The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands) (9 page)

“The King’s Oak?”

“Barklee said it’s shrouded in some kind of mist. If you try to enter that mist, you encounter impenetrable brambles. When the king’s men were ordered to cut through those briars, some men lost their wits and others disappeared entirely. No one tries any more.”

“What about Lowmeer?” Saker asked suddenly. “Is there any help to be had there?”

“Regal Vilmar is dead, and the Regala rules for her son, Prince-regal Karel Vollendorn.”

Saker’s face was a picture of startled shock. Then he started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Ardhi asked.

“Oh, you’d have to know the Lady Mathilda to understand. Let’s just say I imagine she’s exceptionally happy to be a widow. I’d love to know how she persuaded the Lowmians to make an Ardronese princess a Regent, though.”

Sorrel thought of all the rich pastries and creamy desserts prepared for the Regal.
I just hope his death was nothing more than plying him with sweetmeats
…

Thrusting the thought away as mean-spirited, but not fully convinced, she dragged her thoughts back to the present. “So what can we do now? It’ll be a couple of days before we arrive in Hornbeam.”

“I’ll use the eagle to spy. If there are shrines still around, I should be able to see them. If there’s anything else amiss, I might be able to pick up on it as well.”

He looked so desolate, her heart lurched in sympathy. His whole youth and adult life had been lived in harmony with Shenat and shrines, and what he was facing now must have been overwhelming. She laid a hand on his forearm, and he placed his own hand on top.

“When the eagle nears Hornbeam, I will have to join it,” he said. “I rely on you to bring me back. You know, if – if I get stuck inside its head, keep talking to me, Sorrel. Don’t let me get lost.”

“Never.”

“We will see this through,” Ardhi said. “We, the ternion.”

P
ickle it, but the night was dark.
They had waited several days, through bombardment, for just such a dark sky, a time when clouds obscured the stars and the moon had not yet risen, when the wind was not strong enough to slam someone lowered on a rope against the rock face and yet playful enough to make sure the surface of the estuary was choppy, for that would make a small boat harder to see.

Ryce schooled his face to appear calm in the lamplight on the tower roof, but he had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Bealina,” he said, “if things do go wrong, if you are caught, tell them who you are, and ask to be taken to the king. Failing that, to Fox. That will keep you safe. And always remember this: if you do fall into his hands, I will not rest until you are free.” He glanced around at those gathered on the roof of the tower. “I won’t be alone in that, either. There’s not a man here who doesn’t care about you, who wouldn’t die for Garred.”

His voice was steady, his smile didn’t waver – but he’d never felt so sick.

In the next few minutes his wife, or his son, or both, could die. If he had been a stronger man, more far-sighted, smarter and able to outwit Fox, perhaps none of this would ever have happened. Perhaps his father was right to say he hadn’t the stomach for being a ruler. Perhaps Mathilda had been right. She was the one who should have been heir.

Bealina lifted a finger to place it across his lips, and said, “Hush, my love. You’ve already said everything that needed to be said. Be strong, as I will be. For our son.”

They had spent precious time arguing, their last hours together
consumed by their wrangling over how she was to travel. He’d wanted to send the boat back and forth several times, until she had a small band of his best men to accompany her, plus her handmaiden and Garred’s nursemaid, but it would have delayed her departure and increased the likelihood of something going amiss. She’d said she had a better chance of reaching Staravale if she travelled as a common woman, dressed simply and accompanied only by a single reliable man.

“It won’t be so difficult for me. I was used to a simpler life once,” she said. “Being a Staravale princess wasn’t a bit like being an Ardronese one.”

“Still, you can’t travel without a lady-in-waiting of some kind,” he protested, shocked.

She fixed him with a cold stare. “If I can live through a siege, I can do anything. I’d rather be safe and inconspicuous than proper.”

In the end, she’d prevailed, and he was sending only Horntail with her.

Pox on’t, she looked so small and fragile. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and shield her from everything. He nodded, not trusting himself to say anything more.

“It’s time, my liege. The boatmen have signalled they are ready.”

Horntail, with Garred in his arms. Rot it, he’d miss that man too, but the sergeant was the only person he could trust to take care of those most precious to him. “Farewell, my friend,” he said, and his voice was husky.

He stood there, at the top of the castle wall, and watched while his men winched Horntail over the edge, Garred asleep in his arms after being given a couple of drops of a sleeping draught. Leaning over the parapet, hand in hand, he and Bealina watched their descent. He thought his heart would stop beating when he lost sight of them in the darkness. The boat and its crew were already down there, although he couldn’t see them either. It seemed an age, time enough to imagine all that might have gone wrong, before the rope wriggled and then went loose, the signal that Horntail had reached the rocky platform at the foot of the cliff with his precious burden. The slack rope was hauled up again.

