Traitor's Knot Read online

  Only Sevrand stood rear-guard, tankard in his left hand, and his bared blade bent at a menacing angle toward the Mad Prophet’s nonchalant back. ‘Have you brought us an enemy?’ he challenged, dead earnest.

  ‘Irons!’ snapped Bransian. ‘We’ll know soon enough after this wretch is put to the question.’

  ‘No!’ Dakar yelled across spiralling uproar. ‘That boy’s under Prince Arithon’s warding protection!’

  ‘You didn’t say this!’ Keldmar bellowed, fast echoed by Parrien’s accusation that the prisoner was a slinking spy for the Light, and why didn’t Talvish set to with his knife and gut the cur here on the carpet. ‘I’ll do the work and unravel his tripes, if you’re snivelling, spit-licking squeamish.’

  ‘You didn’t say he was Prince Arithon’s charge,’ Keldmar interjected, ‘Why not?’

  ‘Yes,’ Parrien echoed, ‘why not? Just why shouldn’t we flense him to crow-bait right now?’

  Mearn’s manic laughter rang through crowding heat. ‘It’s not obvious? I think Dakar’s been clever. The ingrate who’s wearing a friend’s royal face requires a sharp lesson in humility’

  The irons arrived, clinking, in the care of a house-steward, who also was fit as a mercenary. Capable hands snapped them over pinned limbs.

  Fionn Areth spoke, strained by the sword-point pressed to his throat. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  Bransian spared no sympathy as his shaken prisoner was hauled by the scruff to his feet. ‘West tower dungeon,’ he declared forthwith. ‘The irons stay locked. Under Arithon’s bond of protection, you say?’ At Dakar’s nod, the Duke of Alestron stepped back, ‘Then his Grace had better collect his goods, quickly. I don’t care fiend’s get if the wretch rots in the dark till the rats pick him down to a skeleton.’

  ‘The tower guard’s apt to spit him,’ Mearn warned, his evil smile still in place.

  Parrien’s agreement chimed in lightning fast. ‘A shove on the stairs, or a slip with a knife. I’d do that, myself, there’s enough provocation.’

  ‘You’re turncoats!’ Fionn Areth gasped, faint with shock as the hold on him viciously tightened, and someone’s badgering blade nicked through skin. ‘Traitors gone over to Shadow!’

  ‘We are Arithon’s men,’ said Duke Bransian, complacent. ‘And my brothers are right. You’re a damned idiot with a tongue that the breeze flaps to every fool point on the compass. Leave you to yourself, you won’t last an hour. Sithaer, without help, I doubt we can get you out of my sight without somebody hasty pinning your liver up on my wall for a trophy!’

  At Dakar’s concerned glance, the duke finally smiled. Still murderously vigorous, he had all his teeth. ‘Don’t worry, man. He’ll have Arithon’s feal backing. Vhandon and Talvish will serve as his wardens. Let them handle the puppy as they see fit, and keep him breathing against all comers.’

  ‘That’s rich!’ Keldmar whooped. ‘We’ll take bets to see who winds up bloodied first.’

  ‘Or better,’ Parrien attacked with bright relish. ‘A thousand royals on whether Vhan or Talvish is willing to die, defending a priest-sucking goatboy’

  Summer 5670

  Last Home-coming

  Of nine Companions who marched with their Earl’s war-band from Halwythwood, eight had held the blood-soaked ground in Daon Ramon and broken the net of Alliance forces that had closed on the Master of Shadow. Five were killed in the red slaughter on the field. A sixth succumbed during rearguard action, defending a ragged contingent of scouts as they slipped through the lines and took flight. Cienn, who was seventh, was dispatched for mercy, by the knife of a steadfast friend. The eighth, single-handed, had been charged to defend the s’Ffalenn prince through a desperate retreat to the Mathorn Mountains.

  Against odds, alone, he survived to return.

  Braggen came south and entered the forest on foot to avoid leaving tracks for the head-hunters. He crossed the north fork of the River Arwent in the heat of high summer and paused to trap a black fox. As he intended, his smoke fire to finish the cured hide drew the clan scouts who watched over the downlands near Caith-al-Caen. News was exchanged, and directions.

  Under the regal crowns of the oaks, the warm air scarcely trembled. The fragrance of greenery clung thick as glue, shafted with sun through the heat haze. In the shaded glens, the deer drowsed through midday, fawns asleep while the does stamped off flies. Braggen slipped on his way, his step just as furtively silent, and his strapping frame lost in the brush.

