“I am thinking only of the emperor and his safety, Prince Robert,” the knight said stiffly.
“No one is withdrawing,” William said. “I want to speak to Austrobaurg myself.”
He sat impatiently as the opposing company drew nearer. They were caparisoned in high Hanzish fashion, silver and gold bells jangling on the manes and saddles of their horses, horsehair or feathered plumes streaming from their helms. William had kept his company plain, to avoid recognition on the ride to the cape. But Austrobaurg was shouting to the world who he was, knowing only William and his knights would see.
Robert was right—it was a boast, salt rubbed in the wound by the duke of a small province who had made the emperor bend to his will.
The humiliation of it tasted like rotten meat and sat sour in William’s belly.
The duke of Austrobaurg was a thick, short man with a brushy mustache and eyes as green as a sea swell. His long black hair was streaked gray, and his expression was imperious as he drew rein a few yards away.
One of his knights raised a hand and spoke.
“The Duke Alfreix of Austrobaurg greets the empire of Crotheny and wishes well-meeting.”
Robert cleared his throat. “The emperor—”
William cut him off, speaking in Hanzish. “What is this, Austrobaurg? Where is my sister? Where is Lesbeth?”
To his astonishment, the duke appeared puzzled.
“Lord Emperor?” he said. “I have no knowledge of Her Highness. Why should you ask me of her?”
William tried to count to seven. He made it only to five.
“I have no patience for this nonsense,” he exploded. “You have what you wanted: twenty Sorrovian ships lie at the bottom of the sea. Now you will return my sister, or by Saint Fendve I will burn every one of your cities to the ground.”
The duke shifted his gaze to Robert. “What is His Majesty talking about?” he demanded. “We had an agreement.”
“You know very well what my royal brother speaks of,” Robert snarled.
“Your Highness,” Austrobaurg said, looking back to William, “I make nothing of this. I am here at your behest, to settle the matter between Saltmark and the Sorrows. This war benefits no one, as we agreed in our letters.”
“Robert?” William asked, turning to his brother.
Robert cackled and kicked his horse to full gallop. William watched him go, his mouth gaping.
And as he stood confused, and his knights began to shout and reach for arms, the earth vomited up death.
At first William thought it a strange flock of darkling birds, winging up from some subterranean nest, for the air was full of black flight and fearsome humming. Then the part of him that had once—so long ago—been a warrior sorted it out, as an arrow pierced Sir Ananias through the eye and pushed its blood-head through the back of his skull.
Twenty yards away, a trench had appeared as the archers hidden there pushed up its coverings of cut sod. They were clad in raven black, like the arrows they shot.
“Treachery!” Austrobaurg cried, desperately trying to wheel his mount and find cover behind his men. “Crothanic treachery!”
“No!” William cried, but the Austrobaurg knights were already engaged with his own, and swords were spilling blood. Only he seemed to notice that both sides were falling from the deadly aim of the archers.
“There’s our enemy!” he shouted, drawing his sword and waving it toward the trench. “The enemy of us both!” Robert has betrayed me. He tried to fight clear to charge the archers, gasping as a shaft glanced off his breastplate. He watched as Sir Tam Dare, his cousin, made for the murderers, and saw him fall, quilled like a hedgehog.
An Austrobaurg knight went down in the same fashion. The head flew from the shoulders of Sir Avieyen MaqFergoist, cut by the sword and arm of a knight wearing the crest of house Sigrohsn.
A horse screamed, his own, and William saw an arrow in its neck. It reared so as to take another in the belly, then crashed to earth, twisting as it went. William twisted himself, felt a brief, grinding snap of bone as the beast covered him. The horse writhed off, kicking. A hoof—maybe that of his own horse, maybe another—struck William in the head, and for a time he knew nothing.
He came back to the sea wind, and a view over the cliffs. He was propped sitting against a stone, feet facing the water, and his head hurt terribly. He tried to rise and found his legs wouldn’t work.
“Welcome back to us, brother.”
William turned his head, sending splinters of pain down his neck. Robert stood there beside him, looking—not at him—but out toward the horizon. The sun had clotted the mist into clouds, and the waves danced now in fitful sunlight.
“What has happened?” William asked. He wasn’t dead yet. Perhaps if he pretended continued ignorance, Robert would choose another course. “The ambush—”
“They are all quite dead, save me.”
“And me,” William corrected.
Robert clucked his tongue. “No, Wilm, you’re merely a ghost, a messenger to our ancestors.”
William looked at his brother’s face. It was quieter than he had ever seen it, almost serene.
“You’re going to kill me, brother?” he asked.
Robert scratched his neck absently. “You’re already dead, I told you. Your back broke when you fell from your horse. Have some dignity, Wilm.”
Hot tears started in William’s eyes, but he held them back. The very air seemed unreal, too yellow, like the colors in a dream.
He pushed down his fear and dread along with his tears. “Why, Robert? Why this slaughter? Why murder me?”
“Don’t worry,” Robert said. “You’ll have plenty of company on your journey west. Muriele dies today. And your daughters. Lesbeth is already there, awaiting you.”
“All of them? All of them?” William could move his hands, he found, though they shook as if palsied. “You filthy beast. You’re no Dare. You’re no brother of mine.”
A touch of anger at last entered Robert’s voice. “But you’d already decided that, hadn’t you, Wilm? If you thought me a brother, you would never have betrothed Lesbeth without asking me. I could never forgive you that.”
“You killed her. You killed her and cut off her finger so I would think— Why? And my children? My wife? All for a single slight?” He had his hand on the hilt of his echein doif, now, the little knife every warrior kept concealed in a special place.
The knife of last resort.
“And for the combined thrones of Hansa and Crotheny, and one day Lier, as well,” Robert said absently. “But the slight might have been enough. I have been too often neglected by this family. Too often betrayed.”
“You are mad. Crotheny will not have you, not for long. And Hansa—”
“Is almost mine already.” He smiled. “There is a secret I have. It will stay so, for now. There are ways of talking to the dead, and even though your spirit will wander far from the houses of our ancestors, I am not so foolish as to take that risk. But I will thank you for your help, brother.”
“Help?”
“I could not have sent our ships against the Sorrows. You did that. Did you know that the lords of Liery have discovered the identity of those ships? Had you lived another few days, you would have had an earful, I’ll tell you. You should thank me for sparing you the righteous pomposity of that old de Liery fool, Fail.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Can’t you just think for once, Wilm? The sea lords discovered that we’ve been aiding Saltmark against their allies. I let slip the hints that led them to know.”
“But I agreed to that only because I thought Lesbeth—”
“Hush and listen. They’ll never know that, of course. Everyone who believed the story of Lesbeth’s kidnap is dead. The hue and cry over your policy is already begun, and now you and Austrobaurg, dead, in the midst of trying to conclude a lasting peace. Very suspicious. Especially since you were slain with Lierish arrows.” His smile was ghastly.