Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind (50 page)

Aremil sighed. 'You may have my word for what it's worth. I can hardly make a run for it.' He gestured with his crutches.

'You have mine,' Tathrin said, more grudging.

Ridianne smiled. 'I'll have your sword too.'

'If you must.' Tathrin retrieved the blade from the rack above Aremil's seat, scabbard, belt and all.

'Thank you.' Ridianne leaned forward to take it through the carriage doorway. 'Secure that latch,' she advised. 'We'll be on our way.'

Tathrin closed the door and sat back on his seat. He looked at Aremil. 'Did you really think she would throw in her runes with us?'

Aremil shrugged. 'It was worth a try.'

'Where do you suppose--?'

The carriage swayed as the horses leaned into their harness. It didn't move. Shouts rang out. Furious responses all around were punctuated by the stamp of hooves and clashes of steel. After a few cries of surprise and pain, silence fell.

'Shall we?' Tathrin gestured towards the door.

'Why not?' Aremil gathered up his crutches.

Tathrin opened the door, kicked the folding step down and got carefully out of the carriage.

'Can I offer you a hand?' A grinning youth with a cream and gold armband waited on the road.

'Thank you.' Aremil allowed the man to take his arm, leaning on him as he stumbled down the step.

The sun outside was painfully bright. Once he was secure on his crutches, he raised one hand to shield his eyes.

Ridianne still sat on her horse though her reins were now held by a burly man wearing a cream and gold kerchief. He had her sword in his other hand.

'I believe this is yours, Captain-General?' A scar-faced sergeant offered Tathrin back his own weapon. The man's badge showed the Lescari standard's halberd blade atop his old company's knotted stave.

'Thank you.' Tathrin carefully raised his sling to allow the sergeant to buckle the belt around him.

The disarmed Marlier troop was now surrounded by thrice their number wearing Lescar's colours.

'So this was your plan all along?' Ridianne shook her head, more amused than angry.

'We wanted to give you the chance to yield first,' Tathrin said sincerely. 'But once you took my sword? That was a clear sign you weren't ready to accept our terms.'

'A sign to the curs dogging our footsteps and inside my own boundaries too. I should have been more careful.' Ridianne looked severely at her discomforted cohort. 'I lost my best lieutenants at Pannal, or you'd never have caught me out.'

'I don't doubt it.' Tathrin bowed.

'What now?' she demanded. 'Ransom?'

'I'm afraid not,' apologised Aremil. 'If Duke Ferdain is still willing to fight, Marlier has no hope of success without you at the head of his army. You will be escorted to Carluse Castle and held until Marlier's surrender is settled.'

'If you'll give us your oath that you won't try to run,' Tathrin added, 'you need not be chained.'

Ridianne looked at him, a glint in her eye. 'Why don't you give me back my sword and we can settle this in single combat, captain to captain? I'll strap one arm to my side.'

Aremil recalled the tales of her challenging rival mercenaries to games of white raven, and not only when her own forces were outnumbered. Ridianne had won the day so often that men soon preferred to endure her mockery rather than face that trial.

'Thank you but no.' Tathrin bowed before gesturing to his shoulder. 'My surgeon would skin me alive if I undid all his handiwork.'

All the men laughed; both the Lescari and Marlier contingents. As their amusement died away, Aremil saw a brief commotion among those waiting further down the road.

'Look what I found!' Gren shouted cheerfully.

The Lescari soldiers parted to let the Mountain Man through and Aremil saw a gagged man slung across his horse's shoulders. Gren shoved and the man fell to the frozen ground with a painful thud. His hands were bound behind his back and roped to the leather belt lashing his ankles.

The captive writhed in his bonds. Tall and well muscled, his handsome face was bruised and his expensive clothes were muddied. He looked otherwise uninjured.

'I have the honour to make known His Grace Duke Iruvain of Triolle,' Gren proclaimed.

Ridianne laughed out loud.

'Care to share the joke, Captain?' Gren invited.

