Weavers of War (12 page)

“More healers are on the way,” Javan said, dismounting and crouching beside Welfyl. “I’ve sent for all the Qirsi who accompanied my army.”

“Can you help him?” the duke asked Fotir, seeming to ignore Javan. “Please.”

Fotir looked pained as he shook his head. “I haven’t that power, Lord Heneagh. I’m sorry.”

It had to be Welfyl’s son. Looking at the face of the wounded man, Tavis saw that he had the duke’s nose and chin. The man’s hair was yellow, rather than white, and his face was fuller than Welfyl’s, but the resemblance was strong. He glanced back at Grinsa and read desperate frustration in his friend’s eyes. No doubt he wanted to try to heal the man, but couldn’t without giving away who and what he was.

A moment later, one of Heneagh’s Qirsi arrived, breathless, her cheeks flushed.

“Ean be praised,” the duke said, looking up at her. “Save him! I beg you!”

She frowned. “I’ll do what I can, my lord.”

Javan placed a hand on Welfyl’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should leave them—”

“No!” The duke seemed to tighten his hold on the man.

“Your healer will do all she can for him.”

“I’m not leaving him!”

Javan gave a low sigh and nodded. “Very well.” Straightening, he stepped away a short distance, gesturing for his company to follow.

“He won’t make it,” Hagan said, his voice low.

“Probably not.” Javan closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “Damn.”

“That’s his son, isn’t it?” Tavis said, careful to keep his voice down as well.

Javan eyed him briefly, then nodded. “Dunfyl, thane of Cransher. He’s a good man, and a fine warrior.”

“Why isn’t he duke?”

Tavis’s father looked over his shoulder, as if to make certain that Welfyl couldn’t hear, then he walked a bit farther from where the thane lay dying. “That’s a good question. The two of them had a falling-out many years back—I never learned what caused it. But Welfyl is given to pride, and the son doesn’t step far from his father’s shadow. For years they didn’t even speak to each other. To be honest, I never thought I’d see the day when they rode together to battle. It seems they reconciled none too soon.”

They heard horses approaching and turned, seeing Kearney and his archminister riding toward where they stood. Behind them, on foot, came several more Qirsi and a small contingent of soldiers.

“What’s happened?” the king asked, as he climbed off his mount. His eyes fell on Welfyl then quickly darted away. “Is that the thane?”

“It is, my liege.”

“Will he live?”

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Kearney shook his head slowly, his lips pressed thin. “Demons and fire. How many others were lost?”

“Twenty-five. Maybe more. I expect many of the wounded won’t make it.”

“Were your losses this high, Lord Curgh?”

“No, my liege. About half, though even that was too many.”

“Yes. Ours were similar.”

“If I may, Your Majesty,” Hagan said, “Heneagh has never been known for her might. And I’ve never seen an army that could strike as quickly as that of the empire.”

“I agree with you, Sir MarCullet. I’ve been thinking that perhaps we’d be better served by giving Lord Heneagh command of the five hundred men I originally gave to you, Javan.”

Curgh’s duke gave a single nod. “Of course, my liege.” But he wasn’t pleased by this. Kearney didn’t notice, but Tavis did. He had spent all his childhood gauging his father’s mood changes by inflections far more subtle than this one.

“You can’t do that, Your Majesty!”

“Hagan!”

“It’s all right, Lord Curgh. Let him speak.” The king faced Javan’s swordmaster, a slight smile on his youthful face. “Why can’t I do this?”

Hagan had colored to the tips of his ears, and he was staring at the ground, looking for all his height and brawn like an abashed child. “Forgive me, Your Majesty. I shouldn’t have spoken.”

“It’s all right, Hagan. Clearly you feel that I’m making a mistake. Why?”

“Th-the Curgh army holds the center, Your Majesty. Braedon’s soldiers have been testing us, looking for where we’re weakest. If they see that we’ve shifted so many men, they’ll strike at where they had been. And if our center fails, we’re lost.”

“Thorald’s army should reach us by tomorrow, Hagan. They can reinforce the center. But right now our weakest point lies here. If Braedon’s army strikes at the western lines, the entire Heneagh army could be lost. Surely you see that I can’t allow that.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Kearney grinned, though the look in his eyes remained bleak. “Don’t humor me, swordmaster. Gershon Trasker has served me for quite a few years now, and whenever he agrees with me in the manner you just did, I know that I’ve done something wrong.”

