Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers (32 page)

“The Fountain of Beer,” Kyra replied, just as quietly, her eyes flicking from side to side in a way that told Justin she was watching everything about her without making any great show of doing so.

“I suspect that's it ahead of us.” His hands were full; reins of his horse in the left, pack in the right, so he pointed with his chin. The sign did indeed sport a violently yellow fountain that was apparently spouting vast quantities of foam.

“If you'll take care of the lodgings, I'll take care of the stableman,” Kyra offered. “We've both got tokens; one of us should hit on a contact if we try both.”

“Good,” Justin replied shortly; they paused just at the inn gate and made an exchange of packs and reins. Kyra went on into the stableyard with their horses, as he sought the innkeeper behind his bar.

Justin bargained heatedly for several minutes, arriving at a fee of two silver for stabling, room and meals for both; but there was a third coin with the two square ones he handed the innkeeper—a small, round, bronze coin, bearing the image of a rampant hawk on one side and the sun-in-glory on the other. It was, in fact, the smallest denomination of coin used in Hawksnest—used
only
in Hawksnest, and almost never seen outside of the town.

The innkeeper neither commented on the coin, nor returned it—but he
did
ask
“Justice
Twoblade?” when registering them on his rolls.

“Justice” was one of the half-dozen recognition words that had come with Justin's message.

“Justin,” the fighter corrected him. “Justin of the Hawk.”

That was the appropriate answer. The man nodded, and replied “Right.
Justice.”

Justin also nodded, then stood at the bar and nursed a small beer while he waited for Kyra to return. The potboy showed them to a small, plain room on the ground floor at the back of the inn.

“Stableman's one contact for certain sure,” Kyra told him as soon as the boy had left. “He wished me ‘justice,' I gave ‘im m'name as Kyra Brighthawk, and then ‘e tol' me t' wait fer a visitor.”

“Innkeeper's another, gave me the same word. Always provided we aren't in a trap.” Justin raised one laconic eyebrow at Kyra's headshake. “My child, you don't grow to be an
old
fighter without learning to be suspicious of your own grandmother. I would suggest to you that we follow ‘enemy territory' rules.”

Kyra shrugged. “You been the leader; I'll live with whatever ye guess we should be doin‘.”

Justin felt of the bed, found it satisfactory, and stretched his lanky body on it at full length. “It is a wise child that obeys its elders,” he said sententiously, then quirked one corner of his mouth. “It is also a child that
may
live to
become
an elder.”

Kyra shrugged good-naturedly.

A few moments later, the boy returned with a surprisingly good dinner for two, which he left. Justin examined it with great care, by smell and by cautious taste.

“Evidently we aren't supposed to leave,” Justin guessed, “And if this stuff has been tampered with,
I
can't tell it.”

Kyra followed his careful inspection of the food with one of her own. “Nor me, an' my grandy was a wisewoman. I don' know about you, friend, but I could eat raw snake.”

“Likewise. My lady?” Justin dug a healthy portion out of the meat pie they'd been served, and handed it to her solemnly.

She accepted it just as solemnly. It might have been noted, had there been anyone else present, that neither partook of anything the other had already tried. If any of the food had been ‘tampered with,' it would likely be only one or two dishes. If that were the case—
one
of them would still be in shape to deal with the consequences.

When, after an hour, nothing untoward happened to either of them, Justin grinned a little sheepishly.

“Well—”

“Don't apologize,” Kyra told him. “I tell ye, I druther eat a cold dinner than find m‘self wakin' up lookin' at the wrong end'f somebody's knife.”

They demolished the rest of the food in fairly short order—then began another interminable wait. After a candlemark of pacing, Kyra finally dug a long branch of silvery derthenwood out of her pack, as well as a tiny knife with a blade hardly bigger than a pen nib. She sat down on the floor next to the bed and began the slow process of turning the branch into a carved chain. Justin watched her from half-closed eyes, fascinated in spite of himself by the delicate work. The chain had only a few links to it when the wait began; when it ended, there was scarcely a fingerlength of branch remaining.

