David Weber - Wind Rider's Oath

Fahlthu frowned ferociously, obviously angered by Warshoe's withering irony, but Warshoe didn't really care about that. Or, rather, he did care-a man like Fahlthu would be perfectly capable of arranging an accident for someone who had sufficiently irritated him-but he preferred the cavalry commander's anger to his undiverted suspicions. It might be unlikely that Fahlthu could figure out everything Saratic and Baron Cassan had in mind, but it wasn't impossible. And if he did figure out what Warshoe's true mission was, there was no telling what he might do about it. Except, of course, that a man like Fahlthu would have absolutely no interest in being saddled with the blame for the death of the Kingdom of the Sothōii's first noble.

"All right," the knight growled finally. "I don't believe for a minute that you're the innocent, simpleminded sort you'd like me to believe, 'Master Brownsaddle.' But whatever you may be is no concern of mine. Except for this." He fixed Warshoe with a cold, angry eye. "While you ride with my company, you ride under my orders. And I would not advise you to violate them in any way. Is that clear, 'Master Brownsaddle'?"

"Of course it is," Warshoe replied. "Whatever you may believe, Sir Fahlthu, I never had any intention of violating your instructions."

"Why do you think they've been so quiet lately, Sir Yarran?"

"I beg your pardon?" Sir Yarran Battlecrow looked up from the tankard of ale the serving maid had just plunked down in front of him. "Did you say something, Milord?"

"Yes," Sir Trianal Bowmaster said, then grimaced and waved one hand through the pipe smoke-thickened air. The mess hall attached to Lord Warden Festian's barracks was packed with Glanharrow's own armsmen and almost half of the ten troops of Balthar armsmen who had accompanied him here. That many raised voices, one or two of them already beginning to bawl out the words of a ribald song with more than a trace of tipsiness, made it hard enough for a man to hear his own thoughts, much less what the fellow sitting beside him might have said aloud.

"I asked," he said more loudly, "why you think they've been so quiet lately?"

"Well, as to that, Milord," Sir Yarran said as thoughtfully as a man could when he had to half-shout to be heard, "I'm inclined to be thinking it's a matter of weather and your uncle's reinforcements."

Trianal arched an eyebrow and curled the fingers of the one hand in a drawing motion, inviting him to continue. Sir Yarran grinned, then took a long pull at his tankard, and shrugged.

"The weather's finally clearing, Milord," he pointed out. "That's probably making it easier for them to get in and out of the Bogs, with or without stolen cattle or horses. But at the same time, it's taken away the cover of all those nice, thick fogs they used to run about inside, and we've moved every cattle and horse herd in the area of their original operations out to the west. That means they'll have to range further out, and the dryer, harder ground-and the fact that the rain doesn't come along and wash out any hoof prints five minutes after they're made-means we'd find it far easier to track them back to their ratholes. They'll know that as well as we do, so when you add to that the fact that Milord Baron's seen fit to send in his own armsmen-which both raises the number of bows and sabers we can send after them and simultaneously says he's minded to take this whole business a mite seriously-I'd say it's fairly plain what they're thinking."

"I see." Trianal pushed the remnants of his supper-exactly the same food any of his armsmen might have expected-around his plate with a spoon and frowned. Sir Yarran watched him and very carefully allowed no sign of his inner smile to show. Sir Yarran was inclined to think that all the good reports he'd had about Trianal had been accurate. The lad was conscientious, hard-working, and determined not to disappoint the uncle he clearly idolized. He was also not only smart but willing to actually use that intelligence . . . which all too many young nobles of Sir Yarran's experience had not been.

But for all of that, he was still only nineteen years old, and he couldn't quite hide his disappointment at the thought that his adversaries' caution-or cowardice-might deny him the opportunity to show what he could do.

"Do you think they've given up for good, then?" he asked after a moment, trying valiantly (though with imperfect success) to conceal his disappointment.

"No, Milord." Sir Yarran leaned closer to his titular commander so that he could speak without shouting-and with less chance of being overheard.

"Milord," he continued in the patient voice he and Festian had used to train generations of eager young armsmen, "there's two sides in any fight, and neither one of them's got any real interest in losing. Which means that whatever you may want the oily bastards to do, they're going to be trying to think up something you won't want them to do.

"Now, we know that whoever these . . . people are-" he avoided mentioning any names, despite the voice-drowning background hubbub "- they've already shown us as how they're pretty damned determined to make Lord Festian look like he can't find his arse with both hands, and to make your uncle look foolish for having picked him to replace Redhelm in the first place. I'm thinking it's not so very likely that they'll just decide it was all a bad idea and that they ought to go home and behave themselves. And even if it happened that they-or some of them-were beginning to lose their nerve, we've a pretty fair idea of who they are, and you know your uncle better than I do. D'you really think he's going to be inclined to let them go home and pretend as how butter wouldn't melt in their mouths?"

Trianal barked a laugh at the very thought, and Yarran nodded.

"Aye, and if you and I think that, don't you think those on the other side might be thinking the same? Which means their best chance to get out of this with their skins whole is to succeed in what they started out to do in the first place. And they'll not do that by sitting home on the other side of the Bogs and letting Lord Festian put Glanharrow back in order.

"So I'm thinking that what they're doing right this minute is either sitting back and waiting to see just how long Milord Baron is prepared to leave you and your armsmen here to support Lord Festian, or else thinking about whether or not they want to reinforce their side. Or it might be they're doing both of those at the selfsame time."

He shrugged, and his expression was noticeably more grim as he drank another large mouthful of his ale.

"So the answer to your question, Milord," he said finally, letting his tankard thump back down on the plain, plank tabletop, "is that, aye, I think we'll be seeing them again. Maybe sooner than we'd like."

"Well, at least we're rid of her at last," Dahlaha Farrier said. She pouted into the mirror above her dressing table, leaning close to examine her faultless complexion critically, and her golden hair gleamed under the lamplight.

" You're rid of her," Varnaythus corrected. He sat comfortably slouched in an armchair, watching her primp for an evening with Trisu's cousin Triahm. The first evening they'd spent together since Dame Kaeritha's arrival at Thalar Keep.

"What do you mean?" Dahlaha's eyes shifted, gazing at his reflection in her mirror, and there was an edge of something-petulance, perhaps-in her tone.

Varnaythus simply looked back at her blandly. She'd already made it obvious that she resented his return to Thalar, and he saw no reason to let her guess that he resented it as well, probably more than she did. And although he had no intention of admitting it to her, he'd been more than a little frightened when he got the instructions that sent him back. He'd had no desire at all to get any closer to a champion of Tomanâk than he had to, and especially not at a time when that champion's suspicions might well have been aroused. So he'd been delighted to discover that Kaeritha had left Thalar several hours before he himself arrived back there.