Banner of the Damned (51 page)

“The ambassador took me aside in Chwahirsland to advise me that I looked stupid when I practiced my juggling. His actual words were ‘hum-bumbler’ which, when you consider that we were in the Chwahir capital at the time, had added spice. I thought, if the queen wants me to look harmless, what could be more harmless than a hum-bumbler? So I’m at it again. There’s a stream over yonder.”

We started down an incline, barely visible in the weak starlight peering through the parting clouds. He added with a laugh no louder than a breath, “Between the inner perimeter sentry points. I’ve learnt that much.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that though the fellows posted to guard the camp can still see us, because these Marlovens are far too efficient to permit a blind spot, we’re at enough distance that they will just see a couple of inept Colendi fumbling around. And the outer patrol, on horseback, won’t see us because they are looking outward, so the firelight won’t cloud their vision.”

“You’ve learned a lot,” I observed.

“I’ve learned a little,” he countered, pocketing the silks as he turned his head. “Very little, as I discover anew each day.” The glance to the side was quick.

I turned, but it was only Anhar, and not a Marloven or our own fretful seneschal.

Birdy continued, “But as the queen ordered, I am making myself as useful as I can.” He pointed toward a huge boulder, barely discernible in the weak blue light. “We can sit on that for a short time, I think. We’re too boring for any of them to wonder what we might be doing, but a long absence will cause notice.”

The water-repelling spell on my cloak kept me from getting wet, but nothing warded the cold or the hardness. As I fell in step between the other two, I shivered, and he said, “Ah, getting to chat in our language feels so good. But Emras, you don’t look happy.”

As always, the temptation to tell Birdy about the book was intense, but he could not know any more than Anhar could. “You do not mind being damp and dirty all the time?”

Anhar’s hands came up in the shadow-ward, and Birdy chuckled. The firelight exaggerated his bony eye sockets, the edge of his jaw, and his ears. “I’m glad I was with the Chwahir so long. I learned all about sleeping in terrible places and bathing infrequently. Not that I mean to slander the Chwahir, for if our kingdom was half as cold as theirs, we wouldn’t bathe often, either. How are you two doing learning the language?”

I said, “They don’t talk to us but rarely and then in Sartoran.”

“I do not know a word.” Anhar gazed downward, revealing two fingers breadth of dark hair on either side of the part. “Are they giving you the south-gate?” she asked, looking up earnestly into Birdy’s face.

“Ah-ye, it’s more that they’re a closed circle. Like what people say about courtiers: you can walk with them, but not among them. How long did it take before I realized that three of Ivandred’s lancers are women?”

“Women?” I repeated, as Anhar threw up her hands again. “I did not know that.”

“They do look all the same, don’t they? Anyway, they’re not south-gating me. I know the difference—the Chwahir south-gated us as much as they dared.
How
they hated us Colendi! I only learned these things after I bought a Bermundi coat and hat, then walked about the streets of Narad unintentionally incognito.”

“So are you learning anything now?” Anhar asked.

“Yes.” The ruddy firelight was just bright enough to outline the sharp angle of his nose and catch in curly wires of light his unruly hair. “We’ll have to sell these carriage horses when we reach the river, and since my orders are to go all the way to Marloven Hesea, my partner really wants to return home.”

“But why sell the horses? The queen’s horses aren’t good enough?”

“They aren’t trained for riding,” Birdy corrected. “And most important, they aren’t trained for fighting.” He yawned. “The Marlovens can’t afford to transport the carriages and the carriage horses. I don’t know what they do for money in their own kingdom, but Prince Ivandred’s purse is thin, so when we get to the other end of the Sartoran sea, we’ll all be riding. That means throwing away any ‘extra’ baggage. Except for the princess’s. You know whose will go first. Be aware of that when you repack.” He yawned again. “The perimeter guard will be around soon to shoo us back to camp. Sleep well! I fear we’ll be riding by torchlight well before dawn to make up for lost time.”

