The False Martyr (97 page)

Behind them, the tents
were finally down, the wagons were loaded and lined, the knights
were in formation. It had taken another hour, and it was debatable
whether it was even worth the effort to ride today. If the camp
took as long to prepare as it did to dismantle, they’d only cover a
few miles before they stopped. Cary had spent the last fifteen
minutes briefing the nobles from a knee. Sticking with his
training, he had offered only established facts, included none of
his own theories or conjecture. And, as Ambassador Chulters had
asked, he had not mentioned the meeting with Nyel or the spying he
had done after.
That hives not worth the
honey
, his dad would have said.

The prince had not taken a
grain of salt to any of it. He seemed to accept that the battle for
the Fells was won, that they could set any terms they desired, that
it was the Morgs who would come begging rather than the reverse.
Cary just had to return to Torswauk with the news, and everything
would happen exactly as it should. He’d have days to spend with Noé
while they finalized terms. Then he’d carry the news to the King,
would be the first one His Majesty saw when he heard of the
astounding success that would save his country. The adulation and
rewards would be immediate: promotions, special duties, fame,
fortune, and good favor. Soon, he’d be commanding the royal
couriers. He might even be knighted. Every star in the sky was
aligned to see him rise. Then the prince had said those terrible
words, and that magnificent dream had turned to ash.

It’s not about us. It’s
all Morg politics.
He heard the words
again and rose involuntarily from his knee. “I must return to
Torswauk,” he said in a daze, remembering too late to add, “Your
Majesty.” The prince looked at him with distaste. His advisors
might have killed him with their eyes. Not only had Cary risen
without the permission of his sovereign, he had spoken out of turn,
and his words had been a statement rather than a request. For
better or worse, Cary was too overwhelmed to care. Instead, he dug
the hole deeper. “I cannot explain, but I must leave immediately. I
will take the horses we brought. Please continue to Torswauk as
quickly as you can.”

Rumbles of discontent
followed Cary as he ran from the nobles without having been
dismissed. He had just broken every possible protocol for dealing
with the nobility – and a prince, for the Order’s sake. The only
thing that saved him from immediate punishment was the completeness
of the act. None of those men had ever seen anything like it and
had no idea how to deal with it. They were stunned, but even more,
doing something about it was so far below them that they did not
know where to start – wasn’t that what officers were for? The
confusion would provide a reprieve, but only until they arrived at
Torswauk. By then, Cary wasn’t sure it would matter.

He ran from the grumbling
nobles toward where Yerl and Pence stood holding the reins of their
horses. Not a part of the procession, they were well off to the
side, wondering how far in front of or behind they would be
expected to ride. Cary was about to make that decision even more
difficult. “I need the horses,” he called as he
approached.

“
What in the Order’s name
are you doing?” Pence asked, his eyes on the disgruntled nobles.
“I’ve never seen the conical hats give someone such look that
weren’t shovelin’ shit the rest of their lives. You must have . . .
.”

“
Shut up and give me the
horses!” Cary yelled. He had reached the rangers. Ignoring them, he
ripped the reins and leads for all five from Yerl’s hand, leapt
into the saddle of Pence’s, and dug his spurs hard into its side.
It burst forward. Cary nearly lost his grip on the other animals as
he jerked them forward. Recovering, he looped the long reins
through the flank girth ring, and tied them into a single overhand
knot. The rangers yelled behind him at the theft. Cary didn’t care.
He had just realized that everything they believed was wrong, that
the negotiations were very much in danger, that even now everything
could be unraveling. There was still a chance to save it, but it
would take everything these horses could give and all his skill as
a rider to get there in time.

#

As he rode, Cary thought
back through his epiphany. He’d had time now to regret the way he’d
departed the prince’s camp. Given the distance before him, the few
minutes that proper decorum would have required were insignificant,
but the revelation had come so fast, had so filled him with dread
that he had not been able to control his actions. Even now, any
punishment he would receive seemed insignificant in comparison to
what might be happening in Torswauk.

