Quorin.
‘A stroke of luck, your Grace,’ Diegan said. To avoid embarrassment, he allowed Lysaer the titular courtesy due his birthright. Since no honorific at all implied a labourer’s stature and thus demeaned both parties in conversation only socially acceptable between equals, other Etarran officials had followed suit. ‘To find barbarians so easily, and they, overtaken unaware.’
Stolid on his horse as a figurehead, Gnudsog scowled his annoyance. ‘Clan scouts are never so careless!’
‘Elders, surely,’ Lysaer agreed. His clear gaze swung toward the scout. ‘But children? What would you guess were their ages?’
The answer held no hesitation: the largest had looked no more than twelve.
‘Rat’s get all, and bad cess to them.’ Gnudsog slapped a fly that landed, but had no chance to bite his horse. ‘They’ll know every inch of this country, Deshir’s scouts. Likely as not, they’re part of a camp that’s laid in an ambush farther on.’
‘Against an army?’ Diegan grinned, the gilt scrollwork on his helmet and the plumes on his bridle and harness the fashion of the daredevil gallant. ‘The odds would hardly be sporting.’
‘Barbarians don’t play at odds,’ came a querulous interruption from the sidelines. ‘In these parts, they prefer pits lined with sharpened stakes and spring-traps that rip out a man’s guts, or tear the axles off wagons.’
Smart in a black and white surcoat over chain-mail dulled with grease and years of polishing, Pesquil rode up to determine the cause of the delay. At the head of the column, he jerked short his brush-scarred gelding that he liked best for its toughness. ‘So you chase those children thinking to find an encampment of scouts you can surprise, eh? Well, try that. Then find yourselves bloody.’
Lysaer regarded the dip of the hills that unfolded in curves toward the ford. Chilly in courtesy he said, ‘Would you send your ten-year-old son out as gambit before the weapons of a war host?’
‘Perhaps. If the stakes were arranged in my favour.’ Sallow, pockscarred and quick with nervous energy, Pesquil shrugged. ‘For sure, I’ve known clanborn chits who’d dangle out their newborns if they thought any gain could be wrung from it. The slow plan we follow is safest.’
But Diegan was ill-pleased to spend a summer swatting insects and enduring rough camp in the open when a bolder victory might be possible. ‘Send in a small troop of light riders,’ he ordered Gnudsog. ‘See where the children flee and let the army follow if it’s safe.’
Pesquil reined around so hard his mount grunted in pain from the bit. ‘Fools,’ he muttered. ‘Idiots.’ And he spurred to a canter back through the lines to his headhunters.
Gnudsog watched him go, his huge hands crossed at his saddle pommel. Then his eyes, black as rivets, swung to Lysaer. ‘What do you think, prince?’ From his lips, the title implied insult.
Lysaer raised his head in genteel challenge. ‘Send in your riders,’ he suggested. ‘If a trap exists, then spring it with fewest losses.’
‘You don’t think it’s a trap.’ Deigan soothed his restive destrier. Then, his regard in speculation upon Lysaer, he raised a gauntlet chased in glittering gold to signal the columns to rest at ease. ‘Why?’
‘Because I saw Arithon in a back alley with a band of knacker’s conscripts once when he didn’t think he was being watched.’ Fair-skinned as an ice figure in the early sunlight, the prince stroked the black-handled sword newly forged for his use in the field. Rumour held that the blade had been engraved with Arithon’s name in reverse runes, which may have been at the armourer’s insistence, for shaping a blade to kill a sorcerer. Lysaer did not look superstitious or afraid, but only pragmatic as he said, ‘The Shadow Master has few scruples. But I know him well enough to hedge that he’d sanction no ambush that involved any use of small children.’
At this, even Gnudsog reconsidered. ‘You could be right.’ Supporting evidence lay with the arrangements for the escape of the knacker’s brats. Arithon’s bribes had been lavish enough that hard measures had been needed to pry loose the names of which parties had treated with him. Etarra’s field captain scraped an itch underneath his right bracer. ‘Let’s prove Pesquil a sissy.’
Forty riders were dispatched to track the children. From the rear of the column, Pesquil watched them go, his narrow lips clamped in disdain. ‘Those lordly fops Gnudsog has to nursemaid didn’t listen. We’ll keep our distance, then.’
The mounted lieutenant at his elbow stopped fingering the scalplocks that fringed his saddle, and widened seamed eyes at his commander. ‘They’re going in with the army, you think? And you’d send our league riding after?’
‘Any trap laid by Deshans is bound to be placed deep in Strakewood.’ Head cocked in consideration, Pesquil picked his teeth with a fingernail. ‘We’ll go in, yes.’ He clipped out a breathy laugh. ‘With two whole divisions of garrison troops ahead, and another pair blundering on each flank, whatever surprise the barbarians fixed’ll be sprung before we try the trail. Even Steiven’s dirty tactics can’t murder ten thousand troops without exposure. We’ll win our bounties in the mop up.’
‘I hope your score’s well squared with Daelion Fatemaster.’ The lieutenant adjusted studded reins in laconic resignation. ‘They say we fight a sorcerer who weaves darkness. For myself, Sithaer, I’d always planned I’d die rich.’
As Etarra’s two score light riders crested the rise above the ford, six young boys snatched up javelins and bolted like hares for the forest. Whether they had defied their parents to play in the open, or whether they had been posted in plain view for bait became moot as the riders spurred their mounts and charged after them. They were quarry, and fear for their lives drove their flight. Flat out across dew-tracked greensward, enemies with drawn blades swept down at their heels. The boys made straight course for shelter, vaulting the switched back curves of marshy streamlets on the butts of their toy wooden weapons.
They were small and light, and shod in deerhide that made little mark on the hummocks, while the steel- rimmed hooves of the horses bit deep through the soft turf and sank. The riders were forced to take a zigzagging course over firm ground, or tear their mounts’ tendons in the bog. They shouted and whipped on their horses and brandished sabres in a show of blood-thirsty frustration, their orders plain. The clan boys were to be routed, not killed. Pursuit must hound them into Strakewood until they tired, then slacken off and appear to give up. Trackers would take over from there. The youngsters would be followed in stealth back to their parents’ encampment; a sensible plan, which pleased the garrison’s light horsemen, carefully chosen as fathers who might condone the slayings of headhunters, but who had little inclination themselves for the horror of skewering youngsters.
Hardbitten to bitterness by the atrocities of his profession, Gnudsog was not given to foolish chances.
His forty light riders crashed into the hazels and saplings that edged the forest just seconds behind the last
