Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles (55 page)

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Authors: Katya Reimann

BOOK: Prince of Fire and Ashes: Book 3 of the Tielmaran Chronicles
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“Good riding!” Fredeconde would not touch her man before they parted—perhaps from some sense that it would bring bad luck. Yveir saluted her from his saddle. Followed closely by his abbreviated company, he kicked his horse into a trot and disappeared among the trees.
The route Fredeconde led them on was much overgrown. She stuck to the wooded ridgelines rather than the more open brush of the valley floors. Not entirely to Gaultry’s dissatisfaction, they spent a good part of the first day leading their horses rather than riding, and they broke off their journey early in the day. While it was clear the scout knew her ground and was picking her route with care—she made no mystery of the landmarks for which she was searching, and there could be little doubt when they came upon them—Gaultry’s impatience grew as her boredom mounted. Fredeconde was amused. “You would not like it so well if I chose an interesting route,” she commented wryly. “Interesting would be Lanai warriors forcing open your knees.”
Gaultry gave her a sharp look. In the wake of Richielle’s attack, she had guided Tullier for three days through the Fingerland marshes before regaining the High Road. Guided him and fed him and kept both of them safe. Unburdened by horses, her woodcraft easily surpassed this woman’s—even without small assists of magic. She could sense that every time they struggled up another briar-infested slope. There were ways, she knew, of doing this sort of climb more easily. Perhaps her poor horse skills had been a hindrance to their pace at times—but this was no good reason for the woman’s amusement now. “The last man who tried to tangle with me that way died quickly,” she said shortly. “The next one will fall faster still.”
Beyond Fredeconde’s shoulder, she caught Tullier’s eye. She had the impression he wanted to add further words. She shook her head. They had almost reached their goal now. Better to keep the peace.
L
ate in the afternoon they reached the end of the wooded ground. The hills flattened and opened, giving the first views of the high mountain massif that lay ahead. These mountains shouldered aggressively up from the foothills, like nothing Gaultry had ever seen. They formed a barren shield of rock, filmy blue and grey colored at this distance, save for darker
horizontal striations. With this first glimpse of the Lanaya high country, Gaultry finally understood why the places where the tribesmen could descend to attack Tielmark were so limited, and why this summer’s campaigning under the Ratté Gon, Far Mountain’s King, had taken Tielmark so much by surprise.
Fredeconde named the two peaks that were separate and distinct even from this distance. Ittanier and Hawkshead. The great lake and waterfall called Llara’s Kettle lay south of Ittanier.
“It’s scrub and bare rock from here forward,” Fredeconde told Gaultry, as they lingered among the trees and finished off a waterskin. “With rolling limestone gullies. Easy to come upon a friend—or an enemy—when you least expect it. But we are not so far from the Kettle now. Those mountains are closer than they look. If anything should happen to separate us, ride due east. You’ll bump into
somebody
friendly if you keep going east long enough.” She smiled, and stared hungrily out at the mountains, drawing a deep lungful of air. Her round face lit with pleasure, revealing a surprising prettiness, usually kept soberly concealed. “They are beautiful, no? You feel the gods close, when you look upon such things.”
What Gaultry felt was closer to awe than pleasure, but she did not say so aloud. Tullier, she noticed, was similarly subdued. “Llara in me,” he said, as she came by him to adjust her saddle. His voice was for her ears alone. “Attacking down from these mountains, I can just barely fathom. The country here would be impossible to protect. All these rolling valleys—keeping track of a small group of riders just isn’t practicable. They could descend on any outlying farm with no notice. But to successfully force an attack upward—no wonder my forefathers could never subdue the Lanai. And how our army managed a successful attack on the High Pastures this year—the gods must have been riding with them.”
“Either that or they invoked powerful battle magic.” Gaultry thought of Issachar Dan, Columba’s lover, the dark Bissanty warrior who had been sent to Tielmark in the days of the Chancellor’s rule. His battle mount was the fabulous eagle, Gyviere, a monstrous creature with feathers as sharp as steel. But she doubted even an army of Issachars would have an easy time of it, attacking upward into those treacherous gullies and slides.
