War Maid's Choice-ARC (72 page)

“Of course, Milord!”

Stoneblade slapped his breastplate in salute and headed off purposefully, his expression grim. Horsemaster started to follow him, but Cassan gripped the younger armsman’s elbow before he could.

“Milord?”

“A word more, Kalanndros,” the baron said quietly. The captain cocked his head slightly, eyebrows rising, and Cassan smiled grimly. “There’s another reason I didn’t want to send a courier to Balthar,” he said in that same quiet tone. “My agents in Nachfalas actually gave me a little more information than I was willing to share with you and Garman...until I realized where they’re headed, at least. Now I think you need to know it.”

He paused, waiting.

“What sort of...information, Milord?” Horsemaster asked finally.

“Information suggesting these people were met by one of Baron Tellian’s spies,” Cassan said flatly. “To be honest, that’s the reason I pulled this many men together before I went looking for them in the first place. I was afraid they were up to some mischief in the South Riding, something Tellian could deny responsibility for because the men who carried it out it had obviously come from out-kingdom. But now that I’ve realized where they’re really headed, I have to wonder if there wasn’t a much darker reason than I’d suspected for why they met with one of his agents before setting out.”

Horsemaster’s expression was suddenly intensely wary, and Cassan smiled without a trace of humor.

“If this
is
an assassination attempt and Tellian’s behind it, there’s only one reason he would have recruited them from outside the Kingdom and had them enter the Wind Plain at Nachfalas and come at Chergor across my lands. He’s not just setting up a way to hide his hand—he’s obviously hoping to saddle
me
with responsibility for whatever they’re about to do. And if he’s been as clever about it as he usually is, they probably truly believe I’m the one who hired them!”

Horsemaster nodded slowly, his eyes narrow, and Cassan shrugged.

“Obviously, I don’t have any sort of proof he’s the one who set this all up. For that matter, I might even be wrong to think he is.” The concession was perfunctory at best, Horsemaster noted. “The gods know this canal business offers enough of a threat to the interests of the Spearmen and the Purple Lords for
them
to want to wreck it even more badly than I do! But the point is that if it
is
Tellian, and if whoever he used as his agent hired them in
my
name, the consequences could be...serious.”

Horsemaster’s nod was far more emphatic this time.

“So I think it would be best, when we overtake them, that there be no survivors,” Cassan said flatly, and gave another shrug. “Men who hire their swords for assassinations are scum, anyway. If we’re fortunate, we’ll catch them short of Chergor and finish the business then.”

“And if we don’t, Milord?” Horsemaster asked softly.

“Well, that will depend on whether or not they’ve had any opportunity to talk to anyone on the other side, won’t it? Someone who might actually believe their lies and think I’m the one who hired them.”

Cassan’s tone was completely neutral, but understanding flickered in Horsemaster’s blue eyes. Understanding of what his baron had just said and perhaps—
perhaps
—just a trace of what he
hadn’t
said.

“That would be...unfortunate, Milord,” he said.

“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” Cassan replied.

“I’ll see to it, Milord,” Horsemaster said, and if he was unhappy about the possibilities, there was no sign of it in his level gaze.

“Good.”

Cassan released the other man’s elbow and watched him walk across to his own company. Someone’s armor and weapons harness creaked behind him, and he looked over his shoulder.

“All well, Milord?” Dirkson asked softly, and the baron nodded.

Dirkson was younger than Darnas Warshoe, but they were very much cut from the same cloth, and the armsman nodded back to his patron. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the six handpicked armsmen of his personal squad. Aside from Cassan and Dirkson himself, they were the only ones who knew the baron’s full plan, and if the thought of regicide bothered any of them, there was no sign of it.

“Won’t hurt a thing for Sir Kalanndros’ lads to be busy cutting inconvenient throats, Milord,” Dirkson said, touching the hilt of his own saber, and his eyes were cold. “Lots of confusion and people running and shouting.”

“Best of all if we get there just too late,” Cassan told him in an even softer tone. “But if we don’t, remember to make sure the dagger’s in Tellian’s hand. Or the hand of one of his allies, at least.”

