right hand. The short bladed dagger in the spring-loaded sheath strapped to his forearm snapped into his hand and he lunged in a single supple movement. The blade went home, stabbing through the eye opening in Gayrhalan’s steel plate chamfron.
A heartbeat after Hathan stiffened and started to slide from the saddle, Gayrhalan collapsed under him.
“ Treason! ” Cassan screamed, wheeling his horse back towards his shocked armsmen. “Treachery! They’ve killed the King! ”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
“Hathan!”
The agonized cry burst from Tellian Bowmaster as Dathgar and Gayrfressa felt Gayrhalan’s death. The coursers echoed the helpless protest, screaming their rage, and Leeana tasted blood as her teeth sank into her lip.
She and her father stared at one another, each feeling the other’s pain. It was all they could do for what seemed like an eternity, but then Tellian gave himself a savage shake and turned to the King.
“Hathan is dead,” he said in a voice of hammered iron. “So is Gayrhalan. Cassan murdered them both.”
Markhos’ face turned to stone.
“How?” he demanded.
“ Cassan,” Tellian spat. “Cassan spun a tale about Yeraghor being behind all this-spun it well enough even I might have believed there was some truth in it. He offered to show Hathan ‘proof’…and then put a dagger through his eye. He’s mine, Markhos- mine! This time I’ll have his blood!”
“This time you’ll have his blood, Milord,” Markhos promised. King and baron gazed into one another’s eyes for a long, icy moment, and then Markhos smiled humorlessly. “Of course, first we both have to live long enough for you to collect it.”
Cassan thundered back to Stoneblade and Horsemaster, then drew rein so hard his horse half-crouched, skidding on its rear hooves. Both captains stared at him, eyes stunned, and he pointed back at the fallen courser and wind rider.
“The bastards have killed the King!” he snarled.
“Are you sure of that, Milord?” Stoneblade demanded, his expression shocked.
“ Sure of it?!” Cassan looked at him incredulously. “The son of a whore admitted it to me!”
“He admitted it?”
Cassan gripped his reins fiercely, battling his own impatience. But he had to handle this carefully. He had to carry Stoneblade-and all of his armsmen-with him if he meant to succeed.
“Not at first,” he said harshly. “At first, he insisted the King was well. You saw us talking! He said the King was suspicious of our ‘timely’ arrival-that was why he’d been sent out to find out who we were, why we were here. He wasn’t happy to see me, I assure you! But he pretended he was…at least until I suggested the King would be safer out here. That was when he told me he’d been instructed by the King to invite me into the lodge to ‘confer’ with him and Tellian. Look at that smoke, those fires! D’you really think the King would invite me into the middle of all that instead of getting out of it himself as quickly as possible?! Besides, he insisted the King had invited me by name…after admitting he’d been sent to find out who we were! It was ridiculous!”
He spat on the ground.
“I told him that with the hunting lodge burning down around the King’s ears, it would be far better to get him safely out of it, and that’s when he started getting evasive. He came up with one excuse after another, every one of them thinner than the one before. So I told him I needed some assurance-some proof-the King was still well and in control of his own fate. That’s when he cursed me and reached for his sword. It was only the gods’ own grace I’d been suspicious enough to see it coming! I couldn’t reach my saber in time, but I got my dagger into his helmet before he could clear the scabbard. And somehow Tarmahk managed to drop the courser before he could take my arm off with his jaws.”
Stoneblade’s eyes were narrow, and he looked at Horsemaster.
The junior captain had been staring at Cassan. Now he looked at his fellow armsman, his brain racing. Silence hovered for a moment, and then Horsemaster drew a deep breath.
“I saw Hathan reach for his sword,” he said softly.
Cassan’s expression never altered, but triumph flooded through him. He hadn’t dared hope Horsemaster would commit himself, and he wondered how much of it was an armsman’s loyalty and how much was cold calculation. Horsemaster must realize that by the simple fact of being here, suspicion must attach to him and Stoneblade if their liege was proven a traitor. Loyalty to his baron would be a thin defense against the charge of regicide, even among the Sothoii, but if Cassan was in a position to control the story emerging from this day’s work…
Stoneblade’s expression was still shaken, but his eyes hardened and he looked back at Cassan.
“Your orders, Milord?” he asked crisply.
Leeana’s hands were rock steady as she nocked an arrow to her string once more, but tears trickled down her cheeks. Hathan had been a part of her life since she’d learned to walk-her father’s closest friend, her personal armsman’s cousin, her own adoptive uncle. A man of unyielding honor, the very shieldarm he’d been named. A man Cassan of Frahmahn could never have defeated in battle…murdered by a coward and traitor, and his wind brother with him.
She felt Gayrfressa’s rage and grief melding with her own, but the mare wasn’t with her. She and Dathgar- and Tellian-had circled around behind the still blazing main lodge despite the smoke and the heat. It was bad enough for the humans; it was far worse for someone with a courser’s senses, and Gayrfressa lacked the barding which had protected Dathgar from flying cinders. Now the coursers waited, shrouded in blinding, choking smoke and surrounded by roaring flame. Any normal horse would have been overcome by the smoke, even assuming it hadn’t been driven mad with panic, but Dathgar and Gayrfressa weren’t horses. They closed their eyes, enduring, drawing on their link to the energy which sustained the entire world, and somehow they bore it.
Leeana didn’t know how. Even with her link to Gayrfressa, she couldn’t understand how the coursers could do it, but they did, and she blinked her own eyes furiously clear of tears as bugles sounded outside the lodge once more.
The warhorses were skittish.
No, Cassan thought, they were far worse than that-they were half-panicked, and he knew Stoneblade had been right. It would have been far better to dismount his armsmen and take them in on foot. However little they might care for the prospect of fighting on their own feet, his men would have found it enormously easier than trying to control warhorses who were terrified by the smell of smoke and the roar of flames. And it would have been far easier to control them, as well.
Which was why Cassan had insisted on a mounted charge. He wantedneeded — as much confusion as he could possibly get. All of the King’s guards had to die in the melee, and the chaos would cover Dirkson and his squad as they made sure Markhos himself was dead.
He could hardly explain all of that to Stoneblade, of course. Instead, he’d pointed out that they didn’t know for certain the King was dead. He might simply be a prisoner…so far, at least. And if that was the case, they had to break in and settle this as quickly as humanly possible, before a desperate Tellian did kill his captive.
It was a risky argument, in some ways, but it was a pretext with which Stoneblade was unable to quibble.
