'Perhaps it would be best to postpone it until the dead of night, sir,' Brukhalian said. 'My daylight hours are rather full — and public. As are Prince Jelarkan's.'
Quick Ben nodded. 'Two bells before next dawn, then.' He glanced around all of a sudden. 'I'll need a bigger tent …'
A moment later he faded from view. The sphere contracted once more, then slowly vanished at a wave from Karnadas. The Destriant turned to Brukhalian. 'This was unexpected.'
The Mortal Sword grunted. 'We must be certain to condition the prince, sir. Perhaps this warlord's army can harry the besieging forces slightly, but it will probably achieve little else. We must keep Jelarkan's vision realistic … assuming we tell him.'
We'll not win this war. Aye. No false hopes here.
Brukhalian asked, 'What think you of this Quick Ben?'
'A man of many veils, sir. An ex-priest of Fener, perhaps. His knowledge was too precise.'
'Many souls, within one, you said.'
Karnadas shivered. 'I must have been mistaken,' he said. 'Perhaps the ritual required the assistance of other mages, and it was these that I sensed.'
Brukhalian studied his priest long and hard at that, but said nothing. He turned away after a moment. 'You look exhausted, sir. Get some sleep.'
Karnadas slowly bowed.
As the spell faded, Quick Ben sighed, glanced to his right. 'Well?'
Seated against the tent's wall on that side, Whiskeyjack leaned forward to refill their goblets with Gredfallan ale. 'They'll fight,' the bearded man said, 'for a while at least. That commander looks a tough sword-hacker, but it might be all show and no iron — he must be a shrewd enough man of business to know the value of appearances. What was that you called him?'
'Mortal Sword. Not likely — once, long ago, that title was for real. Long before the Deck of Dragons acknowledged the place of Knights of the High Houses, Fener's cult had its own. They've got the serious titles down with exactness. Destriant. Hood's breath, there hasn't been a real Destriant in the cult for a thousand years. The titles are for show, Whiskeyjack-'
'Indeed,' the commander cut in, 'then why keep it a secret from the Fener priest on the Mask Council?'
'Uh. Well… Oh, it's simple. That priest would know it for a lie, of course. There, easy answer to your question.'
'Easy answer, as you say. So, are easy answers always right answers, Quick?'
Ignoring the question, the wizard drained his goblet. 'In any case, I'd count the Grey Swords as best among the bunch over there, but that's not saying much.'
'Were they fooled by the "accidental" contact?'
'I think so. I'd shaped the spell to reflect the company's own nature — whether greedy and rapacious, or honourable or whatever. I admit, though, I didn't expect it to find pious faith. Still, the spell was intended to be malleable, and so it was.'
Whiskeyjack climbed to his feet, wincing as he put his weight down on his bad leg. 'I'd better track down Brood and Dujek, then.'
'At the head of the column, is my guess,' Quick Ben said.
'You're sharp tonight,' the commander noted as he made his way out.
A moment later, when Whiskeyjack's sarcasm finally seeped into Quick Ben's thoughts, he scowled.
On the other side of the street, opposite the barracks gate and behind an ancient bronze fence, was a cemetery that had once belonged to one of Capustan's founding tribes. The sun-fired columns of mud with their spiral incisions — each one containing an upright corpse — rose like the boles of a crowded forest in the cemetery's heart, surrounded on all sides by the more mundane Daru stone urns. The city's history was a tortured, bizarre tale, and it had been Itkovian's task among the company to glean its depths. The Shield Anvil of the Grey Swords was a position that demanded both scholarly pursuits and military prowess. While many would hold the two disciplines as distinct, the truth was in fact the opposite.
From histories and philosophies and religions came an understanding of human motivation, and motivation lay at the heart of tactics and strategy. Just as people moved in patterns, so too did their thoughts. A Shield Anvil must predict, anticipate, and this applied to the potential actions of allies as well as enemies.
Before the arrival of Daru peoples from the west, the tribes that had founded Capustan had only a generation before been nomadic. And their dead are left standing. Free to wander in their unseen spirit world. That restless mobility resided still in the minds of the Capan, and since the Daru communities held to their own, it was scarcely diluted despite the now dozens of generations who had lived and died in this one place.
Yet much of Capustan's early history remained mysterious, and Itkovian found himself pondering what little he could piece together of those times, as he led the two wings of riders down the wide, cobbled street towards Jelarkan's Concourse, and beyond it to the south-facing Main Gate.
The rain was abating, the dawn's steel smear pushing through the heavy clouds to the east, the wind falling off into fitful gusts.
The districts making up the city were called Camps, and each Camp was a distinct, self-contained settlement, usually circular, with a private open ground at the central hub. The wide, uneven spaces between each Camp formed Capustan's streets. This pattern changed only in the area surrounding the old Daru Keep — now the Thrall and home to the Mask Council — called the Temple District, which represented the sole Daru-style imposition of a gridwork layout of streets.
The Camps, Itkovian suspected, had once been precisely that. Tribal encampments, tightly bound in ties of kinship. Positioned on the banks of the Catlin River among sea-fearing peoples, this site had become a focus for trade, encouraging sedentary behaviour. The result was one of the oddest-looking cities Itkovian had ever seen. Wide, open concourses and avenues defined by curving walls; random clay stands of burial pillars; well pools surrounded by sandpits; and, moving through Capustan's winding spaces, Daru and Capan citizens, the former holding to the disparate styles and ornamentation of their heritage — no two dressed alike — whilst the latter, kin-bound, wore the bright colours of their families, creating a flow in the streets that sharply contrasted with the plain, unpainted architecture. The beauty of Capustan lies in its people, not in its buildings… Even the Daru temples had bowed to the local, modest style of architecture. The effect was that of ceaseless movement, dominating its fixed, simple surroundings. The Capan tribes celebrated themselves, colours in a colourless world.
The only unknowns in Itkovian's scenario were the old keep that the Grey Swords now occupied, and Jelarkan's Palace. The old keep had been built before the coming of both the Capan and the Daru, by unknown hands, and it had been constructed almost in the shadow of the palace.
Jelarkan's fortress was a structure unlike anything Itkovian had ever seen before. It predated all else, its severe architecture throughly alien and strangely unwelcoming. No doubt the royal line of Capustan had chosen to occupy it for its imposing prominence rather than any particular notions of its defensive capacities. The stone walls were perilously thin, and its absence of windows or flat rooftops made those within it blind to all that occurred on the outside. Worse, there was but one entrance — the main approach, a wide ramp leading into a courtyard. Previous princes had raised guard houses to either side of the entrance, and a walkway along the courtyard's walls. Actual additions to the palace itself had a habit of falling down — the palace's stone facings refused to take mortar, for some reason, and the walls were not deemed strong enough to assume additional burdens of a substantial nature. In all, a curious edifice.
Passing out through the crowded Main Gate — harsh black iron and dark leather amidst streams of saturated colours — the troop swung right, rode a short distance down the south caravan road, then left it and its traffic as soon as they reached open plain, riding due west, past the few goat, cattle and sheep farms and their low stone walls breaking up the landscape, out onto unoccupied prairie.