Warrior (61 page)

“What the hell is he
doing
?” Wrayan asked Starros in annoyance. “Damin should know better than to place himself in a situation so potentially advantageous to an assassin.”

“Securing his throne,” Starros replied, putting his arm out to prevent Wrayan interfering. “Leave him be for a moment.”

“Are you mad?”

Starros smiled knowingly. “Don’t let Damin fool you, Wrayan. He’s always been smarter than he pretends. Underneath that jolly exterior, he’s a smarter politician than his mother.”

Wrayan wasn’t entirely convinced. “I know what you mean . . . I’ve wondered the same, myself .

. . but even so, Starros, Almodavar would kill Damin himself, if he saw him risking such close contact in a crowd like this without his bodyguard present.”

“And every man and woman in this place probably knows that, Wrayan,” Starros pointed out, looking around at the mob of thieves and beggars clamouring for the young prince’s attention. “Yet he does it anyway, and he’s not afraid. You mark my word, news of this will get around the city before we’re back at the palace.
The Prince of Krakandar isn’t too scared or too proud to mix with his own
people
. That’s what they’ll be saying. He couldn’t make the citizens of Krakandar love him more if he paid them in gold.”

Wrayan looked at Starros for a moment and then shook his head. “I’m not sure what’s worse, Starros. That Damin might be so calculating, or that you actually admire him for it.”

“Damin’s not being calculating,” Starros replied confidently. “He’s probably not even aware of what he’s doing. Look at him, Wrayan. He’s not faking anything. He really does like these people and he really isn’t afraid of them.”

Wrayan watched Damin greet the patrons of the Pickpocket’s Retreat, laugh and shake hands and even kiss a baby thrust into his arms for luck, and knew Starros was right. Damin was having the time of his life. It didn’t make him any less nervous that something might happen to the prince in such close confines, but it was clear that Damin’s popularity was more than just the hopeful wish by these people for their own prince in a city ruled for much of the past half century by caretakers and regents.

These people finally had a lord of their own and they all wanted a little piece of him to keep for themselves, and Damin appeared happy to oblige them.

It took them the better part of an hour to make it from the table Damin had first stopped at to the door. By the time they got there, Wrayan was fairly certain that Damin Wolfblade owned every heart in the Beggars’ Quarter.

Sealing the city and decimating the rat population might have slowed the advance of the plague in Krakandar, but it caused other problems that soon became apparent, the foremost of which was food.

Although the grain store in the inner ring of the city held enough to keep the population fed for about a month and a half in an emergency, there was little else on offer and it was a delegation from the Krakandar Chamber of Commerce who suggested a cattle raid into Medalon to address the problem.

“Why a cattle raid into Medalon?” Mahkas asked, when the delegation consisting of the elected leader of the Chamber of Commerce, Hyreld Weaver, and several of his fellow members of the various trade guilds confronted the regent with the problem a few days after Damin and Starros had met with Wrayan in the Pickpocket’s Retreat.

“Why not?” Damin asked in reply.

Mahkas glanced over his shoulder at Damin with a frown. Damin stood just behind his uncle’s right hand, the fitting place for Krakandar’s heir. Mahkas was sitting at his carved and polished desk, his gilded chair almost large enough to be called a throne. It was a recent acquisition, this almost-a-throne of his uncle’s. Damin didn’t remember it being here the last time he was home.

“I invited you to attend this meeting so that you may learn something of administering the province, Damin,” Mahkas scolded. “Not to trivialise the importance of it with flippant comments like that.”

“Sorry, Uncle.” It was raining outside, the world grey and uninviting, but it was still preferable to being stuck here inside the palace discussing cows. Even rats were more interesting than this.

Almodavar, Orleon and Starros waited behind the delegation from the Chamber of Commerce. Damin suspected they were as bored as he was, just better at not letting it show.

“If we’re going to start cutting into our own herds, my lord,” the delegate from the Butchers’

Guild explained patiently, “we’ll face problems later in the year that can easily be avoided by taking stock from over the border. Most of our cows are already with calf, ready to drop them in the spring. To slaughter them now would be detrimental to their numbers.”

“Won’t the cows in Medalon be with calf, as well?” Mahkas asked.