  Worn lean from the trail, he arrived at the s’Valerient chieftain’s encampment in the lucent glimmer of twilight. He carried the pelt slung over his shoulder and the black brush strung at his belt.

  The pack of clan children discovered him first. ‘Look! It’s Braggen! Braggen’s alive! Another Companion is back!’

  Like starlings, they descended, calling his name. Their eager hands plucked at his clothing. He tousled heads, fended the boys off his knives, and detached the girl toddler before she wore the caked mud from the last stream he had forded.

  No welcoming crowd of adults came forward. No one mentioned the loss of his clan braid.

  Instead, given space out of mourning respect, two men were sent by the watch. They arrived unaccompanied, armed and dressed in the fringed, forest leathers that carried no other adornment. The expected, tall figure was slightly ahead, with the other sturdy and short, striding fast through the failing light. The children all scattered. Left standing alone, his heart heavy in him, Braggen confronted Sidir, and after him, Eriegal, whose round face was no longer merry. ‘We are four. After us, of fourteen, only Deith is still living.’

  Deith, who had not gone with the war-band, but remained in Strakewood, holding the tenuous ground in Deshir since the massacre at Tal Quorin that had savaged a whole generation.

  Now, the other survivors were fallen. Against crushing numbers and impossible odds, their lives had been given as well, to win their prince free of Lysaer’s massed assault on Daon Ramon Barrens.

  Braggen, who was not a demonstrative man, bent his close-cropped head, overcome. ‘I knew there were deaths. Just how many, the scouts would not tell me.’

  Grief closed his fists against helpless pain. Then Sidir caught him, gripped his massive frame close, and Eriegal embraced him also. Braggen wept with these two, whose lot had been hardest to bear: their doomed earl’s command had asked them to stand guard for the children and families in Halwythwood. Of them all, the bravest and best had been spared to advise the heirs chosen to inherit the s’Valerient titles. Barach, not yet twenty, was now Earl of the North, and clan chieftain ruling Deshir. Young Jeynsa, a hot-tempered and rebellious seventeen, must swear her oath and stand as caithdein to the crown of Rathain.

  Eriegal stood back first. His crooked smile broke through as he tipped his fair head to bear-bait the comrade, whose return was a gift unexpected. ‘You’ve hacked off your hair, man? Whoever she was, she must have shown you a rousing performance to have filched your braid as a keepsake.’

  ‘We were certain the Fatemaster had passed you for judgement,’ Sidir added, gruff. ‘Since you’re not maimed, we’re right to presume the knife-work was yours, not a townsman’s?’ The same height as Braggen, but spare and long-boned, he lost none of his quiet dignity through the moment of desperate emotion. ‘Come in. You’ll be starving. Better expect you won’t get any sleep until you’ve satisfied Feithan’s questions.’

  Braggen gripped the fox hide, too nerve-wracked to eat. He had dreaded this meeting with the earl’s widow for the better part of three months. Now the hour was upon him, he pressed the question. ‘What of Jieret’s successors?’

  Eriegal hooked fretful hands on his antler-bossed belt. ‘Barach will come once the runner’s informed him. He’s out on patrol with the archers.’

  ‘And Jeynsa?’

  The two Companions exchanged a taut glance. Then Sidir murmured, ‘You’ll see.’

  Flanked by his peers, Braggen crossed the encampment. Since the return of the Prince of Rath
ain, increased persecution by head-hunters had redoubled an already rigorous security. No open fires burned after dark. The Companion passed through the lines of dimmed tents, then ducked into the balsam-sweet shadows of the central lodge.

  The hide flap slapped shut, and Braggen stopped cold. Trophy hide on his shoulder, scarred hands crossed on his sword-pommel, he stood speechless, while Sidir lit a pine knot in a staked iron sconce, and Eriegal dodged to avoid being mown down by a tiny dark woman clad in leathers.

  ‘Braggen!’ Quick as a sparrow, Earl Jieret’s widow stretched on tiptoe and brushed a kiss on his bearded chin. Her black-and-silver hair still wore the s’Valerient clan braid. Bound by a deer-hide fillet, her brow showed a crease of stunned disbelief. Then her brown eyes spilled over with tears. ‘Ath Bless! You’ve returned. We thought—ah, no matter!’ Ravaged by grief, but as tirelessly vital, she embraced every part of him she could reach, then hammered his broad chest until his ornery nature relented, and he sat on a grass-stuffed hassock.

  The taciturn Companion offered up the rare fox pelt.

