Sir Kritchen, immaculate despite his long and dusty ride from the city, wrapped my right hand about the sword's hilt. The last time I'd swung the weapon in earnest had been at the Aral Pa.s.s. The notches told a story that I'd largely forgotten and wasn't keen to relive. Somehow terror had pushed me into a berserker frenzy that day. Even if I could repeat the feat here on the Appan roadside it would do me little good. Battle madness doesn't make you the better swordsman, it just stops you caring whether the man you're facing is the better swordsman.

I stared stupidly at my blade a moment, dazzled by the sunlight flashing from it. Dehydration and hunger had left me slow-minded, not quite connecting with the events unfolding around me.

"Clear a s.p.a.ce! Stevanas-make some room!" Isen swung his sword in wide and dangerous circles.

"Wait! Get this thing off me first!" I tugged ineffectually at the mask, the words emerging as gurgles. A moment later I realized I was holding a sharp edge and with great relief turned it against the straps. Unfortunately it didn't seem possible to hold the sword far enough away to get the point to my face. I tried instead to saw at the straps with the length of the blade but they were so tight I couldn't get fingers beneath them, and so bedded into my flesh that cutting away at them blind and clumsy would inflict horrible wounds. Seeing Isen turn my way and knowing he intended to inflict rather more fatal injuries on me I started to cut at the most prominent strap, albeit somewhat tentatively. It hurt.

The highborn, barking as highborn are trained to, made a hole in the crowd quick enough. The onlookers were eager to see a show in any event and keen to help.

"Defend yourself, man!" Isen stepped toward me, his sword leading the way, point held steady and level with my heart.

"Stop!" I yelled. "I'm being held prisoner!" Or more accurately, "Gogh! Mmm meen meld mimimer!" My fingers were slick with blood or sweat or both but the strap seemed to be giving.

"It's better I don't have to listen to your lies, Prince Jalan, and better you don't have to shame yourself before these witnesses with excuses for your cowardice." The count's eyes burned with an insanity I couldn't quite place . . . perhaps three parts homicide and two parts absolute certainty that every word ever to pa.s.s his lips was G.o.d's own truth. "Have at you!"

"I'm not going to fight you!"-"Mmm mot mowing moo migh moo!" I resolved to make no move to defend myself and to rely instead on the count's honour to save me, or at least his fear of having his honour called into question.

The first strap gave. And with that he lunged.

Despite my conviction that I wasn't going to react I found myself leaping back and swinging my sword to deflect his. Whether it had been an earnest attempt on my life or a ruse to goad me into action I couldn't tell, but my body had made the decision for me and now he attacked with a flurry of blows very definitely intended to disembowel me.

My sword arm moved instinctively, following the patterns beaten into it over the course of so many long and miserable hours training in the weaponmaster's halls at Grandmother's insistence. The clash of steel on steel is always frighteningly loud and a helpful hint of the agony that being hit will involve is transmitted through the hilt, driving shards of pain through palm and wrist and making you want nothing more than to drop the d.a.m.n sword.

For the first . . . well it felt like an hour but must have been considerably less than a minute, the tempo of Isen's attack left no fragment of a second spare for thinking. Instinct and training actually served me pretty well. I defended well though made no counter-attacks. The idea of deliberately slicing my sword into flesh-even the flesh of an odious dwarf like Count Isen-turned my stomach. It's not any sort of compa.s.sion-I'm just squeamish. I couldn't even contemplate it. Like sticking a needle into my own eye I found it something I just couldn't bring myself to try. Besides-I was busy.

We clashed our way in mostly one direction, me backing, scattering the crowd. Isen advancing with a small grimace of satisfaction on his face as he cut and thrust. It felt like battling someone standing in a hole, an uncomfortable sensation that left me worrying about a different set of vital organs than usual. I left the road, nearly tripping in the ditch and retreated across uneven ground, scrub catching at my feet.

