The Conqueror's Shadow (39 page)

Toward Orthessis.

Duke Edmund and Sir Tyler knew they had little chance of defending Orthessis against a determined assault. Edmund had immediately led the bulk of his armies west to Pelapheron, the largest and most defensible city in Lutrinthus Province. He'd taken with them the gathered forces of several of his barons, reinforced by a small detachment of the regent's own armies, led by Nathaniel Espa himself. Tyler was under orders to come west with the remainder of the soldiers once the evacuees were clear—and that was his intention until Jassion, Baron of Braetlyn, showed up with another army at his back and demanded hospitality. Tyler, bound by the demands of noble courtesy and Jassion's rank, was forced to oblige. The two men spent the next week arguing, Tyler insisting they move on to Pelapheron as ordered, Jassion demanding equally as strenuously that, with their combined might, they could hold Orthessis if only Duke Edmund would return with the bulk of the army.

Rollie wished they'd make up their minds, one way or the other. If they were caught before a decision was made and faced Audriss piecemeal, it would be a slaughter.

The healer finally shoved through the main hall, past a large man in a rusty-smelling coif and hauberk, and into a much smaller, and blessedly emptier, corridor. Steadying himself with a few deep breaths, he shifted a bag of herbs and implements to his other shoulder, ran a hand over his bald pate, and moved at a quicker but much steadier pace down toward the room in which his patient lay.

This particular fellow was also a soldier, and not even one of Edmund's. He was an injured man in need of aid, however, and that fact overrode any personal objections Rollie might have regarding either his profession or his loyalties. He'd arrived with Baron Jassion's men, his head bandaged and bloodied, his arms and legs lashed to the saddle to prevent him from falling off. Although his eyes would occasionally open, he'd displayed no indication of speech, or even self-awareness,
since his injury. He ate and drank anything put in his mouth, allowed himself to be moved or dressed, and otherwise showed as much life as any other dumb animal.

Rollie was all but convinced that the damage was permanent. Had he been present when the injury was first inflicted, he might have been able to do more. Too much time had passed, alas, and while the men who first treated the wound certainly meant well, their battlefield dressings proved woefully insufficient. It was yet possible he might recover, and Rollie would work to that end as long as the fellow was in his care, but he didn't hold out much hope.

He knew better than to tell that to Jassion of Braetlyn, though.

The heavy door creaked alarmingly as the healer pushed his way in. The room reeked of fevered, sour sweat. His patient lay in the sparsely adorned bed, his eyes shut, breathing softly. His face was sallow and gaunt, pale enough to make the wide scar on his brow all but invisible. His beard, formerly a deep red, had gone grey, and his body, once the paunch-over-muscle common to aging warriors, was a meager shadow of its former girth.

Heaving a sympathetic sigh, Rollie sat on the down quilt beside him and laid his bag on the floor. As had been his practice three times a day for over a week, he removed a small vial of a syrupy concoction and held it to the man's lips.

“Wake up now,” he said softly. “Come on, friend, I need you awake. Wouldn't want you to choke on your medicine, after all.” He smiled an ironic grin. “It would sort of defeat the purpose.”

“Yes,” the injured soldier croaked back through the muffling curtains of a voice long unused, “I suppose it would.”

The gaze of a basilisk wouldn't have frozen Rollie in place more thoroughly. The vial dropped from suddenly nervous hands, and only the fact that it bounced across the mattress, rather than the floor, kept it from shattering.

Could it have been a fluke? His imagination? Rollie leaned closer, trembling slightly. “Can—can you hear me?” he asked breathlessly. “Can you understand?”

“I hear you. What …” The man coughed once. “What day is it?”

“Sannos and Vantares, thank you!” the healer whispered, invoking
both the Healer and the Guardian of the Dead. Then, his voice awed at the miracle he'd just witnessed, “It's Queensday, my friend.”

“Queensday,” the man repeated, his voice rough, licking his cracked lips. Immediately Rollie removed from his bag a skin of clear water. With a weak nod of thanks, his patient grabbed it and began to drink.

“Slowly, now,” Rollie cautioned, reaching out for the bag. “Not too much at once.”

“Of course.” The man's voice sounded a bit stronger. “Queensday,” he said again. “I've been out a week.”

The physician smiled sadly. “A bit longer, I fear,” he said gently, placing a comforting hand on the man's arm. “It
is
Queensday. And the fourteenth day of the Month of the Crow.”

Rollie would not have thought it possible, but his patient's face grew even paler. “Has it been so long?” he breathed.

“I'm afraid it has. But you will adjust, my friend. You—” He jumped with a startled yelp as the soldier's hand clamped tightly onto his arm.

“I must speak with Baron Jassion,” he rasped, pausing only long enough to get over another fit of choking. “Immediately!”

“I don't know that you're in any condition for that right now,” Rollie objected. “Perhaps in a few days—”

“No! No, you don't understand! I know—I know who it is! I know whose army it is!”

“Of course,” the healer said calmly. “Audriss, the Serpent. We all—”

“No. No, please, you don't understand. It's not Audriss! It's Rebaine! Oh, gods, it's Corvis Rebaine!”

“… QUITE POSITIVE
he's confused,” Rollie concluded his report before both Baron Jassion and Sir Tyler. “Probably hasn't a notion of what he's saying. Still, he was so insistent, and so certain, I thought it best to tell you. It won't do him any harm for you to hear him out, and it might help calm him down, speed his recovery.” Jassion was already on his feet. “Take me to him. Now.”

They left the lushly carpeted confines of Sir Tyler's office, three separate sets of boots clattering along the manor's stone floors. Although Rollie was ostensibly in the lead, he found himself struggling to keep up with the brown-haired Baron of Braetlyn. Jassion, he'd noted often since the baron's arrival, never did anything in moderation. The severe young man was a bundle of suppressed energy, a tornado imprisoned in the body of a human being. Jassion rarely sat when he could pace, walked when he could run, spoke when he could shout. It would have been a worthy character trait in some people. But in Jassion, it was something to be wary of, perhaps even feared.

