CHAPTER 28
“The winter appears to have done us a favor.” Landen offered this observation to Chaddin as they rode at the head of their small column through the nearly empty streets of Londray.
There’d been no problem with the guards at the outer or the inner gate. Of the four guards to examine them, one had taken in the pair of them riding together and hurriedly raised the gate, one had simply bowed at sight of the ring on Landen’s finger, a third had peered long but surreptitiously at the resemblance in the cut of their jawlines, and the fourth had run off ahead of them, swinging a handbell and yelling, “The Baroness returns! The Baroness Landen Delondeur returns!”
“What do you mean?”
The streets were empty, and though it was early, they were too empty. No prentice boys were running errands or beginning their morning tasks. Bakeries and inns they passed were not pouring the smoke of oven fires from their chimneys.
“The folk are expecting a fight. Strife in the streets. A scramble for the Dunes and the seat. The winter kept it at bay for this long,” Landen said. “With each day that passes, they grow more wary, hide inside their homes, ignore their trades. Probably hoarding food.”
Chaddin sighed heavily. “What can we do?”
“Pray that we’ve gotten here fast enough and that our letters will buy us time.”
When they passed a cross street where the signs were carved with the image of a shallow bowl, Landen called forward two of the knights that had ridden with them back from Thornhurst and turned to dig into a saddlebag. Chaddin looked at the armored men a moment, and leaned towards his half-sister, murmuring, “Send the warband men.” He dropped his voice to an even lower whisper. “They’ll not go looking for any other friends.”
Landen thought a moment, nodded. To the two knights, she said, “Ride ahead to the Dunes, then back, quick as you can manage.” They spurred off, and after a moment, Landen brought forward the letters she’d been digging for. She pulled free a rolled-up parchment tied with white silk and sealed with white wax with the impression of Fortune’s wheel. “Ivar.”
The remaining men of the Iron Ravens filed along behind their gap-toothed captain as she approached Landen. Before coming within sight of the walls, Landen had talked Ivar into striking their banner, but their black mail still stood out, as did their horses. The short, shaggy ponies they rode were far more common in Oyrwyn or Harlach than Delondeur.
Landen held out the scroll to the warband captain, who took it in a black-gloved hand. As it moved, a tiny remnant of the perfume worn by the woman who’d written and sealed it wafted into the air.
“Y’sure the Arch’oness isn’t damnin’ ya w’this?” Ivar raised the scroll doubtfully.
“As sure as I can be, not having broken her seal,” Landen said. “I expect it to arrive at Fortune’s Temple intact.”
“Aye.” The mercenary started to turn her horse.
“Captain,” Chaddin suddenly said, “there’s a silver link for your company for every additional armed man accompanying you to meet us at the Dunes.”
Ivar saluted with the scroll, her smile offering brown teeth where it had any at all, and her men and their ponies shuffled off into the drawn gloom.
“Where are you getting those links, brother?” Landen looked towards Chaddin with an arched blonde eyebrow.
“I assume the office of the Lord Magistrate will have an official purse,” Chaddin replied calmly. “And the best way to keep the streets free of blood is to have more armed men behind us than in front of us.”
“I can’t fault your logic,” Landen said, “and I suppose you will need funds. Yet you have probably just spent them all.”
“How many men can Ivar possibly round up?” Chaddin shrugged and set his horse moving.
* * *
The answer, as it turned out, was the entire available guard of Fortune’s Temple: three score men in white surcoats, spiked bronze helmets, and matching enameled mail. They marched in ranks, gleaming dully in the early morning light.
Landen and Chaddin watched them with critical eyes and turned to each other. “Their lines are ragged,” Chaddin pointed out. “Bad at marching, bad at fighting.”
“We don’t want them to have to fight,” Landen said.
“I’ll wager half of them don’t know more than what end of the sword to hold.”
As the guards came to a slow stop, with many collisions in the ranks, Ivar came riding to their head, smiling widely and crookedly. “That’s if ya have anything left t’wager with, m’lord,” the mercenary captain drawled. “I’ll happily take payment in gold links if ya’ve not enough silver.”
“We have a castle to occupy first,” Chaddin pointed out. “But I will give you a down payment now.” He turned in the saddle and started to dig in a saddlebag, but Ivar waved him off.