'Why not?' she said obligingly. 'When I got word that you were on the road, we left him tucked up warm in Hengere, snoring like the drunkard he is.' The Vixen bowed, mocking. 'I did you a disservice, Your Grace. How did you capture him, runt? How did you know who he was?'

Gren smiled, taking no offence at Ridianne's casual insult.

'There are some good likenesses hung in Triolle Castle. So when I recognised him, it was too good a chance to pass up. I rode ahead and stretched a cord across the road. He was riding like a man chasing some thief, so it snatched him right off his horse.' He shrugged. 'Then I just took his sword and knocked him senseless.'

As if that had been no challenge, Aremil thought; fighting a man at least a head taller and a practised swordsman to boot.

Ridianne turned to Tathrin. 'This is a whole new cast of the runes.'

Aremil took a cautious step forward. 'Madam Captain, you said you were ready to fight for Marlier. I take it Iruvain of Triolle is your ally?'

'For what little he's worth.' Ridianne didn't hide her contempt.

'You're aware of these brigands who've been plaguing Carluse and Marlier?' Aremil continued. 'Even venturing into Caladhria?'

'I am,' Ridianne replied with slow suspicion.

'Did you know they've done so on Iruvain's orders?' Aremil asked, guileless.

'I knew you weren't to be trusted.' The Vixen glared at the fallen duke.

Aremil nodded. 'Do you know they're selling their captives to Relshazri slavers?'

'That's where his gold comes from?' Ridianne's hand went for her absent sword.

'I think he wants to say something,' Gren observed.

Aremil turned to see Iruvain thrashing wildly on the ground.

'By all means.' Tathrin nodded and the scar-faced sergeant knelt to tug the gag free of the erstwhile duke's mouth.

Scarlet-faced and breathing hard, dead leaves tangled in his hair, Iruvain spat out a mouthful of phlegm. 'Scum!'

'Brave words for a man tied up and flat on his back.' Gren dismounted. 'Want to try that after I kick in your teeth?' He drew back his booted foot, smiling cheerily.

'Let him speak,' Tathrin reproved. 'First,' he added, menacing.

Iruvain stiffened, still defiant. 'I don't answer to swine like you.'

Aremil glanced at Ridianne. 'Like every duke, he thinks he's above any law, thanks to nothing more than the accident of birth. This is the tyranny we will lift from Lescar.'

Ridianne's face twisted with distaste. 'He thought the raids would provoke the Caladhrians into fighting and see him restored to his domain?'

'When that didn't work, he decided to raise the stakes.'

The Lescari cohort parted once again to let a second horseman through.

'Sorgrad?' Aremil had been wondering where he was.

'Corsairs, Captain.' Sorgrad looked at Ridianne. 'They'll be sailing up the Dyal any day now before cutting themselves a path overland. The Oisin's headwaters will be running red before they're finished. Then they'll be sailing on down to the Rel, heading north and south to slave and plunder as they go.'

'His doing too?' Ridianne looked ready to murder Iruvain with her bare hands.

'His man Karn's.' Sorgrad nodded. 'He knows all manner of vermin in Relshaz.' He looked more thoughtful. 'I'm guessing black ships will loot and murder right up to Triolle Town. So much for this hero's duty to his vassals and their tenants.'

Aremil glanced at Tathrin. 'I'll warn Failla,' he promised at once.

And of course, their duke's fresh treachery would help her persuade any faltering Triollese. Kerith, Charoleia and Branca could add this news to their own arguments. He restrained a grimly satisfied smile.

Then he saw that this news was no great surprise to Tathrin. He had known already and more surprising still, he'd concealed it all from Aremil. That was curious.

'It's a filthy lie!' Iruvain struggled uselessly against his bonds.

Gren kicked him hard in the thigh. 'Didn't your mother teach you to tell the truth?'

As Iruvain gasped with pain, Tathrin shrugged. 'We'll know when the black ships appear.'

Ridianne shifted in her saddle, flexing her empty sword hand. 'We must make ready to fight them off.'