Then, without warning, a portion of the wall blurred and Kethry stepped through it.

Kethry just held out her arms, welcoming both of them into an embrace which included tears from all three of them.

“Gods, Keth—” Justin finally pulled away, reluctantly. “It has been so damned
hard
keeping this all inside.”

“I know; none better—Windborn, I cannot tell you how glad I am to see
you
two! You're the first to come; may the Lady forgive me, but there were times I wondered if this was going to work.”

“Oh, it's working all right; better than you could guess.” He wiped his eyes and nose on the napkin from their tray and locked his emotions down. “All right, lady-mage, we need information, not water-falls.”

“First—tell me how you got here so fast.”

“We weren‘t
about
t' let anybody beat us here,” Kyra replied. “Not after that message. Sewen sent me on ahead t' tell ye that Queen Sursha give us leave t' deal with this soon's we get some of her new army units in t' replace us. The rest of the Hawks'll be here in 'bout a month.”

“Ikan's out rounding up all the former Hawks we can track down,” Justin continued. “We'll be trickling in the same as the Hawks will—no more than two or three at a time, and disguised. One of the merchant houses is going to let some of us use their colors; Ikan took the liberty of taking your name in vain to old Grumio. We have the support of Sursha's Bards, and half a dozen holy orders. We'll be everything from wandering entertainers to caravan guards. You've got a plan, I take it?”

“Tarma has; she's worked it out with a couple of highborn we can trust,” Kethry told him. “All I really know about is my part of it, but generally we're hoping to accomplish the whole thing with a minimum of bloodshed.”

“Specific blood,” Kyra replied, with a smolder ing anger Justin shared.

“Oh, yes. One of the lot we've already taken out—Raschar's Adept. But the others—” Kethry allowed her own anger to show. “—Tarma's identified every person that had a hand in the deed. And they
will
answer to us.”

Justin nodded, slowly. “What about arms? There's going to be at least half of us without much, given the disguises.”

“Being smuggled in to us from an outside source, so that Char won't be alerted that something's up by activity in forges and smithies. We're getting everything Tarma could think of; bows, arrows with war-points, various kinds of throwing knives, grapnels, climbing spikes, pikes, swords—the last is the hardest, that, and armor, but we're hoping most of you will manage to bring your own. Do either of you have a guess how many there might be that we can count on?”

“Six hundred at an absolute minimum,” Justin said with grim satisfaction. “That's four hundred Hawks and the two hundred that either retired to Hawksnest or that Ikan knows for a fact he can get hold of and will want in.”

“Gods—that's better than I'd hoped,” Kethry said weakly. “There're four hundred regular troops here, about a hundred and fifty assorted militia, and fifty personal guards belonging to Char. There're some other assorted fighters, but Tarma tells me they won't count for much; there're Char's adherents, and their private guards, but we don't know but that they won't turn their coats or hide if things look chancy. That means we'll be going pretty much one-on-one; all the professionals starting the fight even.”

“Even with his mages?” Justin asked dubiously.

Kethry raised her chin, her eyes glinting like emerald ice in the light from the window beside her. “He hasn't a mage that can come close to me in ability, and I have more power at my disposal than any of them could hope for.”

“Where are you getting
that
kind of power?” Justin asked in surprise. “I mean—you're alone—”

“You—and the Hawks. Your anger. I can't begin to tell you how strong a force I've already tapped off just you two; when I start to think about six hundred Hawks, it makes
my
head reel. It's the kind of power a mage sees perhaps once in a lifetime, and if I weren't an Adept I'd never be able to touch it, much less control it.”

“You're
Adept
class now?” Justin said incredulously. “Great good gods—no wonder you aren't worried!”

