Stormed Fortress: Fifth Book of The Alliance of Light. Janny Wurts
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outnumbered, and if we’re attacked, a slacker’s mistake’ll drop you stone-dead in a second.’
Yet the sultry night passed without disturbance. Men tossed and turned to the shrilling of insects and the cries of rodents razed down by an owl.
Pre-dawn, under a dank scud of fog, the advance line spied a head-hunters’ party on foot with three couples of dogs. The man with the report came in breathless, his professional summary bleak. ‘Onto somebody’s trail, tracking south-east from Silvermarsh. That points to a clan runner with news, moving hell-bent to reach Atwood.’
A ghost presence in his dull brigandine and blacked helm, Talvish weighed the development. ‘That’s a damned problem.’ The Sorcerer’s sealed warding might not let a messenger through; this, alongside the confounding snag, that the bounty hunt posed a hindrance to his skulking task force. ‘Listen up, men! I want ten, armed for skirmish. By daylight, we’ll have that league squad cut down. No noise, without fuss! Sink their dead in the river. Can’t have a batch of circling vultures to warn off the couriers from Spire.’
Those chosen strung bows and slipped off to snipe headsmen. The unsavoury chore of weighting the corpses would be handled without complaint. They were too small a company, camped amid open land, far too deep into unfriendly territory.
Talvish moved next for chance-met opportunity. ‘I’ll have a cordon. We’ll net the live quarry as well.’ He would hear what grave need sent a fugitive clansman at risk near the towns of West Halla. ‘I’d know what’s afoot at first hand, and not wait on the pickings of rumour.’
The company’s reserves assembled at speed, with Fionn Areth on fire to go with them. Three weeks tasked with menial chores had pitched his quick temper to snapping. ‘Leave me in charge of the horses again, I’ll go out of my skull slapping flies.’
Talvish scarcely paused. ‘You want the assignment? Then streak your face, bantling.’ The suspect, cat gleam to his glance should have roused second thoughts, under daylight.
In darkness, the veterans smiled, unfooled: the testy Araethurian was going to be dealt an arduous lesson in patience. Bagging forest-bred talent amid covert thickets called for hours of motionless vigil. The insect bites, nettle rash, and tedium could drive even a seasoned man fidgeting crazy.
Even so, Talvish was not complacent. Entrusting a greenhorn with critical action, he finished his raking review. ‘Keep your wits, goatherd. Stay self-reliant. Don’t think for one second you’d be here bearing arms if Vhan hadn’t left his word with the duke to vouchsafe your weathercock character.’
‘I won’t fall short,’ Fionn Areth insisted, absorbed with the fit of his baldric.
‘Fall to napping, more likely,’ Talvish tossed back.
The effect was predictable: Fionn Areth huffed in retort, ‘A month’s beer to my promise I’ll stoop to fleece goats, first!’
Talvish clapped the young man’s rigid shoulder. ‘Should I pity the goats? It’s not my place, but I have to presume that a sword makes a hack job of shearing.’
The duke’s captain strode on his self-assured way, aware his brisk handling had whetted the edge he required of hot-blooded new recruits. If league trackers had flushed a clan runner crossing Melhalla on desperate business, the creature would sense Alestron’s fixed line. The mistake must not happen, that forestborn instinct should snatch the least chance to slip through. ‘Bring this scout in safely! Such news as he carries might become critical to holding Alestron’s defence.’
Sunrise over East Halla dispersed the ripped tatters of mist. The rolling land emerged, its crabbed briar and crowned oak as a layered etching stamped on dull foil. Heat followed. The late-summer sun beat relentlessly through, bleaching the hazy sky powder blue and silting the parched vales in shadow. Jeynsa s’Valerient stirred as the first breeze riffled the leaves of the oak where she hid. She ached. Her tucked posture amid the crooked boughs had stiffened the muscles stressed hard by the zeal of league trackers. Her moment to catnap had lasted all night, a fool’s lapse and a perilous set-back.
Thirsty, still tired, in need of the meal she dared not pause to forage, she took wary stock. In hindsight, she should never have shortened her route by choosing the east way past Backwater. Either the boatman she paid for her crossing had talked, or a child sent out to pick brambles had seen her; or else an inquisitive crofter’s dog had dug up the warm ash of her campsite. Whatever the cause, the league pressed the chase. Her capture by townsmen would see Eriegal branded by Feithan’s undying, cold fury. Sidir, as well, would decry the bold course that had led her into Melhalla. Her predicament should have borne deadly stakes, except that her mother and Halwythwood’s council had been duped by Rathain’s corrupt crown prince. His vile practice left Jeynsa no choice but to win through regardless of danger. In a country-side busy with pennoned outriders, armed skirmish parties, and couriers mustering troops, she had been chased, every step, since leaving the sinkpools of Silvermarsh. Though she was well trained to elude close pursuit, seventy-five leagues across open terrain had sapped her youthful resilience.
Now beaten lean, with the refuge of Atwood a day’s run past the Pellain road, Jeynsa confronted the desperate fact she had lost her cover. The mist had burned off. Worse, a snapped twig from below revealed someone’s unwelcome company.
Jeynsa silently unslung her bow. Prepared for a bountyman, she swiped back her hacked hair and peered downwards.
Another stick cracked. A snagged briar rustled. A slinking form wearing town cloth paused in step, while gingerly fingers unhooked the thorny grip of the underbrush. Her stalker was armed, and masked with streaked walnut, though clearly he was not wood-wise. He never inspected the boughs overhead. The bumbler parked himself under her tree, oblivious as a straw target.
Jeynsa chose not to shoot him. Aside from the fact she had killed only deer, a dead body would attract scavengers and flag the dog-pack. This man was no scalper. Her indistinct view through the foliage unveiled a jerkin sewn with a troop badge. Which device did not matter. The town-born rooster would have armed companions. She dared not risk a redoubled pursuit, dizzy with hunger and wracked by exhaustion.
Past help, her niche in the oak was a trap till the fool on the ground chose to move.
Jeynsa curbed her impatience. He would fall asleep. Flushed by the scald of the sun on her back, she must bank on the rankling certainty. Amid sultry air, fecund with summer greenery, a man by himself on a boring patrol would nod in the shade and succumb.
But an hour passed; two. The young man remained standing. Back braced to the oak, he raked his dark hair from his streaming forehead. Jeynsa chewed her lip. Inwardly swearing, she wrestled her need to climb down, find a bush, and relieve herself. The man-at-arms, whoever he was, had not picked his vantage at random. She had detected the rest of his company staked across the next vale. Their placement deepened her growing anxiety, that their cast net had marked her as prey.
Noon came and went. Burgeoning cumulus fluffed into columns, then flattened to towering anvilheads. Unlike a town-born anyplace else, this soldier maintained his vigilance. He wasted more time than her straits could afford. Jeynsa smothered her insults maligning his ancestry. She had to move, or her bladder would burst. The squall line that darkened the sky would deliver its cloud-burst too late to shield her.
Helpless, she languished, draped on her branch, while the torpid air pressed down like a lid. Her nemesis continued to sweat and slap flies. He did not sit, did not sleep, failed to shirk his post despite itching discomfort. Ready to kill out of broiling frustration, Jeynsa endured. Before her survival, the warning she carried must reach the clans in Melhalla. Her crown prince was involved with dark sorcery. Sighted vision had unveiled his vile rites at Etarra. Against the grim charge of collusion with necromancy, Jeynsa required a witnessed accusation, then the formal backing of a Fellowship Sorcerer.
She suffered her impasse, until the young man below her tipped back his head.
Jeynsa went cold. Past question, beneath the smeared dye, the sharp cast of those features was royal.