“They’re here,” the scout informed Damin, Almodavar and the rest of their small band, pointing to another rough map drawn in the mud a couple of hours later. The rain was pelting down relentlessly, smacking the oiled cape they were using for shelter during this brief halt in their pursuit of the Fardohnyan general and his missing cavalry. It was a bit more than two hours since the ambush closed around the Fardohnyans. Damin figured the death toll must already be in the thousands. If the man had any human feeling at all, getting Regis to surrender might be as easy as giving him the opportunity.
He turned to Almodavar. “You were wrong.”
“How so?”
“You assumed they’d set up their command post here,” he reminded him, pointing to another spot on the map a bare inch from where the scout had indicated. “You’re out by a whole … hundred yards, I reckon.”
Almodavar rolled his eyes and turned to the scout. “How many?”
“In the command tent? About half a dozen, including Lord Regis. Plus a constant stream of messengers.”
“It’s not going to be easy sneaking up on him,” the old captain surmised. “He commands an almost three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the terrain. Where are the cavalry?”
“Back here,” the scout replied, pointing to another small valley between two hills just to the north of the Fardohnyan command post. “I gather they’re just waiting for the word to move.”
“He won’t give it,” Damin predicted.
“Are you sure?” Almodavar asked.
Damin pointed further down the rough map. “They’re too far back. The spot he’s chosen would have been fine at the start of the day—I’d have chosen it too, if it were my decision—but his army’s been drawn too far down the valley. He might have had a chance if he mobilised the moment our lines looked like breaking, but he’s left it too late. If he sent out the cavalry now, we’d have a good half hour to mount a counterattack before they got to the actual battle.”
The scout nodded in agreement. “He didn’t sound like a man about to mobilise anything. Mostly he sounded as if he was trying to reduce the damage by getting the stragglers to pull back.”
“How close were you able to get?”
“Close enough to hear them talking,” the scout replied, squatting down to indicate his route on the map. “The only way to approach without being seen is along the northern ridge of the hill here. The overhang gives you protection from being spotted from above. After that, if you scale the cliff on the north western side of the hill, you can get close enough to hear what they’re saying.”
“And if we go over the cliff?”
“Then we could take them from behind,” the scout suggested. “They won’t even know we’re there until we’re running them through.”
“We have to scale a cliff, though?” Almodavar asked doubtfully.
“It’s not that high.” The scout shrugged. “Forty, maybe fifty feet.”
“You can stay and mind the horses if you’re getting too old for this sort of thing, Almodavar,” Damin offered.
The old man glared at him. “You worry about yourself, lad, and I’ll worry about what I’m getting too old for.”
Damin expected no other answer. He turned and looked around the circle of faces, all huddled under the oiled cape. “Let’s do this, then,” he declared. “And no unnecessary killing. Wound if you have to, but I don’t want anybody accidentally killing Regis. He can’t surrender his damned cavalry if he’s dead. And given there’s only fourteen of us, I’d rather we didn’t have to capture them the hard way.”
“Sire?” one of the men asked, obviously not sure what he meant.
“He means we might have a bit of a problem surrounding five thousand men and convincing them to throw down their arms,” Almodavar explained.
“I don’t know,” the scout joked. “Fourteen Hythrun Raiders against five thousand Fardohnyan light horse? Seems a fairly even fight to me.”
“If only your skill matched your ability to brag about it, Noran,” Almodavar lamented, shaking his head at the young man’s foolishness.
“How will we know which one is Lord Regis?” one of the others asked.
“We won’t know,” Damin said. “Hence the order to avoid unnecessary killing. Any questions?”
The silence that greeted his question was enough for Damin.
He smiled. “Let’s go hunt Fardohnyan.”
Scaling a steep rock face in the rain with no ropes while wearing full battle gear was, Damin Wolfblade decided about halfway up the cliff, an experience he could well have done without. It wasn’t so much the height. Damin had spent enough nights as a boy watching the city lights of Krakandar while perched on the palace roof for the drop to hold no fear for him. And it was by no means a sheer cliff. Weathered and broken in places, it offered plenty of hand and footholds for the ambitious climber. No, what made it terrifying was the rain. The cliff was slimy. Tiny rivulets of water trickled down the rocks,
merging in places to form full-blown waterfalls. It was perilously slippery and with the added weight of leather armour and his weapons, Damin was dangerously off-balance. He could appreciate why Regis had chosen this place as his command post. Only a madman would think climbing up the treacherous cliff behind him was a viable option.
A few feet from the top, Damin stopped and signalled his men to do likewise. The rain was starting to relent and he could just make out the enemy voices. They were speaking Fardohnyan and although he understood the language, he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.
