Stormrider (21 page)

“I thought you were happy in the army, Father. Only recently you said you had been invited to join a select order of knights. It was a great honor, you said.”

“We will talk no more of it. Do you like Macon?”

“Yes, I do,” she admitted.

“He is doomed, Cordelia. He has enemies in very high places. His death is assured.”

She stared at him. “There must be something we can do.”

“Aye, there is,” he said, sadly. “We can leave. And that is what we will do in four days.”

“No, that is not what I meant. We must warn him.”

“These are forces far beyond our ability to tackle. We cannot save him, Cordelia. I will be hard-pressed to save myself.”

“How can you talk this way?” she cried, stepping back from him. “It is contemptible.”

“As I said but a moment ago, never is a long time,” he told her sadly.

Huntsekker had never been what he would describe as a deep thinking man. His needs were simple, and he rarely bothered with concepts or philosophies that required dedicated thought. Conversations revolving around politics bored him. Talk of religion mystified him. Love? Well, that was totally baffling. He had seen grown men, tough men, reduced to whimpering dolts because some doxy rejected their attentions.

For Huntsekker the world was essentially a remarkably simple place. A man should earn enough to fill his belly, build a home to keep out the cold, and survive for as long as he could before death took him. Then he was worm food. Those were the basics. If a man was lucky, he would also find a little happiness. Even that, however, was not guaranteed.

But as he trudged on through the melting snow he found himself thinking about life. This was no longer unusual and all the more disquieting for it. It had tended to happen more frequently in the last four years. Huntsekker even knew the exact moment it had begun.

When Jaim Grymauch had died saving Maev Ring, Huntsekker had been there and had watched as the huge highlander stalked across the cathedral square, scattering the guards with his quarterstaff. Then the four knights of the Sacrifice, in full silver armor, ran at him. Grymauch dropped his staff and drew a huge, old-fashioned broadsword from a scabbard between his shoulders. He killed two in swift fashion, threw the third into the execution fire, and left the fourth unconscious. In the crowd Huntsekker felt a soaring of the heart as the one-eyed clansman cut his lady free.

It was a moment of joy unmatched in Huntsekker’s long life. It was pure and unselfish. It spoke of something beyond the Harvester’s narrow vision of life. It shone like sunlight after the storm.

Then the musketeers pushed through the crowd and shot Grymauch. Huntsekker ran to him, gently lowering him to the ground. There was nothing to be done. The big man was dying. Huntsekker pulled Maev Ring clear, taking her through the cathedral and out across the back fields. He had done this in a moment of reckless passion. Not for her but for the memory of the hero who had given his life to save her.

His actions had surprised him. Not since the long ago days of his youth had such absurdly romantic notions touched him.

Now, as he walked through the winter night, he could no longer summon the precious feeling he had experienced.

One fact was sure, though. Huntsekker’s world had been subtly changed by Jaim’s death.

Not just because life was more interesting while Jaim prowled the highlands, stealing cattle. The man had style, and more than that, he had heart. Huntsekker had not even realized that he himself lacked that quality. Not until he met Jaim.

In all the years Huntsekker had lived in the north he had had only two dealings with Jaim Grymauch. On the first occasion Jaim had stolen his prize bull. Huntsekker had known he would try and had set traps around the paddock. Then he had sat for night after night, his blunderbuss loaded, waiting for the raid. One night he had dozed. When he awoke, the bull was gone. Huntsekker and his men had scoured the highlands all night and had found nothing. When they had returned to the farm at dawn, they had found the bull back in the paddock, a sprig of heather tied to its horn. That memory still made Huntsekker smile.

The second occasion had been more deadly. The Moidart had demanded the death of the fistfighter Chain Shada. Grymauch had spirited him away. Huntsekker had guessed their destination and set a trap.

It had not worked. Jaim took to the river and swam behind the ambushers. The first moment Huntsekker realized he had been tricked was when a knife blade pricked at his throat. He was holding his blunderbuss, but there was no way he could turn it.

“Best be putting that dreadful thing down, Harvester,”
came the voice of Jaim Grymauch
. “I’d hate to be cutting your throat on such a fine night as this.”

Huntsekker smiled at the memory. He had carefully laid the gun down and then looked at Grymauch. The man’s clothes were drenched.
“You’ll catch a chill, Grymauch,”
he said.
“You’re not as young as once you were.”

“Maybe I’ll take that bearskin coat,”
replied Jaim
. “That’ll keep me warm.”

“It’s too big for you, son. Takes a man to wear a coat like this.”

