“I know Elena speaks to your heart, but another will as well.”
“As in...another woman?” Elena had his loyalty and his life, but not his heart. Only Lesle had that.
“I think someone more familial,” she answered.
He shook his head. “I’ve no family left at all, my lady. They’re all dead.”
But maybe it wasn’t truth. His lady mother? Was she dead yet? As a boy slave he’d seen her once, a cloaked figure gliding across the lawn as he’d minded the King’s dogs during a jaunt outdoors. His cousin, a young prince then, had laid his hand on Draken’s shoulder and told him who she was and why she was shunned from court. Maybe it was then he had thought to make provisions for his young, enslaved cousin.
And it had all gone the way of the banes, Draken thought sourly. He came back from the memory finding Galene watching him. “I’m sorry, my lady. My mind wanders.”
“Without my mask, I cannot offer you much more than I’ve heard.”
“You knew I have royal blood,” he pointed out. She nodded but offered no further explanation. He sighed. “What else have you heard of me?”
“The Mance fear you and the Moonlings trust you. Such hatred and faith are not easily gained.” She produced a small stoneware bottle and rose. “More draught for your pain. Peace keep you, my lord.”
Feeling shuffled aside, Draken bowed over her hand and pocketed the bottle before reluctantly taking his leave. The cold fog had everyone bustling around the courtyard with their hoods up and cloaks pulled tight. The others were already mounted. He strode to his bay mare, his cloak hem dragging in the puddles, sputtering rain cooling his cheeks. He tried to ignore his complaining shoulder as he mounted and drank another swallow of the nasty liquid from the bottle. Draught or no, he faced a wet, miserable, aching journey to the river.
Brooding won’t help,
Bruche said.
But this might.
Cold enveloped his arm and shoulder, bringing a measure of blessed numbness.
“Ready to be off, then?” Tyrolean sounded amicable for once.
“Aye.” Draken avoided looking at Osias. He had too many questions for the Mance at the moment, as well as the disquieting inkling of mistrust. He’d been suspicious of him before and here it was back, stronger than before. The Mance fear you, Galene had heard. “We need—”
A flash of light sizzled in the wet air: flaming arrows sank into the intricate twig roof. Armed men on horseback materialized within the thick mists. A sword swung so close he heard the rain ping off it. Draken urged his mare sideways, dodging the blow.
“Away!” Ty cried, wheeling his horse.
Sticky sounds of hooves in mud, cries of rage and terror, a flicker of smoke in Draken’s nostrils. Galene! he thought, and the others inside—
They are too many.
Bruche was calm. Much too calm.
“No!” Draken shouted back, but his lungs drowned in deep, numbing cold as Bruche took over.
The bay tried to bolt at Bruche’s urging; Draken fought back and collected her to a nervous prance. He thought he had the protection of the trees, but the thud of an arrow glancing off his chest plate nearly unseated him.
Bruche tore his gaze from the inn at Tyrolean’s cry, “Lord Draken! To me!”
Surrounded by three swordsmen in black, Tyrolean’s swords slashed through the mist, horse spinning on its back legs in as fine a battle-trained maneuver as Draken had ever seen in a lifetime of soldiering. But Tyrolean’s assailants kept outside his range, holding him in place. In that moment, Draken and Bruche found perfect sync as they drew the sword and spurred toward him. Bruche decapitated the nearest assailant from behind with a single, ringing blow, and Draken cried out as pain raked his injured shoulder. Blood from the man’s severed throat soaked Tyrolean’s left side, but it bought him enough time to slay the other two.
“My lord!” Tyrolean shouted at him. “Be off!”
Chaos whirled around Draken as pain overtook his senses. A black mask materialized from the smoke and rain. Steel-colored eyes locked on his. Draken couldn’t make his legs grip his horse any tighter and felt himself slipping. Bruche’s cold deepened in intensity. Black began to wash across his vision.
“RUN.”
Osias’ Mance Voice brought him back to himself and he watched as Bruche swung the sword toward the black mask. Red jutted through the gray gloom, a drop of salty sweetness pierced his lips, and then his horse leapt forward into the trees.
No!
Draken shouted mentally, his jaw locked by ethereal power.
I cannot resist the Mance,
Bruche said, and Draken felt his body urge the horse for the protection of the woods. Screams and shouts filled the mists behind him.