Kearney’s archminister cleared her throat. “If I may offer a suggestion, Your Majesty: you’ve also given five hundred men to Lord Shanstead. If we wait until nightfall to move the men from Curgh’s army to Heneagh’s, the enemy might not notice. And tomorrow, when the Thorald army arrives, Lord Shanstead can send half of those five hundred men to Lord Curgh.”

The king smiled again, more convincingly this time. “A fine idea, Archminister.”

“It is, Your Majesty,” Fotir said. “But I don’t think we should wait until dark. As the archminister just said, Lord Shanstead should reach here tomorrow. If Braedon’s scouts learn of his approach, the empire will attack today. Certainly that’s what I’d advise them to do. We should move half the men immediately.”

“You make a good point, First Minister.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“What do you think, Hagan?”

The swordmaster smiled as well, though clearly it was forced. “Very well, Your Majesty. We’ll send two hundred and fifty men to the Heneagh lines. I’ll see to it right away.”

The king nodded. “Good.” He glanced at Welfyl, his smile fading. The old duke was weeping, and though his son’s chest still rose and fell, the healer had stopped working on him. It was but a matter of time.

“Excuse me,” Kearney said, his voice hardly more than a whisper. He stepped to where Lord Heneagh still knelt and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. Welfyl seemed to collapse at the king’s touch, falling against Kearney’s leg and sobbing.

“Two hundred and fifty men is nothing,” Hagan said, pitching his voice so that Javan could hear but Kearney could not.

“I know. But it’s all we have. Half of the King’s Guard is in Kentigern, and half of Eibithar’s houses have chosen not to fight at all. We’re fortunate to have as many men as we do.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“There’s nothing for us to do here,” the duke said, looking once more at Welfyl and wincing, as if the man’s grief pained him. Tavis couldn’t help but wonder if Javan was thinking about how close he had come to losing his own son the previous year. “We should return to the Curgh lines.”

Tavis saw Grinsa and Keziah exchange a look.

“I’ll be along shortly, Tavis,” the gleaner said. Then, facing Fotir, he raised an eyebrow. “Will you join us for a moment, First Minister?”

“My lord?” the minister said, seeking Javan’s permission.

“Yes, of course.”

The duke had climbed onto his mount again, as had Hagan. They started away to the east, and Tavis and Xaver followed, scrambling onto their horses and following some distance behind the duke and his swordmaster.

For a time the two young men rode in silence, Tavis enduring the stares of his father’s soldiers as best he could.

“I wonder if they’ll even let us fight now,” Xaver finally said, his voice so low that Tavis wasn’t certain he had heard correctly.

“Let us fight?”

His liege man nodded, then glanced toward their fathers so that Tavis would know who he meant.

“Why wouldn’t they let us fight?”

“Dunfyl, of course. My father didn’t even want to bring me along from Curgh; he made up some nonsense about how he needed me to take command of the castle guard while he was gone. After seeing Dunfyl killed he’ll have me standing watch over the provisions or some such thing. You watch, your father will be the same way.”

“I doubt that.”

“Tavis, you and your father might not always see eye-to-eye—”

“No, it’s nothing to do with all that. I’ve been gone for a year now, evading Aindreas’s guards, journeying through Aneira, tracking down Cadel. He doesn’t get to choose anymore whether or not I fight. I know he’s my father, but the fact is that I’ve been taking care of myself for some time now. I don’t need his permission to pick up a sword.” He looked over at Xaver, who was regarding him as if they’d never met before. “I guess to you I sound pretty full of myself, eh?”

“Not really. Somebody else saying all that, maybe. But not you. Not after what you’ve been through.”

He continued to stare at Tavis, until the young lord began to feel awkward, the way he did when the soldiers cheered for him.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

Xaver dropped his gaze, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, his light curls stirring in the wind. “Sorry.”

“What are you staring at, anyway?”

“You look different.”

“Yes, well, Aindreas saw to that with his blade, didn’t he?”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m used to the scars now. In a way, I find it hard to imagine you without them.”

Tavis looked away. Grinsa had said much the same thing to him not long ago. For his part, Tavis still imagined himself without them all the time. Indeed, even now, whenever he saw his reflection, he found the lattice of scars on his face jarring. He wondered if he’d ever get used to them.

