Stormed Fortress (74 page)

Dakar abandoned his tirade to stare. And mage-sight delivered the shattering truth: that the
chit
was in fact a clanblood huntress, foisted here without anyone
'
s asking.
'
Dharkaron
'
s thundering Chariot! Glendien! Your husband
'
s probably choosing his knives to mince us both into weasel bait
'

'
Kyrialt knows better. I look after myself,
'
the minx declared without conscience. Under the slouched hood, her fox-brush eyebrows shot up.
'
You need my specialized talent, besides. Or you
'
d rather yon rider, whoever he is, climbs up your blind butt with no warning?
'

Dakar conceded her pesky point. He had no choice. Sprawled in the surrounding snow with red weapons, the murdering fools from Parrien
'
s war fleet lay felled in the throes of spelled sleep. He had not dared to risk the exposure of asking warped minds for permission. He had just dropped them, hard, and bedamned to the hindmost for the rough salvage of their sorry lives. The penalty stung now, a lashing recoil that would only get worse, the longer he pushed without rest. He could not let up, no matter the peril his endeavour faced by exposure. The culprits of the ill-starred slaughter were stopped, but the Koriani spells of compulsion laid on them had yet to be grappled and broken.

The lead-based talisman fashioned to break the Prime
'
s sigils had been a nasty and difficult labour. The construct still pained him: a vicious headache, pounding the meat of his brain.

Glendien gushed, oblivious to her outraged companions, caught blindsided by the cheeky female insinuated into their midst.
'
I like mayhem, forbye.
'
Her taunts rang too cheerful, since
her
private parts scarcely suffered, groin deep in a snow-drift.

'
Not to mention,
'
she declared, an elbow jabbed into Dakar
'
s plump ribs,
'
we get to ding an enemy rider stark senseless. Might argue for reason to lift your dab spellcraft and wake Parrien up to defend himself.
'

Dakar wanted to strangle her.
'
Try that, and you might fetch his blade through your throat. Parrien loves his fighting too well, and that sigil still warps him for slaughter.
'
The sleep spell that dropped the brute
still
stung his hands, while his bones wore the bruising reverberation.

Glen
dien shrugged. Takes a rock-spli
tting maul to turn a s
'
Brydion head.
'
A quizzical glance unveiled ginger eyebrows arched with reproof.
'
If you aren
'
t planning to take down that horseman, I
'
m not laughing. Very soon, the fool
'
s going to plough his labouring horse overtop of us.
'

"Then lie down for me, wench!
'
Dakar flexed his fingers, prepared to shape conjury with a mean twist to stifle her gadding impertinence.
'
Yon Alliance flunkey will see us as corpses, and may an unpleasant sprawl in the snow chill the sauce off your motherless tongue!
'

Glendien snugged into her cloak fast enough to avoid the first cast - for
no movement -
intended to flop her face-down in the drift.

Dakar granted the eight men that Vhandon had sent a more graceful space to prepare. Once they had settled in prostrate comfort, he widened the spell template wrought to hobble Prime Selidie
'
s victims. When his escort rested in oblivious peace, he set about stitching a veil of illusion. Lent the grisly tableau of congealed blood on dropped weapons, his living companions soon were made to appear as cold dead on a field of brute carnage. Revulsion ought to hasten the on-coming rider away without morbid lingering.

The Mad Prophet hunkered down in the gulch. The delay would cost dearly. Ahead lay a brutal course of tight conjury, with no guessing how long the Teir
'
s
'
Ffalenn could continue to sustain Alithiel
'
s exalted cascade. The mystical power awake in that chord remained all that suppressed Lysaer
'
s curse-riddled instincts. No help could speed tonight
'
s unpleasant work. The Fellowship Sorcerers had not answered the compact
'
s charge to break the Matriarch
'
s snare of delusion.

'
May the almighty wheels of Dharkaron
'
s Black Chariot mill the witches to crumbling dust!
'
Dakar would rather suck mortified flesh as a maggot than befoul himself touching Prime Selidie
'
s treacherous web.

For mage-sight unmasked the vile lines of entrapment spun by her conniving. Parrien
'
s warped passion fed itself off the light cords of affection and loyalty held between him and his fellows. The shared grief for lost comrades had been parasitized like a life-sucking network of fungus: a destructive compulsion that replaced rational thought with an insatiable thirst for ruin. The insidious weave overshadowed the worry posed by one incoming rider. Dakar could support no such minor distraction. While the talisman shielded him from falling prey to Selidie
'
s draining compulsion, he enclosed every man of Parrien
'
s suborned company under a protective boundary, then began the painstaking array of counterwards.

His work was not practised. An apprentice spellbinder lacked the strait strength and experience. Each man victimized through desire for vengeance must be wrested clear, one by one. Every strangling tie isolated, then singly severed, that Dakar might turn their flow counter: run the malign energy to ground under seal, then rebalance the void with the calm intent to hold harmless. Taut focus absorbed him. A careless mistake could lay him wide open to a Koriani attack.

