Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers (34 page)

Jadrek was already there, seated at the table; beside him, looking somehow far more princely than Tarma had remembered, was Stefansen.

It was Stefansen the ruler who rose to greet them; to clasp the hands and shoulders of both Ikan and Sewen with that same ease and frank equality Idra had always shown, and thank them for their presence and help with a sincerity that none of them doubted. The meeting was, in some ways, rather unnerving for Sewen and Ikan; Tarma knew how much like his sister Stefansen looked, but the others hadn't been warned. And in the soft light from their candles the resemblance was even stronger. Tarma could almost hear their thoughts—shock, a touch of chill at the back of the neck—

Then they shook themselves into sense.

Kethry gestured, bringing three more chairs into abrupt existence, as Jadrek unrolled the first of a series of maps on the table. All six of them seated themselves almost simultaneously; Stefansen cleared his throat, and the odd note in the sound caught Tarma's attention—and by the way the other two looked up at him in startlement, Sewen's and Ikan's as well.

“Jadrek has kept me appraised of what's been going on,” he said, with a kind of awkward hesitation that he had not displayed before. “So I know the reason all you Sunhawks are here. I don‘t—I don't deal well with emotion, it's hard for me to say things that I feel. But I just want you to know that I—understand. I have half a dozen reasons for wanting to roast Char over a slow fire, and that one is at the top of the list. But I think all of you have a prior claim on his hide. I was never as close to Idra as even the lowliest of her Hawks. So—if it's possible—when this is over, he's yours.”

Sewen's eyes lit at those words. “The Hawks thank you for that, Highness—an' I'll tell you true, they'll fight all the better for the knowing of the promise.”

“It only seemed fair....” He looked straight into Tarma's eyes, as if asking whether this had been the wise choice. She nodded slightly, and he looked easier.

“Very well, gentlemen, ladies—” he said after a moment of silence. “All the pieces are on the game board. Shall we begin?”

 

It was Midsummer's Night, and folk in carnival garb thronged the streets. Among the mob of wildly costumed maskers, who would notice six hundred-odd more celebrants?

Who would notice masks on a night of masking? Who would note six hundred-odd sets of phony weaponry among so many thousand tawdry pieces of junk like them? Who would take alarm from another merchant or peasant playing at warrior?

Except that beneath the cheap gilding and pasted-on glass jewels, beneath the paper and the tinsel, the arms and armor of this lot was very real.

This was the night of all nights that the rebels had hoped to be able to use—in part because of the ability to move freely, and in part because of one aspect in particular of the Midsummer's Night celebrations of Rethwellan. Though the folk of Petras were mostly long since severed from any direct ties to the farms that formed a good third of Rethwellan's wealth, Midsummer's Night was still the night which ensured the fertlity of the land. There would be reveling in the streets right up until the stroke of midnight—but
at
midnight, the streets would be deserted. Every man and woman in Petras would be doing his or her level best to prove to the Goddess in Her aspect as Lover that the people of Rethwellan still worshiped Her in all the appropriate ways.
This
Midsummer's Night they would be trying especially hard, because over the past three months the priests of the city had been doing
their
best to encourage exactly that behavior tonight. Some of them had even unbent themselves enough to admit that—on this one
night
—perhaps it didn't altogether worry Her if your partner did not happen to be your lawfully wedded spouse. And that if one felt guilty after being infected with, Her sacred desires and fulfilling same—well, for a case of indulgence after Midsummer's Night, penances would be few and light, and forgiveness easily obtained.

For all but six hundred-odd, who would not be fulfilling Her desires as Lover, but as Avenger.

Tarma picked her way through the thinning crowds, still wearing her guise of Arton. It was that guise that was going to give the Hawks the entry to the Palace grounds. From all directions, she knew, the Hawks were converging on the Palace; she would be one of the last to arrive. Kethry was already in place, waiting to spring her trap-spells. If they didn't work, she would be in a position to guide Hawks to the mages to deal with them physically while she kept them occupied magically. If they
did
work, she would be a most welcome addition to their arsenal.