All this for Sharal DeVeer's honour? For bedroom antics that happened long before he'd laid an eye on her . . . or perhaps the old goat had laid both eyes on her years back and had simply been waiting for her hand to be old enough for his ring, or maybe he'd had to wait for her over-protective father to die before forging a marriage deal with the new and less scrupulous Lord DeVeer?

Instinct and training served me well and it wasn't until the raw terror of it all caught up with me that my mind started interjecting and causing mistakes. The tip of Isen's blade scored a hot red line across my shoulder. It wasn't pain so much as shock . . . and horror. I knocked his sword up, sprang back, turned on a heel and ran flat out for the trees.

The surprise of it gave me a good head-start. I'd opened a lead of twenty yards before Count Isen's roar of disbelief caught up with me. I could hear the pursuit begin before I made it halfway to the tree-line but few men are gifted with my particular turn of speed and none of those I'd venture to say stood eye to eye with little Isen.

I pa.s.sed between the first two elms with what would have been a wild grin, but for the mask. I could lose myself in the forest, be rid of the gag, sort myself out a safe pa.s.sage to Umbertide and d.a.m.n their hides. The Slavs would swear it wasn't me and I would, in the fullness of time, deny the whole thing. "You must be mistaken. Me in a liar's mask? How can you even tell who the wretched traitors wearing those things are? You should have taken it off-then it would have been obvious. Lucky Isen didn't murder the poor fellow!"

Panting, scratched and sweaty I paused, lost among the trees, mostly tall copper beeches. The ground beneath them lay thick with the rustling remains of last year's leaves, overgrown with brambles. I set my back to the thickest trunk in sight and started to work on the leather straps around my head again. This time wedging my sword hilt between my feet and going at it with considerably more care.

Applying a sharp edge to your face with sufficient force to cut old leather whilst trying to preserve your boyish good looks is a tricky business. In fact the task took up so much of my concentration that I almost missed the faint crunch of dry leaves beneath approaching boots.

Somehow the need to be able to talk over-rode the sudden rising panic and I kept sawing just long enough to break through the last of the straps. I pulled the d.a.m.n thing free, working my sore mouth but careful not to spit or make any other sound that might draw attention.

"Stevanas? Poe?" More rustling, a muttered oath. "Sir Kritchen?" Count Isen's voice booming out far deeper than might be expected from so small a man, and far closer at hand than I'd thought he was. "Jalan Kendeth! Show yourself!" He sounded rather hoa.r.s.e, as if he'd been shouting quite a bit.

With agonizing slowness I set the mask down and started to turn my sword around so I could grasp the hilt. Despite the utmost concentration my hands, slippery with sweat and blood, managed to do the exact opposite of what I asked them to and dropped the weapon. It landed with a m.u.f.fled crunch among the dry leaves.

"Ah ha!" Count Isen appeared, rounding the bole of the forest giant next to mine, arriving from a completely unexpected direction and turning out to be far closer than I thought he was-the tree he skirted stood so close to the one at my back that their lower branches interlocked above us like the fingers of praying hands.

We both froze for an instant, eyes fixed to each other's, me sat on my a.r.s.e with my sword on the ground before me, the silent forest all about us, lit here and there by irregular patches of sunlight, golden in the dappled gloom. Without further warning Isen charged, some wordless and murderous battle cry on his lips. I dived for my sword, shrieking that I was unarmed.

Just two yards short, with me still rising from my roll, the count's foot snagged on some hidden root and his lunge, intended to skewer me, became an ungainly thing, jolting with those overlarge strides we take in such circ.u.mstances to avoid falling on our faces. He ended up impaling the beech tree, his blade buried two or three inches deep in the exact spot my head had been resting against the trunk.

To the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d's credit he reacted swiftly, whipping out a knife fit for gutting oxen, and spinning round to brandish it at me.

"See here, Isen . . . bit of a misunderstanding . . ." The words felt wrong in my mouth after so long biting on the mask's bit.

Still he came on, holding that hideous knife up high so I saw his eyes one to either side of it, their pupils tiny black dots of madness, mouth twitching.

