The Doomfarers of Coramonde (34 page)

But soon they
were too hampered to move effectively and were borne backward, crashing down on
collapsing tables and held fast by sheer weight of numbers. Through the tangle
of limbs and bodies, Gil saw the jokester being helped unsteadily to his feet
by the manager; the man pulled a dirk from his sash and handed the manager a
bulging purse.

Fear froze the
American as he saw that he and his companions were to be murdered right here
and now with the purchased complicity of the manager. He redoubled his efforts
to escape, without success, and wondered in disgust if he’d made his final
miscalculation.

Then
Springbuck, in the same predicament, saw that two of his captors had
disappeared, followed a moment later by the other two. He squinted up to see
Dunstan hurl them, one in either direction, as if they were empty suits of
clothes.

Insane light
burned in Dunstan’s eyes, that thing that made his own people avoid him come to
full life now. His face was covered with perspiration and his breath came with
extreme rapidity. All the lean muscles of his body stood forth like cables and
his lips were flecked with white tendrils of spittle. So completely different
was this terrifying apparition from the morose man who’d been drinking with
them moments before that the Prince wondered in horror if this weren’t some
Doppelganger.

The Rider moved
with blurring speed, bellowing at the top of his lungs and striking adversaries
this way and that with single blows of his fists or swings of his arms. He
eluded a sword thrust, seizing the blade and breaking it in his hands. The
slashes this left in his palms closed as soon as they’d opened. He ripped away
the three men who held Gil, then turned and caught the young wit’s knife hand,
twisting and breaking the wrist and popping the shoulder ball from its joint in
one motion. The youth went to his knees with an ear-piercing shriek, and his
female companion, with courage born of sheltered ignorance, struck Dunstan from
behind with her reticule. The Berserker didn’t even look around but swung a
backhanded blow in her direction almost as an afterthought. She was knocked
across a bench in a flurry of skirts, her mouth a red ruin.

Dunstan was
smashing two more foes together as a muscular porter took the luckless girl’s
place and broke a stool over his head. The gaunt Rider spun angrily with an
openhanded clout that broke the porter’s jaw.

Gil and
Springbuck had gotten to their feet through a press of flying bodies when the
attacking throng drew back in fear and amazement at the savagery of the lanky
Rider. Gil could see Dunstan’s shoulders heaving as his breathing became more
rapid in preparation for another exchange. In an effort to halt the carnage,
Gil grabbed the Berserker by the arm.

Dunstan
whirled, ready to destroy him, but the dim mist of recognition came to his
face. His brows knit as if he strove to recall an elusive memory and his
breathing began to slow. Irrationality passed from his face and his rage ebbed.
His muscles relaxed and he slumped in Gil’s grasp.

Springbuck,
meanwhile, had brought forth Bar and his dagger, but might as well have spared
the effort. No one in The Excellent Board would have approached them for any
reason. Other diners had come to their feet and witnessed the episode, but none
attempted to intervene. The Prince, Dunstan and Gil made their way out of the
pavilion in silence. When they’d reached their horses, the steppesman
disengaged the American’s supporting hands. “The weakness is past; now there is
only the emptiness and the sorrow.”

Gil nodded, and
they mounted just as a cry came from behind, a detachment of the city watch.
They galloped away low to their horses’ necks and didn’t look back.

They eventually
made their way to a poorer section of the city where the air was strongly
redolent of its many middens and soldiers of different units were spending
their pay. The inns and taverns were filled, so many sat at the side of the
street swigging beer and ale from drinking jars or buckets of wood or leather,
taking turns getting them filled at one of the drinking houses or stalls there.

Springbuck
purchased a bucket for a copper pellet and waited in a jostling line to have it
filled. Again, without his war mask and in such a crowd, he went unnoticed.
They sat together, passing the bucket without conversation and taking long
pulls at it.

In time,
Dunstan said, “You’ve witnessed the curse of my lineage, the Rage that comes on
men of my line. But tonight, too, you’ve seen an event as never happened
before; I didn’t strike Gil MacDonald, and the Berserkergang left me. Always
before the Rage had to burn itself out. I shall have to think about this.”

They drank some
more.

“By the way,”
Gil asked, by way of breaking the silence, “what tribe is that Reacher lived
with? Why aren’t they here?”

