Bazil Broketail (29 page)

“Keep out of this, Talion,” snapped Kesepton. “The succession to the throne of Marneri is our business not yours.”

“It is mine when my captain intends to throw away the lives of my men on the orders of a witch.”

“You refuse to serve the emperor, is that it?”

Yortch colored. “Of course not.”

“Well, the witch is from his council; she speaks with the emperor’s voice.”

“How can we be sure of that? How can we be certain we’re not being used for their own purposes. The witches want a queen, that’s natural enough—they always want queens rather than kings.”

“I don’t think that’s true, and in this case there are special circumstances.”

But Duxe was not having it. “No, Yortch has it right. The damn witches want to supplant Erald and give us that silly baggage Besita for our queen. Then the witches will be able to do anything they want in Marneri, and they’ll start by raising taxes. You mark my words, they’ll be taxing the water and the air next.”

“Look,” said Kesepton, struggling to be reasonable, “you know that Erald is too weak in the head to be king. There’s no choice except Besita, unless we turn aside from the line of Sanker and look among the noble houses.”

“And start a civil war that will destroy Marneri? Of course not.” Duxe was simmering with anger and frustration. “But you want us to fight tomorrow without orders from Dalhousie. If you’re wrong and this witch is playing some game of her own, then we’ll all hang.”

“The witch sent for orders.”

“So you told me. She talks to wild birds and animals, she probably talks to the trees as well, and this is the person you think is fit to give orders to the Thirteenth Marneri?”

“She is of the council, Sergeant.”

“Damn the council, I’m talking about our lives.”

And at that very moment the guard pulled open the entrance to the tent to announce the Lady Lessis.

“Send her in,” said Hollein after a long moment of silence.

Duxe snorted. Yortch muttered a charm against witches under his breath.

Lessis was as bright-eyed as ever, unassuming, clad in plain grey, slight and yet filling the tent with her presence.

“Greetings, gentlemen. I believe you are discussing the curse of women’s rule.” Her smile had grown slightly frosty.

Duxe colored; Yortch stared at her with insulting disdain.

“Something of that sort,” said Hollein after an uncomfortable silence.

“No offense, my lady,” began Duxe.

“No offense taken, Sergeant Duxe. You want what’s best for your men, I understand that. It is not my choice that we fight this battle tomorrow. But if we are to rescue Princess Besita, then we must fight and we must win.”

“But is Besita any improvement over Erald?” said Duxe. “Why must we have the rule of a silly woman over that of an addled boy?”

Lessis nodded as if recognizing that there was something to these arguments.

“Of course, of course, such questions must be faced. Besita lacks the will of King Sanker perhaps, and she has made many questionable decisions. However we feel that she will be more susceptible to good sense once she is queen. She responds well to responsibility. Alas, young Erald does not. We fear a disaster for Marneri if he should mount the throne. He speaks for instance of coming to the frontier with his entourage to take control of the Marneri legions to fight with them as a separate army. How would you and your men fare then, Sergeant Duxe?”

Duxe had paled. “I never heard of this.”

“No, of course not, you have better things to do than to sit around in Marneri sifting through gossip of the court. But that is our task, Sergeant, we of the Office of Insight. We watch over the courts of Argonath and we attempt to prevent the excesses of princely rule.”

“Bah, interfering female busybodies!” snorted Yortch. “We have no truck with them in Talion.”

“Yes indeed, Subadar, Talion is the least cooperative of the cities of the Argonath, and Talion is also the most heavily infested by agents of the enemy. Talion is also the city ruled for six generations by the increasingly feeble Matulik family. If you think King Fildo has been a troublesome monarch, wait until his son Esquin takes the throne.”

Yortch’s face clouded. “The king is troubled in his mind, all agree, but he is the king.”

“And Esquin is an irresponsible savage who will steal the Talionese blind.”

Yortch screwed up his lips but made no reply. In truth the city of Talion already dreaded the day when the haughty Esquin would mount the throne.

Lessis held up her hand. “But all this concern is unnecessary, gentlemen. I came here because I am about to receive the orders for Captain Kesepton from Dalhousie that we sent for yesterday.”

