Limits of Power (39 page)

Andressat

F
ilis Andressat rode eastward out of Cortes Andres before dawn, across the gently rolling hills below the escarpment. On this familiar journey—for he visited Cortes Cilwan on Andressat's business at least twice a year—he had refused his father's offer of an escort. He would spend Midsummer at Cortes Cilwan without having to endure insinuations from the regent that quartering his escort and their horses was a drain on the boy count's resources.

By the time he got back, maybe his father and brothers would have given over their harping on his attitude toward that bastard. At least the man had had the sense to know he could not fit in and had taken himself back to Fox Company. This half-year later, Filis recognized that Burek was—though a bastard—the kind of man he himself would have liked as a brother or nephew if only Burek had not been Ferran's get on a servant. By all accounts, he was a fine young officer. But the public scolding the Count had given Filis for that earlier outburst still rankled, and the constant comments by his brothers did nothing to make Cortes Andres comfortable.

The cool morning mist burned away quickly, summer's steamy heat replacing it. Filis stayed to the shadier forest tracks as long as he could and by evening had come to his own command, the easternmost Andressat fort. He gave his captain the latest news from Cortes Andres and left his usual orders, as he did before every absence.

The next morning, he set off again. He passed the cluster of stones marking the Andressat–Cilwan boundary just as the sun rose. Toward noon, he came out of the woods on a bare hillside with sheep spread out on its slope. He reined in and glanced around for any sign of people. He spotted two typical sheepdogs and then the shepherd, sprawled facedown on the short grass. Taking a midday nap, no doubt. Below the pasture, Filis saw the deserted farmstead he remembered, relic of Siniava's War: several roofless huts and a barn mostly whole. Sometimes he stopped for lunch there; once, in a storm, he had spent the night. The old well held good water.

To the north, a thunderstorm towered high, rumbling steadily as growing storms did. Already wispy veils of rain fell across the valley, thickening even as he watched, moving nearer. That shepherd was due a drenching, if he didn't wake up.

Thunder rumbled louder; a breeze lifted his hair. Filis grinned. Race or wet, that was the choice. He sent his horse down the slope at a hand gallop, certain the hoofbeats would wake the shepherd if the thunder didn't.

Chill air met him ahead of the rain, and rain lashed his face in the last few strides to the barn. Inside, most of the roof remained; he led his mount to the driest corner, loosened the girth, and opened a saddlebag for the sausage, cheese, and bread he would eat for lunch.

Not long after, he heard the clatter of hooves and baaing of sheep outside. Then they poured in, a wet, gray, sheep-smelling mass of woolly backs, black ears and faces. His mount whinnied and stamped; the sheep scuttered back, only to be chivvied in by the dogs. The dogs shook themselves, then growled at him. Filis kept a firm hand on his mount's bridle. Finally the shepherd came in, a boy now wrapped in a ragged cloak. He called the dogs to heel.

“Sorry, surr,” the boy said, in the accent of the region. “I see you go in, but t'dogs don't.” He stared at Filis in the gloom of the storm-darkened barn. “Who yurr be? Where be goin'?”

Filis had come this way before but had not seen this boy; it spoke well of the child that he asked, given the times. “I'm from Andressat,” he said. “On my way to Cortes Cilwan to visit relatives there.”

The boy nodded. “It come rain,” he said. “Won't clear afore dark, maybe. Share bread?”

“Yes,” Filis said, though he had no desire for the coarse hard bread the boy would have. “I have cheese.”

The boy smelled of wet sheep, wet dog, and dirty boy, but the ritual of sharing food meant Filis must take a hunk of the boy's bread, as the boy took a hunk of Filis's cheese. That close, Filis was a little surprised to see that the boy was a redhead whose pale skin had freckled heavily. Red hair was rare in this area; he tried to remember the nearest vill with a redheaded adult who might be this boy's parent. The boy ate rapidly, almost gulping the cheese, looking past Filis at the horse, then at Filis's hands, at the rings he wore.

“Yurr from Andressat,” the boy said, after wiping his mouth. “Yuh know t' count?”

“All in Andressat know the count,” Filis said. Of course the boy would notice his horse, his rings. He wished he'd left his gloves on, but too late for that now. For an instant he felt a twinge of anxiety, but he had his sword and he could take the boy and the dogs as well if he had to.

“Jus' wonder,” the boy said. “Yurr rich, though.” His gaze flicked to the horse, back to Filis's hands, and then to the hilt of his sword.

“Not very,” Filis said. “Only one horse.” The boy just stared. The back of Filis's neck tickled. Well. He could ride through rain if need be. He stood up, eased his way through the sheep, and looked out into the storm. The branch laid across the opening was no barrier for his mount—an easy hop, even onto wet ground. Rain still fell, though less heavily, and it looked lighter to the east. He turned back to see the boy edging toward his horse. “Storm's breaking up,” he said, and the boy jerked to a halt. “I'd best be on my way.”

“Still rainin',” the boy said. He stood oddly, feet a little wide.

