Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (54 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“She cannot cross over,” Gaultry said wonderingly. “The border is closed to her.”
“It’s Llara Thunderer’s fire,” Tullier whispered reverently. “She cannot truly hope to defeat the Mother Thunderer’s will—can she?”
Richielle would not accept what was happening. Quieting for a moment, and beginning to approach the problem more methodically, she tested the barrier that lay before her, first by rolling a boulder over the edge, then by flinging another goat. This one landed, squealing, on its side, and did not get up. Then she tried again herself. Her fury, even pent up away from them, was a terrible thing.
“It must be that nothing like this has ever happened to her,” Gaultry said, staring upward, awed. “Tamsanne told me that Richielle followed
the old wanderers’ ways. The borders are not something that she ever learned to respect.” She glanced at Tullier. “You’re Blood-Imperial. That must be protecting you. Sciuttarus made you a Prince, and now Llara has closed the border to the woman who would threaten you.”
He looked at her blankly while she stared at him in wonder.
“Richielle did not understand that Great Llara would turn against her if she raised her hand against an Imperial Prince. What a horrible thing, to discover the gods’ notice in such a way.”
Richielle rained curses on their heads. Gaultry turned to look at Tullier. She realized dully that they’d have to kill the poor goats that had made it down the cascade. They could not risk having the animals follow them. It was peculiarly unpleasant, chasing the creatures down, all the while with Richielle threatening and ranting over their heads, and beginning even to pelt them with stones, but it was soon done. Gaultry’s guess about the
Ein Raku
blade was shown correct—it repelled blood like oilskin shedding water. Tullier did not need even to wipe it clean when he pocketed it inside his shirt.
“We’ve not done with her,” Tullier said, as they moved somberly toward the cover of the trees, the sound of Richielle’s ranting fading behind them.
“I fear not.” Gaultry scraped her hair tiredly back from her face. She was exhausted and hungry. They had no provisions, nor anything else to sustain them. Only the
Ein Raku
knife, and she would sooner starve than consume an animal that had been killed with that blade. “And how we’re going to pass through Haute-Tielmark and reach Benet’s side
now
is a pretty question.”
They were in the Fingerland swamps for three days, surviving off
thin foraging, heading always northward, away from Richielle and her valley. In that time, they had brushes with two Bissanty patrols, but neither saw nor heard evidence of pursuit by Richielle or her animals. By dint of combined good fortune and vigilance, they passed into Tielmaran territory without incident and found their way to the High Road. Though Gaultry had lost the Prince’s sigil along with the rest of their meager equipment at Richielle’s farm, once they reached the Black Man Inn, the first way station in Haute-Tielmark over the border, they were able to reprovision. The owner of the Black Man knew Gaultry’s face from her visit earlier in the spring—on the occasion when she’d first seen, if not met, Victor Haute-Tielmark—and he did not question her word that she was on the Prince’s duty.
Better still—the Black Man Inn, which was well fortified and busy with couriers running to and from the western border, offered them a place of safe haven and rest. It was now getting on for a fortnight since their departure from Princeport. The days since their encounter with Richielle had passed under the strain of fear and uncertainty, and despite the pressing need to reach the Prince at the border, neither Gaultry nor Tullier had the strength to continue without a full day to recover. Gaultry, still depleted by her efforts to free herself from Richielle’s magic, slept through a full night and day, waking fitfully to swallow a little water, and rising only once, shortly before dinner, to eat a few bites of bland stew before returning gratefully to her bed.
When she woke the next morning, empty-stomached, light-headed, but tremendously refreshed, Tullier was already up. She caught up with him outside the forge for which the inn was named, watching the soldiers with whom they had arranged to ride as they oversaw the farrier attend their horses’ feet.
“They’re good,” he said, as she came to stand by him. “They wouldn’t let the man start the work until they were there to see it.” Gaultry was pleased to hear the boy’s judgment. She and Tullier had been able to attach themselves to a courier and his men who were shuttling news from the Fingerland border to the battlefields on the shores of Llara’s Kettle.
Gaultry had liked the look of the lean captain, Yveir, and the way he commanded his little detachment. His unit was composed of two short, sturdy-looking women, fast riders who worked as his scouts; a stocky, muscular man who rode with an ax at his stirrup; and three younger soldiers, still lean and adolescently gangly, but agile in the saddle, as though they had been riding since infancy. The little troop had the strength of numbers that would deter a casual attack, but also enough speed and flexibility to slip a single rider or more through, should any larger band of Lanai outriders come up on them.
Whether or not that would help them if Richielle attempted a frontal assault, Gaultry did not dare hazard.