She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his cheek, whispered
in his ear, “Carry my love in your heart.” And then she was slipping on the harness, smiling at the men who were going to winch her downwards, giving one last wave of her hand. She looked up at him, holding his gaze as she was lowered until he could see her no more.

He waited there until dawn, until the sun rose and told him the sloop still patrolled the sea, and the tiny craft holding his wife and child was nowhere to be seen.

Bealina sat very still in the stern of the boat next to Horntail, who had Prince Garred in his arms. Her left hand gripped tight to the gunwale, nails digging into the wood, while her right grasped the sergeant’s arm. If the boat turned turtle, she was not going to be separated from either him or her son.

Praying under her breath, she begged for Va’s protection. Surely Va would care for Garred – he was the hope of the kingdom, Ardrone’s future. Then, because that future now depended on the two brothers who rowed the boat and she knew from their names, Gorse and Holm Campion, that they were Shenat folk, she also prayed to the Way of the Oak to keep them safe. As an afterthought, she added a fervent prayer to the Way of the Flow, requesting smooth seas.

She wasn’t certain they would all survive the night. The Campion brothers were chosen for the job because they’d both fished the coast in boats like this one in their younger days, before they had come to work for Prince Ryce in the holdfast, but the task appeared impossible to her.

Without a moon or stars, the dark was impenetrable. Waves came out of nowhere sending spray to drench them, the boat rose nose-up and then tipped into the next trough, rocks loomed up out of the dark and passed by far too close. Only Garred, tucked under a piece of sail canvas, remained dry. The brothers rarely looked over their shoulder to see what was ahead, so she couldn’t understand how they knew where they were going, yet every now and then one or the other would ship an oar to allow the boat to veer this way or that.

It will be worth it
, she thought.

The bombardment had already begun to take its toll on Garred. Every time the cannon had boomed, he ran to hide in her skirts,
trembling, and the night before he’d refused to go to bed and had to be rocked to sleep in his nurse’s arms.

You will love Staravale, little one.

At last, daylight began to creep into the sky as if reluctant to begin a new day. When they finally slipped into the safety of a tiny cove and could step out on to the sand, she was wet to the skin and shivering. As had been agreed, Gorse and Holm guided them up through the dunes to the farm that belonged to their uncle, Sprig Campion.

Although Sprig and his wife had no idea they were coming, they were welcomed. As they had earlier agreed among themselves, she was introduced as the wife of one of Ryce’s commanders, who’d been willing to take the risk of leaving for the sake of her son. If they guessed her real identity, nothing was said. They were given clothes to wear while their own were dried in front of the kitchen fire, and then offered a hearty meal of fresh farm produce. For the first time in her life, she was tempted to be greedy; it had been a long while since she’d had an actual choice about what to eat. Garred, now wide-awake and wide-eyed at his new surroundings, chewed happily at everything he was offered, but shyly refused to say a word.

Later, when she took him out to see the geese in the pond, and help look for eggs, he became his normal chatty self. When they heard the occasional low rumble of cannon in the distance, he didn’t notice. It was Bealina who shuddered. Nobody commented at the sound.

That night, Gorse and Holm left to take the boat back to the holdfast, and this time there was a sack of dried peas, several hams, a bag of hazelnuts, four cheeses and two live geese as cargo. Bealina, Horntail and Garred stayed one more night and then set off the next morning in the farmer’s cart, laden with a crop of freshly pulled turnips and mangelworzels bound for the market in the next town.

“There’s none of them grey men on the road,” Sprig assured them. “They’s all yonder at the holdfast, damn them to beggary.”

It was a pleasant day for a journey. If it hadn’t been for the distant rumbling that told Bealina the bombardment continued, she might have even enjoyed it. She sat up next to Sprig, Garred in her arms. He was constantly on the move, twisting round to look at things, pointing at a squirrel, waving at a labourer in a field, trying to escape
her hold to scramble over the turnips behind. Finally Sprig allowed him to sit between his legs and hold the end of the reins. Thrilled, he settled down, looking at her occasionally, saying, “Me drive, Mama!”

There was no room on the cart for Horntail, so he walked. They’d agreed he was to pose as her father-in-law, bringing her back home after the death of her husband. He hid his sword under the pile of turnips. His face was unreadable, but every time the rumble of the cannon sounded, his shoulders tensed.

The road headed to the market town of Beck Crossways, after which she and Horntail would be on their own, travelling north to the border. At least they would not have any trouble paying for an inn or buying mounts in Beck Crossways. Ryce had given Horntail a pouch of coins and she had a heavy gold chain hidden in her undergarments if she needed it.

