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Authors: Duncan Lay

Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy

Wall of Spears (9 page)

BOOK: Wall of Spears
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Gaibun slumped on his chair. Perhaps it would be better to die fighting the gaijin. At least that way he could finish with honour and forget about his betrayal. Sumiko tapped him on the knee with her hand and, again, he was struck by how warm it was. Gaibun felt his misery drain away, to be replaced by a slow-burning anger.

‘Tell me,’ he growled.

‘Head west and find Sendatsu. He will not suspect you have learned his dark secrets and will greet you as a friend, still pretending you are like brothers. Kill him. End his life and save your own. Then you can return home with the news that Asami’s lover is dead, killed in battle with the Forlish. Asami will be so devastated she will turn to you for comfort. She will have no choice but to convince you the child is yours and she is yours alone.’

‘But the child will not be mine,’ Gaibun said harshly.

‘Babies can still die. There are many things that can happen to them and not even the priests can save them all,’ Sumiko said mildly. ‘Kill that one and replace it with one that is yours alone. With Sendatsu cold in the ground, she will have nobody but you.’

Gaibun nodded slowly.

‘You will regain your honour; you will wipe out your shame and reclaim your wife. All it takes is to avenge yourself on Sendatsu. And you want revenge now, Gaibun, don’t you?’

He stood suddenly. ‘More than anything.’

Sumiko stood also and reached out to clasp his hands in her own. ‘This is what you have been waiting for your whole life. You have known from the start it would come to this. When you see him, strike before he can act. Finish it.’

‘I will,’ Gaibun said with relish.

Sumiko put her arm around his shoulder, guided him to an oak tree a few paces away and opened a gateway to Vales.

‘Avenge your humiliation,’ she told him, then pushed him into the gateway.

Sumiko waited until Gaibun was gone, then smiled. Manipulating warriors was so easy. Tell him a little truth amid the lies, use a little magic to help him believe it and then supply an extra witness. The result did not matter. Whichever one died was a problem removed. She walked back into his tent.

‘Mistress, can I go now? You promised not to hurt me again if I said what you wanted,’ Omi said softly.

Sumiko walked up to the trembling Omi and reached out, not with the magic this time but with her own hands and grabbed the girl around the throat. It was over swiftly. Omi tried to struggle but Sumiko used a little magic on her to keep her quiet and then dropped her to the ground when she went limp.

Breathing heavily, she reached down and tore apart the dead girl’s kimono. She was sure everyone would get the idea when they found her the next morning. Gaibun vanished into the night, the bruised, naked body of his murdered household maid lying on the ground inside his tent; even if Gaibun returned — with or without Sendatsu’s head — he would be in no position to trouble her. Now she was free to go after Asami without fear Gaibun would come looking for her when he heard his wife and unborn child had been killed. It had been easier than she expected. It seemed paying attention to Asami’s inane conversation over the years had been worth it.

She checked outside the tent carefully before slipping out and using a combination of a little magic and the shadows to flit carefully away towards Jaken’s tent. The Elder Elf had begged for her presence and, after her night’s work was done, she felt able to deal with him.

‘Are you ready?’ Caelin asked them.

Harald put down his sharpening stone. ‘I don’t see why it is always us who gets these jobs,’ he sighed.

‘Captain Edmund asked for us specially. He thinks we might bring him luck,’ Caelin said mildly.

‘My gran used to keep a rabbit’s foot around her neck. She thought that brought her luck. Why don’t you offer him one of those?’ Ruttyn suggested.

‘And what if he says he wants to take our left hands and wear them as a lucky necklace or something?’ Harald nudged him.

‘He’s the chosen heir of the king, not some barbarian from the Skilly Isles,’ Caelin snorted.

‘That’s right. He’d want both our hands in that case.’ Ruttyn tried to smile but it was a weak thing.

Caelin sighed. ‘I know what it must seem like. We were the first through the elven barrier, the only ones to go in with both Captain Wulf and Captain Edmund. Now they are asking us to go into Dokuzen and grab enough hostages so the elves do what we want. We will be surrounded by angry elves and could all end up dangling by our balls in their town square.’

‘Well, when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so bad,’ Harald said.

‘If it works, there won’t be any more fighting. We will have won. We all went through the battle at Dokuzen and none of us want to go through that again. We can spare not just our mates but our families and country all that.’