Huntsekker had thought his life would be over that night. As well as the massive Chain Shada there was a youth with Grymauch, dark-eyed and carrying two Emburley pistols. Huntsekker looked into his eyes and saw the ferocity there. Kaelin Ring was a killer. Huntsekker knew the type. Hell, Huntsekker
was
the type. There was no doubt about it. Death waited for Huntsekker and the only one of his men still conscious, the sharp-featured Boillard Seeton.

But instead Jaim had asked them their intentions. Huntsekker offered to say nothing about the encounter. Seeton was quick to agree. Huntsekker did not expect Jaim to believe the promises. Boillard Seeton was a man with no honor, and Grymauch had no reason to trust Huntsekker’s word.

“Well, that’s it, then,”
said Grymauch.

“The hell it is!”
stormed Kaelin Ring, his voice shaking with anger.
“I say we kill them
.” Huntsekker saw the pistol come up. It was pointed at his face. He stood very still.

“We’ll kill no one!”
said Jaim.

“We can’t trust them. They’ll betray us as soon as they get to Eldacre.”

“Aye, maybe they will. That’s for them to decide
,” Jaim said, softly, moving to stand between Huntsekker and the youth. “
Killing shouldn’t be easy, boy. Life should be precious.”

Kaelin Ring had not been convinced, but he had accepted Grymauch’s wishes. Chain Shada crossed the bridge, and Grymauch and Kaelin Ring moved off into the woods.

Huntsekker had watched them go. The boy had been right. The most sensible course of action would have been to kill them both. Still, Huntsekker had thought, maybe Boillard Seeton would justify Grymauch’s faith. That hope was short-lived.

“By the Sacrifice, I’ll see him swing and I’ll piss on his grave,”
Seeton had said once Grymauch and the others had left.

“No, you won’t, Boillard. You gave your word.”

“Under duress,”
argued Boillard.
“Don’t count.”

“Mine does.”

“Well, I’m not you, Harvester. You do as you wish. Nobody shoots Boillard Seeton and gets away with it. Damn, but I’ll enjoy seeing them hang.”

“I don’t think so.”

Huntsekker drew his scythe and sliced it through Seeton’s chest. The man was dead before he knew it.

Just the three occasions: a stolen bull, an ambush by a stream, and a death near the cathedral. A few sentences had passed between them. No more than that. Yet Huntsekker constantly caught himself thinking of the highlander, the thoughts tinged with a massive regret that he had not known him well.

He walked on, cutting down through a gully and clambering up the other side. He was breathing heavily as he reached the top, and the old familiar ache in the lower back had begun.

Huntsekker stretched, then looked for a place to sit. He was still some five miles from Eldacre and was beginning to regret turning down Powdermill’s offer of a night’s lodging. Leaving the trail, he found a small hollow and sat with his back to a tree. His thoughts drifted to the Moidart. Huntsekker had never liked him. He was not a man who would ever inspire devotion. Too cold, too self-contained. Too deadly.

Just like you, Huntsekker, he thought.

Ah, well, we are what we are, he told himself.

The Moidart was troubled. Huntsekker had known the man angry and filled with a cold, murderous rage. Never troubled, though. Always confident in his talent.

After the meeting with Powdermill, Huntsekker knew why.

They float in the air.

Huntsekker shivered and glanced around the hollow. As always when troubled, he tugged at the twin silver spikes of his beard. Thoughts of magic left him uneasy. Twenty years earlier the church authorities had set out to destroy magickers and witches. There had been burnings across the land. Huntsekker had been one of those who had kicked down doors, dragging out suspects for questioning. Dark and bloody times, with many an innocent flayed or put to the fire.

Now there were few who admitted to the dark arts. Huntsekker had come across Powdermill eight years earlier. The man was known as a finder. Huntsekker had been tracking a rapist and a killer, but the man had gone to ground somewhere. In desperation Huntsekker had listened to the advice of one of his men, Dal Naydham, and sought out Powdermill. He had had no expectation of success, but anything was better than returning to the Moidart with news that the killer had escaped him.

Powdermill went into a trance while holding a glove owned by the killer. When he opened his eyes, he told Huntsekker about a cabin in a valley in the shadows of Caer Druagh, some sixty miles south. He described it and the route to it.

Huntsekker found the man, removed his head, and carried it back to Eldacre. He earned nothing for the trip. Powdermill’s price had been exactly the bounty: two pounds, eight chaillings.

He was a canny little bastard.

His back eased, Huntsekker rose and returned to the road. Something was still troubling him, but he could not put his finger on the problem.

The answer came too him just a fraction too late.

Why had Powdermill refused to travel with him?

