horse whinnied when it felt some of the stray water splash off the man's face and onto its withers, but the well- trained animal did not move. Finally, when he had removed the last vestiges of the sticky residue from his face and hands, Letius capped the skin again and let it drop back down to hang from his saddle.
Letius turned back to watching the men on the opposite side of the glade where he had been stationed. They were oblivious to him, hard at work sawing or chopping through the trunks of the trees. Already, they had felled more than two dozen large shadowtops, which other men then trimmed, removing the trees' branches. Still other workers, assisted by teams of horses, were in the process of dragging those logs away, down the path in the direction of a nearby river, where they would be floated down to Hlath, milled into lumber, and used or sold there.
Letius yawned, feeling drowsy from both the noonday sun and the food in his belly, and he thought of dismounting and settling in a shady spot for a brief nap. He abandoned the notion, though.
Sergeant Kukras'll have me scrubbing kettles for a tenday if he finds me sleeping, the soldier thought. Tempus, I hate this wretched guard duty.
Sighing, the mercenary wheeled his horse around and began to ride along a track, away from the tree- cutting, casually guiding his mount. The trail he followed was little more than a deer run, a narrow path that wound its way through the endless stretches of tangled suth trees that clogged the forest floor. He was supposed to be watching for hostile forces sneaking through that section of the Nunwood, mercenaries hired by noble families of Hlath attempting to sabotage their rivals' lumber operations in the area. Though he didn't doubt for a moment that there were troops out there somewhere-dueling mercenary armies were just a fact of life in and around the Nunwood-he didn't see how they could possibly manage to work their way through the tangled growth in any sizeable numbers.
It didn't really matter, anyway, for like most of the armies for hire along the northeast coast of Chondath, the Iron Lion Mercenary Band regularly switched sides in the endless games of one-upmanship played out by the nobility. One month the company might be working for the Lobilyn family of Hlath, protecting their logging interests, and in the following month, when a larger sack of coin dropped into Captain Therdusple's hands, the band would most likely be serving House Lobilyn's most hated neighbors. Sometimes, when Captain Therdusple was particularly clever, he could play one side against the other, convincing each family to pay them to ruin their counterpart. With so many changes of fealty, the armies themselves seldom even fought. Most of the time, their captains met and negotiated an 'outcome' based on how much coin had changed hands and which noble houses were most likely to up the ante for favorable results.
Fools, Letius thought, laughing to himself. They waste their coin fighting. Then he sighed. But we're the bigger fools, for we waste the chance to fight, and thus waste our lives on meaningless guard duty, for the sake of that coin. No one ever wins. What's it all for?
The soldier must have been almost out of earshot when he heard the shout from back in the logging camp, for it was very faint. He hadn't realized he had ridden so far away, and cursed himself for idle musings. Finding a slightly wider spot in the trail, he spun his horse around and bolted back down the track, headed toward the logging site.
When he broke through into the glade, Letius spied a horde of men, many of them astride horses of their own, surrounding the milling cluster of loggers, who had obviously been rounded up by the newcomers. Though the strangers brandished weapons-mostly axes, crossbows, and halfspears-they seemed content to herd the workers.
Letius expected as much, and rode forward, a grin on his face. He would, of course, seek out the invading band's captain, or the most senior officer otherwise, and direct him toward his own captain, who was encamped perhaps a quarter mile back the way the invaders seemed to have come. It was as he had always done, usually with a laugh, a coarse joke about the coin squandered by foolish nobles, and a shaking of hands.
One of the enemy soldiers spotted Letius's approach and wheeled his mount about, giving a shout to his comrades to follow. He galloped toward Letius, who held his hands in the air, showing that he held no weapons. The other man, who looked to be a barbaric northerner-with a thick black mustache and twin braids of hair flying back from each temple-never slowed his approach, and half a dozen others came with him, strung out behind.