“Oh, aye, I’ll do that little thing, Milord,” Dirkson promised with an icy smile. “A cold,
dead
hand...and I’ll make sure it’s dead myself.”

* * *

Erkân Trâram drank deeply from his canteen, then looked around the small circle of intent faces gathered about him.

“All right, lads,” he said. “It’s time we were about it.”

That circle of faces tightened, but no one argued. It was far too late for second thoughts, even if they’d been inclined to entertain them, and they weren’t. All of them recognized the risk inherent in their task, especially if anyone escaped to set wind riders on their trail. Their horses were good, even by Sothōii standards, but
no one’s
horses were that good. Still, if things went according to plan, there’d be no survivors
to
escape, which ought to give them at least several hours—possibly even a day or two—of head start on any pursuit. Besides, they weren’t going to escape overland; river barges were waiting just below the point at which the Ice Sisters’ outflow reached the Spear to bear them back to Nachfalas more swiftly than even a wind rider could cover the distance. If they reached the barges, the only real concern would be one of those blasted magi who could throw their thoughts over vast distances, or one of the “wind-walkers.” Nothing else would be able to get word to Nachfalas in time to prevent them from escaping back down the escarpment and disappearing into the Kingdom of the River Brigands and the Empire of the Spear once more.

Or that was the plan, anyway.

“Somar,” Trâram looked at his senior lieutenant, Somar Larark. Like Trâram himself, Larark was a veteran of the Spearman Army, although it had been some years since either of them had been that reputably employed.

“Yes, Sir?” Larark responded with the discipline Trâram had carried over from his army days.

“Go ahead and circle around to the other side. Take Gûrân with you and send him back once you’re in place. I know it doesn’t look like much,” he twitched his head in the direction of the hunting lodge hidden by the half-mile or so of woodland between them and it, “but the Sothōii don’t pick Royal Guardsmen out of a helmet at random. We’re going to lose some of the lads no matter what else happens, so let’s take time to do this right.”

“Yes, Sir,” Larark said again, and nodded to Sergeant Gûrân Selmar, the company’s senior noncom. The two of them moved off towards Larark’s command, and Trâram looked at his other subordinates.

“Go,” he said flatly.

They nodded and filtered off through the trees, leaving Trâram with his bugler and his small command group. He stood there, listening to bird song and the scolding chatter of an outraged squirrel. The light was dim and green as it filtered through that dense leaf canopy, like being at the bottom of a lake, and it was cool under the trees. He drew a deep breath, smelling the leaf mold, the moss, the deep scent of earth and growing things. Of life.

There were times when even a man like Erkân Trâram had qualms about the choices he’d made in his own life. When he felt himself at the center of a leaf-whispering, breezy pool of living energy and thought about all the lives he’d ended. All the blood he’d spilled for more paymasters than he could any longer count. But those times were few and far between, and he’d long since learned how to banish them when they insisted upon intruding.

Bards and poets could rhapsodize about noble conflict, about honor and the warrior’s call to duty under his liege lord’s banner in time of war. But the skills of a warrior weren’t worth a copper kormak in time of peace, and there wasn’t always a war when he needed one. A man had to make his way in the world with the talents he had, and Erkân Trâram’s talent was for killing.

And with what you’re earning for
this
one, you may finally be able to retire, after all
, he told himself.

Besides, it wasn’t as if Markhos Silveraxe was
his
king, now was it?

Chapter Thirty-Five

Leeana forced herself to sit calmly on the hunting lodge’s deep, roofed veranda.

What she really wanted to do was to stand up, pace vigorously, and spend several minutes screaming at Sir Frahdar Swordshank. She would, however, cheerfully have traded the screaming time for the opportunity to remove Lord Warden Golden Hill’s handsome, sleekly groomed head, instead.

Slowly, preferably. One inch at a time.