  ‘Who told you?’ Feithan whispered, overcome yet again. She raised the silky fur to her cheek. Eyes shut, she thanked him. Steady in his silent support, Sidir stood at her back, while Eriegal dragged up a second hassock. She gave way and sat. ‘You have news? It can wait. You’re aware, we’ve lost Jieret.’

  Braggen nodded. ‘I knew.’ He found all speech difficult. ‘Prince Arithon was blood-bonded. His Grace told me he sensed the High Earl’s crossing at the moment that spirit left flesh. But we were already past Leynsgap, by then. I cannot say how my lord fell.’

  ‘We were told,’ informed Sidir. Enough time had passed, he could force his tone level. ‘Luhaine of the Fellowship brought word back to Halwythwood. He said, further, that Arithon Teir’s’Ffalenn had survived, and that his enemies could no longer reach him. But the Sorcerer would not answer our questions or disclose our liege’s location.’

  Braggen glanced down, marked hands laid uncertain before him.

  Where Sidir’s grave tact preferred space, Eriegal flared to impatience. ‘Ath, you’re too quiet. You know where his Grace is! Is that why you’re shorn of your clan braid, for shame? Braggen, where did you fall short?’

  The accused Companion snapped up his chin, bitter. Against precedent, his anger turned inward. ‘I did not fail in my charge! As a man with no other skill but the sword, I stood ground at my prince’s shoulder. I could, and I did, defend him with weapons. But I am not made as his chosen caithdein. I was not fit to stand in the breach and challenge his adamant spirit.’

  ‘What happened?’ pushed Eriegal. ‘Where did Arithon go to seek refuge?’

  Braggen stood in a rush, with Feithan beside him, her small hands caging his fist. ‘Peace! All of you! This was Jieret’s lodge, and he would not have your contention.’

  And trembling, Braggen was first to back down. He turned from Eriegal’s leashed accusation, and with a dignity no man had seen, eased the earl’s widow back to her seat. Then finesse deserted him. ‘My lady, on my word of honour, the truth: I cut off my clan braid at need, in order to pass through the lines as a townsman. Now it’s my right to know. What happened to your husband in Daon Ramon Barrens?’

  While Sidir pressed long fingers over closed lids, and Eriegal watched, white, Feithan looked up at the man who overshadowed her, savage and raw with resentment. She told him. ‘Jieret was captured by Lysaer’s Lord Commander of the Alliance armed forces. He was wounded, Luhaine said, and not handled kindly. Yet he was kept alive. His enemies thought to use him as a hostage to bring the Teir’s’Ffalenn back to heel.’

  ‘Ath’s mercy!’ gasped Braggen. ‘For Jieret’s life? Defend us! For that, the s’Ilessid pretender would have flushed Arithon from cover.’

  Sidir bared his face, and found grace at last to lift the burden from the brave woman now sorely bereft. ‘Jieret knew that, as well. He found resources no other caithdein has tapped. The Sorcerer told us he achieved true greatness, and opened a gateway into the mysteries through his sworn tie to the land. Signs and wonders were shown to men on that night. Lysaer’s war host was paralysed, unable to fight. They could not be made to regroup until Earl Jieret received a sorcerer’s twofold death, first by a sword through the heart, then by immolation with fire.’

  ‘The hand on the blade was Lysaer s’Ilessid’s,’ Eriegal added with wretched clarity. ‘Our High Earl met a dog’s end, without succor. Now, tell us the fate of Prince Arithon.’

  Pale to the lips, Braggen backed up until his huge frame bumped against the center pole of the lodge tent. There, he braced, at a loss for retort. His fellow Companions held their wary ground, well aware he was wont to strike out when cornered.

  Yet Braggen gave them no whisper of argument. His volatile fists stayed locked at his sides. ‘Grant me the presence of my acting clan chief. Also Rathain’s appointed caithdein since, in this life, I can scarcely bear to repeat what will have to be said.’

  Feithan arose. Silent and quick, she fetched wooden cups and a bottle of cherry brandy. Eriegal woke out of his bristling distress. He took Sidir’s urgent hint and left to bring Jeynsa, who had yet to make timely appearance.

  Nothing remained except to wait, with Braggen’s raw nerves wrapped in the lodge tent’s familiar, close shadows. Though he had a wife and a daughter, kept safe, in the northern wilds of Fallowmere, this place was as much a home to him. Head bent, he breathed in the pitch scent of resin, underlaid by the fragrance of leather and goose-grease and the wax used for weatherproofing the camp gear. The summer furnishings seemed as they always had, except for the absence of Jieret’s sword and the dearth of scouts coming and going. The encampment had been three-quarters stripped of its fighting men, blood-bought cost of a crown prince’s freedom.

