Hal Matelon crawled forward on his belly until he could look over the edge of the cliff. The wind off the Indio drove a freezing rain inland in sheets, plastering his hair to his head, running under his collar and down his neck, and dripping off the tip of his nose.
Below and to the south lay the city and harbor of Chalk Cliffs. His heart sank when he saw that the same siren flag flew over the battlements as had flown over the ships that attacked the city a scant few days ago. It was what he had expected, but still . . . disappointing.
The harbor was packed with ships, and the waterfront seethed with activity despite the rain, like an anthill that’s been overturned. The invaders were wasting no time off-loading soldiers, horses, and supplies.
Horsemen rode up and down the beach in their thickly padded coats, head wraps, and knee-length breeches. They carried the curved swords they’d used so effectively on the city battlements. Some wore bits and pieces of Highlander uniforms along with traditional garb.
Corporal Sasha Talbot eased up beside him. She stared down at the scene for a long moment, swore softly, then blotted at her eyes with her sleeve. She cleared her throat. “That answers that,” she said. “It looks like they mean to stay awhile.”
Hal nodded, watching her out of the corner of his eye. The statuesque bluejacket had been subdued and gloomy since the city fell and the empress Celestine sailed off with the heir to the Gray Wolf throne. At least she no longer talked about drawing her sword and charging down into the midst of the horselord pirates, taking out as many as she could before she went down herself.
She blames herself, he thought. And I blame myself. He guessed there was more than enough blame to go around.
“Do you see any of ours?” he said, focusing on the scene below.
Talbot slowly turned her head and stared at him.
“Yours, I mean,” he amended quickly. He and Talbot got on fairly well, except for the fact that she still considered him to be a prisoner of the crown. At least she’d allowed him to keep the weapons he’d collected off a dead soldier.
Talbot looked again, then murmured, “I think they’ve got some of ours repairing the fortifications.”
Hal saw it now, teams of workers hauling rock under the supervision of the riders. It seemed that one of them wasn’t moving fast enough, because his horselord guard unslung his blade and cut him down.
Talbot swore again. “I wish we could help them.” She fingered the hilt of her sword.
“Come back with an army,” Hal said quickly. “Then you can help them.”
Talbot grunted. “I don’t know if we can field an army that can stand against them,” she said, her expression bleak.
“Buck up, Talbot,” Hal said, punching her lightly on the shoulder. “It’s not like you to surrender before the battle begins.”
“I’ve never fought soldiers like these,” she said.
Hal knew she was second-guessing every move she’d made, all the choices that resulted in the loss of her captain. Her princess. Her friend. Hal was doing a lot of that himself.
“We’ll be ready for them, next time,” Hal said. “They may be fierce and fearless, but they’ll bleed like any other soldier.”
“I’m not so sure,” Talbot said. She shot Hal a defiant look, as if daring him to contradict her.
Hal fully intended to bring that same story to his father, but he knew better than to go before the thane unprepared. He needed more information.
“Stay here,” Hal said. “I’ll be right back.”
When he began scrambling back, away from the cliff, Talbot gripped his arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“I’m going to go down and see if I can find out a little more about who we’re up against.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
Hal struggled not to lose his temper. “If I don’t come back, I’ll be dead, but you’ll be alive, so you can go tell your Captain Byrne and your queen what’s going on.”
Talbot scowled, but released her hold. Hal crept south along the cliff until he found an icy streambed where he could descend to the beach. Once on the sand, he threaded his way forward between huge chalk slabs until he could get a clear view.
The horses were being ferried ashore in small boats south of the high cliffs and kept in temporary paddocks until they could be moved into the city. They were not the dun-colored Ardenine military mounts Hal was used to, nor the sturdy, shaggy ponies used in the highlands. These horses had chiseled heads, arched necks, and long legs, and they carried their tails high.
A sentry leaned on the paddock fence, watching the progress of a longboat back to the ship anchored offshore. Unlike most of the others, he was bareheaded. He wore his hair in a long plait that extended nearly to his waist, though the top of his head was shaved clean. His beard was also braided and decorated. He wore light armor over loose-fitting clothing. More than anything, he resembled the horselords from the desert realms across the Indio.
Hal was still debating whether to kill him outright or to try to take him alive and risk giving himself away when the rattle of pebbles on stone behind him alerted him to danger. He dove sideways in time to avoid being beheaded by the curved blade of the horselord who’d crept up on him. Hal rolled to his feet, his sword in one hand, a fistful of sand in the other. He managed to block his attacker’s next swing, but the force of the blow all but rattled the teeth from his head.