Carefully, Damin moved a little further up. Any noise now would give them away and the rain, which up until a moment ago he’d been roundly cursing, was easing off and no longer offering them cover. As slowly as he dared, Damin raised his eyes over the rim of the cliff and then jerked his head back again as a pair of booted feet approached. Waving his men down, Damin froze against the muddy cliff face.
The boots stopped just above Damin’s head.
He held his breath, praying to Zegarnald to protect them, wondering what had drawn the man out into the rain and over to the edge where one glance down would reveal the dozen or more Hythrun Raiders climbing up the cliff. A moment later, Damin had his answer when a thin stream of liquid shot over the side, mingling with the rain until it vanished below. He glanced across at the man beside him, the scout, Noran, who had already climbed this cliff once today. The man grinned and rolled his eyes and then pointed upward. A few moments later the stream stopped and presumably the urinating Fardohnyan had returned to the shelter of the command pavilion. Just to be certain, Damin silently counted to twenty in his head, and then once again inched his eyes over the edge of the cliff. This time the small plateau was clear, only the back of the pavilion visible.
With a final heave over the edge, Damin lay flat against the wet ground as the others moved up behind him. Glancing
around, he did a quick count and discovered all twelve of his men and Almodavar, who looked no more bothered by the climb than the men half his age, were accounted for. He climbed to his feet, signalled his men to fan out to surround the pavilion, and then, just as the final raindrops fell, gave the order to attack.
The command pavilion was really just a large square tent with three sides rolled up to give a clear view of the countryside. Regis obviously wasn’t a man concerned with aesthetics so much as practicality.
“Ollie, take word to Captain Jerris,” Damin heard a man ordering as they closed in. “Tell him we’re pulling back.”
“Ollie,” Damin suggested in Fardohnyan, as he and his Raiders surrounded the open pavilion with drawn swords, “how about you stay right where you are, my friend.”
With no advance warning of their approach, the half-dozen Fardohnyans inside were taken completely by surprise. Almost before Damin had finished speaking, the officers were disarmed and on their knees, swords to their throats. Everyone, that is, except the young messenger, Ollie, and the man who was issuing the orders.
His sword still drawn, Damin turned to the older man. He was dark-haired and swarthy, and much younger than Damin was expecting, perhaps only in his mid-thirties. “Lord Axelle Regis, I presume?”
The Fardohnyan glanced around the pavilion at his captured men and then fixed his gaze on Damin. “Impressive. How did you … ah, the cliff. A clever ploy, sneaking up like that.”
“I’ve been practising my sneaking manoeuvre on my stepsister,” Damin informed him. “It worked a treat with her, too. Almodavar?”
“Yes, your highness?”
“Set a perimeter. I don’t want any surprises until we’re done here.”
The old captain signalled four of the men to follow, leaving the rest to watch over the six Fardohnyans they’d already captured.
“Your highness?” Regis repeated with a raised brow.
“I’m sorry. Did I forget to introduce myself? How rude of me. I am Damin Wolfblade.”
Regis looked him up and down, clearly sceptical. “You’re the Wolfblade heir?”
“You seem unconvinced.”
The Fardohnyan general shrugged. “The intelligence we received about Damin Wolfblade, sir, does not lend one to expect a man who would scale a cliff in the rain with a dozen men to capture an entire army.”
“Well, that’s what you get for listening to gossip. Your sword please?”
“You’re assuming I’m going to surrender.”
“If you want to die, I’d be happy to oblige, Lord Regis.”
The Fardohnyan hesitated. “What are your terms?” he asked, although he made no move to give up either his weapon or his army.
“You sound the surrender and we’ll stop butchering every man you have on the field at present.”
Regis glanced around, perhaps debating his chances of calling for help. “If this was Fardohnya and our roles reversed, we wouldn’t offer you mercy.”
Damin raised his sword and pointed it at Axelle Regis’s heart. “You mistake practicality for mercy, my lord. I have other plans for you and your men.”
Regis thought on that, looked down at the sword against his breast and then glanced to the north, where the hidden cavalry lay in wait. “I have a cavalry reserve plenty big enough to turn the tide of the battle, your highness.”
“Which you’ve left it too late to deploy,” Damin reminded him. “But you don’t need me to tell you that. You worked that out about an hour ago, didn’t you? The only thing keeping you here now is that you didn’t want to be seen abandoning your army.”
“Unlike your High Prince who turned tail and ran the moment things started looking a little shaky.”
Damin smiled. “Hotly pursued by your infantry, who fell straight into our trap, remember? Do you really have time for this, Lord Regis?”
The Fardohnyan hesitated and then slowly unsheathed his sword. He studied it for a moment, then offered it to Damin, hilt first.
