There were two thousand of them at least.
Two thousand fresh, disciplined and well-trained Medalonian Defenders.
The battle for Greenharbour was ugly, but blessedly short once the Defenders joined the fray. Cyrus’ army broke and ran just after sundown. Conin Falconlance and Serrin Eaglespike died during the battle, but Cyrus survived and fled back to Dregian Province with the remainder of his scattered forces to make a last stand.
Damin sent Narvell after him, with Gaffen and a force of Fardohnyans. It wasn’t that he thought Narvell needed the help so much as his desire to separate Adrina’s half-brother and Tejay Lionsclaw, who would rather have perished in battle than accept help from her despised enemies. She made no secret of her distrust of their new allies, so Damin thought it prudent to put as much distance between Gaffen and Tejay as possible until things calmed down a bit. Gaining entrance to the castle by the same hidden passage that he, Adrina and R’shiel had escaped through, Narvell and Gaffen took Dregian Keep with barely a man lost in the fight.
Conveniently, Cyrus threw himself on his sword rather than face the consequences of his actions.
Damin was privately glad that he had. It was always messy, following a civil war, to decide what to do with the miscreants. If he had executed Cyrus, there would always be a small core of resentment among the people that could be fanned into life in the future. If he left him alive, he left him free to plan further mischief. It was better this way. Cyrus’ widow and three-year-old son were back in Greenharbour as prisoners, but Damin was inclined to be generous towards them. It was hardly their fault that Cyrus had let his ambitions run away with him, and anyway, he doubted he could bring himself to order the execution of a child, no matter how sound the logic behind the decision.
There were other issues to be resolved, too. Dregian, Greenharbour and Krakandar now needed Warlords, and everyone from Tejay Lionsclaw to the palace gardeners had an opinion on who should be awarded the positions. Although there were numerous candidates among the nobility, it was not uncommon for a Warlord to be appointed from the lower classes. Talent still counted more than bloodlines in Hythria, and Damin was seriously considering looking further afield for the new Warlords. He’d had enough of bored noblemen with delusions of grandeur. A few young bucks who were more interested in holding onto their own provinces than eyeing off his throne would let him rest much easier at night.
Then there was the problem of the Defenders.
Tarja wasn’t with his men, which worried Damin a great deal. Denjon had told him what Tarja had planned to do, but the fact that he had not returned from his mission to sink the ferries on the Glass River
was a bad sign. Damin felt he owed the Defenders an enormous debt. With Tarja missing, and with an administrative and political nightmare ahead of him, he was tempted to drop everything, gather up his forces, head for Medalon and leave Adrina to sort out the details here at home. He smiled grimly at the idea. Trusting Adrina was still very new to him. He could not bring himself to tempt fate by handing her that much power.
It was five days since the battle and his hope that things would improve had proved optimistic in the extreme. Although gradually being brought under control, disease still raged throughout the city. There were thousands of homeless, as many wounded, and another five thousand Fardohnyans and Medalonians to feed.
Cyrus had stripped the countryside of what food there was close to the city. Damin had a vast number of his men out scouring the land for grain to tide them over until supplies could be brought in from the outlying provinces. The fishing fleet had put to sea again, which prevented the situation from becoming desperate, but he was so heartily sick of fish for every meal, that he was certain he would never be able to face it again once this crisis was over.
The door to his study suddenly flew open and slammed against the wall. Adrina stormed into the room. The candles wavered in the breeze caused by her anger. She was shaking with fury.
“Do you know what she’s
done
?”
“Tell me who ‘she’ is, and I might be able to answer you,” he replied calmly. Adrina’s tantrum was a welcome distraction.
“R’shiel!”
“She sent your brother and three thousand men to save our necks?” he suggested.
Adrina actually stamped her foot at him. He fought very hard not to smile.
“Don’t be so bloody obtuse, Damin! She promised Hablet a son!”
“I know. Gaffen told me.”
“You
knew
about this? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I have been rather busy lately.”
“Then what are you doing about it?”
“Nothing.”
“You can’t do
nothing
! She has just cost you the throne of Fardohnya!”
“Well, as I never actually wanted the damned thing in the first place, it hardly seems worth getting upset over the fact that I’ve lost it.”
“How could you not want it?” she asked, genuinely puzzled by his lack of ambition.
“Not everybody shares your desire to wear a crown, Adrina,” he told her. “Anyway, you were furious at me for being the heir to the throne. Now you’re angry because I’m not. Make up your mind.”
