The War, page 27
“Peace, Captain,” said the general. “What do you mean by this?” he asked the lean, hawk-nosed rider.
“Just this,” answered Jedediah Crayes. “You will find no battle waiting for you ahead, your attack on the leader’s camp is going to fail, and you had best turn around if you wish to pull them out before it is too late.”
“Explain,” said the general, wheeling his horse. “Give the signal to turn about,” he bade the horn-bearer beside him.
Jedediah Crayes snorted. “What is there to explain, hmm? It is very simple. I have been trailing a man I suspected of spy work for some time, only to have him slip through my fingers yesterday morn. What else, I thought, could he have dashed away to do but warn the leader of an upcoming attack on his camp? When I rode ahead to see whether they took your bait for the decoy—which they did not—the answer was plain enough. Now you must move in haste; Finley Rhodes’ men cannot have come to the camp yet, but it will take us several hours to reach them.”
~
The noise of battle rolled to their ears through the deceptive peace of the standing trees. Cries, thuds, the crash of metal on metal.
“Quickly,” said the general.
As they broke out into the fight, the Runnicorans drew back startled, their tight current of attack dissipating. In the middle of the confusion was a desperate knot of soldiers, half-scattered and fighting madly. Captain Rhodes, helmetless, his armor dented and his cheek streaming blood, looked towards them and narrowed his gaze, trying to see who they were. Then recognition dawned, and his eyes widened in relief.
The general rode forward, closing the distance between them. “What happened?” he asked Captain Rhodes.
“It appeared deserted when we came,” Captain Rhodes said briefly. “I sent out a few to search it better, and they came back with four men missing. I gave the order to continue with the attack, and we had just moved out when the enemy struck.”
The general nodded. “Very well. It will be spoken on more elsewhere. Give the order to your men to retreat, and we will cover you.”
Slowly the Ordenians began to move back, away from the onrushing tide of the enemy. The Runnicorans sought to cut them off, but they continued to withdraw, gradually yet unstoppably.
Ahearn had been pushed to the right wing of the retreat, losing the general and his own men. In the midst of the fighting, his horse suddenly shuddered and swayed as a spear took it through the breast.
He kicked his feet loose of the stirrups, leaping off and landing heavily on his shoulder. He rolled onto his back and stood, barely in time to counter the attack of the same spearman who had killed his horse.
Ahearn was armed with a sword, but the other man handled his spear with surprising skill, using it as both blade and stave. Their fierce exchange carried them all the way to the outskirts of the fighting, where Ahearn at last landed a clean blow on the handle of the spear, snapping it in two. In another moment his adversary lay dead on the ground.
Ahearn let out his breath in a gasping sigh, feeling the tight pain of his wrenched shoulder. The next instant, a hurled stone came flying out of the battle sound to his left and clipped the back of his head, and he dropped like a felled tree.
~
Ahearn came to consciousness with a half-familiar face bending over his and an irritated, urgent voice muttering in his ear. He stirred, and grunted involuntarily at the sharp pain in the back of his head.
“Up you get, sir King,” said the voice shortly, and the lean face came into focus above him.
“Jedediah Crayes,” said Ahearn, sitting up slowly with his rescuer’s help.
“Wonderful observation. Now I’d get up. Your head is not bad, just a brief stun. And there’s a limited distance I’d be able to drag you on my own. Contrary to popular opinion, I am not invincible.”
He dragged Ahearn up to his feet and led the way rapidly through the soft rods of sunlight that were lancing through the trees. “You should be glad I happened along you,” he grumbled. “Lying there just like that for any Runnicoran to find you and stab you to death. Then where are your subjects? An unhappy bereaved people, with an equally unhappy Mordred Kenhelm to rule over them.”
“Do not speak of my brother like that,” said Ahearn sharply.
“You Kenhelms are all the same,” Jedediah Crayes said hopelessly. “‘Don’t talk about my brother like that.’ ‘Don’t talk about my brother like that!’”
He seemed to know precisely where he was going, and Ahearn, who did not, could do nothing but follow him and hope he was right. “We could not rejoin the army?” he asked.