The mood of the little party took on a seriousness that had not been there through all their stumbling about among the trees. As they made ready for the final leg of the journey, Fredeconde, Elthois, and Shostra knelt in prayer. Gaultry and Tullier, after casting each other a doubting
look, joined them. A faintly nauseated feeling opened in Gaultry’s stomach as she sensed the likelihood of upcoming bloodshed. Shostra shifted the scabbard of his ax to a position closer to his knee; Fredeconde readied her sword. Tullier, watching the scout’s efficient movements, fiddled with his wrist sheath—a Sha Muira device, aiding the launch of a knife or dagger. The slim spring sheath, which he always wore on his wrist beneath his long sleeves, was the only piece of equipment he had rescued from Richielle’s, other than the Kingmaker dagger. Unloaded and bound flat against his wrist, it was virtually invisible—which was probably why Richielle had neglected to strip it from his body. Now, Tullier was loading it with a knife he’d picked up at the Black Man Inn, where he had also been provided with the clumsy-looking sword he now wore at his waist. After meticulously checking the loading and the sheath’s spring action, he unbuckled the sword in its scabbard, copying Fredeconde. The contrast between his smoothness with the first and awkwardness with the second was striking.
“If Elianté and Emiera watch us, we will miss the Lanai line completely,” Fredeconde said, rising from her knees and whistling to her horse.
Gaultry could tell from her preparations that the scout did not think it would be so easy as that. “And if we meet them?”
“We’ll have to fight. Whoever we meet will be a detachment of the Ratté’s finest warriors. He planned the backdoor sortie to spread the broadest possible confusion, trusting only his most cunning and loyal men to the task. They went knowing that the longer they held out against our forces, the less likely it would be that they would safely regain the mountains—save in a hostage exchange at the summer’s end—yet they were particularly charged with holding out in the lowlands until the Long Raid could be completed. To their honor, they achieved that goal. Now their aim is to regroup with their people—but they would be equally happy to ride into camp with a last trophy, freshly seized as proof of their valor.”
She looked at Gaultry, taking in her travel-grimed face and simple traveling clothes. “Dressed as you are, they will not know that you are Gaultry Blas, the Prince’s Glamour-witch, but they are rough men, with different means of assessing value. They won’t notice your dirty cheeks. They’ll see only that you are unarmed, that you have an escort—and they may try to seize you simply because of that.” The words seemed an apology, or perhaps simply an explanation, for her earlier crude humor.
“I’ll make them regret it if they do,” Gaultry said. “I had hoped to reach the Prince without making my presence public, but if I must use
my power to ensure that Tullier and I reach him, I won’t hesitate. And to protect you too, of course,” she added belatedly, glancing at the others.
Gaultry’s horse, a rangy gelding, rolled her an inquiring look as she came to untie him. She patted his shoulder, feeling his nervous life-force. “Something’s sure to go wrong,” she told the quivering animal, trying to speak soothingly. “But I’ll do what I can to see you through unscathed.”
A snort from behind her announced that Tullier had overheard. “Gaultry.” He put a restraining hand on her bridle. “I don’t want you to be exposed to a mêlée for no good reason. Anything can happen. It’s not worth the risk. Why can’t we just wait here among the trees until we hear word from Yveir?”
“Because of Richielle. She knows this is where we’ve headed. If she hasn’t been following us, it’s a good guess that’s because she came straight here instead.” Gaultry shivered. In the days since Richielle’s attack, she had regained her strength, but the thought that the old witch might meet them here—perhaps even herding the flock of her Changing Land sheep before her—was still daunting.
Tullier picked up a chunk of loose limestone and turned it over in his hands. “You can’t fight her? Why not? If we fought together, surely …” His voice trailed off momentarily, then he found the words. “We defeated the Soul-breaker together. We can defeat this horrible crone too, if that’s what you want.”
Gaultry patted the gelding’s side, trying to decide how to answer. She had fought Lukas’s magic to a standstill—and then, while she held him engaged, Tullier had killed him. For her, that encounter had been full of terror, Lukas’s death a horrible thing. For Tullier—perhaps that moment had held terror too, but defeating his powerful half-brother had also been an unhealthy moment of triumph.
