“I can think of very few men, noble or common, who have ever served the Crown as well as you have this day,” he said now, turning back to Leeana. He glanced up at her father, but his eyes came back to meet hers, and his voice was level. “And I can think of none at all who have ever served it better. I stand in your debt, and my house remembers its debts.”
Leeana flushed and shook her head quickly.
“Your Majesty, I’m scarcely the only-”
“Of course you aren’t,” he interrupted her, looking out over the courtyard once more, watching a half dozen of Swordshank’s surviving armsmen dragging wounded assassins out of the pile of dead and dying. His bodyguards’ expressions suggested those prisoners would soon be telling their captors everything they knew, and his eyes hardened with grim satisfaction as he continued speaking to Leeana.
“The Crown owes a debt to a great many people today, and I’m afraid it isn’t the sort anyone can truly pay. But I overheard at least a portion of your conversation, and Sir Jerhas is right. Without you and your wind sister, all of my armsmen would have fallen in my defense…and they would have fallen in vain. Your father”-the King’s expression didn’t even flicker as he called Baron Tellian that-“has always served me and the Kingdom well, yet there have been times, especially of late, when that service has threatened to turn the entire Kingdom topsy-turvy, as well. I suppose there’s no reason I should expect his daughter to be any different in that regard.”
Leeana opened her mouth. Then she closed it again, and Macebearer chuckled.
“I think-” he began, then broke off as Gayrfressa’s head snapped up. The mare wheeled, looking to the east, and her remaining ear went flat.
‹ Smoke! › she told Leeana, and green eyes widened as Leeana smelled the same scent through the courser’s nostrils.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Traram watched the first flight of flaming arrows trace lines of smoke across the sky and smiled thinly. He hadn’t had many archers to begin with, and it had become painfully evident in the assault across the wall that the ones he did have weren’t as good as King Markhos’ armsmen.
Fortunately, they didn’t have to be for what he had in mind.
The steeply pitched, cedar-shingled roofs of the main lodge, the stables, and the enclosed barracks showed clearly above the cursed ornamental wall. They were big targets, and the plunging arrows struck firmly into them. Within seconds, more smoke began to curl upward, and Traram’s smile broadened. The defenders had economized on manpower by defending the buildings, firing from cover as his men crossed the wall and falling back on the doors and windows as the attack rolled in. But large and ornate as the lodge was, the entire area enclosed by its wall wasn’t all that spacious, and after the casualties they’d taken in the initial assault, the King and his guardians couldn’t possibly have enough manpower for firefighting on top of everything else. Once the buildings were nicely alight, they’d be driven from cover, forced to huddle in the limited space where nothing would burn and hemmed in by torents of heat and moke. They’d find their defensive options badly cramped when that happened.
Flames began to leap and dance along the roofs, the columns of smoke growing thicker and denser, beginning to billow on the fires’ growing updraft. He watched those columns climb and waited.
Some of the armsmen and servants dashed for the watering troughs and the lever-arm pumps that served them. It was an instinctive reaction, but one Leeana knew instantly was futile. There were simply too many arrows, too many separate pools of flame spreading across those roofs, and her heart sank as she pictured what the heat and smoke were going to do to their ability to defend the King.
But then she heard a sound even more horrifying than that thought-the screams of panicked horses.
“ The stables! ” she shouted, and ran madly across the courtyard, ignoring the scattered rain of burning arrows hissing out of the heavens. More feet pounded behind her, following her towards the stables with the bone-deep instinct of all Sothoii.
Hooves thundered on box stalls, more whistling screams of terror rose from within the smoke, and Leeana heaved desperately at the bar across the stable doors. Someone skidded to a halt beside her, helping her, throwing the locking bar aside, grabbing the huge double door panels and hauling them wide. Smoke, heat, and those bone chilling screams billowed out of them, and Leeana coughed as she ran into the heart of chaos.
She flung open the stalls nearest to the entrance, dodging frantically as the horses in them threw their weight against the opening doors. Those horses saw light, knew where the door was, and terror gave them wings. They thundered out of the stable, fleeing madly from the crackling flames, and Leeana coughed again, harder. The smoke was incredible, and the stablemaster had stored a loft full of hay against the coming winter. Burning bits of shingle and roofing timber spilled into the loft, and the dried hay caught instantly. White smoke joined the seething coils of wood smoke, and it was suddenly impossible to see more than a foot or two through the choking, suffocating waves of heat.
‹ Come back!› Gayrfressa cried in the back of her brain. ‹ Leeana! Sister- come back!›
Leeana heard her hoofed sister, but even Gayrfressa’s voice was lost and far away, somewhere beyond the immediacy of her mission. She staggered in the blinding smoke, finding the stall latches by feel more than by sight, throwing them open, but these horses couldn’t see the entrance, and even if they could have, crackles of flame danced and leapt between them and the stable door. The path to escape and life lay between those flames, but they eyed the wall of smoke with ominous red glare, and the panicky horses shied away from the visible menace. They reared and trumpeted madly, deadly in their terror, and Leeana jumped aside, barely in time, as one of them blundered blindly deeper into the death trap of the burning stables.
She caught another by the halter, and was nearly dragged from her feet by the terrified creature. She managed to hang on, wishing desperately that she could somehow bandage its eyes, but that would have taken an extra set of hands. All she could do was speak to it as soothingly as the tumult of sound and her own coughing breath would allow while she dragged it towards safety.
She’d managed to get it almost all the way to the entrance when a flaming bit of debris landed on its croup. The fiery piece of wreckage wasn’t especially large, but the burned horse squealed and bolted forward, nearly trampling her as it broke free of the stable. She staggered, almost falling, then started back into the roaring inferno once more.
Something hit her. Already off-balance, she fell, and barely managed to tuck a shoulder before she hit the ground. The cut on her ribs sent a stab of pain through her, but she ignored it, shoving herself back up onto her knees, starting for the stable again.
“ No! ” a voice shouted in her ear.
She coughed, trying to understand, and felt hands on her shoulders, dragging her back. She turned her head and found herself looking into a face she knew.
“No, Milady!” Tarith Shieldarm said. He shook his head, tears washing pale lines through the soot on his own face. “No…it’s too late.”
‹ Listen to him! Listen to him, Sister!›
Leeana twisted, trying to pull free, the hideous screams of the horses still trapped in that vortex of flame washing over her, but he wouldn’t let her go.
“No,” he said once more. “You can’t! It’s too late!”
The words broke through to her at last, and she sagged, suddenly aware that she wasn’t simply coughing. She was weeping wildly as those shrieks of agony rolled over her, and the man who’d been her personal armsman for so many years gathered her into his arms and held her tightly.