“We can work it out later,” she said, then that ugly smile widened even further. “W’reas’n’ble interest, o’course.” The black-mailed woman on the shaggy little horse guffawed at her own wit, then spat on the cobbles and rode back towards the Temple Guards, eyeing them disapprovingly.
One of the guardsmen approached the mounted half-siblings and bowed. He carried no spear and his surcoat bore a wheel embroidered in silver thread. “Guard Captain Sanglais,” he said in a mellifluous accent. “I am bid by Archioness Cerisia to place my entire detachment in your hands, Lady Baroness, and Lord Magistrate,” he added, sketching a second bow, and then a third—slightly smaller than the first two—to Landen and Chaddin in turn.
“Thank you, Captain,” Landen said. She tilted her head. “Keersvasti?”
“Aye, m’lady Baroness,” the man replied. “I understand you spent some time among the jeweled islands last summer.”
“Aye,” Landen replied. Pursing her lips a moment, she spoke again in a more lyrical tongue. Chaddin and the rest of the men around him turned quizzical eyes on her. “I spent most of my time chasing Keersvasti pirates,” she said in his language carefully, slowly, “and less among jeweled isles.”
Sanglais chuckled lightly and laid a hand against his chest as if lightly wounded. “Any man who violates the sanctity of the sea is no true son of the archipelago.”
“There are many islands on all that water,” Landen replied. “Not all are as a string of emeralds. Some are merely rock, and full of places for a pirate to hide.”
“That may be, but when they come near the archipelago, my lady, we kill them,” Sanglais replied. “Pirates would clutter our very lifesblood and see us slowly die.”
Chaddin cleared his throat, and Landen lifted a hand to him in apology, switching back to the Barony tongue. “I am sorry, Lord Magistrate. We must cease being rude, captain—and we have business to attend to.”
“That we do, m’lady Baroness. To the Dunes, I assume?” When Landen nodded, Sanglais bowed once more and returned to his troops, calling out orders to them. They lurched forward unevenly, a few men butting into the ranks in front of him.
There was no need to give directions. The tall, sand-colored walls loomed over the city in its extreme northwest corner. They reflected the light of the rising sun like a beacon mirror guiding ships to shore in darkness or mist, and Landen felt keenly their pull.
By now folk had started to tail along after the mounted train, and whispers scurried along the lanes and streets. Boys and young men, running the news ahead of them, found themselves getting yanked indoors by prudent parents or cautious wives. Many a door-bar could be heard falling, many shutters drawn tight, and yet a crowd still drew alongside them.
A few cheered raggedly, and Landen felt the pressure growing, a spot in the center of her back that expanded until it became a weight upon her shoulders and the back of her neck. What, she thought, would my father have done?
Talked them all into taking up arms and marching ahead of him. Even as the thought formed she saw the cold, easily-angered face of Allystaire Stillbright swim in her vision.
She called a halt and stood in her stirrups, cleared her throat. “Good people of Londray. I hope that this day is as bloodless as Snow’s Melt or a Harvest Fest.”
Silence. A lot of stares that weighed her carefully. Her horse whinnied quietly, stomped at the cobbles.
“However,” she went on, “if blood is to be spilled, let it be our blood. Go to your homes. Pray that we can put the winter behind us in peace and plenty. My brother and I have buried any enmity that was between us, and there will no longer be factions plotting in their halls and then fighting in your streets. Please,” she added, raising her hands up, palms out. “Please go to your homes. See to the safety of yourselves, your children, your trades.”
Landen sighed as she sat back into the saddle. Perhaps half the crowd, dozens of folk that had gathered by then, dispersed back into the streets. The rest milled around. When Landen swung her small and motley column back into motion, they followed, though at a distance.
The Baroness sighed, which her brother heard. “We can’t all inspire them to defeat armies like he can, Landen,” Chaddin murmured.
“I’d settle for them doing as I asked and heading for safety. No matter what happens, Londray will need them safe and working, fishing, trading, selling, smithing.”
“What is it you expect to happen? Another brother? Ennithstide or Lamaliere to have taken the Dunes and named himself Baron?”
“It is not about what I expect,” Landen said, “it is about what can happen.”
They rode on in silence, but didn’t need to wait long, for the pair of riders Landen had sent ahead came thundering back. They pulled their mounts up dramatically; one threw sparks from a cobble with its shoes.
