Defiant Peaks (The Hadrumal Crisis) (61 page)

He felt nothing so hopeful. Very well. With the same cautious hand held high, he rose to his feet. Arms outstretched before him, he took a careful step, testing the ground before committing his weight and taking a second pace forward. He advanced slowly until his questing fingers found a stone wall.

Moving closer until his bare chest touched the rock, he explored this newfound surface with his fingertips. There were no joints or cracks. This wasn’t masonry. He was in a cave. That would certainly explain the unchanging mildness of the air; cool but not uncomfortably cold.

Now he moved sideways, tracing the course of the cavern with his hands. The wall went on and on. For the first time, he felt uneasy. Was he following some passageway or charting a circular course? With no point of reference, he wouldn’t know when he came back to the beginning.

He halted and considered this. Without a blade, he couldn’t mark the wall. Without clothing, he couldn’t leave some token to tell him that he’d made a full circuit. Corrain smiled grimly into the darkness. So he’d piss to mark the spot like some troublesome hound and let whoever had put him in here make whatever they chose of that.

He heard the trickle strike the stone and felt the warmth seep under his toes. These sensations put new heart into him.

Sheltya.
Now he remembered. He had been travelling in the mountains with the woman Aritane, trying to find the mysterious Artificers who had exiled her.

His fists clenched at further recollection. He had been seeking these unknown adepts because Soluran wizards had suborned aetheric magic’s assistance as they sought to force the Archmage into surrendering the ensorcelled artefacts which the Mandarkin Anskal had discovered in the Archipelago. But Aritane had been afraid that she would be punished for returning.

Corrain gritted his teeth and refused to be dismayed. If he was naked, he wasn’t unduly cold. If he was imprisoned, he wasn’t loaded down with chains or being thrashed by some whip-wielding slaver. He wasn’t guilty of any offence against these
sheltya.
Once one of them read his mind, they would know that and release him.

If he hadn’t already found his own way out, to challenge their right to detain him. He continued his slow progress along the wall, trying to determine if it was curving back on itself.

Was this even a real wall? He halted at a further thought. Was he truly here, naked and alone, or was this merely some illusion, like Micaran’s deserted vision of Col’s Carillon Square or the murderous Soluran’s imaginary woodland?

Corrain turned around, leaning his shoulders on the stone as he considered this. If this was an illusion, what did that mean? Little enough, he concluded. He had no magic of his own, so he could hardly overcome such enchantment, not unless he could get his hands around the throat of whoever might be wielding it. So he might as well continue exploring the confines of this prison, real or imagined, and hope to find some means of breaking free.

A voice spoke somewhere in the darkness. ‘He is remarkably strong-minded.’

A sardonic voice answered the first. ‘Strong-minded or simple-minded?’

‘Single-minded?’ someone mused.

‘Practical at least,’ a further speaker commented.

‘He is no leader of men,’ the sardonic voice said with contempt.

‘Look deeper.’

Was that a first speaker replying or someone else? Before Corrain could decide, the overseer’s lash bit deep into his shoulder.

He gasped. In the next breath, he bit his lip to stifle the cry which would surely draw the slaver’s wrath down on the men sharing this bench. He braced his feet against the wooden plank jutting up from the deck and hauled hard on the oar. The galley pitched and tilted in the wild seas.

Somewhere out beyond the bulwark, the fickle waves dropped away from their blade. The five of them fell backwards as the united strength of their pull met no resistance. Only the chain threaded through the fetters linking his ankles saved Corrain from sprawling into the oar behind them.

Gritting his teeth against the agony of the iron shackles digging into his raw flesh, he struggled upright once again. Shaking the matted hair out of his eyes, he rocked back and forward trying to see past the man who sat between him and Hosh. Was the lad all right out at the end of the bench by the oar port?

‘A leader of men, perhaps,’ the critical voice allowed grudgingly, ‘but he is no ruler.’

