The House of Gaian

Chapter 34

Adolfo opened the door that led out onto a terrace, letting the rain lash his face, soak the fine carpet beneath his muddy boots. The mud and the wet carpet were a small way to punish the baron's wife. The woman was not docile, despite the fact that the baron had followed all the procedures to make her so. Oh, she did what was required, said what was required. . . but hatred burned in the back of her eyes. Should he warn the baron to watch his back? No. If the fool ended up with a knife plunged into his heart one night after using her, it was no more than he deserved.

There was hatred in the baron's wife that discipline would never exorcise. There was fury in the storm that chained him to this house.

A bitch of a storm.

Adolfo stared out at it, as if his stare alone could crush it. Instead, it was crushing him. His army was mired in roads turned to mud. The wheels of supply wagons were sunk to the axles, and even with men straining until muscles tore in their effort to help the horses pull the wagons out, they advanced a handspan at a time. Their only choice had been to empty the wagons and have men carry supplies along with their own packs, exhausting the men to the point where they weren't fit to meet the enemy. Lightning struck old trees that fell across the road, forcing more men to expend time and effort to chop and haul enough aside to let men and wagons pass. Fields were drowning under lakes of water. Creeks had risen and washed away bridges.

A bitch of a storm, reeking with magic and fury, aimed right at him.

He knew who to blame for that.

Leaving the door open so that the storm would frame him, he turned to look at the pale, trembling baron.

"Were my orders so difficult that you found them impossible to follow?" Adolfo asked gently.

"No, Master Adolfo," the baron replied, looking at his hands clasped white-knuckle tight in his lap.

"All you had to do was gather the complement of men from your county and wait for the rest of the army to arrive. Why couldn't you do that?"

When the baron just hunched his shoulders, Adolfo said nothing more, letting silence take on the weight of a weapon. You're a weak man, he thought as he watched the baron, used to being guided. You resented knowing it was your wife's strength and intelligence that kept your estate and your county from being mired in debt, that it was her will that kept you from gobbling up the prosperity of the villages under your hand like a greedy child. What glee you must have felt when my Inquisitors helped you tame her, what pleasure you must have had every time you disciplined her for defying her new place in the world, what joy you must have experienced when you raped her after a beating. But like a greedy child who now has the means of punishing the once-restraining hand, you thought there were no restraints, no one to whom you had to answer. You will learn differently—and you will learn the lesson so well you will never dare disobey again.

"I thought—" The baron stammered, struggled to collect his thoughts. "I only wanted to help our side win the battle. I thought if Baron Liam was eliminated, it would make it easier for the army to march through his county and meet the real enemy, the bitch servants of the Evil One."

"But you didn't eliminate him," Adolfo said, his voice viciously gentle.

"We should have!" The baron finally looked up, confusion and defiance in his face. "He wasn't expecting an attack. He didn't have that many men gathered at his estate. Certainly not enough to defeat my men."

"But he did have enough men."

"He didn't! Even with those Fae helping him, he didn't. He wasn't prepared for an attack. We would have captured him or killed him if. . ." The baron swallowed hard. "If it hadn't been for that wind."

"A wind that was able to defeat three hundred men." Adolfo put just enough skepticism in his voice to sting, even though the storm raging outside was sufficient testimony that the witches in this cursed land were far stronger than any he'd encountered in Wolfram or Arktos. "A wind killed three hundred men."

He had questioned the one man who had escaped the slaughter and managed to make his way back to his home county. Had questioned him carefully. A huge funnel of wind that consumed everything in its path. A controlled funnel of wind. The spot in his lower back that always turned cold when he was afraid felt icy now.

The baron looked away. "I lost my son, my heir. That wind killed him."

And that would be the punishment. The baron hadn't yet considered what the loss of those other men would mean to the farms and villages in his county, wouldn't think of the cost of those lives until his steward made the trip to collect the tithes that filled the baron's pockets. Those pockets would be less full this year. He would insist that the tithe be lowered for every family that had lost a father or a son because of this ill-conceived attack as a compensation for the loss of a worker in his prime. That loss of income would be a punishment, too. But the son, the heir . . .

Adolfo drew on his Inquisitor's Gift of persuasion, let it roll through his voice, turning the mildly spoken words into whiplashes on the heart. "That wind didn't kill your son. You did."

The baron's head snapped up, his eyes full of shock . . . and a kernel of anger.

"You decided to attack the Baron of Willowsbrook on your own instead of waiting for the rest of the army. You sent your heir to lead the men who died without considering all the enemies that might be waiting for you there. You ignored the dangers in order to indulge in some childish rivalry with the other barons. You wanted to be the first to encounter the enemy, to defeat the enemy, to be praised for your courage, to be envied for your vigor. Because of your willfulness, you sent those men to their deaths. And you killed your heir."

The baron wept silently, his kernel of anger crushed under the weight of persuasion.

Watching him, Adolfo felt nothing but contempt. "And because of your recklessness," he continued, "they're aware of the army now." The storm raging outside was confirmation of that. "We no longer have the advantage of swiftness or surprise. Men will die, fighting for ground we should have conquered with ease. Because of you."

"I'm sorry," the baron whispered. "I—"

Adolfo turned and walked out the terrace door, walked into the storm. Fury grew inside him, and his desire to punish was more excessive than prudent.

It wasn't just that men were going to die. Wolfram men were going to die. The army led by the Arktos barons was expendable. So was the army led by the Sylvalan barons from the east and south. Distractions to split the enemy's strength. A bonus if either army actually made it around the north or south ends of the Mother's Hills and threatened the midlands. But this army came from Wolfram, came from his people. There would be losses. He knew that. Now there would be more. They knew he was coming, knew his army was aimed at Willowsbrook and the hills beyond Willowsbrook.

He didn't know how Liam had managed to persuade the Fae to join the fight, and he didn't like the fact that those creatures were suddenly paying attention to the human world. Bad enough that Ubel had encountered them the first time he'd gone to Breton, but if they were actually joining forces with the Sylvalan barons who dared to defy him . . .

He shuddered. There had been no mention of a black-haired woman riding a dark horse. There had been no sign of her around Willowsbrook. With so much death in one place, someone would have seen the Gatherer if she had returned to this part of Sylvalan.

Perhaps he should change the place of attack anyway. Swing around the county Baron Liam ruled and strike somewhere a little farther north or south. It would force the human enemy to march fast to meet him before he reached the Mother's Hills and began cleansing them of the foul magic that lived there. If the Fae had some alliance with Liam, they would lose interest if Willowsbrook wasn't threatened.

He could turn the army away from Willowsbrook . . . but the Sylvalan barons would see it as fear. They would think he was afraid of whatever unnatural allies that young bastard Liam was gathering, would gain strength and courage from misinterpreting his decision, and would pursue him more relentlessly because of it.

Soaked to the skin, Adolfo closed his eyes and lifted his face to the storm. The rain stung his skin, reeked of magic.

Magic.

He smiled.

He wouldn't need to find an Old Place. The bitches were providing him with pools and pockets of magic he could drain for his own use, twist to his own will. He would still need a witch to create his finest gift, but he could use these pockets of magic to create the smaller gifts.

So he wouldn't turn away. He would drive his army to Willowsbrook, would fight against the elements that had become the enemy's weapon. He would capture a witch, soften her enough to remove any threat to himself or his men—and he would give Baron Liam and his allies a gift from out of a nightmare.