The leader appeared surprised to hear the words. He glanced at his companion before speaking. "I am not your judge, Tawl of the Lowlands," he said. "Tyren claims that privilege in Bren."
Skaythe watched the party ride away. Ten knights, four of them marksmen, three hostages, thirteen horses, two mules, and enough supplies to provision a journey to Bren. So Baralis hadn"t relied on him alone.
Skaythe returned his bow to its sheath. The rain had done it no favors and it would have to be waxed and then restrung. A good shot at this distance, with a damp string and the air heavy with rain, would be nearly impossible. The Valdis marksmen were no better than he-just a whole lot closer.
It had been an interesting scene to watch. It had taught him a little more about his mark. Tawl was not stupid; he knew when to quit. The knights had outrun and outnumbered him, his friend was down and his horse was less than a barn"s length from collapse. The man was no fool, but he wasn"t a hero, either. Skaythe shook his head. Most definitely not a hero. Heroes don"t smash their opponent"s brains out when they"re no longer capable of fighting. They don"t keep on beating a man long after the fight is over. And they don"t kill from lack of control.
Blayze died by Tawl"s hand. It was an unnecessary death, and one Skaythe intended to vindicate.
Skaythe rubbed his aching shoulder. The damp brought out the worst in that, too. Tawl had a lot to answer for. After the duel on the cliffs north of Toolay, it had taken Skaythe two weeks to recover from his injury. He had found an old woman in a small village to tend to the wound. A lot of blood was lost, the shoulder blade had been grazed, and there had been some minor muscle damage. The old hag had done a fair st.i.tching, but she hadn"t used a clean knife and infection had set in. He lost a week to fever, and another to poor health. When he finally mounted a horse again, he had to ride slowly with many rests. He eventually arrived in Rorn only to find no trace of the knight or his companions. By making inquiries at the harbor he"d discovered that the knight had sailed to Marls two days earlier. Skaythe promptly followed.
The week aboard ship had been good for him. It gave him a chance to finally recuperate. His shoulder had stiffened during the ride to Rorn and the voyage gave him the time to work the suppleness back. He exercised and ma.s.saged, gradually extending his range of movements. By the time he landed in Marls his shoulder was strong enough to hold a bow for the draw.
During the journey north, he had taken a few practice shots. He had lost both distance and accuracy, but even then he could still outshoot Valdis" best. A few weeks of rest and he would be back to fighting form. The problem was the riding. The knight had set a grueling pace from Marls, and Skaythe was forced to better it to catch up. Long hours in the saddle, combined with sudden downpours and biting winds, had started the stiffening process once more.
A few more weeks of these sorts of conditions and his shoulder would be back where it started. But Skaythe had no choice-especially now-he had to follow Tawl. The knight"s life was his for the taking and no one else was going to get there first.
Skaythe mounted his horse. Perhaps it was a good thing that the knights had captured Tawl. It would slow the pace down and make him easier to track. Warning arrows were out of the question now, though. With four trained marksmen in the party, Skaythe had no intention of giving away his presence. Skaythe kicked his horse forward. Next time he came for Tawl, the strike would be unannounced.
Tawl leant back against the tree he had been bound to. Glancing over at Jack, he hissed, "Are you all right?"
Jack nodded. "My head"s splitting, but I"m sort of used to that by now."
It was dark. They had traveled north all day. With one hand tied behind their backs and both feet tied to the stirrups, it hadn"t been an easy ride. Nabber fared better over the back of the mule.
The knights had just made camp. They were well organized. A fire was started within minutes, and holk and drymeat porridge were set to boil. The horses had been fed, watered, and brushed. A watch was currently circling the camp, bows at the ready to bring down intruders or game. Waterskins had been filled, breastplates loosened, muscles ma.s.saged, and brandy pa.s.sed from hand to hand. Even the captives had been seen to. Jack"s wound had been tended, Nabber had been given herb tea for his cold, all their bindings had been loosened, and they had been retied, with care, to three separate trees. Later there would be food.
