Janny Wurts - The Curse of the Mistwraith

‘Grithen, you’re wrong,’ somebody protested; the voice sounded female. ‘This catch is certainly no townsman.’

‘You say?’ The red-headed ringleader swore. ‘Do you see clan identification anywhere on this bastard? Accents can be faked. If this man were clanborn but in league with the mayors, he’d know better than to leave town walls.’

Arithon looked at Grithen, calm through an uncomfortable blast of wind. ‘And if I am neither?’ His indecipherable expression stayed with him. ‘What then?’

‘Well, whoever values your foolhardy hide will pay us a bountiful ransom.’ Grithen signalled left-handedly and this time, his henchmen responded.

Arithon found himself pitched forward into the snow. Hands searched his person for weapons, found none and pinioned with a thoroughness that hurt. Arithon twisted his head sideways. ‘Furies of Sithaer!’ he exclaimed in derisive and blistering consternation. ‘Had I wanted a fight, don’t you think I’d have knifed something more than a bowstring?’

‘Then why trouble with decoy and ambush in the first place?’ Wolfishly contentious, Grithen exacted payment for the shame of his earlier misjudgement. ‘Bind him.’

Jerked to his feet, Arithon watched with a sailor’s appreciation as the scouts cut their rawhide laces and expertly tied up his wrists. Then he averted his gaze, spat blood from a cut lip and endured an ignominious interval while more cords were looped tight around his ankles. ‘The heart of the dilemma,’ he conceded to Grithen in a final, acid afterthought. ‘Did I act out of purpose or folly? You’d better figure out which, and quickly.’

Down the trail, Asandir’s party had successfully recovered their strays; they were starting back up the pass with obvious urgency and concern, and though no one appeared to watch them, their progress was covertly marked.

‘Suppose I had a companion too prideful to submit to a threat.’ Arithon looked keenly at his captor, who was frowning and flicking blood from his leathers. ‘Say my friend had no fear of danger and he forced you to harm him to make your capture. That might be a pity. His skin is pricelessly valuable.’

Grithen whistled and shot a triumphant glance at his henchmen, one of whom was indeed a scarred and grim-faced woman. Then his leonine beard parted in a grin of forthright appreciation. ‘Which one is he? I assure you, we’ll handle him as delicately as a flower.’

Arithon raised his brows. ‘Flower he isn’t, but don’t worry. If he doesn’t co-operate and surrender, my life will surely be forfeit. ’

Grithen caught up the hilt of Arithon’s relinquished blade and tested the balance, his smile turned suddenly corrosive. ‘You’re a boy-lover,’ he concluded in disgust. ‘That’s why you gave yourself up. To protect your beloved.’

‘By Dharkaron,’ Arithon murmured, ‘how you’ll wish that was true.’ He showed no rancour at the insult; and at long last his barbarian captor saw past his hostage’s wooden expression. The wretch he ordered manhandled and tied and dragged toward the edge of the outcrop was desperately struggling not to laugh.

‘Mad,’ Grithen concluded under his breath. He traced the sword’s edge with a fingertip and flinched as the steel nicked flesh. Uneasy, but too rabidly committed for retreat, he whistled the call of the mountain hawk and alerted the band still in hiding to initiate the next stage of his ambush.

The dun mare shied back, snorting over the jingle of bit rings and gear as the riders approached the promontory where their companion had lately come to grief.

‘Whoa,’ Lysaer soothed gently. Astride his disgruntled chestnut and leading his half-brother’s mount by the bridle, he slacked rein as the mare jibbed backward. ‘Whoa now.’ The patience in his voice overlaid a worry that burned his thoughts to white rage. Obstinate the Master of Shadow might be, and most times maddeningly reticent; yet as Lysaer combed through wind-whipped snow for a man perhaps fallen and injured, he did not dwell on past crimes or piracy. However cross-grained, no matter how secretive or odd a childhood among mages had made him, Arithon’s motives before exile had likely not been founded in malice.

He was kin, and the only other in this mist-cursed world who recalled that Lysaer had been born a prince.

The mare shied again, hauling the chestnut a half-pace sidewards. Fixed and diligent in his search, Lysaer kept his seat out of reflex. He swept the grey rocks and the trampled spread of drifts and finally sighted the cloak, crumpled in a shallow depression, and pinned by the black shaft of an arrow. His breath locked in his throat. The dun had not come by the gash on her shoulder through mishap: now he had proof.

Tautly controlled as a clock spring, Lysaer looped the dun’s lead through a ring on his saddle and addressed Asandir crisply. ‘Arithon suspected trouble in these mountains. Why ?’

Before the sorcerer gave answer, shouts cut the misty pass. The abutments came alive with archers.

‘Halt!’ called a bearded ruffian from the cliff-top. ‘Dismount and throw down your arms!’

Lysaer spun in his stirrups, his bearing of command unthinking and wrath like torchflame in his eyes. ‘What have you done with my half-brother?’

‘Shot a hole in his cloak, as you see.’ Accustomed to arrogance from the mercenaries hired to guard caravans, the barbarian dared an insolent grin. ‘If you’re minded to protest, I can add to that.’

He rapped orders to someone in position over his head. There followed a flurry of activity and a bundle appeared, suspended over the cliff face by a swinging length of rope. As the wind lulled and the snow settled to clear the view, Lysaer recognized Arithon, bound hand and foot and suspended face-first over a drop that vanished straight down into mist. The brutes had gagged his mouth.

Lysaer forgot he no longer held royal authority. Very pale, but with unassailable dignity, he accosted the raiders on the ridge. ‘Lend me a blade. For the sake of the life you threaten, I’ll set honour above cowardly extortion and offer trial by single combat as settlement.’

‘How very touching!’ The barbarian ringleader raised up a dark-bladed weapon, unmistakably Arithon’s Alithiel, and set the sharpened edge against the hanging cord. One ply gave way, loud as a slap in the silence. ‘You mistake us for our ancestors, who perhaps once affected such scruples. But as long as mayors rule there are no fair fights in this pass. Who will hit ground first, you?’ The ruffian dismissed Lysaer and dipped the sword toward the hostage who dangled without struggle over the abyss. ‘Or this one, who provoked us by drawing first blood?’

‘Would that Arithon had done worse!’ Lysaer cried back in indignation. ‘Unprincipled mongrel pack of thieves! Had I an honour-guard with me, I’d see the last of you put to the sword!’

A hand restrained his arm, Asandir’s, restoring Lysaer to the shattering recollection that his inheritance was forever lost; in cold fact he owned nothing but a poignard to manage even token self-defence.

‘Dismount as they wish, and quickly.’ The sorcerer did so himself, while more barbarians armed with javelins closed in a ring from the cliffside.

Stiff with wounded pride, and galled enough to murder for the brutality which had befallen his half-brother, Lysaer watched in seething compliance as Asandir threw the reins of his black to his apprentice and confronted the cordon of weapon-points.

‘Who leads this party?’ the sorcerer demanded.

‘I’ll ask the questions, greybeard,’ said the red-bearded young spokesman who descended in a leap from the outcrop. Cocksure, even ruthless with contempt, he strode through the circle of his companions.