The Warlord's Domain (25 page)

There was no real enmity between Doern and himself, but after their last and so far only encounter the
hautmarin
would want to know what business brought the man he knew only as a mercenary—and a sorcery-enraveled one at that—to the heart of the Warlord’s Domain. It wasn’t every battleram commander whose ship had helped destroy one of the flying demons known as
isghun
, and even the wildest optimist wouldn’t dare to hope he had forgotten it already. Aldric was not an optimist—at least not in a situation such as this. The only hope he entertained was that Doern had read only blank non-recognition from his face rather than the startled concern that was really there—and it was a hope dashed almost at once, when the
hautmarin
yelled, “You there,
stop
!”

That Doern would know nothing of which he could suspect them was never any obstacle to an Imperial officer; flight was guilt until proved otherwise, and their departure from the theater would already have seemed flight enough. At the same moment they broke free of the audience who hemmed them in, and ran. Kyrin, aware of it as much as Aldric, was playing her part to the hilt in an attempt to give their haste another reason. With one hand to her forehead and another flat across her stomach, she projected such an impression of a pathetically sick lady of quality that the crowd who might have tried to block someone with a sword parted to let her through.

Hautmarin
Doern and the two other men who were presumably his First and Executive officers were trying to follow, but like all the other military men in the Playhouse they were in civilian clothes. It was a small point, but where the people around them would have scattered in obedience to the orders of a Fleet uniform, now they merely continued to resume their seats or even actively obstruct the passage of a trio whose actions they regarded as being no more than rude. Sparing a second at the door to glance behind him, Aldric saw just enough of Doern’s difficulties to create a sort of smile. Then Kyrin’s hand was pulled from his own as she was seized, dragged through the door and out of sight. Aldric’s smile dissolved in an oath and he kicked the closing door wide open, plunged outside… then froze.

There were eight men standing across the entrance of the theater, all in the thunderbolt-slashed black of
Kagh’ Ernvakh
, the nominally-Secret Police. A ninth lounged nonchalantly against one of the uprights that supported the entrance awning, tapping a riding-crop against his booted leg and looking very pleased, for all that he and his men seemed out of breath. “You see, Holbrakt,” he said smugly to the tenth and last man, the one standing beside him who was holding Kyrin by the elbow, “I knew that we should double-time it here before the end of the play. And once again, am I not right… ?”

“Yes,
Tau-kortagor
Hakarl, sir.” From his tone the other soldier didn’t seem especially happy to make the admission. “You are, sir.”

“Well said. And you”—the junior officer Hakarl straightened himself and leveled his riding-crop at Aldric—”are the man the
Woydach
wants.”

Aldric ignored the threat implicit in the crop and stared instead at its wielder, not much liking what he saw. So this was the face of the new order in Drusul, the face of the New Imperial Man whose destiny it was to rule and be obeyed. It was scarcely an appealing prospect. “Why me?” he asked.

“Because the
Woydach
said so should be good enough for you,
hlensyarl
. Good enough for you and your woman both.”

Hakarl’s words made Aldric shiver; this was becoming too much like the episode of Ivern’s steading. It required a conscious act of will to keep his right hand away from Widowmaker’s hilt. No sense in starting trouble yet; there would be time enough for that when the moment came. “And why the rough handling? We’re guests in your city,
Kortagor
, not criminals.”

“My orders say otherwise.” Hakarl made a quick motion of encirclement with the thonged tip of the crop. “Take him.”

Isileth Widowmaker came out of her scabbard with the sort of eager metallic singing that gives even the most battle-hardened soldier pause for thought, and these men were not combat troops no matter how the term was stretched. Their more usual opponents were unarmed men and women, confused beyond the capability for rational thought by being woken from a sound sleep in the small hours of the morning by the noise of their house doors being kicked in. The sight of a longsword poised in the hands of someone who looked all too eager to use it produced an immobility that made nonsense of Hakarl’s order.

“
Sh’voda moy, Kagh’ Ernvakh
,” said Aldric, and for all that he spoke softly there was a deal more authority in his voice than there had been in Hakarl’s. Widowmaker leveled in exactly the way that the young officer had leveled his riding-crop, her gleaming, bitter edges giving extra weight to the gesture. Aldric tracked her point from face to face, slowly, as if he was letting the blade have first sight of her prey. “
Hlakhan tey’aj-hah, ya vlech-hu taü-ura! H’nach-at slüjeü keü’ch da
? Or as we say at home, who’s first?”