“You look older, Tavis,” Xaver said, drawing the boy’s gaze once more. “Older even than you did when I saw you in the City of Kings.”

“A lot’s happened since then.”

Xaver hesistated. “You still haven’t told me about … about the assassin.”

He shook his head, staring straight ahead. “I’m not sure I can. I killed him. That’s really all that matters.”

“I don’t believe that.”

He could see it all again. The storm that had battered the Wethy Crown that day, the serene expression on the assassin’s face just before he died, the way his own sword cleaved the man’s neck. And he could remember as well being held under water, with Cadel kneeling on his back, the man’s hands clamped on his neck and head. He could feel his lungs burning for air, the frigid waters of the gulf making his head ache.

“I almost died, Xaver. He had me, and he let me go. When I killed him, he wasn’t even trying to protect himself anymore.”

His friend was watching him, seemingly at a loss for words.

“I thought that I’d find peace once I’d killed Cadel, that avenging Brienne would make up for everything that’s happened since she died. But I was wrong.”

“It’s too soon to know that. You may find peace yet, but it can’t be easy when everyone around you is preparing for war.”

A smile touched his lips and was gone. “I suppose.”

“Maybe once this war with the empire is over, and you’ve—”

“You know what, Stinger,” he broke in, “I understand that you’re trying to help, but I just don’t want to talk about any of this.”

Xaver’s jaw tightened and he lowered his gaze. “Fine.”

“Why don’t we talk about you for a while?”

The boy looked up again, a slight frown on his lean face. “About me?”

“Yes. You haven’t told me anything about home.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“There has to be something. Tell me about your studies, or your training. I don’t even know if you have a girl.”

That, of all things, made Xaver’s face shade to scarlet.

“You do! I knew it!”

The boy shrugged, grinning sheepishly. “She’s not really…”

“What? She’s not really a girl?”

Xaver laughed. “Oh, she is that.”

“Well, now I really want to hear.”

His friend was a bit sparing with details—her name was Jolyn, and she was the daughter of one of the ladies who served Tavis’s mother. Other than that, Xaver offered precious little information. But Tavis hardly cared. Long after he and Xaver had returned to the Curgh camp, they continued to talk, laughing and teasing one another as they had long ago, before their Fatings and all that followed. And for a brief time, as the day grew warm and the sun turned its slow arc over the Moorlands, Tavis gave little thought to Cadel or the conspiracy or the war that loomed over them like a dark cloud.

Later in the day, however, after they had talked themselves into a lengthy silence, Xaver eyed the young lord, suddenly appearing uneasy.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” he said, meeting Tavis’s gaze for but a moment before looking away.

“Of course. Anything.”

“Don’t say that until you’ve heard what it is.”

Tavis felt his stomach tighten.

“I’m not certain that my father’s going to let me fight,” said the liege man. “And if he asks your father to keep me out of the battle, your father will do just that.”

“I really don’t think—”

“Please, let me finish. You’re my lord—I swore an oath to serve you. And since we’re both past our Fatings, you have the authority to overrule my father.”

“Xaver, the last thing I want to do is get between you and Hagan. Besides, if my father decides to keep you out of combat, there’s nothing I can do.”

His friend scowled at him.

“Why are you so eager to fight, anyway?”

“You have to ask? You’re just as avid for it as I am.”

Tavis shook his head. “That’s different. I have reasons that have nothing to do with this war and everything to do with Cadel and Brienne and all the rest.”

“Well, I have reasons, too, Tavis! You’re not the only one who wants to strike back at the Aneirans and the Qirsi and the empire, and everyone else who’s been attacking us for the past year. You’re not the only one whose father…” He shook his head. “I know it’s hard between you and your father, but it’s not easy being the son of Hagan MarCullet either. He’s been the best swordsman in the land for just about all my life. And everyone expects me to be just like him.”
Including me.

Xaver didn’t have to say this last aloud. As his friend spoke Tavis found himself remembering what Xaver had told him of the siege at Kentigern, which was the first and only time the young man had fought in a battle of any sort. He said at the time that he had acquitted himself poorly, that he had embarrassed himself in front of Javan. For his part, the duke never had anything but praise for Xaver’s courage as a warrior, but that wouldn’t have kept Xaver from feeling that he had something to prove to himself, to his duke, and to his father in this newest war.