And just in case Char somehow slipped through their fingers—
Warrl
?

Warrl's duty was to work with Horsemaster Tindel; the fastest of the Shin‘a'in-bred mounts she'd sold Char the year before were to be saddled and kept at the ready, in a cul-de-sac just outside the Palace gate, with Warrl and Tindel guarding them. If Char got away from them, Tarma and the best riders among the Hawks would be hot on his heels—

:Saddled
,
bridled, and ready to ride.:

Tarma approached one of the side gates, that gave out onto a delivery area. Tonight the gate stood open for the convenience of servants, and the courtyard beyond was dark and deserted. And there was Kethry—still in
her
own disguise, and looking angry enough to bite a board in two. Tarma altered her walk, swaying a little, as if drunk. She was carrying what looked like a jug loosely in her right hand. As it happened, it
wasn't
a jug; it was her sword, magicked with another illusion.

Kethry spotted her; Tarma put a little more of a stagger into her step.

“There you are, you
beast!
And drunk as a pig!” she shrilled, to the amusement of the two gate guards.

“J-janna?” Tarma slurred uncertainly, coming to a halt just before the gate.

“Of course it's Janna, you brute! You asked me to meet you here, you sot! I've been waiting for hours!”

“Don't you believe her, Arton,” snickered the right-hand gate guard. “She ain't been here more'n half a candlemark—an' she showed up with a big blond lad on one arm, too. Reckon she's been playin' more'n one game tonight, eh?”

“You—damned—slut!” Tarma snarled, feigning that she had suddenly gone fighting-drunk. She advanced on Kethry, brandishing the jug. Kethry backed up until she was just inside the gate itself, giving every evidence of genuine and absolute fear. “I'm gonna beat you bloody, you fornicating little bitch!”

Kethry whirled, and threw herself on the lefthand guard, begging his protection, distracting both guards for the crucial moment that it took Tarma to get within arm's length of the right-hand guard.

Then Tarma pivoted, and took her guard out with the pommel of her sword, just as Kethry executed a neat right cross to the point of her target's chin. Both went down without a sound. Within heartbeats the Hawks were swarming the gate—as two of their number, already bespelled into looking like the two guards they were replacing, dragged the bodies into the gatehouse, trussed and gagged them, and took up their stations. The fighters filled the courtyard on the other side, hidden in the dark shadow of the Palace, waiting for Tarma and Kethry to make the next moves.

Kethry stood in frozen immobility for a single moment; sensitized to stirrings of energies by her own status as Kal‘enedral, Tarma actually felt her spring her trap-spells.

“Well?”

Kethry's eyes met hers with incredulous shock. “They're holding—all of them!”

“Lady with us, then, and let's hope they keep holding. New body, Keth.”

“Right,” the mage answered, and Tarma waited impatiently as the figure of “Janna” blurred, became a rosy mist, and the mist solidified into a new guise—a very ordinary looking female fighter in the scarlet-and-gold livery of Char's personal guard.

“All right, Hawks,” Tarma said, in a low, but carrying voice. “This is it—form up on your leaders—”

She marched up to the unlocked delivery door, Kethry beside her, and pushed it open. The half-drunk guard beyond blinked at her without alarm, and bemusedly; he was one of Char's own personal guards and Tarma (in her guise of Arton) had ordered him to stand duty tonight on this door for a reason. He was one of the men that had participated in the rape and torture of Idra.

She swung once, without a qualm, cutting him down before he had a chance to do more than blink at her. Her only regret was that she had not been able to grant him the lingering death she felt he deserved. She and Kethry hastily dragged his body out of the way; then she waved to the waiting shadows in the court behind her.

And the Sunhawks poured through the door, a flood of vengeance in human shape, a flood which split into many smaller streams—and all of them were deadly.

 

“No luck,” Tarma said flatly, as her group met (as planned) with Stefan‘s, just outside the corridor leading to the rooms assigned to the unattached ladies of the court. “He wasn't in his quarters, and he wasn't with the mages.”