“Not with power like that at my disposal. I can channel all that anger, harvest it, and save it for the hour of striking. We're the attackers, this time. I can set up as many spells as it takes as far in advance as I need to, spells specifically designed to take out each mage; and wait until the moment of attack to trigger them. I'm assuming only half of those will work. The rest will probably be deflected. But the mages will be off-balance, and I can take them out one at a time. I know how mages think—when they're under magical attack they tend to ignore anything mundane, and they seldom or never work together. White Winds is one of the few schools that teaches working in concert. I think we can plan that they will be concentrating on
me
and not on anything nonmagical. And that they won't even think to band together against me.”

Justin nodded, satisfied. “Sounds like you people have a pretty good notion of what you're about. Now comes the hard part.”

“Uh-huh,” Kethry nodded. “Waiting.”

 

Singly, or by twos and threes, the Hawks came, just as Justin had told Kethry they would. Each of them arrived in some disguise, some seeming utterly harmless—a peasant farmer here, a party of minstrels there, a couple of merchant apprentices. Day by day they trickled into Petras, and no one seemed to notice that they never left it again. Each went to one of the dozen inns whose masters had bought into the conspiracy, carrying with them a small bronze coin and a handful of recognition words. Each was met by Kethry, or by one of the other “official greeters”—Justin, Kyra or Ikan, who had arrived within days of the first two.

From there, things got far more complicated than even most of these professional mercenaries were used to.

 

Beaker coughed, scratched his head, and turned his weary donkey in to what passed for a stableman at the Wheat Sheaf inn. The stableman here was, like most of the clients, of farm stock; and probably had never even seen a warhorse up close, much less handled one. Beaker's dusty donkey was far more in his line of expertise. The “stable” was a packed-earth enclosure with a watering trough and a pile of hay currently being shared by three other mangy little donkeys and a brace of oxen. Beaker had serious second and third thoughts about this being the contact point for a rebel force, but the instructions had said the Wheat Sheaf and specified the stableman as the contact.

“Ye wanta watch that one,” Beaker drawled, handing the wizened peasant the rough rope of the donkey's halter with one hand, and four coins with the other—three copper pennies and one bronze Hawk-piece. “She'll take
revenge
if she even thinks ye're gonna lay hand to ‘er.”

“Oh, aye, I know th' type,” the fellow replied, grinning, and proving that a good half of his teeth had gone with his lost youth. “Ol' girl like this, she hold a grudge till
judgment
day, eh?” He pocketed all four coins without a comment.

Well, that was the proper sign and counter. Beaker felt some of his misgivings slide away, and ambled on into the dark cave of the rough-brick inn.

Like most of its ilk, it had two floors, each one large room. The upper would have pallets for sleeping; the lower had a huge fireplace at one end where a stout middle-aged woman was tending an enormous pot and a roast of some kind. It was filled with clumsy benches and trestle tables now, but after the inn shut down for the night, those that could not afford a pallet upstairs would be granted leave to sleep on table, bench, or floor beneath for half the price of a pallet. Opposite the fireplace was the “bar”; a stack of beer kegs and a rack of mugs, presided over by the innkeeper.

Beaker debated looking prosperous, when his stomach growled and made the decision for him. He paid the innkeeper for a mug of beer, a bowl of soup and a slice of roast; the man took his money, gave him his drink and a slice of not-too-stale bread. Beaker slid his pack off his back, rummaged his own bowl and spoon out of it, then shrugged it back on before weaving his way through the tables to the monarch of the “kitchen.”

Rather to his surprise—the inn staff of places like this one were rather notorious for being surly—the woman gave him a broad smile along with a full bowl, and put a reasonably generous slice of meat on his bread. Juggling all three carefully, he took a seat as near to the door as possible, and sat down to eat.

The food was another pleasant surprise; fresh and tasty and stomach-filling. And the inn was cool after the heat and dust of the road. The beer was doing a respectable job of washing the grit out of his throat. Beaker was about halfway through his meal when her heard someone come up behind him.

“How's the food t‘day, sojer?”

Beaker grinned and turned in his seat. “Kyra, when are you gonna get rid of that damn accent?”