Then came the sentencing of the poacher.

The quick-eyed little man was brought out in chains, a huge armsman on either side half-carrying him.

Karl leaned over and whispered, "What are you going to do about him, Thomen? Put the fear of the G.o.ds into him?"

"No." The boy visibly suppressed a smile. "I'll put the fear of me into him. I follow through." He turned to the prisoner and raised his voice. "Vernim ip Tyrnael," Thomen said, "you have been found guilty of poaching deer on the private preserve of Listar, Lord Tyrnael. It has been determined by a jury of your equals that neither you nor your family suffered from excessive need; it has also been determined to my satisfaction that this was not the first time you have stolen from the baron."

Karl remembered hearing Ellegon's version of the case. Vernim was the nth in a line of small-plot farmers whose holding was outside of Myaryth, a small town in Tyrnael, right on the edges of Baron Tyrnael's personal preserve.

Tyrnael was a reasonable sort. He didn't mind a bit of rabbit hunting or pheasant snaring on his landa"he even encouraged the first, to prevent the rabbits from overrunning his preserve. But deer were in short supplya"and no wonder: Tyrnael's constable had literally unearthed evidence that Vernim's family had long been taking at least ten deer per year out of the preserve.

Nothing terribly surprising about it, but it had to be discouraged. The trouble was that, technically, poaching on baronial or princely land had long been punishable by death, and Tyrnael hada"almost certainly deliberatelya"not asked Karl to waive the death penalty for Vernim.

Not a good situation.

Tyrnael was a solid ally, and Karl had no intention of slapping the baron in the face. In fact, Karl would have been tempted to close his eyes and let the baron execute Vernim, except that he had established that baronial courts could mete out the death penalty only for murder.

Tempted . . . it wasn't right to kill a man for poaching a few deer for his pot.

It just wasn't right. Karl was glad that Thomen had decided to frighten the man.

" . . . and the fact is, Vernim, that you deserve to end your days kicking on an impaling spear. But the emperor has outlawed that, and inst.i.tuted the noose. Which is what I'm tempted to sentence you to."

Vernim should have been trembling, white-faced. But, defiantly, he threw back his shoulders, the look of a man past fear on his face. "May I speak now, your honor?" he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

s.h.i.t. Karl looked over at Thomen. This wasn't the way it was supposed to go. Thomen had clearly intended to scare the peasant with the threat of death, and then to subst.i.tute some number of blows with the whip or tendays in the dungeona"enough to make the point that poaching was not going to be tolerated.

Buta"

"You have no right to judge me. What are you? Some kind of G.o.d? No; you're a man, just like I am." He started to turn his back on Thomen, but the guards yanked him back by the chains, a marionette on a string.

"Gag him," Karl said, forcing himself to keep calm while his mind raced.

There it was, the danger of being too d.a.m.n clever. Thomen had frightened the poacher past fear, left him feeling that his fate was already sealed, that he had nothing to lose.

Helplessly, Thomen glanced at Karl, then recovered what was left of his composure. "You have, Vernim ip Tyrnael, eaten your last meat, poached or otherwise. You are sentenced to be thrown into the meanest cell in the dungeon of Biemestren Castle, there to be fed only on water until such time as you can conveniently be transported in a prisoner's cart to barony Tyrnael, there to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, to be buried in the ground, the ground salted."

He nodded at the bailiff, who rapped the hilt of his halberd again on the floor.

"Court," Thomen said, "is dismissed."

Karl nodded. It surely was.

Karl chased the armorer out of the armory and waved Thomen to a seat. "I can't spend much time on this, Thomen," he said, idly running his fingers across a rack of spears before taking a rebuilt flintlock down from the wall. "There's a lot to do today. But what the h.e.l.l are we going to do about this?"

The trouble was that Vernim was right. The truth was that neither Karl Cullinane nor Thomen Furnael had any right to even threaten to kill a man for poaching. It was wrong. Maybe it was necessary, but it was wrong.

On the other hand, a ruler had to have it clearly established that he was the ruler, and to allow a convicted poacher to challenge his rule was just not tolerable. The magic of leadership, the mana of the leader, had to be preserved.

Thomen shrugged, his shoulders tight, barely moving, not as though he didn't care. Quite the opposite; it was as though the cares of the world weighed more heavily on his shoulders than they had any right to. His brother had had the same shrug.

"Only two possibilities, Karl, and I don't like either one." He chewed on his thumbnail for a moment. "I can trust Enrel, my bailiffa"he's been with the family since before I was born. I'll have him weaken the floor of the prisoner cart, and instruct him to look the other way if Vernim tries to escape. With a bit of luck, he'll make it out of Holtun-Bieme, and he'll surely never come back."

Karl shook his head. That wouldn't do. "And what if, after Vermin breaks out, he picks up a sword and kills one of the armsmen guarding him? Or what if he gets away, and kills a farmer for his food or money?"

A hunted man was far more dangerous than a wounded wolf. Karl had been a hunted man more than once.

Thomen thought about it for a long while. "Maybe Kirling will ask for mercy for him? You can always give clemency."