Filis dropped his hand to his sword hilt, casually, as if checking its readiness. The boy's eyes narrowed, then he moved away from Filis and the horse. “Not that hard,” Filis said. He was in no real danger, he was sure; probably the boy had only wanted to filch more food from his saddlebags. But the two dogs, now standing alert, ruffs bristling, were worrisome.

He turned his mount so he could see the boy and the dogs while he tightened the girth he'd loosened, then mounted and rode at the sheep; they scattered from his path, leaving an opening. A touch of his spur, and the chestnut rose on his haunches and hopped over the branch into the rain outside. The rain had lessened enough that he had no need to stop and unroll his cloak from his pack.

Filis rode on through the afternoon, wondering about that boy. The sheep—ordinary sheep for this region. The dogs—sheepdogs for certain. The boy, though … all the past year he'd seen no sheep on those hills. People might be moving back into the old vills, but … easy for brigands to buy some sheep and set them and a boy out to watch for travelers.

For himself in particular? Unlikely. But not many travelers went from Andressat to Cortes Cilwan by this route, not since Siniava's War. There'd been talk at home about the brigands the year before, in Vonja outlands. Burek had fought them, his father told him, with what was now Fox Company. Brigands who might be in the pay of the Duke of Immer.

As the storm moved up the Immer lowlands to the west, blocking the sun, the afternoon stayed gloomy. At first he saw no hoofprints on the muddy track he rode. The track forked at a well; there had been a vill here once, but only tumbled stone walls remained. Filis watered his horse and pressed on. Here he found tracks: someone else had ridden, driving cattle. A small flock of sheep or goats had crossed the tracks of cattle and horse. He passed farmsteads, men and women at work in the fields, a child perched on a rock watching geese. A familiar vill, women on wooden pattens taking water from the well, their skirts splashed with mud. Bare-legged children, mud to the knees, chased one holding a leafy twig: some game. They all watched him pass; he smiled and nodded, and so did they. All the same as usual.

As he came to another fork, he paused. A faint trail led right, to the hump of ground where he usually camped in an old stone shelter. If someone had set a watch on him, it would be wise to avoid his usual campsite. He could reach a vill he knew, not until well after dark, but a place he was sure would be safe. He'd stayed there before, and even when he passed through, he gifted the headman with a coin. He turned his horse left to the wider track.

It was full dark indeed, the muddy track having slowed him more than he expected, when he reached the vill. If not for the mud, he'd have ridden on to the outskirts of Cortes Cilwan—on a dry track only a half-day or -night's ride—but he and the horse were both tired.

The village headman opened to his knock and lit the way to the barn with a clay lamp that he set on a ledge inside. He helped Filis untack and rub down his horse. “My lord, I'm sorry, but my two youngest are down with fever. You should not stay in the house.”

“The barn's fine,” Filis said. “I'm sorry to come so late, but the storm—”

“Of course, my lord. I'll bring you something hot in just a little.”

Filis made a bed of his blankets and a pile of hay, and by then the headman had reappeared with a basket: a bowl of good-smelling stew, a half loaf of bread, a small jar of fruit jam, and a large jug of ale.

“It's m'own wife's brewing,” the headman said. “Last time you came, we was short—”

“This is bounty indeed,” Filis said. He fished coins from his belt pouch. “After the day I've had, this is luxury.”

“Nay, my lord, you needn't—” Polite refusal preceded grateful acceptance.

“I must,” Filis said. “For your kindness—and if it is too much, pray help the next stranger who needs a meal.”

“Thank you, my lord,” the headman said. “And sleep sound.”

“I'm sure I will,” Filis said. “And I'll be off in the morning.”

He ate the stew, hot with the spice mix preferred in Cilwan; smeared the fruit jam—plum and peach mixed, he thought—on the bread; and drank deep of the ale. Yes, the goodwife here had a gift for brewing. He drifted easily into sleep, deep and dreamless.

F
ilis woke to a nightmare that lasted days—cramped in a box in what he presumed was a trader's wagon, jouncing on the road somewhere. He guessed east to Lûn or even Cortes Immer, but he had no way of knowing. He was allowed out once a night for necessities, which did not include a full meal or a full draft of water but plenty of knocking about by those who surrounded him. He had no chance to attempt escape—they had stripped him, bound him, and even as he squatted beside a tree, his arms were bound and his captors stood over him.

He cursed himself for the stupid decisions that had led to this. If he had brought an escort, if he had camped apart, if he had not drunk that ale … He wondered if the regent in Cortes Cilwan would search for him—if anyone would recognize his horse, any of his things—but reason told him his captors would have found ways to dispose of them. His father—he did not want to think what his father would imagine. The family hothead running off in anger to turn traitor, sell his father's secrets to his father's enemy? Surely not. Surely his father knew him better than that.

But every day took him farther from home, closer to the man even his father feared. He saw no chance to escape, no hope in any of the hard faces around him that one might be bribed to help him.