Tawl had watched all the activity with a certain admiration. These men worked well together. They carried out their various jobs with little need for orders. They were efficient, but not unkind, and relied upon each other heavily. Tawl recognized just two of them. Andris, who seemed to be second-in-command, had been a circle below him at Valdis, and Borlin, who was one of the four marksmen and the oldest knight in the group, had first taught him how to use a bow.
It was Borlin who walked toward them now: heavyset, short for a knight, with arms as thick as his thighs, and the grin of an old campaigner stretching his blue-veined face.
He waggled a bow-callused finger. "No talking between the prisoners. You know that, Tawl."
"I was just testing your memory, Borlin. After all, it"s got to be thirty years since you learnt that rule."
"You calling me old, boy?"
"I"m not calling you a spring chicken."
The sound of Borlin"s laughter brought back vivid memories for Tawl. The low, gurgling laugh had been something of a phenomenon at Valdis. People used to say it sounded like a barrel full of rocks rolling down a hill.
"Got yourself in a bit of a mess, haven"t you, Tawl?" he said. "Word is you murdered Catherine of Bren."
"Word is the knights stood by and watched women and children being slaughtered in Halcus."
Borlin"s face hardened in an instant. "You weren"t in Halcus, Tawl."
"No, but a friend of mine was-a good man who couldn"t bear it any longer. He headed south and took a boat to Leiss."
"A deserter."
"No," Tawl shook his head. "Not a deserter. A man who remembers what Valdis once stood for."
Borlin turned and began to walk away.
"Is that how you manage to live with yourself, Borlin?" Tawl shouted after him. "You just turn the other cheek?" Tawl"s chest strained against the bindings. He was shaking, and behind his back his hands were balled into fists. A handful of the knights were staring at him.
"Why did you say all that?" whispered Jack.
"Because it needs to be said. These are good men following a bad leader, and in their hearts they know it. But no one dares speak it out loud." Tawl"s thoughts turned to Gravia. Perhaps he shouldn"t have sailed to Leiss: the knights would have listened to him. He wasn"t an outcast and a suspected murderer.
"Tyren can"t be the only one to blame," Jack said. "He must have found knights willing to carry out his orders." Tawl shook his head. "You don"t understand. The knights are sworn to obey Tyren. It"s not a matter of which knights are good and which are bad. They don"t have a choice. Disobey Tyren and they break their oath. Most knights would rather die than do that." Try as he might, Tawl could not keep the bitterness out of his voice as he spoke. He had broken his own oath in front of the entire city of Bren.
Jack gave him a long, appraising look, and then said, "The knight who cut me from the horse said that Kylock"s forces were on the move again. They"re heading to Ness." Tawl exhaled softly. Jack was right: it was a good time to change the subject. With an effort, he switched his mind to the topic of Kylock. "He"s wasted no time."
"We can"t either. We"ve got to escape-"
"No." Before Jack had finished speaking, the word was out. "There"s no need to escape just yet. We"re heading north. The knights are setting a good pace. We can afford to bide our time for a few days."
Jack flashed him a hard look. "What are you up to, Tawl? Why didn"t you want me to do anything in the field?"
"I don"t want you using sorcery on these men, Jack. They don"t deserve it."
"Neither did the seers."
Tawl slumped against the tree trunk. There was no possible reply. Jack was focused on what he had to do, and that was the way it should be. But there was something else here, something that had nothing to do with Jack but everything to do with him. He was Tawl, Knight of Valdis, and no amount of vows, denials, or dishonor could change it. The circles would be with him for life.
Tyren was forcing knights into making a terrible choice: stay in the knighthood and be used as Kylock"s mercenaries, or desert like cowards in a cloud of secrecy and shame. To men who prized honor and loyalty above anything else, it was a hard decision to make. They were d.a.m.ned either way. Tawl watched the knights gathering around the campfire. They were settling down, pouring cups of holk, exchanging jokes, rolling out their bedrolls for the night. One man was humming a tune, another was mending his leathers. Good men following a bad leader.
"Andris!" shouted Tawl toward the fair-haired man who was busy stripping branches for the fire. "Come over here and loosen my bindings."
It was time someone gave these men another choice.
Twenty-seven.
It was early morning, an hour or two before dawn, and Mistress Greal was up and about doing a discreet spot of scavenging.