Now critically engaged, he felt someone
'
s insistent tug at his elbow. The rousting shake went on, cringing his nerves until his tranced focus upended.

Then Glendien
'
s whisper drilled into his ear.
'
Wake
up,
you incompetent lard sack!
'

'
Damned fool hussy!
'
Dakar flung out a tingling hand, snagged her wrist in a grip that hissed her caught breath through her teeth.
'
Woman, why aren
'
t you prostrate and dreaming, and what
idiot
mischief keeps shoving you in backside first and well over your carroty head?
'

'
Look, damn you! The rider!
'
Desperation broke through Glendien
'
s welling tears for the pinching abuse to her forearm.
'
Fault my scout
'
s instinct later,
he
'
s no pesky courier!
'

Fellowship trained, and facile with Sight, Dakar unreeled an outward channel for scrying. He captured the inbound horse, very close! Then the patterned aura of the mounted man burned through complacence and dazzled: the gold that bespoke a gifted talent, laced through by the glittering, indigo strands that denoted a
caithdein
'
s
oath, sworn to the Sorcerers.

'
Blazing Sithaer!
'
swore Dakar, appalled. His veiling illusion must blindside no less than the Light
'
s Lord Commander himself: a creature imbued by s
'
Gannley descent, who
would
Sight-read weavings of craft and event, plain as written text on a page. Sulfin Evend could stare straight through all simple work, with the wretched lead talisman an ugly presence nigh impossible to mask from attention.

'
We
'
re lost!
'
Dakar reeled for the crushing defeat that sold out every man who relied on him. His only choice was to give himself up. Negotiate, against hope, that a battle-trained officer would accept Parrien
'
s slaughter with equanimity, and in such an improbable mood of restraint, be convinced to heed a stranger, as Fellowship emissary.

'
Craven!
'
snapped Glendien.
'
You will not fail us, now! My lineage carries the hunter
'
s inheritance. But I can
'
t bend the lane flux widely enough. You
'
ll have to extend my short reach.
'

The Mad Prophet snatched her offering.
'
Take my hands! Quickly! Hide nothing more than our breathing lives and the resonance raised by this talisman.
'

Glendien gasped.
'
You
want
Selidie
'
s sigil-borne craft left exposed?
'

'
Let rightful blame come to roost where it
'
s due,
'
snapped Dakar, centred back into tranced concentration. Ath bless, that Alestron
'
s obligation came under the Crown of Melhalla. To spare clanblood under the precepts of old law, straightforward permission must answer. He gathered the meticulous forms in the blaze of Glendien
'
s initiative, that borrowed the semblance of stone and bare twig, then added the icy profusion of water contained into numberless snowflakes. These framed a pattern, invoked as a binding, to let the hunter blend into the natural landscape.
Here
became a mirror, amplified to reflect the night terrain, strewn over with corpses: the view any predator expected to see, based on the assumptions of fixated senses.

While Glendien melded the ripples of grand conjury against the back-drop of lane flux, the spellbinder entrained his awareness to hers, then engaged his initiate knowledge to expand the mild ring of her influence. His intervention locked down
just in time!
The errant horseman arrived, driving fast round the bend in the road. His mount
'
s brisk canter thudded the ground,
much too close!
Clods of snow churned up by shod hooves pelted over the prone men, vacant stares unresponsive to peril, and slack limbs helplessly vulnerable.

A snarl of rife fury, the rider
'
s gasped curse; then the whipped gelding leaped over the gulch. Dakar trembled under a shower of ice, as its blowing bulk thundered over his head and passed by, hell-bent for the Alliance war camp.

The Sunwheel pavilion that housed the Divine Prince was lit, despite the late hour. More, the enclosure was packed with the noise of an on-going officers
'
conference. Men from a dozen town companies crowded against the broad trestle, spread over with tactical maps, troop counters, and the scale-model siege engines to demonstrate strategy. No such thoughtful council impelled tonight
'
s gathering. Voices clashed, laced by insurgency. No heads turned to look, as the tent-flap twitched open. No combatant paused to notice the cloaked figure who entered, chilled yet from the saddle.

'
. . . a mad and unthinkable proposition!
'
shouted the westshore
'
s ranked captain, stabbing an adamant finger.
'
We must withdraw the troops. Now! Abandon this siege. Make a swift return by sea and relieve Tysan
'
s crown seat at Avenor!
'

'
Such a journey, in winter? That
'
s fanciful folly!
'
The advisor assigned from Kalesh slammed the planks with a meaty fist.

While map counters jounced and pinged like flung shot, more objection shrilled from the side-lines.
'
You couldn
'
t stage such a move! Or deploy enough men to make a damned difference before the spring.
'

That heated point became trampled by the hard-bitten Etarran, left in charge of the field at Alestron.
'
Today
'
s crisis would already be settled before our galleys sailed halfway round the continent!
'

More contenders clamoured, a deafening chorus demanding instant redress: here, a man urged retaliation for the scores of unburied dead. There, a pack of garrison captains howled for punitive action against an upsurge of desertions.