The first shot struck him between the shoulder blades, slamming him forward. The second shot hit him in the lower chest. Instinctively Huntsekker threw himself to the right and over the edge of a steep drop. He fell heavily, then pitched head over heels, gathering speed until his body splashed into an icy stream.

The moon disappeared behind thick clouds. Huntsekker, semiconscious, dragged himself clear of the water and crawled into thick undergrowth. There he passed out.

When he awoke, it was dawn. His head pounded, and there was dried blood on his scalp. With a groan he sat up, struggling to remember how he had come to be there. Had he fallen? Then he remembered the shots from the darkness. With an effort he opened his bearskin coat. There was blood on his shirt, which was ripped, and the wooden hilt of his double-shot pistol was dented and split. Huntsekker pulled it clear. The second shot had struck the weapon, then cannoned off across the flesh of his left side, tearing the skin.

The big man scanned the upper tree line, seeking out the assassins. There was no one in sight. Rising, he grunted with pain as he took off the heavy bearskin coat. As he did so, a flattened ball dropped away from the narrow double-mesh chain mail that was expertly fitted to the lining of the shoulders, extending down to his hips. Two of the outer mesh rings had snapped, but the second section had saved his life.

Bruised, bleeding, and angry, Huntsekker donned the coat. He would not go straight to Eldacre. Instead he would go home first.

And fetch his scythe.

9

Jakon Gallowglass had few friends. A naturally taciturn man, he had little time for socializing, and no inclination at all to sit gossiping around the campfire. Only two activities interested the young southerner: fighting and whoring. Only nineteen, he had been at war now for four years. In that time he had developed a taste for battle. Where most soldiers spent their lives caught between boredom and terror, Jakon Gallowglass enjoyed life to the full. He was neither introspective nor imaginative. He listened as his comrades spoke of their fears of death or mutilation but let the words wash over him. Jakon would wrap himself in his cloak and think of better things. There was a new whore at Mellin’s tavern, a buxom youngster from the eastern shires. Three daens for a swift ride and half a chailling for an entire night. Jakon could not imagine why a man would want a whore for an entire night. He had spent an evening with one once. The ride had been most enjoyable, but afterward all she had wanted to do was talk. Endlessly. There had been a buzzing in his ears for days afterward. It was amazing how many words had flowed out of her. She told him her life story, and by the end of the evening Jakon felt he had lived it several times over.

No, give him the swift ride every time.

He had enjoyed just such a ride this very evening and was on his way back to camp. Snow had been falling hard, and Jakon trudged slowly through it, climbing a steep bank to cut across the fields. As he approached a small wood he saw a horseman enter the trees. It was his commanding officer, Barin Macy, in his uniform of scarlet and gold, partially obscured by his fur-lined cloak. Jakon paused in the moonlight, idly wondering what the general would be doing at that time of night in such a desolate place. Under normal circumstances Jakon would not have gone a single step out of his way to find out. Curiosity was not one of his vices. On this occasion, however, the general was riding across the path Jakon was to take. That posed a problem in that he had slipped out of camp without a pass, and were he to be seen, he would have to endure a flogging.

He hunkered down beside a bush and waited for the rider to exit the trees.

Only he did not.

Jakon was growing cold and decided to see if he could creep past the small wood without being noticed. Keeping low, he angled his way down the slope to the edge of the trees. He could hear voices now and paused again.

“They’re northerners. There’ll be few tears shed,” he heard someone say.

“Even so, they are good fighting men. It’ll not be easy,” came the reply.

“I think you are wrong, Macy. They’ll be expecting nothing. Your men will get in close, and at the first volley the Eldacre men will panic and run. Keep your cavalry back to mop up stragglers. And bring back the head of the traitor Macon.”

“Dammit, Velroy, this is hard to believe. The Gray Ghost has been our finest cavalry leader. He’s turned several battles. Why would he defect to Luden Macks? It makes no sense.”

“It is not for us to question orders. Pick your men carefully and ride out late the day after tomorrow. Attack the town the following morning. Come in on all four sides. No one must escape.”

“What of the townsfolk?”

“The Redeemers will take over after the battle. They will question the citizens and deal with any deemed to have covenant sympathies.”

“By heaven, Velroy, this feels like a dirty business.”

“Do it well and you will be given command of Ferson’s lancers. Lord Winterbourne also offers a thousand pounds as a gesture of his continuing goodwill toward you and your family.”

“That is most generous.”

“Lord Winterbourne makes a very good friend, Macy. It is worth remembering.”

“A man can never have enough friends,” answered Macy. “Convey my thanks to the lord and tell him he can rely on me and my men. And now I must go. This cold is eating into my bones.”

