| |
He had been riding all night, and he probably wasn’t going to have much chance for rest when he got back. Baron Broderick had sent him to find Lukas’s army, and he had. It wasn’t very hard to find. Half a dozen regiments marching up the river road, with all their luggage in barges. That would have been difficult to miss. They were moving fast, too—covering thirty or thirty-five miles a day. At that rate, Duke Lukas was confident he could be at the southern gate of Formacaster by midday.
The duke’s men wouldn’t need to go that far to find a fight, though. Two miles south of the city, as the towers of Wealdan Castle peeked over the willow trees, William looked across to the west bank of the Trahern and saw a vast flotilla of little boats lining up. Some of them were fishing vessels, others were larger cargo barges. But most of them were flying the banner of the Duke of Newshire. Long rows of men stood on the road there, and every time a boat touched shore, a squad or company would run forward and climb in. At least a dozen of the boats were already in midstream.
“Son of a bitch,” thought William. This little naval force must have slipped by the castle in the middle of the night. And now they were starting to ferry the Newshire men across the river.
Briefly, William wondered if he should turn around and go back to warn Duke Lukas about this. But he decided there was no need. Lukas already knew the Newshire troops were on the western bank, and anyone with sense could see they had to cross somewhere. No, it was the enemy who were in for a nasty shock. They would find a huge army coming up from their rear, just as they were setting out their siege camps around Morwyn Hill and the suburban village of Osricksburg. Of course, a lot depended on timing. And on how many troops the Duke of Newshire could get across the river before Lukas attacked.
William spurred his horse to a fast trot over the last two miles. The air already felt heavy and warm, and the wind on his face was a relief. He looked to his right, across the hills and fields of the Crown Lands, and spotted the little orchard where he and Gwen had gone for a picnic one Sunday afternoon, not long after arriving in the city.
Robby was just a baby then, and they’d left him with Hazel Rowley for the day. It was such a blatantly romantic setting—all the trees in bloom—that they’d both been a little embarrassed by it. Gwen had started giggling when they heard someone, on the other side of a clearing, start playing love songs on the lute. And then William had started laughing, too. Afterward, they had always said they would go back there again, but between one thing and another, they never had.
He wondered where his wife and son were at that moment. Lily Serrana had left a tiny note for him, slipped into the latch of his door, that said, “They are safe and comfortable,” but that was all. It would have been nice to know exactly where they were, and to know they were far away from the battle. But he had to trust that Lily had taken that into consideration when she had selected their hiding place. For now, they were safer if no one knew where they’d gone, even William.
As he rode up to the gate, a curious thought suddenly struck him, and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before. He realized that he could have gone into hiding with Gwen and Robby. There was no reason why he couldn’t have. If Lily could hide two people, she could surely hide three. And who would have stopped him? People at the castle and in the city were used to him coming and going at odd hours. He had never had a regular duty schedule. And frankly, if he never came back, most people at the castle would assume his past had finally caught up to him, and he was resting in a shallow grave somewhere or floating in the river.
But of course he couldn’t have deserted and run off with his family. He was sworn to the service of Baron Broderick, and he had been for twelve years. He would no sooner have abandoned the captain general than he would have abandoned his wife. He had his duty, and he would do it, even if it got him killed today.
He put all these thoughts out of his mind as he rode up Morwyn Hill into Osricksburg, where hundreds of knights and men-at-arms were already mustering. One of the captains told him to report to Colonel Rath at the southeastern gate, though when he did, Rath told him he should go up to the castle, instead.
“I heard the captain general say he wants you to ride at his side. He wants to make sure he knows where you are at all times during the battle today. You should be flattered.”
“Oh, I am,” said William, though in fact he wasn’t.
His usual place in large battles was to serve as Broderick’s scout and messenger. So it wasn’t that odd that he would start the day at the baron’s side. But there was something about the notion of wanting to know where he was “at all times,” that felt slightly menacing. He thought it over as he rode into the city, and he decided he wasn’t being paranoid. He knew too much about the Gramirens’ secrets, and if things went badly for them today, then it stood to reason they would want to silence anyone who could tell what they had done.
At the corner of Monk Street, on his way to the cathedral square, he paused, looking a block north to the turn into Shieldworten Street. He didn’t need to stop back at home, and he was in a hurry, but he almost couldn’t stop himself from going there anyway, just to stand in those rooms, run his hands over the furniture, and think about his family one more time. He got halfway down the block before he decided he was being stupid, and reminded himself he needed to get Duke Lukas’s message to the captain general. So he turned around.
As he rode up Monk Street, a huge carriage rumbled past him, and he realized with a shock that he knew it. This was the carriage of the Immani legate, with the gold eagle on the doors and the mysterious inscription, “S.P.Q.I.” As it drew alongside him, he turned and looked in the window, and for half a second, through the blinds, he could have sworn he saw the faces of Lily Serrana and Princess Elwyn. He stopped his horse and turned to watch the carriage rattle away.
Could that really have been the princess? Was she running off with her Immani lover? That would be the end of any chance for a wedding between the Sigors and the Gramirens. Baron Broderick really ought to know about this. But then again, William might have been mistaken. It could have been some other girl in that carriage with Lily. And frankly, he felt as if he had brought the baron enough bad news recently. If the princess really was gone, then Broderick and Lady Muriel would find out about it from someone else after the battle, and they could deal with the problem then.
At the castle stables, awkwardly enough, the first person William saw was Young Broderick, who had pulled in ahead of him with the Gramiren family carriage. The young man greeted William with unusual warmth—he seemed quite pleased about something. William got away as quickly as he could. His face kept burning as he thought of what he knew about the poor fellow’s fiancee, and what the girl might be doing at that very moment.
He went up to Baron Broderick’s rooms through the servants’ passages—it was faster that way. The Palm Court and the public parlors were crowded with men in armor and ladies bidding them loud and tearful farewells.
In the stairwell, before he got to the baron’s apartment, William brushed past a servant carrying a large, empty wine bottle. A tall fellow, with big, wide shoulders like you didn’t usually see on a page or underbutler. For half a second, William caught a glimpse of the man’s profile, his eyes hidden by a big, floppy hat, and then he disappeared down the stairs.
There was something strangely familiar about the shape of that nose and that jaw. William stood with his hand on the door into Broderick’s parlor, trying to remember where he’d seen those features. Then he remembered, and a cold chill ran up his back.
That was Sir Robert Tynsdale.
On the other side of the door, William heard Lady Muriel’s voice, saying, “Yes. Why don’t we have a toast, then?”
William made it down half a flight of stairs, knife drawn, searching for Tynsdale, before he thought of that empty bottle in Sir Robert’s hands. The awful significance of what her ladyship had said finally hit him. Then he scrambled back up the way he had come, praying he wasn’t too late.