Irons in the Fire (39 page)

"You stink," he said with contempt. "Are you shitting in the ditch where you're sleeping?"

That was good enough to draw one of them a few paces forward, a stained hunting knife in his hand, more suited to gutting a deer than killing a man.

"There's a toll to pass this way," the youth said boldly.

Karn laughed. "Does herself know you're snapping at travellers' heels?"

"Who?" One skulking at the rear betrayed how recently he'd arrived.

"He means Ridianne. She knows to leave the woods to us," the one with the knife sneered.

Karn shook his head regretfully. "No, she just knows anyone who can't kick shit like you off his boots isn't worth talking to."

"Shut your mouth and give us your coin." The angry youth with the knife took another step forward. "And food." He was half a head taller than Karn and close enough to wound him now.

Karn dropped his horse's reins. "Take it," he invited.

The nameless youth thrust his knife towards Karn's belly. Satisfied, Karn stepped sideways so the blade missed him by a hand's breadth. As he moved, he punched hard up under the bold youth's jaw. As the youth staggered, Karn seized his knife-wrist and forced it down. He didn't punch him a second time, but rather reached out and wrapped his arm around the boy's neck, trapping his head. Bent over backwards, the youth struggled, his filthy and broken fingernails scrabbling at Karn's sleeve. Still holding the knife well clear, Karn only needed one wrench to snap the youth's neck with a grating crunch of bone.

These scum really did stink. Karn stepped back and let the dying lad fall to the ground, limbs twitching in helpless spasm. The sinking sunlight shone dull gold on urine puddling around the corpse.

The three remaining youths stood aghast.

"Take yourselves off to the shithole you've been cowering in." Karn knocked the deer knife out of the dead boy's fingers with the toe of his boot. "Or I'll cut out your tripes with your friend's knife." He flipped the knife up and caught it.

The three boys backed away and broke, racing for the dubious safety of the tangled bracken.

That suited Karn. Arriving with fresh blood on his clothes would attract as much attention as riding a sweating horse. He didn't have time to waste killing fools, either. Ridianne didn't like interruption while she dined, so her hall doors would soon be closed to all but her most trusted associates. Karn didn't flatter himself that he was among that company.

His mount hadn't run far. Karn sprang back into the saddle and urged it into a trot.

As he had expected, the broad expanse of turf between the woods and the River Rel was dotted with campfires. Each encampment had twenty or so tents, the captain's pennant hanging limp above the heart of each gathering. There was no wind to draw out the standards and show Karn their badges. He rode thoughtfully along the tracks judiciously separating the warbands. There were fewer than he had expected.

He approached the bridge of solid ground cutting across the stone-walled ditch that ringed Ridianne's fortified manor house. When the rest of the trees surrounding it had been cleared, the oaks had been left out of respect for Talagrin. Ridianne wouldn't risk displeasing the god of the hunt.

A woman, shirtless beneath a leather jerkin, sat in a spreading tree's shade, picking her teeth. "I'll have your name and your business." She didn't get up from her stool.

"My name is Lec and I ask for audience with her ladyship." Karn made sure his tone was neither aggressive nor supplicant. Twenty men would come running at the first sign of trouble. Twice that number would come for the entertainment of seeing a troublemaker kicked to death.

"Who do you ride for?" The woman warrior spat out her wooden splinter.

"Hamare of Triolle." Karn twisted in his saddle to show that his swords were already securely tied up in the centre of his roll of blankets. "I have two hand-and-a-half blades and one boot knife."

"What's on your belt?" The warrior raised a languid hand.

"Just an eating knife." Karn raised his arm so the woman mercenary could see it was no longer than a man's forefinger. He saw another man closer to the manor house's erratic stone wall shove a lad in their direction.

The boy came running, brushing a hand to his sandy forelock in a brief salute as he arrived.

The woman on the stool nodded. "Take him to the gate."

