The War, page 17
Sergeant Corass came to him some hours later. “Sinethar.” He shook him lightly by the shoulder when Mordred did not turn.
“Yes.” Mordred said the word between his teeth, afraid that if he did not his voice would start to shake.
“Sinethar, you are on guard duty at the outer wall, midnight till dawn. Can you manage that?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded strangled in his own ears. The tears were close, too close.
“I know not what is amiss, I fear—was it something in the letter—” The voice hesitated, uncertain, gruff, kind.
Mordred’s hand closed around the letter in a taut fist. Was it so plain? He summoned all his will into a desperate front of his most distant, cold politeness, knowing that at all costs he must keep away further advances of friendship and sympathy. “Nothing is wrong. I will thank you to keep your questions out of where they are not needed.” He rose stiffly and strode out of the barracks.
~
The night stretched out long and cold. Movement rustled and wavered below in the enemy camp, but nothing approached the walls. Mordred longed for a distraction, for a skirmish, and he watched until his eyes ached for something that would take his mind away from the deathlike face of Therelane, the lightheaded memory of splintered bone sticking out of a mash of fingerless, meaningless flesh, swimming in the acrid blood; and then all that gone, tossed into a drain somewhere, and Therelane would never have a hand again.
He stared at his own hands in the dark: faint white blurs that sharpened as he brought them closer, lean, whole, beautiful things that flexed and bent at his command. With a shudder he buried his face in them and wept, unable to hold it back any longer.
The sobbing breaths were the only sound he made; no-one heard him except the nearest of the guards, who put a swift arm around him with a murmured, “Brace up, lad.” Mordred, lost in misery, did not care.
The presage of dawn came in a strange, pure silence and an imperceptible lightening of the air. Mordred leaned over the breastwork, worn out with spent tears and sleeplessness. A fluttering by his ear beat the air, and he turned his head slowly to meet the bright eyes of a great crow that settled with the gentlest snick of claws on the rampart.
It preened its breast feathers, scrutinizing him all the while, and tapped a single claw secretively against the stone. At that Mordred was sure, quite sure, that it was eraris.
“Cern Dersturi?” he asked in a low voice, careful of the soldiers who were standing so close by.
The crow nodded once.
“Does he have a message?” Mordred scarcely moved his lips.
It shook its head this time, deliberate, unwinking, and with a violent swivel stabbed its beak downwards in the direction of the camp.
“He sends for me, then?”
It tipped its head in a light nod, and instantly flapped into the sky again, darting downward across the plain of grey tents.
Mordred watched it go dipping and wheeling, and noticed how light the sky had grown. Scarcely a minute later their relief arrived, and amid the banter and jesting complaints Mordred departed and hurried through the city: first to Mithissa to apprise the general of his absence, and then to the north wall.
~
Because of the withdrawal, the leader had ridden back to the main camp. It was evening before Mordred reached the red-woven tent.
He lifted the heavy flap and ducked under, his feet scuffing lightly over the trampled grass. “Paraki?”
The leader turned from the map-strewn table at the side of the tent, his eyes narrowed in a calculating way that made Mordred suddenly apprehensive. “I wonder that you should call me that when you have made it plain where your allegiance lies.”
Mordred did not move. Like a bird struck, he could not.
All at once, everything was over.
“You played a pretty game, did you not? It is like playing with a knife—a lovely toy, but very dangerous.”
Mordred’s instincts begged him to run, but there was no call from his will in answer. He knew that if the leader were so sure, he would never gamble on taking him without a struggle. Wherever he had placed his men, they must be close at hand and Mordred refused to degrade himself before those hard eyes by fleeing further into the trap.
“Still you do not speak? You did well, Richardson, or I might call you Mordred Kenhelm. It was long before I began to suspect you. Only after the faulty attack did I suddenly wonder—of course it could easily have been misheard information, or a change of plans, but I realized that the opposite was quite a viable possibility. You were an Ordenian, you had shown reluctance to spy, and now this blunder. No, I did not quite suspect the double spy part. I thought maybe that after deserting you found the Runnicoran side not so much to your taste.