Damin lowered his blade and took the sword from him, bowing in acknowledgment of the general’s gesture. “Your surrender is accepted, Lord Regis. Issue the command to your troops.”
“I’ll need some of these men you’ve taken prisoner to relay the orders.”
Damin allowed Regis to select two officers to carry news of the surrender, both to the cavalry and to the men on the main battlefield, the sound of which could be heard faintly in the distance.
“You’ll be held hostage, of course,” Damin told Lord Regis, once the men were dispatched. “Pending negotiations for your ransom, your release and your return to Fardohnya.”
“I have no care about what happens to me.” Regis shrugged. “My life was done for the moment Her Serene Highness set eyes on me. What will happen to my men?”
“They’ll be moved back to Winternest,” Damin informed him. “We have a mountain pass to clear. A few thousand prisoners of war should do the trick in no time, given it’s their only way home. Who is Her Serene Highness?”
“Her Serene Highness, Princess Adrina of Fardohnya,” Regis explained. “Hablet’s eldest daughter. A demon disguised as a goddess.”
Damin looked at him oddly, wondering if the humiliation of defeat hadn’t sent the Fardohnyan general just a little bit crazy. “I see …”
Regis smiled thinly. “No, your highness, I doubt you do. But it’s thanks to her I’m here and thanks to her there’s not likely to be an offer of ransom made on my behalf.”
“Does she have something against you?”
“She showed an interest in me, your highness. Only a fleeting one, mind you. I’m sure she did nothing more than flirt with me to relieve the tedium of the Winter Palace. But in the eyes of Hablet of Fardohnya, looking at one of his daughters uninvited means you’ve probably got your eye on his throne and that’s akin to treason. He doesn’t trust his daughter and the moment she looked at me, he started to doubt me, too. Hence we find ourselves in this place, you with a victory and I faced with death no matter which way I turn.”
Damin shook his head, thinking Hablet’s court made the troubles in Hythrun politics seem quite dull. “Is there no chance you’re mistaken?”
“I’m not even sure it wasn’t Hablet who blocked the pass, with the deliberate intention of stranding me here in Hythria.” He turned to the young messenger he’d been talking to when Damin and his men burst in. “Tell them, Ollie. Tell them the message you brought me from our king.”
The young messenger glanced at the Hythrun invaders nervously. “He said … um … he said to tell Lord Regis that his daughter, Her Serene Highness, the Princess Adrina of Fardohnya, doesn’t think he’s worth saving. He told me to tell Lord Regis that at her suggestion, King Hablet was going to abandon the general and his men to their fates.”
“Tell him, at my daughter’s behest,” Regis quoted bitterly, “we are leaving him to do what he can against the Hythrun for the greater glory of his king and his family name, but there will be no further support from Fardohnya.”
“And all this because she flirted with you?” Damin asked, shaking his head, partly in sympathy, partly in disbelief. “What a nasty bitch. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologise. The fault is not yours.”
A moment later the sound of trumpets echoed across the foothills—Fardohnyan horns, sounding the surrender. The noise was followed, a few moments later, by the distant call of Hythrun horns, declaring victory.
Regis listened to the echoing trumpets with a morose expression and then turned to Damin. “It seems the day is yours, Prince Damin. Congratulations.”
Damin glanced down at the curved Fardohnyan sword he was holding. It was heavy and unfamiliar and it represented more than even this Fardohnyan could know.
“Will you ride with me, Lord Regis? To meet the High Prince?”
“Will I be as surprised by him as I have been by you?”
Damin smiled. “Actually, the gossip probably doesn’t do him justice. You’ll find him to be everything you’ve heard and then some.”
“And yet you follow him loyally?” Regis asked curiously. “Even knowing what he is?”
“I notice knowing what Hablet and his daughter are didn’t stop you coming through the Widowmaker,” Damin pointed out. “At least Lernen Wolfblade is family.”
Regis shrugged. “We men do foolish things for pride and glory.”
“Is that why you invaded Hythria? For pride and glory?”
“And to kill you, your uncle and your half-brother,” Regis added. “I had quite specific instructions about that.”
“Why does Hablet want me dead?” Damin asked. “I’ve never even met the man.”
“He wants all the Wolfblades dead, your highness. I thought you knew that?”
Damin sighed, wondering if there was actually a single soul outside of his immediate family and close allies who didn’t want him dead. “Well, he lucked out this time. Shall we go?”
Axelle Regis picked up his oiled cape, swinging it over his shoulders against the rain as he walked away from his command post and into his new role as a prisoner of war, the bitter miasma of defeat hanging over him as if he wore a second cloak woven from despair.