Jedediah Crayes sputtered. “What? He gets completely separated from the retreat and knocked upside the head and lies unconscious for a quarter of an hour, and what? Excuse me for not trying to fight through half a mile of Runnicoran soldiers for your preference.”
“I see,” returned Ahearn stiffly. “And may I ask what acquaintance you have had with my brother, that you seem to know of his existence at all?”
“Acquaintance? I’m his tutor.” Jedediah Crayes smiled smugly at his inscrutable remark.
“What does that mean?” Ahearn snapped back.
“Tutor in spy work. Now you can’t tell that to anyone, especially considering that the war’s not over and he might well go back into it if necessary. The only reason I tell you at all is that you’re a high-ranking personage who would’ve known sooner or later.”
“Mordred is—a spy?” The thought was completely unexpected and bewildering.
“Is, was,” said Jedediah Crayes cheerfully, ducking under a branch. “Not serving actively in that regard at present. And I hardly need tell you he’s been doing an excellent job of it. You remember the Runnicoran man Blackthorn they caught back in April? That was his doing. And the failed attack through the pass of Mirech? That was him again.”
Ahearn, who thus far had known Jedediah Crayes only as a vain and thoroughly haughty man, was taken aback to hear him bragging about someone else. “I see,” he said slowly.
“Hullo, now—what’s this?” Jedediah Crayes bent down, running his fingers over a faint rut in the undergrowth. “Looks like a cart wheel track. And here’s the other,” he added, moving a little ways further.
“Does it matter?” asked Ahearn impatiently.
His disinterest only served to make Jedediah Crayes give more painstaking attention to his deductions. “Of course not,” he retorted. “I’m merely interested. Who was driving a cart in this secluded area of the woods? Ha! footprints beside it, see? Two people, hmm, perhaps three, hard to tell in this light. The cart ruts are deep, though. Must have been carrying quite a load. Maybe a wood-gatherer. But was it a farmer, or a Runnicoran soldier? Not many farmers around here, probably even less with an army nearby. I would opt for the soldier.”
Jedediah Crayes paced quickly along the tracks for a few feet, and Ahearn, following a short way behind, heard him give a surprised grunt.
“Doesn’t look like they came to a very pretty end,” he said to Ahearn as he approached. “See that?”
He pointed to a slight rise in the ground, which looked no more than a hillock until Ahearn joined Jedediah Crayes on its brow. There the ground broke away quite suddenly into a sheer cliff, and a ravine with a rushing river at the bottom. The wheel marks led up the slope, and then at the very brink, where the undergrowth petered out, there were marks of scuffling and sliding.
Ahearn looked into the gorge stretching down—down—
“But if it were wood-gatherers,” he said, “they needn’t have gone over with the cart.”
“They may have escaped,” said Jedediah Crayes. “But I don’t think they were wood-gatherers.”
He paused, looking at Ahearn’s perplexed face.
“Their cart was full, but they were heading away from the camp altogether. And even if they had been fetching wood, the soldiers have been taking it from the east side, not the north.” He paused again, as though thinking.
“There is one place they could have been heading for. That is the leader’s other camp, the one that you were making a show upon with the decoy.”
“So?” said Ahearn, questioningly, as Jedediah Crayes turned back from the cliff and led the way again through the trees.
“The tracks are quite recent. I would guess we happened upon traces of some trusty Runnicorans, bringing Cern Dersturi four Ordenian soldiers.”
“The four that Captain Rhodes—” Ahearn began, and said no more.
~
“Let me in,” snapped Jedediah Crayes, scowling at the face of the guards at the West Gate. “Do you mean to hinder Jedediah Crayes? Oh, if Jedediah Crayes isn’t enough for you, this is Ahearn of Dirion, whom I imagine everyone has been in a tizzy over.”
It was gladly then that they were admitted.
“We were almost ready to account you both as dead,” said the general when the three of them, together with Captain Rhodes, met in Mitheren late that night.