When the northerner was perhaps twenty paces away, he raised his axe menacingly. Letius's smile vanished, and he hastily fumbled for his own short sword, which was still sheathed in the scabbard on his saddle. At the same time, Letius spun his horse around, intent on rushing back into the cover of the forest. His mind awhirl in confusion and fear, the mercenary hoped that he could evade the onrushing foes in the suth tangles.
It was not to be. One of the riders charging hard toward Letius fired a crossbow, and the bolt slammed into the lone soldier's arm. The missile's tip passed completely through his bicep, embedding itself into his ribs. Letius's arm was effectively pinned to his side, and he dropped his sword in the process.
The wounded mercenary roared in pain and yanked reflexively on the reins with his good arm, drawing them back too sharply. His horse reared up, kicking its forelegs high into the air and unseating Letius. The mercenary landed on his back with a painful thump, knocking the wind from his lungs.
The northerner slowed his own horse's approach and circled around the gasping Letius, but instead of finishing the kill, the man reached out and took hold of the riderless horse's bridle. Letius looked up in fear and pain as the stranger began to lead his horse away. The casual way in which the foreigner seemed to have claimed the mount gave Letius a cold chill. He coughed and tried to speak as his body worked to regain its air, but when he began to struggle to sit up, with only one arm to aid him, a second enemy rider loomed above the downed soldier, halfspear raised high overhead.
'Wait!' Letius cried out feebly, throwing up his good arm to ward off the impending attack. 'Let us parlay!' he begged.
There was a sudden fire in Letius's belly as the halfspear jammed down, skewering him to the ground, right through his midsection. Letius gasped, falling back, his good hand closing around the shaft of the halfspear in a vain effort to pull it free. He blinked repeatedly, feeling tears welling up in his eyes, both from the burning pain in his stomach and the bewildering fear that washed through him. He just didn't understand, and his mind was having trouble recognizing that he had been wounded.
'I-' he started, trying to make sense of what had just happened. 'My captain,' he mouthed, his voice a mere croak. 'Parlay,' he whispered, feeling the pain in his belly spreading.
Tempus, it hurts. Please.
'Leave him,' the northerner said to his companions from a distance, his accent thick. 'Let the others find him like that.' Then the man leaned down from his saddle and peered at Letius. 'If you live to see your brethren again,' he said, his voice filled with contempt, 'tell them that Reth claims this section of the Nunwood for its own and that the greedy, scheming folk of Hlath, of all of Arrabar, are no longer welcome here.' Then the northerner spun his horse and, leading Letius's mount by the reins, rode away, his companions following.
Letius lay gasping, staring at the brassy blue sky overhead, clutching feebly with that one hand at the halfspear pinning him to the ground. He knew a man could linger for days with a belly wound before dying. Maybe someone would come. He prayed to Tempus they would. Flies began to swarm around him in the sweltering heat of the day.
'But why?' Lobra Pharaboldi asked with a choking sob from behind a black linen handkerchief she held delicately to her mouth. Occasionally, she dabbed it at her intensely dark eyes, red-rimmed and glistening with tears. The color of the fine cloth matched the heavy black velvet dress she wore, a cumbersome funereal outfit that made her uncommonly porcelain skin glow like summer moonlight, even though there was little enough illumination in the chamber at the moment.
Servants had draped the entire sitting room of the Pharaboldi estate in black, suitable for mourning, and had set up a handful of flickering candles.
The periphery of the solemn chamber seemed to shift and waver in their glow, which cast their uneven light haphazardly upon the pair of caskets arranged near the great fireplace. The effect made the shadows at the corners of Falagh Mestel's vision seem alive and restless. The tall, slender man did not much care for the dimness of the chamber, but the elegantly dressed woman huddled against him on the overstuffed couch had insisted they meet there. In the interests of getting her to agree to hear what Grozier Talricci and his partners had to say, Falagh had acquiesced.
Might as well humor her, he thought idly, running a single index finger along his thin black mustache. There's
