Traitor's Knot (13 page)

‘There is nothing I require,' Fionn Areth declared stiffly. After his host's crisp, clanborn accents, the twang of his Araethurian origins spun drawled echoes to the farthest corner of the room.

‘Nothing?' Mearn advanced, to a light-footed rustle of lawn. ‘But then, you shall entertain us.'

‘The goats didn't teach him to make conversation,' Parrien said. He pulled his dagger, balanced the tip of the blade on his thumb, and set the steel spinning with a deft flick of his forefinger. ‘Or did they?'

His seeming twin, Keldmar, laughed into the breach. ‘Words, is it? That's mockery, man. What use has this fighting cock got for hot air? That's a nice enough sword, despite the gross scabbard.' Disturbing grey eyes bored into the guest. ‘Is that blade sharp, child?'

Fast as echo, Parrien launched a rejoinder. ‘Never mind sharp! Can he use it?'

Keldmar considered. ‘Maybe. But I'll stake you my next turn on watch that Sevrand can best the young rooster, even sunk in his cups.'

‘That's lame!' Mearn cut in. ‘Sevrand's no contest!' At close quarters, now, he paced round the victim, then saw fit to amend his assessment. ‘Except for the boots. That could even the match. But is that a sufficient handicap, do you think, to the beer Sevrand's swilled since the watch-bell?'

‘No such foolery,' Dakar said with sidelong relish. ‘Fionn's not come here to make casual sport. Actually, he longs to enlist, and hopes you'll consider his prospects as a field officer.'

‘Does he!' The duke shoved erect off the back of his chair. ‘Do you presume, young man, you've the skill and the nerve for it?'

‘By Ath!' burst in Keldmar. ‘He can scarcely get dressed!'

‘Oh? You oafs would measure a man by his looks?' Parrien moved, snake-fast, and recaptured his twirled dagger without shifting his attentive stare from Fionn Areth. ‘Does he actually think he can meet the requirements?'

Dakar shrugged, sipped his wine. ‘I made him the promise I would provide him the chance to speak on his own merits.'

‘No,' Mearn declaimed. ‘No question about it. Another ten minutes wearing those boots, he'll be too crippled to stand for a demonstration.'

Fionn Areth shouted to make himself heard in the tumult. ‘I would beg leave to try!' As quiet descended, he ignored the precarious state of his hose, and bowed from the waist to the duke. ‘My lord, I should like nothing better than to be tested for mettle. I am not inexperienced. If I fall short of Alestron's high standard, I beg to enlist with your foot-troops. I'd be willing to train for as long as it takes to win my fair chance for promotion.'

‘Enough!' The duke glowered to quell his pack of brothers, then joined Mearn for a closer inspection. ‘We have an earnest young man who's a guest. He's declared himself to have fighting potential. Let's hear out what assets he brings us.'

Fionn Areth drew in a lungful of air. While he groped for the words to begin, Mearn lost patience. Ablaze with a wanton, mercuric energy, he started to circle, dizzy as a moth at a lamp. ‘Do you write?'

‘No,' said Fionn.

‘Recite poetry? Ah, don't bother, boy, to open your mouth. With that hayseed accent, certainly not. Do you paint? Play music? Raise beautiful flowers? No time, I see. What
do
you do, then,
a'brend'aia
with the nanny goats?'

‘What?'
Fionn Areth did not know Paravian.

Mearn's pause extended. His level brows lifted. ‘Must I translate?' he taunted. ‘You don't speak in fair tongues?'

Before the goatherd could rise to that bait, a faint cough from the side-lines. ‘The term means “dance,”' the Mad Prophet said, owlish.

Fionn Areth raised his chin, dazed by the suspicious awareness of something gone over his head. Determined, he leashed his temper. ‘We breed them quite otherwise.'

