by my word, you go free. Return to your loved ones and live out your days without fear. For if in truth I were the sorcerer you believed, your life in my hands would be sacrosanct.’
But Tharrick had no family, nor any place left to call home. His post in the duke’s guard had been his whole life until this man, who meant no malice, had ruined him. Desire for revenge had sustained him ever since. Denied that, he was an honourless exile, lost without purpose and cast adrift.
Duke and Prince
The hour after the brig Savrid dropped anchor behind the chain in Alestron’s inner harbour, Duke Bransian and two brothers s’Brydion prepared to fare out hunting. The formal messenger sent by Lysaer of Tysan to request an audience reached them in the stable yard, just then a commotion of running grooms and glossy horses plunging and snorting at their leads. Underfoot, through the puddles seized black in the frost, the stag hounds yapped and cavorted.
Even while coursing for pleasure on his lands, the duke preferred to wear mail. Planted spraddle-legged over an upset trestle that had spilled its overweighted load of horse trappings, Lord Bransian turned the snarled frown begun by his servant’s incompetence upon the harried royal dignitary. ‘The timing’s a cursed inconvenience!’ His shout boomed across the milling chaos in the bailey. ‘I shan’t hold a war council without the attendance of my family. That’s a problem, since Mearn hates to hunt.’
Lysaer’s greying seneschal clasped his cloak in his fists before a gust ripped it up around his throat. A slender, quiet man who disliked being dishevelled, he fought the odds to maintain diplomacy and dignity, and ignored the puppy which crouched to gnaw his ankle.
Lord Bransian overshadowed him, a tower of a man in cowl and surcoat, who fumed in impatience until his groom scuttled up in breathless deference to retrieve the scattered ducal horsecloths.
‘My lord, our news involves bloodshed,’ pressed the seneschal.
The huntsman by the kennels chose that moment to try his horn; Lysaer’s statesman pitched his plea above the bugle. ‘His Grace of Avenor bid me say that the Master of Shadow who laid waste to your armoury has burned the trade fleet in the harbour at Werpoint.’
Framed in steel links, the scowl on Bransian’s square features knitted to thunderous disgust. ‘Dharkaron’s avenging Spear and Chariot! His Grace petitioned us to withhold our assault against the meddling little criminal last summer. Just like kissing idiots, see what we get for our waiting! I suppose the royal army’s been landlocked?’
While the seneschal hunched like a turtle in his cloak and lace collars in mute affirmation of bad news, Bransian raised a mailed fist to flag down the pageboy who raced past with both arms looped in bridles. ‘Tell the master of horse to saddle Mearn’s gelding!’
The boy bobbed a bow, dragging reins. ‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And kick my brother’s narrow arse out of bed!’ Bransian’s bellowed order sent a massive black stud in a clattering shy across the cobbles. Its bunched, dappled haunches set two carter’s lads to flight, while a lone, honking gander, escaped from its crate in the kitchen yard, flapped in distress through the fracas. ‘Say he’s to attend me, however late he’s stayed out to gamble, and bedamned to his disdain for blooding stags.’
The ducal displeasure fastened back on Avenor’s skinny seneschal. ‘Does your master ride a palfrey or a war-horse? Speak fair. Our destriers want for exercise, but I won’t spare your prince the rough side of my temper if his mount slips the bit and kicks a hound.’
Midday saw the four brothers s’Brydion reined up in the softened, grey slush on a hillside. They had taken no stag, but not for want of trying. Mud splashed and boisterous astride their foam flecked mounts, they groused in rough play, and derided Keldmar for his temerity. An exchange of dares had led him to jump over a wall in a shortcut through a crofter’s hog pen. The landing had mired his mount to his knees in a wallow overflowing with a shrieking sow and her farrow.
‘Ath, I’ll split,’ chuckled Parrien, his battle braid fallen undone and his hair whipped in crimped hanks across his shoulders. ‘That piglet that fell in your boot cuff -’
‘Shut up!’ Keldmar snapped, his eyes creased with malice. Reminder enough, the tassels on his horsecloths were crusted with dirt that reeked of faeces. ‘Your turn will come. Remember that stream with the sink pool, last season?’
Rain misted through the trees, nipping Bransian’s cheeks to clash pink against his beard, and chilling the thinner Mearn ghost white beneath the black velvet band of his cap. Still clad in the ribboned doublet he had chosen in expectation of a quiet morning minding the accounts, the youngest of the brothers tipped his head in cool courtesy toward the royal guest. The only one likely to commiserate with a foreigner dragged headlong through raw weather and winter fields, he apologized for the barren hunt.
‘We don’t use beaters. That’s a mayor’s habit, and shame on the man who kills a beast without due respect for its honour, its pride and wild strength.’ He combed nervous fingers through his mount’s burr-caught mane and flicked up one shoulder in a shrug. ‘I never liked coursing stag. Too much sweat and ploughing through briars. But the sorcerer you chase. He’s another matter. I should like to feed his heart to my falcon.’
Resplendent despite the soil on his blue-and-gold cloak, his hand in skilled quiet holding a mettlesome bay charger in check, Lysaer s’Ilessid at last gained the moment to address the subject which had brought him. ‘I’m here to join our efforts to that end.’
‘You mean you’re here to beg for ships,’ Parrien cut in, the humour erased from his face.
In the dark gash of the draw, cross-laced with winter trees, a hound bayed on a false scent. The huntsman shouted and winded his horn. Reduced to a toy figurine by the distance, he wheeled his horse and cantered, his pack fanned over the sere ground ahead like shadows streamered in a current.
Bransian grunted in disgust, backed his rawboned mount from the hillcrest, and reined around to rejoin his brothers. Faced to the wind, his beard whipped like a lion’s mane across his faded surcoat, he regarded the Prince of the West with eyes the gritted grey of filed iron. ‘This hunt’s a shambles. We may as well discuss the other.’ Never one to trouble over niceties, he plunged headlong to the point. ‘An entire fleet was scuttled. Excuses won’t restore your burned ships. I want to know if the loss was due to incompetence.’
Lysaer met the duke’s glare, his back straight, and his hands square and steady on his reins. ‘Let me tell you how a pirate who works sorcery and shadow goes about butchering the innocent.’
Keldmar snorted and scuffed a gob of dirt off the steel-studded knuckles of his gauntlet. ‘The trade fleet was anchored off Werpoint for the purpose of moving your war host. A fool might call that innocent. Your s’Ffalenn enemy’s proved he’s not stupid, that’s all.’
Parrien glared at the brother near enough in looks to be his birth twin. ‘You jabber like a woman at her laundry tub.’
Keldmar returned a smile rowed with teeth. ‘Say that again across my sword. Words are for ninnies. Let’s determine who’s a woman with bare steel.’
Duke Bransian shouldered his horse between the pair, effectively strangling their rivalry. To the prince interrupted by the family style of bickering, he said, ‘We have our ships snugged down and our mercenaries on leave for the season, as they should be. Winter’s no time to
