Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (4 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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Ochsan’s warriors, doubtful but resolute, began to move for the edge.
If Vidryas did not join them, he would be stranded alone in the high
massif. He started to cry, first single tears, and then a blinding torrent.
Somehow the witch was near him. “Tears!” she cackled, reveling in his humiliation. “A fine soldier boy you are!”
Driven by blind, terrified passion, he put up a hand to push her away. Her arm was surprisingly hard and strong, and he could not move her. Mistaking him, or choosing to mistake him, she seized him by the wrist and turned his palm upward.
“Shall I make a future for you, boy?” Her grip was like a human vise. Her breath smelled sickly sweet like fermented grain, the flap of her robes against his arms like the harsh brush of a goose’s wing. “I can read it into you, if you will let me. I did it for your master, you know, when he was a boy not much older than yourself. And see how finely it has served him!”
Goaded beyond fear, he hit her. She had not expected that. She dropped his wrist, freeing him.
“This is not war!” he cried. “This is not the glory I wanted!” Running, he reached the chute as the last man disappeared into the precipice.
T
he goat-herder strode to the edge. The men’s retreating backs were already far below her, the strange Bissanty boy laboring at the rear.
“This is war, boy!” she shouted after him, laughing crazily. “Believe it! Bissanty and Tielmark will be forever changed!”
The boy ran like a rabbit—the last in the straggling line of the descent. More fool he. The terror that possessed him would make him clumsy. She doubted he would reach the gorge’s bottom whole.
But the others—the Dramaya cattlemen would gain the High Pastures, and they would decimate the Lanai herds. The mountain tribesmen would be forced into Tielmark to recoup their losses, and Tielmark would once again know strife and war and change. She would be there, in the middle of it, seeing that the Prince of Tielmark too, like Ochsan, made the right choice—or had it made for him, if that was how the cards played.
She glanced back at the domed rock. Her goats were scattered—the black nanny, the oldest fertile female, was in a foul mood for having one of her twins stolen. With her grey and black kid safely returned, she had charged back in among the younger nannies, separating them from their own in reprisal. Cursing, the old woman turned to round them together.
A god had prevented her from reading the young Bissanty’s hand. What god, she did not know. She was old enough not to care. But she
had read the young man well enough for her own purposes. If there was hidden mettle in him, it would not rise in time to affect the outcome of his uncle’s campaign, or, more importantly, any part of her own plot.
F
or the first time since he had begun his wild descent, Vidryas turned his face outward. Wild elation swept through him.
The sparkling river was still far below, but they had descended beneath the most perilous of the cliffs. Upriver—Vidryas was low enough now that there was an upriver—he could see where the cascades began their ascent, a secret, water-covered stair. In the far distance, on the high horizon, the Lanai High Pastures lay silhouetted against the sky.
How Ochsan must have laughed beneath his stolid façade as the soft Bissanty Guarda had sent him to decimate his warriors beneath the walls of an impregnable Lanai watchtower. He had accepted the miserable, hopeless mission because it had given him a chance to impose a real defeat. To gain glory. A real soldier’s glory.
It would be the greatest triumph in decades of summer campaigning. A decisive Dramaya victory over the Lanai would change everything—not least Bissanty attitudes toward his homeland. Bissanty would be forever changed, and perhaps Dramcampagna too.
Vidryas hastened onward, suddenly eager to join with his uncle.
In his excitement, he did not think of the witch, did not wonder, did not query why her last words had been of Tielmark, the rebellious lands that lay just over the other side of these mountains.
Gaultry Blas, the huntress-witch of Arleon forest, had at last arrived
home to Tielmaran soil.
