War Maid's Choice-ARC (80 page)

“We won’t be that lucky a second time,” he told Tellian flatly, and the baron was forced to nod.

“Probably not, Your Majesty. Even Cassan’s going to be bright enough not to pack cavalry like that again. They’ll either push an infantry column through the gate or come at us over the wall, the way that first lot did.”

“Why in Phrobus’ name didn’t they do that the first time?” someone demanded, and Tellian shrugged.

“Because he thought his way would work,” he said. “And because all this smoke”—he gestured at the thick columns rising from the fires—“is going to attract
someone’s
attention. And when it does, the people who see it are going to remember the King’s visiting here. He needs to finish this before any unfortunate witnesses happen along.”

“I think there may be another reason, Milord,” Leeana said, carefully not calling him father. He looked at her, and she grimaced. “The confusion,” she said.

“To create an opportunity for Golden Hill, you mean?” Macebearer said, glaring at the elegantly dressed corpse one of Swordshank’s armsmen had dragged away and heaved onto the pile of bodies heaped into a grisly breastwork for their position.

“No, Milord.” Leeana shook her head. “Or not
primarily
for him, at least. I’m not at all sure he was part of the plan from the beginning. I think he simply realized his patrons’ position is hopeless if His Majesty survives. He thought he saw an opportunity to make sure you didn’t, Your Majesty, but I doubt Cassan even realized he was here. And even if Golden Hill was part of the plot from the beginning, how could Cassan have been confident he was still alive?”

“Then why create confusion?” the Prime Councilor asked.

“Not for Golden Hill,” Tellian said slowly, his eyes on his daughter’s face. “For his own people.”

“That’s what I think,” Leeana agreed. She looked back and forth between Markhos and Macebearer. “We know the lies he spun for Hathan and Gayrhalan before he killed them, but we don’t know what he told his own armsmen
after
he murdered them. And when they charged, Your Majesty, they were shouting ‘For the King.’ I think he told his armsmen that
we’ve
either killed you or taken you prisoner. Most of those men think they’re trying to rescue or avenge you...and he wanted enough confusion for someone he trusts to get close enough to kill you before the others realized you weren’t already dead.”

There was silence for a moment, and then Macebearer nodded slowly and looked at Tellian.

“A remarkable daughter you’ve raised here, Milord,” he said.

“I’ve always thought so,” Tellian acknowledged with a faint smile.

“But if she’s right—and I think you are, Milady,” Markhos said, “—then the way to beat him is simple enough. All I have to do is show myself to his men and call on them to lay down their weapons.”

“No,” Tellian said immediately. The King looked at him, eyebrows raised, and the baron shook his head. “At least some of those men out there
do
know why they’re here, Your Majesty, and every one of those armsmen has a bow.”

“They wouldn’t dare—not in front of so many witnesses who aren’t part of any plot against me,” Markhos shot back.

“Your Majesty, they don’t have anything to lose,” Macebearer pointed out. “Any of them who were part of this from the beginning know your magi will get to the bottom of it in the end...if you live to order the investigation. And they know the penalty for treason. Any of them with a bit of backbone—or enough desperation—is going to figure he has a better chance of surviving if he engineers an ‘accident’ for you, no matter how suspicious the accident in question might appear.”

“That’s as may be,” Markhos said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that losses or no losses, he’s still got two or three hundred armsmen out there and we have less than thirty in here, even counting those of us who don’t have armor.” He swept one hand in a circular motion, indicating the surviving grim faced, scorched and bedraggled men standing around him with bows and swords in hand. “Eventually, they’re going to simply overwhelm all of you, and when that happens I think it’s unlikely I’ll get out of this alive any more than the rest of you.” He smiled crookedly. “I don’t doubt all of you are prepared to die defending me, but I’d really prefer you don’t. Especially not if I’m not going to survive anyway.”

“Your Majesty, you’re the King.” Tellian’s voice was flat. “You don’t have the right to risk your life the way other men do—not when the stability of the entire Kingdom depends upon you.”

“I have a son, I have a brother, and I have two daughters,” Markhos replied in an equally flat tone. “I
am
the King, Milord Baron, but there are others to bear the Crown, should I fall.”

