Avenger

THIRTY

15 Ches, the Year of Deep Water Drifting (1480 DR)

The sun, weak and pale, broke through the overcast as Geran and his small company thundered over the Vale Road. They raced north for a half mile or more, following the familiar twists and turns through the muddy fields and wooded stretches, the trees still brown and bare from winter. Geran leaned forward over his mount’s neck, urging the horse to more speed; the misty air splattered his face with droplets of cold water, and the animal’s flying hooves kicked plumes of mud up behind him. All he could hear was the drumming of hooves, the creaking of the saddle, the clash and jingle of the armored warriors behind him.

They galloped into a thick copse that cut off the view of the road ahead, and passed by a motionless horse standing beside a fallen warrior, a Council Guard mercenary who’d evidently ridden as far as he could with the wounds he carried from the engagement by the Burned Bridge. The Hulmaster company sped past the fallen mercenary without stopping. Then they burst out of the woods into the last stretch of open fields before old Lendon’s Wall.

Marstel and his Vaasan escort were a scant hundred yards ahead of them, riding slowly northward. The mercenaries and Vaasans stared back in horrified astonishment, surprised by the appearance of pursuit, before they spurred their horses ahead with cries of alarm. Two or three of the riders fell behind almost at once.

“They’ve got more injured from the fight by the bridge!” Kara shouted to Geran. “We’ve got them!”

The fleeing lord and his allies realized their predicament as well. They kept up their flight for a few hundred yards more until they reached the spot where the Vale Road passed through a gap in Lendon’s Wall, then reined in and turned to make the best stand they could in the narrows. Several worked to ready crossbows as the Shieldsworn raced closer, and a ragged volley of bolts whistled past Geran; he heard cries of pain and the sudden clatter of a warrior falling from the saddle. Risking a quick glance behind him, he saw Mirya and Hamil reining in short of the clash. He was relieved to see that Mirya had sense enough to know that she had no business getting in the middle of mailed swordsmen and swordswomen trained to fight from horseback. She slid from her saddle and began to draw her own crossbow.

That’s not a knife fight, the halfling told him. Go ahead, I’ll be here if you need me.

“Take them!” Geran cried to his warriors, and he led the way as the lines closed. He spied a woman with a veil over her face riding close beside the Warlock Knight; she began chanting a spell, pointing a wand at him. An instant later a bolt of purple lightning crackled across the gap between them, as Geran raised his blade to parry with a counterspell on his lips. The arcane lightning glanced from Umbrach Nyth to plow a deep furrow in the muddy ground nearby; a small shock tingled through Geran’s arm, but he was otherwise unhurt. Then he was in the middle of a violent skirmish as his horse carried him into the middle of the enemy. Knee to knee with a Vaasan rider, he cut and parried with everything he had left as the Shieldsworn riders hammered into their foes.

“For Hulburg, and the true harmach!” a Shieldsworn shouted. Others took up the cry.

The Vaasan sorceress took aim at Geran again as he was caught in the press. He tried to maneuver into a position to parry her next spell-but suddenly Kara flashed into sight, nimbly dashing through the fight on her agile mare. She took the Vaasan sorceress out of the saddle with a wide slash of her saber; the woman screamed and fell, her wand flying from her outstretched fingers.

Geran’s adversary was swept away from him as the Shieldsworn’s greater numbers began to tell. He looked for another foe, and spied the Warlock Knight Terov in his armor of black plate. The Vaasan lord dueled with a Shieldsworn rider briefly before smashing him out of the saddle with a spell that conjured dancing black motes along his rune-scribed sword. Geran spurred for the Warlock Knight, ducking under the Vaasan’s blade to stab at the man’s neck, but the knight’s gorget deflected the stroke. Terov countered with a quick chop at Geran’s sword arm, but the swordmage parried as his horse’s momentum carried him past.

Rather than follow him, Terov wheeled and shouted at Marstel. “Harmach Maroth, flee! My iron tower is only half a mile farther.”

At the edge of the fray, Maroth Marstel wheeled his horse and spurred madly for the open road; the Warlock Knight raced after him. Geran sought to drive his own mount through the press after the fleeing lords, but too many soldiers-Shieldsworn, Vaasan, and Council Guard alike-crowded the gap in the old dike. For the moment there was no opening.