Osias’ Voice shuddered through the trees and Draken’s soul.
“AWAY TO SAFETY!”
Draken fought, but Bruche kicked the bay mare into a gallop. He sucked in a ragged breath and fought again, drawing on his anger for strength. He grasped the reins in his hand and yanked back. The bay mare, confused by conflicting commands, danced under him, ears flattened, head up, trying to tear loose of her reins. Draken forced his head back to look, slowly, because managing his rebellious body was a calculated battle.
Osias stared back at him, seeming somehow larger in the mist, shock crumpling his features. A single moment of silence and the smoke and screams overtook his senses.
“Go, my lord!” Tyrolean slapped the flat of his blade against Draken’s horse and despite the tightened reins, she leapt forward, narrowly missing a tree. Draken again tried to halt her, but terror made her strong. She continued to run, gathering speed with every stride, arrows whirring by him.
Chapter Fifteen
R
ide, friend! Only ride!
Draken didn’t know if it was Bruche or Osias. Wordless protest filled his mind, but he was at the mercy of Bruche’s fierce cold and his charging horse. His resistance to Osias’ Voice waned. He glanced back to see Setia hesitating and Tyrolean spurring her on, but then his horse was crashing through deep woods and required his full attention. He hunkered down over her neck, cold to his core with Bruche’s soul. The mare jumped a fallen log and flattened into a full gallop through a small clearing.
Thick underbrush clogged the woods on the other side of the clearing, but his horse thrust herself onward and Bruche rescinded control. Draken rode hard until lather flecked the bay’s flanks. He was panting so hard his leather armor constricted his breath. He looked back several times but heard rather than saw the frantic race between Tyrolean and Setia. No one seemed to be following, no arrows thumped into trees or whistled by them.
“Hold!” Tyrolean cried at last. “Setia! Draken! Hold!”
Bruche slipped back, making himself smaller. Draken drew up his mare and allowed the others to catch up. For a moment they stared around at each other. His horse quivered beneath him.
“They’d have caught us by now with arrows if they were going to,” Tyrolean said.
They nearly had. “Even so, I don’t like running,” Draken snapped. “Now we’ve no idea who they were.”
Tyrolean, covered in drying blood, wiped his face with a clean bit of cloak. “They were too many. We had no choice. And they were masked at any rate.”
“Like the man who attacked me last night,” Draken said. “Va Khlar, then.”
Tyrolean nodded and the sickness in Draken’s stomach swelled. He’d brought an attack upon the inn and its occupants, and he regretted his mistrust of Galene. She had been trying to help. Now she was maybe dead. At the least, several of her guests and servants had lost their lives. He’d seen that much. “I would have gone back to help Galene.”
Tyrolean’s fist touched his collarbone in salute. “It is my duty to protect the life of my betters, Night Lord. Had you stayed, you would have died. I won’t be tasked with ferrying your corpse back to my Queen.”
I could not say it better, Draken
. The old warrior’s voice was composed and kind. Rain began pattering down again on his horse’s steaming flank.
Besides, you cannot save every woman you meet.
Draken looked away, letting the green woods fade into the silvery blur of rain. How had it come to this, that he was Tyrolean’s superior? He was no better than any other soldier, worse even, with the mistakes and decisions he’d made. How had everything gone so wrong?
Mistakes do not only belong to underlings
, Bruche pointed out.
“The attack reeks of Va Khlar’s men,” Tyrolean said, heedless of Draken’s internal debate. “The skill, the destruction, the masks.” He shook his head, disquiet written in his lined eyes. “This will reach the Bastion. Queen Elena will be outraged.”
“As well she should be,” Draken said tightly.
“I thought you didn’t like to answer every slight, my lord,” Tyrolean said, slipping Draken a grin.
Draken let the jibe pass. Like a lot of soldiers, Tyrolean likely thrived on the energy from battle. Exchanging taunts was a way to release the tension.
“Where is Osias?” Setia asked suddenly. “I thought he was behind us.”
Osias. He had tried to control Draken through Bruche.
He might have warned me this is a side effect of having you aboard,
he told Bruche. The spirit didn’t answer.
Tyrolean lifted a bloody hand. “Peace, Setia. He knows our path. We’ll meet him at the river docks or in Reschan.”
