Irons in the Fire (5 page)

He waved at the waiting banquet, spitting with fury.

"Am I the only one sick to my stomach of festival gatherings where we sit on our fat arses and cuddle our fat purses? Have you no feeling for your kith and kin who can only fear the lengthening days as the year turns to Aft-Spring? Will For-Summer bring armies to plunder their crops again, militias to enlist their sons or mercenaries to despoil their daughters? Doesn't this fine white bread taste of bitter ashes when you know Caladhria's farmers will be giving thanks to Drianon this Spring Festival for last year's fine harvest? As they debate whether they'll earn more gold selling their wheat to the mercenary camps or to the dukes as they lure men to sign up for militia service to save their children from starvation."

Tathrin saw the whole gathering standing frozen, some faces appalled, more ashamed.

The old man continued before anyone could attempt a reply. "Whatever duke presumed to claim our allegiance when we were born, we all left such quarrels behind when we came to Vanam, to any of the cities across Ensaimin. For the love of whatever gods your beleaguered families cherish..." His voice cracked with anguish, tears standing in his faded eyes. "Can we not find a way to stop this strife that curses our unhappy homeland?"

The hall erupted. Anguished voices protested how often they sent coin to salve the worst hurts of warfare. Men and women insisted they offered friends and relatives a safe haven in times of trial, even securing apprenticeships for their sons and respectable marriages for their daughters.

His heart racing, Tathrin tried to pick out the most earnest faces. He did his utmost to find some distinguishing feature, some quirk of dress. An enamelled collar here, a fistful of diamond rings there--anything that might help him identify the men and women who seemed to be in fiercest agreement with the old man.

"Wyess, Garvan." The cloth merchant spread apologetic hands, colouring with embarrassment. "You know I hold you in the highest esteem--"

"Gruit's been drinking too much of his own wine," Kierst sneered. "Too much time on his hands since he buried his wife and married off his daughters."

To Tathrin's utter astonishment, Wyess spun around and knocked the long-nosed man clean off his feet with a single colossal punch.

Chapter Three

Karn

Emirle Bridge, in the Dukedom of Draximal,

Spring Equinox Festival, Fourth Day, Morning

"Why change horses here?" A thin-faced woman stepped down from her carriage with an angry flounce of her gown.

"This is the last town safely inside Draximal."

Karn didn't care if the harassed man with her was her steward or her husband. He was just pleased their argument was attracting everyone's attention. Chewing the last of his morning bread, he headed for the wide gate to leave the inn's stable yard unremarked.

"We must hire a team here to take us across the bridge," the hapless man explained. "Then we change horses in Tewhay."

He should just tell the shrew to shut up, Karn thought, and let him manage their journey.

"We're paying a day's hire for horses taking us three leagues?"

The woman's shrill outrage followed Karn into the road and he looked back over his shoulder. It was curious that someone should set out to travel between Draximal and Parnilesse and not know that the horsemasters at inns all along the highway refused to allow their beasts to cross the border. North and south, they condemned their counterparts as thieves and scoundrels with near-identical curses.

Perhaps he would wait until this coach arrived at the bridge before crossing on foot himself. Coaches attracted more attention from the guards. No one would waste time detaining him, with his ragged cloak and threadbare breeches, when they could be cozening money from someone richer. He felt discreetly inside his doublet to make sure his purse was safely hidden.

The high road through the town was deserted. Karn stepped around a fallen festival garland spattered with some incautious reveller's vomit. Broken earthenware was further evidence of the previous night's excesses. Karn smiled. The guards on the bridge would hardly wonder about him this early in the morning while Misaen's hammers were pummelling their heads.

Travelling over the five days of a festival weighed on both sides of the balance. With so few folk on the roads he could make much better speed. On the other hand, it was easier to go unnoticed just before the holiday actually started, while the world and his wife were hurrying home to make merry with family and friends.

He followed the curve of the road down towards the bridge, his thoughts returning to the inn yard. That old-fashioned coach had come a good distance. Karn's practiced eye told him that. Where were they going? The shrew hadn't been berating her escort for failing to reach their destination in time for the Spring Festival. Were they merchant stock or minor vassals of Duke Secaris of Draximal? The woman's dowdy dress meant nothing. Wealthy folk often travelled in such a disguise for fear of bandits on the wilder roads.

If he caught up with them again, he'd find some answers. Not from the woman. She looked like a hard, dry furrow to hoe, not the type to let secrets slip in pillow talk once a charming stranger had softened her up with skilled hands and practiced tongue. The man, though--he'd pour out his heart over a game of runes with a sympathetic stranger. Especially if that stranger made sure the poor fool cast the strongest runes more often than not. He probably hadn't seen Halcarion roll the bones in his favour since the day he'd met the shrew.

It would be good to have something to report to Master Hamare. All Karn had garnered on this journey so far was rumour and speculation, even if the self-appointed sages in Draximal Town were confident that Duke Secaris was going to enforce his claim to all the woodland and marshland of this oft-disputed region. They insisted his forces would push Duke Orlin's vassal lords back so far that Tewhay and Quirton would find their walls marking the border.

Sceptical, Karn had kept his eyes as well as his ears open as he'd travelled south. All around the stone-walled farmsteads, cows were being turned out to enjoy the new grass, sway-hipped heifers round-bellied with calves soon to come. Shepherds were cleaning out their huts in more remote pastures, ready for lambing. Cottagers were herding pigs into common fields left rough over the winter so that hungry snouts could begin breaking up the ground for pease planting.