‘Or we could die horribly, screaming for our mothers,’ Ruttyn said flatly.

‘I’d be screaming for the wife’s mother,’ Harald told him.

‘I thought you hated her?’

‘Exactly. If I’m going to die horribly, I want to see her going through the same thing.’

Caelin shook his head ruefully. ‘If you can still make jests like that, then you’re ready for Dokuzen!’

‘Papa, why are you sad? The Velsh are listening to you now,’ Mai said, draping an arm across his shoulder.

‘I am not sad!’ Sendatsu protested, lifting his head up from his rice bowl.

‘Please, Papa. Anyone can see you are missing Asami. You should send her a message.’

‘Mai, nothing I can say will do any good. Now please, eat your dinner.’

‘You told me you don’t know everything. So you don’t know she will ignore you if you talk to her,’ Mai said.

‘You listen too carefully,’ Sendatsu said ruefully. ‘Maybe I need to put some carrots in your ears sometimes!’

‘I put carrots in my ears!’ Cheijun announced, taking thin slices of carrot and trying. Sendatsu plucked them out of his son’s fingers before they got into his ears and dropped them back into the bowl.

‘You should still try again,’ Mai said.

Sendatsu pushed his rice bowl away. ‘What did I do to deserve you?’ he asked with a smile.

‘Something very good,’ Mai replied.

A knock on the door stopped Sendatsu’s reply and he opened it carefully, holding back Cheijun’s efforts to attack their visitor with his wooden sword, to reveal Cadel.

‘Huw and Rhiannon need you,’ he said. ‘I’ll watch Mai and Cheijun.’

‘I defeat you!’ Cheijun announced, waving his sword and forcing Sendatsu to jump over the blade.

‘I won’t be long,’ he told them.

‘Remember what I said,’ Mai told him.

Sendatsu hurried over to the meeting hall, wondering what had happened, to see Huw and Rhiannon arguing. Or rather, Huw trying to apologise and Rhiannon ignoring his efforts. It was a sight he had seen before and had no wish to see again; he thought they had fixed things.

‘Now what?’ he said loudly as he strode into the hall, seeing them turn away from each other to face him. ‘I have been training fat, stubborn old men all day and just when I get the chance to spend some time with my children, I am dragged in here again!’

‘We still have not heard anything from Asami. But I think I know why,’ Rhiannon said.

Sendatsu pulled up a chair as Huw shoved the map in his direction, worries about the two of them vanishing in an instant.

‘The Forlish are going no faster, indeed they are slowing down. And they are crossing some of the worst country in Rheged. At this rate they will never get here before the snows arrive.’ Huw slapped at the map. ‘So I decided to see what Dokuzen was doing, and discovered that Jaken has marched with his full strength. At least ten thousand warriors, most of them mounted. They are coming west, straight for Vales.’

Sendatsu, his mouth dry, looked closely at the map, lit poorly as it was by a pair of crude candles. ‘There is something missing,’ he said. ‘There is a piece to this puzzle we are not seeing. If only we could speak to Asami, we might work it out.’

Rhiannon sighed. ‘Asami has ignored every message I sent. But I shall send her another, just in case.’

Sendatsu tapped the table slowly. ‘I know my father would not ask gaijin to help him defeat us. So we know Sumiko is behind this. What does she want?’

‘Well —’ Huw began.

‘I wasn’t looking for an answer, I was thinking aloud,’ Sendatsu told him. ‘She wants power. What did she achieve by breaking up the alliance we had fought to create? She makes herself and the Magic-weavers the heroes of the battle of Dokuzen. She makes humans look bad, so Jaken can never turn to them again and she turns herself into Jaken’s most trusted adviser. So she must have persuaded him to let her go to the Forlish, try to set them up in a trap with us as the bait. Only we know Ward is too clever to walk into a trap. He only sends his most mobile force north, so he’s planning to betray her if it is a trap. Both sides are ready to betray each other.’

‘So do we just sit back and do nothing, let them turn on each other?’ Rhiannon asked.

‘There is something more,’ Sendatsu said in frustration. ‘She knows my father has won the people. They see him as their saviour. They would not turn from him or accept her as Elder Elf. She must have something else planned, an extra double-cross.’

‘What would make them turn from your father?’ Huw pondered.