She glared at him for a moment then flopped inelegantly into the chair on the other side of the desk. “I’m in no mood to be reasonable, Damin. Fight with me.”
“I will,” he promised, “when the occasion warrants it. But in this case, it’s not worth it. I’ve got my hands full holding onto to Hythria. I don’t need your father’s kingdom as well. The whole idea of splitting Fardohnya and Hythria in the first place was because they were impossible to govern as one nation.”
“We could have done it,” she grumbled.
“
We
? Ah, so that’s what this is all about. If I don’t become the King of Fardohnya, you don’t get to be queen. I’m sorry, but you’ll just have to settle for being the High Princess of Hythria.”
She smiled faintly, as if she understood how childishly she was behaving. “You have no idea how good it would have felt to return to Fardohnya as her queen. My father sold me like a side of beef to the Kariens because that’s all I was worth to him. And for no better reason than I was born a girl. It didn’t matter how clever, or well educated, or politically astute I was.”
“Personally, I think your political acumen had a lot to do with it,” he suggested. “You are far too clever for a disinherited princess. If I was in your father’s position, I’d have shipped you off to a temple somewhere when you were five.”
“I think he wishes he had,” she agreed. “But there’s more to this than me losing my chance to revenge myself on my father, Damin. Do you know what’s going to happen once this child is born?”
He shrugged. “You mean other than a very big party?”
“Once my father has an heir, he will remove any threat to the child’s claim on the throne.”
“But there
are
no other claimants to the throne.”
“I have thirteen living baseborn brothers, Damin. Hablet was quite prepared to legitimise one of them if he couldn’t get a son. Each of them is a potential threat.”
Damin looked at her aghast. “Are you telling me he’ll kill his own children?”
“He’ll kill them and not lose a moment’s sleep over it. This may be hard for you to understand—Hablet loves every one of his bastards—but they know as well as he does what fate will befall them should he produce a legitimate heir.”
“You’re right. I don’t understand.”
“It’s tradition. When Hablet was born, his father had seventeen baseborn children and his three unmarried daughters put to death. When
my
father took the throne, every pregnant concubine and
court’esa
in the harem was executed. His own sister committed suicide as proof of her love for him. She was hailed as a heroine.”
“And you call
me
a barbarian.”
She shrugged, helpless to make him understand. “It’s the Fardohnyan way.”
“Then I’m glad I won’t ever have to sit on a throne that is soaked in so much innocent blood.”
“Don’t you see the irony? You would never have countenanced such slaughter. I think that irks me more than anything else does. We could have put an end to that dreadful custom.” She rose to her feet and smiled at him sadly. “I’m sorry to burden you with this, now. I know you have a lot to do. Is Gaffen back yet?”
Damin nodded. “He arrived back with Narvell this morning.”
“Then I’ll go find him and leave you in peace. As soon as I’ve slapped him around a few times for being such a pig to me when he arrived, I shall endeavour to make the most of what little time we have left together.”
Adrina walked to the door, leaving Damin staring at her back. It wasn’t learning of the fate awaiting
her siblings that disturbed him as much as her quiet acceptance of its inevitability.
“Adrina, wait!”
She turned and looked at him questioningly.
“If you can’t be queen, would you settle for Regent?”
“Regent of Fardohnya? How?”
“Your father’s how old? Sixty? Sixty-five?” he asked, suddenly excited as the idea formed in his mind. “He’ll live another ten years, perhaps, less if we’re lucky. His son won’t be old enough to take the throne when he dies.”
“He would never appoint me Regent.”
“He will if we make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
“Like what?” she asked suspiciously.
“I’ll renounce the Wolfblade claim on the Fardohnyan throne. I’ll remove forever the threat of Fardohnya having a Hythrun king.”
She nodded thoughtfully. “And in return, he appoints me Regent? You know, that may actually work. But what of your plans for unity between Fardohnya and Hythria?”
“That will be up to you. This child will be as much your brother as Gaffen is. If you manage to get along with him half as well as you do with your bastard siblings, there’ll be no danger of war between us. For that matter, he’ll only be a few months younger than our child. If we’re smart about this, they’ll grow up the best of friends.”
“And you’d do this? You’d renounce a throne for me?” She appeared to be putting a rather romantic slant on something he considered a coldly rational and practical course of action. But he didn’t correct her.