“So I sent an eraris to follow you, a spy upon my spy. And he tracked you to a tower in Mianu yesterday morn and there overheard certain words between you and the General of Orden. So I discovered that you had betrayed me twice.”
He looked up from a small knife that he had been handling ever since he spoke of knives. “I might salute you, as a most clever opponent and one worthy of esteem. But I do not take kindly to being played upon. And I fear you will have to learn that I, though exciting as a knife, am likewise sharp and unpleasant in the end.”
“Thank you for the advice.” Mordred found his tongue suddenly, his head very cool and steady. “I fear it is late in coming, for I shall not have long to practice it.”
Cern Dersturi’s mouth curled up on one side. “Not long indeed. Although I hope a little time will suffice to persuade from you the secrets that you are still concealing.”
“If they should catch you, it is torture . . . ”
He made some motion that Mordred did not quite see, and several seconds later a stream of men came through the rear entrance to the tent. “Take him,” he ordered briefly.
Mordred let them surround him, did not evade or lash out as they seized him, though he hated the hold on his arms. To struggle, that would be useless by this time, an entertainment for the leader which Mordred had no intention to give.
They took him to a small empty tent and led him in. “Stag,” snapped one, jerking his finger at the middle, which Mordred took as a command to go there. He obeyed slowly and sat down, crossing his legs under him and resting his chin on his clenched hands.
The soldiers—there were five of them—posted themselves around the tent in various poses of vigilance. They watched him with unfriendly eyes, rather as though they expected him to shoot fire from his fingers and decimate them.
Mordred was tired, so very tired. Muddles of thought swam through his head—Therelane, caught, the general, torture, Fenris—Fenris would hurt so if he died. Jedediah Crayes—“I can’t guarantee getting you out of that mess.”
With a drowsy sigh he lay down. Jedediah Crayes might not even be in the camp any more, and if he were he could not try to rescue Mordred without great danger to himself. That was all right; he would manage. Somehow, he would manage. Torture could only hurt for so long—one must pass out eventually.
~
Jedediah Crayes scowled into the flame of the candle beside him. He grumbled, very softly, to himself. “That boy! Got into trouble again, has he? Oh yes, we always leave it to Jedediah Crayes to fix things up. He never has important work to do. Nothing better to occupy his time.”
He stretched out on his back, his mind whipping over the aspects of main importance. Five men in the tent with him. Ten more posted outside. Hands might be bound. All manageable issues.
As long as he himself could stay in the clear—but Jedediah Crayes was perfectly sure that he could do that. Cern Dersturi had no idea who was infiltrating his camp, and he was not going to find out.
Little fool, he thought, but did not say it aloud. He blew out the candle in an irritable burst of breath, relaxed again, and waited for the murmuring around him to deepen into stillness and snores.
CHAPTER 16
MORDRED STIRRED, A ROUGH HAND on his shoulder dragging him persistently out of dreamless, exhausted sleep. He struggled to remain there, his body yearning for the rest that it had lain in deadened and content, but the hand tightened, shaking him, until his eyes drifted open.
He did not see the leader, as he had expected to; the man in front of him was the balding, pale-faced one he had seen twice now. And something in him began to be afraid, and his drowsiness faded. “Is it morning?” he asked.
“No,” said the man. “It is only a few hours past sunset.” He shifted his grip to Mordred’s face, eyes narrowed, and Mordred writhed away with a violent shake of the head. The icy, bony fingers pinching his skin were too much like the werevulture’s claw-hand. Memories poured over him, and he began to tremble in spite of himself. He shrank away, knowing that contemptuous eyes were on him, vainly trying to stop.
“Has the Paraki sent for him, my lord Mirden?” asked one of the guards.
Lord Mirden! Mordred sat up in astonishment.
“Nay, I came of myself.” The man seized Mordred again and studied him, and Mordred clamped his jaws together, desperately forcing a mask of impassivity over his features. “I wished to see him and speak to him.”
He addressed Mordred. “You, Sinethar, Richardson, Kenhelm, I suspected you early on.”