Jakon ducked down. He heard the creak of leather as the officer mounted. Then he saw the rider swing his horse back toward the camp. Jakon waited until the other officer also had departed, then rose from his hiding place.

Jakon Gallowglass did not have many friends.

But two years earlier, a ball lodged in his thigh, he had waited to be killed by covenant scouts. He had been hunkered down on a stretch of open ground, two dead comrades alongside him. Dragging himself behind one of the bodies, he had lain there quietly as shots rained in on him. He could hear some of them thunking into the corpse and others kicking up dirt close by. Then he had heard a shot from behind him. With a curse he rolled to his back, scrabbling for his pistol. There were no covenanters there. It was a young, sandy-haired musketeer wearing the leaf-green tunic of the Eldacre regiment. He was kneeling on the ground some fifty paces behind Jakon’s position. Shots peppered the ground around him, but he coolly loaded and fired. Then a horseman on a huge gray gelding came thundering across the open ground. A young rider wearing a wide-brimmed gray hat and a long gray greatcoat leaped to the ground alongside Jakon, hauling him upright and lifting him into the saddle. Vaulting up behind him, the rider kicked the gelding into a run. A shot screamed by them, ripping the hat from the rider’s head.

The gelding took off and was soon out of range of the muskets. The rider drew up and helped Jakon to the ground. Other cavalrymen moved past them, galloping out toward the high ground and the covenant snipers. The officer knelt beside Jakon, examining the wound to his thigh. “Broke no bones and missed the major artery. You’re a lucky young fellow. I’ll put a tourniquet on it until we can get you to a surgeon.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The man laughed. “Don’t thank me. Thank that idiot rifleman of mine. He’s too good a man to lose. If I hadn’t pulled you out, he’d still be there in the line of fire. As it is, I’ve lost a damn good hat,” he said, pushing his hand through his long golden hair.

“You’re the Gray Ghost.”

“One of these days I must find out where that name originated,” said Gaise Macon. “Now, what can we use as a tourniquet?” The Gray Ghost had untied a white silk scarf from around his neck and, using Jakon’s pistol as a lever, had tightened it around the wounded thigh. “That should hold you, lad. I’ll leave you in the capable hands of young Jaekel here.” Patting Jakon on the shoulder, he returned to his mount and rode away toward the hills.

Jakon eased himself up into a sitting position. The rifleman sat beside him. “Thanks,” said Jakon.

“Don’t mention it,” said Taybard Jaekel, and they sat in silence for a while. Jaekel pulled a plug of smoked meat from his hip pouch. With a small knife he cut it in half and handed a section to Jakon. “Need to loosen that tourniquet,” said Jaekel. “Leg’ll rot if you don’t.”

“Did you hit any of them covenanters?” asked Jakon.

“Two.”

“You only fired twice.”

“That’s why there were only two.”

The leg was beginning to pain him, but Jakon still managed a smile. “I’m Jakon Gallowglass. I owe you one.”

“If I see you near a tavern, I’ll let you buy me a tankard of ale,” said Jaekel.

It was a good memory.

Now Jakon Gallowglass, cold and angry, stood at the edge of the woods, staring at the twinkling fires of the camp not two hundred paces distant. Given the choice, he would have preferred to have arrived five minutes after the officers had gone, to have heard nothing of their plans. That way, when he had heard of the death of the Gray Ghost and Taybard Jaekel, he could have experienced a little grief before resuming his life of fighting and whoring.

Gallowglass swore long and loudly, his anger rising.

He had spent many evenings in the company of Taybard Jaekel. He liked the man. He did not fill one’s head with questions. Added to which he had saved Jakon’s life twice now. “Damn and perdition,” he said.

If he headed off toward Shelding, he could be there by late morning. At which point he would have moved beyond desertion and become a traitor.

Jakon Gallowglass was not a fool. Even if he warned the Gray Ghost, it was unlikely that the man or his company would survive. If they did, they would become hunted men, hundreds of miles from their homeland.

“Best you look after yourself, Gallowglass,” he whispered.

Then he turned his back on the Shelding Road and returned to his barracks.

Marl Coper had always been ambitious. As a child living on the southern coast with his widowed father he had dreamed of a life of power and riches. In that order. His family had been poor though not poverty-stricken. His father was an army surgeon and had received a tract of land and a good house upon his retirement. After that he tended to the citizens of Lord Winterbourne’s southern estates. He would not have seen himself as poor. There was always food on the table, but clothes had to be mended, and shoes repaired. They owned only two horses, both old and swaybacked. Marl needed more than that.