“Yes. I’d renounce a throne for you, Adrina.”
With a sob, she ran to him, threw her arms around his neck and buried her head in his shoulder. He could feel the slight swell of her belly pressing against him.
“Gods, you’re not crying, are you?”
Adrina sniffed and looked up at him with glistening eyes. “No.”
He gently wiped a tear from her cheek. “If I’d known this was going to reduce you to tears, I wouldn’t have suggested it.”
“Nobody ever loved me enough to renounce a throne for me, Damin.”
“That probably has more to do with lack of opportunity, rather than you being unloved,” he told her with a smile.
“Can’t you be serious? Even when I’m
trying
to be nice to you?”
“I’m sorry. You bring out the worst in me.”
She kissed him then leaned back in his arms with a sigh. “I don’t like admitting it, but I suppose I must feel something for you, Damin Wolfblade.”
“Well, I won’t tell if you don’t,” Damin promised with a smile.
The high plains of Medalon were a riot of colour, caught in the burgeoning grip of spring. R’shiel reined in her horse and studied the scattered clouds that dotted the pale blue sky. Wildflowers carpeted the plains, and the day was so mild she had shed her cloak some leagues back. As the tall white towers of the Citadel appeared in the distance an odd feeling came over her and she found herself strangely reluctant to go on.
“What’s the matter?”
She shrugged and leaned forward to pat the neck of her gelding. He was a sturdy, deep-chested grey they had purchased in Vanahiem. R’shiel missed the magnificent speed and stamina of the Hythrun horses she had grown accustomed to riding, but he had been a reliable mount, if more stolid than spirited.
“I’m scared, I think,” she admitted, thoughtfully. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“You’re only half-Harshini, R’shiel,” Brak reminded her. “You’ll find your human emotions have a nasty habit of jumping out and biting you at the most inopportune moments. What were you expecting to feel?”
“I’m not sure. Some overpowering sense of righteousness, I suppose.”
Brak laughed sourly. “You have a lot to learn, demon child.”
“I wish you’d stop calling me that. You know how much I hate it.”
“I thought you were growing quite enamoured of the title. You certainly threw it around enough in Fardohnya.”
“In Fardohnya I wasn’t likely to be hanged for it.”
He nodded silently. They both knew the risk they ran by returning so openly to Medalon. In fact, even more than the mediocrity of their mounts, it was the need to travel through Medalon by conventional means that had taken them so long to reach their destination. Had they been willing to risk using their power, R’shiel and Brak could have been at the Citadel weeks ago, but they were too deep into Karien-occupied territory to tempt fate by openly using demons.
Hablet had provided them with a ship, which had delivered them to Bordertown. Then they had taken passage on a river boat as far as Vanahiem. With news that the Testa ferry had been destroyed and the river boat captains understandably nervous about approaching the Citadel, it proved quicker and easier to complete their journey on horseback.
R’shiel turned in her saddle at the sound of other horses approaching. Brak followed her gaze and muttered a curse. The road they travelled from Brodenvale was almost deserted this late in the afternoon. Earlier, it had been crowded with refugees fleeing the Citadel and the occasional Karien patrol.
“We’d best get off the road.”
“Founders! They’re everywhere!”
Brak urged his horse into the long grass on the shoulder of the road. R’shiel followed him as the approaching patrol drew closer. She gripped the reins until her knuckles turned white as she watched them. The troop of Kariens passed by without sparing them a glance, pennons snapping from the tips of their lances, the armoured knights claiming the road with the arrogant assurance of conquerors who have nothing to fear from their vanquished foes. It was the third Karien troop they had seen in the last few hours. Southern Medalon was still relatively free of them, but the closer they got to the Citadel the more they saw.
“There are no priests with them.”
“They’ll be at the Citadel. Mathen probably doesn’t want to scare the population into thinking they’re going to be forced to worship the Overlord,” Brak speculated.
“But isn’t that exactly what they’re planning?”
“Undoubtedly, but Squire Mathen is too smart to do it openly.”
“Squire Mathen?”
“Don’t you remember him? Terbolt left him in charge of the Citadel.”
“I don’t remember much of anything from the last time I was at the Citadel,” she admitted with a frown. “Except Loclon.”
“Mathen’s not a nobleman,” Brak told her as the Kariens moved slowly past them. Behind the knights trundled several wagons carrying loot from some outlying village that had been the victim of their foray out of the Citadel. “That in itself is a bit odd
for the Kariens. But he appears to be a very astute politician.”