"Possible, if unlikely." Karl nodded. "If I'm asked for mercy by Tyrnael or someone representing him. You can't tell Kirling to ask me, thougha""

"No. It would look like you were the one who was asking."

"True. And if I'm not asked?"

Thomen Furnael drew himself up straight. "Then he'll have to hang. And it'll be my fault, Karl." He considered the matter soberly. "I miscalculated, and it will cost Vernim ip Tyrnael his life. It isn't fair."

Karl Cullinane nodded. It wasn't fair, at that. But that was the way it was going to be. The way it had to be. "An expensive lesson, eh, Thomen?"

Thomen Furnael turned away, his shoulders shaking minutely. "Yes. It is. Karl . . . I never killed a man before."

It would have been one thing to kill in combat. Pumping adrenaline, raging fear, the relief of it's-him-and-not-me would have made it different . . . until later, until the long, interrupted nights when men with faces contorted in final agony stared back at you, clapped their hands to deathwounds that you had given them, never quite believing that it had finally happened to them.

It was quite another thing to order a man's death.

Ordering someone hanged for murder would have been easier, if not easy; an eye for an eye wasn't only an Other Side concept, after all. At nights, when you woke in a cold sweat, you could tell yourself that you had saved lives by ordering the murderer executed.

Karl had killed slavers in hot blood and cold. People who made others into property had to be stopped, and their example had to be fatally discouraged.

But ordering a man hanged for eating a deer? It wasn't right. It might be necessary, but it wasn't right. "You don't like the feeling much, do you?"

"No."

"So be it," Karl Cullinane whispered. That was how a death sentence was really pa.s.sed: with a whispered resolve. "He dies. Think about how you can prevent it, next time."

"Karl, I hate this. I . . ."

"Good." Karl Cullinane drew himself up straight. "Keep it that way." He clapped his hand to Thomen's shoulders. "Keep it that way."

CHAPTER SIX:.

"A Little Bird Told Me . . ."

The wise man in the storm prays G.o.d, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear. It is the storm within which endangers him, not the storm without.

a"Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It didn't look good, Walter Slovotsky decided, but maybe it didn't look too bad, either.

It was likely going to be G.o.ddam b.l.o.o.d.y.

But not yet. Squatting in their perch in the hastily manufactured blind in an old oak tree along the trail, Slovotsky patted Jason rea.s.suringly on the arm while they both looked down at the progression of the slaver caravan below.

The slavers were moving both themselves and their cargo as quickly as possible, but it wasn't a rapid gait; the horses had to hold to the pace of the slowest of the neck-chained slavesa"humans and elves of all ages and s.e.xesa"although the very youngest and weakest were carried by their companions.

Not a pretty sight; as he watched, one of the captives, a boy of perhaps eight, maybe nine years of age, tripped and fell, only to be dragged along for several feet by his neck chain until the rag-clad men in front and in back of him could help him regain his feet. As he did, a horse-borne slaver's whip snaked out and caught him across the shoulders with a quiet snap; his scream trailed off into a whimper, punctuated by another yelp of pain when the slaver lashed him again and cursed at him to keep up. Crimson welts flared on the boy's shoulders.

Walter Slovotsky's fingernails clawed at the bark of the tree. Most of the time he let himself forget what this was all about. Most of the time he let things like a nine-year-old boy being whipped become only distant memories.

He didn't want reminders like this; the slaver with the whip would pay for that, would pay for reminding him.

The slaver was a big, blond man, with close-cropped hair, looking vaguely Germanic to Slovotsky's eyes. Probably from Osgrad. Slovotsky made a mental note to deal with him personally.

Walter nodded grimly to his companion in the tree. Jason, me bucko, it seems that some of your father rubs off on us all.

But not all of his father. Karl Cullinane probably would have dropped into the crowd of slavers and taken them all on, no matter what the odds, trusting on his extraordinary fighting ability and his even more extraordinary luck to carry him through.

Slovotsky held back a smile; Karl would probably have been right, at that. He probably would have chopped all of them into slaver pt, only working up a good sweat.

That was the advantage of leading a charmed life.

Walter Slovotsky, on the other hand, was fully aware of his own mortality, and while he had the utmost faith in his own luck, he figured that it was best used as rarely as possible.

Besides, remember Slovotsky's law number nine, revised: Sometimes you can't do anything about something that sucksa"until later.

Still, how to handle this one was hard to figure. At least it wasn't a trap, thank G.o.d; for once, his suspicions, if not quite groundless, had been proved wrong. Slavers trying to draw Home raiders into some sort of ambush wouldn't be driving themselves, their horses, and their chain of slaves this hard.

The slavers were on the run with their bootya"both people and golda"trying to avoid a fight, not find one.

The trap hypothesis hadn't been likely, granted; slavers' minds wouldn't work that way. They wouldn't a.s.sume that a Therranj raid would draw Home raiders; besides, they hadn't been operating openly in the region, and wouldn't have the kind of support they'd need to make it a trap. The few communities between Therranj and Wehnest were far more attached to Homemade steel than to slaver-supplied slave labora"labor which could be liberated without warning.

If little ol' me isn't suspicious of a trap, it ain't a trap. And that's the name of that tune.