“My lady Baroness,” one reported loudly, “there are no banners flying above the Dunes save that of the Barony itself. There are men drawn across our path, though. Armed, but only a score.”
“They’re under Braech’s banner,” said the other. “Led by a priest, a young man I don’t recognize. Not the Choiron nor the Marynth of Londray’s Temple.” The man cleared his throat, looked as if he had more to say.
“Go on, Urbin,” Landen urged him. “I would have a full report, and truthful, always.”
“Very well, m’lady. Among them, flanking the priest? There’s two men not wearing armor, aside from gauntlets. Bare from the waist.”
Landen suppressed a shiver by tightening her hands around the reins of her horse. “Was their skin marked?”
“Aye.”
There was silence save for the sound of horse’s hooves shuffling on the stone-lined streets, of the clank of gear and creaking sway of harness.
Chaddin looked from his sister to the reporting knight, frowning. “What? An unarmored man is a fool, and we have them three to one if they mean to force a fight.”
“An unarmored man is a fool,” Landen agreed, “but sometimes a fool is the most dangerous kind of man to fight. Have we any bows?” She looked back over his shoulder at their ragged train, but the hope in her words was futile; in her sinking gut she knew the truth. “Cold,” she cursed quietly as he saw only their horsemen, with their swords, their horseman’s axes, or flails dangling from wrists. Behind them, Sanglais’s gleaming ranks of bronze and white carried short, stabbing spears and swords. Not a bow or a crossbow in evidence.
“What is it?” said Chaddin. “Will twenty stand and fight sixty?”
“How many men did Allystaire Stillbright have to stand and face three hundred, because he had the will of a Goddess behind him? If the rest of the Islandmen abandon them, which I doubt, the two that Urbin saw would stand and fight if we were six hundred. I have seen them, in the islands, in Keersvast. Urbin,” she said, “ride back to the Captain of Fortune’s Temple guards and tell him to prepare his men to face a pair of Dragon Scale Berzerkers.”
* * *
Landen and Chaddin rode to the fore, spreading the horsemen out in a thin line, flying the Tower of Delondeur in their midst. Ivar and the Ravens had dismounted, mingling with Sanglais’s men in hope of stiffening them. While the walls of the Dunes gleaming promisingly, a thin line of men blocked the approach to the main gate.
The men barring their path looked huge, leaning on the gigantic axes and massive, broad swords Islandmen favored. Armor was mismatched or barely visible beneath the their furs, bristling to match the long braids they wore in hair and beard. A blue-robed priest stood in their midst, the berzerkers flanking him.
All eyes were drawn to them. Even among so many grim, hard-looking men, they seemed composed of violence, ready to unleash it like a part of themselves.
At a long distance, Landen stood in her stirrups and called out. “Men of the Sea Dragon! Why do you block the path of the Baroness Landen Delondeur and her brother, Lord Magistrate Chaddin?” Landen had decided it couldn’t hurt to trumpet that last bit as often as possible in case any former mutineers were in shouting distance.
The blue-robed priest, who seemed tall and yet somehow insubstantial next to the bare-chested men flanking him, had started to speak, but one of the Dragon Scales threw his head back and roared.
Even from dozens of yards away, the sound boxed Landen’s ears like a pair of closed fists. It hurt to hear it; it was unearthly and it echoed off the buildings that lined the street.
A pair of horses panicked, screaming and rearing up. One threw its rider and bolted. Some of Sanglais’s men started to back away. A few were quickly struck back into line by the butt-end of a black-clad Raven’s spear, but a handful turned and ran.
Nothing for it now, Landen thought. Her ears rang and she couldn’t hear herself, but she thought that standing straight in her stirrups, raising his sword to catch the sun, and spurring her horse forward would be sign enough.
She could feel, rather than hear, the rumble of the mounted men charging along beside her. She wished they’d had lances. Lances were a distant second to good bowmen when it came to killing Braech’s Holy Berzerkers, but a damn sight better than swords and axes.
True to their reputation, the Islandmen charged out to meet the horsemen, but not before unleashing a volley of throwing axes. Most clattered harmlessly to the stones, deflected off of a raised shield, or poorly thrown.