“Marstel’s getting away!” Kara shouted over the fighting.

“I know!” Geran snapped. He couldn’t get through the press, but he could go around it … Before he could reconsider the desperate plan that had sprung into his mind, he slid out of the saddle into the muddy road and fixed his eye on a spot just a short distance ahead of the fleeing lords. “Sieroch!” he said, summoning his teleport spell to mind. With one confident step he strode through an instant of icy blackness, reappearing to stand in the road a few yards ahead of Marstel and Terov on their galloping horses. In the moment before they rode him down, he wove his sword through an intricate flourish and unlocked his next spell. “Nhareith syl shevaere!”

A bright blue corona of fire sprang into being on the shadow sword’s dark blade, streaming an arc of blue flames as Geran’s sword danced in his hand. With one final slash, the swordmage flung the fiery blast at his enemies. The horses whinnied and shied from the sheet of fire, losing their footing as they leaped away from Geran and the menace of his flames. Terov cursed and deflected the sword’s fiery arc, at least in part, with a counterspell of his own-but the panicked stop of his mount sent him flying from the saddle. Marstel had no such magic to protect himself, and the blue fire seared a black gash through his breastplate that stretched from hip to shoulder. The usurper spilled to the ground as his horse went down. Geran tried to dodge the tumbling horse as it crashed by him, but it swept through his legs and knocked him down too.

He fell into the muddy road in a great splash, shocked by the cold water that soaked his clothing. The fall knocked the wind out of him, but a heartbeat later he scrambled back to his feet and staggered toward Marstel. The old lord lay facedown in the road, limbs twisted from his fall, a faint wisp of acrid smoke rising from his breastplate. Geran reached him and rolled him over, raising Umbrach Nyth to deal the coup de grace to throat or heart.

It wasn’t necessary. For a moment Marstel’s eyes locked on Geran’s as the old lord’s breath and blood gurgled somewhere in his broken body-then Marstel’s eyes drooped and his last breath wheezed from his lips. “You old fool,” Geran rasped. He let his sword drop and looked up to find the Warlock Knight, meaning to deal with Terov next. The Vaasan lord floundered on the ground twenty feet away, gasping with pain as he disentangled himself from his saddle and stirrups. Geran pushed himself upright and started toward him, only to halt in disbelief when a great burst of smoke and wet, bubbling sounds erupted behind him. He spun around in time to see Maroth Marstel’s body melting away into a puddle of dark, frothing ooze.

“What in the Nine Hells?” he muttered. He backed several steps away, staring in astonishment.

The sounds of skirmishing behind him diminished as Shieldsworn and Vaasan alike paused, distracted by the spectacle. Kara, who’d picked her way through the fray and was now close behind Geran, peered at the stinking mess. “What in the world did you do to him, Geran?” she asked.

“It was no spell of mine,” Geran replied. “That was a thrice-damned simulacrum, not the real Marstel! It must have been!” He was no expert on such magic, but Rhovann certainly was. Now that it was dead, it was reverting to the alchemical brew that the wizard had made it from.

“A simulacrum?” Terov snarled. The Warlock Knight had lost his horned helm in his fall; beneath it he seemed surprisingly ordinary, a man with stern features and steel gray hair. Only his crimson eyes marked the touch of the supernatural in his face. “It was a simulacrum I tried to spirit away? Curse Rhovann Disarnnyl’s perfidy! He’s made a fool of me, and kept the real Marstel for himself.” He finally dragged his feet free of the stirrups and started to stand, pushing himself unsteadily to his feet.

“Whether he did or not, it was little help to him,” Geran replied. He turned his attention to the Vaasan lord and advanced on him, setting the point of Umbrach Nyth at Terov’s neck before the Warlock Knight found his feet. “I have you at a disadvantage, my lord. Yield, and order your men to yield as well, or I’ll slay you where you stand.”

Terov glowered at Geran for a moment before he sighed and raised his hand to the handful of soldiers still on their feet. “Very well,” he said. “I yield. Borys, Naran, you others-lower your weapons. We can do no more here.”

