As soon as it became obvious the heir to Elasapine and his royal half-brother planned to resolve this awkward impasse by the time-honoured tradition of slugging it out like a couple of common tavern roughs, the whole mood of the gathered forces changed. What could have been a tinderbox waiting on a single spark to ignite it suddenly took on a carnival atmosphere. The archers lining the ridges relaxed their bows and sat down to watch, laughing and joking among themselves. The pikemen ranked across the ravine lowered their lances and the cavalry dismounted.
Squinting against the setting sun, Tejay. Lionsclaw glanced over her shoulder, as the bulk of the Krakandar troops gathered behind them, cursing all men and their childish need to constantly prove themselves to each other.
She wasn’t unsympathetic. Tejay had been raised in an all-male household; she had four small sons of her own. She knew what men were like, and even empathised with their need to continually establish their supremacy over their foes. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t annoyed by it. Or that she didn’t mean to put an end to this awkward situation with as little loss of honour to both the combatants, as fast as she could possibly manage it.
Dismounting, Tejay led her mare over to where Adham Tirstone stood by his horse watching the unfolding scene with rather a bemused expression. Adham wasn’t quite so dedicated to honouring Zegarnald as Damin Wolfblade and his half-brother. He was his father’s son, a trader at heart who fought only to protect his investments.
“Are they really going to do this?” Adham asked as Tejay walked up beside him.
“Never underestimate the capacity of noble young men to
do incredibly foolish things for perfectly good reasons,” she replied with an impatient sigh.
The trader smiled. “That sounds like something my father might say.” Then his smile faded and he corrected himself. “Would have said. Were you trying to talk Damin out of fighting, my lady?”
She shook her head. “There’d be no point. I was asking him to let Narvell win.”
Adham laughed at the very idea. “You’re an optimistic woman, Lady Lionsclaw, I’ll grant you that.”
“I think I managed to convince him to at least let Narvell get a few hits in before he destroys him,” she informed Adham.
Before he could reply, Narvell Hawksword charged at his brother with a bloodcurdling yell and the fight was on. Tejay turned to watch as the gathered soldiers roared their encouragement, certain that no matter how necessary, this could only end in disaster if Damin’s temper got the better of him. It was a valid fear. She’d been there when he maimed his uncle, crushing Mahkas Damaran’s throat with a single, furious blow.
There seemed no danger of that happening at the moment. At first, it was obvious neither brother was very serious about harming his opponent, which was a good thing, given their difference in size. Narvell Hawksword was an accomplished fighter, slender and wiry. He’d inherited more from his fine-boned mother than his burly grandfather. Damin Wolfblade, however, had inherited only his colouring from Marla Wolfblade. Physically, he was pure Krakenshield—over six feet tall, athletic and powerfully built. Additionally, Tejay thought worriedly as she watched the two combatants feel each other out with tentative, probing blows to the encouraging cheers of their large audience, Damin had been tested in a way his easygoing younger brother had never been tested. Leila’s suicide, Starros’s torture and his confrontation with Mahkas had left an indelible mark on Damin Wolfblade, even if it was only visible to those who knew him well.
And Tejay did know him well. From the first time she’d watched him racing Starros, Kalan and Narvell through the broad halls of Krakandar Palace when he was a small child, shouting gleefully at the top of his voice that he’d beat everyone to the dining room, to the brash young man who had spent his formative years under her father’s stem and watchful eye, she’d always suspected there was more to him than he let on. But she’d never realised just how shrewd he really was until that awful business in Krakandar. It wasn’t that he’d almost killed Mahkas. It wasn’t even that he stopped himself from killing a man who so patently deserved it. She’d seen Damin Wolfblade display a capacity for rage that was frightening to behold, but what impressed her was why he contained it. It was pragmatism, not mercy, that stayed his hand. Damin stopped himself from killing his uncle because he could see the bigger picture, which was all very well, she mused, but not likely to save anybody here.
Narvell needed to prove himself and Damin hated to lose. It might take as little as one lucky blow on Narvell’s part to inadvertently trigger Damin’s rage. Tejay knew well that once exposed to the light, such a fury took a long time to settle again. It was simmering below the surface, waiting for a crack in the fragile shell Damin had built to hold it back. If that brittle barrier crumbled, Damin Wolfblade wouldn’t care about the big picture. He wouldn’t care about his younger brother’s future as the Warlord of Elasapine. In a moment of blind rage, he could easily decide his own need to win outweighed everything else.
With the chill of the coming night closing in on them, Tejay watched the fight, chewing on her bottom lip, waiting for Damin to make his move, wondering how she was going to be able to stop this fight with the honour of both men still intact. Fortunately, Damin appeared to have heeded her advice and there was no need to intervene just yet. The brothers seemed quite evenly matched, in fact, which clearly wasn’t the case, but it meant Damin was letting Narvell get past his guard just enough to make it look convincing.
She wasn’t the only one who realised Damin was fighting
below par. A few paces away, Geri Almodavar wore a disgusted look and when Narvell managed to bloody Damin’s lip with a particularly lucky blow, he started yelling advice, although to which one of the brothers, Tejay wasn’t really sure.
“Adham,” Tejay said in a low voice. “Be a pet, would you, and sidle up to Captain Almodavar and tell him if he keeps on coaching those boys from the sidelines, I’ll arrange to have his intestines relocated to the outside of his body as soon as we get to Byamor.”