‘No doubt you do.' While his three brothers watched with rapacious amusement, Mearn moved again, pricking with words. ‘I see by your hands that you've never dyed cloth. You don't spin. You can't weave, you won't mix straw clay for bricks. You've not rowed in a galley, though you might have dipped water, or maybe cooked swill, or dumped slop for the rowers.
Perhaps
you've done that, though I doubt such. Despite the fact that nice doublet's too tight, your shoulders are slim as a maiden's.'

As Fionn Areth's hazed fury notched higher, Mearn slapped his forehead and turned a glance of discovery upon the crowding ranks of his brothers. ‘Oh, now I have it! How did I miss seeing? Those lovely buttocks, those melting, sweet haunches! And those
wrists!
Fit for kissing. He's some fat pimp's runaway
prandey
!'

While Sevrand choked and exhaled sprayed beer, the victim flushed crimson, nipped by that gadding tone to recognize mortal insult.

Five pairs of grey eyes, and Dakar's, of brown, waited to see how he would choose to react.

A brief pause ensued.

Confronted by suspended expectation, Fionn Areth ventured a thin challenge. ‘You called me a name, sir?'

‘He did,' murmured Keldmar, leaned forward with bloodthirsty interest.

Mearn pattered on in venomous delight, ‘Oh, that.' He fluttered his lashes. ‘My tender child, are you so inexperienced? Or didn't you
listen?'

Parrien provoked, grinning, ‘He's from Araethura! He doesn't know the Shandian gutter name for the painted boys they geld with hot knives to serve twisted filth in the brothels.'

Fionn Areth snarled out an inchoate syllable. Then his hand moved, and his sword, which was sharp, leaped with a practised shriek clear of his scabbard.

Mearn danced back, laughing, as steel darted to spit him. ‘Oh, brothers, he fights!' Whipped back by the lunge, his rich doublet glittering, he smiled throughout, and kept talking. ‘The manikin fights, and most prettily even with his drawers skint down to his knee-joints!'

Fionn Areth bore in, furious, to a shrill shredding of silk, which, obliging his tormentor, had slithered to hobble his boot-tops. Mearn bounced out of range to a mocking gleam of gold ribbon. The sword whickered through air, and narrowly missed. Fionn Areth overreached, and his tight doublet tore, to a jingling shower of sprung buckles.

‘Look out!' howled Parrien, bent double, tears streaming. ‘He's giving us the strip show of his young life!'

As Dakar scuttled clear to secure the carafe, Mearn kicked the table into the goatherd's advance. Filled goblets gushed and tumbled onto the carpet. Glass shattered, crunched to slivers as Fionn Areth charged ahead in his misfitted boots.

‘Enough!' Duke Bransian waded in and slapped down a mailed fist. The goatherd's struck weapon hit the floor, clattering. A page-boy who descended with towels dodged the flying blade. As though he mopped up after brawls by routine, he bent to sweep glass and blot puddles.

Fionn Areth, hazed wild, stood in the wrecked shreds of his clothing, rubbing his shocked wrist. He looked up. And up; while from his muscular height, the Duke of Alestron glared down at him. ‘Stripling, you haven't a babe's self-control, to wipe your smeared arse with a napkin.'

The Araethurian glared back, hornet-mad, and possessed of a desperate dignity. ‘Then teach me. I'll learn.' While Bransian's auger gaze bored him through, he plunged ahead with bravado. ‘I'll serve. I'll black boots. I'll do anything you ask. Only let me sign on to your troop rolls. Let me march under Alestron's proud banner to take down the Master of Shadow.'

The pause was electric.

‘What?'
whispered Mearn.

‘Kill Arithon,' said Fionn. ‘That is why I came here.'

At that, the whole room exploded: every man standing rushed forward and pounced. Fionn Areth was milled down by a flurry of mailed blows, knocked bloody and flat, then spread-eagled. Three brothers s'Brydion gripped him, wrists and ankle. His right leg was crushed under the grey-haired man-at-arms, while the blonde one poised a dagger over his heart, and the duke's bastard sword pricked at his windpipe.