Jedediah Crayes winced. “Both?” he muttered under his breath. He said aloud, “Your four missing soldiers, Captain Rhodes, I suspect we found. Or found as much of them as we will ever find.”
“What do you mean?” asked Captain Rhodes swiftly, his face paling.
“They were being transported in a cart, to the other camp, I believe. Unfortunately their guards were careless or ignorant of the area, and the cart went over into a gorge.”
“Who were the men?” the general asked, looking to Captain Rhodes.
“They were all from that village of Ceristen,” said Captain Rhodes, staring at the wall. “Bardrick Segelas, Therelane Grey, and Mordred and Fenris Kenhelm.”
Ahearn stood up, face stricken.
Jedediah Crayes straightened in his chair. “Well, in that case,” he said abruptly, “they’re obviously not dead.”
CHAPTER 26
FENRIS SWAM UP SLOWLY THROUGH a murky haze of muddled, wisping dreams. His head ached, and the pain and clinging drowsiness clouded his thoughts. Where was he? Why did his head ache?
He strained to remember. The attack on the leader’s camp; Mordred talking; the camp, deserted.
Aye, the camp had been deserted, they had searched it. One man had found movement, and he had gone with him. And then?
Then—nothing. Nothing until now . . .
His head hurt—something must have hit him. A rock—a branch? A falling branch could not have knocked him out. And why would a rock have hit him unless someone had hurled it?
Had they been attacked then? He could not remember—he could not remember. Panic shot suffocatingly through his chest, and he opened his eyes to look around, find out where he was.
He saw nothing.
It was all black.
He put a hand to his eyes, frantic, wondering whether they were really open. Surely he was still dreaming. But the ground under him was real—cold, gritty stone. The sickening pangs in his head were real.
Could the blow have blinded me? Horror overcame him, dizzied him, and the dread of not knowing anything. Where am I? he thought despairingly. Where am I?
He could not think clearly for a long time, but only lay in confused pain and terror, until he heard all at once a soft sound beside him, like a breath or a whisper. He waited tensely, listening, and it came again, a rustling noise and a faint, restless sigh.
“Where are you?” he called out, desperation shaking his voice. The effort of speaking sent flashes of pain afresh through his head.
“Fenris?” came a voice in answer, faint, unsure.
“Who are you?”
“Bardrick. Bardrick Segelas. Is that you, Fenris?”
“Aye—it is. Bardrick, I cannot see.”
He heard a grunting, as though Bardrick were sitting up. Cold fingers brushed across his own. “There you are. Rest easy, Fenris. Not a one of us could see in this place, ’tis windowless as far as I can tell and night besides.”
Fenris let out a shuddering breath, feeling as though a grip of burning iron had released him. But the other fears returned to hold him fiercer still. “What has happened, Bardrick? Where are we?”
Bardrick released a long, weary sigh. “I do not know. I followed a man who said he had found . . . found enemy soldiers. I think he turned on me and struck me, and I woke in a cart moving through the woods. There were two men hurrying beside it, talking—arguing, mostly. One said that he feared they were being followed.
“‘If so,’ said the other, ‘then let’s make a false trail going over that bluff.’
“‘I think we ought to make it look like we killed the prisoners and then went over; they’ll be more likely to believe that’—so said the first man, and they stopped the cart and argued for a little. It was dim and I thought to get away, but one of them saw me climbing out and leveled his spear at me, and the other one stunned me again from behind. After that I was too sick to try, and I remember nothing more until someone pulled me up and marched me here. That is all I know of what happened; and if it is the leader who has captured us, I do not know why, nor what he means to do with us.”
Fenris did not know either. Surely it could only be the Runnicorans who had taken them; but what value were they as prisoners? Who could possibly find them useful?
“Bardrick,” he said, “are there any others besides us?”
“One or two more, I think,” said Bardrick. “I do not know who, though. I noticed that there were others in the cart with me, but I did not pay attention to them.”
His last words faded out of Fenris’ consciousness, and he slipped into a fitful, half-fevered sleep.
