The Lady (15 page)

“What was going on here?” Kharduin asked. “What started the fighting?”

“The temple guard showed up here fleeing the battle in the suburb. They put their heads together with Orta, and the bastard ordered us all to barracks. He was going to turn the place over to them. Kurman got me aside and told me what had gone on out there, folk butchered in their homes and the demons that came for the Red Masks. I'd have had trouble believing him, but he was so shaken he could hardly stand, and I've never seen the boy cry before. Anyway, we'd had a few caravans bolting out before the order to close the gates came, and Master Lu, the horse-dealer, he's an old friend, he told me what was going on up past the Gore before he fled, and what Kurman said meshed with that. Something's wrong in the city, and I wasn't going to be locked up unarmed by temple bully-boys with lies in their mouths. They'd already locked up three of ours, the ones that survived that Nabbani wizard or assassin or whatever she was, the day before the Voice of the Lady died. Because we let her escape, they said. As if we could have stopped her, after she beheaded a Red Mask! And she'd killed everyone on gate-duty. If that's the great wizard who's fighting the Lady for us, then I'm not sure there's much to choose between them.”

But Holla-Sayan was still on the road with us, Varro thought, and even Ivah couldn't kill Red Masks; Holla said so.

“I—I don't think it was our wizard,” Varro stammered in the face of the lieutenant's accusing glare. Defending Ivah, devils take him. No, not that, not when they were real and present in the city. Old Great Gods forgive him. Sneaking murder was more Ivah's style than bold assault, but he couldn't offer that in her defence. Kharduin was her devoted servant now, and she probably hadn't had to bespell him to it, though she was quite capable of that. “No,” he said firmly. “It couldn't have been Ivah, the wizard of the suburb. She was—” what had Talfan said about her, “she was living in the city then, at the Doves, disguised as a scribe. She hadn't,” and he was surprised the words didn't choke him, spinning legends for the traitorous bastard Tamghati, “revealed herself to the city yet.”

“I hadn't heard anything about another wizard killing Red Masks either,” said Kharduin, plainly fascinated. “Lady Ivah's full of grief for her friend Ghu. He showed her they could be killed, she said, but he died at the Doves—at least, he wasn't imprisoned with her and Nour, and no one's found a trace of him since. But this wizard you saw left the city before the Doves burned?”

“She was an old woman anyway, not a man,” said Jing.

“Old, you're sure?” asked Varro. “Not just pale-haired? You might think sort of silvery-old, but really just a sort of autumn beech-leaves colour?” They didn't have beeches, here. Or any real autumn. “Maybe a really fair-haired Northron?”

“She was Nabbani.”

Not Moth, then. Damnation. One wizard—one
devil
he wouldn't mind having turn up.

“And a swordmaster, what a swordmaster,” Jing went on reflectively.

Varro shook his head. “We don't know anything about that. Pity she's gone, though. The more Red Mask killers we can find, the better.”

“Not if they're going to kill three or four of my guards for every Red Mask,” said Jing. “But you wanted to know how this fighting started. When they told Orta to arrest us too, we took the south tower and dragged Orta with us. That's all. I didn't really think it through. Stupid. I just didn't want to be locked up.” That seemed to remind her. She shouted in the direction of the stairs to someone to “Let Young Ead and the others out. And so,” Jing went on, turning back to Kharduin. “Master Kharduin. What are you doing here? Aside from the obvious.”

“Taking the Eastern Wall for the Warden of the City, in the name of the senate and the true gods.”

She snorted at “senate,” rubbed her face. “Lady, that hurts. All right. You've taken it. Now what?”

He bowed, mockingly. “Captain Jing Xua, it's all yours.”

“Thank you. Going to clean up your mess?”

Kharduin looked around. Bodies and blood. Not much sign of the quick and easy overrunning they had hoped for. No, this
had
been quick and easy, comparatively. Varro remembered Lissavakail.

“Will you look to our wounded and the dead? I don't think we can carry them all away.”

“I don't think we can tell them apart,” Jing muttered.

Varro had crouched by the woman who'd been so proud of knocking down that first temple guardsman. Dead. Some sword had found the damage in her stolen armour. The magistrate's boy bore only a cut cheek and a sombre look; he was leading an effort to carry the wounded down to beds in the barracks below.