“How can you know that?” grumbled Duxe.

“It is my business to know these things. Come, Chinook will not enter the tent, we will have to greet him outside.”

“Now this is foolish,” groused Yortch. “We are to wait outside for your trained bird to find us out here in the middle of the woods?”

“Chinook is not trained, far from it.”

“Even better, we are to wait for a wild bird to find us.”

She smiled sweetly. “If you wish to put it that way, then yes, we are to wait for him. He will come, you will see.”

Still grumbling, Yortch followed the others out.

Outside the tent she cupped her hands and produced a loud hoot that echoed off the trees along with the banging from the smiths.

Silence fell, the wind sighed through the trees. The moment stretched itself out as the men fidgeted, wondering how mad this hag was.

Then suddenly a larger pale shape detached itself from the dark masses of the trees and fluttered down to land atop Kesepton’s tent pole. The great owl confronted them with its huge eyes.

Yortch emitted a startled oath at the size of the bird and took a step back.

Lessis made another of the eerie calls and encouraged the great owl to hop down upon her upraised staff. A message was tied to his leg. In a few moments she had removed it and passed it to Hollein Kesepton. He stared at it for a moment.

“It is from General Hektor himself. See, here is his seal.” He held it up for Yortch and Duxe to see. They grumbled together but they could not deny it; the seal was official.

“He orders us to fight tomorrow and to obey the Lady Lessis implicitly until she no longer requires our service.”

Duxe sucked in a long breath. It was Hektor’s seal, no doubt of it, and thus he and his men were given up to the command of the witch. It was either that or mutiny and complete disgrace and the end of his career.

Yortch screwed his mouth up and then spat eloquently to the side. “We can just hope that we survive the fiasco, then.”

Lessis was imperturbable. “Oh, I think we will survive, Subadar, and perhaps we will surprise you too.” She pressed her palms together. “Now here is my plan of action. In the morning we will set off early and cross the Thun at the Trail Ford. But we will not set our ambush there—there is a better place that Matugolin knows, just a couple of leagues further to the west. Our enemy will expect an ambush at the ford, and not finding one will perhaps become overconfident and less wary when he reaches our place of choice.”

“And where is that?” said Duxe.

“A place called Ossur Galan, where the giant Ossur is said to have cut the rocks with his axe, long ago.”

“A giant, eh?” muttered Yortch as he left. “And tomorrow trolls will cut our men with their axes?”

The next day, however, dawned grey and cloudy. Before long a drenching cold rain began. It was evident to Lessis that not even Thrembode would get much movement out of the imps and trolls that were his escort through Tunina on a day like this. Accordingly she told Kesepton to rest his men and dragons during the morning. Then with Subadar Yortch and Lieutenant Weald, Lessis and Lagdalen rode along one of the trade trails to the site recommended by Matugolin for the ambush. They crossed the river at a shallow ford where the water was still high with melted snow. Throughout the journey they saw no sign of the enemy, no tracks at all. Lessis was increasingly confident that they were in time.

After another hour’s ride they reached the spot. A jagged sill of volcanic rock formed a north-south ridge here. Through this ridge was cut a single pass, the great gash called Ossur’s Galan, or axe cut.

Here the trail narrowed to a point where it was barely twenty feet wide. A perfect bottleneck. With a small force, protected on both sides of the rocky ridge, they could easily trap their foe and then destroy them from above.

A wave from the rocks above told them that King Matugolin was waiting. They climbed to meet him. The rain hissed down again and everyone was cold and wet, except for the elves who had forsaken their feathered costumes and were clad instead in drab green cloaks with pointed hoods that seemed to repel the rain and remain perfectly dry. Matugolin rubbed his hands briskly as they drew close. He was bubbling with his news.

“I have word of the enemy this hour,” he said to Lessis, who alone understood the forest tongue. “They are moving very slowly today. There was a struggle in their camp this morning, and two men were hanged before they left.”

“Good, it is as we hoped. They’ll not reach this spot today.”

