In the Eye of Heaven Part 40

After thirty paces, the gloom and the noises beyond pushed Deorwen from his head. The roads teemed with madmen and thieves; he had seen as much with his own eyes.

Another dull report echoed down the road. Durand touched the worn pommel of his sword.

"How far?" he whispered.

Agryn rubbed his jaw. "They are some way off still, I think."

"I suppose we ought to get a look at them," Durand said. Neither of them wore armor. "Aye."

"Now I could use that blind old man and his second sight," Durand joked.

Agryn took a moment to peer into Durand's face."He had things to say," Durand admitted.

"Such folk do not always realize that we are not all like them."

Something in the man's look hinted. "He spoke to you as well, didn't he ..." After a moment's stillness, Agryn let out a long breath. Just then, something moved up the track. They heard murmured voices.

"Let us come upon them from the forest," Agryn whispered, and led Durand silently up the roadside bank and into the trees.

Within twenty paces, Durand could see firelight. The wet tang of stables reached his nostrils. Men were laughing.

Durand spotted a screened approach, and, hooking a finger toward Agryn, wormed himself behind a knot of blackthorn right at the camp's edge. Agryn pointed to the canvas of one tent wall: Lord Moryn's blue and yellow diamonds.

In the branches, something scrabbled to life right over Durand's head.

A maze of oak branches stretched against the Heavens. Half-lost among the crabbed lines moved black and s.h.a.ggy forms: rooks.

One brute flapped its wings, dropping a rain of debris into Durand's eyes: loud.

"What's that?" said a voice from the camp. Durand knew the bullying tone from his wrestling match.

"Spirits in the bushes, you reckon? Should we go have a look?"

Durand grabbed his sword, but saw that Agryn seemed ready to come out of hiding. His hand was nowhere near his blade.

Recognizing their difference of opinion, Agryn nodded toward the trees, and the two faded back into the woods-a sensible compromise.

THE NEXT DAY, an oxcart was all it took to catch two companies of mounted knights-at-arms.

As Lamoric's men wound their way north, the Lawerin Way sank between steep banks until only a mounted man might see the mills and towers of pa.s.sing villages from the road. The ancient way narrowed, trees crowded close, and a vast oxcart lumbered in the track ahead of them.

There was no way around, and soon Lord Moryn's party was right on their heels.

Durand found himself at the head of the party, driven nearly into the back of the tall cart.

A ragged black shape alighted on a branch overhead.

"I suppose my father will have sent Landast," Lamoric was saying, voice m.u.f.fled in the red helm he must wear with so many of Moryn's men right behind them. "I don't imagine he'll stir himself to travel as far as Tern Gyre this time of year."

As the cart lumbered on, Durand saw more of the black birds. They hopped and chortled among themselves.

"Your father's not a young man," Coensar answered.

"And my brother will carry his vote to the council with great care. Landast does everything with great care."

Coensar smiled indulgently.

All around now, black mockers lurched and chuckled in the canopy of branches. Others had begun to notice. There were scores, thick as the leaves of a black summer.

"Durand," inquired Lamoric, "Coen was meant to say, 'He must be a comfort to your father' just then, was he not?"

Durand blinked. "Yes, Lordship.""You see?" Lamoric said.

Two of the ragged black birds swung in to squat on the roof of the cart. Jet eyes glittered.

As Durand's mouth opened, someone at the tail of the party began to cause a commotion. Durand twisted to see Waer, the wrestler, arguing with some of Guthred's men. Horses and men jostled in the narrow roadway.

In the commotion, the huge cart jerked out of the ruts to crash in a bawl of oxen. The rooks croaked into the air, abandoning their roost and chuckling at some private joke.

Durand twisted, a warning on his lips, just in time to catch a furtive stranger scrambling in the back of the cart.

They were ambushed.

"Down, Lordship!" he hissed, as armed men scrambled into view on every side. Only two paces from Lamoric's throat, a brown hand yanked the cart's cover wide and thrust a crossbow forward.

Durand was already leaping. He got his hand out. With a finger-numbing clank, the heavy weapon snapped its bolt into the Heavens. A second man inside was just raising his bow, and Durand could see no way but to hurl the first attacker into the second. In an instant, a b.l.o.o.d.y steel point stood from the hapless a.s.sa.s.sin's ribs.

