[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
He looked out to sea where the ship had been, and saw the rapidly sinking mains'l disappearing beneath
the surface of the waves.
Suddenly exhausted, he lay back in the tide, holding tight to Rhapsody and Achmed, and let the
eternal pull of the sea carry them to shore.
HAGUEFORT, NAVARNE
When Caius entered Haguefort, there was no guard at the gate, no one in the foyer, no one in the
corridors or on the stairs. It was as if the keep had been abandoned in the advent of a coming hurricane.
Which, in a way, it had been.
He crept quietly through the entranceway, taking pains to not allow his footsteps to echo on the
polished stone floor.
The crossbowman was making his way through the enormous dining hall when a middle-aged woman
in an apron appeared in the buttery doorway; Caius shot her through the forehead one-handed without
breaking his stride, and without looking back.
Berthe crumpled to the floor without a sound, the blood that pooled beneath her forehead and into
her open eyes whispering quietly as it bled.
Caius walked silently through the corridors, past the beautiful displays of armor and antiquities,
looking for anyone who might have been the husband of his master's quarry, but finding nothing but
empty silence.
Until he entered the Great Hall.
At the far end, beneath the tall windows, a man was sitting in a heavy wooden chair at a similarly
heavy wooden table, sorting through parchment scrolls. When he looked up, their eyes met, and Caius
froze.
It was the soldier he had seen in his dreams, the crippled man who rode in a high-backed saddle
through the burning leaves swirling on the forest wind to rescue the woman his master sought.
The man who had killed his twin.
Caius could read the man's thoughts as he raised his crossbow and sighted it at the soldier's heart.
The soldier's first glance had gone to the windows behind him, trying to determine if escape through them
was possible, the thought immediately discarded because of the height. Next the soldier glanced around
for another exit, but there was none between Caius and him. He could see the futility register as the last
thought came into his head.
There was no escape.
Generally Caius never spoke to his victims, determining conversations with the imminent dead to be a
waste of energy. But in this case, the look on the face of the man who sat behind the desk was so
insolent, his expression so hard, that he made an exception.
'You killed my brother," Caius said accusingly.
The soldier's expression did not change as he spoke a single word, likely to be his last.
'Good," he said.
The anger of insult coupled with the grief of loss flooded through Caius. He raised the bow a fraction
of an inch higher, taking the time to be deliberate, to enjoy this moment.
He cocked the crossbow.
There was a flash seemingly behind his eyes as his bolt whizzed harmlessly over the head of his
brother's killer.
Impossible, he thought.
It was his final musing as he fell sideways, a white-feathered arrow skewering his brain through the
temples.
Anborn, who had been gritting his teeth and tensing his abdominal muscles in the hope of twitching as
little as possible when the arrow pierced him, blinked and pushed himself up with his hands on the table.
He stared down at the body on the floor, then looked to his left where the arrow had originated.
Gwydion Navarne stood, still in his archer's stance, his hand holding the bow trembling slightly. His
other hand was still frozen at the anchor point behind his ear.
After a long moment, he turned to meet the gaze of the Lord Marshal, whc still remained behind the
table, rigid in body and face. Gwydion regarded his mentor seriously.
'I believe you owe me, or rather, my bow, an acknowledgment of youi misjudgment," he said blandly.
"I told you, as an archer I merely needed tc be sufficiently proficient to penetrate a haybutt." He walked
over to the corpse and turned its head over with his toe, admiring the clean breach of the man'; skull
between the temples. "And as you can see, I can."
Anborn only continued to stare at the crossbowman on the floor. Finalh he shook his head and turned
to the future Duke of Navarne.
'Are those the albatross arrows Rhapsody brought you from Yarim?"
'Yes."
A reluctant smile broke over the General's face.
'I suppose we have to acknowledge a center shot for both you and my mac Auntie Manwyn. Two
miracles have occurred today; you managed to pull of a fine shot, even with a silly longbow, when you
weren't even supposed to bi here, and she actually got a prediction correct. I do believe the world is
cominj to an end."
Gwydion Navarne smiled. "Or perhaps it is just beginning."
THE CAU LD RON
Osten waited in the shadows impatiently, watching with grudging admi ration the precision with which
the semi-human beasts that were the Bolg heL a watch. There was no perfunctory movement, no
yawning or evidence tha the ritual was rote. The king's guards took their duty seriously.
All the better.
She would have preferred to slip in and slit their throats but she had take so long and spent to much
time setting the trap that she didn't dare tip he hand now.
So she waited.
It had required painstaking hours to covertly search the general vicinity c the corridor whose general
location she had knobbed out of Shaene. But in the end, it was the Bolg king's meticulous security that
gave her the clue she needed. His inner sanctum must lie beyond this most guarded of intersections.
Somewhere in the distance she could hear an uproar, a sound of muster, or something like it, rumbling
through the mountain, but the guards did not deviate in their watch. Upon consideration of it, she realized
that the noise had been building for the better part of the day, like preparations in the face of a coming
storm. This deep inside the mountain, however, little impact could be felt.
In truth, she mused, hearing the three-quarter-hour bells sound,it probably isoverkill to trap the
king's bedchamber . The tower had been brilliantly constructed, the subterfuge of the snare was so
subtle, so unexpected, that she fully expected to blow the top off of Gurgus, crumbling the rest of the
peak in upon itself, burying the king and all the Bolg he allowed to be present at the inauguration of the
tower with it.
But it never hurt to have a backup plan. And she wanted to be certain that the Bolg king paid for his
incursion into her guild, for the loss of her tunnel into the artery below Entudenin.
She wanted him to suffer horribly before he died. If her timing was good, he would be enjoying the full
effects of the exposure before he was crushed to death.
The last communique she had sent to Dranth had included the general directions she had knobbed out
of Shaene. The memory of riding his shapeless body, his pathetic wheezing beneath her, gave her a chill
of disgust that she shook off, wanting to be ready when the watch changed. As long as the idiot's
information was good, the Raven's Guild would have detailed maps and schematics to the most sensitive
areas of the inner Teeth, she knew, along with the intelligence she had gathered and passed along
previously.
Her opportunity presented itself just as the soldiers crossed in front of the triple pass, a juncture
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]