Overhead, the sun shone brightly, lighting the land’s handsome rolling fields and groves of willow and ash trees. Evidently Tielmark’s twin goddesses, bold Huntress Elianté and graceful Emiera, had smiled on Tielmark in all the time of Gaultry’s absence. Farmers and travelers of every description choked the High Road as far as the young woman’s eye could see, loaded with proofs of the Goddess-Twins’ bounty. Strings of fat geese jostled panniers of brightly colored chickens; pretty grey-faced donkeys, overloaded with bags of green-cut hay and early barley, pressed against healthy-looking sheep. The prosperous crowd, headed in both directions along the road—west for a horse market at a place called Fairfields, east for the great Midsummer fair at Soiscroix market-town-offered every evidence that Tielmark’s gods were happy, and all was well in the land.
But to Gaultry, who had spent the last weeks in flight from homicidal imperial soldiers, this bounty simply presented a new series of hardships. She had journeyed for more than a month in the Prince of Tielmark’s service—even if against his wishes and knowledge—risking body and mind against one of the most powerful sorcerers ever raised by the Bissanty Emperor to destroy Tielmark’s independence. Somehow she had envisioned her return to her home soil would have a more glorious aspect … .
“Pigs!” she snapped aloud, startling her companions, along with everyone else within earshot. “Whoever thought tying a pig to a lead was a good idea?” And yet there they were, blocking the way, a nursing-thin
mother and her eight robust progeny tied on leather tethers in the hands of a corpulent farmwoman. The two most active piglets had tangled their leads in the wheels of a tinker’s rickety handcart. All traffic had ground to a halt as the farmwoman’s son attempted to extract the young pigs without destroying the wheel’s age-weakened spoke-work.
Like a slowly erupting volcano, the farmwoman lumbered around to face the young woman on her fee-rented horse. Her embarrassment at the obstruction she had caused was obvious; obvious too was the fact that Gaultry’s outspoken complaint marked her as a convenient target on which to vent this feeling as anger. “What’s your hurry?” she snapped. “Danton will soon have them free. You’ll have time enough to set up your sideshow once you reach Soiscroix. Dirty players.” She spat on the road in front of Gaultry’s horse.
“Players?” Gaultry replied, at first not understanding what the woman meant.
“Spongers, more like. What’s your hurry? People won’t be paying you ’til they’ve settled themselves, to my way of thinking.”
Gaultry cast an uncomfortable glance at the little group that had accompanied her home from Bissanty. For one guilty moment, she could see what the pig-woman was thinking: She had mistaken them for itinerant performers.
Everyone, herself included, looked miserably road-filthy, hollow-eyed, and hungry, the inevitable wages of too much travel too fast, on insufficient food and sleep. They
were
out of place on this happy road, a pass point between prosperous towns where the three days of the Midsummer Festival would be celebrated with all good feeling.
Firstly, there were the animals: the rented horses, too fine for their scruffy riders; the skinny, half-grown dog with its nervous eyes and frightened air; and worst of all the pair of exotics that clung to Gaultry’s saddle crupper: a delicate grey monkey and a striped tamarin with a pointed muzzle—the latter of which bore more than a passing resemblance to anyone’s idea of a small, if beautifully furred, demon.
She could only guess what the farmwoman would think if she saw the enormous desert panther that was also traveling with them—shadowing the little party some ways off the road, in an attempt to avoid casual confrontations with cattle and livestock. Picturing Aneitha-cat’s probable reaction to the pigs, Gaultry would have cracked a smile, had the pig-woman not been glaring. She had to consider herself lucky that the animal contingent ended with Aneitha. The soul-breaking sorcerer
whose magic they had defeated to escape Bissanty had maintained an enormous, varied menagerie to bolster his magical strength. If their departure from his stronghold had not been so precipitous, no doubt her party would have been lumbered along accompanied by something like an entire zoo!