His horse’s hooves echoed loudly on the new-laid cobbles beneath the archway of Halferan’s freshly rebuilt gatehouse. Behind him, Corrain could hear cattle lowing with complaint and sheep making their irritation known as they were herded into the pens erected on the grassy expanse between the manor’s wall and the brook.

Emerging into the clouded daylight within the courtyard, he looked first for Kusint. The Forest-born youth hurried out of the guards’ barrack hall and raised a hand to acknowledge the troop’s arrival. His confident nod told Corrain that all was well within the demesne.

Now Corrain looked for Lady Zurenne. There she was, standing in the great hall’s entrance, her children with her at the top of the steps

‘Reven?’ Reaching back, he snapped his gloved fingers.

‘My lord Baron.’ After the hesitation over his title which Corrain was so used to, the young sergeant thrust the battered ledger into his waiting hand.

Corrain lifted himself in his stirrups and leaned forward, taking his weight on his hands to swing his booted foot over the horse’s rump and dismount. Landing on the cobbles, he took a moment to ease the stiffness in his back, thighs and shoulders. This final leg of their journey back to the manor had been a long and wearisome few days at the end of an arduous half-season.

Walking towards the great hall, he undid the top few buttons of his jerkin. Within a few strides, he became uncomfortably aware of the sweaty reek of his shirt. No matter. He would return to the guard hall and bathe with the rest of the troop while Lady Zurenne addressed herself to the ledger he had brought her.

The farmers who had seen their cattle, sheep and pigs scattered by the corsairs had been writing to her constantly, begging for assistance in determining if their beasts were slaughtered, stolen or strayed. She would know how best to allocate the animals which he and his troop had found wandering unbranded or separately penned with unnotched ears by honest herdsmen as they had made their round of the barony to see how the tenantry fared now that peace had returned. Few farmers had needed persuading to surrender beasts which they had no claim to.

‘He is a most loyal man,’ a voice approved.

Corrain wrapped his arms around Hosh, doing his best to restrain the boy’s thrashing limbs. He could still feel the fever coursing through the lad’s veins despite the fact that Hosh was lying here on the beach naked and exposed. Back home an apothecary would advise cold baths to cool him. With sharks in the waters here, even in the shallows, the best that Corrain could do was strip him for the damp winds blowing in from the western sea at this tail end of the Archipelago’s unexpectedly chill winter.

Hosh mumbled, incomprehensible, tossing his head from side to side. The lad stared into the distance, his blurred gaze unseeing. His distorted eye was rimmed with angry scarlet while the smears of tears and mucus from his broken nose glistened yellow with pus on his red and swollen cheek.

Should he soak his own ragged tunic in the sea again, to swaddle the boy with the sodden cloth and draw this damaging heat from his bones? As Hosh’s struggles subsided, Corrain looked warily past the twisted and warty trunk of the ragged-leaved tree hiding them at this far end of the beach.

He didn’t dare leave the lad if there was any chance that some other slave might wander this way. That they had nothing to steal was no safeguard. When the corsair galleys couldn’t go voyaging in these storms, the slave rowers were left to their own devices on this cursed island. All too many relieved their own anger and fear by brutalising those weaker than themselves.

Corrain’s empty stomach twisted beneath his bruised ribs. He was always hungry here but now he felt he was truly starving, after trading his meagre share with the kitchen slave Imais.

She had promised that her herbs would help break Hosh’s fever. When would that happen? Did Hosh need another dose? Did he need to sneak close to the corsair shipmaster’s pavilion and find Imais again?

Corrain refused to consider the possibility of Hosh dying. He would see the boy through this fever and come the spring, come the sailing season, they would find some way back to Halferan.

‘Loyal indeed,’ a different voice agreed.

‘Not always,’ the sardonic voice sneered.

Her skin was silky beneath his hand, her breast yielding until his fingertips found her nipple. Her flesh tightened with desire, just as his own was doing elsewhere. He felt the warm breath of her stifled giggle against his neck as she felt his swelling passion hard against her thigh. Their bodies pressed tight together in the softness of the featherbed, swathed warmly with sheets and blankets.