His footsteps chuffed through the mud, and the two of us returned to our tent, each silent. I could not prevent Seneschal Marnda from going through my things as well as the belongings of the other staff, if she was ordered to.

I would have to parrot the entire book, though I still did not comprehend it. When we reached the river, I would get rid of it. That would meet everyone’s demands.

“You should have seen them! Or maybe not, for I tell you, we were in danger of falling off the roof, we were laughing so hard,” Kivic said, as they toiled up into the mountains, coats pulled up against occasional spits of sleet. “There was no hope any of them would catch up with the Marloven boys, no matter what their titles.”

“Tell ‘em about the duke who put the shield over his butt,” one of the men said.

“It wasn’t a shield, it was a breastplate,” another corrected. “Tell him, Kivic!”

The tale had grown in the telling. What harm did it do to embellish a little? Kivic laughed with them, though the spark of his amusement was at the predictability of human behavior. He’d picked his man—the one who couldn’t resist finding duty near Kivic’s cell to hear more, and out had come the little anecdotes, one by one. This man carried the stories to his cronies among the guards, exactly as Kivic predicted.

Their favorite story was how the arrogant Colendi, trailing ribbons and lace, scrambled all over one another to mount their horses and chase after the Marlovens. It was amusing and also reassuring, not only reinforcing how incompetent the Colendi were, but reminding them that
the hated Marlovens were long gone, probably halfway across the continent by now, where they could cause no one any grief.

“… and the Duke of Altan bawling at his servants to find the tents as he danced around, wrestling with the baldric. Which ripped right across.”

Guffaws, as someone repeated,
Ripped! Ripped!

“I promise you, it ripped. They wear silk even to battle, those fools. And this baldric, judging from the faded color, had to be at least five hundred years old. I’m surprised the moths hadn’t gotten to it generations ago.”

“It’s certainly moth food now,” someone said as they pulled up behind the captain.

“Ho, here we are,” said the captain, as they rounded the last towering cliff, runnels of slushy rain slanting across the road.

The animals halted, heads drooping. The Chwahir dismounted, leaving the horses to the equerries.

“Let’s just take a look,” the captain said, eyeing the massive stone arch with its narrow passage that the Colendi had built generations ago to mark the border. Kivic had always wondered if any of them knew about the epithets painted and even carved on the Chwahir side. There was no such mar on the Colendi side, but the carvings were insult enough, intertwined thorny vines representing their Thorn Gate. “Stupid as they might be, there’s no use in our riding down blind,” the captain said, sending a speculative glance Kivic’s way then shifting his attention to a scout. “Thassler. Take a look through the glass.”

This was the first sign of suspicion, making Kivic wonder what the king might have said to the captain, as the scout slogged through the mud to a standing stone, pulling his field glass from his belt.

No matter. Kivic maintained his most innocent demeanor, and as the captain raised a hand to peer down the Colendi side of the road into the mist, Kivic shot a grin at his guard, who had ranged himself with his chosen fellows in a line. All he needed were a few moments of mad scramble to make his getaway. He’d marked his escape route on the retreat with Jurac, while everyone else was grumbling and cursing. Among the scattering of animals trails there was an overgrown path, probably the one used before the road was laid.

“Two ribbon-pricks with the pair of buckets,” the scout reported, the epithet “bucket” pertaining to the judiciaries’ hoods. “Waiting about thirty paces down the road.”

The captain turned Kivic’s way. But before he could speak, Kivic said
with all the disgust he could muster, “Look at ‘em. Summoning us like we’re servants.”

If he’d done his work right, that “us” could goad the captain, along with the memory of that humiliating defeat. If the captain said “you,” then it was on to plan two, far less easy.

But the captain reacted with a grim face, his horse shifting beside him. “If they want him, let ‘em come and get him,” he said, and Kivic’s pet guards reinforced that with
Yes, let ’em fetch,
mutterings.