Then, of course, there were the people, two of them obvious outlanders. The Sharif, a respected war-leader in her own land, looked dangerously foreign and possibly contagious, her long frame emaciated by ill health and her hair cropped short and strange. Young Tullier, riding with the skinny pup at his heels, had the unfriendly face of a boy trained too long, too young, and too hard as a warrior. It could not be denied that he looked like some sort of half-criminal delinquent—an appearance that was only partly deceiving! Of course, Tullier was much more than that. Indeed, Tullier was most of the reason Gaultry was hurrying to make report to Tielmark’s Prince. The boy’s travel-stained clothes gave no outward indication of the bizarre, magically influenced destiny that had left him heir to the Goddess-blood normally reserved for the sons of the Bissanty Emperor. If they could just get him safely to the Prince’s court, and arrange for the Prince to put him under a pledge of protection, Tielmark would have leverage against the Bissanty empire for the first time in decades—if only they could convince the Prince of the veracity of Tullier’s bloodlines.
Gaultry suspected that none of this hidden information would suffice to placate the farmwoman.
Finally, there was the Tielmaran half of the group, which was only a little more savory in appearance than the foreigners. Gaultry’s accent gave instant evidence of her modest south-border origins, and her threadbare garb betrayed nothing of the power or importance she had earned since she had left that simple upbringing behind her.
Only Martin, confident astride his big gelding, managed to appear anything approaching respectable. Handsome dark-haired warrior Martin, for whose sake Gaultry had risked all the peril of journeying deep into Bissanty. Riding at the back of the group, he watched with a half-amused expression as Gaultry struggled for the right words to rebuff the farmwoman’s bad manners. If it had been Martin who had challenged the pig-woman, not Gaultry, she had no doubt but that the woman would have stammered and moved hastily out of his way.
Blood rushed in her cheeks. This situation felt exactly like old times.
Before she had traveled; before she had learned the true strength of her magical powers or of the prophecy she had inherited, binding her to the Prince of Tielmark’s service. Old times, before she learned that she had been born to the Common Brood, the coven of witches blood-sworn to protect Tielmark’s Prince.
On this crowded summer road, it little mattered if she had challenged the gods, or if she had risked the things dearest to her heart to keep her country free. Those things were a part of an invisible past. Here was only the lamentably disreputable present: rough clothes, shady companions—and her lack of a quick tongue in the face of a direct challenge. A reprisal against this woman with magic—that would cause more problems than it would solve. A reprisal with quick and clever words—worse!
Complaining aloud had been a mistake. The things she had done in Bissanty—she could not do them here at home.
Bissanty was not like her native Tielmark. Bissanty’s loathsome hierarchy slaved the field-workers and the serving class both with god-bonds and with fear. In Bissanty, for simple survival, she had exploited every incidental advantage the empire’s own customs offered: the passivity of the field-workers, the pathetic cringing of the slaves. But she was back in Tielmark now, and in Tielmark any tough-minded beggar had the right to argue his case when he felt ill-used.
Let alone so substantial a woman as a farm-mistress off to market with an entire litter of pigs.
“Good-woman, please. Allow us room to go by you.” Gaultry gamely attempted to moderate her tone, though from the pig-woman’s expression, the time for that had come and gone already. “Our business is in Princeport, not in Soiscroix, and it is important.”
The woman was not appeased. “If you want to move, tell your boy to get down and help me,” she said gruffly. “Or your man. Or—” Despite being encumbered by the pigs, the woman reached with surprising agility and caught hold of Gaultry’s bridle. “You could come down off your high horse and help me yourself.”
“Let go and get out of my way,” Gaultry said coldly. She was not so fine a rider that this woman’s sudden grab did not threaten to unseat her. “You’ve been foolish and greedy. Nine pigs on the road is not my problem.”
It was sheer bad luck that her tone and her horse’s little jump together startled the woman’s boy. He made a sharp movement, sawed on one of
the trapped pig’s leads, and snapped one of the tinker-cart’s wheel-spokes. A piglet squealed, jabbed by a fragment of wood. As it struggled, a second spoke fractured.
“What have you done?” the tinker shrilled, his voice a fair match for the piglet’s. His cart listed slowly on one side as the wheel began to fold.