“Certainly,” Hyreld Weaver agreed with a perfectly straight face. “But they are
atheist
cows, my lord, and therefore their numbers are of no interest to us at all.”

Damin coughed to cover the laugh he just knew his uncle would disapprove of. He dared not look at Starros, who was probably on the verge of doing the same thing.
Atheist cows, for the gods’

sake!

“Something has to be done, my lord,” another fat little merchant urged. “If you intend to keep the population confined, you must find a way to feed them.” The man looked as if he could miss quite a few meals and not suffer any detrimental effects.

“Perhaps you should discuss that with my nephew, Master Goldsmith. It was his idea, after all, to seal the city.”

The merchants all looked at Damin in surprise. “
Your
idea, your highness?”

“Guilty, I’m afraid.”

“You agreed with our proposal then?” the butcher asked.

“What proposal?”

“Why, the one in which we suggested the very same thing. The Chamber of Commerce drafted it not three days before you arrived.” Master Weaver beamed at him. “You’ve no idea how relieved we were when we heard our suggestion had been acted upon.”

Damin glanced down at Mahkas, wondering why his uncle had mentioned nothing about it.

“Well . . . obviously, I . . .
we
. . . agreed with your assessment of the situation, Master Weaver,”

he replied, a little uncertainly.
Had Mahkas just ignored the damn thing?

“Then you will have read our recommendation that we should be raiding across the border, and will agree to that, too.”

“What if the Medalonians have closed their border against the plague?” Mahkas asked brusquely. It was hard to tell if he was angry or just being businesslike.

“Unlikely, my lord,” Almodavar replied. “It’s too long, too open and too impractical. If they’re worried about plague spreading into Medalon, they’ll be concentrating their efforts in the towns and cities. If anything, they’ll be more vulnerable to attack than ever.”

“There!” the weaver declared. “It is just as Captain Almodavar says. Safe as houses. And vital for the sake of the city.”

“That’s not what he said,” Mahkas corrected, “but I take your point. What do you think, Captain? Is it worth the risk?”

“I would think so, my lord.”

Mahkas thought about it for a moment and then nodded his approval. “Very well then, I will issue the necessary orders. How many head of cattle do you want, gentlemen?”

“Four score would relieve our immediate problems,” the butcher told him. “For now.”

“You heard the man, Almodavar. Bring us four score of fine Medalonian shorthorn so that Krakandar may eat beef.” Mahkas rose to his feet, which was obviously the signal that the audience was at an end. “Good day, gentlemen.”

The delegates bowed to their lord, with varying degrees of elegance, and departed in a buoyant mood now they’d had their way about the cattle raids as well as sealing the city.

As soon as Orleon closed the door on the last of them, Mahkas turned on Damin. “Please don’t do that again.”

“Do what?”

“Contradict me in front of others.”

Damin stared at his uncle in confusion. “All I said was that we agreed with their proposal. Which apparently we did, seeing as how they wanted the city sealed and we sealed it.”

“I had already sent a letter to the Chamber of Commerce before you arrived, denying their proposal, Damin. You made it look as if
you
overruled my decision. You made me look like a fool.”

“Well, if you’d told me that before the meeting, Uncle, I might have known better.”

Mahkas didn’t seem to have an answer to that accusation, so he turned to Almodavar. “Be ready to leave first thing in the morning, Captain.”

“Of course, my lord,” Almodavar said, saluting the regent sharply.

“Can I go with them?”

Mahkas shook his head without even stopping to consider the suggestion. “Absolutely not, Damin.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not safe.”

“Almodavar says it is,” Damin pointed out reasonably. “He said the Medalonians will be concentrating their efforts on protecting their towns and cities. I probably won’t even get to see a Defender, let alone pick a fight with one.”

“I could take along extra men, my lord,” Almodavar volunteered. “To be on the safe side.”

Damin looked at his uncle hopefully. With Almodavar supporting him, he had a much better chance of being allowed to go on the raid. “We’ll only be gone for a few days. Eight or nine at the most.

Right, Captain?”

“It shouldn’t even take that long,” Almodavar agreed, “if we raid the farms closest to the Border Stream.”

