The Dark Ferryman (56 page)

Tressandre deftly wove Jeredon’s hair into a war plait, pulling hard with her comb to untangle it before she did, his scalp stinging as she yanked. Jeredon fought to sit still and stay silent, a task not difficult as his thoughts wandered. Her hands quieted suddenly. “You’re thinking of the Dweller.”

His head jerked even though she had not pulled on him then. “I’m thinking of war,” he denied.

She ignored him, returning, “Keep her, then, as a pet.”

A bitterness rose in his throat at her words. “She is not a pet.”

“You may be right there. Our hounds live longer than she might.” Tressandre’s fingers began to move again, even harsher than before. Her voice softened a bit. “It is not uncommon to have a bond with those who nurse us. Lariel should recognize that. You’re a man of good heart, and she should know better than any of us. Your fondness for Nutmeg is not a flaw. I understand.”

He could not see her face to weigh her words, but even if he could, he doubted he would be able to judge Tressandre. The ild Fallyn kept their true thoughts and machinations as veiled as any he had ever met. He knew that even as she now shared his bed it wasn’t for him alone. She had her eye, as she’d always had, on the throne of Warrior Queen. She pleased him more in lovemaking than he pleased her, of that he had no illusions, for she liked it far rougher than he could manage, her taste for pain both in giving and taking something he could not meet. He lay with her only because she knew how to make her touch seduce him, and his thoughts of Nutmeg created an ache that he could not forget in any other way. And today, it seemed, even that no longer worked. He tightened his jaw as Tressandre finished his braid and let it drop along his back.

“It is best she stayed behind,” Tressandre murmured, her hand stroking his shoulder. “She won’t understand your warrior side as I do. Your returning triumphant to her will mean that much more. She will see you, and understand what all three of us share.” Her words lingered meaningfully, stopping his comment in his teeth.

He did not trust her. He wasn’t as blind as she thought he was, nor was she, he realized. She lifted him to his feet as he stood, her power bringing strength. His own strength increased every day, but he would not spend it just yet. He used her even as she hoped to use him.

“I will be with Lord Bistel.”

Tressandre gave a little half smile, a gracious curve to her beautiful face. “Of course.”

He found Bistel easily, his shock of white hair standing out, as the warlord sat upon high ground, watching his troops. Bistel smiled, a genuine smile, that creased his face and warmed his shockingly blue within blue eyes.

“Sit with me a moment.”

Jeredon maneuvered as close as he dared, but the old war hound Alfra lifted her head and curled her lip at him in warning as the warlord stretched out one leg and his aryn wood staff. Bistel put his hand on her head. “Steady,” he told her. He scratched the flap of her ear gently. “She’s an old bitch,” he said to Jeredon, “and one of my favorites. She’s a brave one. Faced a pack of Ravers with me, took two of them down all by herself. She hates the very scent of them now. I’d hoped to get one last litter from her, but she’s gone barren these last few seasons according to the packmaster. They shouldn’t have brought her. She deserves to rest at home, but she wouldn’t be left behind. And now she snaps at everyone. I can’t have that or her pretending she’s too deaf to hear orders.”

Jeredon put his hand out and let the dog sniff him. She settled against Bistel’s leg with a grumble. Jeredon ran his hand along her muscular frame with his hunter’s senses, feeling her bone structure and the lines of her body, a hound bred to course battlefields instead of green fields and forests, his palm pausing for a moment on her flank; and then a curious and warm smile came over his face, and a light into his eyes. “Thrash your packmaster for not knowing his bitches,” he told Bistel. “She’s carrying a litter and a nice-sized one, too, I sense. She’s about halfway along.”

“What?” Bistel looked at him down his sharp, aquiline nose.

Jeredon took his hand away with a shrug. “It’s just one of the things I do. I’m told I knew my mother was carrying Lara days before
she
knew.”

“Great news then!” Bistel thumped old Alfra in delight.

“I’d put her with the supply wagons on guard,” Jeredon offered. “She’ll have shelter there. She’s snappish only to protect herself and you.”

“That I’ll do.” Bistel settled back with a pleased look. He let his free hand down and scratched Alfra’s head now and again.

“What do we do here, sir?” asked Jeredon. “Besides waiting.”