Matugolin waved to the rocks behind them. “We shall set our forces on the heights above the pass. When they are stuck in the canyon we will destroy them with rocks and arrows.”

Lessis paced around the site, examining it carefully. It was the last choke point before the high pass over the saddle north of Mount Uhno.

Later, when the rain slackened, Captain Kesepton rode up to join them. He had set the men and dragons to march over the ford and come up to Ossur Galan that afternoon, and thus ensure that they would get there ahead of the enemy.

However, Yortch had been less than eager to keep his men on patrol behind them. They were tired, they needed a rest and everyone was wet through. And indeed some of the men were very slack about watching the flanks of the moving column.

Thus they missed the rider in black who approached Ossur Galan from the north and spotted the advancing column in the late afternoon.

By the time the Talionese returned to patrol, this rider had already slipped back to the east, to the crossing of the river, and was gone.

At length the rain ceased and the clouds cleared in time for the sunset, which illuminated Mt. Ulmo and turned its white crown into a glory of purple and gold.

Kesepton ordered an early evening meal and the dousing of all fires immediately afterwards. Cooks were told to prepare foods to be eaten cold for breakfast.

At length some elves brought word of the enemy force. It had crossed the river and made camp. The trolls were reportedly cooking and eating some men they had captured along the Argo. This news went around the camp very quickly. An angry buzz soon edged the cook fires.

Lessis ordered vigilance through the night with constant patrols. She feared that Thrembode, realizing the nature of the obstacle at Ossur Galan, would discover her trap and leave the trail, going north around the rocks.

But the enemy camp was quiescent during the night; only at dawn did a pair of patrols go out and neither of them were particularly aggressive. Lessis began to hope that finally she would snare the wily Thrembode and recapture the princess.

It was such a bright clear morning that everyone’s spirits soared to join the occasional white cumulus cloud that floated across the vault of blue. The men and dragons were in their positions shortly. The dragons were to hold the pass while the men and elves controlled the ridge above them. Once the battle was joined Lessis had agreed to send Yortch and his men around to attack the foe from the rear and snap shut the trap.

Now they waited. From Matugolin’s elves they had reports of the enemy’s progress, which was slow but steady and continued straight along the trail.

Another hour passed and more elves came in to report that the enemy was close. Within twenty minutes the clank of metal and the throb of heavy feet upon the ground confirmed this.

For several long minutes the men and dragons peered down the narrow pass. They could hear the enemy’s approach, but still there was no glimpse of imp or troll.

Then at last a mass of imps appeared at the eastern end, moving in a defensive phalanx with black shields serried behind a forest of spear points.

A mounting concern gripped Lessis.

“He suspects something,” she exclaimed. “We must change the plan.”

Kesepton was unconvinced. “But lady, he will know that this place is dangerous. He will seek to investigate it before trying to cross.”

“Which he has not done, Captain. I’m afraid we are discovered.”

Kesepton continued to study the phalanx of imps at the eastern end of the defile. They had not moved forwards. He began to share Lessis’s misgivings.

Lessis sniffed suddenly.

“Quickly, Captain, order the dragons to join us on the ridgeline.”

But it was too late. Almost as soon as these words were spoken, the forest to the east of the ridge came alive with a huge shout and more imps, with men leading them and tall purple trolls stalking behind them, came surging out from beneath the trees.

The elves of Matugolin turned about, but they were taken in the flank, and though they sent volleys of arrows whistling into the enemy masses they could not halt them.

And then the two forces closed and everything became a confusing whirling chaos of men, elves, imps and trolls.

On the south side of the pass a dozen elves were knocked over the edge of the cliff and fell screaming to their deaths when the charge drove home.

A troll got in among the men of Marneri and cut down two with a sweep of his great sword. Others gave way in near panic. They were on the point of breaking in a complete rout.

Kesepton clashed with an enemy officer, a man with the dark face and slanted eyes of the Hazog. Their swords rang on each other for a moment, but Kesepton was the swifter and his short blade cut inside and struck home. The officer went down and Kesepton rallied the men around him. They stiffened for a moment until a swarm of imps came in around them.