Mahkas glared at the captain, then turned to the chief steward for his opinion, which Damin considered a very good sign. It meant Mahkas’s resolve was weakening.

“I suppose you think I should let him go, too, Orleon?”

“I think, my lord, that any constructive activity which keeps his highness occupied and out of the palace at such a trying time as this is an excellent suggestion,” the old steward replied solemnly. “If you recall some of the previous . . .
incidents
we’ve been subjected to over the years, directly attributable to Prince Damin’s efforts to relieve his boredom, I believe the most worthy recipients of his attention on this occasion should be our enemies.”

“He means yes,” Damin translated. He grinned at the old steward.
Good old Orleon
. Already he was going insane with Damin underfoot.

“I know what he means, Damin,” Mahkas informed him. “And much as I hate to admit it, I’m inclined to agree with him. I heard about your little incident in the city the other day.”

“What incident?” he asked innocently.

“A near riot in the Beggars’ Quarter? In a tavern?”

“Oh, that,” he said, wondering how Mahkas had learned of their visit to the Pickpocket’s Retreat. “And it wasn’t a near riot. It wasn’t even close, was it, Starros?”

Mahkas turned on Starros. “
You
were involved? I might have known. I suppose it was your idea.”

“It was
my
idea,” Damin said, annoyed at the way Mahkas constantly tried to find fault with Starros. He was so annoyed, in fact, that he added, “There’s a working
court’esa
down there I’m rather fond of, actually.” Damin knew Mahkas would be appalled to think he would even
know
any of the working
court’esa
in the Beggars’ Quarter, let alone be on intimate terms with one of them.

“You try my patience, Damin.”

“Keep me cooped up in the city for another couple of weeks,” Damin suggested. “Then you’ll find out how really irritating I can be when I’m bored.”

It was blatant blackmail and Mahkas wasn’t happy about it, but Damin could tell he was on the verge of giving in.

“If I agree to this, I want your promise that you’ll be making no more visits to the Beggars’

Quarter. We have
court’esa
in the palace for that sort of thing, Damin. And there’s always . . .” Mahkas didn’t finish the sentence, but Damin knew what he was thinking.
And there’s always Leila
.

“I swear,” Damin said, dramatically placing his hand on his heart. “If you let me go with Almodavar, Uncle Mahkas, I will give up my dear Fyora and never lay another hand on her.” This time it was Starros coughing to cover up his laughter. Fortunately, only Damin recognised the strangled noise the young man was making for what it was.

“I will hold you to that oath, Damin.”

“Then I can go?”

Mahkas shook his head, as if he was about to make the worst decision of his life. “I suppose you might as well.”

“
Yes
!” Damin cried, and then quickly curbed his eagerness in the face of Mahkas’s obvious disapproval of his unseemly enthusiasm.

“You’d better make certain he comes back in one piece, Captain,” Mahkas warned Almodavar.

“I’ll keep him safe,” the Raider promised.

“You’d better,” Mahkas said. “Because it won’t be me you’ll have to answer to if he comes to any harm. It will be Princess Marla.”

Three days later, Damin stood on the edge of the Bardarlen Gorge, the cool wind whipping the hair around his face, wishing he’d thought this through a little more carefully before demanding he be allowed to accompany the Raiders across the border into Medalon. In front of him was a cutting, deep and treacherous, which could at its narrowest point—so Almodavar assured him—be cleared by a man on horseback. Almodavar and Raek Harlen stood either side of him, watching Damin survey the canyon, both of them veterans of many leaps over this gorge and both of them highly amused by Damin’s reaction to his first sight of it. It wasn’t that Damin wasn’t expecting the gorge to be here. He’d heard tales of it all his life. He just hadn’t expected it to be so . . . big.

“So how wide is this gorge, exactly?” Damin asked doubtfully, putting one foot on the fallen log that lay just on the edge of the drop, so he could lean forward a little to look down. The bottom was far below them, two or three hundred feet at least. He could just hear the faintest sound of rushing water echoing off the steep, jagged walls of the canyon, where the Border Stream gathered speed over the rocks as it fell towards the lowlands of southern Medalon. The other side of the gorge was about three feet lower than the Hythrun side and fell away in a gentle, lightly forested slope.