“Tell them apart? No,” said Kharduin. “You probably can't. That's the problem when a tribe fights itself.” He turned away, scowling. “Lay the dead out decently somewhere, Jing, all of them. People may come seeking them. Varro, round up our lot, count heads, and go let Warden Jugurthos know we have the Eastern Wall.”

Varro thought about protesting being conscripted as a mere errand-boy, considered the cold ice of Kharduin's eyes, and settled for a nod. By the time he'd hauled the Red Mask armour off, Jing was pressing a sealed tablet on him for Captain Hassin, too.

Demoted to courier, was he? At least he'd be the one carrying news of the victory to Talfan. He plundered the horse-pen for the best of their ponies.

CHAPTER VIII

The scouts didn't see their enemies coming, didn't hear the two stalking them afoot until the first arrow whined from the hazels and took one of the three in the cheek. She'd aimed for the eye. Deyandara didn't swear, just nocked another arrow. It was not, after all, so very different from hunting deer. The man had fallen, but she didn't think the angle had been such that he could be counted dead and out of the action yet; it wouldn't have struck up into his brain. The other two scattered left and right, one making it to the horses, the other disappearing on his belly into the gorse that rolled down the hillside behind the campsite. The horses panicked suddenly, swinging haunches around, heads into the wind, ears back and eyes rolling, and the man who'd been about to mount had to spring away or be trampled. He turned, too, which gave Deyandara a brief clear shot between helm and the thick leather collar of his coat.

Dead, but now she'd lost the other from the corner of her eye, and in the dusk the first to fall had vanished as well. No, he was trying to keep out of sight, creeping down towards the stream and the horses, the arrow broken off. A second bit through the jerkin he wore, deep into his ribs, the leather little use at this range. He scraped frantically, then feebly at the earth, trying to pull himself onwards, before he stopped moving. Up the hillside, a man cried out. One of the horses broke free and bolted downstream.

Rustle and crack to her left. Wrong. There were only three. Arrow on the string, she swung to face into thickening shadow, deeper in the thicket of hazels that had let her creep so close along the bottom of the hill. Nothing moved. Slowly, she sank down on one knee, looking between the stems. Still no movement. And where was Lin? Lin didn't break twigs. She was uncannily silent in her stalking.

Deyandara heard the Marakander at the last moment, a new rustle that sent her leaping back as his sword thrust from beside her. She loosed the arrow, but with a bush between them it tore twigs, snagged, and tumbled harmless. The man dodged around, a Grasslander with matching scars on both cheeks, his sabre raised for a proper slash now. It caught on a branch; she had her knife, but he kicked at her as he wrenched his blade free. She fell, rolling away, slashed at his following legs and made him dance. Squirming to put another many-stemmed hazel between them again, she bounded to her feet and shouted for Lin, who had a sword, damn her, and was wizard besides. The Grasslander bared his teeth, circling. She kept moving, kept hazels between them, and there was Lin, running doubled over, weaving through the brush like a coursing hound. The man turned in time to see her before she cut him down.

No old woman should run so fast.

“Where were you?” Deyandara demanded, searching for the bow she had dropped, queasy with nerves now that it was all over. There, and not trampled, thank Andara.

“Up the hill.”

“Doing what? You said you'd circle around.”

“Circling.”

“You took your time.”

“I'm an old woman.”

“Not so as anyone would notice.”

“I was persuading a fool of a Praitannec scout that I wasn't a Marakander mercenary, if you must know.”

“What?” That cry. “Andara prevent you didn't kill one of Marnoch's scouts!”

“No, he's still up there, and in one piece. Or,” as there was a sudden slithering and crashing, “perhaps not. Down here, boy!” she called, raising her voice. “The Marakanders are dealt with, and Lady Deyandara wishes your escort to Lord Yvarr.”

The scout was no boy but one of Marnoch's own huntsmen, balding and with a grey-grizzled beard. He came through the hazel thicket much more slowly than Lin had, spear levelled and a red welt rising on his cheekbone.

“My lady Deyandara!” He raised the spear and grinned. “It really is you.”

She not only knew his face but remembered, after a moment's frantic thought, his name. “Faullen! Well met. This is Lady Lin, a wizard in the high king's—in my service.”