Only Sevrand stood rear-guard, tankard in his left hand, and his bared blade bent at a menacing angle toward the Mad Prophet's nonchalant back. ‘Have you brought us an enemy?' he challenged, dead earnest.

‘Irons!' snapped Bransian. ‘We'll know soon enough after this wretch is put to the question.'

‘No!' Dakar yelled across spiralling uproar. ‘That boy's under Prince Arithon's warding protection!'

‘You didn't say this!' Keldmar bellowed, fast echoed by Parrien's accusation that the prisoner was a slinking spy for the Light, and why didn't Talvish set to with his knife and gut the cur here on the carpet. ‘I'll do the work and unravel his tripes, if you're snivelling, spit-licking squeamish.'

‘You didn't say he was Prince Arithon's charge,' Keldmar interjected, ‘Why not?'

‘Yes,' Parrien echoed, ‘why not? Just why shouldn't we flense him to crow-bait right now?'

Mearn's manic laughter rang through crowding heat. ‘It's not obvious? I think Dakar's been clever. The ingrate who's wearing a friend's royal face requires a sharp lesson in humility'

The irons arrived, clinking, in the care of a house-steward, who also was fit as a mercenary. Capable hands snapped them over pinned limbs.

Fionn Areth spoke, strained by the sword-point pressed to his throat. ‘Where are you taking me?'

Bransian spared no sympathy as his shaken prisoner was hauled by the scruff to his feet. ‘West tower dungeon,' he declared forthwith. ‘The irons stay locked. Under Arithon's bond of protection, you say?' At Dakar's nod, the Duke of Alestron stepped back, ‘Then his Grace had better collect his goods, quickly. I don't care fiend's get if the wretch rots in the dark till the rats pick him down to a skeleton.'

‘The tower guard's apt to spit him,' Mearn warned, his evil smile still in place.

Parrien's agreement chimed in lightning fast. ‘A shove on the stairs, or a slip with a knife. I'd do that, myself, there's enough provocation.'

‘You're turncoats!' Fionn Areth gasped, faint with shock as the hold on him viciously tightened, and someone's badgering blade nicked through skin. ‘Traitors gone over to Shadow!'

‘We are Arithon's men,' said Duke Bransian, complacent. ‘And my brothers
are right. You're a damned idiot with a tongue that the breeze flaps to every fool point on the compass. Leave you to yourself, you won't last an hour. Sithaer, without help, I doubt we can get you out of my sight without somebody hasty pinning your liver up on my wall for a trophy!'

At Dakar's concerned glance, the duke finally smiled. Still murderously vigorous, he had all his teeth. ‘Don't worry, man. He'll have Arithon's feal backing. Vhandon and Talvish will serve as his wardens. Let them handle the puppy as they see fit, and keep him breathing against all comers.'

‘That's rich!' Keldmar whooped. ‘We'll take bets to see who winds up bloodied first.'

‘Or better,' Parrien attacked with bright relish. ‘A thousand royals on whether Vhan or Talvish is willing to die, defending a priest-sucking goatboy'

Summer 5670

Of nine Companions who marched with their Earl's war-band from Halwythwood, eight had held the blood-soaked ground in Daon Ramon and broken the net of Alliance forces that had closed on the Master of Shadow. Five were killed in the red slaughter on the field. A sixth succumbed during rearguard action, defending a ragged contingent of scouts as they slipped through the lines and took flight. Cienn, who was seventh, was dispatched for mercy, by the knife of a steadfast friend. The eighth, single-handed, had been charged to defend the s'Ffalenn prince through a desperate retreat to the Mathorn Mountains.

Against odds, alone, he survived to return.

Braggen came south and entered the forest on foot to avoid leaving tracks for the head-hunters. He crossed the north fork of the River Arwent in the heat of high summer and paused to trap a black fox. As he intended, his smoke fire to finish the cured hide drew the clan scouts who watched over the downlands near Caith-al-Caen. News was exchanged, and directions.