“You’re right,” she said. “Together we are an unstoppable force.”
The light in his face was a terrible thing. All his boyish love was suddenly revealed there openly, naked and hopeful. She tried to make her next words firm but gentle. “But I can’t ask you to risk yourself going after Richielle, and it is your blood she seeks, not mine. I’m not ready to fight her on my own account. That is a decision for Benet to make. Let’s just get through this next bit and join up with Martin and the Prince.”
He turned rigidly to his own horse. “I don’t want to join them. I want to go on traveling as we are. Just us, alone.”
“While your gods and mine ride with us? That’s not possible, Tullier, and you know it.”
Shostra came to untie his big barrel-chested mount, and that ended their conversation.
Setting into her saddle, Gaultry pressed her hands against her breastbone and took a steadying breath. She could feel her power, coiled beneath her palms, potent and ready, filling her torso like a deeply drawn breath—impatient to be exhaled. Now—if only she could keep it in control, she would use it to break the Lanai lines. It was almost a more daunting thought than facing Richielle. She would have to remain cool, detached.
How she was to do that with trained warriors riding down on her was the real question.
For only the second time in her life she was riding deliberately toward a fight with armed men. The first time, Martin had been there with her, and his familiarity with this battle scenario had steadied her. Now Tullier would be her closest companion. The thought made her uneasy. The boy was trained in hand-to-hand combat, not in surviving a frontal assault, mounted like a knight. This time, she would be responsible for protecting Tullier as well as herself. She glanced over at him, and saw him staring at her, his expression troubled—probably imagining how he was going to protect her back. The thought was not reassuring.
Fredeconde, seeing everyone was ready, started her horse forward at a trot.
Out from under the trees, the sun glared unmercifully down on them. The limestone terrain, thin pastureland broken up by sculpted ridges of white, sun-bleached rock, reflected rather than absorbed the light. Fredeconde had picked a route that kept them down in the gullies, hidden for the most part below the horizon line. The stagnant air of these parched gullies was as stifling as a furnace fire. After days of coolness among the trees and on Haute-Tielmark’s high plateau, this resurgence of full summer was an unexpected purgatory. Scant minutes into the ride, sweat was pouring beneath her clothes, and Gaultry fervently regretted not having doffed her tunic before they had left cover.
The heat made the ride seem endless, their jolting pace unendurable as their tension rose. On the few occasions they ascended to the horizon plain, the ground around them shimmered with heat. Gaultry began to think she would have to insist they take a brief respite. Then Fredeconde herself, just after they reached a pass up to the horizon line, held up her hand, motioning for a halt.
“Quiet,” she snapped, as Gaultry’s mount side-danced, hoofs clattering on rock.
Then Gaultry, even with her mount not quite under control, heard it. Horses. Moving toward them? Fredeconde paused for a further heartbeat, listening. “Half a dozen at least. Maybe more.” She snapped her horse’s reins. “Follow me!” Slapping her horse’s rump, she took off at a canter.
It took Gaultry a moment to get her horse moving, but her travels at least had taught her how to encourage a horse to keep on the tail of a leader, so it was not quite the nightmare she had experienced previously, with a balking animal that she simply could not get to move. Tullier, a fine horseman, jockeyed his horse to her side, ensuring that her animal would match its pace as they all accelerated. Shostra, a heavier man on a heavier animal, was in the rear, Elthois with him.
They rode for a long time in that formation: Fredeconde in the lead, Gaultry and Tullier together, the two others tailed at their back. Gaultry found the rhythm of a canter easier to maintain than a trot. She crouched against her horse’s neck, whispering encouragement. To her slight astonishment, the beast responded, relaxing and stretching out its legs. The sun blistered down on her bent back, but the movement of the air cooled her, and the heat began to center itself at the front of her body, taking on its own eagerness, its own urgency. She whispered a prayer as she rode, the words coming clumsily at first, then falling into a cadence with the movement of the horse’s legs.

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