of determined fury, while the neat ranks of his riders were bashed out of formation by the unravelling temper of his mount. Lances dipped, wavered and cracked into a cursing tangle of men and disgruntled horseflesh.
Too cynical for surprise, Lord Diegan glanced aside to find Lysaer watching the affray, his unruffled, wide-eyed dignity at odds with innocent intentions. The older page half-hidden by his horse cloths was deviously engaged with a handful of smooth pebbles and what looked like a rawhide bird sling.
A lifetime of Etarran politics lent Diegan the presence to mask astonishment. He was prepared and listening for the low-voiced string of orders from his prince. ‘The headhunter captain’s horse is shortly going to bolt. Before it does, I’ll need an honour guard assembled, a delegation from our guild representatives and city officers, and the wagon bearing Lady Talith and her servants. This will be a state visit to Isaer, I shall make it so. But warn the men: on pain of punishment, and despite the most grievous provocation, they must hold their tongues and their tempers.’
No fool, Lord Diegan did as he was bidden; and so he missed the moment when the headhunter’s huge grey at last tore free of restraint and exploded kicking and snorting into a tail-streaming run. Somebody dispatched an equerry at speed to chase after the luckless captain. Before the sergeant left as second in command could restore the wrecked order of the troop, Lysaer rode forward to meet him.
‘Never mind the formalities,’ the prince opened, magnanimously forgiving, and sure enough in stature to shake the confidence of a struck bronze monument. He followed with a phrase that caused several lancers to break into laughter. While the sergeant was torn between outrage, uncertainty, and an explosive attack of pure mirth, Lysaer managed with light-hearted, lordly arrogance to make several sensible suggestions.
The headhunter lancers sorted themselves back into order, to find themselves seamlessly joined by the prince’s personal honour guard, a wagon bearing a woman beautiful enough to leave a man staring and silly, and a dozen trade dignitaries who were fed up with rain, and expressing thanks for the Mayor of Isaer’s timely consideration.
At the sergeant’s stirrup rode Lysaer, at patent length and diffidence inquiring what sort of silk would compliment his Lord Mayor’s colouring; the other gifts, he added hastily, were less personal. Unless the mayor’s lady wife had the misfortune to disdain Falgaire crystal?
Thoughtful, bemused, not entirely without sympathy for the sergeant who stammered answers to the royal inquiries under Talith’s distracting regard, Lord Diegan rode silent through the rain. In a humour that was piquantly Etarran, he watched Lysaer’s masterful diplomacy take the city of Isaer by storm.
There followed six days of formal dinners and protracted hours spent touring guild sheds where last year’s flax harvest lay hackled for bleaching. Lord Diegan followed the talk as he once had ravished the courtesans he seduced from the beds of wealthy patrons.
Yet even under close scrutiny, these discussions pursued the same topics as others in cities to the south, once Isaer’s mayor recovered from the flustered irritation of being hazed into guesting the very same prince he had dispatched his headhunters to set shackles on. The city’s guild ministers in circuitous politeness inquired whether Lysaer intended to launch from Avenor the same campaign he had spearheaded at Etarra: raise a garrison to meld forces with the headhunters’ leagues to clear Tysan’s wilds of barbarians. Trade with Camris, they said, suffered unduly from raids in the Thaldein passes.
Lysaer heard their woes in rapt sympathy. When the banquet was finished and the fine brandies poured, he graciously ventured opinion. ‘The clans of Rathain were stamped out by Etarra because they fell to ill usage by the Shadow Master.’ A frown marred his brows. The glitter of his hair and his jewels hung still in the lamplight as he paused in disturbed reminiscence. ‘Your difficulties in the passes of Orlan must be approached carefully.’ In the face of poisoned fear - that as scion of s’Ilessid he might lay claim to clan loyalty and upset rule in the towns - he said outright, If a way can be found to avoid outright slaughter, I would seek that before war.’
Silence fell, tensioned with threat.
While inimical stares from the councilmen sharpened around the table, and the Mayor of Isaer whispered something to a servant that brought guardsmen in full mail to block the doorway, Lord Diegan groped to draw the hidden dagger in his sleeve.
The prince acknowledged none of this, but centred upon a careworn alderman who fluttered his napkin in dismay. ‘You can’t suggest a treaty with the clanborn! Ath! There’s no way to reason with such, uncouth as they are. Like animals.’ While the mayor’s fat steward retreated without refilling the wine goblets, he added with whispered distaste, ‘ ‘Tis said of Maenalle s’Gannley that she wears uncured animal skins.’
For a moment Lysaer looked blandly mystified. Then he roused and said in forbearance, ‘Forgive me. I can’t support such hasty thinking.’ Under the table, his hand clamped hard on Diegan’s arm, locking the little knife in its sheath. ‘What would an armed campaign accomplish except to drive Tysan’s clans to share grievance with their brethren in Rathain? No. Blood-hunts are too dangerous an option, and Arithon s’Ffalenn too wily an adversary to risk driving allies to his cause. Of all things, I dare not draw his interests to your land to threaten the industry of your cities.’
With a deftness that seemed natural chance, the discussion was deflected to threats of shadow and sorcery; Lord Diegan swept into passionate description of the heinous slaughter that occurred on the banks of Tal Quorin, when a grisly chain of traps had savaged Etarra’s proud garrison.
The telling set him in a cold sweat. Deshir’s clansmen had always been killers; allied with Arithon s’Ffalenn and his demonic touch at spellcraft, they had narrowly been stopped from threatening civilized Rathain. Hands clenched on his cutlery, Lord Diegan spoke; as if the roar of Tal Quorin’s flood still battered his ears, and the screams of those troops swept away. Sucked back into memory like nightmare, he heard the crack of arrows striking through foliage and flesh; the ripping of timber and earth as concealed spring traps and deadfalls left his lancers gutted and bleeding out their lives in whimpering agony. Death did not account for all the losses. Some men were permanently deranged by the maze wards and shadows Arithon had used to bind them into confusion; others had been broken in spirit, prone to fits and raving when relivings wrenched them from sleep.
By itself, the account of the battle the Shadow Master had launched in Strakewood was enough to inspire terror. Isaer’s council ministers departed mollified; by direct command of their mayor, the men at arms tactfully dispersed.
Later, lighted by perfumed candles in a tapestried upper chamber, Lord Diegan chose his moment and cornered Lysaer before the prince called his valet to retire. ‘What are you playing at? I thought we agreed at Etarra that barbarian havens anywhere were too ready a tool for the Master’s use and design!’
‘You’re worried?’ The brandy had been particularly fine; yet an edge of irritation burned through the prince’s flush as he crossed the guest suite’s floral patterned carpet. Contained as smoothed marble, he said, ‘Then rest content, the raids in the passes will be ended. One way or another. By armed force as a last resort.’
Lord Diegan met and held those blue eyes, that could seem inhumanly assured in their candour. ‘Pretty manners and slick language might disarm the mistrust in Isaer. But tonight’s talk at supper would get you bloody and dead on the other side of the passes. Don’t fool yourself. Erdane’s mayor won’t be stood off with sweet talk and gifts.’
A frown knitted Lysaer’s brows. ‘I thought as much.’ He sighed and stifled a yawn behind a blaze of sapphire rings. ‘It’s inconvenient, I admit, but we’re going to need every city’s loyalty against