He passed through the open gate in the town's wall and started down the slope to the river. The solid grey pillars of the fortified bridge cut the river into a skein of swirling silver threads. Each end was guarded by a squat tower and a taller fortification kept watch from the centre of the bridge. Two long, low boats heaped with sacks rode the flood towards the central span. Each was steered by a solitary figure with a stern oar and both were sunk deep in the water. Beyond, the high road continued along the embankment reaching out across the sprawling reed beds.

Common folk's lives depended on knowing which way the winds blew. If the same peaceable activity was evident in Parnilesse, it would take more than market-town gossip to convince Karn that either duke planned an attack. Would Master Hamare consider that good news or bad?

Galloping hooves scattered his thoughts as horses raced through the sleepy town. Karn sprang into the tangled grass by the side of the road and crouched low. He saw a company of armoured men reach the town gate. A militiaman, braver or more foolish than the rest, challenged them, waving his halberd. The first horseman swung his sword, cutting clean through the shaft to sever the man's head from his shoulders.

A maidservant standing close by screamed with horror as blood spattered her white apron. The first cries of alarm from whoever was keeping watch at the near end of the bridge down below were lost beneath the fearsome howls of the attackers. They spurred their horses fearlessly on down the sloping road. Bloody blades told Karn that more bodies lay behind them in the town.

He settled down to watch. Someone on the bridge managed to shut the gates. Men in Draximal livery were left outside to face this onslaught. Panicking, half of them turned to hammer on the wood instead of readying their weapons. Someone up on the battlements remembered his crossbow, but too late to kill more than one of the attackers' rearguard. He could only look down helplessly as his friends, inextricably mingled with the enemy, died with shrieks of pain and terror.

Was the town militia about to take on these brigands? Karn looked around for activity by the town gate or on the walls. There was no one to be seen. Who would have expected an attack in the middle of festival?

Turning back to the bridge, he saw that a second assault had been launched against the gatehouse on the far side. He suspected that the duke's men on that side of the bridge had managed to release their portcullis. Certainly the attackers hadn't broken through to the roadway. On this side, however, whoever had managed to shut the gate had failed to bar it. Between the guards seeking refuge and the attackers pursuing them, it was soon forced open.

What of the men holding the central tower that straddled the bridge, where the road passed through a wide archway? Thinking back to a previous journey along this road, Karn recalled the portcullises at either end of that passageway, ready to cut the bridge in half. If they could trap their foes between the gates' lethal confines, there were gratings in the roof. Defenders in the tower room above could drop murderous darts or pour boiling water onto whoever they trapped.

But he saw the fools rushing out of the tower onto the bridge. They deserved to die for such stupidity, he concluded.

Then he realised that quarrels from crossbows on the central tower's battlements were sending the militiamen sprawling across the hard-packed stones of the roadway. More were picking off the defenders atop either end tower rather than piercing the armoured assailants down below.

Downstream, there was no sign of the laden boats he'd seen passing beneath the bridge's central span. Karn laughed. He should have wondered who could send sacks of turnips to market at the end of a hungry winter. This armoured band must have hidden men beneath the sacking, and they'd snagged the underside of the bridge with grapnels. There must be some doorway down below by the waterline, some last escape for besieged defenders. It had been turned against them.

Now a crowd was gathering by the town gate. Demands that something be done were immediately challenged. Just what did they propose? Foolhardy exhortations that the townsfolk take up arms were swiftly scorned. A cry went up for the duke's reeve, heartily endorsed. The crowd stilled, expectant.

Karn settled himself more comfortably on the damp grass and waited to see what transpired. He'd definitely have something interesting to tell Master Hamare now.

The defenders on the far side of the bridge soon capitulated, only to be stripped and marched naked out onto the causeway. The militiamen captured on this side of the river suffered the same humiliation. The crowd shouted, urging them to run for the safety of the town walls. One bold man ran forward to offer the foremost a cloak. When he wasn't cut down by a crossbow bolt, others did the same.

Karn had no sympathy for the weeping youths who passed him, scarlet-faced and trying to hide their inadequate manhood with shaking hands. They were still alive.

Now the force who'd taken this tower began throwing the naked dead through the gate to lie tumbled on the muddy road. Wails went up from the crowd.

"Where's the reeve?" a militiaman bellowed, the hair on his chest and groin as grizzled as that on his head. "Where's Nuchel?"

"I'm here." A portly man, doublet unbuttoned over a stained shirt, forced his way through the crowd. His breeches flapped loose at the knee, yellow stockings drooping over his tarnished silver shoe-buckles.

"I have a message." The militiaman scowled. "Captain Arest of the Wyvern Hunters presents his compliments. Anyone who wishes to pass across the bridge is welcome to do so for the appropriate toll."

The reeve gaped. "What's the toll?"

The militiaman spat on the road. "Whatever they think you can pay."

"Mercenaries." The reeve trembled with fury. "Dastennin drown the filthy curs!"

Curses rose, lamentation and accusation. Karn ignored the clamour. Master Hamare would want to know who these mercenaries were and who was paying them.

How could he get close enough to pick up some hint? By crossing the bridge. He had to cross to get to Parnilesse anyway. Master Hamare would be most unimpressed if he turned tail and took the western route home to Triolle, through the hilly ground along Draximal's border.

He wasn't going to be the first offering himself up for the triumphant mercenaries to rob and abuse, though. Was there any sign of that battered coach with the two travellers from the inn? No. He'd bet good coin their horses were already being whipped back northwards.

Still, there would be local people trapped on the wrong side of the river. Labourers come to the town to revel with friends. Townsfolk who'd visited family farmsteads for more sober revelry now unable to return. Karn wrapped his tattered cloak around himself. He'd wait till sufficient folk gathered to get up the nerve to approach the bridge together. He could hide himself among their number.