  None too soon, the pent silence shattered, cut across by a male voice, declaiming, overlaid by a woman’s vituperative anger. The lodge door flap cracked open, careless of the light, and Jeynsa strode in, still raging.

  Brows pinched into an iron scowl, eyes like chipped flint, she encountered the motionless presence of Braggen, and stopped. Her vivid regard raked him over. From cropped head to scraped boots, she missed only the foxtail melted at one with the shadow.

  Her opening was hostile. ‘Did you cut your hair out of protest as well?’ Against the stunned stillness, she raked back the hacked bangs that remained of her shining brown hair.

  Eriegal moved, shut the door flap, then caught her arm. ‘You have no shame!’ Despite his dumpy stature, he man-handled her subsequent, wild cat wrench. Curbed, she stood glaring, hard-breathing and heedless of the deep bruise her clamped wrist was going to show later.

  His voice level, Sidir explained from behind. ‘She cut off her hair rather than suffer the formal ritual of her investiture.’

  Braggen stared, horrified. ‘Girl, you did this to avoid receiving the pattern of the caithdein’s traditional clan braid?’

  ‘We’re a perfect, matched pair, as you see,’ Jeynsa sheared back. ‘Why’d you cut yours?’

  ‘That’s enough!’ Feithan ploughed Eriegal aside to confront her daughter. ‘No get of mine is brought into this world to insult clan heritage under this roof! Apologize, Jeynsa! Right now.’

  Strapping at seventeen, with her sire’s tough strength clad in scout’s knives and leathers, the girl towered over her mother. Nonetheless, her eyes dropped. Smoking with banked defiance, she spoke the rote phrases, then perched against the board trestle. To Braggen, she said, ‘You have news of my father? Don’t trouble to report. I know how he died. By Sight, I stood witness. No reason, and no blooded prince under sky could justify how he suffered!’

  Struck breathless, Braggen appealed to Sidir. ‘What’s she saying? Ath’s own mercy. The High Earl was tortured?’

  ‘Worse.’ Jeynsa spat on the packed earth floor, while the brand dipped her drawn features in carmine. ‘He was mutilated, degraded, cut dumb, and drugged. Did you know, when they finished, they threw his cha
rred skull to be mauled in the teeth of the tracking dogs?’

  ‘He was gone by then, and you know it!’ Feithan’s composure withstood the cruel pressure. ‘Luhaine swore you his oath that your father was raised beyond pain when his spirit crossed over Fate’s Wheel.’ Upright, arms folded, she drew a fierce breath. ‘But that’s not why you won’t forgive him. Be honest! You hate what happened because Jieret held true to his oath as caithdein. He died, and died well, for this land and his prince. You reject the willed choice of his crossing because of his triumph, that dared come before his own family’

  ‘What’s to forgive?’ whispered Jeynsa, while the tears welled and spilled. ‘Not Father! It’s the crown prince who left him that I would cry down for Dharkaron’s redress.’

  Braggen shoved off the center post. ‘Prince Arithon’s will had nothing to do with this! Jeynsa! I was there.’ Helpless anguish broke through, as, after all, he spoke out before Barach arrived to share witness. ‘Your father broke orders. As caithdein, by right claim of precedence to the realm, he rejected Prince Arithon’s instructions. I was to have been the one sacrificed to Lysaer. Jieret was your liege’s choice to return, safe and sound, to this hearthstone.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ Jeynsa gasped, unappeased. Her glimpsed sight of the fox-brush roused more galling venom. ‘I still see the sword fall. Every night, I smell the stench of the pyre. My father’s heart’s-blood runs red through my dreams. He had no tongue, and no voice, beyond the wretched sound Ath gave an animal.’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Jeynsa!’ Sidir thrust forward; yet Braggen, like rock, only shuttered his face with blunt fingers.

  ‘I will tell you this much,’ he said, muffled, then lowered his arms, unutterably altered. ‘I heard our prince beg. I listened to his appeal to Earl Jieret. His Grace used words that no man I know could possess the stern fibre to refuse. Naught but one. Out of love, this prince’s caithdein held firm. When I tell you what our liege risked to spare Rathain’s royal blood line, you will realize: Arithon was forced upon Earl Jieret’s mercy. As the man sworn to preserve our crown heritage, your father rejected his liege’s bared will. There is no fault, and no blame for what happened. No reason, past the needs of this kingdom, that have robbed us all without quarter. As the last standing witness, I promise: none suffers more for the death of your father than the prince now left burdened, and living.’