Something about the way the farrier was manipulating the horses’ hooves made Gaultry rub her still-bruised wrists, and shiver at the memory of the skinny sheep’s trotters. The power of her Glamour, even controlled, was fearful. The idea of such a transformation—not a fetch-cover, but bones, skin, and hair, truly altered, truly animal—it frightened her. Certainly, the gods were capable of such transformations. Half their stories described them assuming such forms to appear, hidden, on raging battlefields, within the beds of well-guarded maidens, or at other such decisive moments. But in all the stories that spoke of human beings transformed or so translated, the change was described as a curse, something cast down as divine punishment.
Would that be her fate? She was not certain, even now, if she had performed the transformation herself, or if it had been some trap, some syphon-like spell, that Richielle had deliberately set to snare her.
“Have you eaten?” she asked Tullier, putting these grim thoughts momentarily aside.
The boy shook his head. “I was waiting for you. We still have time. Yveir is waiting for a last runner from the border.”
“Excellent,” Gaultry said. “I am eager for us to be on our way.”
T
hey rode for two days on the High Road, keeping a decent pace, but cautious of foundering the horses on the increasingly rough road. The land felt barren and wild. It was subtly rising as it made its way toward the as-yet-unseen mountains, and that rise in the land also cooled the heat of the nights. Summer in Haute-Tielmark was not marked by the humid heat that gripped the lowlands to the east and south of the Fingerland. To Gaultry, the chill was ominous, like an early breath of fall, of the dying season that lay ahead.
They spent the first night at an old stone inn with fortresslike walls and tiny windows, then the second in a tiny manor drawn inside a wooden stockade. That manor marked the end of their travels on the High Road. From there the road turned north to Haute-Tielmark’s stronghold at Arciers. Westward, the road toward Llara’s Kettle dwindled to a narrow track. For obvious reasons, none of the routes from this point toward the border were maintained to encourage the swift movement of large numbers of riders.
The third day was long and hard. One of Captain Yveir’s trio of young riders lamed his horse, and Gaultry, the worst equestrian of the company, was required to give over her mount and ride pillion behind him after the Captain had taken stock of the situation. Tullier rode close by her constantly after that, much to the young soldier’s annoyance. The two of them exchanged words at a place where the track traversed the side of a rocky valley and the level ground dwindled. “You’ll have both of us off the track, and our mounts broken in that rubble below,” the soldier, a thin, dark-haired man named Elthois, snapped. After that Tullier, however unwillingly, ceded them more space.
Come evening, the riders spent an unrestful night in the grim manor holding of one of Haute-Tielmark’s counts, strategically but uncomfortably set to guard a valley confluence among the first of the foothills. The count himself was away at the front, fighting with the best of his knights. In his absence, his lady’s welcome was as cold as the drafty stronghold. She granted them a remount for Elthois with obvious reluctance. Gaultry was glad they would be sleeping there only the one night.
Rather than draw attention to herself and Tullier, she spoke with Yveir for places in his company’s quarters. “Better we should be thought of as part of your troop than otherwise.” So they were assigned to pallets in the damp, cell-like barracks along with the rest.
The Countess Ruelevy would not have any of them in her own kitchens. She sent in servitors with a cold kettle of stew and a pail of overcooked barley. It was eaten standing around the small table in front of the room’s single, long-disused hearth.
“Tomorrow will be better,” Yveir told them, catching Gaultry’s expression as she picked at her dinner. It was burnt. Even after the hard rations she and Tullier had endured during their wretched cross-country journey through the Fingerlands, she had trouble chewing it down. “Tomorrow will be Sieur Denys and his lady. A smaller house, but a warmer keep.”
Gaultry found herself looking forward to it.
“
S
omething ahead has been set to fire.” Pulling his horse to an abrupt halt, Yveir stood up in the stirrups. “That is not good.” Riding at the bottom of a wooded valley, they had come to a place where the track began a steep descent, giving them a broken view out over the treetops. Far down this new valley, a curl of smoke drifted, half-obscured by the trees and the turns of the land. The lean captain reached back into his saddlebags and pulled out a chart.
His woman—Gaultry had come to realize that one of the two women who rode with him was his partner, the other, her young sister—pulled up at Gaultry’s side. “It has to be Sieur Denys’s holding,” she said worriedly. “I hope the good Sieur and his lady have not been harmed.”
“Is it possible that the Lanai have penetrated this far East?” Gaultry asked.
The woman, Fredeconde, nodded. “This summer, after what the Bissanty did to them in their High Pastures, their raids have been a constant threat. This season, the Lanai have bowed to the command of a single man, and Ratté Gon is clever, bold, and dangerous all together.”
Gaultry shook her head. Fredeconde, seeing her confusion, explained. Most of the Lanai forces were rallied at Llara’s Kettle, but there were two other places where they had descended from the mountains. It was these secondary forces who were doing most of the raiding Gaultry had heard tale of, back in Princeport.