Hal was no slouch, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that he was outmatched. The horselord was strong as an ox, and yet so quick on his feet that Hal could scarcely do more than dodge and feint, rarely getting in a blow of his own. The horselord’s next swing all but disarmed Hal, but the curved blade caught against his own, and Hal took that opportunity to come in close enough to fling the sand in the horselord’s eyes. When his blade dropped away, Hal drove his sword beneath his rib cage, all the way to the hilt.
The horselord smashed his gauntleted arm across Hal’s face, pitching him backward onto the sand. Then the other sentry was there, his blade at Hal’s throat, pinning him to the beach. Hal watched in horror as the man he’d skewered yanked the blade free and tossed it aside on the sand.
No, Hal thought, spitting out blood. That wound is not survivable, let alone ignorable. Not by any mortal man. I need to apologize to Talbot for questioning her description of the invading army.
The way things were going, he might never get the chance.
The two enemy soldiers were arguing now, in a language akin enough to Common that Hal realized that they were arguing over whether to kill him now or deliver him to the empress alive.
If they took him to the empress, would Lyssa Gray be there? Could he devise a way to rescue her and the busker?
“You know the empress will want this one alive,” one of the horselords said, pointing at Hal, and then toward the ship. “He is young and strong, and a good fighter.”
The skewered man fingered the hilt of his sword and scowled at Hal; the man’s jaw was set stubbornly, as if he took being skewered rather personally. “Celestine has many new recruits to choose from, Hoshua,” he said. “She can spare this one.”
“She will need many more bloodsworn in the coming days,” Hoshua said. “These wetlands have plenty of seasoned soldiers. They have been at war for years.”
Wetlands, Hal thought. That must mean that they are from the drylands across the sea. And what did that mean—bloodsworn? Was it simply the name used for the horselord fighters, or did it have something to do with their superhuman strength and stamina?
“I don’t want to have to keep watch on him all the way to Celesgarde,” the wounded man said.
Where is Celesgarde? Is that where they would have carried Lyssa Gray?
“Don’t worry, Enebish. We can chain him belowdecks. He won’t be any trouble.”
After a heated discussion, his captors finally agreed that maybe the empress could spare this one particular soldier.
“Take me to Celestine,” Hal said in Common, startling the two horselords, who looked down at him as if a rock on the beach had begun speaking. These bloodsworn might be relentless, but they were not particularly quick-witted.
Enebish, the skewered man, drew back his foot and kicked him. The movement caused the horselord to stagger a bit, as if his body was catching up to the fact that it was in serious trouble. That’s when Hal heard a familiar thwack. Now an arrow shaft was centered in Hoshua’s chest.
Hal rolled onto his side, gripped Enebish’s boot, and gave it a hard twist. Bone cracked and the horselord went down. Focus on breaking bones, Hal thought. That makes them less mobile.
Hal scrambled over the sand to where Enebish had dropped his sword, scooped it up, and turned to see Hoshua bearing down on him, as unconcerned about his arrow as Enebish had been about being run through. The bow sounded again, and the horselord stumbled as a second arrow hit him in the back. Hal took advantage of the distraction to behead his opponent with a two-handed swing. The head splashed into the water, but the body continued to stagger around, spraying blood from its severed neck until it tripped over a rock slab and went down.
“Matelon! Look out!” Hal turned, and Talbot was sprinting toward him, nocking an arrow as she ran. Between them, Enebish was crawling across the sand toward Hal, pulling with his arms, pushing with one leg and dragging the broken one, his dagger in his teeth. In desperation, Hal threw his shoulder against a slab of rock, toppling it over so Enebish was pinned underneath.
Breathing hard, Hal bent down, resting his hands on his knees, and tried not to spew sick all over the sand.
Talbot knelt next to Enebish’s head. She swore softly. “He’s dead,” she said, glaring at Hal. “I wanted to interrogate him.”
“Sorry,” Hal muttered. “But I . . . ah . . . questioned him before he died.”
Talbot eyed him suspiciously. “What do you mean? What did you find out?”
It was the first time he’d interrogated someone from the wrong end of a sword, but he knew more now than he had before.
“They’re Empress Celestine’s army,” Hal said. “They sail out of her capital at Celesgarde, wherever that is. That’s where they likely took the busker and Captain Gray.”
Hal and Talbot chose new mounts from among the long-legged desert horses in the temporary paddocks on the beach. They stole weapons and other gear from the dead horselords. Hal wasn’t in love with the curved blades the pirates carried, but now he knew from experience that they were good at removing heads with a single swipe, which seemed to be one of the few ways to put these demon soldiers down for good. Their bows were strange, also—lightweight, with limbs that curved back toward the archer. Hal was good with a crossbow, and fair with a longbow, but it would take practice to learn how to use one of these.