As the morning wore on, Sprig seemed restless, until Horntail asked him what was wrong. “Should be more folk on the road,” he muttered. “Market day tomorra. But folk be feared. Bad times when folk stay home ’stead of taking their crop to sell.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “They says when nobles quarrel, ’tis the serving lad gets beat, and I reckon there be truth in that.”

Neither of them replied, although she thought Horntail tensed even more.

“How long to Beck Crossways?” she asked.

He looked up at the sun, spat in the dust, and said vaguely, “Be there by dark.”

About half an hour after that, they heard the sound of hooves behind them. When they looked back, it was to see a party of horsemen raising dust as they approached at a quick canter.

“Brazen it out,” Horntail said. “Draw to the side as much as you can, Sprig. Keep calm. And remember, you don’t know us. You’re just giving fellow travellers a ride to the market.”

Bealina took a calming breath.

The black-clad man in the lead was young, but it was those who followed who sent her heart galloping and her arms reaching out to gather Garred into her lap.

Grey Lancers. Six of them, one leading an extra saddled mount.

“Quiet now,” Horntail said.

The young man passed them, but once in front he swung his mount around to halt in the middle of the road, and the others drew up around him to block the way. Sprig’s carthorse stopped dead. Garred, sensing her tension, half-hid his face in her chest.

“What’s amiss, sirs?” Horntail asked, pulling at his forelock in a gesture of deference. He’d edged closer to the cart, near where his sword was hidden. He rested one of his hands on the turnips.

The young man did not acknowledge him, or even look his way. His gaze was on Garred, intent, yet with eyes strangely devoid of human expression, or even real interest. His skin was deathly pale, hollowed cheeks lacking all colour, and her immediate thought was that he was ill, close to death.

He’s having the life sucked out of him
…

Sorcery did that to you: that was what Pontifect Fritillary had written to Ryce.

“I’ve come for the prince,” he said.

How does he know who we are?
She did not know him; to the best of her recollection, she had never seen him before.

“What prince?” Sprig asked, astonished.

The young man’s blank indifference sent chills down her spine. Her heart hammered so hard her chest ached. She knew, without the slightest understanding of how it had come about, that she walked a thin line between life and death, between integrity and compromise.

“Give me the child,” he said.

“What do you want with my grandson?” Horntail asked.

The man deigned to look at Horntail then. “He’s no grandson of yours. The boy is the son of Prince Ryce, and the king has demanded his return to Throssel.”

“Twaddle!” Horntail said, simulating indignation. “Whatever makes you think that?”

The blood drained from her face, leaving her lightheaded.

A momentary expression of doubt flickered across the man’s face. He dismounted and walked over to her side. “Show me the lad’s hand,” he said.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice hardly even a whisper, and leaned away from his reach.

“Endor Fox,” he said, “of Boneset.” He took hold of Garred’s hand.
Reacting to her fear, the boy screamed. Endor did not flinch, almost as if he didn’t hear. He turned Garred’s hand to look at the palm. “There,” he said. “My father’s mark. I knew the moment the child left Gromwell.”

She rubbed Garred’s back to calm him. “There’s nothing there,” she said, looking at his palm. It was clean and unmarked. Then she remembered the warnings sent by the Pontifect, about how Valerian Fox could mark those he wanted so they could be recognised by his minions.

“I tracked him,” the young man said with the pride of an immature lad seeking approval. “He travelled by sea. Yet I have found him.”

Fiddle-me-witless, he’s little more than a child himself. Confused and ill, too.
Part of her felt a moment’s compassion, but she dismissed that out of hand. She must not underestimate him. There was a blankness behind his eyes, a lack that made him less than human. He was soulless.

She sensed rather than saw Horntail’s move to seize his sword and turned to frown at him. His only chance was to keep still, not to become this man’s target. “You can be on your way in a moment. These men mean me no harm, I feel sure,” she told him and turned back to address Endor Fox. “What instructions were given to you?”

“The prince is to be returned to Throssel.”

“And the prince’s mother?” she asked, but her archness fell flat. He shrugged, the indifference even more chilling now. “Whatever you will. His Reverence said it would be easier for the child if his mother accompanied him. I brought an extra mount. A palfrey. I’m told that’s best for a lady. Are you the Princess Bealina?”

“I am.”

She looked over his head at his men. They waited impassively, without pity, without even apparent interest. Looking from face to face, she searched for any hint that offered her hope, but there was nothing there to see. Unlike Ryce’s disciplined men, they were begrimed and slovenly, their hair lank and matted, and they smelled of more than just sweat. Their once grey coats were caked with mud, blood and grease. They were like a pack of stray dogs, unkempt and disorderly, kept in line by the power of the pack leader, but ready to rip the weak to pieces.