“Not me!” The farmwoman shouted back. “It’s these outlanders, making trouble for all of us!”
Martin, seeing the situation moving out of control, stopped smiling and kicked his horse forward. The pigs bolted, sawing on their leads. The farmwoman was forced to relinquish Gaultry’s bridle strap.
“If it’s trouble you’re having, we’ll gladly stop to help.” The big soldier grinned unpleasantly, his teeth a wolfish flash of white in his handsome, sun-darkened face. “Unless, of course, you already have the situation under control.”
The woman’s bluster faded. Gaultry she might mistake for a sideshow-sponger, but not this man, however dirty his clothes. “My apologies, Sieur.” She backed away, moving the pigs with her. “My boy Danton ought to have kept the little ones in order. But we will have them back in hand soon enough.” She sketched the Goddess-Twins’ sign, seething but respectful.
“Very good. Perhaps the two of you can better sort this from the road’s side.” Martin, sliding his horse past without waiting for an answer, reached down from the saddle and seized the cart’s sideboard. Straining, he raised it up off its collapsed wheel and held it upright until the boy and the tinker pushed it off onto the grass.
The crowd around gave a rough cheer, amused by the display of muscle and will. Martin, smiling more broadly, whipped off his hat and gave something like a bow, drawing an even larger salute.
The woman—forgetting Gaultry, and eyeing daggers at Martin—was obliged to follow, chivying her pigs out of the traffic’s flow. She made up for this surrender by initiating a noisy quarrel with the tinker. But the tinker was sharper than his mournful appearance suggested. He seemed likely to gain one piglet at least for his repairs.
Thus, Gaultry thought grimly, hastening her horse on by, thus was concluded the defeat of the pigs.
Behind her, the Sharif and Tullier exchanged a private laugh, no doubt, Gaultry guessed from their glances, making light of her mishandling of the affair. She scowled, and set herself to ignoring them.
Passing two heavily laden hay carts and a small herd of bawling cattle, she urged her horse up to Martin’s.
“This is like damnation to Achavell,” she complained. “And it’s my fault that we’re stuck here. If I hadn’t insisted we rest that extra night in Truit, we’d be through Soiscroix by now and out of this crush.”
Martin shook his head. “We couldn’t have pushed on earlier. Everyone needed to rest. Who could predict that the Midsummer crowds would be so plentiful this year? It’s not anyone’s fault.”
“We have a duty to Tielmark,” she said. “Bringing our news to Prince Benet should have driven us forward.”
“We were dead on our feet,” Martin replied flatly. “There is only so much fatigue a body can withstand. Of course we need to reach Princeport as quickly as possible. But you arguing with every farm-mistress between here and there isn’t going to help us accomplish that faster.”
“She was in the wrong.”
Martin drew an impatient breath. “If you want to fight with me, go ahead. But you know you should have left well enough alone. Bissanty is behind us.”
“I know.” Gaultry sighed. “But it’s so hard—and these people! None of them know what we’ve been through, yet everything we’ve done has been for them! Yet here they are, blocking our way, delaying us further.”
“Perhaps they should open a path on bended knees,” Martin said sardonically. “Would that better suit your taste?”
“Our business is more important than bringing pigs to market.”
“Yes, well, and you’d have proof of that in hand if Benet had actually sanctioned you to follow me to Bissanty.” If Martin had not been so tired, she would not have been able to draw him like this. His capture and transport to Bissanty was not something he often referred to, and particularly not during their periodic quarrels. “Next time, wait ’til the Prince hands you his sigil before you skip town.”
She was tired too, or she would not have answered angrily in turn. “You’d be dead today if I had waited. You, and the Sharif too—and certainly Tullier as well.” Even as she spoke, she regretted it. She knew she had gone too far as soon as the words left her mouth. “Martin,” she said, immediately contrite. “I don’t mean that. Or at least—I don’t mean it angrily.”

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