Darkening Skies (The Hadrumal Crisis) (19 page)

Which explained the absences which Corrain had noted in the troop’s muster. Reclaiming livestock also meant losing men to herd them to the closest village.

‘And where our lands march with Wanflest?’ Corrain was much less inclined to give any benefit of the doubt there. With his lands north and inland to the east, only touching Halferan thanks to a long finger reaching past Karpis, Baron Wanflest hadn’t seen a single corsair set foot within his borders.

That hadn’t stopped his guardsmen brutally repelling those fleeing from Halferan, so Fitrel had heard around Ferl’s taprooms. Add to that, while Lord Antathele had abstained in the vote in parliament, Baron Wanflest had apparently been loud in his support of Baron Karpis.

‘We found plenty of his men’s traces.’ Fitrel’s expression grew more grim. ‘Half the standing crops in our fields have already been cut to stubble. Our tenants said they were penned up in their villages for a handful of days at a time. Anyone venturing out was beaten senseless by howling men with soot-blackened faces dressed in motley-coloured rags.’

Corrain scowled. ‘A festival masquerader’s notion of the Aldabreshi.’

‘We’re supposed to believe that these island barbarians carefully harvested those crops and carted them away in wagons leaving the tracks we found,’ Fitrel spat with savage sarcasm.

‘So it’ll be a hungry winter.’ Corrain rubbed a hand over his chin, feeling the stubble of his days on the road. The shackle around his wrist snagged a strand of his untidy hair.

He had sworn an oath on both those tokens, to himself and his dead lord’s memory. He would see this land and its folk safe from the cursed corsairs, or so he had spat at Talagrin’s statue.

He knew exactly how to make these thieving Wanflests pay. He would lead a guard troop inland and follow those wagon tracks all the way to the barns where those bastards had stored their plunder. They’d reclaim Halferan’s winter stores, aye and use the flat of their sword blades on anyone who tried to stop them.

But of course, Corrain couldn’t do any such thing. He wasn’t Halferan’s captain of guards, trained for such duty since he was a beardless boy. Halferan’s baron couldn’t lead such a raid. And he couldn’t send this troop to reclaim the stolen harvest regardless. These guards were all too old or too young to prevail against Wanflest’s handpicked ruffians.

But Halferan’s entire populace was relying on him, as surely as they had once relied on his dead lord and the guard troop who had died in the marshes.

Corrain was beginning to fear, very seriously, that he could not measure up to their expectations. Oh, he was confident that he could meet any one of these challenges; commanding the guard troop, taking charge of rebuilding the manor, even running the household once that was done, should Master Rauffe and his wife return to Licanin.

Though playing the part of Halferan’s baron remained a daunting prospect, he had bested the other noblemen in their parliament once, so as long as he stepped carefully, he should survive the next gathering.

But how was he to manage all these things, with so many constant and conflicting calls on his time? He could barely address one problem before a handful more came clamouring.

‘My lord baron,’ Fitrel prompted.

‘I will write to Baron Wanflest.’ Not that Corrain had any notion of how to frame such a letter.

Could Lady Zurenne advise him? She was currently sorting through the remnants of the barony’s archive back at Taw Ricks. Perhaps she would find something to guide them?

‘Yes, I know how feeble that sounds,’ Corrain snapped before the old sergeant could speak. ‘But it’s the first step to laying the matter before the Winter Solstice Parliament.’

By which time, those harvested crops would have been eaten or Wanflest would claim they had been lost to damp or rats.

‘No, my lord baron.’ Fitrel sounded as exasperated as he had been long years ago, whipping the callow Corrain into line. ‘On the eastern road!’

Corrain stood in his stirrups, unable to believe his eyes. ‘Get the troop down to the manor and see the horses watered and groomed,’ he ordered through gritted teeth.

Furious, he spurred his mount into a startled gallop. The three riders on the eastern road slowed, their horses shying at the chestnut thundering towards them. Two horses anyway. The donkey bringing up the rear regarded his approach with stubborn indifference.