Adham looked at her askance and did as she asked without comment. She turned back to the fight and glared at Damin with an impatient frown. “You’ll be considering the most artistic way to arrange your internal organs on the ground next to your corpse too, young man,” she muttered to herself, “if you don’t put an end to this, shortly.”
But just as Damin seemed about to abandon all common sense and do exactly what she’d advised him not to, she heard a ruckus to her right and turned in time to see the soldiers blocking the road from Zadenka Manor suddenly fall silent as they hastily stepped aside to make way for a trio of charging horses that ploughed through the circle of gathered men with little care for anybody’s safety.
Tejay was stunned to realise two of the riders were Rorin and the scout Damin had sent with the sorcerer yesterday to speak to Narvell at Zadenka Manor. Astride the mare in the lead was a dishevelled young woman, her long dark hair streaming out behind her. In hot pursuit of the trio was a troop of Raiders led by a grey-haired, middle-aged man who wore the same look of fury Tejay had feared she might see on Damin’s face.
The horses skidded to a halt in a shower of loose gravel, sending Damin and Narvell diving out of their way to avoid being barrelled over. With a desperate sob, the young woman flew from the saddle and into Narvell’s arms just as the other horsemen caught up with them.
The fight clearly no longer Narvell’s concern, Damin hurriedly stepped back, watching this strange turn of events with a puzzled look. Narvell, on the other hand, obviously
knew the girl. His brother forgotten, he put his arms around her and held her close briefly, and then pushed her behind him as the newcomers rode into the circle of troops, putting himself protectively between the desperate young woman and her pursuers.
“Well done!” Tejay said with an approving nod as Rorin dismounted hurriedly beside her, pushing his horse clear.
He turned to her in confusion. “My lady?”
“Turns out you really are a sorcerer, aren’t you? A proper one, I mean, not one of those Greenharbour fools who buys his way into the Sorcerers’ Collective and likes to think he’s performed magic if he manages to melt snow over an open flame.”
Rorin frowned, panting heavily from his ride, watching the other riders dismount, rather than paying Tejay much attention. “What do you mean, my lady?”
She patted him on the shoulder. “I was hoping someone would break this up before it got out of hand. I wasn’t expecting magic, though. Impressive, lad. Not to mention quite original and totally unexpected. You’ve done very well.”
Rorin glanced at her and shook his head as the man leading the troop of mounted Raiders jumped from his horse and advanced on Narvell threateningly, his hand on his sword hilt. “I’m not here to break anything up, my lady,” he warned. “If anything, my arrival is going to make things a whole lot worse.”
“You mean this isn’t divine intervention? Because I tell you, Rorin, you couldn’t have picked a better moment to appear if you’d actually cast a spell to find the most appropriate time.”
“Get your hands off my wife!” the older man bellowed at Narvell while Tejay and Rorin were talking. The girl cowered behind her protector, who was—rather inconveniently—unarmed.
Tejay turned from Rorin and took in the scene with a glance. She sighed, shaking her head at the newcomers. “Maybe I was a bit hasty, thanking you for arriving at such an opportune time.”
“There wasn’t much else I could do, my lady.” Rorin shrugged apologetically. “Under the circumstances.”
Before Rorin could stop her, Tejay stepped forward, putting herself between Narvell and the young woman’s irate husband. “Is that any way to address a member of your ruling family?” she demanded, guessing this man wasn’t used to anybody standing up to him, particularly a woman.
He halted in surprise and then roughly shoved Tejay aside. “Out of my way, woman! This is between me and that treacherous little Hawksword bastard.”
Tejay stumbled backwards but thankfully Rorin caught her before she fell. The girl Narvell was shielding whimpered in fear as her husband moved closer. Fortunately, the troop accompanying the man remained mounted and made no move to intervene, acutely aware they were surrounded by several thousand troops who didn’t appear very sympathetic to their lord’s cause.
But that was the least of her concerns. In a heartbeat the situation had changed and they were back in the tinderbox. The whole bizarre interruption had taken only a minute or two and Damin looked decidedly unhappy at the way this stranger was treating his brother and his friends.
“Almodavar!”
The captain had his sword out and tossed it to his prince, almost before Damin had finished speaking. The prince snatched the blade out of the air, took a step forward and pressed the point against the older man’s throat, preventing him moving any closer to Narvell or his terrified wife.
“That ‘treacherous little Hawksword bastard’ is my brother,” he informed the man coldly. “The lady you’re pushing around is a very dear friend and the men you rode here in pursuit of are mine. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just run you through, right here and now.”
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked disparagingly, glancing down at the blade Damin held to his throat as if it was nothing more than a minor irritation.
“Damin Wolfblade,” he replied. “Who the hell are you?”
The man hesitated. It probably wasn’t fear that gave him
pause. Damin’s reputation was quite deliberately that of a foolish young man with little to recommend him and the news of the events in Krakandar and Damin’s attack on his uncle wasn’t likely to have reached much beyond the walls of the city yet. But even an angry provincial lord thought twice before making an enemy of the next High Prince.
“I am Stefan Warhaft, the Baron of Zadenka,” the man replied, taking his hand from his sword hilt. “And I demand satisfaction!”
“For what?” Damin asked. (Rather unnecessarily, Tejay thought; a blind man could see what was happening here.)
Lord Warhaft drew himself up self-righteously and pointed at Narvell and the woman using the young man as a shield against her husband’s wrath.
“For that!” he announced loudly. “I want satisfaction because your brother accepted my hospitality and then the ungrateful little bastard stole my wife!”