Kara trotted forward and dismounted beside Geran. “Where is the real Marstel?” she demanded of Terov.

“I have no idea,” the Warlock Knight answered. “If you don’t have him, and I don’t have him, then I would guess that he is either dead or locked away in some secure dungeon of Rhovann’s. This one here”-he nodded at the sodden, bubbling puddle in the empty armor-“has ruled in Hulburg for a couple of months now.”

Geran risked a glance at the frozen skirmish behind him. Several Shieldsworn were on the ground, but none of the Council Guards were still in the saddle, and only four of the Vaasans remained. Hamil and Mirya slowly rode forward along the road as Sergeant Kolton directed his Shieldsworn to dismount and disarm their prisoners. Mirya closed her eyes and murmured a prayer of thanks as she saw that Geran was unhurt; Hamil took in the scene with a broad grin, and gave Geran a wink.

Looks like you’ve got the rascal right where you want him, he said to Geran. Run him through already, and let’s go have breakfast.

“Not quite yet,” Geran murmured. He looked back to the Vaasan. “Who are you? And what is your quarrel with Hulburg?”

The Warlock Knight’s face might have been made of stone. “I am Kardhel Terov, fellthane and Warlock Knight. I have no particular quarrel with Hulburg. It is simply not in Vaasa’s interest to leave Hulburg in the hands of a weak ruler who might fall under the sway of Mulmaster or Hillsfar.”

“You say you’ve got no quarrel with us, but I don’t see it so. Last year on this very spot I fought Vaasan knights who were aiding the Bloody Skulls in their attack on Hulburg. Mhurren and his orcs would have razed Hulburg to the ground if we hadn’t fought and bled here to stop them. Now I find that you meant to keep Maroth Marstel as a pawn to use against us whenever you felt like it.” Geran narrowed his eyes. “You’ve caused my family and my people a great deal of blood, grief, and tears, Vaasan. Don’t play games with me if you value your life.”

“There are repercussions for slaying a Warlock Knight, Hulmaster.”

“Which I care nothing for at the moment.”

Terov grimaced. “I am not toying with you. We have done nothing more than back the strongest faction in our designs to bring Hulburg within our orbit. Last year the rising power in the Moonsea North was Warchief Mhurren. This year the master mage of Hulburg was ascendant. If your position had seemed strongest to us, we would have approached you, but in fact the survival of House Hulmaster seemed highly unlikely until the last day or two. I would dearly like to know how you ruined Rhovann’s construct warriors at a single stroke, by the way. In any event, the grief we caused your family was incidental to your own lack of strength.”

“We seemed weak, so what you did to us was justified?” Geran snapped. “Show me your iron ring!”

Terov hesitated, but the shadow sword at his throat did not waver. He drew off his gauntlet and held up his right hand. The ring was surprisingly plain in appearance, a simple band of iron.

Geran shifted Umbrach Nyth to his left hand and seized Terov’s right hand in the clasp of his leather-gauntleted silver fist. “Swear on your ring that you will truthfully answer the next question I ask.”

“That is hardly necessary-”

“Swear it or I’ll kill you myself,” Kara said from beside Geran. Terov’s eyes blazed with anger, but he nodded. “I swear I shall answer truthfully.”

“Did you direct the Cyricist priest Valdarsel to arrange the assassination of my family?” asked Geran in a cold voice.

Terov flinched-not much, only a slight flick of the eyes, but a flinch nonetheless. “Yes,” he answered. “But, as I said-”

“Shut your mouth!” Geran snarled. Before he knew what he meant to do, he released Terov’s hand and struck him in the face with his right hand. A sharp jolt of fresh pain seared his arm as the damaged bones of his wrist took the impact, and a trickle of fresh blood started from beneath the silver cuff at the end of his arm. But Terov’s jaw broke under the weight of the silver fist. The Warlock Knight spun to the ground, spitting blood and broken teeth. Geran strode forward and seized Terov by the gorget, setting the point of his sword at the Vaasan’s throat.

“Murdering bastard,” Hamil said aloud. “If you don’t kill him, Geran, I’ll be happy to take care of it for you.”