"Wait!" I held my blade between us at arm's length to fend him off. I struggled to think of a good reason for him to wait and of its own accord my mouth said, "Free your sword, man. I won't have it said I beat you unfairly!"

Count Isen paused, frowned, and glanced back at his sword still jutting from the trunk. His frown deepened. "Well . . . knife fighting is beneath men of n.o.ble birth . . ." He shot me a look that showed some doubt on the question of whether I were truly sprung from royal loins, then backed toward the tree.

Genius! Years of habitual lying had left me with a tongue capable of invention without requiring any conscious input from my mind. I tensed up, preparing for the sprinting away stage as soon as he started tugging on that sword hilt. As I did so however, I noticed my right foot was resting on a st.u.r.dy-looking branch, about three foot in length-a splintered section broken from the tree in some recent storm.

Count Isen sheathed his knife and set both hands to his sword hilt, his back to me as he got ready to heave. I swapped my sword to my left hand, picked up the stick and advanced on stealthy feet. Slow steps brought me up behind the count, the gentle crump of leaf litter under my boots inaudible beneath his grunting as he strained to work the trapped blade free. I glanced at the stick. It had a good weight to it. I shrugged and-trusting to my longer legs to win me clear if anything should go wrong-I whacked him squarely around the side of the head. I'd had poor experience before pitting vases against the back of a man's head, so I thought I'd try the side this time.

For a trouser-soaking heartbeat I thought Isen was going to stay on his feet. He started to turn, then fell into a boneless heap about halfway through the move. I stood there for a few moments, staring down at the unconscious count, breathing hard. At last it occurred to me to toss away the stick and at the same time I became aware of distant shouts and the clash of swords. I paused, wondering what the source might be.

"Nothing good." Muttered to the forest. And with a shrug I set off. Left to my own devices I might have lightened the count's purse to pay for the inconvenience and a new horse, but the sounds of fighting were drawing closer.

I set off at a decent pace, blundering through bushes into the bed of a dry stream that I proceeded to follow. I'd gone no distance at all when with a crashing of branches someone cannoned into me from the side, sending both of us tumbling in a confusion of twisted limbs and sharp elbows. A confused period of terrified shrieking and wild punches followed, ending with me managing to use my superior weight and larger frame to get on top with my hands around a scrawny neck.

"Poe?" I found myself looking down into the narrow and purpling face of Bonarti Poe. With a modic.u.m of reluctance I unwrapped my fingers from his throat.

"T-" He hauled in a huge breath. "T-They followed-" He turned to the side and retched noisily into the leaf-filled streambed.

"Who followed what?" I got off him and stepped back, distaste twitching on my lips.

"T-Those men . . ."

"The Slavs?" I spun around, imagining them advancing on us through the undergrowth. Poe hadn't the spine to try and stop me, but those three needed me back in their clutches if they wanted to keep their skins.

"They attacked Stevenas and Sir Kritchen." Poe nodded, clambering to his feet. "I ran." He looked a sorry affair now, his city finery torn and dusty. "To get help." A hasty addition. He had the grace to look guilty.

Away to my right leaves rustled, twigs snapped-something advanced unseen toward us.

"Oh G.o.d!" Bonarti clutched his chest. "They're coming!"

"Shut. Up!" I grabbed his arm and yanked him down with me as I crouched low. The main thing about panicking is to do it quietly. I clutched him tight, wondering how long he'd slow the Slavs down if swung into their path. Insects buzzed around us, dry pebbles ground beneath my boot heels, the urge to p.i.s.s built relentlessly, and all the time the crashing in the undergrowth drew nearer. It didn't sound like a charge directly at us so much as a meandering search that just might uncover us.

"We should run," Bonarti hissed.

"Wait." Running is all well and good but it has to be balanced against hiding. "Wait."

The rustling and tearing grew suddenly louder and a small figure stumbled from the bushes into the streambed about thirty yards from us.

"Count Isen!" Bonarti sprung to his feet as if the count's presence solved all his problems.

I leapt up a split second later, or tried to, but wrong-footed by the count's sudden appearance, my feet lost purchase amid the pebbles and I went sprawling forward onto all fours.

