The Merchant Emperor (58 page)

He stopped in his tracks in the buttery where he had been preparing Ashe’s morning tea and the whey cereal that was one of the few things the Lord Cymrian would eat in these days of terrible news. He cocked his head to one side, hearing the directions, but for the first time since the whispering had begun some weeks ago, he did not shake it off.

And instead went back to the pantry, looking for a stronger blend of tea to hide the taste of the datura he also took from the cleaning cabinet to enhance it with.

Datura was an herbal element, deadly poisonous to the cockroaches in the nests that the Lady Cymrian had painted with it when back in the drafty keep of Haguefort.

And to anyone who might ingest it.

He had almost forgotten what he had done until the young duke of Navarne came down to breakfast.

And sat in the Lord Cymrian’s place at the table.

Gerald Owen had reentered the room just in time to see Gwydion Navarne lift Ashe’s teacup to his lips.

His ragged gasp caused the young man to freeze, his hand with the cup in the air in front of him.

“Er—young master Navarne,” he said, trembling. “What are you doing?”

Gwydion summoned a halfhearted smile.

“Ashe is gone, Gerald,” he said. “He has invested me with his Right of Command; I am leaving immediately to meet up with Anborn and Rhapsody two days hence in the farming encampment south of Bethany. I thought I might keep his tea from being wasted before I left.”

The elderly chamberlain’s eyes welled up at the sight of the young man he had loved as a son for all Gwydion’s life.

A love stronger than any demonic command could ever be.

“No, sir, I’m afraid you are mistaken. Even if you are the acting Lord Cymrian now.” Gently he took the teacup from the young duke. “You see, that’s
my
tea.”

The tears in his eyes spilled over as he raised the cup to his lips.

And drank.

Then he bowed, excusing himself, and hurried back to his chambers behind the buttery to bed before the datura took him, so as to appear to die in his sleep.

His last act of guardianship to the family Navarne.

54

KREVENSFIELD PLAIN, SOUTH OF BETHANY, NORTH OF SEPULVARTA

A sennight after he had numbly buried his family’s beloved caretaker and left for Bethany, Gwydion Navarne stood atop the viewing tower at the highest elevation of the east-west midpoint of the Krevensfield Plain, spyglass to his eye, watching the armies of Sorbold advance. Down from the piedmont that led to the steppes to the south, long dark lines of soldiers, ten divisions mounted, another twenty on foot, and, most terrible of all, fifty or more wagons with the long boxed frames indicating the transport of iacxsis were approaching the armed farming settlement, defended only by the eight thousand or so soldiers that the Lord Marshal had deployed there.

Another forty thousand were coming, by his own command, but all intelligence predicted a three-day wait until their arrival.

By which time, the garrison was likely to be nothing but ashes.

Gwydion swallowed hard. He, like Anborn, had expected Sorbold to attack the less central, more vulnerable settlements first; their bad guess looked to be a costly one. Though Sorbold could have committed more soldiers, it was clear that the supreme commander had been confident enough to attack with the forces that had been quartered in Sepulvarta, leaving the walled city all but undefended.

In his youth, Gwydion had not enjoyed the games of three-in-hand or fiddlesticks, betting games of bluffing and intentional deception, for just this very reason. He, like his father, was by nature a straight arrow, a man with little taste for risk taking. His lack of a sense of this kind of adventure was something the Lord Marshal had bemoaned humorously when training him in field strategy, but even the great Cymrian hero had to concede that risk did not always pay off.

Anborn had taken the young duke spying in southern Sorbold and the Nonaligned States with him, and he had watched the Lord Marshal offer halfhearted crossbow support while his godfather sliced through a cohort of twenty-seven Sorbold soldiers that had made its way inside the gate of Haguefort disguised in the colors of Ashe’s own regiment. Ashe and Anborn had seemed almost bored as they dispatched the intruders; it was a fascinating if unrealistic view of military maneuvers, leaving Gwydion both comforted by the level of skill of those leading the armies and navies of the Alliance, while making him worry that he would underestimate what battle really required when he himself was drawn into it.

Ashe had known of his fears, and had brought him along when repelling raids in southern Navarne, allowing him to put the skills that Anborn had been imparting to him to the test. The result was that he now had a healthy respect for his own limitations.

That real-life training was the only combat experience he had ever had, with the exception of the battle with the Fallen at the Moot during the Cymrian Council four years before, where every civilian, even the lame and children, had joined in the fray, using every possible weapon of any sort they could find, including horse whips and shovels.

The battle that had taken his father’s life as he had held the gate, rescuing much of the population as it fled the Moot.

Gwydion looked down at his own hands. They were trembling.

For all that Ashe had invested his own Right of Command in his namesake, Gwydion Navarne was deeply aware that he, a human man with distant Cymrian ancestory, did not have the lineage of extreme longevity or dragon blood that both Ashe and Anborn did, nor did he have their physical training and the experience of, in Ashe’s case, more than a hundred years, in Anborn’s, more than a thousand, of soldiering and surviving battle.

He did not fear for his own life.

He feared that losing it easily would leave the Alliance, and therefore the Known World, in danger of destruction.

Gwydion prayed that he would be killed, rather than captured.

He looked down to his left, where Rhapsody stood, her emerald eyes gazing south as he had been.

“Do you think our ballistae will hold—I mean, will they be effective against the iacxsis?”

She did not take her eyes off the approaching army.

“I hope so,” she said. “We will have a rough time of it. Don’t take your eyes off the sky.”