“Nor with any of his current mistresses,” Stefansen reported. “That leaves the throne room.”

Their combined group, which included Jadrek (who had accompanied Stefan) and both the other Sunhawk mages, now numbered some fifty strong. The new force surged down the pristine white marble of the Great Hall to their goal of the throne room, all of them caught up in battle-fever. The Hawks had met with opposition from Char's fighters, some of it fierce. The bodies lying in pools of spreading scarlet on the snowy marble of the halls were not all wearing Char's livery. Sewen had been hurt, and Ikan. Garth was dead, and more than fifty others Tarma had known only vaguely. But the Hawks had triumphed, even in the pitched battle with the seasoned troupers of Char's army, and all but a handful of those who had murdered their Captain were now making their atonements to her in person.

But among that handful—and the only one as yet uncaught—was Raschar.

Those in the lead shouted as they reached their goal—the great bronze double doors of the throne room—first in triumph, and then in anger, as they attempted to force those doors open. The sculptured doors to the throne room were locked, from the inside.

Justin and Beaker and a half dozen more battered at them—futilely—as the rest came up. Their efforts did not even make the glittering doors tremble.

“Don't bother,” Stefansen shouted over the noise, “Those damned doors are a handspan thick. We'll have to try to get in from the garden.”

“No we won‘t,” Kethry snarled, audible in her rage even over the frustrated efforts of those still trying to batter their way in.
“Stand back!”

She raised her hands high over her head, her face a mask of fury, and Tarma felt the surge of power that could only mean she had summoned some of that terrible anger-energy she had channeled away but not used in the trap-spells. This was the best purpose for such energies, Tarma knew—anything destructive would do—

Kethry called out three piercing words, and a bolt of something very like scarlet lightning lanced from her hands to the meeting point of the double doors. There was a smell of hot metal and scorched air, and a crash that shook every ornament in the hall to the floor. The fighters around her cringed and protected their ears from the thunder-shock; the doors rocked, but did not open.

“Fight it down, girl,” Tarma cautioned her, and Kethry visibly wrestled her own temper into control; if she lost to it, she had warned Tarma, she would be prey to the stored anger.

Kethry closed her eyes, took three deep breaths, then faced the obstacle again. “Oh no,” she told the doors and the spell that was on them, “you don't stop
me
that easily!”

Again she called the lightning, and a third time—and on the fourth, the doors burst off their hinges, and fell inward with a crash that shook the floor, cracked the marble of the walls of the Great Hall, and rained debris down on all their heads from the ceiling. None of which they particularly noticed, as they stormed into the throne room—

To find it empty.

 

Jadrek cursed, with a command of invective that astounded Kethry, and pointed to where a scarlet and gold tapestry behind the throne flapped in a current of air. “The tunnel—it was walled off years ago—”

“Figures that the little bastard would have it opened up,” Stefan spat. “Think, man—where does it come out?”

Jadrek closed his eyes and clenched both hands at his temples, as Kethry tried to will confidence and calm into him. “If the records I studied are right—and I remember them right,” he said finally, “it exits in the old temple of Ursa, outside the city walls.”

Tarma and her chosen riders had already spun around and were sprinting for the door, and Kethry was right behind them. Because she had already laid most of the spell on them, it was child's play to invoke the guises she'd set for just this eventuality—even while pelting down the hall as fast as her legs could carry her. They were exceedingly simple illusions, anyway—not faces, but livery, the scarlet and gold livery of Char's personal guards, exactly as the guise
she
wore was garbed.

They didn't have far to run; and Hawks now held the main gate and had forced it open, so there was nothing to bar the path to their allies. As they pounded into the torch-lit court behind the main gate, a dozen Shin‘a'in-bred horses, driven by Warrl, and led by Tindel, galloped past that portal. Their iron-shod hooves drew sparks from the stones of the paving, and they tossed their heads as they ran, plainly fresh and eager for an all-out run.