The man she accosted startled and yelled. He snatched for the sword in his scabbard.
Jeynsa bore in, caught his wrist, then grappled as Sidir had taught her. A wrestler’s move a clan child would know hooked his ankle and tripped him. Thrashed into the brush, her bared knife at his throat, he slammed at bay against the tree trunk.
‘Dharkaron avenge!’ she railed through her teeth. ‘You won’t escape justice. I’ve seen your foul works. As I live, I won’t rest till I see you deposed for those sacrificed girls in that crypt!’
‘I’m not who you think!’ gasped the dishevelled victim. When the jab of her steel said she was not convinced, he ran on in a twanging Araethurian accent. ‘Cutting my throat won’t resolve a thing. The murdering bastard you want will be laughing, since I’m not the Prince of Rathain!’
‘Liar!’ Jeynsa snarled a vicious phrase in Paravian.
‘And may I couple goats on your grandparents’ grave,’ Fionn Areth retorted. ‘Whoever they are. If you had any.’
‘Say again?’ Jeynsa snapped. ‘You laid out their burned bones in Strakewood. Built their stone grave cairn yourself!’
‘I did no such thing,’ her prisoner insisted. ‘Though thinking I did will end my complaint and send you past Fate’s Wheel straight after me.’
‘Ath above!’ Jeynsa swore. ‘I should fall for a shameless mouthful of mimicry? Do you think I’m flat witless?’
‘Aye, so,’ said her captive, agreeably limp. ‘Probably worse, since armed men on both sides of this thicket have you sighted under drawn bows.’ As she stared at him, vexed, he risked bleeding and qualified. ‘We’re sent to pluck one of your woods-grubbing countrymen out of the teeth of a dog-pack.’
Set aback, moved to check the device on his jerkin, Jeynsa shoved upright and crouched. ‘You’re Alestron’s sworn man?’ She blinked, overset. ‘Daelion forfend! The made double?’ Shaken, incredulous, she pulled her bared steel. ‘Then you’re the poor wretch that almost got roasted for my liege’s misdeeds in Jaelot!’
‘His other associates are equally rude,’ Fionn Areth declared as he brushed himself off.
Jeynsa watched him rake the caught leaves from his hair and dig a trapped beetle from under his collar. The face underneath the brown dye was alike as a rendered masterpiece. Yet as he stood up, his movement lacked the Teir’s’Ffalenn’s hair-trigger grace. These green eyes were not deep. Only prosaic as he sized up her cropped hair and torn leathers, then her gaunt state of privation.
‘You’d better sit down,’ he determined at last. ‘At least sheathe the knife. You look faint enough to fall over.’
‘Not just!’ Jeynsa huffed. ‘Warn your bowmen away. All night in a tree, I’ve got needs that won’t wait.’ Pink with embarrassment, she unclipped her quiver and flung it beside her dropped bow. ‘If you see any hounds, shoot them down. They’re league trackers. Stand guard for our lives, that’s the least you can do, since I’ve lost my lead to the slipshod fact that you failed to look up, or declare yourself.’
Dagger poised, she shoved off with indecorous haste and burrowed into the privacy of the brambles.
She managed to give them her lineage and name before she collapsed at the feet of the acting sergeant. His cursory check encountered no injury, beyond a few festering thorns. ‘Nothing that rest and good food won’t put right.’ He settled Jeynsa’s limp wrist and regarded his men, gathered under the tree where Fionn Areth had flushed her. ‘Do I have volunteers? Good. You’ll need thick skins. I don’t fancy she’ll stay unconscious for long. Bound to fight like a cat once she notices she’s being carried.’
Fionn Areth surveyed the unkempt girl they disarmed, then slung over the shoulder of the first burly man who stepped forward. Her filthy, cropped hair, tattered soles, and starved face seemed too young for the courage that would dare a black sorcerer’s morals at knife point. ‘The Teiren’s’Valerient? That sniping chit is caithdein to Arithon, and steward for the realm of Rathain?’
‘In these hills? That name becomes an endangerment. I’d say she’s all that she claims to be. If not, the problem’s not ours. It’s our duke she’ll have to answer to.’
‘Melhalla’s caithdein,’ Jeynsa interposed. Slung upside down, she should have had no standing left, and nothing resembling dignity. Yet her sharp demand was delivered forthwith. ‘I ask for safe escort to Atwood.’
‘Not possible.’ The sergeant glanced at the darkening sky, as an icy gust tossed the oak leaves. The summer squall line threatened to break and douse them in a white torrent. ‘Move out!’ he barked. ‘Keep ahead of that storm. This is no sort of place to leave footprints.’ Fresh mud would hold an impression for days; Pellain’s constable would not need a tracker.
To Jeynsa’s protest, the officer repeated the news that dispatched their troop through the country-side. ‘You can’t go to Atwood. Access is closed. Kharadmon’s resetting the Paravian markers to guard. We’ve been forewarned that our lives could be forfeit if we try to enter the free wilds without a Sorcerer’s escort.’
At the end of her strength, the Teiren s’Valerient allowed them to bear her without further argument. The field company would see her through to Alestron. Denied other choice, her sensitive news must be brought to the ear of Duke Bransian s’Brydion.
Late Summer 5671
Prophet
The last time Dakar crossed the high mountain pass through the Skyshiels, he had been piss drunk in his self-absorbed effort to thwart a Fellowship directive to stand guard for Arithon s’Ffalenn. This time detained by a renegade Sorcerer’s meddling, he rode himself ragged to rejoin the same prince’s service. Wayside inns where he had once dragged his feet now chafed him with obstructive delays. The after-shock of the cleanse that had expunged the grey cult’s grip at Etarra made fit post-horses in scant supply. A fat man plagued with inept balance astride could not hope to outpace the state couriers bearing bad news. Nor could he bribe the deep treasuries of guildsmen, or overrule the sealed writs of Alliance requisition, unleashed by the imminent war.
The upset seeded at the moon’s nadir had sparked Darkling’s whirlwind muster as well. Clear down to Highscarp, the road had been choked with ox-drawn supply trains and foot-troops. Fast transport by galley across Eltair Bay became priced to extortion by the same demand. Jammed inns and a crucial shortage of provender made Dakar’s need for haste a trial of sapping frustration. Even fishermen’s luggers had been pressed in service to move men and arms to East Halla. The Mad Prophet fumed, coughing dust on the by-ways through the hamlets, cadging rides in lumbering farm drays. Forced to stage his way by the south route to Jaelot, his scapegrace past left him haunted by irony at every bend in the road: hung-over after a staggering binge, he once had endured the same, winding drive in the bed of a masterbard’s pony-cart.
Such memories wore daggers. This smoky tap-room, and that gabled inn recalled the arduous care with which Halliron sen Alduin had shaped the talent of his successor. Twenty-seven years might have passed in a season: each painful detail remained vivid. The ghost echoes of the old bard’s remonstrance, then Arithon’s diligent hours of practise notes lurked in the flickering shadows of the ingle-nooks, or else wafted down the backstair of some wayside tavern’s tawdry lodgings.
Often, the spellbinder flushed with fresh shame, as informed hindsight brought wounding discovery: the guise of Medlir from those bygone days had masked s’Ffalenn features, and nothing else.
The laughing wit, and the quizzical patience shown to Dakar’s complaints and slack living had never been feigned. The gently barbed tolerance granted to rage and eruptions of poisonous rancour had been Arithon’s true nature, released