There was no confidence or reassurance in her voice, just a cold, emotionless assessment. It brought no comfort to the sick twisting in the depths of Gwydion’s viscera, but he reminded himself that this was how Rhapsody was now. The warm-hearted woman who had chosen him as her first adopted grandson had been replaced by a warrior he did not recognize. But the loss of the almost parental love and reassurance she had given him over the last few years serving with Ashe as his and Melisande’s guardians was well worth the cost if the steadiness was effective on the battlefield.

“How much longer do you suppose it will be?”

She did not answer immediately, her eyes fixed on the approaching army.

“It will take at least an hour before the calvary gets within missile range,” she said. “No more than two, though; they didn’t bring siege weapons, so they’re traveling quickly. They are confident, apparently. It’s time to get to down to the field.”

Gwydion exhaled, looking for one last long moment at the approaching lines blackening the rolling hills of the Plain beyond the walls of the armed settlement. Then turned to embrace Rhapsody one last time before they went into battle.

She was already heading down the ladder.

*   *   *

The Lord Marshal was riding the line along the southern quarters of the garrison on horseback when Gwydion and Rhapsody arrived at the front.

The Lady Cymrian dismounted from her own steed and tossed the reins to a corporal from the livery as Anborn slowed his black warhorse and pulled up beside her.

“The archers are in place, the defense of the wall is forming. How many troops do you want back here in the midfort for yourself, m’lady?”

“None, thank you. For what I plan they would just be in the way. If a iacxsis is targeted at me, I don’t want anyone else to suffer for it—or to prevent me from responding appropriately.” She turned to Gwydion, who had dismounted as well. “The only support I will need is yours.”

Gwydion nodded nervously. He had been briefed by the Lady Cymrian the night before when she arrived on her plan to work side by side with him, using their special weapons and abilities, saving any direct combat as a second line of defense. Gwydion suspected that if their swords were needed in hand-to-hand combat, the outcome would be foreordained anyway.

He was having a hard time remembering that the woman who was calmly discussing last-minute strategy with the Lord Marshal was the same woman he had known and loved for a third of his life. He barely recognized her, the golden locks she was famous for shorn to the base of her neck, her legendary beauty replaced by a sharpness that he found disturbing. He closed his eyes and willed himself to concentrate on the battle coming quickly, relentlessly toward them.

“Fair enough,” said Anborn. “Good luck, both of you. We will focus on the conventional forces—the archers will hold the wall as long as they can. If we are overrun, use whatever power is at your command, m’lady. Do not spare any of your comrades—any of us. The enemy needs to die first; if you have to take some of us with them, then that is as it should be.”

“Indeed,” Rhapsody agreed. “Good luck to you as well.”

The Lord Marshal paused for a moment, then smiled down at her. He bowed to his sovereign, then winked at Gwydion.

“Get some blood on that blade before the battle is over,” he advised. “Tysterisk is an ancient weapon, and has been in many hands. It’s time you started your own blood history with it.”

“I will do my best,” the young duke promised. “Good luck.”

The Lord Marshal spurred his horse and returned to the wall.

*   *   *

Fhremus felt the power of hearts beating behind him, those of his men, of the horses they rode. He imagined he could feel whatever passed for hearts beating in the abominations that waited in the long boxes atop the wagons.

And the beating heart of the earth itself.

He looked through his spyglass at the walls of the farming settlement. A second barricade had been put in place, much as had been erected at every such settlement along Anborn’s Threshold of Death. He suspected that, even without the iacxsis strike, the wall would have held for a very short time before the cavalry and infantry overwhelmed the settlement, sheerly due to the massive numerical advantage Sorbold enjoyed.

How sad,
he thought. He had not even needed to call up troops from any of the standing mountain regiments; the occupation force of Sepulvarta outnumbered what could be seen in the Alliance settlement by more than three to one, very likely more.

And then there were the iacxsis.

It was his intention to keep the army back while the beasts decimated the wall and the interior of the garrison, sparing as many of his men as possible. By the look of things, it might not even be necessary to fire a single bolt. He sincerely hoped that the Lord Marshal was not here; even if he was Cymrian and the enemy, Fhremus carried enough respect for Anborn ap Gwylliam’s soldiering career and his status as a Kinsman to deserve a better, more valorous death than the one everyone in this settlement was about to experience.

“Come to halt,” he shouted to the field commanders of the mounted and infantry divisions. He turned his steed one hundred eighty degrees around and watched as the invading force slowed and stood at attention, waiting.

“Today is the first of the assaults we will launch against the enemy of Roland and the army of the Alliance,” he said, his voice ringing with conviction that he did not feel. “All will remain at rest while the first wave is released; iacxsis riders, advance.”

The soldiers of that elite regiment riding in the midst of the cavalry divisions dismounted and came forward to the wagons. Another group, armored heavily, came forward as well, and took up their places atop the wagons. Each team consisted of four armed soldiers whose task it was to open the boxed cage, while four more, draped and clothed with thick padding carrying heavy chains, prepared to hold the beasts steady while the riders mounted. It was a specialty unit that was becoming more popular and desirable for assignment as the aerial forces scored more widespread victories in the harbors and battlefields of the expanding Empire of the Sun.

Fhremus waited until all of the teams, as well as the riders, were in place and ready.

“Archers, draw and nock,” he said. “Await my command to let fly.”

The squeaking and rattling of bows being made ready almost split his eardrums.

Fhremus looked back once more over his shoulder at what a short time before had been an innocent collective of farmhouses, barns and storage silos, pastures and ponds, now surrounded by martial hardware, weapons and walls.
A shame they chose the wrong side of history to ally with,
he thought as he noted the movement on the ramparts, the sighting of crossbows and the readying of the arms of ballistae he could see through his spyglass.