Horsemaster’s nod was far more emphatic this time.
“So I think it would be best, when we overtake them, that there be no survivors,” Cassan said flatly, and gave another shrug. “Men who hire their swords for assassinations are scum, anyway. If we’re fortunate, we’ll catch them short of Chergor and finish the business then.”
“And if we don’t, Milord?” Horsemaster asked softly.
“Well, that will depend on whether or not they’ve had any opportunity to talk to anyone on the other side, won’t it? Someone who might actually believe their lies and think I’m the one who hired them.”
Cassan’s tone was completely neutral, but understanding flickered in Horsemaster’s blue eyes. Understanding of what his baron had just said and perhaps- perhaps — just a trace of what he hadn’t said.
“That would be…unfortunate, Milord,” he said.
“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” Cassan replied.
“I’ll see to it, Milord,” Horsemaster said, and if he was unhappy about the possibilities, there was no sign of it in his level gaze.
“Good.”
Cassan released the other man’s elbow and watched him walk across to his own company. Someone’s armor and weapons harness creaked behind him, and he looked over his shoulder.
“All well, Milord?” Dirkson asked softly, and the baron nodded.
Dirkson was younger than Darnas Warshoe, but they were very much cut from the same cloth, and the armsman nodded back to his patron. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the six handpicked armsmen of his personal squad. Aside from Cassan and Dirkson himself, they were the only ones who knew the baron’s full plan, and if the thought of regicide bothered any of them, there was no sign of it.
“Won’t hurt a thing for Sir Kalanndros’ lads to be busy cutting inconvenient throats, Milord,” Dirkson said, touching the hilt of his own saber, and his eyes were cold. “Lots of confusion and people running and shouting.”
“Best of all if we get there just too late,” Cassan told him in an even softer tone. “But if we don’t, remember to make sure the dagger’s in Tellian’s hand. Or the hand of one of his allies, at least.”
“Oh, aye, I’ll do that little thing, Milord,” Dirkson promised with an icy smile. “A cold, dead hand…and I’ll make sure it’s dead myself.”
Erkan Traram drank deeply from his canteen, then looked around the small circle of intent faces gathered about him.
“All right, lads,” he said. “It’s time we were about it.”
That circle of faces tightened, but no one argued. It was far too late for second thoughts, even if they’d been inclined to entertain them, and they weren’t. All of them recognized the risk inherent in their task, especially if anyone escaped to set wind riders on their trail. Their horses were good, even by Sothoii standards, but no one’s horses were that good. Still, if things went according to plan, there’d be no survivors to escape, which ought to give them at least several hours-possibly even a day or two-of head start on any pursuit. Besides, they weren’t going to escape overland; river barges were waiting just below the point at which the Ice Sisters’ outflow reached the Spear to bear them back to Nachfalas more swiftly than even a wind rider could cover the distance. If they reached the barges, the only real concern would be one of those blasted magi who could throw their thoughts over vast distances, or one of the “wind-walkers.” Nothing else would be able to get word to Nachfalas in time to prevent them from escaping back down the escarpment and disappearing into the Kingdom of the River Brigands and the Empire of the Spear once more.
Or that was the plan, anyway.
“Somar,” Traram looked at his senior lieutenant, Somar Larark. Like Traram himself, Larark was a veteran of the Spearman Army, although it had been some years since either of them had been that reputably employed.
“Yes, Sir?” Larark responded with the discipline Traram had carried over from his army days.
“Go ahead and circle around to the other side. Take Guran with you and send him back once you’re in place. I know it doesn’t look like much,” he twitched his head in the direction of the hunting lodge hidden by the half-mile or so of woodland between them and it, “but the Sothoii don’t pick Royal Guardsmen out of a helmet at random. We’re going to lose some of the lads no matter what else happens, so let’s take time to do this right.”
“Yes, Sir,” Larark said again, and nodded to Sergeant Guran Selmar, the company’s senior noncom. The two of them moved off towards Larark’s command, and Traram looked at his other subordinates.
“Go,” he said flatly.
They nodded and filtered off through the trees, leaving Traram with his bugler and his small command group. He stood there, listening to bird song and the scolding chatter of an outraged squirrel. The light was dim and green as it filtered through that dense leaf canopy, like being at the bottom of a lake, and it was cool under the trees. He drew a deep breath, smelling the leaf mold, the moss, the deep scent of earth and growing things. Of life.
There were times when even a man like Erkan Traram had qualms about the choices he’d made in his own life. When he felt himself at the center of a leaf-whispering, breezy pool of living energy and thought about all the lives he’d ended. All the blood he’d spilled for more paymasters than he could any longer count. But those times were few and far between, and he’d long since learned how to banish them when they insisted upon intruding.
Bards and poets could rhapsodize about noble conflict, about honor and the warrior’s call to duty under his liege lord’s banner in time of war. But the skills of a warrior weren’t worth a copper kormak in time of peace, and there wasn’t always a war when he needed one. A man had to make his way in the world with the talents he had, and Erkan Traram’s talent was for killing.
And with what you’re earning for this one, you may finally be able to retire, after all, he told himself.
Besides, it wasn’t as if Markhos Silveraxe was his king, now was it?
Chapter Thirty-Five
Leeana forced herself to sit calmly on the hunting lodge’s deep, roofed veranda.
What she really wanted to do was to stand up, pace vigorously, and spend several minutes screaming at Sir Frahdar Swordshank. She would, however, cheerfully have traded the screaming time for the opportunity to remove Lord Warden Golden Hill’s handsome, sleekly groomed head, instead.
Slowly, preferably. One inch at a time.
It seemed evident that whatever anyone else might think, King Markhos cherished no suspicions about her father’s fidelity. For that matter, she wasn’t at all certain Swordshank truly worried about Tellian’s loyalty. But it was Swordshank’s job to consider all possibilities, and the truth was that they knew far too little about what was happening. Given what they did know, the decision to stand fast or to seek a place of greater safety could have been argued either way, and the King wasn’t in the practice of capriciously overriding the skilled and experienced armsman he’d chosen to command his personal guard even before he’d attained his majority and assumed the Crown in his own right. The choice Swordshank had made might frustrate and worry her, and she might be convinced it was the wrong one, but she wasn’t angry at him for it. Not once she’d had a chance to think about it from his perspective and cool down a bit, at any rate.
But Golden Hill, now…him she could definitely be angry with. Even now, she knew, he was standing attentively with the knot of unarmored courtiers and servants surrounding the King in the lodge’s great room as the final line of defense. And while he was standing there, sword in hand and expression of noble purpose firmly fixed, he was undoubtedly continuing to drop the occasional, carefully honed, poisonous word to undermine her father. Nor was Baron Tellian in any position to parry his attacks at the moment.