Springbuck
explained about the Wolf-Brother’s sojourn with the Howlebeau, adding that they
had a strict injunction against leaving the High Ranges for any reason, and had
accepted a Lowlander among them only out of respect for the King’s father.

The American
meditatively twirled the Browning around his index finger.

The Prince
continued. “There is still a storm of debate about this war and whether we
should go to Hightower’s aid, but I don’t take part in it. Van Duyn and
Princess Katya are trying to make sure I’m nothing but a figurehead. Andre and
Bonesteel object, but the Snow Leopardess has the council of Freegate with her
and her brother says nothing one way or the other.

“The time to
put forth my hand is not yet, but soon, when the day is ripe, I’ll make my
presence felt.” His eyes hardened. “There’ll be aid for the Hightower, this I
vow.”

“Look, is
Hightower the name of the fortress, of the guy in charge or what?”

“The Keep is
called
the
Hightower, while its ruling Lord, the Duke, is referred to
simply as Hightower.”

“Oh. Uh, how
does Gabrielle feel about all this?”

“Gabrielle!”
said the Prince softly, lost for a space in thought. “Yes, she’s made me lust
after her—or says she has, though I wonder if it doesn’t come of me,
uninfluenced in truth—so she takes no action and says little, watching all that
I do and, I think, finding it all amusing. Sometimes I curse the day I first
beheld that spellbinder, that wanting, green-eyed plague, but I wouldn’t be
without her if I could.”

He tipped the
bucket, drained it. “Whose turn to service our bucket?” he asked. “Nay, mine
again already? I think you two conspire against me. My funds are not without
limit, you know.”

Gil burped.
“It’s all found money,” he consoled the Prince philosophically. “We left The
Excellent Board in such a flap you never settled the tab.”

He hath
brought me into the banqueting house,

and his
banner over me was love.

THE SONG OF SONGS,
Which Is
Solomon’s

THE Lady Duskwind quickly grew
bored with life at Court. Her royal cousin, Reacher, forbade her to go out into
the practice fields to join in military exercises and she respected his wishes;
but it was hard when she saw that it wasn’t unknown for women to ride with the
Horse-blooded. With the notable exception of the Snow Leopardess, women were
seldom given to practicing war arts in Freegate, though that was slowly
changing. She chafed at this and considered asking to be sent on a deputation
to the gyneocracy of Glyffa, but there was no need at hand and there were
possibilities here in Freegate.

She related all
she could of information accumulated in Earthfast to the eagerly listening
intelligence experts of Reacher’s war ministry. She told what she knew of
various Legion-Marshals’ abilities or quirks, their strong suits and
weaknesses, what they looked for in a battle and what they avoided, how they
treated their troops and how they stood in the favor of Strongblade, Fania and,
most important, Yardiff Bey. She checked maps for discrepancies with those at
Earthfast as she remembered them, described tactics likely to be encountered
and the details of Court Life under Strongblade—who his supporters were, what
influence and wealth they had and who might be convinced to plot against him.

All this she
had learned during her masquerade in Earthfast, through intelligent observation
and by drawing it patiently and ingeniously, a scrap at a time, from those
she’d met there. To be sure, much of it was duplicated by what Springbuck and
Bonesteel knew, but hers was valuable corroborative data.

Like her
cousins, she enjoyed intrigue and statecraft and relished being close to their
seats of power without envying them. So for a time she partook of the
entertainment of Court, but it soon palled without the added excitement of
being an agent in the stronghold of a foreign suzerain.

Still, there
were stately dances, crooning minstrels and musicians who sought to amuse,
along with actors, poets, acrobats, jesters, conjurers and philosophers. There
were ceaseless feasts—the privations of war might come soon enough, the time to
live was now—with uncountable courses of honeyed fish, glazed fowl, beef, pork,
hotbreads, sweetmeats, mutton, pastries, iced sherbets, confections, jellied
fruits, fine cheeses, rivers of wine and liquors, a constant flow of beer and
ale, and so on and on.

And there was
gossip and scandal. Which knight wooed the favors of which blushing damsel?
Which heroes promised great deeds in the coming war with Coramonde’s Usurper
Ku-Mor-Mai?