“Your Majesty, we can’t—”

“Baron Tellian, we
can
.”

Blue eyes locked with gray, and tension crackled between them.

* * *

Cassan exhaled in noisy relief mingled with anger.

Stoneblade had moved with maddening deliberation as he organized the fresh attack. He’d used a dagger to scrape a diagram of the hunting lodge’s layout onto a cleared patch of ground, and he’d methodically questioned the survivors of the first attack to fill in the details. Then he’d assigned objectives to each troop of dismounted armsmen and made sure their troop commanders understood what they were to do.

Cassan was confident Dirkson and his squad had already known what
they
were to do, but Stoneblade’s careful organization was going to make their task more difficult. That was bad enough, but the baron suspected his captain was deliberately delaying the assault. Something about Stoneblade’s eyes, the set of his shoulders, shouted a warning to Cassan’s instincts.

He wanted to snap out the attack order, override Stoneblade’s dragged out preparations, but he dared not. If the captain truly did suspect the truth, a premptory order might be enough to turn reluctance into open resistance, despite his personal oath to Cassan. No. Better to wait. If Stoneblade refused to order the charge, that would be time enough to take drastic action. Once the captain
did
order the attack, he’d be just as committed as Cassan—or just as guilty of treason, at any rate—and a man like Stoneblade didn’t do things by halves. Besides—

A bugle blared suddenly out of the forest behind him, and Cassan wheeled his horse in shock as a long line of cavalry walked slowly out of the shadows towards him with lances ready.

He’d never met the burly, fair-haired man riding beside the gray and white banner, but he recognized the arms of the Pickaxes of Lorham. The full-moon banner of the Quaysar temple streamed on the breeze beside it, and the woman riding beneath that banner wore the surcoat of an Arm of Lillinara.

His heart sank, but he faced the newcomers with the courage of a man who had nothing left to lose.

“Stand where you are!” he snapped.

The oncoming banners halted a hundred yards away and he heard his own armsmen climbing quickly back into their own saddles behind him, yet that upright thicket of lances never wavered.

“What’s your business here?” Cassan shouted across the distance.

“A question I might fairly ask you, Milord Baron,” the man who must be Trisu of Lorham replied coldly. “This is the
West
Riding, not the South.”

“I know perfectly well where we are. And I ask you again—
what brings you here?
”

“A threat to the Kingdom,” Trisu said flatly. “One I believe I’m beginning to fully understand.”

“A threat to the Kingdom, is it?” Cassan shot back and barked a contemptuous laugh. “The only threat to the Kingdom
I
see here is you, Milord! You and that traitorous bastard you serve!”

“Have a care, Milord! Baron or no, any man who names me traitor will answer with his life!”

Cassan sneered as he realized how badly outnumbered Trisu actually was. Even supported by the Quaysar Guard—and how dangerous could armsmen who took orders from
women
truly be?—he had less than half the men Cassan still retained.

“I’ll call you whatever I choose,” he said harshly. “Your baron’s already murdered the King! No doubt you were part of the same plot. I order you in the name of the Crown to lay down your weapons and surrender now or pay the penalty for your crimes!”

“If you think you can take our arms, come and try,” Trisu’s voice was a glacier grinding mountains into rubble, and the upright lances shivered and came down all along the front of his line.

“Very well—on your own head be it!” Cassan drew his saber and looked over his shoulder at his armsmen. “Take them! For the King!”

“
For the King!
” his men thundered, and they charged.

A baron had no business in the front line of a cavalry melee, and Cassan let his armsmen charge past him. Trisu’s men and the Quaysar guards spurred to meet them, and Cassan smiled thinly as the two forces slammed into one another and he realized the newcomers were even more badly outnumbered than he’d realized. He actually owed that idiot Trisu a vote of thanks! Stoneblade would be committed now, whatever else happened, and it wasn’t as if—

“
Kalatha!
Kalatha!
Kalatha for the King!
”

Cassan twitched and twisted in the saddle as the forest stretching along his right flank came to sudden life. The fresh voices shouting that warcry were higher and lighter but no less savage, and he stared in disbelief as the war maids of Kalatha swarmed out of the trees. They were on foot, not mounted, and a Sothōii’s instinctive contempt for infantry—especially unarmored infantry
women
—welled up within him as he realized who and what they were. But only for an instant, for
these
women were past mistresses of the art of light infantry tactics and concealment. They’d filtered soundlessly forward in the shadows of the trees while Trisu occupied his attention, putting themselves in a perfect position to hit his own men from behind, and he hadn’t seen a thing. Not a thing! How in Fiendark’s name had they managed to get this close without his even
seeing
them?!