Each of the berzerkers had thrown as well. One of their slim-bladed weapons buried in a horse’s skull, sending the poor animal toppling in a boneless heap, the rider thrown forward like a bundle of rags. The other carried off the upraised sword-hand of another rider, blade and gauntlet clattering to the ground, leaving the man to gawp at the stump of his arm as his horse bore him heedlessly forward.
Grimly, Landen lowered her sword and aimed her horse into the mass of fur-clad men.
Islandmen strategy for dealing with horsemen was brutal, but effective; they attacked the horses. Landen knew this, and so when one bent low and held his axe out to sweep at her mount’s legs, she waited till the last moment to turn the beast so that it bore down on the Islandman with its weight.
Over a hundred stone of horse and rider barreled straight over the man, crushing him to the street. The horse, trained well, put one iron-shod hoof into the man’s head as it swept over him.
Landen let the horse run on, shouted madly at the walls of the Dunes, hoping men inside might hear her, see her, recognize her voice. She started her horse into a turn, describing a wide arc back towards the men. Most of her horsemen had pierced the line, but there were empty saddles and men on foot being surrounded and hacked to pieces.
Sanglais had his guards double-timing, spears leveled. They’d make short work of the ordinary Islandmen warriors, she thought, for all their inexperience. But she searched frantically for the Dragon Scales.
One had leapt upon the man unhorsed when his mount had taken the throwing axe. His scale-gauntleted hands were around the dazed man’s throat, twisting.
Even through the ringing in her ears, Landen heard the panicked shriek, suddenly and sickeningly cut off. Mercifully, she was too dazed or too far away to hear the snap.
But she could see it plainly when the berzerker lifted the head clear of the dead man’s body, showed his grisly trophy to the sky, and then hurled it into the melee.
The second had run clear of the horsemen and his compatriots and instead flung himself into the midst of Sanglais’s guardsmen, clearing their leveled spears with a leap that seemed effortless. Two shocked guardsmen fell to axe and gauntlet in as many moments. A handful more broke and ran.
“My Barony for a decent length of ash and steel,” Landen muttered, even as she spurred her stallion towards the nearer of the two berzekers, the images graven upon his bare back making at inviting target.
She sensed movement at her side, spared a glance, saw Chaddin joining her. Together they lowered their swords and spread out, Landen switching her grip to her left hand, so that they’d bracket their target. They risked a dreadful cost, but the half-siblings moved as if they’d trained together from childhood.
The berzerker they bore down on had dragged another Delondeur knight from his saddle. To his credit, the armored figure never stopped swinging his axe, but the force of the fall took some of his strength, and the bare-chested man contemptuously knocked the axe aside with one gauntleted hand. Meanwhile his other hand, curled into a razored fist, crashed into the knight’s helm, staving it in on the second blow.
The third sent spurting streams of blood through the mangled slits. Feebly, the knight swung his axe again. The Dragon Scale, kneeling atop his foe, snatched the weapon, clutched it with both hands and pressed the blade against the already ruined helm. He leaned forward, arms rippling.
The axe punched through steel, flesh, and bone, and the knight twitched and bled and died on the street.
As the Dragon Scale stood, Landen and Chaddin’s swords, with the speed and mass of well-trained warhorses behind their points, sank home.
Landen felt far more resistance than any bare skin should’ve offered. It was like striking with the point against steel plate. For a moment she thought her blade might break, but it endured. Both points entered the berzerker’s back and punched through the front of his chest; both swords were ripped from the hands of their wielders.
Fumbling to get her flail into her hand from where it dangled on her wrist, Landen turned to watch the berzerker. He still stood, blood pouring freely down his chest and from his mouth, the three streams merging into one over the muscles of his belly. Only when another Delondeur knight rode past, swinging a heavy flanged mace into his skull, did the Dragon Scale fall to his knees.
Still, he looked towards the fighting, eyes restless, smiling beatifically as he bled, joy plain on his features as he slowly died.
Leaving him to it, Landen turned her horse back towards Sanglais’s men. The Islandmen were dead or scattering, but a ring had formed around the second Dragon Scale, a ring of black-clad men holding long spears, darting them at him as he hopped and leapt and spun to avoid them.