Gren raised a questioning hand. 'Can we cut off his head?'

Sorgrad looked at Tathrin. 'That's a fitting penalty for such treachery.'

'I am not answerable for crimes done in my name, without my approval!' Iruvain rolled over, as far from Gren's boots as he could.

Ridianne's eyes narrowed. 'Let's see what Karn has to say about that.'

Iruvain fought to sit up. 'You cannot convict me on the word of one man so far below my rank, even if you find him.'

He finally succeeded in sitting upright and Aremil saw frantic hope in Iruvain's white-rimmed eyes. He swallowed his own disquiet. That villain Karn had proved horribly elusive thus far.

Sorgrad rode a pace closer. 'I think your own duchess's letters and testimony will convict you in any assize that we care to summon.'

'Litasse?' Ridianne was shocked.

'She's a traitorous whore and a lying bitch--'

Iruvain's hate-filled outburst was cut short by Gren's ruthless boot driving into his other thigh.

'Keep a civil tongue in your head,' the Mountain Man warned genially, 'or I'll cut it out.'

Iruvain tried to wriggle away, still protesting through gritted teeth. 'Karn was always her man from the first to last. Whatever he's done, it's her order--'

'Liar!' Ridianne shouted him down. 'You claimed all his successes as your own not a handful of days ago!'

Aremil saw the assembled Lescari soldiery exchanging eloquent glances with the Marlier mercenaries. Iruvain of Triolle was truly friendless here.

He looked at Tathrin. 'What do we do now?'

Ridianne wrenched her reins free of the man restraining her horse. 'Captain, you took me fairly and I'll ransom myself without argument. Name your price and I'll pay it. I have gold of my own and my companies will raise the rest.'

The Vixen's voice hardened with desperation. 'If you take me to Carluse, there's no one to lead Marlier's swords against these raiders. How can you claim to defend the innocent and weak if you leave them to be slaughtered by corsairs? You have to let us go to warn the villages in danger, to raise the coastal defences in Capast!'

Aremil could see the Marlier swordsmen who had been apparently resigned to the earlier turn of events were now readying themselves to fight unarmed against blades if needs be.

Tathrin raised a hand. 'Your men can go to raise the alarm if you come to Marlier Castle with us.'

'Why?' Ridianne looked at him, alert for some new possibility.

'To convince Ferdain that he must yield. That Marlier must be free to send its people to the Lescari Conclave at festival.' Tathrin looked at her, resolute. 'That's your ransom, Madam Captain, the price of your freedom to fight these corsairs.'

Ridianne barely hesitated. 'Done. Will you shake to seal the deal?' She stripped off a glove to offer her hand.

'Gladly.' Tathrin walked over to do just that.

'You cannot--' Iruvain choked on his outrage.

'Gag him,' Tathrin ordered the scar-faced sergeant. 'He can go back to Carluse loaded with all the chains you can find. While we're in Marlier Castle we will retrieve Duchess Litasse from Duke Ferdain's hospitality. Let's see what she can tell us of this man Karn and his dealings.'

'And of Iruvain's other heroics,' mused Sorgrad, 'from Tyrle onwards.'

Aremil saw a shadow of fear cross Iruvain's face. Something about that prospect frightened the duke even more than Gren standing a few paces away, dagger in hand. But Triolle's duke was gagged again, unable to speak.

Before Aremil could pursue that thought, another chased hard on its heels. How did Sorgrad know about these corsairs coming to sail up the Dyal?

Surely it couldn't be a bluff? Ridianne would strangle him with his own entrails if that proved to be the case. And Sorgrad was promising that Duchess Litasse could offer proof of all the accusations he had made. How did he know that?

'Come on.' Tathrin urged him back towards the carriage. 'Let's make for Marlier and see an end to this once and for all.'

Chapter Thirty-Three

Litasse

Marlier Castle,

Lescar,

20th of For-Spring

As the gatehouse's shadow engulfed her, she shivered.