‘What are you doing here?’ Corrain didn’t know who to berate first; Lady Ilysh or young Reven.

‘My place is by your side.’ For all her bold words, Ilysh sagged in her saddle.

‘Your place is at your lessons and heeding your lady mother!’ As hotly as Corrain spoke, his blood ran cold at the thought of this trio of fools unaccompanied on the road.

What would become of the barony if Ilysh were to be killed or worse? Little Esnina would be the next heiress and prey to all those claimants Corrain had only so recently faced down. There was no way under the sun, both moons and all the stars that those noble lords would stand for him and Zurenne contriving a second marriage of convenience.

‘My mother is no longer Lady Halferan.’ Ilysh’s defiance returned as she thrust a shaking finger toward the shattered buildings. ‘It is my duty to see my manor restored!’

That dramatic gesture provoked her ill-tempered grey mare into a buck that could have well unseated her if the beast hadn’t been so tired.

Reven’s firm hand was there in an instant. ‘My lady—’

The lad gasped, his words cut short. The gleaming point of Corrain’s sword pressed against his throat.

‘What were you going to do if you stumbled across a band of corsairs?’ he snarled. ‘Or freebooters from Attar or Claithe, prowling on the nod from Lord Karpis? You only carry one blade. Were you relying on Abiah to defend your open side?’

Though he supposed he should be grateful that one or other of these idiot children had appreciated the necessity of a chaperone.

Corrain’s hand shook as he remembered how he had also sworn never to honour Talagrin again until he saw the lad Hosh safe at his old mother’s fireside.

Reven yelped, but seeing the bloody scratch was no worse than a razor scrape, Corrain swallowed his impulse to apologise. That soreness could keep the lad mindful of the possible consequences of his folly.

He turned his anger on Ilysh. ‘How dare you defy your lady mother? She will be frantic with worry!’

At least until Lady Ilysh returned with a fitting escort. But that was a new thorn in Corrain’s shoe. He didn’t want to send Fitrel’s hard-pressed guard troop back to Taw Ricks. Once men and horses alike were rested, they must travel south to wave Halferan’s colours in Tallat faces.

Ilysh’s voice rose to something perilously close to a wail. ‘I left her a letter!’

‘My lord baron.’ Old Abiath spoke.

‘What have you to say for yourself?’ Corrain wasn’t about to spare the frail old woman, even for Hosh’s sake. For one thing, she looked the least travel-worn of the trio. Not so frail then, for all her slight stature and her shawl-wrapped grey head.

She ignored his question. ‘Look to the manor, Lord Halferan, and to the demesne men.’

Corrain wasn’t about to be distracted. ‘You can rest here till I can find you fresh horses. Then you’ll be on your way back to your mother.’

‘I won’t!’ Ilysh teetered on the brink of tears. ‘I am the lady of Halferan!’

‘You will. I am your husband and your liege lord and you will do as I command!’ Corrain reprimanded Ilysh as harshly any rebellious recruit to the guards’ ranks.

He couldn’t think what else to do. Corrain had no experience of dealing with barely blooded maidens, noble or common born. Truth be told, he had scant experience of living with women of any age. His mother had died labouring to deliver the babe who would have been his sister before he’d seen his tenth summer. When his father had died not long after, Fitrel had taken him in and the old sergeant-at-arms had lived his whole life unmarried. While Corrain had enjoyed plenty of female companionship, he generally left his lovers sleeping before their bed sheets had time to cool.

Those tears trickling down Ilysh’s cheeks unnerved him horribly.

‘Ca—’ Reven’s tongue stumbled in his anger. ‘My lord—’ His words were drowned out by rising cheers from the ransacked manor’s compound.

Corrain turned to see what was afoot, thankful for an excuse to pretend not to hear the boy’s insolence and not have to punish him for it.

He saw the work gangs had all halted, along with Fitrel’s guardsmen picketing their horses in the rough pasture along the brook.