"You!" Isen pointed his over-long sword at me.

"I can explain!" I couldn't.

"You just left me! You can't abandon a man you've defeated!" He sounded disapproving rather than murderous. Sticky trickles of blood striated the side of his face below the spot where the branch caught him.

"Prince Jalan beat you?" Bonarti glanced round at me, surprised.

Count Isen advanced, a touch unsteady on his feet. "Found him in the forest, made my challenge, and had at him. Can't remember much after that. Must have caught me on the head with the side of his sword." He touched crimson fingers to his wound.

"Yes! Yes I did!" I got to my knees and shuffled backward.

The count paused a couple of yards before Bonarti and executed a short bow in my direction. "Well fought, sir!" He touched his matted hair again. "But-but, didn't you run?" Confusion in those beady eyes of his, hardening toward anger.

"Of course I did! We were endangering honest citizens, swinging away on the queen's highway like common brawlers. Besides, I needed to get clear of my captors and lead them into the forest where I could kill them without risk to the peasants."

"Commoners! Pah." Count Isen made to spit.

"Have a care, Isen." I got to my feet. "Those are my grandmother's citizens. The Red Queen says how their lives are spent, and n.o.body else!" I sheathed my sword just in case he should take offence.

Isen waved the matter away. "But you left me lying there!"

"I had to draw the Slavs off." Sometimes my lies impressed the h.e.l.l out of me. "I couldn't have them find you unable to defend yourself. I would have stayed and fought them over your body but I couldn't be sure enough of defeating all three of them if they all came at once . . . so I drew them off." I straightened up to my full height and with both hands tugged my tunic forward across my chest in what I hoped would seem an authoritative, manly, and self-righteous gesture.

"Well . . ." Isen didn't quite seem to know what to make of it all. I suspected his wits were still somewhat scrambled from the blow to the head. He narrowed his eyes at me, at Bonarti, at a nearby tree, puffed through his moustache, and at length sheathed his own sword.

"Right then!" I gave the smallest of bows. "Honour is served. Let's go kill some Slavs!" And I led off in the opposite direction to the one in which I'd heard the clash of swordplay.

Forests, it turns out, are treacherous things. It's d.a.m.ned easy to get turned around in among all those trees, and each one looks pretty much the same as the next. Somehow, despite declaring myself sure of the way and ignoring all of Isen's advice about getting back to the road, we found the Slavs. Or at least two of them, sprawled inelegantly across the forest floor amid their own blood-thankfully face down. Sir Kritchen had been laid out with his arms folded across his chest, almost obscuring the wound that killed him. I spotted Stevenas last, sitting with his back to a fallen tree, legs stretched out before him, his sword across them, dark with drying blood. His arm and left side were crimson, the puncture wound in his shoulder bound about with strips of his torn shirt, the musculature of his torso on display.

"Where's the other?" Isen, looking around, all business.

"Ran for it." Stevenas nodded toward a dense thicket of saplings.

Isen gave a dissatisfied snort. "We'll hunt him down soon enough." A glance at Sir Kritchen then a wave toward Stevenas. "Get him up." He paused for a moment, finding himself in the unusual position of not being able to order everyone around. "Bonarti, do it!"

Quite how Bonarti Poe, skinny and effete, was to get a slab of muscle like Stevenas off the ground I had no idea, but I d.a.m.n well wasn't going to help with a mere count watching on. Besides, the man had been brought along to ensure fair play as Isen carved me up so I had little sympathy for him. Though I did appreciate his work on the Slav triplets. That said, two out of three isn't bad in many circ.u.mstances but here I'd really rather Stevenas had got the full set.

Count Isen and I watched on while Bonarti struggled with the warrior. Fortunately, despite his blood loss, Stevenas had enough go left in him to help out and soon we were following him as he led us back to the road, demonstrating considerably more competence than the rest of us in the business of navigation.

