He stopped himself. He had cost the others far more than he had cost himself. His whole great, fearsome, desperate quest to cut himself a place in the realm—it was a child's thing. But he had done more harm than any child could manage.
"I wonder what's going on up there now," Heremund said, even as his fingers fumbled the leg wound open to take a jot of wine. He mumbled a charm and spat once sharply on the floor.
"Old Hugelin's done with this place, I reckon," he muttered. "It's them upstairs. All those magnates in one hall. You should have seen it Some never meant to ride out for this one. Garelyn looked like he'd combed his mustache in a briar patch. Some of the others were just sopping it all up, preening and strutting. They'll be feasting by now, I reckon. Oxen turning over the hearth fires. Swans. Peacock. Eel. Dolphin."
Durand tried to imagine.
"How will the vote be?" he wondered. Everything was very faraway.
"Well, I don't know. You ever seen a man balance? A rope-walker? You're either up or you're down. There'll be some on either side now, but if they feel it going, I count seven who'll vote the king down."
"Seven?" Durand hauled himself to his feet, he took a limping step toward the cavern mouth. He needed air. "How many are there?"
"Fourteen places at the Great Council since Hesperand." Fourteen duchies.
"Heremund, what happens if they tie it?"
"Even in times dark as these, you don't throw down the King of Errest with a tie vote round a council table. Of course, it's all a question for the priests if Radomor doesn't put his nose in."
But Radomor was coming. The rebel barons would never have shown their faces here if they thought Radomor was dead. Durand's hand fell on the gray gelding's flank. If the rebels thought they were going to lose, there would be no one in Tem Gyre but lackeys. And if they smelled a tie vote on the wind, they would turn it. Durand remembered Gol and mat muddy road in Hellebore. He remembered the marshal's boon: anything asked.
Moryn was marshal.
His eyes were drawn to the hand he'd spread against the carvings. The shadows jittered. He peeled his fingers apart and found two tiny figures sharp and curved: a child's painted birds. Black notches.
He turned from the cavern gloom to the bright storm outside, and, plain as day, two dark shapes tumbled across the crashing waves: black, ragged birds.
"Durand!"
called the skald.
Durand was already outside, barefoot and barelegged. The birds circled each other, gam
boling like drunks and pinwheel
ing in the wind. He could hear the things laughing. Not gulls or terns or even eagles, but rooks. Two rooks beating the air for Tern Gyre.
"Help me get this back on the horses!" Durand said.
With Heremund on
his heels, Durand took a slashing course back up the cliffs and onto the trail from Tern Gyre. Blood seeped into the rain running slick over his skin. He hardly noticed.
"Durand, for God's sake, you're going to kill yourself!" Heremund shouted. The little man clung to the withers of dead Cerlac's bay warhorse. "Hells, you're going to kill
me"
Durand dropped from the gelding's back and limped a tight circle, beating the ache in his leg as he searched the ground for signs. He couldn't listen to Heremund. If he slowed down, he would turn back. The thought of standing in front of Lamoric and his men again sat like a weight on his chest. But he had to go on. Pride and shame could push a man hard, but he would not stand by. He would walk up in front of every last man, and he would tell them whatever he must, and somehow he would turn them back.
Durand's reeling path had struck a metaled road that looked like the one for the South.
"They'll have taken the Eldinor road, yes?" he called back.
"Lamoric? Aye." The rain lashed down fit to shove him down. "Hells, Durand. What are you thinking of?"
He looked up and down the road. With the rain battering the muck, there was no sign of which way they'd gone or how far. Lamoric could still be lurking around Tern Gyre or he could be halfway to the inland duchies. Durand covered his face for a heartbeat, then chose south. If he were Lamoric, he would be riding hard to put Tern Gyre behind him.
With time passing unknowably in the gray Heavens, the road finally broke the line of a natural bank, dropping through a gap down a four-fathom ridge. Durand was soaked and shaking with it. He couldn't still his hands; even locking them tight in the waterlogged reins did no good. He fought to keep his head from sagging.
"What in the Hells are
you
doing here?" demanded a voice.
In the middle of the road stood Badan, having appeared like some nursery-story troll. His bald head gleamed with the red fringe round the back of his skull dripping as if someone had scalped him. A chained flail dangled from his fist. "I asked what you're doing here, and I expect an answer," he snarled. The chain rattled.
Durand stared down on Badan. Under the ridgeline, curious faces huddled as men and boys crowded under tarpaulins to take shelter from the rain. He saw Guthred with his hands loose at his sides. Ouen's face was frozen.
Coensar climbed out of his makeshift shelter.
"Durand, you are passing through on your way south?" the captain offered—suggested.
"No," said Durand. His tongue was stiff in his mouth, and his heart beat in his throat. "I've come to speak with His Lordship."
Water streamed off the captain. "Durand," he explained. 'There's no talking left."
But Lamoric was already on his feet, stalking into the track. Coensar stopped him, too late.
"You must go back," Durand said. His clenched teeth chattered.
Lamoric's eyes flashed. For an instant, his head was rising out his cloak like a turtle from its shell.
"You must go back," Durand said, his jaws tight. "You've got to go back."
Lamoric stared a moment, then looked past him. "Skald, has he gone mad? Was he not there this morning?"
Heremund, crouched on the back of the big bay like a child, simply shook his head.
"Durandsaid Lamoric, "you woke the prince himself. He came out to bid us a good bloody morning. It was only by God's grace that he did not hang you. And you're cursed lucky some of these men didn't cut your throat."
"You've got to go back," Durand managed.
