A nail-paring moon floated in racing cloud wrack as Brandark and Tothas swung down from their horses under the leafless trees. Bahzell tied Zarantha’s mule to a branch and stood looking out from the woods at their objective, then turned his head as the other two stepped up beside him.
“You were right-it isn’t much of a keep,” Brandark murmured.
Bahzell grunted and returned his attention to Baron Dunsahnta’s home. Dunsahnta had never been a rich holding, despite its position on the main road north. The current baron’s father had won his title for service in the Spearman army that pushed the Empire’s borders up to the Blackwater River, but he’d never had the money to build a proper seat for his barony. Instead, he’d taken over the single fortified manor in the area and expanded it. In fairness to him, his military instincts had been sound, and his “keep” would have been a much nastier proposition if his son had maintained it properly.
The first baron had laid out an extended perimeter of earthen ramparts with angled bastions to let archers sweep the wall between them, and a deep ditch had been dug at the foot of the wall. He’d clearly never intended to hold that much wall solely with his own retainers; he’d built it to cover the entire population of Dunsahnta Village and all of his other subjects in time of war, and he would have expected them to help man the defenses.
His son, however, had let the earthworks crumble. Parts of them had eroded and slipped down into the ditch at their foot, providing breaches and bridges in one, and no one had brushed back the approaches in years. Some of the saplings out there were taller than Bahzell, and what should have been a clear killing zone for archery was waist high in undergrowth. It seemed the current baron had more important charges on his purse than sheltering his people against attack.
Still, he hadn’t totally neglected his security. The inner stone wall about the manor house proper was high enough, and sound, and Bahzell’s night vision made out two guards at the main gate. Lanterns gleamed at the wall’s corners, as well. He couldn’t be certain whether there were any guards up there, though it seemed likely. But there was a smaller gate-not quite a sally port, but something similar-in an angle of the wall. It was drenched in shadow, hidden from anyone who might be standing atop the wall, and even his eyes saw no guard anywhere near it.
“There,” he said finally, pointing at the side gate.
“There?” Tothas sounded doubtful. “That’s a long way to go without being spotted, and you don’t really expect it to be unlocked, do you?”
“I can’t know till I’ve looked, now can I? And as for ‘a long way to go’-” Bahzell snorted. “I’ve crossed barer ground than yon against Sothōii sentries, Tothas! Against these lads, and with all that lovely brush, it’s after being no challenge at all, at all.”
“You’ve crossed?” Brandark asked sharply. “I don’t like the sound of that, Bahzell! You weren’t thinking of leaving us behind, were you?”
“So I was-and am.” Brandark started to protest, but Bahzell’s raised hand cut him off. “Hush, now! How’s a city boy like you to know his arse from his elbow when it comes to skulking in the shrubbery? Aye, and Tothas here’s naught but a great, thundering cavalryman! No, lads. This is a job for someone who knows how to move quick and quiet in the grass.”
Tothas started a protest, but he bit it back when Bahzell looked down at him. It would take only one of his harsh, strangling coughs to give them all away, and they both knew it, but Brandark was less easily silenced.
“Quick and quiet you may be, but there’s only one of you and forty of them. At least an extra pair of eyes could watch your back!”
“So they could, but it’s more useful the pair of you will be out here. It may just be I’ll be leaving a mite faster than I came, and if I am, there’s like enough to be someone following after. If there is, I’m thinking two men on horseback will seem at least a dozen in the dark.”
“Humpf!” Brandark brooded up at his friend, then sighed. “All right. All right! I don’t believe for a minute that’s your real reason, but go ahead. Hog all the fun!”
The grounds inside the earthworks weren’t quite as overgrown as those outside. Parts of the area, particularly around the manor’s front entrance, were actually landscaped, but less attention had been paid to its flanks, and Bahzell flowed from clump to clump of brush like winter fog.
He worked his way towards the side gate, but the sliver of moon broke from the clouds again as he started to slip out of the last underbrush. He dropped instantly back with a mental curse, but his curse became something else a moment later, for the faint moonlight glimmered on the dull steel of a helmet in the inner wall’s shadows. The Horse Stealer went flatter than ever, and his eyes narrowed as the man under that helmet stirred. Had he been seen after all? But the lone guard only stamped his feet against the chill, then flapped his arms across his chest, and Bahzell’s momentary worry faded into satisfaction. The gateway was equipped with a portcullis, but it was raised and the entry was protected only by a light, almost ornamental iron lattice. A flagstoned path led from the gate into a formal garden that had reverted to tangled wilderness, but if there was a guard out here, people still used that gate. And if they used it, it might just be unlocked after all.
Yet that guard was a problem. His sword didn’t worry Bahzell-not taken by surprise out of the dark-but if he had time for a single shout, the hradani might as well not have come. Still, this was a problem he’d dealt with before, and against guards far more alert than this fellow seemed.
The hradani cocked an eye at the moon. A nice, thick patch of cloud was coming up fast, and he drew his dagger. He’d left his arbalest with Brandark, for it was only in tales that men obliged by dying silently with arrows in their guts. If you wanted to be quiet, you needed a knife at close quarters, and he’d coated the blade in lampblack against any betraying gleam.
He held the weapon at his side, but his attention never wavered from the guard. A tiny corner of his mind supposed he should feel sympathy for the stranger he was about to kill, but he didn’t. If that fellow’s friends had done their jobs, they wouldn’t have a Horse Stealer in the shrubbery thirty feet from the wall. Besides, if the innkeeper knew of their baron’s activities, they surely did, and anyone who served wizards deserved whatever came his way.
The cloud swept towards the moon, and Bahzell waited with the motionless patience he’d learned the hard way. Then the moonlight dimmed, and the hradani was on the move. He didn’t wait for the light to go completely; he moved while it was still dimming and the guard’s eyes would be adjusting to the change, and for all his size and bulk, he made no more sound than the wind.
The hapless guardsman had no warning at all. One instant all was still, as cold and boring as it had been all night; in the next, a hand of iron clamped over his mouth and wrenched his head back as if he were a child. He had one instant to see the glitter of brown eyes, the loom of half-flattened, foxlike ears, and then a dagger drove up under his chin and into his brain.
Bahzell lowered the corpse to the ground and crouched above it, ears cocked for any sound, then straightened and peered through the lattice. It had two leaves, meeting in the middle, and he detected no sign of life in the ill-lit courtyard beyond. So far, so good, but the iron gate bars were leprous with rust, and his hand was cautious as he reached for the latch handle.
He turned it gently, and hissed a curse at pinch-penny landlords as metal squealed. The sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead, but he gritted his teeth and hoped the wind would hide it. Besides, he reminded himself, noises always seemed louder to the fellow trying to creep in than to a sentry.
Hinges creaked less shrilly than the latch as he eased the gate open, and he pulled the dead guard to his feet. He leaned the body back in the angle of the wall and propped it there. It didn’t look much like an alert sentry to him-then again, the fellow hadn’t been an alert sentry, so perhaps no one would notice a change if they glanced his way.