Eventually she
found all this tedious, and daytime activities were even worse. She was a fair
painter and sculptress, but didn’t feel inspired. She was all thumbs at
tapestries, couldn’t play the lute, didn’t care to teach birds to speak; she
had no wish to weave flower chains or play the tame, simpering games enjoyed by
the more moderate, fragile ladies who frequented Court. For reading there were
only treatises on war—engrossing, but few in number and soon consumed—insipid
romances and ponderous religious tracts. She tried to read the books brought to
Freegate by Gil MacDonald, but they were unintelligible.

She would have
spent time with her royal cousins, a pastime in which she always delighted, but
both were usually occupied with other matters. This was particularly true of
the Snow Leopardess, who now devoted much of her time to Van Duyn. The
American, in turn, was having the time of his life as the intellectual
community of Freegate almost literally fought with each other for the
opportunity to hear his discourses; he was also basking in his station as
paramour to Princess Katya.

The Lady
Duskwind was frequently pressed for details concerning Gil MacDonald, the
outland common-knight who rode at stirrups with King and Prince, and whose
opinions were carefully heard and weighed by Bonesteel, the most capable
general in modern history. Tales of Chaffinch’s demise were being repeated and
enlarged upon, and there were those who called the ex-sergeant Dragonslayer.

In truth she’d
seen him infrequently since arriving at Freegate, and then usually at a
distance, but she was loath to admit it at Court and so contented herself with
dropping vague hints and preserving feigned secretiveness. One evening it
chanced that he came to Court to fetch Springbuck to hear a courier just in
from Bold-haven. Serious and quiet in his green mesh armor, hung about with
weapons esoteric and familiar, he waited as the Prince went to change from his
festive robes, and his eye roamed to Duskwind and the idler at her side, who
was trying to make charming conversation and succeeding only in being boorish.
A quick smile came to Gil’s lips, then a frown as he spied her chattering
companion, and his gaze flicked away selfconsciously. Hand on hilt, he pivoted
on his heel and left the Court so promptly that he almost trampled a door
warder standing behind him.

“Ah, the Prince
has left,” the carpet knight at her right hand said, “and his foreign liege man
with him, yet I think his sorcerous ladylove does not like it overmuch. They
tell me the Pretender spends so much time at fencing practice and military
drill that she feels slighted.”

“Why should he
devote so much time to sword practice when he’s belike the best bladesman in
the armies?” she responded, though she wasn’t much curious and her thoughts
were instead with Gil.

Her tablemate
replied, “Mistress, these affairs have a way of coming down to single combat
between principles, and the Prince knows this. His younger brother is said to
be a robust foe and a better man with steel than he, and he therefore spends
diligent hours each day with the very best masters in the allied armies, to
polish and hone his skills. I think he is more than willing for such a contest
between him and his stepbrother, would welcome it as alternative to the
approaching war.”

But she wasn’t
listening. She was thinking of Gil and felt she understood him now. He’d told
her a bit about himself and she sensed his attraction to her, and his
hesitation to speak. He was unsure of himself, shy and ill at ease with her,
now that she was back in Court. Here was one who’d spent much time at war and
forgotten or never learned the technique of flirtation, of subtle seduction.
And naturally, this appealed to her.

She made up her
mind to remedy the situation and to this end ensured through her cousins that
Gil would be at Court the following evening. She arrived in her finest regalia,
making sure to be late, on the arm of an enviable escort, a much-admired
officer of lancers who’d been soliciting her company for some time. As Reacher
had promised, since he went out of his way to keep his capable cousin happy,
Gil was seated uneasily at the dining boards next to the two vacancies reserved
for herself and her dashing companion. In full, floor-length skirts, laced and
bodiced tightly, her bared shoulders and neck scented and her long hair
gathered elegantly at her neck, she swept into the room and seated herself next
to the American, barely deigning to notice his presence. He was dressed from
throat to heel in close fitting blue-black silk, relieved only by boots,
unadorned belt and a small brooch, a silver saber worn point uppermost over his
heart. He didn’t actually fidget, but he wanted to. The feasting began, and
occasionally Duskwind would turn to him with some witty aside or gay remark,
sharing the illuminations of her presence with him charitably. He found that
his sense of humor had gone into hibernation and could think of little to say.
He thought himself miserable, but there was no place he’d rather have been.