to this place. I have to get out...once I make it to the camp, the fact that I'm elven should keep me safe enough until I can get to my father.'
'Then what?' Zed asked.
'Then I try and talk to him,' Valyn said, a lot more calmly and confidently than he felt.
Zed scratched his head. 'What if he doesn't want to talk? What are you going to do then? Just walk out? I don't know, Valyn; I don't think he's likely to let you.'
'I...think he's likely to underestimate me, Zed.' Valyn wondered how much to tell the young wizard. 'I've got something of his that should give me an edge with him. I think I can neutralize him. If I can't talk reason to him.'
Zed stared at Valyn for a long time before replying. 'So tell me, just for curiosity's sake: If Dyran pulled out all the tricks, brought the walls down, and found you here, what would he do to you?'
'Probably kill me,' Valyn replied as nonchalantly as he could.
'And if Dyran manages to bring in all the elven lords on the Council?'
'He'll be able to pull out every bit of power all the High Lords can muster, stored and internal, and tumble the walls.'
'And...how likely is that?' Zed asked carefully.
'More so with every day,' Valyn told him honestly. 'The longer this goes on, the greater a menace we seem, the more likely it is. They can afford to keep throwing fighters at you until the last of them can climb the walls on the bodies piled underneath. They can wear you down with magic, then pull something unexpected. They can block your thieving, and starve you out.'
Zed chewed on his lower lip for a moment, and seemed to come to a decision. 'Come on,' he said. 'Let me show you the back way out.'
The 'back way' was a tiny trapdoor letting out on a shaft that in turn led to a tunnel that came out somewhere on the valley bottom. Presumably behind the enemy lines. The shaft was a sheer, circular drop of several stories, too wide for someone to brace himself against and inch upwards. Valyn made a light and floated it down to the bottom, and it seemed very far indeed. The only way to use the shaft was to climb down a rope...and there was one, just inside the door, attached to a ring sunken into the stone. Valyn looked at the drop, and at the rope, and sighed.
'I didn't say it was easy,' Zed told him. 'I just said it was the back door. You could always ask one of the better mages to transport you into the camp.'
'No thank you,' Valyn replied, as he rigged the rope around his waist for rappelling. 'I need to get in quietly; I don't want to announce myself.'
He leaned backwards over the long drop and tested the rope. It seemed firm enough.
'I'll wait for you to get down,' Zed said quietly. 'I have to pull the rope up when you're done.' Unspoken was the obvious: He would not need the rope to return. He would either be a prisoner, or he would be the go-between in a truce negotiation.
Valyn glanced down one more time. It was a
'Well, I guess I'd better get this over with,' he said. And, at the strange and worried look Zed gave him, he added, 'Don't worry, I intend to be the winner in this. In fact, I intend to split a bottle of victory wine with you!'
He smiled at Zed, and stepped backwards off the edge.
The filth and misery of the camp were unbelievable. The stench alone was enough to make Valyn's stomach churn. And the plight of Dyran's slaves almost made him turn and run.
Here, among the fighters that were supposed to be earning his victory, Dyran's single-minded obsession with wiping out his enemy, the halfbloods, was even more evident.
The camp looked as if disaster had already struck, and there was no one left to set things right afterwards. No one was setting up the tents that had been knocked down by the storm. No one was cleaning the flooded jakes-pits, which had overflowed into the camp. Wounded fighters had dragged themselves into camp, but no one was tending them. Warriors too sick to fight or wounded previously lay in what little shelter they or friends had managed to contrive before Dyran ordered the current attack. Many of the wounded and ill were dying, some were already dead. No one took the bodies away.
Valyn held a handkerchief over his nose and pretended an aloof indifference to the misery around him. He picked his way through the wreckage of the camp, studiously ignoring anything not in his immediate path. No elven lord would have cared that humans were lying and dying in their own filth...except that if they were dying
Valyn wondered momentarily where the support crews for the fighters were, then decided, given the attrition rate on the walls, the support crews had probably been thrown into armor and out onto the field with the rest.
Dyran's tent was easy to spot; it was one of the few still standing, intact, and untouched by the storm. It had been pitched at the top of the slope opposite the wizards' fortress, standing level with the stone edifice, a gold- and-scarlet pavilion that had made an irresistible target. Not that it mattered; nothing the wizards or the dragons had thrown at it had touched it. Valyn could hardly believe his luck when he was able to stroll right up the stony slope to it without being stopped by anyone who knew him. It occurred to him at that point that perhaps the halfbloods had missed an excellent chance to assassinate Dyran...all anyone would have had to do was to put on an illusion of fullblood...
No, that wouldn't work; there was probably an illusion-dispelling barrier at the edge of the camp. Father might be obsessed, but he wasn't stupid.
There were two guards at the tent entrance. Both of them Valyn recognized, and he braced himself. One of them knew him.
'Master Valyn?' he said-He was calm. Not surprised to see the Lord's son. Not as if the guard knew something... Hmm. It must not be general knowledge that the heir had 'vanished.'
'I'll just wait for my father inside, if I may,' he replied, just as calmly, as if he strolled across a battlefield every day to see his father.
'Certainly, Master Valyn,' the human replied promptly, and held open the tent-flap for him.
Valyn ducked inside; when his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he was somehow not surprised to discover that the tent was furnished as sparsely as the manor was sybaritic.
There was nothing to distract Dyran from his obsession. Out here, he was the Warrior, the Champion of the Clans.
The tent was divided into two sections by a screen; private quarters, and public. In the public area were the portable desk and chair, a map table, stands for arms and armor, and chests for documents. In the private area was a bed, another chair, trunks of clothing, two storage cabinets, and nothing else.
Valyn just had time to take that much in, when footsteps outside the tent heralded the arrival of someone else.
He turned, his hand on the screen, just in time to face his father coming in through the door of the tent.
Dyran froze as the tent-flap fell back into place behind him.
'Hello, Father,' Valyn said quietly.
Dyran stared, as if he hardly recognized who it was that had greeted him. Then slowly, he pulled off his gloves, one at a time, and threw them aside. He was dressed in elaborately chased golden armor, over which was a scarlet surcoat bearing his device. He wore a sword, but no helmet, his hair confined in a braid running down his back. After a moment, he took two steps forward, and folded his arms over his chest.
'I know exactly where you've been, Valyn,' he said, with no expression whatsoever. 'I suppose it's too much to hope that you've come to your senses about these vermin.'
'I was hoping that you would say that you have come to some kind of similar decision about my friends, Father,' Valyn replied, mimicking his father's posture. 'I had hoped you would realize that this vendetta of yours is futile. We didn't begin this...'
Dyran's expression...or lack of it...did not change; only his eyes. There was a dangerous light in them, like smoldering embers...
Like the light in the eyes of a one-horn about to charge.
