Mastiff (65 page)

“What if the castle doesn’t surrender?” Gareth asked.

“Then the army attacks,” Nomalla said. “And they attack until the castle
does
surrender.”

“Let’s hope the castle surrenders,” I told the lad. I hugged him close, ignoring my aches, as the mirror blurred again. When it cleared, it showed us the army on the causeway below, armed with a catapult.

“You asked to see the gate,” Farmer told Nomalla.

“He’s destroyed our house,” Nomalla whispered. “Father and his ambition.”

We heard a roar below and went to see what had happened. Catapults had struck the wall together, driving gaps near the top, while the one on the road to the castle had been loosed. Whatever the stone was made of, it had smashed through the gate, leaving plenty of room for the knights and soldiers to attack. Sabine put her arm around Nomalla’s shoulders as the other lady knight wept.

While everyone watched the fighting in the lands of the three traitorous households, there would be no one to see me weep if I checked on Tunstall. Nobody would call me weak-hearted if I found him something to eat among the packs stolen by Sabine, Farmer, and Nomalla. I should have killed him or let him kill himself the night before. It would have been easy then, when my blood was up and I could only think of the many dead, Rats and innocents, he’d left in our trail. Today I was remembering all that he’d taught me and the way he scratched his head when he was thinking. I was remembering all the good meals we’d had together, and all the Rats we’d hobbled. The thought of taking him to execution was tearing at me.

Farmer had removed the seeming of invisibility from our hiding place. I stepped among the trees and took a deep breath, then sucked up my courage to approach the tree where the horses guarded him. Drummer stepped aside when he saw me. I thought he’d remembered Sabine’s instructions at the wayhouse stables, but then I saw Pounce come to put his nose up for Drummer to sniff. It was probably just that I had the constellation along.

In the tree shadows Tunstall looked to be asleep. “Tunstall?” I called softly. “Wake up.” He did not stir. “Tunstall?” I walked around the back of the tree to make certain his bonds were still tight, then hunkered down at his side. When I touched him, his head did not move. I tried to lift his arm—his wrists were bound in front of him—but I could not. I could not stir his legs, either. He was fully locked in death.

I heard the flapping of wings. The wood pigeon settled on Tunstall’s bound arms. I scrabbled in my pouch, but had naught in the way of pigeon food. In the end Pounce brought me a piece of bread from somewhere.

“You don’t have to feed her, you know,” Tunstall’s voice said from the air. “She will stay until I say what I must.”

“Feeding them makes me feel better,” I replied, looking down to break up the bread into pigeon-size bites. They can’t manage big pieces. “Say what you must, then, will you?”

“I only wanted to be worthy of her,” he told me. “By the time I got to understanding that meant betraying you, I was in too deep.”

“Me?” I asked bitterly. “What of Lord Gershom? What about Goodwin?”

“One day, lass, you’ll be faced with such a choice,” he told me. “It won’t seem so easy then.”

“Who are you lying to now?” I asked him. “Me, or yourself?”

For a moment I thought he’d gone while the bird hopped over to peck at the crumbs. Then he said, “Me. I lie to me.”

“When did it happen?” I demanded. “When did they buy you?”

“Cooper, I told you. I told all of you. They took me aside the night of the banquet at Queensgrace,” he explained. “Seeing where we sat in that dining hall while she was up above us, knowing they wanted her to marry the prince, all that made me agree when they gave me their offer. I was tired of forever being placed apart from her.”

“Don’t blame her. She would have married you had you asked, if she agreed to marry anyone,” I snapped. “She adored you, and you betrayed her.”

“And you settled the bill, or started me along the path to settling it, Cooper. The chill of the night and the weakness from my hurts, that finished it, but you put me on the path to your god.” He sighed. “Tell her I love her and beg her forgiveness, Cooper. And I love you and Goodwin. The pair of you have always been my true sisters.”

He was gone for good this time. It helped to know he’d died of the chill and shock, not any direct blow from me. I’d meant to write it up as battle shock and the cold. There’s no good to be had from anything else. It was better than a traitor’s execution.

It was Farmer and Achoo who came to find me sommat later. Farmer held me as I gave the others the news. Sabine went to see for herself and spent a bit of time there. She had done some thinking when she returned to us.