It was a taut, tense game, and as Landen rode towards it uncertainly, she saw one of the Iron Ravens suddenly seize a chance, step forward, and thrust his spear straight into the berzerker’s lower back. It was surely a deadly wound, erupting in blood, piercing a kidney and the bowels. Or it would have, if the berzerker’s hands hadn’t closed around the shaft and pulled it free, taking the weapon into his own hands and turning on the now unarmed Raven.
The professionalism of his Brothers of Battle saved him, for all three surged forward and caught the Dragon Scale with their spears, pinning him between them.
Grimly, the crazed holy man gripped the shaft of one of the spears, buried in his navel, and started pulling it—and the Raven on the end of it, Ivar herself—closer. Through him, Landen realized, with horror. More of the weapon’s head, and then its dark wooden shaft, was protruding through his back, just having missed his spine. The other two spearmen leaned into their weapons, but the Dragon Scale ignored their efforts.
Suddenly a white-cloaked figure dashed behind the berzerker, lashing out with a lightly curved blade. Sanglais himself, Landen realized, moving with speed and flair and, above all, calm.
Hamstrung, the berzerker unleashed another, weaker roar—men still flinched away—and fell to the ground.
Smiling even as blood began to seep through his teeth, the Dragon Scale threw back his head and unleashed a yelling ululation in the Islandman tongue.
“Sea Dragon bless my death. Sea Dragon bless this battle. Sea Dragon bless all battles. Sea Dragon bless my foes and the man who killed me with the strength of his arm. Sea Dragon curse the man who killed me his cunning. Sea Dragon take my soul and guard it among His glittering hoard until His waters rise to claim the world.”
With the strange, chanting words still filling the air, the berzerker fell forward and died. Like the first, his face was as joyful as any Landen had ever seen.
* * *
When the berzerkers died, the fight went out of the rest of those still standing, and the remaining five Islandmen and the priest of Braech were taken as sullen prisoners. In truth, the priest, a young man with a downy beard who’d never taken his mace from his belt, seemed entirely dazed by what had happened, and allowed himself to be led away mutely.
Shortly after the fight was safely over, the gates of the Dunes rattled open and a detachment of a dozen horsemen rode out, splendid in bright armor and gleaming green surcoats.
Landen found herself staring at the sharp steel tips at the end of their twelve-foot-long ashwood lances, and grew angrier and angrier, but she willed the fury down into a tight, hot ball, let it feed her words and actions, but slowly.
She ignored the lancers and the streaming pennants as she sought out Chaddin, Sanglais, and Ivar. The latter was staring hard at the spear-pricked corpse of the Holy Berzerker. She spat a stream of bloody saliva out of the side of her mouth. “Mighty high butcher’s bill in a fight wi’ odds three t’one t’us,” she said, probing experimentally at her jaw with one finger, wincing faintly as she pressed one spot over and over.
“Aye,” Landen agreed. “How many did we lose, Chaddin?”
“Eight,” her brother answered wearily. Chaddin was holding one arm awkwardly against his side, but seemed otherwise unhurt.
Sanglais’s white surcoat was spattered with crisscrossing lines of blood. “A dozen dead, at least. And many wounded. That berzerker…” He shook his head slowly, eyes in an unfocused stare. “I had heard tales. Seen them at a distance. Never close, never in a fight.”
“You,” Landen said, raising the sword she’d pulled free from the first berzerker’s body at the dazed priest. “What is your name and what was your purpose here?”
“Hissop,” the priest sputtered, his eyes suddenly drawn to a focus by the bloodstained sword pointed at his chest. “Hissop. I did not mean to give battle, m’lady, only to seek out your purpose.” His voice quavered and he raised his hands. “The Scales. They wouldn’t listen. T’wasn’t me, m’lady.”
Landen’s sword hand twitched. She longed to bury the blade in the tall, blond-bearded fool in front of her, but she steadied herself. “They wouldn’t listen to a priest of Braech?”
“They are hard to control, m’lady. I tried to bend my will upon them. It was like trying to make a rope fast to a wave. It wasn’t possible.”
“Who sent them to you in the first place?”
“The Choiron Sy—”
“Symod. Where is he?”
The man shook his head, his skin growing more pallid. “I don’t know.”
Landen raised his sword again. “Answer me!”
As the priest was shaking his head, Landen felt certain she would run him through, until Chaddin stepped to her side and pressed one hand to the flat of her blade, gently pushing it towards the ground. “No, m’lady. Not in the street.” Chaddin flicked his eyes and Landen followed them; a crowd was gathering once more, gawping at the bodies and the wounded.