Under the regal crowns of the oaks, the warm air scarcely trembled. The fragrance of greenery clung thick as glue, shafted with sun through the heat haze. In the shaded glens, the deer drowsed through midday, fawns asleep while the does stamped off flies. Braggen slipped on his way, his step just as furtively silent, and his strapping frame lost in the brush.

Worn lean from the trail, he arrived at the s'Valerient chieftain's encampment in the lucent glimmer of twilight. He carried the pelt slung over his shoulder and the black brush strung at his belt.

The pack of clan children discovered him first. ‘Look! It's Braggen! Braggen's alive! Another Companion is back!'

Like starlings, they descended, calling his name. Their eager hands plucked at his clothing. He tousled heads, fended the boys off his knives, and detached the girl toddler before she wore the caked mud from the last stream he had forded.

No welcoming crowd of adults came forward. No one mentioned the loss of his clan braid.

Instead, given space out of mourning respect, two men were sent by the watch. They arrived unaccompanied, armed and dressed in the fringed, forest leathers that carried no other adornment. The expected, tall figure was slightly ahead, with the other sturdy and short, striding fast through the failing light. The children all scattered. Left standing alone, his heart heavy in him, Braggen confronted Sidir, and after him, Eriegal, whose round face was no longer merry. ‘We are four. After us, of fourteen, only Deith is still living.'

Deith, who had not gone with the war-band, but remained in Strakewood, holding the tenuous ground in Deshir since the massacre at Tal Quorin that had savaged a whole generation.

Now, the other survivors were fallen. Against crushing numbers and impossible odds, their lives had been given as well, to win their prince free of Lysaer's massed assault on Daon Ramon Barrens.

Braggen, who was not a demonstrative man, bent his close-cropped head, overcome. ‘I knew there were deaths. Just how many, the scouts would not tell me.'

Grief closed his fists against helpless pain. Then Sidir caught him, gripped his massive frame close, and Eriegal embraced him also. Braggen wept with these two, whose lot had been hardest to bear: their doomed earl's command had asked them to stand guard for the children and families in Halwythwood. Of them all, the bravest and best had been spared to advise the heirs chosen to inherit the s'Valerient titles. Barach, not yet twenty, was now Earl of the North, and clan chieftain ruling Deshir. Young Jeynsa, a hot-tempered and rebellious seventeen, must swear her oath and stand as
caithdein
to the crown of Rathain.

Eriegal stood back first. His crooked smile broke through as he tipped his fair head to bear-bait the comrade, whose return was a gift unexpected. ‘You've hacked off your hair, man? Whoever she was, she must have shown you a rousing performance to have filched your braid as a keepsake.'

‘We were certain the Fatemaster had passed you for judgement,' Sidir added, gruff. ‘Since you're not maimed, we're right to presume the knife-work was yours, not a townsman's?' The same height as Braggen, but spare and long-boned, he lost none of his quiet dignity through the moment of desperate emotion. ‘Come in. You'll be starving. Better expect you won't get any sleep until you've satisfied Feithan's questions.'

Braggen gripped the fox hide, too nerve-wracked to eat. He had dreaded this meeting with the earl's widow for the better part of three months. Now the hour was upon him, he pressed the question. ‘What of Jieret's successors?'

Eriegal hooked fretful hands on his antler-bossed belt. ‘Barach will come once the runner's informed him. He's out on patrol with the archers.'

‘And Jeynsa?'

The two Companions exchanged a taut glance. Then Sidir murmured, ‘You'll see.'

Flanked by his peers, Braggen crossed the encampment. Since the return of the Prince of Rathain, increased persecution by head-hunters had redoubled an already rigorous security. No open fires burned after dark. The Companion passed through the lines of dimmed tents, then ducked into the balsam-sweet shadows of the central lodge.

The hide flap slapped shut, and Braggen stopped cold. Trophy hide on his shoulder, scarred hands crossed on his sword-pommel, he stood speechless, while Sidir lit a pine knot in a staked iron sconce, and Eriegal dodged to avoid being mown down by a tiny dark woman clad in leathers.