Several hours must have passed before he woke fully again. His first thought was that he could see. A stone wall enclosed him in an enormous circle; the ceiling was in shadow, but high and near to it there was a ring of slits in the wall, through which a greyish dawn light was seeping.
Fenris pushed himself upright, despite an onrush of dizziness. The round prison was perhaps thirty feet wide and maybe twice that in height; he could see no opening or door. The floor beneath him was stone, as he had felt earlier, cold and very filthy.
Bardrick was close beside him, his breath coming soft and even; the skin of his cheek was broken and bruised, and trickles of blood had dried on his face. Beyond him two more figures lay sprawled on the stones, their faces turned away from him. There was something about one of them—something familiar about those lean, broad shoulders—
Fenris sprang up, heedless of his throbbing head, and knelt down beside his unconscious brother. “Mordred!”
The tears spilled over. “Why, Mordred?” he whispered.
No answer came. Mordred lay still, his face white, almost translucent in the grey light, a strange stone-like cast upon it as though he were nothing more than a statue.
Why, Mordred? Why not me alone?
“Mordred,” he repeated through his tears, longing for an answer.
Mordred’s breathing deepened suddenly, caught a moment and resumed. His eyelids fluttered open. “Fenris,” he murmured, sounding bewildered. Then his eyes darkened as though remembering, and his brows contracted in a frown.
Swift anxiety filled Fenris, banishing his grief. Although he had wanted Mordred to wake, he knew that his own sorrow that his brother had been captured was small compared to the guilt Mordred must feel. “Mordred,” he said, seeking to reassure him in what little he could. “Mordred, I am all right.”
Mordred gave a little, matter-of-fact nod. The tightness around his mouth slackened, and he spoke in a tired but sardonic tone. “I think . . . I’ll take back what I said about our close proximity to the leader now.”
Fenris was taken aback. “Mordred,” he pleaded, “how can you laugh—about this?”
Mordred’s eyes met Fenris’, and there was something very far from laughter in them. He did not answer.
~
“Fool,” said Cern Dersturi, his deep, dark eyes like knifing waves. “I told you to take Damachrus of Ralecurn for me. Mordred Kenhelm you would find him as, I said. And what is this you have brought me? Four useless prisoners!”
The man before him shrank back. “We were unable to mingle among the soldiers beforehand as you bade us, Paraki. Only after they arrived in the camp could we slip among them. I could not determine which of them this Mordred Kenhelm was, and only could guess from your description of a tall, dark-haired, light-eyed young man. We thought it best if we . . . ”
“Took captive all the dark-haired young men in the army?” A mocking laugh came harshly from his mouth. “You miserable fool. And you only took four? What if none of them had been the one I wanted?”
“We could not take more,” the man stammered. “They noticed our movements and withdrew.”
“I do not want more, you know that. You should be grateful that you did manage in all your blundering to snare him, that lying scoundrel Damachrus of Ralecurn—” He drew in a hissing breath, and spat. “As for the others, I will attend to them.”
“I did not fail you, Paraki,” the man pointed out nervously.
“True. You did not fail me. You have only disappointed me, and I might say angered me by your stupidity. You are released from any kind of spy service, now or in the future; go report yourself as the nearest officer’s servant. And do not think I have not been lenient with you. If you had not brought me Damachrus, I would have killed you now.”
~
Fenris sat against the wall, staring at the shrouded ceiling. Strange patterns of light played through the narrow slots, like intangible blades of gold crossing one another. To his tired, half-asleep eyes they almost seemed to dance.
Mordred lay by his feet, his eyes open and staring absently away, small tight lines around his mouth. Bardrick and Therelane, too, lay on the stones, awake, weary, listless. No one spoke.
What did they have to say to one another? They were prisoners, injured, without help, for what reason none of them knew; or if any did, he said nothing of it. So silence reigned among the four prisoners.
A voice carried through the tiny windows above them, faint and distant, to Fenris’ ear.
“Nay, I am done with him. He has the sense of a mule and the wit of an addled deer. For all that he secured Damachrus, he has also saddled me with three I did not ask for. His bungling maddens me; let us speak no more of it.”