If I’m
wrong
, a part of him said. A cold wave ran
over him.
What if I am overreacting? What
if I’m being paranoid? I’ll never ride again. The prince will see
to it. I’ll be finished.
He shook his
head. He wasn’t wrong. He knew it. Not this time. Everything fit
far too cleanly, everything made far too much sense.

Cary realized now that he
had been thinking about everything the wrong way. He had been
fixated on how Ithar and Zhurn would use Noé to keep the Thull from
supporting Liandria. He knew that the fire had given Eselhelt the
ability to defy Nyel.
The fire ran through
the women’s quarters,
Noé had said.
Fewer than a hundred survived
. It left Eselhelt with thousands of men who no longer had
wives. It meant that they not only had no need for the thuluck raln
shatar, but that they could provide men to any lodge that needed
them. The tragedy had given them the unique ability to neutralize
Nyel’s most powerful weapon. It gave them a window, but at best, it
would divided the Thull, would delay – not decide – the
outcome.

So then why hold up the
Callik? Their best hope would be to do exactly what Juhn had
suggested: move quickly in the Callik to reject Liandria, collect
their pay from the Empire, and begin the fighting while the Thull
was divided. Eventually, they could broker a favorable deal in the
Thull and get paid by the other side as well. But every day of
delay was a day that they got nothing, so why wait? It made no
sense and had kept Cary’s mind running in circles for
days.

It was only when the
prince had said it wasn’t about them, that Cary had realized his
mistake. With that one phrase, his mind had opened and all the
nonsensical machinations had made perfect sense. The competition
between Liandria and the Empire, even the invasion, was just a
distraction, and even Nyel had been caught in it. Ithar and Zhurn
had their eyes on a far larger prize than gold. They wanted to
topple Nyel, wanted to change the entire hierarchy of the Fells.
They were letting Nyel think that she had won. The stalemate in the
Callik only proved it. It made her overconfident and bought them
time.
The Mothers almost never
meet
, Juhn had said. And they would never
talk to a Father from a different lodge, so they would need time to
bring the pieces together and someone to coordinating it
all.
Juhn
. Juhn
was the only one who could bridge the gap between the men and
women. And he had Nyel’s ear. He could tell her anything and she
would believe it.

Then they would spring the
trap. Thinking her support was secure, Nyel would call for the
vote, and everything she believed to be true would turn into lies.
The lodges would turn on her. Cary could almost see it happening.
Cowed into thinking it her duty, terrified of what would happen if
she failed, Noé would open the door by opposing Nyel and offering
the men who had lost their wives in the fire to cover the change in
the thuluck raln shatar. That would embolden the eastern lodges,
but it wasn’t enough. The real blow would come from
Mehret.

That was the other piece
that Cary had not been able to see. The opposition to Nyel could
not hope to win as long as Torswauk and Mehret were unified. And
Mehret would profit far more from Liandria than the Empire. So why
was the Mother from Mehret meeting with Juhn? Why did she visit
Noé? Because she didn’t want gold, she wanted power. Far from being
Torswauk’s sister, Mehret would be their usurper. When the Thull
was in disarray, when Nyel tried to reassert her authority, Velle
ut Mehret would pull the chair out from under her. They would join
the opposition and propose a new thuluck raln shatar that excluded
Torswauk. And that would be the end. Hvartin and Ostoff would jump.
Nyel would be left with only the two small western lodges who had
neither enough men nor women to satisfy Torswauk. Her men would be
without wives, her sisters would have no husbands. She would be
removed as Mother, and it would fall on Ithar to select her
replacement. He would have exactly what he wanted. And Mehret would
suddenly be the Fells most powerful and important lodge.