“The plot is not ended,” she announced grimly as we all watched the battle below. “We may be safer, our enemies may be in disarray, but there are still miles between us and the Summer Palace, and there will be soldiers to pass. Lad, you must pretend to be a commoner for now. We’ll call you Gary, is that well enough?”

The lad nodded shyly. “As long as I stay with all of you,” he said. “Not strangers.”

I was kneeling beside him. At this I slung my arm about his shoulder. “We won’t leave you until you are safe with your parents,” I told him. “Our word on it.”

“I’ll accompany you,” Nomalla said, turning away from the noise and sights below. “You need at least one other warrior between here and there. And I can’t watch this.” We all knew that she meant the assault on her home.

“I can arrange for friends to meet us between here and there,” Farmer added. “Fortunately for me, scrying does not require a great deal of the Gift.”

“But we need to get out of here. I want to ensure that these horses do not belong to the villagers,” Sabine explained. “If they do, I’ll get some from the army, but I’d as soon not call their attention to us.”

Farmer looked at me. “I think it’s a good idea,” I said, my mind on the body in the woods. Farmer nodded to Sabine.

She and I went into the woods to fetch the horses we’d taken from the village. I made a string of them while Sabine knelt by Tunstall’s body. She soon came to saddle Steady. As we worked, Nomalla joined her and me, saddling another horse for herself. Once she was mounted, Sabine took the string of borrowed horses in hand. She and Nomalla rode off to the village.

Farmer and I watched them ride away. “I’m going to find Daeggan,” Farmer told me. “I’ll bring him back here. We’ll need to find a way to dig graves. We can’t take them with us.”

As he strode away, Pounce leaned against my leg.
Leave the graves to Achoo and me
, he said, whacking me with his tail.
You need to rest those bruises and cracked bones
.

“What can you do?” I demanded, following him and Achoo into the tree cover. “Graves must be deep. It’s not like Drummer can help, you know.… ” I stopped talking. Raccoons, pine martens, foxes, wolves, and beavers were busily digging in a clearing near where we’d kept the horses and Tunstall.

Friends
, Pounce informed me.

By the time Farmer returned with Daeggan’s poor corpse, the animals had finished a grave that would fit the boy and were halfway down a larger one for Tunstall. Before Sabine and Nomalla returned with several more horses than they’d left with, Farmer and I had placed our dead in their graves.

The mots had also brought shovels. After I’d said words over Tunstall and Daeggan, they filled in the graves. Then they thanked the creatures who’d dug them. The animals had waited until the burial was over before leaving. Pounce told us they hadn’t been sure that shovels could do a proper job in filling the holes.

Then we prepared to ride out. “I don’t understand,” Farmer said as he saddled his horse. “They’re not too well off in that village, I remember it from last night. I don’t understand why they would give you permission to take valuable horses. The owners were criminals—they’ll be allowed to keep them.”

Nomalla smiled thinly. “They kept more than they gave us, that’s why. And before we got there, our enemies hurt some of their people. They thought a few horses was the least they could do.”

The villagers wanted no more part of the events of the night before, be it housing the enemy’s mounts or keeping custody of the mages trapped in one of their meadows. When we rode back down the path, they stopped us long enough to give us supplies and to ask when we were going to take their enemies away.

I could not believe what I saw in that meadow.

“Get me out of here! There are insects on me!” screeched Orielle, who had once pretended such care and concern for the queen. None of the traitor mages could even move their heads.

Sabine rode over to the fence and looked at her. “I can change that, but you won’t like what I change your situation to,” she said gently. Orielle went white under the dirt and cow dung that blotched her face. “I thought not,” Sabine remarked. “You may wait here until the Earl of King’s Reach sends mages to take charge of you. I asked one of the villagers to carry a letter to him. Of course, it will be all day for the messenger to find the earl, since he’s busy assaulting Halleburn just now. I hope you don’t mind a touch of sunburn.” She turned her mount and rode on.

“Don’t look at me,” Farmer said to them as we passed the mages by. “Sabine’s in charge now.”

Dolsa screamed, “What did you do with our power, you lowborn cur?!”