Karn dismounted without being asked and followed the boy along the scar worn in the turf by countless boots and hooves. The ditch divided those mercenary troops Ridianne trusted from those on whom she was reserving judgement. Within this inner circle, he could see tents crowded close together, right underneath the shadow of the manor's outer wall.

He could see sufficient blazons to identify these collared dogs. Marlier's silver-grey swords made a triangle around the coiled menace of a loathly worm. Beyond, a toad squatted on a blue shield with the same three swords ranked above it. So Ridianne was whistling up the mercenary troops who had taken Marlier coin for so long they'd earned the right to blend the dukedom's insignia with their own. She wouldn't be doing that without Duke Ferdain's orders.

Though there were mercenaries with other allegiances here, Karn noted. A pale round drum painted on the canvas tents beyond identified the next troop, smoke curling around the fire-basket in its centre. So that war band was more usually at Draximal's beck and call.

They approached the timber-framed gatehouse. With river mud mixed into the plaster, the walls looked russet in the fading sunlight.

"Not so many unchained curs here," Karn remarked. "More men on the leash, though."

The lad shrugged. "I wouldn't know."

Karn didn't take that amiss. The lad had the wary poise of one who'd grown up knowing nothing outside this world. Even those few words showed he'd heard nothing but mongrel accents since he'd been born to some mercenary or some mercenary's whore. He might even be one of Ridianne's whelps. Karn wouldn't put it past her to see to it that any arrogance was knocked out of her sons by making them run such errands.

"Has there been fever here again?" Karn sharpened his words with apprehension. Perhaps fear would open the lad's mouth.

"No, it's been a dry season, Ostrin be thanked." The boy's eyes dulled briefly with dreadful recollection.

"Dastennin be thanked for that." Not that Karn feared the camp fever that wise women said was stirred up when rain gathered in stinking sumps under the hedgerows. He didn't fear mulberry fever or even snowy rot. If he hadn't succumbed to such contagions as a starving child, he wouldn't now.

He waited to see if the boy would say more, but the lad stayed silent until they reached the studded double gates where a swordsman stood guard.

"Name of Lec. Asks for an audience."

The swordsman shrugged his own lack of interest. "Wait there." He slipped through the narrow gap between the gates.

Karn admired the fox's skull nailed above the archway, a few rags of desiccated fur still clinging to it. "Did herself hunt that down?"

The boy didn't respond.

Karn contented himself with untying his modest bundle from his saddle as he continued surveying the insignia on the tents further round the manor house wall. None were showing the black boar's head of Carluse. That was hardly unexpected. Ridianne's ties with Duke Ferdain were far too close for any warband wearing Duke Garnot's collar to come here.

The green grebe of Triolle was nowhere to be seen either. Since his accession, Duke Iruvain kept his most trusted troops of hired swords inside Triolle's borders. Master Hamare had made certain those who refused to stay had stripped the ducal bird from their badges. Karn had carried the gold that paid such loyal mercenaries to force their erstwhile allies to comply at sword-point.

Karn frowned. Over beyond a sprawl of tents where the antlers of Sharlac's russet stag bracketed a white rose, he saw Draximal's fire-basket flanked by leafy branches.

Duke Ferdain of Marlier had long been on good terms with Duke Secaris of Draximal, mostly on account of their mutual suspicion of Duke Garnot of Carluse. If Marlier didn't detest Parnilesse with the same vigour as Draximal did, there was always rivalry between Duke Ferdain and Duke Orlin for coastal trade. Draximal's dogs were always assured of a warm welcome in the mercenary camps along the Rel.

But why wasn't Duke Secaris of Draximal whistling up all his faithful hounds, if warfare with Parnilesse was imminent?

As Karn frowned inwardly over this puzzle, the guard re-appeared.

"She'll see him."

"I'll take your horse." The lad reached for the reins.

"Thank you." If Karn needed to leave here in a hurry it wouldn't be on that sluggard. He knew that the only horses trained to jump the broad, open ditch without baulking were stabled inside Ridianne's manor.

