master.’
‘War is a shout against futility, hostage, but its echo never lasts long.’
She considered his words, and shivered against their chilling touch.
‘There will be wounded animals,’ said Venth.
‘Of course. Let us head down then.’
The horse master led the way down the ladder. Sandalath followed. As she joined him on the landing below she drew close to the locked door. A moment later she gasped. ‘Venth!’
‘Hostage?’
‘Someone paces behind this!’
He came close. Then he shook his head. ‘I hear nothing.’
‘No,’ she replied. ‘Not now. But when I first came close — I heard footsteps. Heavy, shuffling.’
Venth hesitated, and then he reached for the latch. He tried lifting it and failed. Stepping back he shrugged. ‘I am sorry, hostage. Perhaps it was your imagination. Heavy, you say? Then not the girls.’
She thought back. ‘No,’ she said. ‘They were heavy.’
‘Only Lord Draconus possesses the key to this chamber, hostage. There was dust on the latch, and this marks the only entrance — you can see as much. The room’s walls here are a single layer of stone, and the chamber beneath this one has no trap in the ceiling. And no windows, of course.’
‘I know, horse master. Yes, perhaps I imagined it. Mother always said I was prone to such fancies. Come, let us continue on. I have no liking for this place.’
Drifting back from some timeless abyss, she opened her eyes.
A Houseblade was above her, his seamed face hovering close. She saw him lift a hand and then set its palm against her forehead. It was warm but rough with calluses. She should have despised that touch, but she couldn’t. Above the man, thin clouds were stretched across the sky.
‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. ‘I am Captain Ivis. Your companions have… departed. They left to us their wounded. I did not imagine they would find defeat as bitter as they did, to so abandon you.’ He glanced away briefly, eyes squinting, and then looked down at her again. ‘You were knocked unconscious, but seem otherwise uninjured. We have gathered up a few Bordersword horses. When you feel able, we will send you back to your people. But I need to know — why did you attack us?’
The question seemed absurd, too absurd to even answer.
The captain scowled. ‘What is your name?’
She contemplated refusing to answer, but there seemed to be no point in that. ‘Lahanis.’
‘Well, you’re young. Too young for this to be your war.’
‘It was mine!’ she hissed, reaching up and pushing his hand from her brow. ‘You attacked our villages, slaughtered everyone! We tracked you back — we hunted you down!’
‘Lahanis, we did no such thing.’ He studied her for a moment, and then cursed under his breath and turned to someone she couldn’t see. ‘Those Legion companies. I should have chased them off. I should have demanded to know why they camped a stone’s throw from the keep.’
‘We were made to take the blame for that slaughter, sir?’
‘Corporal, I know you sharpened up on the night of the murders, so where does your brain go when you’re in my company?’
‘I wish I knew, sir.’
Ivis met Lahanis’s eyes. ‘Listen to me. You were deceived. If I had ridden out to parley with your commanders-’
‘You would have been cut down before you got out a single word,’ she said. ‘We weren’t interested in talking.’
‘So your standard told me,’ Ivis said. ‘Stupid!’
She flinched at that.
‘Not you,’ he said. ‘Lahanis, listen. Ride to your kin, to the survivors. You say you tracked us back here. Is that true, or did you backtrack?’
‘We backtracked, sir. We were even hoping we’d reach the keep before you returned from the last village you burned.’
‘Abyss below, who was commanding you?’
She shook her head. ‘No one, really. Traj, I suppose. He shouted the loudest. Maybe Rint.’
‘Rint?’ Ivis suddenly straightened, looking round. ‘Venth!’ he shouted. ‘Over here on the double!’
Lahanis struggled to sit up. She was lying on a cot in the keep’s compound. There were other wounded, but with blankets swaddling them there was no way to tell if they were Borderswords or Houseblades — she recognized none of the faces she could see. The back of her skull was tender; her neck was stiff and throbbing with pain.
A third man arrived. ‘Captain? I have injured horses-’
‘What were the names of the Borderswords who rode with Lord Draconus?’
The man blinked. ‘Sir? Well, I can’t remember, to be honest.’
Hands to the sides of her head, Lahanis spoke. ‘Rint, Feren, Ville and Galak. They all came back to us. They said your lord sent them home.’
‘Why? When?’
Lahanis shrugged. ‘Not long. I don’t know why.’
Ivis stood, rubbing at the back of his neck, his gaze on the gates.
‘Sir, the horses-’
‘Go on, horse master. Corporal Yalad.’
‘Sir?’
‘Attend to Lahanis here, and select a horse for her to ride. I am going to my office to pen a missive — she doesn’t leave until I return with it. Lahanis, will you at least bear my message to your kin?’
She nodded.
‘Do you believe me, then?’
‘I was in one of the villages,’ she said. ‘I saw your standards. But no soldier was armoured the way yours are, and none rode warhorses, or used those curved swords. Sir, you didn’t kill us.’
For a moment it seemed that the man was about to cry. ‘I have now,’ he said, turning away. He walked off, his shoulders hunched, his steps uncertain.
The young corporal squatted down beside her. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. ‘Thirsty?’
‘Just get that horse,’ she said.
But he did not move. ‘Captain’s a little… measured, when it comes to scribing. There is time, Bordersword. So?’
She shrugged. ‘Water, then.’ As he headed off she closed her eyes. It was me they all listened to. I saw the standards. We could all read the trail. But it was me. You didn’t kill us, captain. I did.
They had disarmed her — even her eating knife was missing from its thin leather sheath. If she had such a weapon within reach, she would take her own life.
But no. I will deliver the captain’s message. Then, before my kin, I will open my throat. I will give them my name to curse. She saw the corporal returning with a waterskin. Hungry? Thirsty? Scratch behind the ear? As soon as he arrived, she reached out and took the skin from him. ‘Now get me that horse.’
Seven heavily burdened wagons, each one drawn by a brace of oxen, had begun their journey at the Hust Forge, travelling southward to the borderlands where awaited the Hust Legion encampment. Their pace was slow, stalled at times when an axle split or a wheel stripped its rim on the rough cobbles of the road.
Bearing his lord’s command calling the Hust to war, Galar Baras caught up with the train half a day out from the camp. He had ridden hard and his mount was weary, and after the haunting solitude of his journey thus far he welcomed the company of drovers, wagon masters, carpenters, smiths, cooks and guards, many of whom he knew from the Forge settlement where he had been born and then raised. For all that, it was a muted welcome. News of the slaughter at the wedding hung like a pall over everyone. For many, he knew, it was not so much the sudden deaths of Lord Jaen and his daughter that sobered the crew and made conversations infrequent and hushed; rather, it was what the killings portended.
