Traitor’s Knot: Fourth Book of The Alliance of Light

Fionn Areth shouted to make himself heard in the tumult. ‘I would beg leave to try!’ As quiet descended, he ignored the precarious state of his hose, and bowed from the waist to the duke. ‘My lord, I should like nothing better than to be tested for mettle. I am not inexperienced. If I fall short of Alestron’s high standard, I beg to enlist with your foot-troops. I’d be willing to train for as long as it takes to win my fair chance for promotion.’

‘Enough!’ The duke glowered to quell his pack of brothers, then joined Mearn for a closer inspection. ‘We have an earnest young man who’s a guest. He’s declared himself to have fighting potential. Let’s hear out what assets he brings us.’

Fionn Areth drew in a lungful of air. While he groped for the words to begin, Mearn lost patience. Ablaze with a wanton, mercuric energy, he started to circle, dizzy as a moth at a lamp. ‘Do you write?’

‘No,’ said Fionn.

‘Recite poetry? Ah, don’t bother, boy, to open your mouth. With that hayseed accent, certainly not. Do you paint? Play music? Raise beautiful flowers? No time, I see. What do you do, then, a’brend’aia with the nanny goats?’

‘What?’ Fionn Areth did not know Paravian.

Mearn’s pause extended. His level brows lifted. ‘Must I translate?’ he taunted. ‘You don’t speak in fair tongues?’

Before the goatherd could rise to that bait, a faint cough from the side-lines. ‘The term means “dance,”’ the Mad Prophet said, owlish.

Fionn Areth raised his chin, dazed by the suspicious awareness of something gone over his head. Determined, he leashed his temper. ‘We breed them quite otherwise.’

‘No doubt you do.’ While his three brothers watched with rapacious amusement, Mearn moved again, pricking with words. ‘I see by your hands that you’ve never dyed cloth. You don’t spin. You can’t weave, you won’t mix straw clay for bricks. You’ve not rowed in a galley, though you might have dipped water, or maybe cooked swill, or dumped slop for the rowers. Perhaps you’ve done that, though I doubt such. Despite the fact that nice doublet’s too tight, your shoulders are slim as a maiden’s.’

As Fionn Areth’s hazed fury notched higher, Mearn slapped his forehead and turned a glance of discovery upon the crowding ranks of his brothers. ‘Oh, now I have it! How did I miss seeing? Those lovely buttocks, those melting, sweet haunches! And those wrists! Fit for kissing. He’s some fat pimp’s runaway prandey!’

While Sevrand choked and exhaled sprayed beer, the victim flushed crimson, nipped by that gadding tone to recognize mortal insult.

Five pairs of grey eyes, and Dakar’s, of brown, waited to see how he would choose to react.

A brief pause ensued.

Confronted by suspended expectation, Fionn Areth ventured a thin challenge. ‘You called me a name, sir?’

‘He did,’ murmured Keldmar, leaned forward with bloodthirsty interest.

Mearn pattered on in venomous delight, ‘Oh, that.’ He fluttered his lashes. ‘My tender child, are you so inexperienced? Or didn’t you listen?’

Parrien provoked, grinning, ‘He’s from Araethura! He doesn’t know the Shandian gutter name for the painted boys they geld with hot knives to serve twisted filth in the brothels.’

Fionn Areth snarled out an inchoate syllable. Then his hand moved, and his sword, which was sharp, leaped with a practised shriek clear of his scabbard.

Mearn danced back, laughing, as steel darted to spit him. ‘Oh, brothers, he fights!’ Whipped back by the lunge, his rich doublet glittering, he smiled throughout, and kept talking. ‘The manikin fights, and most prettily even with his drawers skint down to his knee-joints!’

Fionn Areth bore in, furious, to a shrill shredding of silk, which, obliging his tormentor, had slithered to hobble his boot-tops. Mearn bounced out of range to a mocking gleam of gold ribbon. The sword whickered through air, and narrowly missed. Fionn Areth overreached, and his tight doublet tore, to a jingling shower of sprung buckles.

‘Look out!’ howled Parrien, bent double, tears streaming. ‘He’s giving us the strip show of his young life!’

As Dakar scuttled clear to secure the carafe, Mearn kicked the table into the goatherd’s advance. Filled goblets gushed and tumbled onto the carpet. Glass shattered, crunched to slivers as Fionn Areth charged ahead in his misfitted boots.

‘Enough!’ Duke Bransian waded in and slapped down a mailed fist. The goatherd’s struck weapon hit the floor, clattering. A page-boy who descended with towels dodged the flying blade. As though he mopped up after brawls by routine, he bent to sweep glass and blot puddles.

Fionn Areth, hazed wild, stood in the wrecked shreds of his clothing, rubbing his shocked wrist. He looked up. And up; while from his muscular height, the Duke of Alestron glared down at him. ‘Stripling, you haven’t a babe’s self-control, to wipe your smeared arse with a napkin.’

