‘Scouting the trail ahead, milady.’
She grunted. ‘He’ll probably take us to the nearest squirrel hole.’
‘Ribs knows what we’re about.’
‘How?’
They were outside now and the door was pushed shut behind them. She heard the thump of the bars falling back into place.
At her question, Rancept shrugged. ‘I wander on occasion.’
‘The hills?’
‘If we need to talk to the Deniers. It’s important to Lady Hish that there’s no misunderstandings.’
‘Deniers? Bandits, you mean.’
‘It’s a hard scrape living in these hills, milady. There’s road taxes, if you like.’
‘Extortion.’
‘And Lady Hish’s tithe on travellers? Extortion’s a big word. It’s only extortion when someone else is doing it.’
They were making their way down the rough-hewn steps. The heavy clouds that had come in with dusk were now breaking up, stars showing through here and there. The temperature was fast dropping.
‘Tulla Hold was granted this land by royal charter,’ said Sukul. ‘A tithe is legal and necessary. Robbing people at the roadside isn’t. But now you’re hinting that Lady Hish had an arrangement with those thieves.’
Ribs was waiting at the middle landing, another half-dozen steps down. When Rancept and Sukul reached the dog, the animal suddenly left the descent, instead cutting across the boulders of the scree to the left of the stairs.
‘As I said,’ Sukul noted. ‘Some rock rat’s got Ribs hungry for more worms.’
But Rancept had halted. ‘We’re not taking the road, milady. There’s a track running above it on this side. It’s well hidden and don’t start up for a ways. Follow me.’
‘What kind of arrangement?’ Sukul asked as they clambered over the boulders.
‘Before they started working the mines,’ Rancept said, once more wheezing, ‘they made cheese from the goats they kept. And fine, soft leather, too. But more important, they kept an eye on the traffic. There’s a track some travellers take that avoids Tulla Hold.’
‘Cheating the tithe? That’s pathetic.’
‘Sometimes it’s that. Sometimes it’s just people who don’t want to be seen.’
‘What kind of people?’
Beyond the boulders, Ribs vanished between two sheer outcrops.
‘We’re at the trail now,’ Rancept said. ‘Time for the talking to end. Night carries voices, and the hills can channel sounds a long way. If you need my attention, just tap my shoulder. Otherwise, we move quietly now.’
‘This is ridiculous — I can still see the keep’s light from here.’
‘If we’re going to argue, milady, we can turn round right now. But I’ll tell you this. Look at Ribs.’
The animal had reappeared and was seated just ahead. ‘What about him?’ Sukul asked.
‘Strangers in the hills, milady. That’s what Ribs is telling us.’
To her eyes the animal looked no different from any other time she’d seen it. There was no way to tell where it was looking with those crossed eyes. But as Rancept moved forward, the dog wheeled and raced up the trail again. Tugging tight her slightly oversized gloves, she followed.
For all his size, the castellan moved quietly, not once glancing back to see if she kept pace. This latter detail irritated her and she wanted to hiss at him, since she was getting tired and the trail seemed to go on for ever. Her boots pinched her feet; her nose was running and she’d begun using the back of one hand to wipe at it, and that was staining the fine leather of the glove. Even more annoying, there was nothing bold in this venture. She’d wanted a dozen well-armoured and grim-faced riders at her back, each one ready to give up his or her life at her word. She’d wanted the thunder of horse hoofs and the clatter of iron and wooden scabbards.
Beneath all of this was the conviction that an innocent little boy was lying dead somewhere ahead of them, killed for no good reason but the silence his death would ensure. She’d taken enough hints from Hish Tulla that there was trouble in the realm. The whole thing seemed ridiculous. Peace had been won, but she knew that the hunger for fighting was not yet done with. It was never done with, and there were people in the world who wanted nothing else, since lawlessness was their nature.
Sukul did not have to look far to see such people; she counted her sisters among them. They delighted in all manner of lusts, and the wilder their environs the more base their desires. If she was honest with herself, there was something of that in her as well. But the reality — including this cold, night-shrouded ordeal — was proving more crass than what the imagination offered in all those idle moments when boredom was a shout inside the skull.
She’d made promises to that boy, to that lost bastard of the Korlas line. They seemed both empty and wasted, and the rush of secrecy she’d felt, looking upon his wide, innocent eyes, was now a source of guilt. She’d played at being grown-up, but it had been a childish game none the less. What if they’d tortured Orfantal? Was Hish Tulla now in danger?
Half the night was gone, and still they padded along. All Sukul wanted to do now was stop, rest, even sleep.
The swirl of stars had spun half round when she collided with Rancept’s back — she’d not been looking ahead, eyes instead on those now-dusty boots that were torturing her feet. Grunting at the collision, she stumbled back, but a hand snapped out to right her, and then that hand drew her close.
She smelled the lanolin of the thick sheepskin jacket he was wearing, and somehow the familiarity of it steadied her.
He leaned down. ‘Riders ahead,’ he said in a whisper.
Sukul looked past him, but Ribs was nowhere in sight.
‘No questions,’ he continued as she started to speak, and his other hand pressed against her mouth, but just briefly — before panic could take her. ‘We wait for Ribs.’
Bandits had carved out numerous hidden trails through these hills, and Risp led her dozen soldiers along one of them that would bring them out on to the road close to where they’d seen the smoke. The old Denier camps they’d come across were abandoned, at least a season old, but she knew the cause of that: the Hust Forge’s demand for ore had grown prodigious of late, for reasons not one of Hunn Raal’s spies could glean. In any case, banditry had been given up and now those miners were growing wealthy with Hust coin.
Thoughts of the Hust Legion — perhaps soon to be bolstered by new recruits — left her disquieted. Every cry for peace was echoed by the beating of iron into blades. No one was fooled unless they willed it upon themselves. Civil war was coming. Hunn Raal meant it to be short; necessarily bloody, true enough, but short.
Urusander escorted to Kharkanas by his triumphant Legion, every enemy of the realm dispensed with and feeding the weeds; an end to the divisiveness and all these private armies; a grand marriage to bind the military and the faith: this was the proper path awaiting them. The Hust Forge would fall under the command of Urusander’s Legion, and that cursed Hust Legion would be gone, disbanded, their dreadful weapons melted down into slag. Houseblades would be reduced to a modest family and estate guard, with prohibitions against re-arming. The Borderswords and the Wardens of the Outer Reach would be folded into the Legion, under Osserc’s command. In this way, peace would be won.
The best solutions were the simple ones. Besides, she had liked the look of the Wardens of the Outer Reach, and had thoughts of commanding them at some point. Her first order would be the burning down of Glimmer Fate, followed by the killing of the naked wolves and whatever other terrible beasts dwelt in those black grasses. They could then face the Vitr directly, and meet its challenge from a position of strength. If an invasion from that sea was forthcoming, she would stand ready for it upon its very shore.
Urusander placed much value in merit; he cared not if the blood was low or highborn among his officers. That was why the nobles hated him so. Calat Hustain was highborn and this alone granted him the privilege and power of command — and Risp had well seen the result of that: the Wardens were little more than a rabble, devoid of discipline and far too respectful of eccentricity among the ranks. She would change all of that.
Assuming any survived the purge.
They emerged from a narrow, choked avenue between crags, moving on to a level clearing partly encircled by
