed townsfolk, slashing at unprotected heads and shoulders with their heavy swords. Driving their frenzied steeds to trample those lying injured in the open. The leader's white mount had been splashed with so much blood it had looked like a painted sorrel.

He had to move. Blindly struggling, he fought his way up the sloping street, away from the approaching riders. A vicious elbow dug into his ribs and a hobnailed shoe scraped down his anklebone, the sudden pain excruciating.

The only way to escape their murderous rampage was to find some recess too deep for their swords to reach, some alleyway so narrow that even their whip-scarred horses would baulk at entering it.

Dread lending strength to his already impressive height, Tathrin forced a path to the dubious shelter offered by the overhang of a house's upper floors. As soon as he reached it, though, he regretted the choice. Now he was trapped, the carved wood of the frontage digging painfully into his back.

"Saedrin save us!"

Two women shrieked hysterically, grabbing for their children as the swirling confusion of the crowd threatened to tear them apart. One of them, a little maid, wailed, her festival dress torn and fouled. Tathrin would have gone to help them but he couldn't move, crushed as he was against the building.

Saedrin had saved precious few before. The mounted mercenaries had shown the shrine of even the greatest of gods no respect. Throwing blazing torches in among those who'd vainly sought shelter there, the murderous scum had slammed the door and barred it shut. Every last person inside had died, their charred corpses crushed amid the funeral urns of their forebears when the shrine's roof had collapsed.

He heard a horse's whinny rise above some bestial noise halfway between a snarl and a squeal.

"Fair festival and Trimon's grace, if you please." A robust townsman and his wife, both too stout and too canny to succumb to unnecessary alarm, pushed past, arms linked as they made their way composedly up the street.

Others who'd been braving the muck of the cobbles joined those crowding the paved walk in front of shops and taverns. Tathrin finally saw what was happening.

"Make way for Talagrin's hunters!"

Cheerful voices shouted appeals in the hunting god's name. Their exuberant horns were deafening.

"Go shit on your own doorstep!" a surly householder shouted from an upper window, prompting laughter and agreement from the crowd.

A half-grown russet pig was running up the sloping street, two men on horses harrying it with lances. Already bleeding from gashes on its shoulders and hindquarters, the infuriated beast was unable to decide where to attack first.

"Get back! Get back!"

Budding sprigs of ash pinned to their tunics, hunters on foot rushed up to level sturdier spears and make an impromptu barrier between the infuriated beast and the jostling crowd. Others stood ready, their broad blades pointing downwards.

"You kill the beast and welcome, but don't you leave blood and guts spread all over here," a stern matron warned belligerently from her doorstep, "bringing rats and dogs to plague us!"

Some onlookers were cheering. More were still doing their best to leave the perilous hunt behind. Even a young pig could inflict murderous injuries.

Squealing with fury, the pig lunged, only for the nearest sweating horse to dance nimbly aside. The second hunter took his chance and stabbed at the pig's rump. The tormented beast whirled around, screaming with ear-splitting ferocity. The hunter wrenched his mount's head sideways to urge it out of the way. Bloody foam dripped from the horse's mouth as it half-jumped, half-stumbled on the slippery cobbles. The first hunter dug his spurs into his steed's sweating flanks. As the pig charged, he drove his lance deep between its neck and its bristling shoulders.

A cheer of relief went up as the pig fell, thrashing and squealing. One of the foot-hunters hurried up to dispatch the hapless animal with a thrust to the heart.

"Fair festival!" The first hunter waved his bloody lance exuberantly. "Fresh meat for the paupers' feast at the shrine of Ostrin!"

The cheers grew more enthusiastic as the crowd flowed back into the street.

Tathrin didn't feel the carved wooden post digging into his shoulder. He wasn't hearing the hunters' congratulations. Shrieks and curses and dying pleas still echoed in his ears. The scent of men's lives spilled out across a little town's market square filled his nostrils, not the mingled sweat and perfumes of this sprawling city's holiday crowd.

Instead of the hunters' jerkins bright with new ash leaves, Tathrin saw ragged leather tunics and chain mail clotted with muck and blood. He had cowered behind a stinking privy as the riders had passed by. Stained rags bound gashes on their arms, their legs, even their heads, but none of them seemed to care. All with their naked swords still gory in their hands, any one of them would still have killed him as soon as look at him. All he had been able to do was hide like a frightened child.

"Tathrin! Stay there, lad!"

Master Wyess's triangular black velvet cap headed towards him, fighting against the flow of people. If Wyess was a head shorter than Tathrin, he was broader in the shoulder and made short work of clearing a path.

At least being taller than most meant he was easy to spot in a crowd, Tathrin thought numbly. But he could not have moved even if no one had been standing in his way. Recollection of that earlier slaughter still paralysed him.

"Come on, lad, let's try a different route." The burly merchant puffed as he reached him.

Tathrin clenched his fists to stop his hands shaking. Why had this hunt brought back memories he'd taken such pains to stifle? He hadn't even dreamed of that appalling day for more than a year.

"No harm done and that's one less hog menacing the streets." Wyess's voice slowed, concerned. "Lad? Are you all right? You're as white as my lady's linen."

"Yes." Tathrin cleared his throat. "Yes, Master. I'm fine."

"Let's get there before all the good wine's drunk, then." Wyess urged him back down the sloping street.

Tathrin was about to ask why they were retracing their steps. Belatedly he saw that the way ahead was blocked by the hunters and their horses. Some of the householders had emerged to castigate the men trying to lash the pig's trotters together before slinging it on a spear for carrying triumphantly away. As he turned and followed Wyess, he swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in his throat. The shivers running down his back were slow to fade.

He looked up. With every storey of Vanam's tall houses built out further into the streets than the one below, only the barest strip of twilight sky was visible above. Torches already burned in nearby brackets. With the Lesser Moon absent and the Greater Moon rapidly shrinking through its last handful of days, this festival's nights were dark ones. The flames struck a gleam from the golden brooch on Master Wyess's hat.

"This way." Wyess caught Tathrin's elbow to draw him into an alleyway. There was no gainsaying him. The merchant was still strong enough to wrestle the barrels of furs in his warehouse should the need arise.

The cutting between two buildings might originally have been wide enough for two men to pass each other. Now Tathrin found his shoulders brushing plastered walls on both sides where the wooden-framed houses had warped and settled so closely together over the generations.