We clambered back across the ditch and onto the Appan Way once more, all of us rather more dirty, battered, and bruised than we had been a hour earlier. The crowd had long since dispersed but fortunately a pedlar had taken it on himself to park his cart and watch over all the abandoned horses. He'd probably spent the time weighing the chance of a reward against the profit in horse theft and juggling the odds of being caught alongside the rather harsh justice horse thieves tend to meet in Red March.

"Good man." Isen tossed the fellow a coin and waved him on his way. "Wait!" The count held up a hand before the pedlar could climb back into his cart. "Poe, take this man into the forest and retrieve Sir Kritchen. We can put him in the cart and take him back to Vermillion." He shook his head as if the thought of a knight reduced to cargo in a pedlar's cart offended him.

Bonarti looked about to complain but thought better of it and trudged back toward the tree-line with the pedlar in tow. Stevenas meanwhile managed to get himself into the saddle where he sat, hunched about the pain of his wound.

"So . . ." Count Isen peered up at me, eyes hard and narrow as if searching for a memory.

I decided to bl.u.s.ter my way out of there as quickly as possible in case as Isen's head cleared and the detail of quite what had fogged it in the first place started to seep back in. "Can't say I appreciated this whole affair, Count. A man marrying as fine a woman as Sharal DeVeer should be focusing on the future rather than rummaging in her past to find offence." I held my hand up to forestall him as he stepped forward, something bitter on his tongue. "I'll thank you though for freeing me from those rogues. They were in the pay of a man named Maeres Allus, a distributor and producer of opium among other things. Probably has fingers in some of your pies too. I hear he has influence in the Corsair Isles. In any event, I shall be dealing with him on my return but for now I've business in Umbertide on the queen's behalf."

I set a foot into Nor's stirrup and stepped lively onto his back. Count Isen kept setting his fingers to his b.l.o.o.d.y scalp and I really didn't want to be on hand if he dug out a splinter and jogged back any of those lost memories. I leaned over and snagged the reins of first one, then two, finally all three of the Slavs' horses.

"Count Isen." I inclined my head some fraction of a degree. "Stevenas." And I set off awkwardly, leading the three nags alongside me. I planned to sell them at the next decent inn and my need for gold over-rode any shame at such looting with Isen and his henchman watching on.

For the first hundred yards I could feel Isen's stare burning into the back of my neck. I may have got the drop on the little madman but he still scared the h.e.l.l out of me. Men like him and Maeres deserved each other. I hoped Isen would take Sir Kritchen's death as a personal insult and take Master Allus to task over the matter.

Riding on in the noonday sun with the road ahead drowned beneath a shimmering heat haze a sudden rush of relief ran through me and left me shuddering. In the s.p.a.ce of a day I'd been caught by both the nightmares that chased me out of my home so quickly after finally making it back. I'd jumped, or been pushed, from the fire into the frying pan and finally escaped, somewhat singed, to retrace steps I'd taken two days previously. "I hope the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds eat each other alive," I told Nor, then kicked his ribs to break him into a canter. Standing in the stirrups I gave a whoop and urged him on. I couldn't leave that s.h.i.t behind me quick enough!

TWENTY-THREE.

Having escaped both Maeres Allus and Count Isen I rode on south buoyed up by the kind of good spirits I hadn't had since . . . well, since being on the road with Snorri. My good mood lasted until early evening when the sullen heat piled up a thunderhead of t.i.tanic proportions that proceeded to try and drown everyone on the Appan Way. I took shelter beneath a huge oak a hundred yards off the road in the midst of a tobacco field. Lightning began to fracture the sky, the thunder rolling back and forth. Nor nickered and pulled, skittish and threatening to bolt with each new crash from above. They do say it's foolish to stand beneath a tree when there's lightning all about, but getting soaked through when there's shelter to hand seemed more foolish so I decided it was probably an old wives' tale and ignored the advice. Soon enough a small crowd of travellers had joined me-a couple of old wives among them.

We stood waiting for the rain to slacken off, the commoners gossiping among themselves, me keeping a dignified silence and listening in surrept.i.tiously.