“You are correct, Lord Magistrate,” Landen muttered. She sheathed her sword, heedless of the blood that coated it, and grabbed the priest’s arm in her fist, swung the man roughly around.
The troop of lancers had wheeled smartly, ranks gleaming under the risen sun. Landen finally read the sigil on their tabards, lances crossed behind the familiar tower. Baron’s Own.
That they seemed to be reporting to her was a good sign, she thought.
“Captain!”
The first man in line, seated on a tall bay warhorse, cantered it forward, snapping the wood of his lance pole against his breastplate in salute. “Detail men to take the remaining enemies to the dungeon,” she said, “and to arrange for the street to be cleared, our wounded to be taken to the chirurgeons. Then you report back to me.”
Another salute, an “Aye, m’lady” muffled by his helm, and the man rode back to his line, barking orders. One of the riders dashed away towards the gate, with the balance smartly surrounding the remaining Islandmen and Hissop.
Landen and Chaddin had pulled themselves wearily back into their saddles by the time the lancer captain rejoined them.
Steeling her face and working hard to keep her voice calm despite the anger she felt, Landen stole another look at the lance. At the foot of steel it was capped with.
“Why did it take so long to ride out, Captain?” Landen’s tone was more clipped than she intended.
“Had to wait for orders to raise the gate, m’lady.”
“And who was giving those orders?”
“Sir Kelten had command of the gate, m’lord, as given by the Castellan Lord Sundegar.”
“I am not familiar with Sir Kelten.”
“He was but lately knighted, m’lady, by his cousin Sir Leoben, before leaving in command of the Salt Spears.”
“Bring Sir Kelten to me. In the Great Hall.”
By now their horses were carrying them through the gates and into the safety inside the walls. Landen felt herself relax, felt muscles begin to unclench. But she forced herself to think of the carnage on the street just beyond the keep, and the anger knotted up again.
* * *
Landen hadn’t bothered to shed her armor, except to remove helm and gauntlets, when she strode into the Great Hall and walked straight up to the seat. She didn’t stop to take in the trophies: the banners of defeated lords, the prized Purple Mare of the former Barony Tarynth, or the Gravekmir skull that hung directly above the seat.
With Chaddin at her side, she walked straight to the chair, turned, drew her sword, and sat with a heavy clank. Servants, courtiers, knights, and clerks all rushed in her wake, whispering and murmuring to each other.
Silence fell over them like a wave as she sat.
“I am Landen Delondeur,” she said, voice raspy, one ear still ringing. “Fifteenth of my line. Lady of Barony Delondeur. If anyone would contest this, come forward now. For those of you who would swear fealty, take a knee.”
Chaddin, standing at the foot of the dais on which the chair sat, was the first to sink to one knee.
The assembled men quickly did the same. Landen stood, descended the stairs, and reached down to take Chaddin by the shoulders and pull him to his feet.
“My half-brother Chaddin, natural son of Baron Lionel Delondeur, I name my full brother, my heir until I continue our line, and Lord Magistrate of Barony Delondeur.” She paused to let that sink in, saw more than one raised head, more than one curious look. “There are going to be changes,” she added slowly, finding a pair of upraised eyes and staring hard until they dropped. “We have not the time for individual oaths, but know that we are marking every person in this room. You have sworn your fealty to me on your knees. Loyalty, honesty, and courage I will reward. Now,” she added, as she ascended back to the seat and sank gratefully into it, “someone fetch my brother a seat. And bring forward any clergy of Braech within the keep.”
As Landen settled into her chair she surveyed the crowd that had gathered. Her eye was drawn to a young man, clean shaven, fair-headed, dashingly dressed with a uselessly thin-looking mail shirt polished to a high sheen, a slender sword worn on his hip, a silver spur ringing melodically on one boot, and a half-cloak of crushed red silk hanging over one shoulder.
“You,” she said, raising one hand to point at the youth, “what is your name?”
“Sir Kelten, my lady.” Though the youth had a slight frame, the voice that issued from it was strong, proud, and clear. “I had command of the gate this morning,” he went on, striding forward—strutting, really, Landen thought—and dramatically bowing. “I sent forth a squadron of the Baron’s Own to secure your safety, m’lady.”
