“It does rather burn his bridges for him, doesn’t it?”
“More to the point, it makes sure he knows his bridges are burned. Now he can’t even pretend he doesn’t know he’s been cooperating with wizards. Any real interogation by one of Markhos’ magi will prove that, and that’s just as much high treason as regicide, as far as the Sothoii are concerned. There’s no way back for him unless he succeeds, and a man like Cassan will figure that if he does succeed he’ll be able to find a way to be rid of us eventually. That should stiffen his spine.”
“I noticed that you didn’t mention anything to him about what Tellian and Hathan did to Traram’s men.”
“No, I didn’t, did I?” Varnaythus smiled nastily, then shrugged. “On the other hand, they ought to be less of a problem for him. The two of them may have ridden Traram’s mercenaries into the ground, but his armsmen know how to fight wind riders. Especially when they have lances and the wind riders don’t…not to mention outnumbering them a couple of hundred to one! Under those circumstances, I’m not that worried about even his ability to deal with them.”
He shrugged again, and Sahrdohr nodded again.
“You didn’t mention Trisu or the war maids, either,” he pointed out.
“Of course not.” Varnaythus snorted. “Why cloud the issue for him? It’s unlikely the threat of them would turn him back at this point, but it might. Besides, it’s not as if we really want him to get away with this. We need at least some of Trisu’s armsmen to escape with word of Cassan’s treachery if we’re going to touch off a proper civil war.”
“And if they get there before he’s had time to kill Markhos?” Sahrdohr asked. The war maids and armsmen from Kalatha and Thalar Keep had faced a far shorter journey than Cassan, and they’d ridden hard enough to cut their arrival time shorter than he’d originally estimated.
“That could be unfortunate,” Varnaythus conceded, “but there aren’t enough of them to stop him. And if it looks as if they might, there’s always the kairsalhain, isn’t there?”
Erkan Traram looked at what was left of his company and managed somehow not to curse out loud.
It wasn’t easy.
At least I’m not going to have to worry about having enough horses for the final run to the river, he thought savagely. Fiendark take those damned wind riders!
“I make it seventy-three, Sir.” Sergeant Selmar’s voice was flat, and Traram winced.
That was even worse than he’d been afraid it would be. He’d expected to take significant losses to Markhos’ guardsmen getting over the wall, but his employer hadn’t mentioned any wind riders in full plate! In fact, he thought sulfurically, he’d been specifically told that any wind riders who might be present would be courtiers who would never be so gauche as to bring armor on a hunting trip with their King.
And this is what I get for trusting someone else’s information about something like that. Even assuming the bastard told me the truth- as far as he knew it, anyway-I should’ve planned from the perspective that he might just be wrong.
His teeth grated as he considered Selmar’s numbers. No wonder even the tough-minded noncom sounded half-stunned. If they were down to only seventy-three effectives, then he’d lost over a hundred and seventy in that murderous exchange.
And I’ll bet those frigging wind riders took down half of them all by themselves.
He glowered down at the bloodstained bandage around his left forearm. He was lucky the pileheaded arrow had punched a neat, round hole through the meat and muscle without hitting bone. A broadheaded arrow would have shredded the limb, but his surgeon had cut the shaft of the one which had actually hit him and drawn it the rest of the way through the wound. It hurt like Phrobus, but it was unlikely to cripple him, and at least he was right-handed. He could still fight…unlike entirely too many of the men he’d brought north with him.
“All right, Guran,” he growled finally. “Get them organized into two platoons.”
The sergeant looked at him wordlessly for a moment, then drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and nodded.
“Aye, Sir,” he said, and Traram turned to Somar Larark, who was no longer simply his senior lieutenant but the only one he still had.
“Well?”
“The best I can give you is a guess, Sir,” the lieutenant said. He shrugged. “Mursam’s estimate is probably the best.”
Traram nodded. Corporal Furkhan Mursam was as hard-bitten and experiencedas they came. He’d never been promoted above corporal because he found it difficult to remain sober in garrison, but he never drank in the field. Indeed, he seemed to get steadily more levelheaded and focused as the crap got deeper and deeper.
“He says he personally saw at least twenty and probably twenty-five of Markhos’ armsmen down, and maybe as many as a half-dozen of his damned ‘guests’ and their servants. That matches fairly well with what I’m getting from the others, although I’m inclined to think it may be a little overly optimistic, myself. And that doesn’t include the Phrobus-damned wind riders.”
Traram nodded again. Assuming the corporal’s estimate was correct, there couldn’t be more than a score of armsmen left, and he had fifteen of his surviving crossbowmen bellied down in the woods within fifty yards of the gate. The Sothoii had already lost two more armsmen they were in no position to spare discovering he had no intention of allowing them to close that gate. They’d declined to lose any more in the effort, which at least meant he wasn’t going to have to go across the wall if he tried a second attack.
If not for the wind riders, he wouldn’t have hesitated, and he’d have mounted the followup as quickly as possible, while the defenders had to be at least as disorganized as he was. Of course, if it hadn’t been for the damned wind riders, he wouldn’t have needed to launch a second attack, either. On the other hand, he knew about them now. They wouldn’t have the advantage of surprise the second time around, and he still outnumbered Markhos’ guardsmen by at least three-to-one. And for that matter, the wind riders’ presence made it even more urgent that he get in there and finish them off along with the rest of the hunting lodge’s occupants.
If he gave this operation up as a bad idea now, he rather doubted they’d simply decide to let him go. No, they’d do everything they could to lay him and his men by their heels, and it was distinctly possible they might figure out where he was headed. If they did, and chose not to ride directly after him, it was all too likely that something with a courser’s speed and endurance could reach the Spear at one of the riverside towns downstream from his rendezvous with the barges well before he could sail down the river past them. And if they managed that, it wouldn’t be difficult for the authorities to send boats to Nachfalas, his only way down the Escarpment from here, to wait for his arrival. Assuming, of course, that they didn’t have enough boats on hand to simply come after him in midstream themselves.
As long as those accursed coursers were in a position to do that, he couldn’t count on breaking contact and getting away clean. Even if he could, his employer was unlikely to be pleased. The assassination of a king was a serious matter, and if the mission failed, he might decide it was time to snip off any loose ends that could lead back to him. Traram had no desire to spend what remained of his life looking over his shoulder waiting for the dog brothers to catch up with him.
There are only two of them, Erkan, he reminded himself. Of course there was that third courser to worry about. But now that he knew it was there, and now that his crossbowmen could bring their own missile weapons to bear through the open gate, the enormous chestnut was simply one more unarmored horse. It was the other two coursers and that heavy barding of theirs. If he could just come up with a way to take them out of action, or at least find a way to get close enough to hamstring them without getting trampled into red mud first…