Betrayal (6 page)

“I’ll need to make contact with a few people still within the military before we can proceed,” Berengar explained.

Nisero sat up on his pallet in the back of the inn. Light filtered gray through the dusty windows and empty corridors. “Contact them to what end?”

“We need information. We need a path that at least has some potential to move us forward. At the moment we have no such thing.”

A chicken walked past the doorway to the storage room where they had slept. The bird was lean with a crimson crown and grand emerald feathers cascading out behind it. Nisero smelled eggs and meat cooking from around the corner. The bird seemed unimpressed and undisturbed by the implications of those smells and the sounds of sizzling oil.

“What is this place?” he asked.

Berengar looked toward the door, but the chicken was gone by then. “It was a very fancy tavern for very fancy people. Now it is part of a farm and no one has gotten around to knocking it down. Is it not up to your standards?”

“You and I have stayed in worse.”

Berengar pursed his lips and nodded. “This is not new to us, to be sure.”

“You trust the people who possess this land then?”

“I trust the ones that know. No one attacked us outside while I was bringing us in, so it is already better than your previous safe places.”

Nisero let out a long breath and bowed his head. “I can’t believe that Forseth would betray me. We fought in defense of the kingdom together in numerous battles. You know what that means. You find out about the nature of a man in those moments. You and I both served with him for many years before he was promoted. He pulled us out of the fire in the mountains in a near hopeless war with the bandits. Did you ever see a possible traitor in any of those moments?”

Berengar seemed to look through the wall, thinking of times long past. The sizzling sound around the corner died off and the sounds of plates and pans clinking followed.

Captain Berengar finally said, “Man is capable of anything under the right circumstances.”

Nisero stared at the captain. “Did you ever entertain the idea that I might have done what they accused me of?”

“Not for a moment,” Berengar said without a pause. “Perhaps Captain Forseth had no part in orchestrating the destruction of the Elite Guard and the assassination of a foreign prince. Someone benefits though. I need to put us on a course to finding out what happened, why, and how their plans are to be undone.”

“Seems to be an easy three step plan.”

Berengar smiled, one said of his mouth twisting up the scar on his cheek.

An old lady with white hair sticking out in every direction leaned into the doorway. She clutched a robe around in front of her. “Breakfast is prepared, gentlemen. You want me to set you up a knee table here from some old pallets or will you come out like proper guests?”

“We’ll come out. Thank you, Gorma,” Berengar said to her.

“As you wish, master.”

Nisero tilted his head. “Master?”

“I may own this farm,” Berengar disclosed. “I may have bought it in Gorma and her husband’s name so that they would not lose it and no one would know that I owned it.”

“Not even Arianne,” Nisero said. “Impressive.”

Arianne spoke from under her covers on her pallet in the corner. “I can hear you both. Keeping secrets from your family is none too impressive. Every man does it.”

Berengar shook his head. “Every man, huh? Where does your husband think you are right now, daughter?”

“Don’t start with me,” she said. “Help me up. I need to go relieve myself before I wet this pallet.”

He crossed the room and helped Arianne to her feet. Nisero looked around thinking that it would be hard to tell the room had been further fouled even if she did urinate in the corner.

A pig hobbled by the doorway on three legs, missing one of its front feet.

Arianne held her back gingerly as she exited the room. From the hallway, she called out to them. “Don’t go on any grand quests without me.”

Her shadow broke the light coming from the foyer of the old inn, and then the light of morning returned once she was outside.

“Will she be okay out there?” Nisero said, worried.

“You can go ask her, but I don’t think she’d appreciate it,” Berengar responded. “You brought her in riding on horseback. I’m sure she can handle this. We are isolated enough on this property.”

Captain Berengar stood and Nisero followed him out into a banquet hall on one side of the building. Large holes opened through the wood paneling and stone. Some of the openings ran nearly from floor to ceiling. Nisero saw weeds lining the property and scant corn fields beyond that. The stalks and leaves were drawing yellow and crisp, indicating time for harvest.

A cow lifted its head from the weeds and peered through at the old woman plating out fried eggs, boiled chicken and ham hock.

She looked up as Berengar approached. “I hope this is sufficient, master. I did not know how many were coming when you sent word.”

“This is a king’s breakfast, Gorma. I would not ask for any more.”

As Nisero took his seat and Gorma poured him wine from a pitcher, an older man in drab leather walked up and lifted a few pinches of meat from the table, before continuing on.

“Are you not joining, husband?” Gorma asked.

He spoke as he walked toward the front of the ruined inn. “No, excuse me, master. The corn requires my full attention this day.”

“Of course,” Berengar said.

Nisero looked out at the cow bowing its head to chew up the weeds again. He wasn’t sure why everyone still insisted on using the door when so much of the wall was missing.

“Who are you going to contact?” he asked Berengar.

“I’d rather keep that close to breast until I have some answers,” Berengar said between bites. “It will be better if you don’t know them. I’m going to travel out to meet with a few contacts and then return with whatever I find.”

“When you say you will go, sir,” Nisero looked up from his plate, “it sounds as if you intend to go alone.”

“Traveling with you and getting spotted before we have a destination might end our efforts before they begin. Arianne will stay here with you until I return. Then we need to deal with reality of her situation too.”