‘Braggen!' Quick as a sparrow, Earl Jieret's widow stretched on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on his bearded chin. Her black-and-silver hair still wore the s'Valerient clan braid. Bound by a deer-hide fillet, her brow showed a crease of stunned disbelief. Then her brown eyes spilled over with tears. ‘Ath Bless! You've returned. We thought—ah, no matter!' Ravaged by grief, but as tirelessly vital, she embraced every part of him she could reach, then hammered his broad chest until his ornery nature relented, and he sat on a grass-stuffed hassock.

The taciturn Companion offered up the rare fox pelt.

‘Who told you?' Feithan whispered, overcome yet again. She raised the silky fur to her cheek. Eyes shut, she thanked him. Steady in his silent support, Sidir stood at her back, while Eriegal dragged up a second hassock. She gave way and sat. ‘You have news? It can wait. You're aware, we've lost Jieret.'

Braggen nodded. ‘I knew.' He found all speech difficult. ‘Prince Arithon was blood-bonded. His Grace told me he sensed the High Earl's crossing at the moment that spirit left flesh. But we were already past Leynsgap, by then. I cannot say how my lord fell.'

‘We were told,' informed Sidir. Enough time had passed, he could force his tone level. ‘Luhaine of the Fellowship brought word back to Halwythwood. He said, further, that Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn had survived, and that his enemies could no longer reach him. But the Sorcerer would not answer our questions or disclose our liege's location.'

Braggen glanced down, marked hands laid uncertain before him.

Where Sidir's grave tact preferred space, Eriegal flared to impatience. ‘Ath, you're too quiet. You know where his Grace is! Is that why you're shorn of your clan braid, for shame?
Braggen, where did you fall short?'

The accused Companion snapped up his chin, bitter. Against precedent, his anger turned inward. ‘I did not fail in my charge! As a man with no other skill but the sword, I stood ground at my prince's shoulder. I could, and I did,
defend him with weapons. But I am not made as his chosen
caithdein.
I was not fit to stand in the breach and challenge his adamant spirit.'

‘What happened?' pushed Eriegal. ‘Where did Arithon go to seek refuge?'

Braggen stood in a rush, with Feithan beside him, her small hands caging his fist. ‘Peace! All of you! This was Jieret's lodge, and he would not have your contention.'

And trembling, Braggen was first to back down. He turned from Eriegal's leashed accusation, and with a dignity no man had seen, eased the earl's widow back to her seat. Then finesse deserted him. ‘My lady, on my word of honour, the truth: I cut off my clan braid at need, in order to pass through the lines as a townsman. Now it's my right to know. What happened to your husband in Daon Ramon Barrens?'

While Sidir pressed long fingers over closed lids, and Eriegal watched, white, Feithan looked up at the man who overshadowed her, savage and raw with resentment. She told him. ‘Jieret was captured by Lysaer's Lord Commander of the Alliance armed forces. He was wounded, Luhaine said, and not handled kindly. Yet he was kept alive. His enemies thought to use him as a hostage to bring the Teir's'Ffalenn back to heel.'

‘Ath's mercy!' gasped Braggen. ‘For Jieret's
life?
Defend us! For that, the s'Ilessid pretender would have flushed Arithon from cover.'

Sidir bared his face, and found grace at last to lift the burden from the brave woman now sorely bereft. ‘Jieret knew that, as well. He found resources no other
caithdein
has tapped. The Sorcerer told us he achieved true greatness, and opened a gateway into the mysteries through his sworn tie to the land. Signs and wonders were shown to men on that night. Lysaer's war host was paralysed, unable to fight. They could not be made to regroup until Earl Jieret received a sorcerer's twofold death, first by a sword through the heart, then by immolation with fire.'

‘The hand on the blade was Lysaer s'Ilessid's,' Eriegal added with wretched clarity. ‘Our High Earl met a dog's end, without succor. Now, tell us the fate of Prince Arithon.'