“I’m letting him decide when to make his move. I know Lara wants him broken, and quickly, but I see no advantage to our rushing it. There’s a trap here, and I’ll draw him into it if he decides to open an attack upon us. If he does not, I’m sure we’ve enough diplomats tented here to come to terms.” He gestured. “Ashenbrook,” said Bistel carefully, “is the river that ran red with blood and where Kanako fell. But it wasn’t Ashenbrook that killed him. It was the Revela.” And he pointed with his aryn wood staff at the other river, a knife of a river, keen and cutting across the landscape, its bones showing because what water remained in it was no more than a trickle.

“How so?”

“It was a wet year that year. A lot of rainfall. Clever brutes, the Bolgers. They knew their land better than we did although, in our arrogance, we didn’t think so. But the Revela was high and so was the Ashenbrook. We’d come in through the southern pass and they cut it off. We thought to wade down the Ashenbrook if we had to retreat, but we weren’t worried. We should have been. The Bolger clans came sweeping down over the Revela, which ran too swift for any crossing on foot. They had pontoons over it and crossed their infantry at a run and then their horse guards. Most of them made it.”

“Wouldn’t they have had their backs to the Revela and been cut off if the battle turned?”

“Kanako hoped so, but he was wrong. They swept up below us, toward the stomach of our troops, because they crossed at night and we had deemed them superstitious devils who wouldn’t dare such a maneuver. The sun rose at dawn, and we look out at a floodplain of Bolger troops. They’d never been so organized before—or since. Kanako knew that his sole hope was to so completely annihilate their troops in our defeat that they would scatter and the nation would be broken. That, he accomplished.”

Jeredon moved in his cart. It creaked under his impatient weight. “Why are we damming the Revela, then?”

“Because this is a dry year. The queen is counting on Galdarkan arrogance to not know all the stories about Ashenbrook and Kanako’s death, that he would not have bothered listening to toback shop tales and there are no Bolger storytellers to listen to. The Revela will once again be uncrossable and even pontoons won’t manage it. Now, the Revela is the driest, most dangerous, rock-ridden trench we could have hoped to dig, if we’d the time. Instead, all we had to do was dam her main tributary up in the mountains and she becomes bone dry.”

“And the Galdarkans think . . .”

“They think that she will be low, and easily fordable, and their retreat. By the time they see she is gone, it will be too late.”

“My sister is brilliant.”

“Possibly.” Bistel lowered the point of his staff to the ground as he got to his feet, and Alfra scrambled up as well. “She might have had a bit of sage advice, too.”

Jeredon had the grace to flush a bit as he tucked his chin in slightly. “I meant that, of course.”

“Naturally.” Bistel walked a pace and then came back to the side of the cart. “She has plans we formulated together and plans which she has kept to herself. She doesn’t intend for us to turn the Ashenbrook red with our blood again. I had hoped she would trust me enough before this day to confide in me what else she has in mind.” He stopped, and then added, “You know your sister well.”

“We’ve always been close.”

“Then it is likely you know her Talent. I won’t ask what it is. Her grandfather made a point of keeping that knowledge under wraps, and I won’t press for a betrayal, but we . . .” Bistel paused, then shook his head sharply. “There is no ‘we’ anymore. I am the only one old enough to remember! Once there had been a ‘we,’ though, and we surmised that one of the secret Anderieon abilities was to prophesy. It followed on the known one, of bridging this plane to the Gods’ for treaties such as the one which created Larandaril under the protection of the sacred Andredia. Your grandfather was a very young warlord when Kanako rode out, but records show that he warned Kanako of what he faced. Kanako did not listen. When it fell to Anderieon to take up his banner and scatter what remained of the Bolger clans, he did so, before we all retreated to our Houses and Fortresses and left the citizens of Kerith to fight their own skirmishes for many a century. Luckily, there wasn’t much fight left in anyone for quite a long while. I remained a warlord, and he became the Warrior King. There were wars among ourselves, the Secret Wars, about which no one will speak except perhaps in the
Books of All Truth
. That is another matter. What remains is that your sister earned the title she carries now, and it is likely that part of what she does is as knowable to her as it is unknowable to us.”

“Prescience.”

“Stronger than that, I deem. Let’s hope that she has foresight and common sense; otherwise, the same Vaelinar arrogance that doomed us before will doom us again.”

“How so, if she knows the rivers?”