“I yielded, damn you!” Terov snarled through his bloody lips.

Geran glared at the Vaasan, but in his mind’s eye he saw Harmach Grigor gasping out the last breaths of his life in Lasparhall, and dead Shieldsworn and servants strewn through the manor. His sword arm almost quivered with the need to take the Vaasan’s life. He felt Mirya frown in deep distaste, shrinking from the blow she sensed gathering in him. Somehow he found that he didn’t want her to see what he meant to do next; her disapproval held him from striking for a heartbeat as he looked down at the villain helpless under his blade. There was no question that Kardhel Terov deserved whatever fate he chose to mete out, that the blood of Grigor Hulmaster and perhaps hundreds more Hulburgans was on his hands. But slaying the Warlock Knight, however richly he deserved death, would not deter Vaasa from meddling in Hulburg’s affairs again.

As a Hulmaster I can justly take his life, Geran thought through his cold fury. But as the Lord Hulmaster, is this the right thing for Hulburg?

“Strike if you think it is right, Geran,” Kara said softly. “He has earned it.”

Geran’s eye fell on the leather gauntlet covering the silver hand he now wore in place of his own. A spot of blood stained the cuff, dripping from where Rhovann’s hand joined his arm. Suddenly he felt exhausted, tired of the never-ending circle of strife and suffering he seemed to be caught in. Looking down at Terov, he realized that he didn’t hate the man. After all, he hardly knew him. He might hate the things Terov had done, but that was not the same thing. And he knew that a war with Vaasa could end in only one way for Hulburg. “Nothing will be ended if I do,” he murmured aloud.

This is why I shouldn’t be harmach, he told himself. Compromise isn’t in my nature. He sighed, and lowered his blade from Terov’s throat. “Can you speak for Vaasa?” he said. “Will the Council of Knights be bound by what you agree to here?”

Terov wiped the blood from his chin and nodded. “Yes,” he replied.

“Swear to it.”

“Damn it, yes, I swear it by my ring. My word can bind the Council of Knights.”

Geran reached down and took Terov’s ring hand again. “Then swear to me that Vaasa will never again interfere in Hulburg’s affairs or support Hulburg’s enemies for the purpose of harming my family or realm, and I will let you leave here alive and unharmed.”

Terov shook his head. “I cannot swear that oath. Never would make it impossible, and therefore powerless. Five years I could promise you.”

“Make it twenty,” Kara said.

Terov grimaced, holding his jaw gingerly. “Ten, and in all candor, that is all I can promise without intent of evasion. There are limits to the authority I wield on the council’s behalf.”

“Ten years, then,” Geran decided. “Swear it, and you can go.”

“I swear on the part of the Council of Knights that no Warlock Knight or agent of Vaasa shall interfere in Hulburg’s affairs or give support to Hulburg’s enemies for the purpose of harming the realm or persons of the Hulmasters, to be so bound for ten years from this day.”

Geran felt an eddy of magic gathering in the ring under his hand. He released Terov and stepped back, sheathing Umbrach Nyth. The Warlock Knight stood up slowly, and regarded Geran for a long moment. The gray turret of his iron tower was a dark shadow peeking through the trees by the shores of Lake Hul. “May we collect our wounded and dead?” asked Terov.

“Go ahead,” the swordmage answered. “But I want that tower out of Hulburg’s territory by the end of the day tomorrow.”

“We will be gone by sunset today.” Terov motioned to his soldiers, who quickly gathered their wounded comrades. The veiled mage was sorely hurt, and Geran wasn’t sure if she would survive or not, but the Vaasans quickly fashioned a litter for her. They left the Council Guards where they’d fallen or sat wounded under guard, and set off on foot down the road.

“That’s done for now, but what happens in ten years?” Mirya asked as they watched Terov and his soldiers march away.

“I have no idea,” Geran answered. “But I’ve got to believe that in ten years we can find a way to convince the Vaasans that we’re capable of looking after our own affairs-or, at the very least, are more trouble than we’re worth for them.” He shook himself, and turned toward Hulburg again. “Come on. Let’s go home.”