Setia leaned forward on her horse’s neck and wrapped her arms around it. For a moment breathing was the only sound: their own, still shallow and quick in their chests, and the horses’ heaving. Draken patted the bay’s wet neck, but her ears still flicked, listening for threat.
“We’d best move on,” Tyrolean said, and they urged their reluctant horses toward the water.
“We’ll be exposed on the river,” Draken said.
“I know,” the Captain answered. “But the currents are quick. With the right driver we’ll gain time on a galloping horse. With the horses, I’ll buy enough mercs to hold them at the bridge if there aren’t any servii about.”
Tyrolean pushed ahead on the riverside trail. Draken kept an eye on the surrounding woods and the water. His hands were cold with Bruche’s vigilance. The rain lifted and the morning lightened as they walked. Trees grew straight and strong in the damp soil, thick enough to fair hide a legion of soldiers. The opposite bank loomed over the wide river, fronted by stratified red clay. The bank on their side was flatter and the water lapped against the trail.
The drogher drivers wore beaded bands about their foreheads and loose, serviceable clothing. They pushed the large, flat rafts along with poles, cutting the water with quiet grace. Rafters lifted solemn hands in greeting, but most eyes narrowed at the sight of the bloody First Captain in his greens. At last they came to a splintery wooden bridge which led to docks.
They dismounted across the river by a dock with several empty droghers tied. Rough cabins and huts crowded in among the trees on the opposite bank. After allowing her a short drink from the river, Draken tied the bay mare and patted her, wondering what would happen to her. She turned her head to look at him as he walked down to the docks.
“Be quick about it,” Tyrolean said to the harried fare clerk. “We’re on a chase.”
“No doubt, my lord,” she said, eyeing him with a wrinkled nose.
“You’re injured,” Draken said, looking the captain over more closely. He’d thought the blood had come from the man he’d beheaded, but there was a hitch in the way Tyrolean moved his arm.
“Bind it on the raft,” Tyrolean said shortly.
The clouds parted and sunlight filled the air, bringing damp heat. The current, streaked with russet from upturned bottom silt, moved quicker than it looked from the bank, tugging at the moss on the rocks and logs in the water. The river flora were tinged with red, like fresh scabs on the edges of the green. Draken felt gazes from the tree-filled banks, the drivers passing below the bridge, bored passengers, and dock workers. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and tried to hold back fresh alarm. But they seemed more curious than threatening.
The fare clerk waved aside Tyrolean’s further admonitions for speed and sent them down to their craft. It was a wide, clean affair, steadier than it looked. The deck had been planed into smooth, well-waxed planks.
After a few moments of observation, chaos settled into method. Men directed the traffic as rafts came and went, and others managed the movement of goods, from buckets to crates that took four men to lift. Metal casks glinted in the midday sun. Low moans from foul-smelling animals underlay purposeful shouts of business. Some of the flat droghers tipped under the weight of the cargo, and the nimble drivers sprinted the sloping decks.
“I’ll find mercs to slow our pursuers, should they follow us here,” Tyrolean said. “If you’ll keep an eye for the Mance, Lord Draken.”
Drivers and passengers stepped aside from the First Captain as he strode up the dock, staring after him. It took some time for him to return. He’d rinsed off in the river, cleaning away most of the blood on his armor, and he’d shed his bloody cloak.
He gestured to three bowmen who had taken up guard on the bridge with arrows nocked. “It’s arranged. The horses will be taken back to Khein, which is closest. Those men will stand guard. Took fair coin, but they’ll hold the bastards—” He cut himself off with a curse. “Seven gods damn him, where
is
the driver?”
“Be easy,” Draken said, though he shared Tyrolean’s apprehension. The raft felt too much like an open stage, an easy target.
“As well, we need to wait for Osias,” Setia added.
“Your time is short, I hear.” The raft swayed under the weight of someone stepping aboard, and Draken, who had still been scanning the forested banks for threat, jerked around.
Their driver, too, wore a band about her forehead, black beads interwoven with brown leather, holding back several thin plaits of long, dark hair. Two moonwrought disks hung from the band at either temple. Long bare legs and feet, browned from the sun, flexed beneath a knee-length, sleeveless gown, gathered about her middle as if in afterthought. A tattered cloak hung down her back and she dropped it on the raft in an untidy heap.