“I’ll grant you that I’m drunk, Tarja,” he conceded. “But as for thinking straight, I’ve never been surer. Shall we pay her Highness a visit?”
“It’s the middle of the night.”
“All the more reason to wake her up. Her Royal Sereneness tried to kill my uncle and she allied herself with the Kariens. She sent her men to be slaughtered and then fled the scene of her crime like a cur in the night. I intend to rattle that bitch until her teeth come loose.”
Ignoring Tarja’s pleas for reason, Damin took the crumbling stairs to the chambers so recently vacated by Joyhinia, two at a time. Voices filtered up to him, as someone entered the hall at a run. Damin ignored them, his eyes focused, (as much as they could focus in his present state), on the door at the end of the landing, guarded by two red-coated Defenders. He had no clear idea what he would say to Her Serene Highness, but he was going to say something, by the gods!
“Damin!”
Tarja’s voice held an edge of urgency that made him pause just before he reached the door. He leaned over the balustrade and looked down into the torchlit hall.
“Forget the princess! The Fardohnyans have surrendered!”
Sobriety returned quickly as the cold night air caught Damin unawares. The camp surrounding the Keep was surprisingly busy, considering the lateness of the hour. Men normally well abed by now were sitting in small groups discussing the battle, dissecting its every nuance with varying degrees of expertise, depending on how much ale they had consumed. Morale in the camp was high. Nobody had expected to weather the first attack with so few casualties. Laughter and the off-tune baritone of men singing victory songs filled the air. Fires blazed with little thought to the fuel they were consuming. Thunder rattled in the distance and a light rain had fallen while he was in the Keep, dampening the dusty ground. Soon enough, these men would be forced to take shelter. There would be no frost tonight with this cloud cover, but if it got much colder it would snow, which should slow the Kariens down somewhat.
This morning’s battle had been a desperate attempt to break the Medalonian defences before winter set in. Damin was rather proud of himself for working that out. Maybe he wasn’t as drunk as he thought.
The young man in command of the Fardohnyans was a Second Lanceman named Filip. He wore an expression of defeat along with his battle-stained uniform. His eyes were dull, and his exhaustion seemed to be warring with an emotion that it took Damin a little time to identify: self-loathing. The thirty or so Fardohnyans stood in a loose group, surrounded by Defenders, their torches hissing as the occasional tardy raindrop vanished into the flames.
“Lord Wolfblade.” The Fardohnyan bowed low, obviously relieved to see someone who might speak his language. The Defenders who had taken their surrender had disarmed the men behind him. A few were wounded and four lay on the wet ground, too seriously injured to stand. Tarja, who always seemed much better organised when it came to these things, ordered the wounded removed to the Infirmary Tent and the sleek Fardohnyan steeds moved to the corrals, leaving Damin to deal with the prisoners.
“I’ve seen many a strange sight in my time, Lanceman,” he said in the young man’s native tongue, “but Fardohnyans surrendering is not among them.”
The lad’s expression clouded. Surrender did not sit well with him. “We were ordered to surrender, my Lord.”
“What did he say?” Tarja asked, coming to stand beside him.
“He says they were ordered to surrender.”
“By whom?”
“Who ordered you to surrender?” he asked in Fardohnyan.
Filip hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at the men behind him before answering, rather reluctantly. “Princess Adrina, my Lord.”
Tarja did not need that translated. “Ask him why.”
Damin turned to Tarja impatiently. “You don’t think I might have thought to ask that by myself?”
“Sorry.”
“Did her Highness give a reason?”
The Fardohnyan shrugged. “She was beside herself with grief, my Lord. She said she did not want any more Fardohnyan blood shed for Karien.”
“Pity she didn’t decide that
“Grief for whom?” Tarja asked, his sobriety allowing more clarity of thought than Damin was capable of.
“Captain Tristan, my Lord,” Filip replied when Damin translated the question. “The captain was the princess’s half-brother. They were very close.”
“And where is her Highness now?” He was curious to discover if this surrender was part of a plan, or if the young soldier was an innocent pawn in some devious game that Adrina was playing. Damin desperately wished his head was clearer.
“With her husband, of course!” Damin would have known he was lying, even if Adrina was not currently being held in the Keep behind them.
“I see.” He turned to Tarja questioningly. “What do you want to do with them?”
“That’ll be up to Jenga. For now, I suggest we find some place to hold them until morning.” Thunder rumbled louder as another storm rolled in. Tarja glanced up at the sky with a frown. “Put them in the Keep. They’ll be out of the rain, at least. We can make more permanent arrangements tomorrow.”
Tarja began issuing orders to his men. Damin watched them being herded toward the Keep, wondering about Adrina’s paradoxical behaviour. The woman had cold-bloodedly plotted the murder of the Hythrun High Prince, yet she’d ordered the remainder of her troops to surrender, rather than see them come to harm. Suddenly he was very glad that he had not made it to the princess’s door.
He had a feeling the only way to face Her Serene Highness, Adrina of Fardohnya, and survive, was stone cold sober.
Chapter 34
Although discovery by the Medalonians had been a risk, Adrina had not really expected it, and was therefore unprepared for her sudden change of circumstances.
For two days, she paced her prison cell impatiently, waiting for something to happen. Meals were delivered regularly by silent, grim-looking Defenders, but they refused to answer her questions. A wan, desperate smile – the precursor to establishing a rapport with her guards – was a wasted effort. Each shift was made up of different men entirely, and once they had left she never saw them again. Nor was Tamylan allowed to leave the chamber, although the slave did not seem nearly as bothered by captivity as her mistress. The waiting began to wear on Adrina’s nerves, and she found herself reassessing the intelligence of her captors. They were smarter than she had given them credit for.
The only advantage her isolation provided was the chance to consolidate her plans to deal with the Medalonians. Her first problem, she acknowledged readily, was Damin Wolfblade. She had always imagined him to be something of a dandy, powdered and spoilt, as used to having his every whim indulged as his uncle was. She had known he was a Warlord, of course, but she had pictured him as a figurehead. A gloriously armoured fop who sat astride his decorative stallion while others did the work for him. That assessment had been wildly inaccurate. He was a damn sight more ambitious than his uncle, and all together too certain of his place in the world. But he was still a man, she reminded herself, and a Wolfblade at that. The family was too inherently degenerate for the differences to be more than skin deep.
Tarja Tenragan, on the other hand, had been a pleasant surprise. Dark-haired, handsome and remarkably well mannered, his worst fault, she decided, was his attitude to poor Mikel. He obviously commanded a great deal