Then there was someone scrambling in front of the cart. Durand leapt over the driver's bench and out among the hobbled oxen. One of the brutes screamed and kicked from the ground. Beyond it, stood a figure from another world: Gol Lazaridge, with his gla.s.s-chip eyes flashing and his head c.o.c.ked in surprise.

"b.l.o.o.d.y Durand, I don't believe it," he sneered and, with a smooth gesture, drew his sword.

Hopelessly, Durand noted that the man-a better swordsman than Durand already-wore a coat of mail rings. Durand had only his surcoat and tunic between him and the man's blade.

"Gol," he said, as coldly as he could manage.

"You cost me a plum spot, lad." The captain grinned to show the black slot where most of his upper teeth should have been. "But I'm working everything out now with this little surprise." He nodded toward the fighting, then paused. "A gift for my master, eh? And now here you are, a gift for me as well. The Lord of Dooms can surprise one."

Durand got his hand on his own sword just in time. With a sudden lunge, Gol's blade shot the distance between them. Only Durand's mad dodge and the half-freed blade of his sword saved him.

Gol was smiling.

Durand got his sword up between them, feeling as though any breeze could cut him. His blade was shaking. He needed a mail coat. Meanwhile, Gol settled in behind his shield, leaving Durand with nothing but shins and glinting eyes to swing at.

The old captain moved again, blinding Durand with his shield and whipping cuts at his shins and ankles. Durand blundered back into the legs of the kicking ox.

Then Gol stepped away.

Already, blood pounded lights in Durand's eyes. He could hardly breathe. The whole world had dwindled to five paces of cart track. He heard cloven hooves scrabble against the cobbles. All the dreams and fears in Creation wouldn't help him now, if he didn't find a way to beat the man in front of him.

When Gol lunged, Durand attacked.

A lad in the Acconel yard once told him you could beat a dog by ramming your arm down his mouth, and that's what Durand tried. Beating Gol's blade aside, he leapt down the man's sword arm.

In the collision, Durand caught Gol around the neck. The man snarled. Shield and mail and swords caught the man's hands like shackles. He scrabbled backward. Durand twisted. They were bound together, sword and sword, and arms straining.

Durand could not let go.

Then the old captain dropped. Though Durand held on, he lost his grip on Gol's sword. He could feel the wet shock of the man's blade-too close for a proper swing. Both men sucked at the air and strained. All Gol needed was an instant to leap off, and Durand was done. The captain smashed back, using his skull to crack Durand's nose. Durand could feel his fingernails slide and tear against chain links. An elbow rammed the last air from his lungs. There were only heartbeats left.

Gol had a knife at his belt.

In a scrabbling instant, Durand's fingers caught the weapon. Gol must have realized, but Durand was on the man's back and already ripping the blade free. The captain's hands locked in Durand's face and hair, but Durand drove the dagger's point upward, scrabbling over mail-shirt and collar. He could feel the man's nails s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g into his eye, then, finally, the dagger slipped from iron links and shot home, deep in the captain's throat.

Durand lay half-pinned in the road. It was as though someone had overturned a cauldron of blood. As the gore ebbed among the cobblestones, he heard the rooks laughing.

23. The Broken Crown

The rooks spun and tumbled down the Lawerin Way, a cackling cloud of rags. Beyond the cart, the sounds of fighting were finished.

Numb, Durand stepped past the crippled ox-still gulping convulsive breaths-and shuffled to where he was sure to find a killing ground. He remembered crossbows and figures moving on the banks, too close and too many. Some-or all- would be dead.

But familiar faces glanced up.

Between the two ditches, knights and animals sprawled in clumps. Shield-bearers picked through the wreckage, clearing the road. In the midst of it all, a knot of men crouched round Lamoric's p.r.o.ne form. Durand could not see whether their lord lived or died.

Faces popped up to look at him: Heremund, Berchard, Agryn. Coensar's face was stern. Each man wore his own version of shock. Finally, he saw Deorwen. Bent very low, she looked up into his face as though she was looking at a dead man.