“The woman!” snapped Hakarl and chopped his hand downward.

There was another quick scrape of drawn steel—then Holbrakt shrieked hoarsely and fell over as Tehal Kyrin put the sergeant’s own stolen shortsword through his left lung. She stepped back, whipping blood from the blade with a quick sideways slash that—deliberately—sent a spatter across Hakarl’s glossy boots, and said, “Not quite. Who’s next?”

“What are you going to do?” asked Hakarl mockingly. “Fight the whole city garrison?”

It was a question that had occurred to Aldric and Kyrin already. Before blood was spilled they might have had a chance to talk their way out of this situation, although with the Warlord’s personal involvement—if the young
tau-kortagor
spoke truth at all—that was always unlikely. Now, with one of the Secret Police choking in the snow, it was downright impossible…

Then everything happened at once. Hakarl, still not convinced that what Kyrin had done was more than lucky accident, snapped the lash of his crop at her eyes with one hand and with the other ripped his own sword from its sheath into a thrust at her throat; the theater door burst open as Doern and his two companion officers finally reached the exit and jerked back into the Playhouse again as three feet of
taiken
split the still-swinging door in half from top to bottom; and in the momentary shift of Aldric’s concentration all eight of the remaining troopers leapt at him…

Straight into the arc of a longsword’s focused strike.

The snow went scarlet and began to melt as blood gouted streaming across it from two troopers whose concerns were more immediate than their bad landings. Two more, crumpled at the end of long smeared skid-marks, were no longer concerned by anything at all. The four who remained fell back in confusion at losing half their number to a single cut.

Aldric snarled silently at them. There was the pain of what felt like a pulled muscle in his shoulder, brought on by the strains and stresses of the impact, but otherwise nothing at all—no reaction to killing two men with a single blow and most likely mortally wounding two others.

That would come later, when he had time for it. Right now his training and his reflex responses were all that mattered. More of this and he and Kyrin might—do what? Fight the whole garrison indeed? Run? Hide? Where… ?

During the brief lull he had enough time to glance across to where Kyrin matched cut for cut with Hakarl. She skidded for one heart-stopping instant on the snow, only to flick out her free hand and rip the riding-crop from his grasp before snapping it back across his eyes in a reflection of his own opening attack… but a reflection that moved slightly faster than the original. Hakarl’s screech at his blinding was a muffled squawk, gagged by the wide blade that rammed up underneath his chin and almost took his head off.

Aldric saw her pull the shortsword free and look down at the corpse a moment, then turn toward him. He saw her eyes go wide and her mouth open in a cry of warning…

... But he didn’t see
Hautmarin
Doern, or the makeshift cudgel descending on to the base of his skull. And after that all the world’s lights went out.

A storm-wind came shrieking out of nowhere into the Hall of Kings in Cerdor, and a spout of blue fire sprang up before lashing itself into oblivion; when all was over and silence had returned, Gemmel leaned against Ykraith the Dragonwand and smiled a little wearily. “It is done,” he said. “There will be peace in Alba, at least for a little time. Now the matter of how long it lasts will rest with both of you, and all of them, and what you have to say to one another.”

Lord Dacurre said nothing, merely inclining his head a touch in gratitude and more relief than he was prepared to let the enchanter see. Lord Santon, younger and if not more skeptical then certainly less controlled and infinitely more curious about the ways of wizards, leaned forward across his table and its carefully weighted paperwork and stared. “How? You can’t have spoken to all the lords in Alba! You were only gone a day!”

Gemmel and Dacurre glanced at one another and, their differences temporarily set aside, exchanged the sort of rolled-eyes look of despair that all old men with youthful relatives must employ at some stage if they wish to keep their tempers. For all that Hanar Santon was a high-clan Alban lord, he was also the same age as Aldric Talvalin—but lacked Aldric’s four years of experience in why people shouldn’t ask users of the Art Magic just that sort of damn-fool question.

“The
how
is my affair, my lord, and so is the time I took to do it.” Gemmel’s hesitation just before he spoke made it quite clear that what he was saying now was not what had first crossed his mind, and Dacurre was grate-ful for the other man’s restraint—such as it was. “I much regret that talking to full-blown Alban clan-lords—that is, of course,
other
Alban clan-lords—is never something I prefer to take long over. They’re all so… honorable.” He said it as if the word was a sticky sweetmeat lodged in a hollow tooth, and for all that Aymar Dacurre knew that he, too, could take offense if he so desired, the old man hid a smile behind his hand instead.