After that, everything proceeded as Kivic had hoped. The masked judiciaries didn’t speak, of course, for justice is supposed to be neutral, but the sodden defenders in blue nudged their horses forward, one calling in Colend’s language, “Send the accused forth.”

The captain, bolstered by his men, called, “What?”

The Chwahir grinned.

The fool in blue repeated his request in passable Chwahir, but the captain, enjoying the grins of his men, said again, “What?” causing a general chuckle.

Kivic was thrilled—people were so predictable!

The pair of Colendi rode a few steps closer over the flagged road. “Send forth the accused,” the one repeated in Sartoran, gloved hands cupped around his mouth.

“Come and get him,” the captain roared back.

The pair trotted closer to the stone arch, and the judiciaries also rode forward, as if pulled by strings.

When they were nearly in reach, Kivic’s guard spoke right on cue, “Let’s teach these scum a lesson.”

“Let’s see how stupid those buckets look with their bare faces hanging out,” Kivic said to the men nearest him then stepped sideways until he was outside of the captain’s peripheral vision. From there he shied a small stone at the nearest Colendi. Up came the sword—out came all the swords—the Chwahir roared through the archway, nearly stepping on each other’s heels in their hurry to get through the narrow gap, and the fun was on!

For about two heartbeats. Then the hillside erupted with Colendi, who had been crouched like brigands behind rocks and trees. Who would have thought they’d have the wit to plan for an ambush? Ah, well. All Kivic needed was for the brawl to spread fifteen paces down the trail.

He slipped past a knot of struggling men, slid in the mud, righted himself, ducked through the arch, got his feet on the flagged stones and
shifted past another knot, ignoring the surprised hail from his guard, “Hey, Kivic, give us a hand here….”

Kivic dashed past, found the old path—and came up short when a man stepped out from behind a juniper, sword in hand. “Where are you going?” the man asked pleasantly.

Kivic stared. Tall Colendi in a theater version of a battle tunic, edged with heavy blue silk, black hair under the towering, silver-chased helm that didn’t keep the rain from pouring down his neck, black eyes. Wasn’t this the destitute baron who’d married his way into a rich dukedom?

Kivic drew in a breath of pleasure. His kind of man! He leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “I can make you a king.”

The black eyes widened, then the fellow threw his head back and laughed.

Shock flashed through Kivic, followed by anger and intent.

For Kaidas, it was the first time he’d laughed since he and Lasva were together. But the reminder of Lasva doused the hilarity and just in time, given that the Chwahir whipped a knife out from his clothing and darted at Kaidas, quick as a snake.

Kaidas belatedly swung the rapier, but not before the point of the knife struck him a palm’s width above the navel. The point turned on the fine mail the queen had ordered him to wear, but the force of the blow nearly doubled him.

He gasped, choked for breath, alarm bringing his arm around to protect his front, the sword swinging with it. The Chwahir darted out of the way of the blade, then lunged again, this time for the throat. Kaidas stumbled back, the sword swinging but too slow, damn the soulripping thing. Fury burned through Kaidas, white fury, his breath rasping, as he put his entire body into a two-handed swing, the correct forms of dueling forgotten.

The blade caught the Chwahir on the side of the head, sending him staggering. Kaidas brought the sword around in a whistling arc. Kivic raised an arm to block the blow, fell to a knee as the steel cut to the bone. Kivic recoiled in shock and disbelief, and the blade struck him again, this time across the face, breaking his nose. He fell back, legs churning up the mud as he tried to get away. Kaidas struck again and again, until the man lay hacked and bloody, obviously dead.

As suddenly as it had come, the hot fury vanished, leaving Kaidas trembling, his body awash in sweat inside his clothes, his breath wheezing in a raw throat. He looked from the blood splatters down his fine battle tunic to the blood fast congealing down his sword in streaks and
clots, to the revolting mess he’d made of a once-living man, and nausea clawed at the back of his throat.