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or imagined, few would draw near enough to determine.
"Here's proper writ for arraignment, and here, the order of execution."
The war host's Lord Commander finished off, "See the shirking dogs beneath the
Wheel, then burn the bodies. We need no reminders lying about to undermine
the morale of our other steadfast troops."
"Ath!" The steel studs on the captain's jerkin caught baleful light as he
stuffed the rolled parchments through his belt, then peeled off a gauntlet to
test the edge on his dagger. "Should've guessed, at this hour, the duty'd be
a messy one. We getting scalp pay to clean up your bothersome details?"
"Ten silvers a head," Diegan affirmed. "Two of my servants will ride with you
to inform me when the deed's been done."
The headhunter gave a silent, wheezed laugh as he snicked his steel in its
sheath. "Assassins' guildsman?" He squinted askance at his Lord
Commander, a sneer on his full upper lip.
"You know we don't need any pandering witnesses to make sure of our kills."
Diegan gestured his dismissal without comment. When the tent flap cracked
closed after the headhunter's stalking stride, he bellowed for his servants to
return and attend to his interrupted comforts.
He was too hardened, too practical, too much the survivor of ambitious years
of city politics. His dreams would be troubled by no screams at all, as
Arithon's fell tactic was foiled, Endings and the twenty-five died in cold
blood.
As the sun rises over the pastel drum towers of Innish, and the light falls
gold and pink through the sandstone arches of a portico facing the harbor,
Jinesse and Tharrick stand with linked hands before the robed figure of an
adept of Ath's Brotherhood; and as each swears the vow of marriage, their
thoughts dwell with ambivalence and regret upon the enigmatic, black-haired
prince whose fate brought their two lives
together....
In a purple-carpeted chamber in the Koriani orphanage at the coastal town of
Firstmark, Lirenda lays the amethyst Great Waystone into the hands of Morriel
Prime with the words, "Matriarch, rejoice, for my mission to Althain Tower has
brought the success you required......
In a high, guarded tower in the city of Avenor, Princess Talith sits on velvet
cushions in a south-facing window seat to stare out over the sea;
and through a weight of unbearable sorrow, she aches for the absence of her
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beloved, pledged to lead a war host to kill a single enemy whose cursed
destiny has come to poison everything in life she held dear....
CHAPTER 8. Strilke at Dier jiroq-cnton
The dawn over Vastmark came in smotherin white mist, threaded by intermittent
rainfall. Against air texTtured thick as unpressed felt, and the eerie
shrills of flying wyverns, the cluster of shepherds'
tents set on the lip of the scree came and went from view, their primal, dyed
patterns like an herb witch's talismans scribed in old blood and rust.
Before them, furled in damp clothing where he crouched stirring peat embers
with a gorse twig, Dakar the Mad Prophet brooded in silence, his hair and
beard screwed into rings.
Behind him, standing, the hood over his mail dull gray as the landscape,
Caolle tested the edge of his newly oiled sword, a squint to his eye that
boded trouble. Since the Havens, he had lost flesh. The skin pressed like
cured leather over the craggy jut of his face bones, and his hands, never wont
to pause between tasks, turned the blade in forced deliberation. "The tactic
last fortnight has failed," he said, flat.
"Lysaer's war host is coming despite us. Please Ath, don't make me be the one
to break the news."
"His Grace already knows." Dakar gave a particularly fierce jab at the embers
and the sparks flurried, red-gold on the colorless air.
"Arithon said last night he could feel the stir of the Mistwraith's curse."
For Lysaer pressed his march forward, not back.
His army had closed, and harried, and set cordons, until the vale of
Dier Kenton lay bottled in, each goat track and pass leading over the peaks
seated off by hostile troops. "Arithon said we have until noon before the
pull of the geas builds to unmanageable proportions."
Caoile sheathed his blade without sound by wary habit, then flicked a swift
glance at the tent. "He's sleeping?"
"No." Dakar looked up, his pudding-round features all misery "But he's
reasonable, and trying to rest."
"Let him bide, then," Caoile said. "We won't need his final orders before the
mist starts to lift." He strode off from the fire, disgruntled for the first
time in his life by a bellyache before the onset of battle.
The mists that presaged autumn in Vastmark could hug the land like raw silk,
impenetrable, then part without warning to some unseen caprice of changed air.
The vale at Dier Kenton emerged out of stainless, cloaking white like an
uneven bowl draped in furrows of burlap left out and beaten by weather, then
salted with dirty flecks of shale. Mountains arose around the rim. The mild
range of hills which invited easy access from the west built ever higher as
the pitch of the valley steepened.
The east wall swept up, a sheer face of grim scarps that speared blue-green
shadow across the knoll where Caoile stood.
Around him, pitched as a decoy to draw Lysaer's main force, an array of steel
helms set on stakes presented empty eyeholes toward the lowlands.
Planted on a pole in their midst, the lazy slap of standards flicked a buffet
of silk on leather against the war captain's shoulder.
Clan custom dictated their arrangement: the purple-and-gold chevrons of
Shand uppermost; then the black-on-gray wyvern, sigil of the principality of
Vastmark; and lowest, the green, sable, and silver of
Rathain's royal leopard, symbolically set in deference to the sovereign rule
of the Southland.
The irksome rains had ceased. Today's clear morning held a fresh crispness
and tension like an indrawn breath. Across the saddle at the vale's far rim
seethed the frontal body of the allied host to bring down the Master of
Shadow, particolored as sweepings from a tailor's shop, spiked like stray pins
where early sun flicked the metal of a helm or a sword blade. The landscape
was vast, and the men, an unnatural, living carpet a league and a half in
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width.
"Such bother for one life," Caolle murmured. "It's not canny."
The nerve-fraught awareness he was surrounded by foes ranked many thousands
strong made his skin feel harried by itches. He cleared his throat, then
finished his instructions to the runner scout waiting at his elbow.
The clansman slipped off. The knoll remained pressed in grim silence, while
the mists ebbed and came in white-footed waves like ranked ghosts.
The swirl of moisture and the presence of the peaks funneled disjointed sounds
in queer patterns.
A rider's horn call might ring in deceptive, close clarity, or make some
distant officer's snapped word to correct a laggard man in formation seem
close enough to touch. Other times the breeze blew muffled in drifts, as if
broken stone and desolation were all that had ruled since [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]