The men were all hallooing. Some waved their shirts, stripped to save the linen from sweat and dirt. As he watched, he saw them realise that their lady had seen their greeting. They returned to their labours with alacrity, calling out encouragement to each other.

‘They’ll work all the harder for their lady’s sake,’ Abiath remarked, ‘and they’ll take it hard if you don’t trust them to keep her safe and comfortable here.’

‘Reven was only doing my bidding.’ Ilysh scrubbed the tears angrily from her face. ‘You cannot whip him on my account.’

Corrain would much rather deal with her angry than weeping but he wasn’t having that. ‘I will discipline my guardsmen as I see fit, my lady wife.’

Satisfied to see Ilysh bite her lip, he glared at Reven and jerked his head towards the picket lines between the manor and the brook.

‘Report to Sergeant Fitrel and see to your horse. I’ll deal with you later.’

Corrain took Ilysh’s bridle from Reven and felt the tremors of the grey mare’s exhaustion. ‘You’ve ridden this poor beast to her knees, you silly girl.’

‘You can’t—’ Ilysh bit her lip again as evidently she recalled Corrain could now speak to her exactly as he wished.

‘Abiath.’ He looked at the old woman. ‘Tell Master Rauffe to set up a tent for you and Lady Ilysh in the most sheltered spot he can find. Set up my own tent beside it.’

‘As you wish, my lord baron.’ With a look he had no hope of interpreting, she urged her donkey forward.

Corrain dismounted with a curt nod to Ilysh, gathering both horses’ reins in one hand. ‘We’ll walk.’

Ilysh opened her mouth, thought better of it, and slid from her saddle in a flurry of dusty skirts and begrimed petticoats. As her boots reached the ground, her knees buckled.

Corrain barely managed to wrap his free arm around her waist to keep her from collapsing completely. ‘Didn’t you rest at all last night?’

‘We had to stop when the moons set.’ Ilysh wriggled free before thinking better of such independence and threading her hand through his elbow as a compromise.

Corrain could feel how heavily she was leaning on him and curbed his long stride to her maidenly pace. The horses were content to walk placidly behind them.

Ilysh heaved a sudden sigh.

‘What is it?’ Corrain asked warily.

‘All… that.’ Ilysh gestured helplessly at the devastation ahead.

Corrain was sorely tempted to sigh himself. ‘I know.’

‘Why won’t you let the wizards help us?’ Ilysh looked up and her hand went to the rune sigil pendant around her neck. ‘The Archmage has offered. He has already helped us. My mother, my sister and I would all be dead in a ditch if it wasn’t for Madam Jilseth’s wizardry.’

But the Tormalin magewoman Merenel had not come to give Ilysh her white raven lesson, as she had been supposed to, on that day when Corrain had returned to Taw Ricks, or since.

‘There are considerations you’re not aware of.’ Though Corrain couldn’t think how to explain his fear of wizardly retribution to the girl.

When would the Archmage demand that he answer for bringing that Mandarkin mage southwards? How much could he achieve for Halferan before that happened?

He cleared his throat. ‘You can rest here overnight, then—’

‘I swapped marriage vows with you at Drianon’s altar for the sake of keeping Halferan safe.’ Ilysh’s intense expression reminded Corrain irresistibly of his dead lord. ‘Why won’t you allow me a say in the barony’s future, when it’s my bloodline that makes you its lord? I know my father did something which my mother wishes to keep a secret and I believe it has to do with his appeals to Hadrumal but I’m not interested in such tangles. I want to see Halferan restored.’ Now she was pleading with him. ‘Why can’t the wizards help us?’

‘Because they have other concerns,’ Corrain said harshly.

By all that was sacred and profane, that was surely the truth. What was happening in the corsair’s anchorage? Was that why Merenel hadn’t returned?

He watched Abiath on her plodding donkey approaching the gatehouse ruins. What had become of her beloved Hosh?

All the questions besieging Corrain tormented him like gadflies.

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