Whereupon the burning lorn exploded-and horses, knights, wingless Aumrarr and all were hurled forward into the air, amid a great wave of searing flame.
'Isk, you awake? Galath at last,' the fat man growled from the front of the wagon. 'Look dead, now.'
The skeletally thin woman inside the creaking wagon made a rude sound by way of reply, shrugged off the cloak that had been keeping her warm, and laid herself down in the coffin.
Arranging the thin shroud over her naked body, she composed herself with her hands folded over her mouth. Between her fingers was the pinch of powdered arsauva that would leave her senseless the moment it touched her tongue; she held her fingers firmly together and waited. No sense wasting good arsauva if lazy border guards made its use unnecessary.
'I'm ready, Gar,' she announced, closing her eyes. 'Try to sound convincing, for once.'
'I thought he'd never stop chasing us,' the fat man muttered, as an armored Galathan warrior stepped out into the road and held up his hand in the signal to halt. 'Still, we're here now. Driven to take refuge at last in the most law-abiding kingdom in all Falconfar. Strong king, proud nobles, lots of guards and coins. Bugger it all, anyway. Well, at least we'll be safe here.'
'Tauren's merchants will do whatever they see best for preserving their own backsides,' Juskra said flatly, running thoughtful fingers along the three old, white sword-scars that crisscrossed on her left cheek. 'If that means deserting Tauren and taking themselves down the Ladruar to the Ports of Storm, that's just what they'll do. As allies, they are useless, and they'll never order their mercenaries into Galath to so much as lift a finger to aid someone else, not even if all of the Dooms lay wounded and helpless, for the ready slaying, because it will cost them coin.'
'Yes, and they have no warriors but hireswords,' Dauntra agreed, anger sparkling in her great brown eyes. 'And their loyalty is to the purse, not a realm or kin or family hold. I know a dozen of the lords of Taur by name and face, and would be known to them if I flew to their gates, but they'd sell their own mothers and daughters for coin, let alone friends and allies.'
'And Sardray keeps to Sardray,' dark-armored Lorlarra put in. 'As their elders never tire of saying, 'What comes to the windy grass matters; what befalls elsewhere matters not.''
'And none of the forest holds,' Ambrelle said quietly, 'have either the battle-might to make any difference, nor the will or strength to push through two lands to reach Galath.' The senior Aumrarr stretched her wings, tossing her long, glossy mane of purple-black hair. 'So Galath, as we all knew, all along, is the cauldron. If Arlaghaun rises to rule it unopposed, the rise of the cults will hardly matter; Falconfar will be lost.'
'We must work against him, and hope Taeauna's man
'It all comes back to the wizards,' Juskra said bitterly, scratching at her bandages again.
'Always,' Dauntra agreed. 'Well, there're Four Dooms, and four of us. A fair fight, I'd say.'
They laughed then, the bitter laughter of despair.
CHAPTER TEN
Rod's horse landed an instant before he did, wherefore he smashed his face hard into its neck. Which pleased it not at all.
As he fought to stay on its back, and it reared and bucked and lashed out in all directions with its hooves, there was similar rearing and screaming all around him, amid much knights' shouting.
The air around him was a-shimmer with heat and thick with the sharp smell of smoke, but the flames had faded, and war-horns were sounding. The wavering forest of upraised lances ahead told Rod that Deldragon's knights were still on the road, three abreast. Lorn wheeled and shrieked overhead, but none were swooping.
'That's done it, for a time at least,' Velduke Deldragon said with satisfaction from somewhere, near to Rod's left. To Rod, the man looked completely untouched; flaxen mustache as neat as ever, eyes still that serene and icy blue. 'They hate fire.'
'I'm not surprised,' Taeauna said tartly, from nearer. 'So do the horses, to say nothing of me. Have you anymore little tricks of magic we should know about, Lord Deldragon?'
'No,' came the flat reply. 'None you should know about.'
'I see.'
'Lady of the Aumrarr,' the velduke replied calmly, 'these are troubled times, and I have a duty to Galath and to the folk who dwell under my hand. To keep to the right road and do his duty, a man must do what he must do.'
'Agreed,' Taeauna said pleasantly. 'Words to remember.'
Rod had just managed to catch hold of both his reins and his saddle horn, and felt secure enough to risk turning to look at Tay and the Galathan noble.
And then wished he hadn't. The glances they were giving each other included polite smiles, but their eyes looked as if they were crossing swords to begin a duel.
A duel to the death.
'My best firedance for the Lord Blackraven,' Marquel Ondurs Mountblade said grandly, adjusting his new monocle, 'and I'll have the same. Bring a large decanter, the old vintage, mind!'
The servant bowed low, spun around still in his crouch, straightened with an audible snap of dagger-coat tails, and hurried off past Mountblade's steward, who stood as still and expressionless as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, carefully out of earshot of seated lords.
Marquel Larren Blackraven had only just arrived at Mountgard; he'd still been clapping the road-dust from his hands when he'd been led up the path from the stables. Sighing in his ease, the tall, hooknosed young nobleman leaned back in his chair to look out over the trim green gardens falling away from the terrace. He hummed under his breath for long moments, as he turned his head to peer; Mountblade smiled silently and watched his guest.
To their right rose the weathered stone bulk of Mountgard, but directly before them the greenest lawns Blackraven had ever seen sloped gently down to pleasant clusters of spire-shaped evergreens, little bowers of winding flagstone paths, and beds of flowering shrubs cloaking sculpted stone maidens. Beyond their shapely, endlessly beseeching limbs gleamed the tamed waters of a smoothly curving stream; from where he sat, he could just see the curve of an arched bridge in the distance, spanning somewhere beyond the sculpted forests. Beautiful.
'Nice,' Blackraven said at last, and meant it, as he turned gleaming emerald eyes back upon his host. 'This must be a delight to ride home to.'
Monocle gleaming, Mountblade smiled widely. 'It is. Not the grandest gardens in Galath, and far from the largest, but mine, and well suited to me. The stream, in particular; I've had the banks sculpted this side, to make it perfect for strolling or bedding down with a lass, and I use the horse trail on the far bank every morn. Everything just as I want it. That's why the new wall; guarding all of this seems my best bet for keeping it. If battle comes, I don't want some ill-bred, motherless dog of a warrior galloping his nag through my beds, hacking at the trees as he fights off those who chase him, and winding up lying dead with his horse and a lot of others, tangled in the stream-just as rains come, so I get flooding!'
'Good thinking,' Blackraven replied, rubbing the bridge of his hooked nose and nodding a little grimly. 'Aye, I fear war is coming; strife that will purge Galath, cleansing our realm as never before.'
Mountblade nodded glumly. 'And tearing what it is to be of Galath asunder in the doing. Galath will never be the same again.'
Blackraven stared at his fellow marquel, who was as young as he was, though the monocles he affected made him look older. He hummed absently under his breath for a moment as he considered what to say, and then shrugged. 'My father said as much, and so did old Velduke Barrowbar, when I was a lad. The kingdom is always changing; none of us can ever have back the Galath of our youth.'
'The king grows wroth more and more often,' Mountblade muttered. 'And titled folk who've not blood- sworn anew to him are down to… what? Three veldukes? A border baron or two?'
'Just one baron, now. Tindror, hard by the Arvale way through the Spires. He'll not last long. Nor, I'm
