CHAPTER TEN
Rod's horse landed an instant before he did, wherefore he smashed his face hard into its neck. Which pleased it not at all.
As he fought to stay on its back, and it reared and bucked and lashed out in all directions with its hooves, there was similar rearing and screaming all around him, amid much knights' shouting.
The air around him was a-shimmer with heat and thick with the sharp smell of smoke, but the flames had faded, and war-horns were sounding. The wavering forest of upraised lances ahead told Rod that Deldragon's knights were still on the road, three abreast. Lorn wheeled and shrieked overhead, but none were swooping.
"That's done it, for a time at least," Velduke Deldragon said with satisfaction from somewhere, near to Rod's left. To Rod, the man looked completely untouched; flaxen mustache as neat as ever, eyes still that serene and icy blue. "They hate fire."
"I'm not surprised," Taeauna said tartly, from nearer. "So do the horses, to say nothing of me. Have you anymore little tricks of magic we should know about, Lord Deldragon?"
"No," came the flat reply. "None you should know about."
"I see."
"Lady of the Aumrarr," the velduke replied calmly, "these are troubled times, and I have a duty to Galath and to the folk who dwell under my hand. To keep to the right road and do his duty, a man must do what he must do."
"Agreed," Taeauna said pleasantly. "Words to remember."
Rod had just managed to catch hold of both his reins and his saddle horn, and felt secure enough to risk turning to look at Tay and the Galathan noble.
And then wished he hadn't. The glances they were giving each other included polite smiles, but their eyes looked as if they were crossing swords to begin a duel.
A duel to the death.
"My best firedance for the Lord Blackraven," Marquel Ondurs Mountblade said grandly, adjusting his new monocle, "and I'll have the same. Bring a large decanter, the old vintage, mind!"
The servant bowed low, spun around still in his crouch, straightened with an audible snap of dagger-coat tails, and hurried off past Mountblade's steward, who stood as still and expressionless as a statue, hands clasped behind his back, carefully out of earshot of seated lords.
Marquel Larren Blackraven had only just arrived at Mountgard; he'd still been clapping the road-dust from his hands when he'd been led up the path from the stables. Sighing in his ease, the tall, hooknosed young nobleman leaned back in his chair to look out over the trim green gardens falling away from the terrace. He hummed under his breath for long moments, as he turned his head to peer; Mountblade smiled silently and watched his guest.
To their right rose the weathered stone bulk of Mountgard, but directly before them the greenest lawns Blackraven had ever seen sloped gently down to pleasant clusters of spire-shaped evergreens, little bowers of winding flagstone paths, and beds of flowering shrubs cloaking sculpted stone maidens. Beyond their shapely, endlessly beseeching limbs gleamed the tamed waters of a smoothly curving stream; from where he sat, he could just see the curve of an arched bridge in the distance, spanning somewhere beyond the sculpted forests. Beautiful.
"Nice," Blackraven said at last, and meant it, as he turned gleaming emerald eyes back upon his host. "This must be a delight to ride home to."
Monocle gleaming, Mountblade smiled widely. "It is. Not the grandest gardens in Galath, and far from the largest, but mine, and well suited to me. The stream, in particular; I've had the banks sculpted this side, to make it perfect for strolling or bedding down with a lass, and I use the horse trail on the far bank every morn. Everything just as I want it. That's why the new wall; guarding all of this seems my best bet for keeping it. If battle comes, I don't want some ill-bred, motherless dog of a warrior galloping his nag through my beds, hacking at the trees as he fights off those who chase him, and winding up lying dead with his horse and a lot of others, tangled in the stream-just as rains come, so I get flooding!"
"Good thinking," Blackraven replied, rubbing the bridge of his hooked nose and nodding a little grimly. "Aye, I fear war is coming; strife that will purge Galath, cleansing our realm as never before."
Mountblade nodded glumly. "And tearing what it is to be of Galath asunder in the doing. Galath will never be the same again."
Blackraven stared at his fellow marquel, who was as young as he was, though the monocles he affected made him look older. He hummed absently under his breath for a moment as he considered what to say, and then shrugged. "My father said as much, and so did old Velduke Barrowbar, when I was a lad. The kingdom is always changing; none of us can ever have back the Galath of our youth."
"The king grows wroth more and more often," Mountblade muttered. "And titled folk who've not blood-sworn anew to him are down to… what? Three veldukes? A border baron or two?"
"Just one baron, now. Tindror, hard by the Arvale way through the Spires. He'll not last long. Nor, I'm thinking, will the others. We'll be summoned into the Presence soon, and mustered to arms by royal order."
"Hunting unbowed veldukes."
"Indeed. Yet so much is obvious, Mountblade; what has you worrying?"
"When all who might defy His Majesty are swept from the realm, what then? Will we be turned on each other again? Or sent against Tauren?"
"King Devaer does seem stirred by battle," Blackraven said carefully, "and why not? He seems good at it, no?"
"Ah, here's the wine," Mountblade said, by way of reply, seeing the returning servant slowly and carefully bearing a platter dominated by a gigantic decanter.
Blackraven turned to watch the approach of the firedance, and so missed seeing Mountblade collapse forward on his face onto the table between them, monocle clattering. Yet he would probably have failed to witness the fate of his fellow noble no matter which way he'd been facing, because he also slumped into slumber at the same moment, head lolling.
The astonished servant blinked and faltered in his measured stride, the platter swaying dangerously, until the steward stepped forward to deftly and firmly steady it and its oversized decanter.
"Wh-what has happened to them?" the astonished wine-bearer whispered.
"Worry not," the steward replied a little sourly. "I've seen this before. 'Tis magic. They'll wake in a moment, all afire with the same notion; whatever thinking a wizard's just thrust into their heads."
"What wizard? Do wizards rule in Galath now?"
"Of course, lad, but it means your death to speak of it. So, mind: I did not say 'of course,' but rather, 'Of course not.' Got it?"
The wine-bearer opened his mouth to reply, but ended up leaving it agape without uttering a word.
The two marquels awakened as suddenly as they'd fallen asleep, straightening without seeming to notice they'd nodded off. They stared at each other with identical smiles, brought their fists down on the table in perfect unison, and declared as one, "Galathgard it is, without delay!"
His monocle dangling, Mountblade looked at the steward and roared, "Horses! Full guard, to ride with me!"
"Y-your wine, lord," the wine-bearer offered.
"No time!" his master bellowed, springing up from his seat to stride for the nearest door into Mountgard, and thrusting the servant aside. "We must ride! We are required, before the throne, without delay!"
The steward, still nodding acknowledgment of his master's command, caught the decanter out of midair, even as the wine-bearer, the platter, and the two ornate metal flagons crashed to the terrace.
Marquel Blackraven was already up and out of his chair; he snatched the decanter from the steward's hands as he hastened to follow his host. The steward ran with him as the noble drained the decanter in one long, loud quaff, and calmly accepted it when Blackraven wiped his elegantly trimmed mustache with the back of his hand, still running hard, and handed it back to the steward with a great satisfied sigh.