". . . n.o.bby? Ain't seen n.o.bby in donkey's years. Had a flat head did n.o.bby-last time I saw him he had a flagon of beer balanced on his head and a beer in each hand . . . must've been twenty years ago . . ."

". . . two dozen palace riders! Going like the devil they were, headed south. More following behind, checking everyone . . ."

"Gelleth! No? Truly? . . . Must have been a judgment on them. A G.o.dless lot they are up north . . ."

Out on the road a tight pack of riders hastened north toward Vermillion. Through the rain, and with their cloaks sodden and dark, it was hard to make out the uniform but I could see that it was a uniform, which made it pretty certain they were some portion of the cavalry that Grandmother had sent out after Snorri. Probably the Undoreth and Kara were in the middle of the bunch, quite possibly each tied across a saddle.

When the ferocity of the downpour abated I took to the road again and pushed on at a decent pace. The sun re-emerged and the puddles began to steam. Two hours later the road ahead lay dusty and parched as if the rain had never happened. There's a lesson in that somewhere. The road forgets. Make your life a journey, keep moving toward what you want, leave behind anything that's too heavy to carry.

The miles pa.s.sed easily enough. I took a room at a decent inn and got a quant.i.ty of lampblack with which I set to obscuring the distinctive flash of white along Nor's nose. Sometimes it's better to travel incognito than in style.

I pressed on, day after day, expecting to find Hennan on the road still hunting the good life with Snorri, not knowing the Norse had been captured and taken back to Vermillion with that d.a.m.ned key.

The further I rode the more impressed I was with Hennan's fort.i.tude and pace. By the time I reached the Florence border I a.s.sumed I must have missed him along the way. That or some harm had come to him. The type of harm that grabs you from behind and buries your body in a shallow grave. The idea gave me a peculiar type of pain, deeper and different from the simple fear of what Snorri would say if he found out I'd let the boy run away and get himself killed. I shrugged the feeling off, attributing it to indigestion from the pastry I'd had off a roadside salesman some hours before. The nearer I got to Florence the less the local food seemed to agree with me.

Ten miles before the frontier between Red March and Florence the Appan Way joins the Roma Road and becomes subsumed by the larger route, our traffic lost in the to and fro of that great artery of Empire. For all of us heading south an air of antic.i.p.ation grew. After Vyene, and Vermillion of course, there is no greater city than Roma in any fragment of the Broken Empire, and the taste of Roma lay thick in the air. The sight of papal messengers reminded us all how close the pope lay now. Scarcely an hour would pa.s.s without one of the pope's riders clattering by, flamboyant in their purple silks atop lean stallions, glossy black and bred for endurance. Monks traipsed the road in columns of ten or thirty, chanting prayers or calling the plainsong up and down their length, and priests of every shade and flavour beat their paths north and south. I recalled that my own father must have pa.s.sed this way with his retinue scarcely a week earlier. I guessed the old man must be in Roma by now, presented before her holiness and perhaps having it explained to him what a cardinal should be and by just how wide a margin he had missed the mark.

My banking papers and obvious breeding got me through the border checkpoint, a pleasant enough inn with an attached barracks full of ornately armoured and overheated Florentine soldiers. The country on the other side of the frontier proved as dry and as hot as the southern stretches of Red March had. Where streams ran they grew olive groves, tobacco, chillies and oranges. Where there were no streams they farmed rocks, with the occasional goat watching on.

Sleepy whitewashed villages observed the Roma Road from the slopes of the arid foothills. In time the villages became towns and the foothills reached up toward mountains. The Roma Road, forced at last from its stubborn addiction to straightness, began to wind and turn, bending its will to that of the surrounding terrain. The air grew a touch fresher and the peaks' shadows filled the valleys, making each evening a blessed relief from the heat of the plains.

Umbertide revealed itself as the road wound down from a high pa.s.s into the broad and fertile valley of Umberto. The city, viewed from an elevation, lay white and splendid, surrounded by orderly farming districts and outlying villas of enviable size. The impression of wealth and peace only grew as the remaining distance shrank.