‹ Of course I was,› Leeana replied silently, reaching up to stroke the courser’s neck as Gayrfressa leaned closer, touching her nose to her chest and blowing heavily. ‹ You’re a bigger target than I am.›
‹ Oh, really? And which one of us came through without a scratch? ›
Leeana laughed just a bit shakily and turned back to Macebearer.
“I appreciate the bandage, Sir Jerhas. I only hope you didn’t shock the rest of the King’s gentlemen too severely.”
“I’m sure some of them will be suitably horrified later,” the Prime Councilor said dryly. “For now, I doubt somehow anyone’s likely to make any…inappropriate remarks. And as for the propriety of it,” his blue eyes twinkled suddenly as they cut briefly to Tellian’s face, “my younger daughter is at least ten years your senior, young lady. I believe I can put a bandage on your ribs without being overwhelmed by lust.”
Leeana blinked at him. For a moment, she was certain she’d imagined his last sentence, but those blue eyes gleamed, and she heard something shockingly like a crack of laughter from her father’s direction as the Prime Councilor stroked his luxurious mustache and returned her goggle-eyed look with a bland smile.
“I see you have hidden depths, Milord,” she told him finally, and he chuckled. But then he sobered and shook his head.
“I won’t pretend I suddenly approve of the entire notion of war maids,” he said, “because I don’t. But without you, my King would be dead. Whatever I think of the choices you’ve made, nothing can erase that debt.”
“No, it can’t,” another voice said, and Leeana turned quickly as King Markhos stepped out onto the veranda.
The King looked around the body-littered courtyard, his expression hard, and anger smoked in his eyes. Anger made even worse, Leeana realized, because he’d been denied the right to strike a single blow in his own defense.
She doubted Swordshank could have enforced that edict if Markhos had brought along his own armor. It had been difficult enough as it was, yet the King had been forced to acknowledge the overriding logic of his personal armsman’s argument. If he fell, their attackers won, whatever their losses; if he lived, then his guardsmen won, even if not one of them survived. He owed it to those guardsmen-and especially to the ones who were certain to fall in his defense-to live. To make their sacrifice count. And so while every instinct cried out to join the battle, he’d made himself accept the far harder task of waiting at the center of his defenders’ ring of swords while they died to protect him.
“I can think of very few men, noble or common, who have ever served the Crown as well as you have this day,” he said now, turning back to Leeana. He glanced up at her father, but his eyes came back to meet hers, and his voice was level. “And I can think of none at all who have ever served it better. I stand in your debt, and my house remembers its debts.”
Leeana flushed and shook her head quickly.
“Your Majesty, I’m scarcely the only-”
“Of course you aren’t,” he interrupted her, looking out over the courtyard once more, watching a half dozen of Swordshank’s surviving armsmen dragging wounded assassins out of the pile of dead and dying. His bodyguards’ expressions suggested those prisoners would soon be telling their captors everything they knew, and his eyes hardened with grim satisfaction as he continued speaking to Leeana.
“The Crown owes a debt to a great many people today, and I’m afraid it isn’t the sort anyone can truly pay. But I overheard at least a portion of your conversation, and Sir Jerhas is right. Without you and your wind sister, all of my armsmen would have fallen in my defense…and they would have fallen in vain. Your father”-the King’s expression didn’t even flicker as he called Baron Tellian that-“has always served me and the Kingdom well, yet there have been times, especially of late, when that service has threatened to turn the entire Kingdom topsy-turvy, as well. I suppose there’s no reason I should expect his daughter to be any different in that regard.”
Leeana opened her mouth. Then she closed it again, and Macebearer chuckled.
“I think-” he began, then broke off as Gayrfressa’s head snapped up. The mare wheeled, looking to the east, and her remaining ear went flat.
‹ Smoke! › she told Leeana, and green eyes widened as Leeana smelled the same scent through the courser’s nostrils.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Traram watched the first flight of flaming arrows trace lines of smoke across the sky and smiled thinly. He hadn’t had many archers to begin with, and it had become painfully evident in the assault across the wall that the ones he did have weren’t as good as King Markhos’ armsmen.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to be for what he had in mind.
The steeply pitched, cedar-shingled roofs of the main lodge, the stables, and the enclosed barracks showed clearly above the cursed ornamental wall. They were big targets, and the plunging arrows struck firmly into them. Within seconds, more smoke began to curl upward, and Traram’s smile broadened. The defenders had economized on manpower by defending the buildings, firing from cover as his men crossed the wall and falling back on the doors and windows as the attack rolled in. But large and ornate as the lodge was, the entire area enclosed by its wall wasn’t all that spacious, and after the casualties they’d taken in the initial assault, the King and his guardians couldn’t possibly have enough manpower for firefighting on top of everything else. Once the buildings were nicely alight, they’d be driven from cover, forced to huddle in the limited space where nothing would burn and hemmed in by torents of heat and moke. They’d find their defensive options badly cramped when that happened.
Flames began to leap and dance along the roofs, the columns of smoke growing thicker and denser, beginning to billow on the fires’ growing updraft. He watched those columns climb and waited.
Some of the armsmen and servants dashed for the watering troughs and the lever-arm pumps that served them. It was an instinctive reaction, but one Leeana knew instantly was futile. There were simply too many arrows, too many separate pools of flame spreading across those roofs, and her heart sank as she pictured what the heat and smoke were going to do to their ability to defend the King.
But then she heard a sound even more horrifying than that thought-the screams of panicked horses.
“ The stables! ” she shouted, and ran madly across the courtyard, ignoring the scattered rain of burning arrows hissing out of the heavens. More feet pounded behind her, following her towards the stables with the bone- deep instinct of all Sothoii.
Hooves thundered on box stalls, more whistling screams of terror rose from within the smoke, and Leeana heaved desperately at the bar across the stable doors. Someone skidded to a halt beside her, helping her, throwing the locking bar aside, grabbing the huge double door panels and hauling them wide. Smoke, heat, and those bone chilling screams billowed out of them, and Leeana coughed as she ran into the heart of chaos.
She flung open the stalls nearest to the entrance, dodging frantically as the horses in them threw their weight against the opening doors. Those horses saw light, knew where the door was, and terror gave them wings. They thundered out of the stable, fleeing madly from the crackling flames, and Leeana coughed again, harder. The smoke was incredible, and the stablemaster had stored a loft full of hay against the coming winter. Burning bits of shingle and roofing timber spilled into the loft, and the dried hay caught instantly. White smoke joined the seething coils of wood smoke, and it was suddenly impossible to see more than a foot or two through the choking, suffocating waves of heat.
‹ Come back!› Gayrfressa cried in the back of her brain. ‹ Leeana! Sister- come back!›
Leeana heard her hoofed sister, but even Gayrfressa’s voice was lost and far away, somewhere beyond the immediacy of her mission. She staggered in the blinding smoke, finding the stall latches by feel more than by sight, throwing them open, but these horses couldn’t see the entrance, and even if they could have, crackles of flame danced and leapt between them and the stable door. The path to escape and life lay between those flames, but they eyed the wall of smoke with ominous red glare, and the panicky horses shied away from the visible menace. They reared and trumpeted madly, deadly in their terror, and Leeana jumped aside, barely in time, as one of them