Pale to the lips, Braggen backed up until his huge frame bumped against the center pole of the lodge tent. There, he braced, at a loss for retort. His fellow Companions held their wary ground, well aware he was wont to strike out when cornered.

Yet Braggen gave them no whisper of argument. His volatile fists stayed locked at his sides. ‘Grant me the presence of my acting clan chief. Also Rathain's appointed
caithdein
since, in this life, I can scarcely bear to repeat what will have to be said.'

Feithan arose. Silent and quick, she fetched wooden cups and a bottle of cherry brandy. Eriegal woke out of his bristling distress. He took Sidir's urgent hint and left to bring Jeynsa, who had yet to make timely appearance.

Nothing remained except to wait, with Braggen's raw nerves wrapped in
the lodge tent's familiar, close shadows. Though he had a wife and a daughter, kept safe, in the northern wilds of Fallowmere, this place was as much a home to him. Head bent, he breathed in the pitch scent of resin, underlaid by the fragrance of leather and goose-grease and the wax used for weatherproofing the camp gear. The summer furnishings seemed as they always had, except for the absence of Jieret's sword and the dearth of scouts coming and going. The encampment had been three-quarters stripped of its fighting men, blood-bought cost of a crown prince's freedom.

None too soon, the pent silence shattered, cut across by a male voice, declaiming, overlaid by a woman's vituperative anger. The lodge door flap cracked open, careless of the light, and Jeynsa strode in, still raging.

Brows pinched into an iron scowl, eyes like chipped flint, she encountered the motionless presence of Braggen, and stopped. Her vivid regard raked him over. From cropped head to scraped boots, she missed only the foxtail melted at one with the shadow.

Her opening was hostile. ‘Did you cut your hair out of protest as well?' Against the stunned stillness, she raked back the hacked bangs that remained of her shining brown hair.

Eriegal moved, shut the door flap, then caught her arm. ‘You have no shame!' Despite his dumpy stature, he man-handled her subsequent, wild cat wrench. Curbed, she stood glaring, hard-breathing and heedless of the deep bruise her clamped wrist was going to show later.

His voice level, Sidir explained from behind. ‘She cut off her hair rather than suffer the formal ritual of her investiture.'

Braggen stared, horrified. ‘Girl, you did this to avoid receiving the pattern of the
caithdein's
traditional clan braid?'

‘We're a perfect, matched pair, as you see,' Jeynsa sheared back. ‘Why'd you cut yours?'

‘That's enough!' Feithan ploughed Eriegal aside to confront her daughter. ‘No get of mine is brought into this world to insult clan heritage under this roof! Apologize, Jeynsa! Right now.'

Strapping at seventeen, with her sire's tough strength clad in scout's knives and leathers, the girl towered over her mother. Nonetheless, her eyes dropped. Smoking with banked defiance, she spoke the rote phrases, then perched against the board trestle. To Braggen, she said, ‘You have news of my father? Don't trouble to report.
I know how he died.
By Sight, I stood witness. No reason, and no blooded prince under sky could justify how he suffered!'

Struck breathless, Braggen appealed to Sidir. ‘What's she saying? Ath's own mercy. The High Earl was tortured?'

‘Worse.' Jeynsa spat on the packed earth floor, while the brand dipped her drawn features in carmine. ‘He was mutilated, degraded, cut dumb, and drugged. Did you know, when they finished, they threw his charred skull to be mauled in the teeth of the tracking dogs?'

‘He was gone by then, and you know it!' Feithan's composure withstood the cruel pressure. ‘Luhaine swore you his oath that your father was raised beyond pain when his spirit crossed over Fate's Wheel.' Upright, arms folded, she drew a fierce breath. ‘But that's not why you won't forgive him. Be honest! You hate what happened because Jieret held true to his oath as
caithdein.
He died, and died well, for this land and his prince. You reject the willed choice of his crossing because of his triumph, that dared come before his own family'

‘What's to forgive?' whispered Jeynsa, while the tears welled and spilled. ‘Not Father! It's the crown prince who left him that I would cry down for Dharkaron's redress.'