Farmer gave her his sweetest smile. “I took it. Every last drop. I’ll put it to far better use than you did.” He looked at Ironwood. “Have you any blessings to give, before we turn you over to the Crown magistrate?”

Ironwood gave us a brief shake of the head. He was well and truly broken.

Farmer looked at Gareth, who rode on the saddle in front of me. “Lad, have you anything to say to these traitors? You are the one they harmed most.” Gareth too shook his head. “You’re probably right,” said Farmer. “They really aren’t worth talking to, are they?” Gareth smiled and shook his head a second time. “Even a four-year-old can see it,” Farmer told the air. On we went, leaving Dolsa and Orielle to screech behind us.

The village had seemed tranquil enough, but on the path between it and the Great Road, we were stopped five times by the army’s outposts. They delayed us so much that we had to make camp on the northern side of the Black Griffin Bridge. We had a few comforts, thanks to the guards on that side. They showed us to a clearing used often by other travelers. There was a small shed with a good supply of dry wood and kindling. We even had a stream where we could get water and bathe. The guards shared their ale with Farmer, Sabine, and Nomalla. I feared I would weep if I had spirits, so the lad and I drank water.

Two days later, Farmer shared the news from his evening’s scrying. Thanen had surrendered Halleburn Castle. Stripped of his greatest mages, under bombardment by royal mages as well as an army, and knowing his allies had already fallen, he leaped from the tallest height in the castle. The coward left his family and remaining allies to face the royal courts.

In the morning, traveling the gauntlet of outposts along the road to the fallen Queensgrace, I let Prince Gary ride with my companions. With room on my saddle once again, I began the long task of writing out my reports.

Mistress Trout’s Lodgings

Nipcopper Close, Corus

We had spent the night of the 30th on the Great Road where it met the way to Queensgrace. We had to decide how we could return to the Summer Palace without having to deal with the marsh. In the morning we were just riding onto the Great Road when we saw the much larger party that was coming toward us. Soldiers in army uniforms encircled an enclosed cart. Their weapons were very good, their clothes and boots expensive. The cart itself was newly painted, with shutters over the side windows. At the head of the party rode a mot in pale blue whose pale blue scarf covered most of her light blond hair.

Seeing us, she turned and rode back to the cart. She stopped beside it and leaned down to talk through the window.

A door popped open on the side and another mot nearly fell to the ground in her rush to get out. The queen steadied herself, then ran through the soldiers, clutching a goldspangled veil over unruly curls. She even lost the veil as she drew close to us and flung her arms wide.

“Gareth!” the queen shrieked. Nomalla, his riding companion that morning, set the boy on the ground so he could get to his mama. Her Majesty stumbled and dropped to her knees in the dirt, where they clutched each other. The others and I dismounted and stood off at a respectful distance. The queen looked little better than her son. Her face was but skin over bone, and what I could see of her arms told me she’d lost flesh there, too. I wondered how many more days she would have lived if we hadn’t found Gareth.

“Cooper?” she said at last, looking at me over Gareth’s shoulder. She reached a hand out to me. “Cooper, what happened to you?”

I hand-signaled for Pounce and Achoo to come with me as I walked over to her and Gareth. “Just Dog work, Your Majesty,” I said, getting on my knees with a wince. “Farmer and Achoo and Pounce and Lady Sabine—she was brought in after I saw you—and Lady Nomalla, they took a pounding as well.”

“What of Tunstall?” she asked. “Was he—is he all right?”

I couldn’t answer her, but hung my head in shame. It was Gareth who said, “He betrayed us, Mama.”

Achoo whimpered and licked Gareth’s hand. My hound had been mourning her old friend, too.

“I am so very sorry,” whispered the queen. “That’s the problem with royalty, isn’t it? The stakes are just too high. People do things for royal stakes they would never dream of at home.” She touched my cheek. “Goddess bless you, Cooper, all the days of your life. And you, Pounce, and Achoo.” She sighed. “Cooper, would you give me your arm? Gareth, you may introduce me to the lady knights, if you will.”

As I scrambled to my feet so I could help the queen, she murmured to me, “The healers were very unhappy with me for coming, but I had to see my lad.” She kept hold of one of Gareth’s hands. “His Majesty is still too ill to move. Cassine says that when we three are together, she can undo the spell that hurts us so.”