He nodded and smiled at Jason. It's looking good, kid, he thought.

Still, there were probably aspects of the slavers' marching order that could const.i.tute a trap for the unwary.

But unwary isn't something I am. He pulled a piece of jerky out of his pouch and took a silent bite, offering the stick to Jason, who refused with a too-violent shake of his head.

The idea is to not move a whole lot, boyo. Still, not a huge danger; humans didn't tend to look up to spot danger.

Walter Slovotsky counted sixty-three slavers, with another ten or so probably resting in the wagons. The few ragged men helping to chivvy along the chain of the slaves were clearly the equivalent of trusties, and while Walter didn't have a whole lot of respect for that or for them, they didn't look like either a problem or a danger; they'd run, not fight.

The slavers, on the other hand, looked to be both a problem and a danger.

The hors.e.m.e.n riding point rode with an easy confidence, never turning to check behind them, manifestly trusting those at the rear to keep a lookout behind the group, while an advance party of five was about an hour and a mile ahead; it seemed that they sent back riders both to report an all's well and to switch off with decent regularity.

The cla.s.sic Karl Cullinane method of taking on a caravan was out. Karl always liked to spook the slavers; a loud attack could get them running into a two-guns squad ambush that would cut the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to ribbons with minimum casualties to his raiders.

But the slick, professional way these folks were running their march suggested that the Slavers' Guild had been taking lessons in military tactics, and the importance of not letting oneself be stampeded into an ambush was something that they had likely worked out. That was too bad; Daherrin was a student of Karl's and wouldn't like another method.

Still, the news wasn't all bad, thank G.o.d.

Most importantly, there were no guns in evidence, and no sign of slaver powder. And while the slavers practically bristled with both crossbows and short Katharhd hornbows, there weren't any visible sign of longbowmen. Which was good. For reasonably close but not quite intimate combat, the longbow was the most dangerous projectile weapon availablea"when held by someone who could use it expertly, which was always the problem.

Hmmm . . . Walter wasn't surprised that this wasn't as large a group as they had been told about by Khoral's emissary; he'd more than half expected that. Reports of battles tended to grow in the telling, and the raid on a few Therranji towns had quickly grown.

Being off by a factor of two wasn't much; the last time Walter had heard about the time the legendary Karl Cullinane had killed Ohlmin and his slavers, Ohlmin had been the marshal of a force of a thousand slavers, and Karl had defeated them all by wielding the sword of Arta Myrdhyn.

Walter Slovotsky m.u.f.fled a chuckle.

He'd been there, and it hadn't happened that way, not that way at all. At the final showdown, there had been precisely six slavers, and Walter had picked off four with his crossbow while Karl distracted them with an admittedly nice display of swordsmanshipa"and it was an ordinary saber that Karl had used that night, not the magical sword that they didn't even know about until long after.

Ohlmin hadn't been dispatched by the legendary single slash that clove him from head to crotch; in fact, he'd been a better swordsman than Karl, and although it was Karl who had killed the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he'd done it with a half-dozen crude headsman's chops, while Ohlmin was clutching at the bolt Walter had fired into his groin.

a"had cleverly fired into his groin, Slovotsky amended, chiding himself for his uncharacteristic and unintentional modesty.

It had been pretty d.a.m.n clever, at that. As good a swordsman as Karl was, that murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ohlmin was better, and would have carved the big man into b.l.o.o.d.y little chunks if Slovotsky hadn't distracted him by sinking a foot of iron-tipped wood into his crotch.

And if I'm so clever, he thought, why didn't I mention to Lou the possibilitya"h.e.l.l, the likelihooda"that we didn't need as many men as he was willing to spare?

The answer to that one was easy: While Lou might have wanted to keep the group as small as possible, from Walter's point of view there was no such thing as too many, and Walter didn't want to give Lou any excuse to cut down on the size of the raiding party. Port captains always liked to see ships in their ports; post commanders didn't like to see empty parade grounds.

Still, even a hundred warriors versus sixty wasn't going to make the job easy, not necessarily. Or bloodless, on their side.

Walter's maps were in his horse's saddlebags, and his horse was a couple of miles away; he didn't exactly remember this trail, but he knew that somewhere it fed into the major road toward Wehnest, and that could mean trouble. If the Home raiders didn't hit the slavers early enough, they'd have to do it in the cleared fields surrounding that town. Much better to jump the slavers in the woods; an ambush would be by far preferable. Something a bit complicated, maybe almost anything would be better than a meeting engagement on a farming road.

The last rider pa.s.sed under their tree. Jason waited until he had pa.s.sed out of sight, then turned to Walter.

"Unca""

Slovotsky shot his arm out and clapped his hand over the boy's mouth. He put his lips next to Jason's ear. "Shut up, a.s.shole," he whispered, barely any breath behind his words. "I'll tell you when you can make noisea"if you understand, nod."

At Jason's nod, Slovotsky let go, not bothering to hide his irritation as he shook his head.

The boy pursed his lips as though to say something, but decided against it. Which was just as well.

Again, Slovotsky placed his lips next to the boy's ear. "A silence isn't over until I say it is," he whispered as quietly as he could. "Now just sit still."