It all fit. It answered
every question. It was obvious. And it would work. Because of the
fire it would work. How long had Zhurn and Ithar been planning
this? How long had Juhn been part of it. Had Zhurn (or Juhn?) set
the fire intentionally or was it just opportunistic? Cary supposed
it didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had to warn Nyel, and
he had to do it now. The only hope that Nyel and Liandria had was
for Cary to get back in before it happened. And every time he
thought of that, he drove his spurs into the side of his horse,
pushing it on past exhaustion.

He rode until the sun was
low in the sky, switching from horse to horse as each tired, never
stopping, pretending that he carried a pouch so red it burned.
Finally, when even the stocky mountain ponies were laboring and
stumbling, he guided them to a small pond. Unable to relax, he
paced between the trees that surrounded the water as the horses ate
the last of the oats and drank from the pond. He forced himself to
eat as well – hard biscuit and dried meat – but he could barely
swallow for his apprehension. Over and over he reminded himself
that he had to be patient. There were no relay stations here. If he
killed his horses, he would fail. With that thought, he forced
himself to wait until the horses had recovered. The sun was nearly
down, the evening was beginning to cool when he rode out again,
maintaining an aggressive but not torturous pace.

Night riding was nothing
new to Cary, but usually he’d have had the day before to sleep,
he’d be riding under a moon, he’d be on a road. Tonight, he was
asking for disaster. The moon was almost new, would not be up until
just before the sun. The stars were bright, but the plains were
like ink beneath him. A single ridge, an unexpected hole, a dark
ravine would end it all. Still, it was only when he nearly followed
his drooping head to the ground that he conceded. Pulling to a stop
near a copse of trees, he took only long enough to secure the
horses before he sagged to the ground and fell asleep.

A dream jarred him from
that slumber before the sun had risen. The sliver of a moon hung on
the eastern horizon. The sun could not be far behind. This far to
the north, it could have only been a couple of hours that he was
asleep. It had been enough, his mind was already back to the task
at hand. He woke the horses. Untied them and rode on.

#

The first horse to trip
was luckily not the one Cary was riding. Even luckier, its lead
snapped as it went down so that it did not take Cary or any of the
other horses with it. “Stupid!” Cary cursed himself as he pulled to
a stop and marveled that he was still in the saddle. The horse was
down. Its leg was broken. Its eyes were wide and begging. Cary
could not deny them.

Cursing himself, the
Order, the horse, the plains, the Fells, and anything else he could
think to curse, he used his knife to put the animal out of its
misery. Though he’d tried to be careful, blood sprayed across him
as the beast fought its death, splattering him with red, making him
look like he’d just killed a dozen men. He wiped it away and rode
on.

#

The sun was rising toward
noon, and Cary was jittery and exhausted all at once. The horses
were wet and heaving. They didn’t have much left, but they had to
be close. Cresting a hill, he looked out at the line of the forest
defining the south as far as he could see. Slowly the plain gave
way to it ahead as the ridges of the Green Mountains jutted north
into the Fells. To the other side, the Ice Mountains were distantly
visible as a ragged blue line, but what drew Cary’s attention were
the smattering of steep hills – little more than thimbles on the
horizon from this distance – directly in front of him and the
streamers of smoke that marred the sky between them. He knew those
hills from two weeks before when he’d emerged from the forest and
looked for the first time upon Torswauk Lodge. He was nearly
there.

Chapter 53

The
42
^nd
Day of Summer

Cary abandoned the horse
with his saddle. It nearly killed him, but he could not stop now to
change saddles and the animal underneath was just about to fall. He
slid from the warm comfort of his custom saddle into the cold, hard
clutches of one of the ranger’s seats and let go of the previous
horse’s reins. It staggered to a stop as he spurred the last
remaining horse. Over the course of the last four hours he had
abandoned every horse but this one, and it was exhausted. Though it
had been unencumbered, it had still been running with the others.
It dripped sweat. Its breaths were labored. Its stride already
showed signs of falling out of sync. But it only had to carry him
for a few more miles. Torswauk loomed, taking up a majority of the
horizon before them. Evening was approaching. The Thull was
probably finishing for the day. Cary prayed that he wasn’t too
late.