The n.o.bles" quarters in the east wing of the palace were her looting ground. A dark and chilly place. A closed-door, silk-carpeted, rat-rustling sort of place, where fortunes lay around for the taking.
King Kylock-Borc bless his dark little soul was having so many of the old n.o.bles impaled, beheaded, and poisoned that it was impossible to keep track of the deaths. Unless one kept a little notebook, of course. Mistress Greal patted her bony bodice, where a softly bound book served to cushion her carca.s.s. "Keep records, " her father always said, "you never know when they might come in handy. "
Death was a great liberator of wealth. And messy, furtive a.s.sa.s.sinations made that wealth much easier to purloin. A lot of times wives couldn"t be sure that their husbands were dead-one beheaded corpse floating belly-up on a lake looks much like another. When there was no body to speak of, children preferred to believe that their fathers were imprisoned, not dead, and when all one had to go on was a few bloodstained sheets, it was easy to a.s.sume one"s errant brother had taken yet another virgin to bed.
Rumors abounded about the a.s.sa.s.sinations, but no one knew for sure. Kylock had a talent for disfiguring the corpses. Fingers, moles, birthmarks, double chins, battlescars, and manhoods of significant size were all sliced off with surgeonlike skill. Mistress Greal had seen her king in action: Kylock was entranced at such times. Blind to the world, he saw only the bodies in front of him and the razorkeen edge of his blade. He spent hours down in the castle dungeons, eyes glazed over, knife in hand, lips moving without making a sound.
Feeling suddenly chill, Mistress Greal pulled her shawl close about her shoulders. The brief pulling action caused a sharp cramp in her damaged left wrist, and she quickly released her hold on the fabric. Ever since Maybor had broken the bones two years back in Duvitt, she had problems with certain hand and wrist movements. It was inconvenient, but not a great obstacle: luckily her money-grabbing right hand was as nimble as ever.
She soon came upon the door that marked her destination. Pushing gently upon the honey-colored wood, she let herself into the chamber of Lord Bathroy, one-time close advisor to the duke, now a faceless corpse rotting in a shallow grave. A week ago he had made the mistake of openly criticizing Kylock-blasting his decision to ma.s.sacre all of Highwall"s troops-and had been taken into custody, tortured, then killed. These days, fewer and fewer people dared to speak up against the notoriously unstable king. The candle Mistress Greal carried gave off just enough light to set the deceased lord"s silken tapestries gleaming. She smiled with satisfaction. Kylock"s madness was her gain.
Mistress Greal quickly set about piling various items into her large woolen sack. Clever as well as fast, she never took too much: a gold goblet here, an embroidered tunic there. Nothing in sufficient quant.i.ty to be missed. Lord Bathroy"s family might be unsure of his status at the moment, but once he"d been gone a month, they"d have the Church declare him dead and be round within an eyeblink to split the spoils.
Once the sack was heavy enough for her liking, Mistress Greal took her leave and headed toward the next chamber on her list.
Her dear but rather silly sister, Madame Th.o.r.n.ypurse, would sell the scavenged goods at market. Sadly, the brotheling business had taken a decided turn for the worse since the Highwall army had been defeated. The night following the battle all the troops in the city had gone on a raping spree; their blood was hot with victory, and with no enemy women to ravish, they turned instead to Bren"s wh.o.r.es. No brothel was left untouched, no streetwalker overlooked, and not so much as a copper penny to show for it! Kylock had done nothing. It was well known he had no love for women, and he simply let his men do their worst.
Things had hardly been better since. Once the men realized they could get away with their behavior, they simply took women at will. Madame Th.o.r.n.ypurse had hoped for an improvement once the siege army left for Ness, but that was two weeks ago now, and chaos still reigned in the city. If you were a member of Kylock"s army, then you were free to do as you pleased.
It didn"t help matters that the city was now rumored to be riddled with Kylock"s spies and informants. Everyone was under suspicion of dissension: guildsmen, merchants, petty gentry, and great lords. Men were so nervous of being accused of treachery against the king that they preferred to stay home at night and talk to their wives. Dull evenings were nothing compared to the threat of a public hanging.