“What do you intend to do with me, father?” Arianne rounded the corner near the collapsing stairs and approached the table in a waddle. Nisero thought she looked to be moving slower. Perhaps the ride had been harder on her than he had realized. He started to feel more guilt on not convincing her to stay home. He understood Berengar’s anger at his failure to do so.

“What situation of mine do you speak of?” she asked pertly.

Berengar snorted as Arianne lowered herself into a chair next to him. He waved his hand over and around her belly as he spoke. “This condition here, with the baby growing inside you while we are out playing bandits. That is the situation of which I speak.”

Arianne filled her plate. “Oh, that situation. I had completely forgotten. Thank you for the reminder.”

“As usual, still more clever than wise.”

“Hmm.” She shrugged. “You don’t think they make armor in my particular size for the battles ahead?”

“Even if they did,” Berengar said, “I wouldn’t be able to get it for you being outside the army. Plate mail is the privilege of those that fight for the King and the wealthiest lords. Like your husband for instance.”

“Is that what he does? I am learning all sorts of things about my life by being around you, father. We should spend more time together.”

Berengar smiled wryly. “I will be gone shortly. In the mean time I ask that you remain secluded inside. Wait for me to bring you out once I return.”

“I’m getting used to that instruction,” Nisero grumbled.

“Why wait inside?” Arianne complained to her father.

“Well, the lieutenant is a wanted man and people witnessed you with him. I also want to make certain I wasn’t followed before you reveal yourself. Does that work for you, daughter?”

Arianne smiled sweetly at him. “As you wish.”

Berengar looked at her suspiciously, but eventually left the table, mounted his horse and rode southward.

She rose from the table. “You and my father fought for the King. Why did you never get your plate mail armor?”

“We did a different sort of fighting for the King,” Nisero told her.

After she left, he found a pitcher of water and washed the dried blood away from the small cuts on his throat from the night before.

Nisero remained in the back room most of the day. Gorma returned to offer bread and boiled corn for the mid day meal, but Nisero did not see her husband the rest of the day.

Arianne entered the storage room later in the afternoon.

Nisero sat up. “Is there something you need?”

“No, husband, just bored out of my mind.”

He laid back down on his pallet and closed his eyes. “Why are you still calling me that?”

“We are bandits maintaining a disguise,” she said.

“That did not seem to hold up very well.”

She laughed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time. We just executed poorly.”

“That is the definition of all bad ideas,” Nisero lamented. “What seems like a good idea which is then executed poorly.”

“You and my father have the same sense of humor. You both jest with an air of sadness. Biting and depressing.”

“Your humor does a fine job of biting at him,” Nisero commented.

“You noticed that, did you?” She moved back to the doorway and stretched up holding onto the frame for support. “He needs a little ribbing to keep him honest.”

“Does that come from resentment?”

Arianne turned and leaned inside the doorframe. “Is this about my mother and brother? Is that what you mean?”

“I meant nothing.” Nisero let his eyes slide open and he stared up at the uneven boards of the ceiling. “Your humor seems to have an edge, like his… and mine, I suppose, but yours seems to direct that edge at him.”

“That’s what you see then?”

He shrugged, lying on his pallet still staring upward. “You had mentioned feeling distant from him in the midst of our escape from bandits all those years ago. I wouldn’t think him isolating himself in the hills to the north would have helped to heal that feeling much.”

“I’ve grown up a little since then,” Arianne said. “I’m about to be a mother for goodness sake. I better be grown up by now. Being married to a soldier has expanded my understanding of what my mother did and sacrificed for that life. I understand my father a little better for it too. Maybe I understand you more as well, for that matter.”

“That’s good, I suppose.” Nisero’s voice sounded tight and drawn in his own ears.

“Dreth is like all other soldiers in many ways,” she continued. “He does not have the same humor or observations of life that you and my father seem to have. He is no warrior-philosopher. He just does his work and returns home.”

“Is that the difference then?” Nisero turned his head toward the wall away from her.

“Maybe it is something different in being a member of the Elite Guard. You boys are warriors first and everything else later… sometimes much later.”

“You thought I would neglect you. That was it?”

He heard her breath catch and then she said, “That’s not what I was saying.”

“I offered to leave that all to be everything else you needed, first and only.”

“That’s not why I brought this up. And I think we both know that the Elite Guard never really leaves a man. We both saw that in my father. You were already becoming more like him then. You are even more so now.”

“So that was it,” Nisero confirmed.

“Now you are just sadness without the humor, Nisero.”

“Dreth offers you happiness and no humor, which is enough to make the soldiering tolerable.”

“And there are the teeth,” Arianne said, amused. “He has nice teeth.”

Nisero leaned back onto the pallet. “Hmph. I was hoping you were going to say you had made a terrible mistake and you will spend all your years pining for me.”

Arianne let out a hearty, high laugh. “I’m not much of a piner. More of a resenter really, and even that is something I grow tired of and hope to outgrow.”

“You seem to be growing quite a bit these days,” Nisero pointed out.

“If that is a shot at my weight with this pregnancy,” she warned, “you better start reevaluating your life choices in a hurry.”

Nisero opened his mouth to answer, but a shout from outside cut him off.

“Arianne… Arianne… come on out, please, dear.”

Nisero jumped to his feet and put his hand on the hilt of his sword before he registered that it was Berengar’s voice.

Nisero made eye contact with Arianne.

“Should we both go out?” he wondered aloud.

“He only called me,” she said.

“Why would he do that knowing we both were here? Why not just come in?”