The Fall of Neskaya (54 page)

They had not gone much farther when one of the heralds spurred his horse back down the road. “Majesty!” He jumped from the saddle and made to kneel in the dust.

“Oh, get up!” Damian snapped. It was no small thing to halt an entire army and certainly not worth it just to mollify one fainthearted messenger.

The man scrambled back into the saddle. “Majesty, they would not receive us! When we arrived, we found the gates shut and when we told them who we were, they shot arrows at us! Teale’s horse took one in the shoulder.”

“And—and they sent a message.”

Anger, hot and silvery, pulsed through Damian. He sat very still in the saddle, his fingers tight on the reins. “What did they say?”

“They said,” the man ducked his head, stammering, “they said—”

“Out with it, man!” Damian roared. Belisar flinched visibly. The mud-colored gelding reared on its hind legs for an instant.

The herald’s words came in a rush. “They said they would no longer bow to an unlawful usurper and that even now, their rightful king, Julian Acosta, is on the way to take back the throne which is rightfully his.”

“Julian Acosta? Who in Zandru’s name is he?”

The herald flushed darkly and stammered something incoherent. Belisar said tightly, “The son of Taniquel Hastur-Acosta, the one born after her escape.”

“The bastard infant?”

“She claims him to be the legitimate son of King Padrik Acosta,” Belisar said.

“I don’t give a scorpion-ant’s nit what she claims!” Damian snorted. “Where is this boy wonder and his mighty army now? It will be a satisfaction to smear out his paltry existence. Never mind.”

Damian turned to his son. “Belisar, be my counselor in this. How would you advise me to deal with this insolence?”

For an instant, some unreadable emotion played across Belisar’s features. “I think—I think such rebellion must be crushed. If we allow this one small holding to defy us, then word will quickly spread that we have gone soft as Dry Towns traders, and we will have a dozen Verdantas to deal with.”

The senior quartermaster, who had ridden a little to the side, motioned for permission to speak. “In addition, we cannot afford to pass up such a rich resource. The farther into Hastur territory we extend, the more serious the problems of supply lines will become. The lands are rich . . .”

Belisar’s chin shot up. “The Hasturs would have no scruples about taking whatever they want. Look at how they tricked us at the border! They have no honor on the battlefield—or in the bedroom. Father, we must use every weapon to defeat them. We cannot afford to diminish our strength when we go up against such an enemy.”

He has the right of it. The dream of uniting Darkover will never come to a man who is weak or irresolute.
Yet Damian paused, for he had never before permitted his men to loot from field or holding.

Nodding in satisfaction, Damian signaled for the trumpeter to call a halt. “We will camp here this night. Tell the captains they may forage from field and village. Seize whatever you need. The best way to handle even the smallest hint of rebellion is to make the price too high. Tomorrow we will take this upstart castle and let the baby king do his worst!”

Vairhaven, little more than a fortified manor house, fell the same day, despite a heated skirmish at the front door. It sat atop a knoll with a view of the wheat fields and a river sparkling below. Heartleaf ivy covered its walls and ferns crowded the riverbanks, giving the place the air of a green bower, cool and inviting after the dusty road. Within minutes of their arrival, the thirsty horses had waded out into the river, churning mud and trampling the delicate purple water-flowers.

It was, Damian thought, a perfect location, with forage and water for the horses, space enough to establish a proper encampment. He put Belisar in charge of setting up the latrines and burying the few dead.

Comfortably ensconced in the one good chair in the central hall, Damian had the Vair lordling brought forth. Vair was a man of middle years, dressed as if he intended to join the fight himself. Now his face was dusky, congested, eyes never still. The loose skin along his jaw and neck quivered. He refused to kneel until Damian’s guards forced him down.

I should have him hamstrung so that he can never stand before his betters again,
Damian thought, and then gave the order to hang him and any sons.
The price of resistance must be seen by all to be too high.

Vair blustered and made threats as they dragged him out. Damian, eyeing the crowd which gathered at the gates, hoped word would spread quickly. It would make his job that much easier.

By the time the Ambervale forces marched out of Vairhaven, the
kyorebni
had picked the lordling’s corpse almost clean. So too were the fields and most of the surrounding orchards. When a party of farmers had approached to complain, saying they had done nothing to deserve such treatment, Damian snorted and ordered the right hand of their headman cut off. Then he conscripted all the men between the ages of fifteen and fifty to the ranks of his foot soldiers.

“It is the way of war,” he said to Belisar once they were on the trail.

For the next tenday, no one could doubt Damian’s victory as one petty lordship after the other surrendered bloodlessly to his forces. Yet, too frequently, the lord turned out to be some aged grandfather, half blind and palsied, and once, a woman. Pock-faced, simpering, and none too clean in her personal habits, she offered to share Damian’s bed as a conquest of war. He declined. Conscripts were few and either too old or too crippled to be of any use. No decent horses could be found.