Lamoric stared, then shook his head.
'It's over now. It's done." He spread his arms at the line of huddled men. "You only found us together like this, because there's but one road off the headland. There's no Red Knight anymore. There's no one to go back." He blinked like a twitch. "His retinue is disbanded. He has no companions. You must wake up. I tell you, because you did me service. It was finished the moment you sent that bastard Waer off that cliff."
Some of the others had stood up now, ranging around their onetime lord. If he could, Durand would have run. He ducked his head, pawing his face with stiff fingers.
"Radomor's coming," he said. "He's coming for Moryn." He couldn't get a good breath. "He's coming to swing the Council. It'll be war if we don't stop it."
"Radomor?"
"They've been at him. I saw the Rooks. I heard Cassonel bring word from ..." Names swam. "From the Duke of Beoran. They wanted him."
"This is madness," said Lamoric. He looked to Coensar, and Durand, too, checked the pale man's eyes. He saw no sneering there. "Radomor, he's my brother-in-law."
"I was there," said Durand.
"He wouldn't do it. All this madness with his father. He's an honorable man. He's led men for the king. Just this summer." He looked for support. "The man took a wound in the Marches."
"He was so angry," Durand said. His face was hot.
"He stood up for her, Durand. Poor Alwen. He shut that man Sitric Gowl up when he called her snipe."
"He's not the same man, Lordship. I know it I was there. Pure fury. He drowned the man who'd done it. Drowned him where everyone could hear, just sitting there. His friend. And he shut your sister up in the tower and her boy with her." There were many eyes on him, but he could not stop now. The whole thing must come out. "They hung a strong door, and there was to be no food. No water. Not for either of them. He was so angry."
"It was suicide" Lamoric said. "I can understand. The shame of it. She never meant—" But Durand wouldn't let him go.
"We held her up in that tower, Lordship. I caught her by the arm! We kept her there days, the babe starving. I stood guard, Lordship, till I bolted for Ailnor. And I found the old man praying, Lordship. Praying to shake his nightmares when I came. No one saw Alwen after. No one. Radomor was leading us through the wilds with his men playing that she had been moved. That she was at some country manor. But I saw him, Lordship, sitting in his father's throne with his skull hot as a cauldron. I was there."
It was almost as though Lamoric had crumpled under his cloak. The rain came down.
"He cannot be king, Lordship," Durand said. "We must go back. The Red Knight is lost, but you've got your
own
name. You can ride back under your father's colors. They're deadlocked up there. Those traitors can't pry the king loose, but Radomor of Yrlac is coming and he'll lead the South Company against Lord Moryn." They all knew Moryn. Even Lamoric knew him, no matter how he talked. Moryn would do as his honor demanded. He would lose, and he would know, but he would kneel and offer the victor his boon. He'd be honor-bound and Radomor would use those bonds to twist one knife-slim favor from his bones. There was only one thing Radomor wanted. "You have to stop him."
Durand could see Lamoric struggling with the air, his sopping cloak moving with his shoulders. He could feel the water sliding down his face, pooling in his boots.
"God, Durand," Lamoric said. He shook his head. A long silence passed. Durand had asked him to march back to Tem Gyre with all his dreams wrecked. He asked him to throw his lot in with a man he hated. There was no sound but rain.
"If I go, we must all go," Lamoric snarled at last.
Durand blinked back at him a moment. Without a word, the others had all risen by now, wrapped in shrouds of tarp and rain-cape, silent and staring.
"If I must go," said Lamoric grimly, "you must ride with me and fight beside these men—these men who remember. You must join me when I join Lord Moryn and his companions after they've set old Waer in the boneyard."
Durand stared down at the young lord, eye to eye.
"Yes, Lordship," he said. "So long as we ride for Tern Gyre."
It was then that Agryn spoke, looking north beyond them all to where Tem Gyre must stand beyond the rain.
'To Tern Gyre," he said.
26. The Eve of Battl
e
E
ven from the bridge, Durand could see they'd shut the gates.
"Could it be dusk?" Heremund wondered. He squinted up into the rain. "I
don't know how they could tell
'
Rain dropped past the men down the forty-fathom gulf on either side of the bridge. !
"Hmm," said Heremund, remembering. 'They'll be up on the watchtower now, all crowded with the priests, squinting off toward the Barbican Strait, just like old tyillan did, the night he gave up his eyes. I'll wager the rain's likely thrown a chill over it. The poor things'll be damp right through then-silks. Maybe
someone will have brought a few
cups of hot malmsey." He shivered.
Up at the head of the column, Durand picked out Lamoric side-by-side with Deorwen, his lady wife. They were just coming under the ship's-bow arch of the gatehouse. Rather than hiding back among the baggage, now Deorwen rode pillion right where everyone could see her. Her idea. Where before she'd been a liability to Lamoric's Red Knight pose, now she made a perfect blind. The man on the palfrey was no Knight in Red.
This
was Lamoric and
that
his new wife, the poor thing dragged along in the rain.
The rest of the train waited on the bridge. Durand could hear Badan muttering just loud enough to make himself plain.
"Whoreson boy's mad. Changing a few cloaks and hopping on each other's ponies ain't g
oing to fool nobody. Bastards'll
know us right off."
"It ain't got to fool them long." Durand glanced to see Guthred speaking for him. The man's eyes were on the gatehouse. "It's just to grease us under the gate. If they press him, His Lordship can say whatever he likes. We're a bunch of thugs he met on the road, saying we'd left the service of some strange knight or other. Whatever he likes. He's son to the Duke of Gireth, and there's little enough light anyway."