He was a good student at the local school, reading endlessly, studying Varlish history. It seemed to Marl that the greatest attribute of history’s giants was ruthlessness combined with a single-minded goal. Closer examination, however, showed that all the great men had also learned the craft of politics. They had acquired mentors, men who could lift them, supply them with contacts, and ease their way through the treacherous alleyways of power.

Marl’s first mentor had been a canny old man who ran Lord Winterbourne’s southern manor. The thirteen-year-old Marl had run errands for him, seeking to please him at every turn. The old man had taken a shine to him and had begun inviting him to his home, where Marl had performed services of a more disquieting nature.

By the time Marl was nineteen he had learned all that he could from the old man. It had not occurred to him at that time to engineer his death and thus take over his role. Marl was still young and unsure of his skills. One day, however, fate intervened. They were crossing the ice-covered River Tael, when suddenly the surface cracked. The old man was spun from his feet, landing heavily, his legs slipping under the water. He scrabbled to hold on to the tilting ice. Marl threw himself flat and instinctively reached out for his mentor. In that moment he realized they were totally alone. Unseen. Slithering forward, he reached the old man, whose lips were already blue with cold. “Pull me out, boy. Be careful, though. If we both go under, we’re doomed.”

Marl reached out, pushed aside the old man’s questing hand, and thrust his head down under the ice. The old man fought hard, but the current dragged him below the ice.

Marl Coper made a fine steward. He reorganized the running of the manor and introduced a new breed of cattle, purchased from the north, which were more hardy and supplied more beef. He improved the horse herds, acquiring three fine stallions from across the sea. The manor house itself had fallen into disrepair, as Lord Winterbourne spent little time there, but Marl brought in carpenters and stonemasons to renovate the building. Despite the expenditure, the profits from the estate doubled in three years.

He worked tirelessly with one aim in mind: to impress the Winterbourne family. Initially that meant catching the eye of Sir Gayan Kay, Lord Winterbourne’s younger brother. Impressing him was not easy. The man was a knight of the Sacrifice, boorish and arrogant. He had a habit of speaking his mind regardless of the hurt or the offense caused. He maintained that this was the duty of a knight, to speak the truth. As always with such people, were people to speak
their
minds to
him
, he would fly into uncontrollable rages. Marl observed him quietly for more than a year. He noted that Gayan Kay professed a hatred of sycophants yet surrounded himself with the most appalling toadies.

Marl organized hunts for Gayan Kay and his friends, arranged the balls and gatherings he was so fond of, paid his overdue bills, and kept largely in the background until he had studied the man fully. He learned to read Gayan Kay. The man had an ego the size of a mountain, but he was no fool.

Except for his belief that he was a poet of distinction.

Often he would invite his friends to listen to his latest compositions. They were mostly maudlin and trite, but his friends would applaud wildly. Marl joined in and waited for his moment. One evening he listened as Gayan droned on and noticed that the knight was not offering the piece with his usual verve. Marl sensed that he was unsure of the poem, as well he might be. It was singularly awful. At the close all his friends told him how wonderful it was. Marl took a deep breath. “I do not think, sir,” he said, “that it is worthy of you.” A stunned silence followed. Gayan Kay’s face went pale. Marl pressed on smoothly. “Had any other poet offered such a piece, I would have praised him to the skies. It is wonderful and vibrant. But your work, sir, is normally touched with greatness.”

Gayan Kay stood silently for a moment. “Damn,” he said, “but I do love an honest man. He’s right. The piece is not worthy of me.”

Within a remarkably short space of time Marl became Gayan Kay’s closest friend.

As a result he was drawn into the close circle of men who gathered around the powerful Winter Kay. Their first meeting had been inauspicious. Winter Kay had nodded in his direction, then moved away. He was unlike his brother. Marl watched him closely. He did not suffer fools, and he was immune to flattery.

It was another year before he saw him again. Winter Kay arrived in the south, took a tour of the manor house, then summoned Marl to the newly refurbished rooms on the southern wing.

“You have done well, young Coper,” said Winter Kay. “It seems to have been fortunate for my family that old Welham vanished beneath the ice when he did.”

“I am happy to serve, my lord.”

“Tell me how he died.”

Marl looked into the man’s cold eyes. “The ice cracked as we crossed the river. He was swept away.”

“Could you have reached him?”

“I did reach him, my lord. He died, though.”

“My brother is impressed with you, sir. He is easily impressed. I am not.”

Marl said nothing as Winter Kay observed him. “From all I have heard you are a thinking man. From what I have seen you are an ambitious one. Ambition is a fine thing. How far, however, will you go to achieve your ends?”