“We introduced ourselves just now,” said Lin gravely.

Faullen eyed her. “Wizard, eh? It's been a while since an old woman kicked me in the face. And I wasn't even trying to steal a kiss. I think you've loosened a tooth or two, as if I had any to spare.”

Lin kissed her hand to him. “Next time, friend Faullen, listen when a lady whispers in your ear.”

He grinned. “Next time, Lady Wizard, try whispering something more to the point than, ‘Hush, I'm a friend.' A man believes that when he's stalking Marakanders, he deserves gutting. I take it you've dealt with all three of them, or our happy get-together would have been interrupted by now. Can I ask, Lady Deyandara . . .”

“I'm on my way to Lord Yvarr,” said Deyandara.

“The Lord Seneschal is up at his own
dinaz
, four days ride, but Lord Marnoch's army is camped just a few miles northwest of here. He's been making a circle, to come at the royal
dinaz
and the Marakanders from the west.”

“Even better,” Lin answered for her.

“Yes,” Deyandara said, with a quelling look at her. They had overshot, then; they had left the road almost at once after Marakand and struck out into the trackless hills, angling towards where Lin's nightly divination told her Marnoch would be. And for over a week, she'd had Lin telling her,
Remember you're their queen's rightful heir returning from a mission set you by their goddess, not a truant child slinking home.
Lin had better remember she was Deyandara's wizard, not her tutor or grandmother, to speak for her. “Can you take us to him?”

Faullen and Deyandara salvaged everything useful from the Marakander mercenaries, and Deyandara recovered her undamaged arrows, dividing the Marakanders' quivers with the hunter. By then the third horse had returned. Faullen caught it, saying that spare mounts were going to be useful. He left dealing with the dead to Deyandara, who pulled up a handful of muddy grassroots and dropped it on the one lying by the brook; she did the same for the man who had gone for the horses.

“Go to your road in peace,” she said. “Don't stay here to trouble the decent folk whose rightful land this is.”

Lin had remained within the hazel thicket, kneeling with a hand on the chest of the man she had killed. Praying, maybe, though she hadn't bothered to pray over others she had slain in their two previous encounters. The light murmur of her voice rose and fell, paused and rose again. By the time she rejoined them the dusk had thickened into night.

“They were on their way back to Ketsim with the news that Marnoch was near,” she said.

“I knew that,” said Faullen. “Why do you think I was looking for their camp? They wouldn't have lived past the dawn. I was about to leave to report back when someone started sticking them full of arrows.” He clapped Deyandara on the shoulder. “You shouldn't take such risks, my lady, going in outnumbered like that.”

Deyandara was on the verge of saying it was Lin's insistence, not her own, and that this was the third time they'd taken on greater numbers of Marakander scouts, when Lin's pinch on her arm silenced her. Yes, don't make childish excuses, pinning the blame elsewhere. “We thought they might be carrying word of where Yvarr's made his stronghold,” she told him, picking the best of her reasons. “We couldn't let them betray that to Ketsim.”

“You shouldn't risk yourself,” he repeated. “I'll see you safe to Lord Marnoch, now. Do you bring word from your brother?”

“I've been in the south,” she said briefly.

“Best you save the tale for Lord Marnoch,” Lin added.

Faullen, reproved along with Deyandara, merely bowed.

Faullen had been doing his stalking on foot; riding one of the captured mounts, he accompanied them over the gorse-covered hill and up a bend of the brook into the narrow valley where they had left their own horses, leading the way on between the hills again. Marnoch wasn't trying to conceal his presence yet; from a hilltop half a mile away they saw the fires—too few, surely, for an army—but they had been challenged by a patrol well before that. Faullen sent a boy from the patrol that met them riding ahead to “Tell the war-leader that Lady Deyandara's come back to us, with news from the south.” Deyandara felt queasier at that than she ever did in the aftermath of attack. She'd told that meeting over in her mind so many times on the way from Marakand, and somehow it always ended up being only herself and Marnoch, alone, and the words came easily. Now they fled her. It would be a public meeting, of course it would. By now the entire folk would know Cattiga's bastard niece had fled the royal
dinaz
before it was abandoned to the enemy.