“The Ratté found a way to send his own tribesmen down the ‘backdoor’ pass behind Durreau Massif—a place where only the most skilled riders can take a horse.” Fredeconde made an angle with her hand, demonstrating the pass’s steepness. “It was an unwelcome surprise. Cutting
those men from their retreat was an easy thing—but once they were down on the plateau, it was almost impossible to guess where their riders would next emerge. Eventually three of the seven ducal armies were diverted to contain them. ‘Hunting rats in a haystack’ was how one commander described it. It took almost a month to regain control.”
Gaultry looked out at the billow of smoke up ahead. “If we regained control, then why are the Lanai still here, burning out people like your friend Sieur Denys?”
“The backdoor sortie was only a cover for the real raid.” Fredeconde frowned. “That came farther north. They penetrated almost as far as Arciers—it was so bad they stole cattle from Victor Haute-Tielmark’s personal stock. That attack’s being called the ‘Long Raid’—the Lanai scoured the manors around Arciers for almost three weeks. Even with the raid contained, they still have a camp in the foothills near there. It’s been more than a hundred years since the Lanai maintained more than a single encampment on our lands.” The scout loosed her reins while she adjusted her riding gloves, and then followed Gaultry’s gaze out across the trees. They were too far away to smell the burn, but knowing it was there made the air seem heavier.
“We are lucky that Far Mountain is separated from our lands by four great massifs. Ratté Gon’s mercenaries are excellent war-leaders, and they’ve kept better discipline among the tribesmen than ever I’ve seen. We have to hope the local raiders don’t learn too much from them.”
“Or that the Ratté doesn’t come back here another year.” The unfamiliar title felt clumsy on Gaultry’s lips. The King, she wanted to say. Far Mountain’s King.
Fredeconde nodded her head. “He wouldn’t be here but for the sins of his son-in-law, letting the Bissanties slaughter the cattle he’d been left to safeguard in the High Pastures. The Ratté’s made that clear, even to us.” She sighed. “It’s been a terrible season. Tielmark’s armies can cut the Long Raid Lanai off from a retreat to the mountain passes, but neither side wants the full-scale engagement that move would provoke. It’s the scattered Lanai who made the backdoor sortie who are the worst problem: They can’t rejoin the main Lanai forces, either at the Kettle or at the Long Raid’s encampment, and our supply lines have cut them off from going home the way they came.
“This land where we’re riding now is in the space between the pincers of the divided forces of Tielmark’s ducal armies. There’s little enough to steal here, now that the locals have been alerted. My guess—the fire up
ahead must have been started by whatever remains of the Ratté’s men who risked the backdoor raid. Discipline among them is breaking down—quite sensibly. With young Neuvy Basse-Demaine’s army blocking their retreat up into the mountains, they’re peeling off in small units and making their way toward the Kettle, trying to find holes in the Tielmaran lines so they can rejoin their own people.”
“So they’re
between
us and the Prince’s armies?” Gaultry asked, alarmed.
“I do not know. I think now I must speak with Yveir.”
Gaultry followed her, seriously concerned.
Yveir confirmed Gaultry’s greatest worries. “But it is not as bleak as you may think.” He folded up his chart and carefully stowed it. “The Ratté’s men are still somewhat organized, but not to the purpose that concerns you—preventing us from reaching Tielmark’s main force. Most of them just want to get home. Their horses’ heads are pointing the same direction as ours. If we are careful, and do not come upon them by mistake, we should be able to avoid trouble. The greater risk will be our own friends cutting us down before they understand who we are—but that’s also avoidable if we follow proper protocols. So—from here we will split into two groups, the better to slip by the Lanai, and the better not to appear a threat as we ride into the Tielmaran lines. Fredeconde and Shostra will stay with you.” Shostra was the big ax-man. “Elthois too, to fill out your number. I will ride with the others and head a little northward. Five and four. Better than nine. We’ll camp together tonight—no fires, I’m afraid—and get a good start on the morning.”
His manner was a little too cheerful for Gaultry to entirely believe his assurances, but he did prove that his map was good—they slept that night in a hidden hollow with a partially overhung roof. Gaultry did not sleep soundly. Her brain teased her with fears that this temporary sanctuary would prove false—should any of the Lanai have discovered them in the hollow, they would have been trapped like squirrels in a bottle. But beyond these nerves, nothing disturbed them.
When dawn came, Yveir would not allow anyone an early start, fearing an inadvertent overrun of some late-sleeping Lanai warriors. But finally they were underway. Fredeconde was to guide their fivesome on a slightly longer route, taking a roundabout, southerly advance to the Kettle, while Yveir would try the more direct approach, sending reinforcements to collect them if he succeeded in broaching the lines. Gaultry, who was once again tired of all the hard riding, almost wished she was
going with his group, save that Yveir intended to investigate the source of the fire they had seen the night before, determining, as best he could, the fate of Sieur Denys and his family.

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