The Araethurian glared back, hornet-mad, and possessed of a desperate dignity. ‘Then teach me. I’ll learn.’ While Bransian’s auger gaze bored him through, he plunged ahead with bravado. ‘I’ll serve. I’ll black boots. I’ll do anything you ask. Only let me sign on to your troop rolls. Let me march under Alestron’s proud banner to take down the Master of Shadow.’

The pause was electric.

‘What?’ whispered Mearn.

‘Kill Arithon,’ said Fionn. ‘That is why I came here.’

At that, the whole room exploded: every man standing rushed forward and pounced. Fionn Areth was milled down by a flurry of mailed blows, knocked bloody and flat, then spread-eagled. Three brothers s’Brydion gripped him, wrists and ankle. His right leg was crushed under the grey-haired man-at-arms, while the blonde one poised a dagger over his heart, and the duke’s bastard sword pricked at his windpipe.

Only Sevrand stood rear-guard, tankard in his left hand, and his bared blade bent at a menacing angle toward the Mad Prophet’s nonchalant back. ‘Have you brought us an enemy?’ he challenged, dead earnest.

‘Irons!’ snapped Bransian. ‘We’ll know soon enough after this wretch is put to the question.’

‘No!’ Dakar yelled across spiralling uproar. ‘That boy’s under Prince Arithon’s warding protection!’

‘You didn’t say this!’ Keldmar bellowed, fast echoed by Parrien’s accusation that the prisoner was a slinking spy for the Light, and why didn’t Talvish set to with his knife and gut the cur here on the carpet. ‘I’ll do the work and unravel his tripes, if you’re snivelling, spit-licking squeamish.’

‘You didn’t say he was Prince Arithon’s charge,’ Keldmar interjected, ‘Why not?’

‘Yes,’ Parrien echoed, ‘why not? Just why shouldn’t we flense him to crow-bait right now?’

Mearn’s manic laughter rang through crowding heat. ‘It’s not obvious? I think Dakar’s been clever. The ingrate who’s wearing a friend’s royal face requires a sharp lesson in humility’

The irons arrived, clinking, in the care of a house-steward, who also was fit as a mercenary. Capable hands snapped them over pinned limbs.

Fionn Areth spoke, strained by the sword-point pressed to his throat. ‘Where are you taking me?’

Bransian spared no sympathy as his shaken prisoner was hauled by the scruff to his feet. ‘West tower dungeon,’ he declared forthwith. ‘The irons stay locked. Under Arithon’s bond of protection, you say?’ At Dakar’s nod, the Duke of Alestron stepped back, ‘Then his Grace had better collect his goods, quickly. I don’t care fiend’s get if the wretch rots in the dark till the rats pick him down to a skeleton.’

‘The tower guard’s apt to spit him,’ Mearn warned, his evil smile still in place.

Parrien’s agreement chimed in lightning fast. ‘A shove on the stairs, or a slip with a knife. I’d do that, myself, there’s enough provocation.’

‘You’re turncoats!’ Fionn Areth gasped, faint with shock as the hold on him viciously tightened, and someone’s badgering blade nicked through skin. ‘Traitors gone over to Shadow!’

‘We are Arithon’s men,’ said Duke Bransian, complacent. ‘And my brothers are right. You’re a damned idiot with a tongue that the breeze flaps to every fool point on the compass. Leave you to yourself, you won’t last an hour. Sithaer, without help, I doubt we can get you out of my sight without somebody hasty pinning your liver up on my wall for a trophy!’

At Dakar’s concerned glance, the duke finally smiled. Still murderously vigorous, he had all his teeth. ‘Don’t worry, man. He’ll have Arithon’s feal backing. Vhandon and Talvish will serve as his wardens. Let them handle the puppy as they see fit, and keep him breathing against all comers.’

‘That’s rich!’ Keldmar whooped. ‘We’ll take bets to see who winds up bloodied first.’

‘Or better,’ Parrien attacked with bright relish. ‘A thousand royals on whether Vhan or Talvish is willing to die, defending a priest-sucking goatboy’

Summer 5670

Last Home-coming (#ulink_fb5467ce-1890-5780-88df-67bba4777273)

Of nine Companions who marched with their Earl’s war-band from Halwythwood, eight had held the blood-soaked ground in Daon Ramon and broken the net of Alliance forces that had closed on the Master of Shadow. Five were killed in the red slaughter on the field. A sixth succumbed during rearguard action, defending a ragged contingent of scouts as they slipped through the lines and took flight. Cienn, who was seventh, was dispatched for mercy, by the knife of a steadfast friend. The eighth, single-handed, had been charged to defend the s’Ffalenn prince through a desperate retreat to the Mathorn Mountains.