And then they were upon his armsmen, and they didn’t seem to care that they were on foot.

Warhorses screamed afresh as the war maids piled into the fray, short swords and daggers flashing ruthlessly, hamstringing the horses of men who were already locked in combat with Trisu’s mounted troops and helpless to defend themselves against an attack from the rear. The shrieking horses went down, spilling their riders, and the war maids were waiting when those armsmen fell. They swarmed over them before they could even start to rise, and if those armsmen were armored, that did them little good when they were taken two or three to one. War maids fell, as well, but they flooded through the ranks of Cassan’s men like the sea, and the surprise was devastating.

He gawked in disbelief as his entire right flank crumpled in chaos and confusion, and even as he watched, Trisu’s left pivoted, swinging in on the rubble of his own right, charging past their war maid allies to slam into the back of his
left
wing.

It was too much for men who were already confused, who knew they were far from home...who’d had one surprise too many. Sabers began to go up, raised hilt-first in token of surrender, and once it began, it spread like wildfire. Perhaps a third of his armsmen refused to yield, grimly determined to take as many of their enemies with them as possible, but there could be only one possible outcome.

For one endless moment, Cassan of the South Riding stared at the disastrous collapse of all his plans. Then he wrenched his horse’s head around and drove in his spurs.

* * *

“
Stand where you are!
” Baron Tellian bellowed as Swordshank’s armsmen started to race towards the gate and the bedlam of combat. They halted, staring over their shoulders at him, and he glared at them. “Get back into your positions! If those are friends of ours out there and they win, well and good! But that’s their job;
your
job is to protect the King!”

The armsmen stared at him for another handful of seconds, and then they slunk meekly back into their original lines. Yet even as they did, a chestnut courser with an eye of blue flame went bounding past them and out the gate with a redhaired wind rider in its saddle.

“
Leeana!
” Tellian shouted, but Gayrfressa was already through the gate in a rolling thunder of hooves.

* * *

Cassan turned his head, peering over his shoulder once more. There was no sign of pursuit yet, but it would be coming all too soon. He needed enough of a head start for his tracks to be lost in those of all the other fugitives who would shortly be fleeing the scene of his debacle. Where he’d go, what he’d do, in the wake of such utter disaster was more than he could begin to calculate at the moment, yet the first order of business was clear enough: to escape. To—

A huge chestnut mare burst through a screen of trees behind him, and he swallowed a strangled curse. His warhorse was already at full stretch, galloping all out despite the dangerous terrain, but the courser closed quickly, eating up the distance between them effortlessly, and blue fire glittered from its right eye socket. He didn’t know what that fire was, but somehow he knew he couldn’t escape it—that glittering flame would find him wherever he went, wherever he hid.

Despair flooded through him, and with it came a towering rage. It was over. Tellian had won. Everything Cassan had fought for throughout his entire life was gone, snatched away by the man he hated most in all the world. And on that courser, charging after him, was Tellian’s hradani-loving whore of a daughter—a woman who’d never trained to fight on horseback and who wasn’t even armored.

He bared his teeth, turning, bringing his horse back around and drawing his saber once more. Perhaps he’d lost, but he could take this one last exquisite vengeance. He could lay Tellian’s daughter dead on the ground and turn his triumph to dust and ashes in his mouth!

“Come to me, bitch!” he screamed, and charged to meet her.

They flashed towards one another, and he snarled triumphantly as he realized she didn’t even have a sword in her hands! He’d have to be careful of the courser, but he didn’t really care whether he lived or died now—not any longer. All that mattered was that he kill
her
before he died, and the fool was making it
easy!