Sir Tyler
looked
more the warrior. His own gleaming silver armor was far better kept than the black half-plate over which Jassion wore a tabard displaying his odd, ichthyic ensign. Tyler was disturbingly well muscled—“a shaved ape,” as some of his men described him—and blessed with a grace remarkable in a man of his girth. His hair was cut even more severely than Jassion's own, and his eyes could reflect just as coldly. Nevertheless, Rollie couldn't help but think of Jassion of Braetlyn as the more dangerous man.

The crowds of metal-clad warriors through which Rollie had been forced to push and squeeze parted easily before the steady advance of these two powerful men. Heavy tapestries fluttered in the trio's wake. Only when they finally reached the hallway in which Rollie's patient was quartered did they allow the healer to go first, and only then because neither knew which room they sought.

Rollie poked his head past the creaking door, intending to determine if his charge was asleep, only to be shoved rudely aside to make room for the Baron Jassion. Between the heavy metallic footsteps of the two lords, there could be little doubt the injured man was certainly awake
now
.

“What—who …” Obviously, despite his phenomenal recovery, he wasn't completely over his befuddlement.

“Name and rank, soldier!” Jassion barked harshly, looming at the foot of the bed.

Rollie opened his mouth to chide the baron for his callousness, but it proved unnecessary.

“Garras Ilbin,” the patient responded smartly, straightening as much
as his prone posture would permit. “Captain, currently … that is, most recently assigned to patrol duty in Kervone.”

“Kervone?” Sir Tyler asked quietly. “Bit of a trek from Braetlyn, isn't it, my lord?”

Jassion cast the knight a sideways glare and then elected to ignore him entirely. “This individual here,” he said, waving vaguely in Rollie's direction, “claims that you have something to report to me.”

“I do, my lord. We've been deceived. This Audriss—if he even exists—is a cover. Our real enemy is Corvis Rebaine.”

Jassion's eyes flashed lightning, but whatever visceral reaction that name spawned in the baron's soul, his voice sounded skeptical as ever when he replied, “Captain, you've suffered a rather nasty head wound. You've been unconscious for three months. Forgive me if I find your assessment unlikely.”

“I realize it sounds mad, my lord,” Garras told him, refusing to be insulted by his liege's obvious disdain. “But it's the truth. You see, we discovered an ogre camped in the trees just outside of Kervone …”

In bits and pieces, but with growing detail as it gradually came back to him, the old soldier concisely described the events that had taken place in Kervone a season past. “I can only assume that Tuvold got there in time,” he concluded. “I doubt Rebaine would have let me survive, knowing what I did, if he'd not had other concerns.”

“He very nearly
didn't
let you survive,” Rollie interjected from a small chair in the corner. “That you're alive after such a head wound, let alone recovering your faculties, is nothing shy of miraculous. I have to wonder if—”

“Physician,” Jassion ordered, “be silent. If Captain Garras here requires any attention, you may provide it. Otherwise, keep to your seat, and keep your lips together. These are matters you wouldn't understand.”

It took a great deal to make Rollie angry, but his face purpled now. Only through several moments of deep breathing and fist clenching did he clear the red from his eyes, the buzzing from his ears, allowing him to concentrate once more on the conversation.

“… makes some amount of sense,” Tyler was saying thoughtfully, staring absently at the bedridden soldier. “Audriss began in Denathere,
exactly where Rebaine left off. We've reports of a man matching Valescienn's description—after tacking on a few years, of course—leading some of Audriss's attacks. Hell, we've even heard some unconfirmed reports of gnomes! I'm not entirely sure I believe in those little devils, but, well, Rebaine was said to make use of them, wasn't he? Maybe this
is
all some elaborate charade to keep us from guessing the true enemy here.”

“Why?” Jassion asked darkly, fingering the tip of a broad-bladed dagger. “The bastard's name strikes fear into the hearts of every weak-willed, knock-kneed, lily-livered so-called soldier from here to the Isle of Kavaley and back again. Why
not
just shout it from the mountain-tops, hmm? He'd probably crush half the resistance by saying
boo
. And I'm not sure his ego would permit him this sort of subterfuge.”

Tyler frowned. “You may have a point. But it all fits so well, I don't think we can just rule it out. I—”

“Excuse me,” Rollie said mildly from the corner. “I wonder if I may point out something you worthy gentlemen seem to have overlooked?”

“You?” Jassion scoffed. “I doubt there's anything you could—”

Tyler raised a hand. “I suggest we hear him out, my lord. If only out of
courtesy
.” Jassion reddened slightly at the rebuke, but nodded.

“As I understand it,” Rollie continued, “one of the reasons that Audriss has been as successful as he has is because Duke Lorum and the Guildmasters can't quit squabbling long enough to present a united front.”

“Stupid bastards!” Jassion swore, clearly in agreement. “They'd rather clutch their privileges to them and die one at a time than risk losing a few of their ‘sovereign rights.' Imbeciles!”

“Well, yes,” Rollie said, his tone carefully noncommittal. “But, my lord, what would have happened if someone came to them and said, ‘Corvis Rebaine is back'?”

Rollie could actually see the understanding dawn on them as they stared incredulously at one another. “The Guilds would have panicked,” Tyler said in a hush. “They'd have given Lorum full command as fast as they could sign the documents. Rebaine would have faced the combined forces of every army worth mentioning across all Imphallion.”

“I can't believe I didn't think of that,” Jassion said wryly. Then, though it clearly pained him, he nodded to Rollie. “Thank you.”