“How perceptive of you.” Mordred felt easier; here, on the ground of insults and word-gamery, he was safe.
The bottomless dark eyes narrowed again. “I suspected you, as I said. There is something strange about you. I wish to know what it is, and that is why I have come.”
Mordred almost laughed. The shivering had passed, he was awake, and this man was making all the most exquisite blunders. “Pray be more specific, my lord. I am sure there are a dozen things strange about me, but I cannot be expected to know any of them, much less which one you are referring to.”
“I do not know what it is.” Lord Mirden was growing angry. “And I wish to know.”
“Perhaps we should find a third party who is more clever than either of us,” suggested Mordred.
His face stung with the slap. “Silence your impertinent tongue! I tell you, there is something about you foreign to me, something which is opposed to all that I am—from which my senses recoil.”
“Is it that I have hair where you do not?” Mordred arched a wondering eyebrow.
“You foul little zarhiss—”
The torrent of harsh, hissing invective that he fell into was unintelligible, alien, yet it rang on Mordred’s ears with a strange familiarity, for he had heard such sounds before. At last the man fell silent, and quietness settled over the whole tent; but his eyes never left Mordred. And Mordred stared back, scornful, cold-faced, a new fear beginning to grow in him.
~
Rustlings came from without, murmurings. A guard lifted his head and said something in Runnicoran.
“Someone comes,” muttered Lord Mirden, rising with an irritated scowl and retreating into the shadows of the tent.
Mordred heard the footsteps scuffling the ground outside the tent, and the flap swishing open, and a figure stepped in.
A slouching, paunch-bellied figure, with an unsightly scar across his cheek and snapping, very much alert black eyes.
“Fine night for guard duty!” said he by way of greeting, nodding to them.
“Mog Dremmag,” mumbled one, recognizing him. “What are you here for?”
“Orders were to relieve you.” The keen eyes drifted over the tent. “Looks like I’m the only one who decided to show up on time, eh?”
With a rueful shrug he sat on the grass and produced a bottle from the satchel at his side, handing it to the nearest guard. “Dirty little slackers. Well, they ought to show up soon. Have a drink to pass the moments?”
The atmosphere became suddenly much more cordial. The soldier accepted the bottle and drank deeply, passing it around, even offering some to Mirden, who came forward and took it stiffly.
Minutes passed. A sluggishness grew on the soldiers, a lethargy, and the bottle lay forgotten and almost empty between them. They sat with drooping eyelids until finally they slumped over, one and then another, while Mordred watched so tense that he could scarcely breathe.
The relief guard eased himself up delicately as a cat and prodded the nearest man thoughtfully with his boot. There was no response. With a sly, satisfied grin he turned leisurely and winked at Mordred.
“It pays to learn the components of a sleeping draught,” said Jedediah Crayes.
Mordred stared at him, speechless, an ecstatic smile widening his mouth.
“Well, don’t just grin at me like a recently birthed idiot,” Jedediah Crayes said irritably. “Get up and let’s see about getting you out of here. I hope you appreciate what an inconvenience you’re being.”
Mordred did not answer. The smile died away from his lips, and his hands grew cold, as Lord Mirden rose from the ground with no sign of drowsiness, shrugging his hair deliberately back and coming up behind Jedediah Crayes with a knife—
“Jedediah Crayes,” he gasped.
Jedediah Crayes whipped around, a knife sliding into his own hand as if he had conjured it from the air. It clashed ringing on the first. Then, with a shriek, Lord Mirden hurled himself on Jedediah Crayes in the form of a great white-headed vulture, wings flailing, spitting and screeching in its own tongue.
Mordred sprang to his feet, shaken, eyes riveted helplessly on the sight. For a bare few seconds they were on the ground, locked snarling and tearing into one another like two animals, but Lord Mirden suddenly returned to man-form and with a hiss snapped his hands around Jedediah Crayes’ throat.
But Jedediah Crayes answered with an instant, solid punch on Lord Mirden’s own throat, and as Lord Mirden reeled, choking, he slipped a second knife out of his belt and stabbed him between the ribs.