Mistress Greal didn"t really care what happened in the outside world. The palace was her home now. She knew its every nook and cranny. All the servants feared her, the n.o.blemen regarded her with wary distaste, and Baralis and King Kylock treated her as if she didn"t exist. All of which suited Mistress Greal very nicely, indeed. She was queen bee in this domain.
There was no need for her to resort to her old plan of blackmail now. She was making an excellent living from her predawn excursions, and as long as she continued to make herself useful, she would be able to carry on. Besides, blackmailing Baralis would not be a smart move. Now that Mistress Greal knew him better, she realized that if she ever tried to use her knowledge of the duke"s murder against him, he"d kill her where she stood. The man had too much to lose.
Mistress Greal approached the second door of the morning. The door to the very rich and now very dead, exchancellor, Lord Gantry"s chambers. Why risk her life with blackmail when there were so many safer ways to make money?
Just as she was about to turn the handle, she heard a noise coming from the other side. Strange, just yesterday she had seen Crope carrying Lord Gantry"s body down to the lake. So who would be in his chamber now? His wife had apartments of her own. Putting a bat ear to the wood, Mistress Greal took a thin listening breath.
A vague mumbling could be heard. There was something familiar about the voice ... Mistress Greal sucked in the sound like a leach siphoning blood ... it was c.r.a.pe!
She flung open the door. "What are you doing in here, you hapless imbecile?"
Crope was sitting by the great lord"s desk. By his side was a bamboo cage, and on his wrist perched a bright green bird with a hook shaped beak. c.r.a.pe looked decidedly guilty. "I was feeding the birdie, miss. It must be hungry now it"s on its own."
"Well, don"t just sit there looking at me," said Mistress Greal. "Put that ugly green thing back in its cage and leave this room at once."
The bird squawked loudly.
Crope stood up and began fumbling with certain items on the desk, stuffing them into a little painted box. Mistress Greal came forward and clamped down a proprietorial hand on the box. "You leave this stuff alone, you great big robber. These things aren"t yours."
Crope became immediately agitated. "They"s mine, miss. I swears it." He pried Mistress Greal"s hand from the box and hugged it tight to his chest. "I swears it."
Mistress Greal s.n.a.t.c.hed the box from him. Crope struggled to stop her, and the box went flying into the air. The lid came off and the contents spilled over the desk. Crope issued a low whine and scrambled to gather the contents together.
No one had a faster eye than Mistress Greal. Even before c.r.a.pe made it to the box, she had taken a visual inventory of the contents: two baby teeth, a length of string, a b.u.t.terfly coc.o.o.n, a lock of hair tied with a blue ribbon, several pieces of amber, some cheap jewelry, and an ancient-looking letter sealed with wax.
Mistress Greal reached for the letter. As she did so, her eye skimmed across the jewelry. Three bra.s.s owls hung from a bra.s.s chain. Mistress Greal felt her heart drop toward her belly. Tiny onyx eyes, painted yellow beaks, the owl in the center a little bigger than the other two: it was the very necklace she had given her niece five years ago. The same one that Madame Th.o.r.n.ypurse swore Corsella was wearing the night she went missing. Mistress Greal remembered it well. She had commissioned its making, switching her order from gold to bra.s.s when the price quoted proved too high. c.r.a.pe went for the necklace.
Mistress Greal reached it first. "Where did you get this?" she demanded.
"It"s mine."
"No, it"s not. Now where did you get it?" Mistress Greal was shaking. She wrapped the chain around her fist and brandished it at Crope. "If you don"t tell me right now, I"ll let everyone know I found you thieving. They"ll lock you in a dungeon and keep you there for life."
Her words had a profound effect on Crope. He brought both hands to his head and pressed them against his ears. "No. Not lock up Crope," he mumbled, shaking his head. "Not lock him up."
Mistress Greal sniffed victory. "Yes. Lock him up and throw away the key. Lock him up so deep he"ll never see the sun again. Now, tell me where you got it."
"I didn"t steal it," screamed Crope. He was shaking his head furiously. "Master said I could have it. I asked him, I swear."