They rode west toward Fortress Rocks, continuing until their horses were exhausted. When they didn’t dare push them any further, they found lodging at an inn along the road. To say they found lodging was being generous. The inn was already packed with refugees heading inland. Hal and Talbot slept in the barn, in a stall with three other people. Talbot had a small amount of money, but all Hal had were a handful of unfamiliar coins he’d taken from Enebish.
To say they slept was being generous.
Hal rose at first light and saddled his horse. He’d named the stallion Bosley because he was balky, full of himself, and obsessed with getting at the mares. Hal filled the panniers with food for several days, his quiver with arrows, and lashed a blanket roll behind his saddle. He was swinging open the barn doors when Talbot appeared, her hair in a tangle, wiping sleep from her eyes.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she demanded, her hand on the hilt of her sword.
“This is where we say good-bye.” Hal led his mount out into the stable yard, with Talbot hard on his heels.
“What do you mean, good-bye?” Talbot planted herself in his path. “You’re coming with me to Fortress Rocks, and then on to Fellsmarch. The queen will want to question you along with me.”
“I have business in Arden,” Hal said. “I need to go home.”
“You are a prisoner of the queen,” Talbot said, “and it’s not my place to decide to set you free.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t,” Hal said, but she didn’t crack a smile. He sighed. It was unfair for her to keep playing by the book when he’d already strayed so far from it. “After what we faced together in Chalk Cliffs, do you really want to shed blood between us?” He knew Talbot well enough by now not to suggest whose. He swung up into the saddle, and Talbot gripped the stallion’s cheek piece. Never a good idea where Bosley was concerned. He showed his teeth, jerking his head to one side so that she lost her hold. Hal reined in, forcing the stallion back a few steps.
Talbot drew her sword. “I like you, Matelon,” she said, “but I can’t just let you ride back home when you are a prisoner of war.”
“We’re all prisoners of war, aren’t we?” Hal said, but that gained him no ground. He leaned down toward her, using all the persuasion at his command, which, admittedly, wasn’t much. “Look, I know you don’t want to go back to your queen and report that you lost your commanding officer, your post, and your prisoner. If I had my way, I would go after that ship even if I had to row all the way to Celesgarde.”
By now, Talbot was nodding her agreement.
“But,” he said, which stopped her nodding. “I’m tactician enough to know that the only thing I’d likely achieve by doing that is an early grave. We need more information. We need more firepower. And the only connections I have are in Arden. Holding me hostage and hoping my father responds for the first time in his life is a waste of time. I can do your queen and your queendom a lot more good by going home and making a case in person than by cooling my heels in a dungeon in Fellsmarch.”
“How, exactly, could you do us good?” Talbot asked, scowling. “And why would you, once you’re home?”
Hal had lots of possible answers.
Because I’ve fallen for your Captain Gray. Because, when it comes to choosing between her and the despicable Montaignes, it’s no choice at all. Because I’ve never seen a people so devoted to their line of queens. Because, after swimming for so long in the political swill of Ardenscourt, I’ve gotten used to breathing clean air here in the north.
Because I’m a fool for lost causes.
“Captain Gray and I had an argument about the war,” Hal said. “I told her flat-out you were going to lose. I told her we had better weapons, a bigger army, deeper pockets, and an entire empire to draw upon. It’s a total mismatch. Only a fool would bet on you.”
Talbot’s face was getting redder and redder. “And she said . . . ?”
He laughed. “She disagreed.”
“What’s your point, Matelon?”
“The point is, now I’m not so sure. Winning a war depends on more than armament and numbers. An army can’t fight on heart alone, but it can’t fight without it, either. That said, the empress Celestine and her army of bloodsworn scare the hell out of me. I’ve never seen soldiers like them. From what Enebish said, she has an endless supply. After Chalk Cliffs, I am sure of one thing: if the Realms cannot unite against the threat from the east, we will all lose.”
Talbot nodded grudgingly. “Maybe so, but if you think that after twenty-five years of war, Queen Raisa is going to bend the knee to the empire, you’re wrong.”
“I didn’t say the empire. I said the Realms. Give your queen my regards.” With that, Hal set his knees to the stallion’s sides. As he rode away, he was reasonably sure that Talbot wouldn’t put an arrow in his back. Mostly because she didn’t have a bow in her hands. Still, the tension didn’t leave his back and shoulders until he rounded a turn and was out of sight.