Lightly he leapt back as the dying werevulture staggered, and sheathed his knife, breathing quickly. His eyes were bright and he looked more than ever like a cat.
“Well,” he remarked. “A near shave, that.” Amusement twitched his face as he regarded the dead body. “If it isn’t the turncoat Lord Mirden. Ha! I fancy that’s a tidbit that will please the general. Mirden discovered, apprehended, and executed.” He uttered a short laugh, nudging the lifeless form. “Old, he was; he shouldn’t have tried that. Old, stupid, and slow. Wonder what he was really up to?”
“Did the—draught have no effect on him?” Mordred gazed down at the white, hook-nosed face.
Jedediah Crayes snorted. “He wasn’t that stupid. No, I’m quite sure he never took a sip of it. Fool that I am, I didn’t check to make sure that everyone actually swallowed who put it to his lips. I should know better.” He grumbled softly to himself as he picked up his other knife and sent it with a snick into his belt. “No, he wasn’t that stupid. Just stupid enough to think he could take me on at his age. He must be at least a hundred twenty; past his prime, at any rate.”
He glanced at Mordred. “Anyway. Back to where we were before that little incident. Let’s get you out of here. If we hurry we can get to Mianu shortly after dawn, though we’ll have to be wary of Cern Dersturi’s retreating troops.”
“It’s all right,” Mordred began. “I can go alone—”
“No,” Jedediah Crayes snapped. “I’ve had enough. I don’t trust you two feet out of my sight, you rascal. Next minute I turn my back you’ll be in the Runnicoran’s clutches again, or maybe another werevulture. I am accompanying you to Mianu’s gate and that’s an order.”
“I understand.” Mordred could not quite manage to keep a straight face.
“And I hope you don’t think I’m doing this because I like you or anything. It’s because you’re useful, very useful, and I’m too smart to let something useful go to waste.” Jedediah Crayes shot Mordred a menacing look under his brows. “Understood?”
“Yes,” said Mordred. “I see.”
Jedediah Crayes led the way out of the tent and through the camp with his expert discreetness and speed. Mordred followed with difficulty, only breathing easier when they had left the Runnicorans behind and were walking through the fringe of forest, whereupon Jedediah Crayes slowed his pace to a lazy amble.
“Stupid,” he muttered on one occasion, and on another, “Absurd—ha!” Mordred, accustomed to his casual, unannounced verbal expulsion of emotion, did not ask what he was thinking about, nor did he care. He was quite simply happier than he had been since—since he had said good-bye to Jedediah Crayes upon becoming Sinethar.
“Jedediah Crayes,” he said, comforting night-whispers in his ears, “What was Lord Mirden doing with the Runnicoran side? He must have been helping them for a very long time. I thought werevultures hated all men.”
“What?” Jedediah Crayes laughed. “Of course they do. And there’s nothing they love better than to help pit two countries against one another! As long as there’s bloodshed for the ‘nikorss’ in it, you can bet a thousand recenna that a werevulture will want to get his beak involved. Of course, he’ll place himself strategically on the side that’s most likely to win, which in this case was Runnicor.
“Werevultures!” He snorted softly, gazing up at the sky. “They are never done making trouble. Cunning, strong, long-lived—one of them will stir up more havoc than a dozen men. But after all, we have at least this advantage: they cannot work together, as they once did. They walk alone.”
“I read that tale,” said Mordred, memories stirring in him. “A long time ago, in the orphanage. They were cursed in the fall of Serndol. The queen doomed them to never have a ruler from their own kind again. And ever since, they have been scattered and disunified.”
“Exactly. Very kind of the queen.” Jedediah Crayes’ eyes glinted with laughter that he did not utter. “Who could stand against an entire army of werevultures? Goodness knows they cause enough headaches for us as it is.”
He broke off speech abruptly and dragged Mordred behind a low bank of fallen tree and bracken. Mordred, crouching with thundering heart and Jedediah Crayes’ hand tight on his shoulder, listened as the tramp of a couple dozen men passed them and faded.