“I think I’d prefer a good old fashioned noble-born moron,” she said, noticing the grain-filled wagons, but she decided against saying or doing anything that would bring them to the attention of the knights. She had learnt that much restraint over the past few months.
“One has to work with what one is given, I’m afraid. Still, we won’t have to worry about him too much.”
“Why not?”
“As I said, Mathen’s not a nobleman. Terbolt placed him in charge, but I can’t see Lord Roache and his ilk tolerating a commoner calling the shots for very long, and unless he’s advocating mass conversion, the priesthood won’t like him much either. They have no care for Medalonian sensibilities.”
The last of the wagons rumbled by. They waited until the Kariens were some way up the road before they urged their horses back onto the road and followed them at a walk.
“Speaking of the priests,” Brak added. “You remember what I told you?”
“About them being able to detect us if we call on our power? Yes, Brak, I remember.”
“I mean it, R’shiel,” he warned. “Don’t underestimate them.”
“I dealt with those priests in the Defenders’ camp.”
“You faced three of them and caught them by surprise,” he reminded her. “Once we get to the Citadel, there will be scores of them, and they know
the demon child is abroad. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have a Watching Coven posted, just waiting for you to slip up.”
“What’s a Watching Coven?”
“A group of priests who link through their staves, sometimes up to twenty or thirty of them. A Coven’s power could give either of us a run for our money.”
“How can they be so strong? They don’t have access to Harshini power.”
“No, they have access to a god who doesn’t mind bending the rules.”
“The gods!” she muttered in annoyance. “It always comes back to them, doesn’t it?”
“In the end, yes.”
She smiled grimly. “Don’t worry, Brak. I’ll watch myself. Squire Mathen isn’t the only one who can get what he wants by subtle means.”
“Oh? You have a plan then?” There was an edge of scepticism in his voice that she didn’t much care for.
“I’m going to take a leaf out of your book, actually. I’m going to go straight to the best source of intelligence in Medalon.”
“Garet Warner?” he asked with amusement. “I thought the first thing you’d want to do when you saw him again would be to run a blade through him.”
“No. Garet helped me as much as he could, I think. I’m not going to kill him. Unless he doesn’t want to help us.”
Brak didn’t answer her and she could not tell if he approved or condemned her intentions.
They reached the Citadel just on sundown, halting on the slight rise in the road to stare at the scene before them in horrified awe. A blanket of humanity covered the plains surrounding the Citadel: the Karien army camped about the fortress of their newest subject nation. R’shiel could not begin to guess their number, but as far as she could see, the grasslands were thick with tents and men and the panoply of war. Both sides of the shallow Saran River were crowded with them. The bridges curved gracefully out of the plain, the only part of it not swarming with the enemy. A pall of smoke from the countless cooking fires lay over the whole scene, touched with ruddy light by the dying sun, making it look like a painting of some nightmarish vision of a pagan hell.
“Founders!” she swore softly. “I didn’t think there’d be so many of them.”
“Having second thoughts?”
She glanced at him, then smiled. “No. I figure between you and me, we have them outnumbered, Brak.”
He returned her smile briefly. “I think I preferred it when you were scared.”
They urged their horses on and rode down through the Karien host that was camped right up to the edge of the road. For the most part, the soldiers ignored them, too engrossed in their own business to care about two unarmed travellers on the main thoroughfare into the Citadel. She avoided meeting their eyes while despair threatened to overwhelm her.
As they crossed the bridge over the Saran River she looked up at the high white walls. Bile rose in her throat. There was a head, or the remains of one, mounted on a pike over the gateway. It had been there for some time. The eyes were empty sockets picked clean by the ravens and the skin of its face hung in strips of desiccated flesh. The hair, or what was left of it, was grey and straggling, but long enough to identify the hapless skull as once having been a woman. With sickening dread, R’shiel wondered who it had been, afraid that she knew. Unless the Kariens had murdered Joyhinia, there was only one woman in Medalon likely to incur such wrath and she had never deserved such a fate.
“Brak,” she said softly.
He followed the direction of her gaze then shook his head sadly. “Gods!”
“I think it’s Mahina.”
He studied it more closely then shrugged. “There’s no way to tell, R’shiel.”
“Loclon is going to die very, very slowly,” she said with frightening intensity.