His mouth found hers. His tongue teased her lips before kissing her long and deeply. He traced the length of her neck with more kisses as she twisted in the bed to offer her breast to his mouth. As he suckled and licked, his hands explored the rest of her body. He could feel her softness, her curves, unlike the firm-fleshed maidens he had dallied with in his youth.

Corrain didn’t care about that. Age brought experience to man and woman alike, in the bedchamber like anywhere else. More fool Starrid, if the Halferan manor steward preferred to spend his evenings in the village tavern tossing runes. Corrain was more than happy to keep his neglected wife entertained.

Lord Halferan would disapprove of course, so devoted to Lady Zurenne. Corrain didn’t care. No one would tell their lord as long as Starrid’s arrogance made him so unpopular among the household while Corrain’s newly-gifted rank of guard captain commanded admiration and respect.

Now he had his own bedchamber in the barracks rather than sleeping in the upper dormitory with the rest of the troopers, no one need know whether or not his bed was occupied. Anyway, even if someone discovered his blankets empty and hazarded a guess at whose thighs he was spreading, Corrain was confident that his men would only envy him, tasting this particular ripe peach.

‘Arrogant and lustful.’ The sardonic voice condemned him.

‘Truly?’ the first voice mused.

Corrain tensed. His chest no longer pressed against luscious fullness. Instead he felt the merest budding of womanly curves against his ribs. His questing fingers stroked a bony hip before sliding down to find the merest dusting of soft down rather than a richly pelted, plump and moist cleft.

‘Now we’re properly wed,’ Ilysh murmured as she kissed his bare shoulder.

Aghast, he was out of the bed and stumbling backwards across the room quicker than thought. The lingering touch of her lips burned his skin like a brand. He sought to cover his shrivelling manhood with one hand, raising the other to hide any glimpse of the child’s nakedness.

How could this happen? Bafflement warred with the horror driving him as far away as the room’s confines allowed. Shame overwhelmed him. How would he ever explain such a base betrayal to Lady Zurenne? How could he protect the child now, when every man in the barony would be ready to beat him bloody and Corrain wouldn’t raise a hand to stop a single blow—

His shoulders struck the wall behind him. Taken unawares, he lost his footing and fell hard onto his rump. The stone scraped his unclothed shoulder blades raw. Without even the meagre protection of breeches and under linen, the impact of his buttocks on the rock floor jarred his spine agonisingly hard.

Corrain didn’t care. The pain cut through his incoherent horror to remind him where he was. He was imprisoned by the
sheltya.
They must have woven that particular nightmare after plundering his memories. To amuse themselves or to test him by laying his character bare?

‘Strong-minded,’ the first voice repeated.

‘Enough.’ A new voice spoke, harsh and unforgiving. ‘He is of no significance beyond what he can tell us. What have Planir and his covey of conjurors and charlatans done now?’

Corrain stood on the corsair island’s beach. The sky shimmered with azure magelight as a gale of brutal wizardry threw him and every man with him against the swiftly disintegrating slavers’ pavilion. Amber magelight was tearing the building to pieces from the roof ridge to the deepest foundation. Emerald wizardry foamed amid waves surging upwards from the shore. The waters scattered the wreckage, heedless of frantic men struggling amid the broken rafters, shattered bricks and lacerating shards of tile. Only the scarlet magefire was untouched; burning beams scattering ruby sparks to kindle every scrap of broken furniture or torn fabric tossed amid the turbulent spume.

His face was scorching while the cold sea leeched all strength from his limbs. His heavy boots were dragging at his legs. He swept his arms back and forth, desperately trying to keep his head above the eerie green froth. He didn’t know which he feared most; drowning or being burned alive.

A wave washed over his head. Stinging salt water filled his eyes to leave him dazzled by emerald magelight. He blinked to no avail, still blind. Flotsam pummelled him, brutal and bruising. He felt something under his hand. Something floating, not burning.