It seemed evident that whatever anyone else might think, King Markhos cherished no suspicions about her father’s fidelity. For that matter, she wasn’t at all certain Swordshank truly worried about Tellian’s loyalty. But it was Swordshank’s job to consider all possibilities, and the truth was that they knew far too little about what was happening. Given what they did know, the decision to stand fast or to seek a place of greater safety could have been argued either way, and the King wasn’t in the practice of capriciously overriding the skilled and experienced armsman he’d chosen to command his personal guard even before he’d attained his majority and assumed the Crown in his own right. The choice Swordshank had made might frustrate and worry her, and she might be convinced it was the wrong one, but she wasn’t
angry
at him for it. Not once she’d had a chance to think about it from his perspective and cool down a bit, at any rate.

But Golden Hill, now...him she could
definitely
be angry with. Even now, she knew, he was standing attentively with the knot of unarmored courtiers and servants surrounding the King in the lodge’s great room as the final line of defense. And while he was standing there, sword in hand and expression of noble purpose firmly fixed, he was undoubtedly continuing to drop the occasional, carefully honed, poisonous word to undermine her father. Nor was Baron Tellian in any position to parry his attacks at the moment.

Unlike any of the other courtiers, he and Hathan had brought their armor with them. Leeana knew that was solely because of his promise to her mother after the ambush had come so close to killing him last spring. Golden Hill (predictably) had commented on how “fortunate” it was that Tellian—and, of course, his closest and most trusted companion (it would never do to call him a “henchman”)—“happened” to be in full armor at a moment when the King might be exposed to the threat of assassination.
Obviously
he’d meant only that it was fortunate that the defenders should have been reinforced by two such formidable wind riders! He’d
never
meant to imply that it might keep the two of
them
safe in the sort of confused, desperate melee which might break out under such circumstances! Why, that might have suggested that they’d suspected their armor might actually be needed, and nothing could have been further from his intent!

At least a few of those barbed words had to be coming her way, as well. And, unfortunately, Golden Hill wasn’t the only one of the King’s courtiers who clearly wished that if someone was going to warn the King about a potential plot, the warning might at least have come from someone with a modicum of respectability.

All of that was quite enough to make anyone seethe with anger, yet she knew those reasons were almost superficial.

No, the true reason for the fury bubbling away just beneath her outward semblance of calm was the fact that, unlike her father,
she
didn’t have armor...and she remained far from anything someone might have called a trained wind rider. Which was why she was sitting on this veranda with a strung bow beside her, a quiver of arrows over her shoulder, and a war maid’s short swords at her side while her father, Hathan, their coursers, and Gayrfressa waited to take the battle to any attackers.

<
I should be with
you...
and Father
!> she raged silently to her hoofed sister.

<
Not yet, Sister,
> Gayrfressa replied far more gently, raising her head and looking back over her shoulder at Leeana from her own place in the hunting lodge’s central courtyard. <
Not until you’ve learned to fight from the saddle, not simply ride. I love you too much to risk you when you haven’t been trained to defend yourself properly from my back. And you don’t even have armor!
>

Leeana felt her jaw tighten and forced herself to relax it, shocked by the spike of anger she felt at
Gayrfressa
, of all people!

<
You’re not mad at me,
> Gayrfressa told her with something almost like a tender laugh. <
Not really. You’re mad at hearing the voice of reason telling you what you don’t want to hear, and it happens to be mine. And the
reason
you’re angry is that you feel as if you’re somehow at fault for sitting there “safely” while your father, Hathan, Dathgar, and Gayrhalan are all out here with me. But you’re not really all that “safe” where you are, you know. You’re simply safer there than you would be out here until we get you properly trained. And while I admit you have a
much
better starting point than
he
did when Walsharno first took him in hand, that’s going to take a while
.>

Leeana was forced to nod, and Gayrfressa shook her head in a mane-flipping gesture, then turned back to the closed gate, standing between the two stallions and their heavily armored riders. Neither her father nor Hathan had thought to bring lances with them, unfortunately. Instead, they had their horse bows strung, which would be more effective from a courser’s saddle than a sword—in the beginning, at least—unless their enemies were far better armored than anyone anticipated. Yet what gnawed at Leeana’s heart was the knowledge that Gayrfressa had no bow-armed rider, because Leeana hadn’t yet acquired that proficiency. And that meant that while the two armored wind riders might be able to stay out of weapons reach of an opponent, Gayrfressa would have no choice but to close so that she might use those weapons with which nature had endowed her.