It did not take long. The last golden light soon faded and the crickets began their songs. Nightgloom stole through the trees, dew glistened as servants lit lamps, and the dark shadow on the branch shifted his position with infinite care to keep his feet from going numb.
The first sharp whiff of smoke came a breath before a long tongue of flame flared up, like a catching candle, inside a nearby window. There followed a sudden, rising roar, then a dull gasp as flames were born around something very flammable; draperies or clothes well-soaked in lamp oil, no doubt. Then came the shouts, the shattering of glass, and men pounding here and there in the sudden, hot brightness with buckets, valuables, and much cursing. The shadow never moved from its perch. All was unfolding as foreseen: Taverton Hall was afire.
The roaring became a steady din, and sparks spat forth into the night in a glittering rain. Draperies at one window erupted in a flame so bright that Rhauligan could clearly see the faces of the hurrying, jostling men. Lord Jalanus was among them, bent over an open book that an anxious-looking guard was holding open and up to him.
There was a crash and fresh flames as part of the roof fell in, and flaming embers rained down around the War Wizard. Jalanus staggered back, snarling something. Then he snatched at a spark in the air, caught it, stammered something hasty—and all over the Hall the flames seemed to freeze for a moment, falling silent and turning green.
A breath later, they started to move again, crawling toward the stars with lessened hunger. The War Wizard shook his head, slammed the book shut, and sent the armsman to join the bucket-runners. Then he raised his hands as if about to conduct a choir, and cast quite a different spell.
Several rooms suddenly vanished, fire and all, leaving a gaping hole in the darkness. The flames that remained were in two places, lesser remnants small enough that stable-buckets of hurled water might tame them. Every hand would be needed, however, and the night would be a long and sweat-soaked struggle. The shadow on the branch stirred, but did not move. It was waiting for something else.
The War Wizard opened his book again and strode to where a lamp afforded better light. That was what someone had been waiting for… someone who slipped out of a window not far from the flames, crossing the ember-strewn lawn to the trees in a few darting strides.
The tether was undone and hand-coiled, then saddle-leather creaked just beneath Rhauligan, who flexed his fingers, waited a moment more, then made his move.
The saddle had a high crupper. He lowered himself gently down onto it with one hand, steadying himself against the branch with the other. The faint whisper of his movements was cloaked by the roar of the fire and the sounds made by the unwitting man in front of him, leaning forward to shake out the reins. Rhauligan delicately plucked a dagger from its sheath on the back of the man’s belt and threw it away into the night.
That slight sound made the man turn in his saddle and reach for his sword. Rhauligan turned with him, placing one firm hand on the man’s sword wrist and snaking the other around his throat. “Warm evening we’re having,” he murmured politely, as the man in front of him stiffened.
His next few breaths were spent in frantic twisting and straining as the two men struggled together. Rhauligan hooked his boots around those of his foe to keep from being shoved off the snorting, bucking horse, and the night became a confusion of elbows, sudden jerks, and grunts of effort. The merchant kept the man’s throat in the vise of his tightening elbow, and frantic fingers clawed at his arm once they found the dagger sheath empty—clawed, but found no freedom.
The man kicked and snarled, and abruptly the horse burst into motion, crashing through rose bushes with a fearful, sobbing cry of its own. Trees plunged up to meet them in the night, with an open garden beyond. Rhauligan grimly
set about kicking at one flank of the mount, to turn it back toward the flames.
He was failing, and taking some vicious bites from the man in the saddle in front of him, when firelight gleamed on a helm as a guard rose suddenly into view almost under the hooves of the galloping horse. It reared, bugling in real fear, and when it came down, running hard, the blazing wing of the Hall was suddenly dead ahead, and approaching fast.
The man in the saddle twisted and ducked frantically, almost hauling Rhauligan off into thin air, but the merchant clung to him with fingers of iron as they burst through a closed gate, wood flying in splinters around their ears, plunged down a lane, and charged into a knot of men dipping buckets in a garden pond.
Someone screamed, and for a moment there was something yielding beneath the mount’s pounding hooves. Rhauligan had a brief glimpse of the War Wizard standing calmly in their path, casting another firequench spell at the Hall with careful concentration.
The horse veered to avoid this unmoving obstacle, slipped in ferns and loose earth, and caught its hooves on a low stone wall. Bone shattered with a sharp crack. Their mount screamed like a child in agony, kicked wildly at the sky, and fell over on its side, twisting and arching. It landed on a row of stone flower urns that shattered into dagger-like shards and ended its keening abruptly.
An instant later, a flying Rhauligan fetched up hard against an unbroken urn. Its shattering made his shoulder erupt in searing pain.
As he rolled unsteadily to his feet, gasping, he saw drawn swords on all sides, the furious face of Lord Jalanus glaring down—then a sudden, blindingly-bright white light as the War Wizard unhooded a wand.
“You set this fire, thief!”
The shout was close at hand. Rhauligan flung himself forward into a frantic roll away from it without looking back to see how close the blade seeking his blood was.
Sharp steel whistled through empty air, very close by. Rhauligan came to his feet, sprang onto the ornamental
wall, and spun around to face his foe. The man who’d been in the saddle lurched toward him, hacking at the air like a madman.
“You set this fire!” Immult Greiryn shouted again, missing Rhauligan with a tremendous slash so forceful that it almost made the seneschal fall over. “Slay him, one of you! Cut him down!”
“No,” said the Lord Justice in a cold, crisp voice that seemed to still the sound of the fire itself and made men freeze all around. “Do no such thing. This man lies. The merchant is innocent.”
Wild-eyed, the seneschal whirled and charged at the War Wizard, his blade flashing up. Jalanus Westerbotham stepped back in alarm, opening his mouth to call for aid, but bright steel flashed out of the night, spinning end over end in a hungry blur that struck blood from Greiryn’s sword hand, rang off the seneschal’s blade like a hammer striking a gong, and was gone into the flowers in a trice.
Lord Jalanus muttered something and lunged forward with sudden, supple speed, thrusting his empty hand at Greiryn as if it were a blade. The blow he landed seemed little more than a shove, but the seneschal staggered, doubled up as if a sword had pierced him through the guts, and crumpled onto his side, unconscious.
The War Wizard bent over the man to be sure he was asleep. Satisfied, he looked up and snapped, “Bolyth! The wire—this man’s thumbs, little fingers, and big toes bound together. Then stop his bleeding and watch over him yourself.”
As his everpresent, most trusted guard lumbered obediently forward, Jalanus Westerbotham turned his head, found Rhauligan, and said shortly, “A good throw. My thanks.”
The merchant sketched him a florid bow. The lips of the Lord Justice twisted into a rueful smile.