“What did you say to them?” Dacurre asked when his features were once more under some control. “And what did they say to you?”

“Respectively, a little and a lot,” said Gemmel. “And none of them offered me a chair, nor a drink, nor anything to eat despite the distance I had traveled…”

Dacurre went somewhat pink at having to be reminded of the oldest obligation due a lord of any standing—that of hospitality to guests. He rang the small bell on the desk in front of him with quite excessive vigor, and when the ringing was answered by two sentries and three servants—all of whom gaped to see Gemmel somewhere he shouldn’t be without their knowing it—issued a rattle of orders that sent all five of them scurrying in different directions.

While Gemmel took first his seat and then “some food and wine, Dacurre leafed through his files to find whichever papers might prove useful. There were very few. Alba’s past rulers had made few provisions for being assisted in their work by the dubious class of wizards, sorcerers and enchanters. At least, unlike the Drusalan Empire, there were no laws on the statutes involving guilt for actually talking to one of them—and if there were, neither Dacurre nor Santon had seen them, and right now did not wish to.

Though he hid it better than the younger man, Dacurre was as curious about Gemmel as Santon seemed to be—a curiosity that today was based on something rather more solid and immediate than the whys and wherefores of the Art Magic. Aymar Dacurre was more concerned with the enchanter’s clothes. On the few other occasions when their paths had crossed, Gemmel had been dressed in commonplace Alban garments—shirt and tunic, boots and breeches, jerkin and over-mantle— quality work and weave, but none of them worthy of a second glance and certainly not the fanciful robes that sorcerers were supposed to wear. Only the ominous presence of the Dragonwand had ever marked him out as different before; that was, until today. Now, under the furred overrobe that was the same concession to the season made by everyone, he was wearing what Dacurre could only think of as some kind of uniform—and one which, colors apart, was too like that of the Imperial military for comfort.

There was a high-necked shirt beneath the tunic, and he was wearing boots and breeches; but though the garments could be named, their austere cut and their material were unlike anything Dacurre had seen before. Everything was a blue so dark that it was almost black, with insignia in a silvery metal at the shoulders, cuffs and collar; except for the leather of boots and belt which
were
black and of an impossible glossiness. There was a flapped weapon-holster on the left side of the belt, supported at a cross-draw angle by a strap that ran across and down from the opposite shoulder, and at first glance it appeared to hold nothing more outlandish than a
telek
. Then Dacurre got a slightly better look and realized he wanted to know neither what the weapon in the holster really was, nor where it had been made.

“You came into the presence of
ilauem-arluthen
dressed like that?” Always, always, Santon could be relied on for the unsubtle question. Dacurre flinched slightly, more from personal affront than out of any fear of Gemmel’s reaction, and quelled the younger lord with a glare.

For his part, Gemmel sipped his wine and studied both of them over the rim of the glass. “It’s almost like having Aldric here, don’t you think?” he observed mildly. “And in answer, Lord Santon, yes I did. Since I was making a formal call, so to speak, I chose to dress formally; it’s only polite.” He set the wine-glass down, considered refilling it, then pushed both glass and carafe aside, sat back in his chair and made a steeple of his fingers in a mannerism unsettlingly reminiscent of the dead King Rynert.

“As both of you are probably well aware, the so-haughty members of the ex-Crown Council were not exactly pleased to be addressed with the words I felt that all of them needed to hear. Words not unlike those you used to me, Lord Santon, and which proved so… effective.” Gemmel didn’t smile; he wasn’t making a joke, and had neither forgotten nor forgiven the way the younger lord had trapped him with a net of words into performing this mission when he had so many other things to do. “Especially when those words were spoken by the
pestreyr
sorcerer who had obtained the fealty—some two or three who thought themselves witty said fouler things—of Aldric Talvalin by some sort of wizard’s trick. Lord Ivan Diskan of Kerys was one who thought to elaborate on what an unmarried older man might want from one much younger.” This time Gemmel did smile and Dacurre, seeing it, would have preferred that he had not. “His sight will return, in time. And in the meanwhile, Lord Dacurre, he has developed something of a willingness to talk about peace. So have they all, even the ones who didn’t… ah… provoke me.”