He went in through the tall gates, his gear under his arm, his demeanour meek. He had no hope of drawing a sword from his bundle fast enough to foil an attack. Inside her walls, Ridianne's personal company of swordsmen all carried at least one long blade as well as a plethora of daggers. For the present, none of them paid him any heed. They were more concerned with watching the men wearing different liveries who were trooping up and down the stone stairs to the great hall's undercroft. This slate-roofed hall was the tallest building within the protective circle of the stone walls. The rest were all later additions crudely built and thatched with reeds.

Karn knew better than to try going up the flight of steps rising to the great hall's door unescorted. He caught one of the guards by the elbow, another sandy-haired man with Ridianne's blazon painted on the back of his deerhide jerkin: long sword, small sword and dagger all impaling a limply dangling dog-fox on the scarlet ground of Marlier's ducal flag.

"I'm to speak to herself."

"She's about to sit down to her meat," the swordsman warned.

Savoury scents coming from the kitchen on the opposite side of the yard were making Karn's mouth water. "I won't take up much time," he promised.

The swordsman grunted. "Follow me."

"My lady." Karn bowed as soon as he stepped into the cool gloom.

"Lec. I hope you're well." Even after so many years her accent was unmistakably Caladhrian.

He could hear Ridianne more easily than he could see her. The low sun shone in through tall west-facing windows and struck sparks in the smoke rising from a long hearth in the centre of the floor.

She chuckled. "You have until that arse of a cook finishes shouting at his scullions. What do you want?"

Ridianne was sitting in a high-backed chair of carved black oak behind the long table at the head of the hall. A double handful and more of her sons and favourites sat on benches all around, watching Karn with idle interest.

He bowed again. "My master wishes to know which dukes are calling their favourite hounds to heel. He hopes you're having a pleasant summer."

There was no profit in lying. Ridianne would inevitably hear what questions he was asking around the camp. Trying to gather news without her approval would see him beaten bloody and thrown into the manor house ditch to scramble out or die in the depths, no concern of hers.

"Wine?" Ridianne jerked her head and two men stood to leave the bench on the opposite side of the table empty for him.

"Thank you." Karn took a seat and kicked his bundle beneath it.

"I'm spending these long summer evenings counting all the silver we're being paid to chase footpads and bandits back into Carluse and Triolle." Ridianne poured wine from her own flagon into an empty pottery goblet, her hazel eyes bright. "Besides counting the gold we've earned hiring out as guards for the merchants shipping their goods down the Rel."

Duke Ferdain of Marlier's brindled vixen was still a good-looking woman even if she was grey-headed now. Her once-auburn hair was short and ragged, hacked off with a knife. She'd first cut it herself, newly widowed and beggared by Caladhria's laws denying a wife any part in her husband's estate. Whether her lord had married her for love or lust, she'd brought no dowry to the marriage to reclaim on his death. That cropped head had become her mark when she'd taken up arms to fight the son of her husband's first marriage who refused her more than a single mourning gown. She'd thrown it in his face, taking instead to the black breeches and doublet that she still wore.

"Duke Secaris of Draximal can spare so many of his best hounds to hunt with you?" Karn took the goblet. "When everyone expects Duke Orlin of Parnilesse to attack before the turn of For-Autumn?"

Ridianne shook her head. "They won't fight. Both their valiant Graces are too scared of Emperor Tadriol."

"That's not what I'm hearing in Vanam." Karn was careful to make it clear he doubted himself, not her.

"What do they know in Vanam?" Ridianne grinned.

"What indeed?" Karn pretended to take a sip of his own wine. "They say, in Vanam, that someone's looking for mercenaries to lead their bold youths in a campaign to force peace on Lescar."

"The news drew off half the scaff and raff hiding in the woods." Ridianne chuckled with amusement. "I wish whatever fool's planning such folly the best of luck with those scum."