Landen sighed and sat back, flicked her eyes away as a pair of liveried servants hustled into the hall with a chair. Though not so large nor as ornate as the one she sat upon, the wood was well-worked, and showed the gleaming patina of years of polished care. They set it at the foot of the dais, placing Chaddin a span or so below her in height; her half-brother sat carefully, his back blade-straight, awkwardly managing the sword at his side.
“There are three things wrong with what you have just said,” Landen spoke up, as she turned her eyes back towards Kelten. She thought, for a moment, of the intensity with which Allystaire Coldbourne had looked at her when trying to impart some message or, as he often did, imply a threat. Stillbright, she reminded herself.
Landen doubted her ability to replicate the force of the paladin’s gaze, but she had years of training and generations of Baronial breeding behind her eyes, and she narrowed them, tilted her head slightly. “First, it was not a squadron, it was a troop. No man is fit to command who does not know such basic terms. Second, it was not my safety that you secured with your orders, but the death of my men by your lack of haste.”
As Landen spoke, the young knight’s face grew paler. He licked his lips, blinked, but remained silent.
“Lastly, Kelten, you are no knight. I strip you of that rank and all of its attendant privilege until you prove yourself worthy of it.”
A collective gasp went up in the room, followed by the silence of the crowd holding its breath. Chaddin looked back over his shoulder warily. Landen gritted her teeth to keep her chin firm and her eyes locked on Kelten’s.
Finally, the fop spoke up, hand falling dramatically to his sword. “My lady! You cannot—”
“Do not presume to tell me what I cannot do, Kelten.” Landen twisted the name, making obvious the honorific it lacked. “Whether cowardice, game-playing, or simply incompetence, had the Baron’s Own ridden forth the instant our path was blocked, lives could’ve been saved. Instead they were thrown away while you did what, tested the air with a wet finger to learn the direction of the wind?”
Kelten drew himself up to his full height, which was not terribly impressive. “I am no coward, my lady. And my patron, Sir Leoben, will take it ill that you would disregard his judgment so recklessly.”
“Do you see Sir Leoben here?”
“I take it he returned in your train,” Kelten answered, though hesitantly.
“Sir Leoben died outside the walls of Thornhurst, engaging in my father’s last and most monstrous folly,” Landen said.
“Then I demand the right to seek satisfaction against the man who killed him. Tell me who it was.”
Landen looked to Chaddin. “Lord Magistrate, can you help the young man direct his ire?”
“I believe I can, m’lady,” Chaddin began airily. “It was a dwarfish alchemist, in point of fact, not a man. He resides in Thornhurst, which is many days ride to the east, over or around the Thasryach. Once there, ask for the Wit. Though, be warned, he is a deadly hand with a crossbow, as your Sir Leoben learned.”
“A crossbow is weapon of peasants and cowards!”
“I promise you, Torvul is neither of those things,” Chaddin said. “And should you make it so far as Thornhurst in some mad attempt to kill him, he will see you coming from miles away. And should he find it expedient, he will put a crossbow bolt through your neck and proceed with whatever more useful work he was about before you showed up. Or, perhaps, he might seek a bit more of a challenge and simply talk you to death. Either way, I can’t recommend you go seeking revenge.”
“Kelten,” Landen said, “you may still serve a purpose here, and earn back the spur you will now remove. Or you may flee the keep and seek what you will of the world—but if you harbor any hope of serving as a Delondeur knight again, you will do as I say and do it now.”
Rage and shock warred on his features before settling on confusion. Petulantly, Kelten knelt and stripped the spur off his boot. He hefted it for a moment, eyeing Landen as though he might throw it. Chaddin rose quickly, hand on his sword, but Kelten dropped it sullenly to the ground, where it fell with a jaunty, out-of-place ring.
“Let this be a lesson and a warning both,” Landen called out. “I will not tolerate errors that lead to needless death. Act in haste to do the thing you think right in the moment, and I will reward you. Delay to see what benefit you may snatch for yourself, and I will punish you.”
Kelten melted back into the crowd and Landen decided to watch him go. She took a deep breath. Best to get it all out right away, she thought. “Now bring forward the clergy of Braech. There is an issue of Anathemata that must be rescinded.”