R’shiel had feared the Defenders on the gate might recognise her, but she need not have worried. There were no Defenders guarding the Citadel. There was, however, a large contingent of Kariens and they were interrogating anybody seeking entrance to the city.
“Let me handle this,” Brak said.
“What are you going to do?” she asked suspiciously.
“Cause a fuss,” he told her as he kicked his horse forward. “Hey you! Do you speak Medalonian?”
R’shiel cringed as he called out to the guards, wondering what in the name of the Founders he was up to. This was hardly her idea of sneaking into the Citadel.
“Halt!” a Karien trooper called out in Medalonian—probably the only word he knew.
“Halt yourself!” Brak retorted. “I demand to see whoever is in charge!”
The guard looked at him blankly.
“Where is your superior, young man? I demand to see him at once!”
“Halt!” the guard repeated.
“What’s the problem?” The man who spoke was a Defender. He emerged from the gatehouse with another Karien, this one wearing knight’s armour. He was very young, just out of the Cadets, R’shiel guessed. She didn’t recognise him and that hopefully meant he wouldn’t recognise her.
“Ah! Someone who understands me!” Brak declared. “Young man, I demand to be taken to whoever is in charge of this…invasion, or whatever you call it, at once!”
The Defender translated Brak’s words for the benefit of the Kariens, which explained his posting on the gate. His Karien was quite fluent but he wore a sullen expression. She could imagine how this duty must irk him. The Karien knight said something to the Defender, who then turned back to Brak.
“Why do you want to see Lord Roache?”
“Lord Roache? Is that who’s in charge?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the First Sister?”
“The First Sister is
assisting
Lord Roache and
Squire Mathen,” the young Defender informed him in a voice loaded with scorn.
“Well then, I wish to see this Lord Roache, young man, to lodge a formal complaint against the behaviour of these…these…hooligans who have invaded our country. Do you know what they’ve done? Do you?”
“I can guess,” the Defender muttered. “What have they done?”
“What have they
done
? My shop is in ruins! My wife and I are homeless! My servants have all fled in fear and I am on the verge of destitution! I intend to see this Karien fellow and demand compensation.”
The Defender appeared genuinely amused at the idea. “Good luck, my friend, but I don’t like your chances.”
“Well!” Brak declared indignantly. “We shall have to see about that! Come, Gerterina! Let us go find this Lord Roache person and set him straight on a few things!”
Brak urged his horse through the gate, with R’shiel following close behind. The Defender and the Kariens stood back to let them pass. As the young man explained what they were doing in the Citadel the Kariens roared with laughter, which followed them down the street.
“
Gerterina
?”
He shrugged apologetically. “It was all I could think of.”
“And
that
was your plan? Make such a fuss at the gate that they’ll never forget us?”
“Sometimes it’s easier to hide out in the open, R’shiel. People trying to sneak into the Citadel don’t
start by demanding to see whoever is in charge. We were barely questioned and they didn’t even look at you twice.”
She had to admit he was right. “Brak, why is it that when you do things like that, you’re being clever, but when I do them, I’m being reckless?”
“Because I’m older than you. A
lot
older.”
“Well,
Old One
, what are we going to do now?”
They rode at a walk down the cobbled main road that led past the Great Hall to the amphitheatre. The tension in the air was almost solid enough to touch. R’shiel realised that the awful spectre nailed over the main gate was more than just a gloating gesture of barbaric triumph. It was a warning, and one the citizens of the Citadel appeared to have taken to heart. The streets appeared almost as deserted as Greenharbour had been, when she arrived with Damin.
“We need to find an inn and a meal and perhaps some company for the evening.”
“Company?”
“We need to find out what’s happening here. The next best source of information in any city, after the assassins and the thieves, are the prostitutes.”
“That’s the best excuse I’ve heard for a long time,” she said with a scowl.
“We all have our own methods, R’shiel.”
“Funny how all your methods involve consorting with criminals.”
He glanced at her and then smiled. “Considering you are probably the most wanted criminal in all of Karien and Medalon, I find your attitude rather strange.”
She ignored the jibe. “I still think Garet is the better option.”
“And I agree, but I want to know that when we confront him he’s telling us the truth, not what he thinks we want to hear.”
“You’re not a very trusting person, are you?”
“I don’t happen to like the idea of having my head decorating the main gate next to poor old Mahina’s. If you plan to live long enough to fulfil your destiny, R’shiel, you would be wise to adopt the same outlook.”