Abruptly, Lamoric craned his neck. A sword wound had split the sleeve over his shoulder. "h.e.l.ls," "h.e.l.ls," he breathed. he breathed. "What have they done to you ? " "What have they done to you ? "

Durand blinked. He went to brush at his cloak, and saw his hands-shaking and b.l.o.o.d.y as a butcher's. A sticky mask covered his face, and his cloak stuck and clung with the stuff.

"No no," he said. "I met the captain on the road. It's his, or most of it."

There was sick, gusty laughter.

"G.o.ds, Durand, wash up. We'll all be sick," Lamoric managed.

Deorwen was raising a hand, shaking, to her face.

Through luck or the intervention of the Powers, Lamoric's company had lost only three horses and two men, though a few had taken crossbow bolts.

"We're lucky," said Coensar. "You don't walk out of a trap like this, let alone drive the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds off. They hadn't the men for it, and I think we got more warning than they intended."

A commotion turned their heads.

Stalking through the wreckage came Waer the wrestler at the vanguard of half-a-dozen knights, including Lord Moryn himself. Durand and a few of the others stood up to intercept him as Lamoric shoved his helmet back on, grumbling an oath.

"Very pretty," said Waer. He set big fists on his hips.

"You should watch what you say," Ouen warned, but Waer only laughed.

"Very pretty indeed. We all get bottled up behind your lot, and then they're on us. What did you pay?"

Lamoric forced himself into the thick of the confrontation. "I lost men!"

Waer sneered. "Or did they threaten you? Was that it? You had another half league behind them than we did. Did they have you at the point of a sword, telling you to shut up and let us come on? Was that it? A coward's bargain?"

"Waer!" said Moryn.

"It's easy to call off your dog after he's bitten, isn't it, Milord?" said Lamoric. Durand could hear a hitch of pain in his voice. "Why don't you just say what you wish and have- done with it? This man and his temper are a b.l.o.o.d.y thin excuse."

Waer lunged forward, caught short by his friends even as his fingers hooked the air at Lamoric's throat.

"You are enough to make a man ill, Moryn," said Lamoric. "You needn't worry about us getting under your feet any longer. There is more than one way to Tern Gyre, and I won't be on the same road with you any longer. Coensar?"

Coensar nodded stiffly.

"And Guthred?" Lamoric said. The aging shield-bearer looked up from his work in the blood and torn flesh. "Get that lot ready to travel. We!ll find a sanctuary to take the dead. And get a party forward to butcher those oxen and heave them out of the road."

THEY LEFT THEIR dead in a town called Lanes Hall and rode north down back roads as a ship tacks into the wind. Where the Lawerin Way would have been straight and clear, now they navigated a maze of hamlets, following Heremund the skald. The little man knew every well and standing stone in Errest, but mysterious strangers stalked the countryside, and black shapes flapped from felons swinging at every crossroad. dead in a town called Lanes Hall and rode north down back roads as a ship tacks into the wind. Where the Lawerin Way would have been straight and clear, now they navigated a maze of hamlets, following Heremund the skald. The little man knew every well and standing stone in Errest, but mysterious strangers stalked the countryside, and black shapes flapped from felons swinging at every crossroad.

They chose to make for Port Stairs. The men judged that from its cliffside perch above the Broken Crown, the city was no more than twenty leagues across the bay from Tern Gyre.

Berchard swore that coasters and fishermen crossed the Crown every day.

Outriders questing ahead of the party reported lone hors.e.m.e.n and slinking strangers among the hedgerows, though none would stand when challenged. Once, they heard hoof-beats over a rise-a fleeing rider. Durand could feel eyes on them from every side. He shot a glance at Deorwen and kept his hand near his blade.

Out ahead, Badan and two of Guthred's shield-bearers were hunting for a refuge.

"You can feel the b.u.g.g.e.rs, closer and closer," muttered Ouen. "A hand's closing about us. We'll wind up missing Lord Moryn's party yet."

"Mind what you say," cautioned Berchard. The Sons of Atthi did not name a doom they hoped to avoid.

"I've never seen an outlaw band who'd attack so many swords," said Ouen. "It's madness, or it's not finished."

Abruptly, Agryn spoke. "I'd be happier if we had shelter."They were losing the light of Heaven.

Coensar stood high in his stirrup irons, twisting to look out over the gloomy fields. 'There!"

Badan and his shield-bearers appeared from the gloom ahead, their horses puffing clouds.