"Stop it!" shouted Mistress Greal. Crope"s wailings were fraying her nerves. "You got the necklace from Baralis-so who did he get it from?"
Crope stopped whimpering the moment the question left her lips. "Don"t know where master got it from." With that said, he pressed his lips tightly together and dropped his gaze to the floor.
"Hmm." Mistress Greal regarded c.r.a.pe for an instant. The lumbering idiot had clammed up. She knew she wouldn"t get anything else out of him. He was protecting his master. "Go on," she said. "Get going. Take your stuff with you."
Crope moved swiftly to put the last of his things in his box. The green bird was pecking its way through a fine silk curtain, and the huge servant lifted it up and returned it to its cage.
"If you want to keep coming here to feed that thing," said Mistress Greal, "you"d better not mention our little chat to your master. Understand?"
Crope nodded and left.
As soon as he was gone, Mistress Greal brought the necklace to her lips and kissed it. Tiny acid tears trickled down her cheek. c.r.a.pe had gotten this from his master, who in turn must have taken it from Corsella"s throat. In Mistress Greal"s mind that meant only one thing: Baralis had murdered her niece.
"Tyren sold my services, just the way he sold yours. Five hundred pieces of gold."
"Why should we believe you, Tawl?" said Crayne, the leader. "You forsook your oath and then you murdered Catherine of Bren."
"Who had the most to gain from Catherine"s murder?" said Jack, speaking up for the first time. "Kylock, that"s who. Tawl didn"t gain a city. Tawl didn"t gain an army. He didn"t poison Catherine, either. You all know that-poison is a coward"s weapon. And i defy anyone here to call Tawl a coward." Silence followed Jack"s words. Out of the comer of his eye, Jack spotted Tawl about to speak, and with a small movement of his hand, he waved him down. Let the knights think about what he"d said for a while.
Slowly, the men began to move away from the campfire. Their faces were hard to read in the pale dawn light. Their movements were subdued. Still no one spoke.
They had been traveling north with the knights for eight days now. Every time they stopped-for water, to rest the horses, to bring down game, or to sleep-Tawl would go to work on them, slowly chipping away at Tyren"s leadership. He had been subtle at first, asking what role each of them had played in the capture of Halcus, mentioning the decline of the knighthood"s reputation, and bringing up the growing number of deserters. At first the men had ignored him, but as the days wore on, Tawl provoked them more and more. Now, having just told them how Tyren forced Bevlin to pay for the knighthood"s services, Tawl had finally said something they couldn"t ignore.
"Give them time, Tawl," said Jack, after all the knights had walked away. "You"re not going to change their opinions that fast. They"ve spent too long following Tyren to be converted overnight."
Tawl"s blue eyes were unusually dark. "I"ve got to keep trying, Jack. I"ve got to make these men see the truth."
There was a raw edge to Tawl"s voice that made Jack sad. "Why is it so important? We don"t need these men. We could escape tonight you, me, and Nabber."
Tawl shook his head. "No, Jack. I don"t want to betray their trust. They"ve treated us well-they let us ride freely during the day and don"t bind us at night They"re men of honor. . . " he hesitated, his gaze lingering over the dying fire ". . . and I was one of them once."
That was it. Tawl was one of them. He was a knight, and having traveled with him for many months now, Jack knew just how deep his circles went.
"If I could just get them to believe what I"ve told them." Tawl was speaking more to himself than Jack. "If I could just make them see that there is another choice."
"What is that choice, Tawl?" Jack"s voice was harder than he had intended.
The knight didn"t seem to notice. He smiled, a little sadly, and said, "I"m not sure yet. I just know following Tyren isn"t right."
Looking into Tawl"s eyes, Jack saw a man who was hurt and confused. After a moment he stood up. It was an hour after first light and the knights were preparing to break camp. Leaving Tawl to dampen the fire, Jack crossed over to where Andris was saddling his horse. Of all the knights in the party Andris was the one who was the most sympathetic to them: Tawl had been a year above him at Valdis, and Jack got the impression that Andris had once looked up to the older knight.
"It"s getting colder all the time," said Jack, stroking Andris" horse. "I saw snow on the far hills yesterday."