Bistel pinned Jeredon with his brilliant blue-on-blue eyes. “A ruler knows what it is to buy an alliance with his or her body, be it in bloodletting or marriage bonding. She’s refused to speak of Diort. Arrogance? Or does she know that which I do not? I pray it’s the latter. I am too old to risk my life again for the former. I don’t wish for history to repeat itself endlessly. ” Bistel swung aboard his stone-gray charger, his aryn staff tucked up under one arm as if it might be a sword. “Rest while you can. They’ll come at us again in the morning, I think. They’ve licked their wounds and made their repairs and replotted their strategies. There are no trees high enough for them to look over the Revela, and we’ve managed to keep their scouts either away or dead. They’ll be greatly surprised when they put their backs to what they plan as a safe retreat. Greatly surprised.”

Jeredon swept his gaze over the river plain as the warlord rode off. He did not know what his sister had planned and from what he could see, they were as trapped as Kanako, only this time by no river instead of a river too high and fierce to cross. But Bistel seemed to think she meant to put Diort’s back to it, giving him no place to go. He could only hope it would be that easy. She didn’t want to annihilate his forces, only beat them to a standstill. It would take more than that, he feared. And where was she?

THE ARMY OF QUENDIUS reeked. They held a dry and musky odor about them that filled his nose with strangeness. He tried to outmarch them but was lucky to stay on his feet. Their movement had gone from a walk to a march to a trot, pressured from those at the rear to the front. Those leading dared not slow. Garner still moved easily, but he knew that some of the two hundred or so guards behind him had begun to wheeze and labor yet dared not drop back. He could hear Beezel’s loud grunt every time his left boot hit the tunnel floor even though the veteran caravan guard lumbered at the rear of their pack. His shambling discomfort echoed ahead to all of them, warning them what they would be reduced to, all of them. A day, a night, and a day, by Garner’s reckoning, they had spent in the tunnels, with little time for a breather and food and none for sleep. The army which followed on their heels would envelop them, run over the top of them, or even devour them. They would not be seen again. The Ravers had taken their horses and ponies one at a time, bounding forward to pick one they wished, tearing the reins from its rider’s hands and bringing it down to eat in the middle of their pack. It could happen to any one of them. That fear prickled the hair on the back of their necks and drove them more mercilessly than any whip. Bregan paced Garner, his elven brace moving smoothly, but the rest of his body had begun to fail him. The Kernan trader’s pale skin had lightened even more except for the slash of color across his cheekbones. Sweat slicked his forehead. He flicked a glance over as Garner looked toward him.

“I think we’re not here to fight,” Garner said quietly, with a chin point toward Quendius who trotted a handful of body lengths or so in front. “I think we’re here to keep him from
them
.”

“I believe you may be right.” Oxfort mopped his forehead with his sleeve.

Quendius kept an easy pace with Narskap by his side although Narskap seemed distracted, winding the stifled air of the caves and casting forward now and then as if he searched the dim depths ahead or the occasional tunnel which shot off from their passage. The pathways glowed when Quendius reached them, not overly bright but clear enough they could be traversed. Once or twice, at the beginning, Quendius had cupped an odd amulet which hung about his neck on a braided thong, and a Raver had sprinted forward, touched foreheads with him and then dropped back as though given an order. As for the caves themselves, all the ways they had taken were marked with glazed and painted tiles inset into the walls and a mere touch from Quendius had brought a glow up in a faltering, flickering start as if reluctant or burned out, only to be forced. Garner had wondered if the glow fed all the way back down their lines or if the others were driven toward the light and that was why they kept increasing their paces.

They both watched as Narskap leaned close to Quendius, his wiry frame little more than a skeleton draped in worn leather armor, his lank hair tied back at the nape of his neck. Surprisingly, the Hound reached near Quendius in height, something Garner would never have figured, even seeing them side by side. Quendius stood as a tall man, even among tall men yet Narskap nearly met him at eye level though Garner had never reckoned Narskap as a being tall and straight. Something inside Narskap hunched as if life had dealt him a near lethal blow and he awaited the second, fatal one. Nonetheless, Narskap argued with his commander now. What about, the two could not hear, nor did Garner think that even those closest could, for they showed no inkling at all about anything happening. The guards were, quite simply, in a slow run for their lives and knew it, and endeavored only to keep moving.