“I wish you'd stop calling me that. You know how much I hate it.”
“I thought you were growing quite enamoured of the title. You certainly threw it around enough in Fardohnya.”
“In Fardohnya I wasn't likely to be hanged for it.”
He nodded silently. They both knew the risk they ran by returning so openly to Medalon. In fact, even more than the mediocrity of their mounts, it was the need to travel through Medalon by conventional means that had taken them so long to reach their destination. Had they been willing to risk using their power, R'shiel and Brak could have been at the Citadel weeks ago, but they were too deep into Karien-occupied territory to tempt fate by openly using demons.
Hablet had provided them with a ship, which had delivered them to Bordertown. Then they had taken passage on a river boat as far as Vanahiem. With news that the Testa ferry had been destroyed and the river boat captains understandably nervous about approaching the Citadel, it proved quicker and easier to complete their journey on horseback.
R'shiel turned in her saddle at the sound of other horses approaching. Brak followed her gaze and muttered a curse. The road they travelled from Brodenvale was almost deserted this late in the afternoon. Earlier, it had been crowded with refugees fleeing the Citadel and the occasional Karien patrol.
“We'd best get off the road.”
“Founders! They're everywhere!”
Brak urged his horse into the long grass on the shoulder of the road. R'shiel followed him as the approaching patrol drew closer. She gripped the reins until her knuckles turned white as she watched them. The troop of Kariens passed by without sparing them a glance, pennons snapping from the tips of their lances, the armoured knights claiming the road with the arrogant assurance of conquerors who have nothing to fear from their vanquished foes. It was the third Karien troop they had seen in the last few hours. Southern Medalon was still relatively free of them, but the closer they got to the Citadel the more they saw.
“There are no priests with them.”
“They'll be at the Citadel. Mathen probably doesn't want to scare the population into thinking they're going to be forced to worship the Overlord,” Brak speculated.
“But isn't that exactly what they're planning?”
“Undoubtedly, but Squire Mathen is too smart to do it openly.”
“Squire Mathen?”
“Don't you remember him? Terbolt left him in charge of the Citadel.”
“I don't remember much of anything from the last time I was at the Citadel,” she admitted with a frown. “Except Loclon.”
“Mathen's not a nobleman,” Brak told her as the Kariens moved slowly past them. Behind the knights trundled several wagons carrying loot from some outlying village that had been the victim of their foray out of the Citadel. “That in itself is a bit odd for the Kariens. But he appears to be a very astute politician.”
“I think I'd prefer a good old fashioned noble-born moron,” she said, noticing the grain-filled wagons, but she decided against saying or doing anything that would bring them to the attention of the knights. She had learnt that much restraint over the past few months.
“One has to work with what one is given, I'm afraid. Still, we won't have to worry about him too much.”
“Why not?”
“As I said, Mathen's not a nobleman. Terbolt placed him in charge, but I can't see Lord Roache and his ilk tolerating a commoner calling the shots for very long, and unless he's advocating mass conversion, the priesthood won't like him much either. They have no care for Medalonian sensibilities.”
The last of the wagons rumbled by. They waited until the Kariens were some way up the road before they urged their horses back onto the road and followed them at a walk.
“Speaking of the priests,” Brak added. “You remember what I told you?”
“About them being able to detect us if we call on our power? Yes, Brak, I remember.”
“I mean it, R'shiel,” he warned. “Don't underestimate them.”
“I dealt with those priests in the Defenders' camp.”
“You faced three of them and caught them by surprise,” he reminded her. “Once we get to the Citadel, there will be scores of them, and they know the demon child is abroad. I wouldn't be surprised if they have a Watching Coven posted, just waiting for you to slip up.”
“What's a Watching Coven?”
“A group of priests who link through their staves, sometimes up to twenty or thirty of them. A Coven's power could give either of us a run for our money.”
“How can they be so strong? They don't have access to Harshini power.”
“No, they have access to a god who doesn't mind bending the rules.”
“The gods!” she muttered in annoyance. “It always comes back to them, doesn't it?”
“In the end, yes.”
She smiled grimly. “Don't worry, Brak. I'll watch myself. Squire Mathen isn't the only one who can get what he wants by subtle means.”
“Oh? You have a plan then?” There was an edge of scepticism in his voice that she didn't much care for.
“I'm going to take a leaf out of your book, actually. I'm going to go straight to the best source of intelligence in Medalon.”
“Garet Warner?” he asked with amusement. “I thought the first thing you'd want to do when you saw him again would be to run a blade through him.”
“No. Garet helped me as much as he could, I think. I'm not going to kill him. Unless he doesn't want to help us.”
Brak didn't answer her and she could not tell if he approved or condemned her intentions.
They reached the Citadel just on sundown, halting on the slight rise in the road to stare at the scene before them in horrified awe. A blanket of humanity covered the plains surrounding the Citadeclass="underline" the Karien army camped about the fortress of their newest subject nation. R'shiel could not begin to guess their number, but as far as she could see, the grasslands were thick with tents and men and the panoply of war. Both sides of the shallow Saran River were crowded with them. The bridges curved gracefully out of the plain, the only part of it not swarming with the enemy. A pall of smoke from the countless cooking fires lay over the whole scene, touched with ruddy light by the dying sun, making it look like a painting of some nightmarish vision of a pagan hell.
“Founders!” she swore softly. “I didn't think there'd be so many of them.”
“Having second thoughts?”
She glanced at him, then smiled. “No. I figure between you and me, we have them outnumbered, Brak.”
He returned her smile briefly. “I think I preferred it when you were scared.”
They urged their horses on and rode down through the Karien host that was camped right up to the edge of the road. For the most part, the soldiers ignored them, too engrossed in their own business to care about two unarmed travellers on the main thoroughfare into the Citadel. She avoided meeting their eyes while despair threatened to overwhelm her.
As they crossed the bridge over the Saran River she looked up at the high white walls. Bile rose in her throat. There was a head, or the remains of one, mounted on a pike over the gateway. It had been there for some time. The eyes were empty sockets picked clean by the ravens and the skin of its face hung in strips of desiccated flesh. The hair, or what was left of it, was grey and straggling, but long enough to identify the hapless skull as once having been a woman. With sickening dread, R'shiel wondered who it had been, afraid that she knew. Unless the Kariens had murdered Joyhinia, there was only one woman in Medalon likely to incur such wrath and she had never deserved such a fate.
“Brak,” she said softly.
He followed the direction of her gaze then shook his head sadly. “Gods!”