‘He has styled himself as the protector of Dokuzen, he saved the people from their nightmare sprung to life, a horde of gaijin at the gates. If the Forlish managed to get inside Dokuzen, then the people would turn on him. But he would never make the same mistakes as Daichi …’ Sendatsu trailed off, his eyes on the map.

‘What?’ Huw prompted.

‘The Forlish are moving in the same manner they did when they fooled Daichi, getting his attention in one direction then springing the real trap from another direction. They might be planning the same thing.’

‘But the rest of the Forlish army hasn’t moved from their camp on the border,’ Huw pointed out.

‘But Sumiko has magic. She can open a gateway for them, bring them right into the city,’ Sendatsu said, his mouth suddenly dry.

‘There’s no way she can bring so many across so far. Asami and I brought the dragons into Dokuzen and it nearly killed us,’ Rhiannon said.

‘She doesn’t have to bring them all, just enough to run rampage. Then she claims all humans have magic and she is the only one who can protect the people. They would abandon Jaken and turn to her,’ Sendatsu said.

‘No!’ Rhiannon exclaimed in horror.

‘This is just a guess though — we don’t know this is her plan,’ Huw warned.

‘We have to tell Asami. She is the only one who can confirm it,’ Sendatsu said. ‘We must get through to her. If I am right, then Sumiko will have a plan for her as well. Rhiannon and Asami are the only ones who can stop Sumiko. She has to kill Asami for the plan to succeed.’

‘What is that noise?’ Retsu asked. ‘I have been hearing it for the last turn of an hourglass, at least.’

Asami looked up from her rice bowl and tensed for a moment, before relaxing.

‘It sounds like another bird has arrived with a message,’ she dismissed.

‘A message? From who? How many messages?’

Asami grimaced. ‘My guess would be Sendatsu, sent through his human friend Rhiannon. They have been sending me a message a day for the past quarter-moon.’

‘Well, they seem to have sent you half-a-dozen in the past turn of the hourglass. What are they trying to say?’

‘I have no idea. I have been throwing the earlier ones in the fire as fast as they arrive.’

Retsu put his chopsticks very carefully on his bowl and wiped his mouth on the cotton napkin. ‘Well, perhaps we should read this one …’

‘There is no need. I am sure they are ridiculous,’ Asami said hastily, imagining with horror what Retsu might say if he opened Sendatsu’s message to see flowery declarations of love and apology.

‘Or they might be important. Don’t forget the work they did to help save Dokuzen. Perhaps they have found out something we need to know. They hate Sumiko as much as we do. And if they have been sending so many, it would be foolish not to read at least one.’

Asami grudgingly sent a servant to collect the birds and bring her the messages attached to their legs.

Retsu cleared his throat and pushed his bowl away. ‘Asami, we have spoken little over the years. I have stayed out of my son’s marriage, for many reasons. I know only too well what it is like to be asked to marry someone who does not hold your heart, to see your true love wed another. But I want my son to be happy. I hope, now Sendatsu has declared where his heart is, you two can learn to —’

Asami surged to her feet. ‘What’s that noise?’

‘Another bird?’ Retsu suggested.

‘No.’ Asami waved him down, straining to hear what was happening outside.

‘The guards would let us know if anyone came calling.’

‘Really? Because the noise came from out there.’ Asami walked swiftly out of the reception room.

‘Where are you going?’ Retsu followed her to the doorway.

Asami stepped into her room, returning with a sword in her hand. ‘Just to get this first.’

‘You are worrying needlessly,’ Retsu told her. ‘Those guards are both former Border Patrol warriors. They are skilled and experienced.’

‘Yes, because the Border Patrol did so well against the Forlish,’ Asami muttered.

She walked to the front door then stopped, her nostrils flaring. A moon ago she would have wondered what the smell was, but after the battle of Dokuzen she knew it only too well. The stink of opened bowels and blood.

‘The guards are dead. Get your sword,’ she said, backing away, eyes on the door.

Retsu did not argue, instead darting over to where he had taken off his sword and left it in the wide entrance hall. He joined her on the far side of the door, where they would be hidden when it opened, protected by the solid front wall.

‘Who is it?’ he hissed.

‘No idea. But I would think they are sent by Sumiko. It is too convenient. As soon as she is out of the city —’

She never got to finish her sentence, because the front door blew in, crashing and tumbling across the hall to slam into a fresco on the far wall and bring down scores of tiles in a shower of splinters and pottery.

BOOK: Wall of Spears
9.27Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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