Scouts brought news to Damian’s army as it made its way toward the Venza Hills which rose like the backbone of an ancient monster along the eastern horizon. Rumors of Queen Taniquel’s return reached them daily. Some said she had a thousand men, ten thousand; others that the very beasts of the field bowed down before her; still others that Aldones himself had come down and blessed her cause.

Damian rained curses upon Taniquel Hastur-Acosta and also on himself, for not pursuing her or finding some way of forcing the
Comyn
Council to turn her over when he had her within sight. But upon reflection, he realized that the result would have been the same. Hastur would have found some other excuse to get involved, once his own interests were threatened. Sooner or later, they must meet on the battlefield. This time, it would be on his own terms.

News came also of armed bands making their way through the Hellers foothills. One of the men Damian had left behind at Vairhaven clattered into camp on an old farm horse, his head shaved bald and painted blue. His hands had been lashed to the saddle and a note pinned to his tunic,

It was signed, “The Free Men of Acosta.”

When the note was brought before the war tent, Belisar roared out that such rebellion must be put down immediately, but Damian managed to calm him down.

“They pose no real threat to us. They do these things only to slow our progress. If we take the time to deal with them, we give Hastur that same time to advance even further, to meet us closer to our own territory instead of his own. Our advantage lies in our speed, our ability to choose our own battlefield. Meanwhile, I will have General Vyandal double the scouting patrols and night watch. We may have a few skirmishes here and there, but we will not be delayed.”

The next day, the vanguard of his army approached the Greenstone River, a minor tributary of the Valeron. Trees clustered along the banks on either side, narrow ribbons of green. To avoid a long detour to the treacherous fords downstream, General Vyandal had suggested the easier route over the stone bridge, even though to cross it, the men could march only four abreast on foot or two on horse. This would leave them strung out and vulnerable. Moreover, the brushy trees gave excellent cover for an ambush.

Damian ordered a slow, careful reconnaissance. He sent mounted scouts up and down the river, but they saw no sign of any body of rebels. When they approached the bridge, however, they gave a warning.

Damian spurred his horse to the front, followed closely by Vyandal and his personal guard. The Ambervale soldiers halted an arrow’s flight away from the bridge. On the far side, a party of men raised their bows and shouted for them to halt. Some of them stood on the stone railings. They wore woodsmen’s clothing in shades of brown and green, difficult to see in the dappled shade. An arrow quivered in the matted grasses in front of the hooves of the foremost horseman. He was still struggling for control of his white-eyed, snorting mount.

“That was a warning!” One of the ruffians, a man with a full black beard, called out. “Come no closer! Go back to where you belong!”

The man atop the left side railing drew his bow and sighted along the arrow. He was more boy than man with his slender build and cropped russet hair, but Damian had no doubt that his was the arrow and that he had placed it exactly where he meant to.

“What do they think they’re doing?” he asked aloud, caught between irritation and bemusement. “Trying to become the stuff of legends?”

“Dead legends, sire,” said Vyandal. “But not stupid ones. We can charge them over the bridge, but not fast enough to prevent them from shooting down the first rows of horses and creating a nice hurdle for the rest of us to cross.”

For a flicker, Damian wished he had not sent Rumail on his mission. It would be satisfying, and so much simpler, to boil the brains of these miscreants in their skulls or turn their arrows into venomous snakes.

“We’ll have to make a wall of shields,” Vyandal said.

Damian nodded assent. It would be slower, and there would undoubtedly be a mess of hand-to-hand fighting at the end of it. As the first ranks of foot soldiers inched across the bridge with their shields forming a barrier, the archers let loose a half-hearted volley and retreated beyond the trees, where their own horses were picketed.

Once a foothold was established on the far bank to cover the slow passage of the army, Vyandal called forth a unit of his own archers. In the field beyond the river, the bandits circled, aiming when they could and occasionally hitting a target. One of them, the red-haired youth, was wounded in the thigh, but not badly enough to take him from the fight. They began taunting Deslucido’s men, hooting at them and daring them to follow. Once a horseman rushed them for a few paces before a rain of arrows sent his mount rearing in panic. Whenever the Ambervale bowmen would move into position, they would retreat to a safe distance and continue their obscene calls.

“They’re making fools of us!” Belisar cried. “Get rid of them!”

Damian, who had been watching the action, shook his head. The archers were an annoyance, true. Their major power was to sting, not to harm. It would be easy to send out enough men to chase them away or run them down. But that would take time, and their harm was their ability to slow him down. Some of these ruffians might even have been the ones who retook Verdanta. Yes, that would make sense—small bands of men, preferably the pick of the seasoned veterans, making their way through the Hellers foothills and into Acosta.