The main Karien army arrived in Cauthside the day after he cut loose the ferry. According to his cellmates, who had witnessed the aftermath, the ferry had been destroyed by the river, which had thrown it against the bank like a piece of driftwood. It was now good for nothing more than kindling. The news gave Tarja some small measure of satisfaction. For the time being, the Kariens were stalled.
His good fortune did not last long. A week after he was captured he was reunited with Ulran, who spied him on the other side of the crowded cellar where they were being held and called out to him gleefully, loud enough for every Karien in Cauthside to hear.
Within an hour, Tarja found himself, chained hand and foot, facing Lord Roache and Lord Wherland.
With the discovery of the notorious Tarja Tenragan in their custody, the Kariens obviously felt that the Overlord had answered their prayers. He became the focus of everything that had gone wrong in their campaign: Cratyn's death, Lord Terbolt's death, the fact that their army was facing starvation because there were not enough farms or cities in northern Medalon they could ransack for supplies, that the Defenders had surrendered yet refused to be cowed - even that they still needed the Defenders to maintain control of the civilian population. They blamed him for the squads of roving deserters who harried their flanks and slunk away into the night before they could be captured, and they blamed him for the fact that they were immobilised on the wrong side of the river, a responsibility which Tarja didn't mind shouldering at all, considering he actually was accountable for that.
Everything became Tarja's fault and they intended to see that he paid for it.
The Karien dukes wore the frazzled air that surrounds men whose success comes at a very high price. Lord Roache did not accuse him openly of single-handedly hampering the Karien occupation of Medalon, but he came close. He had spared Tarja a contemptuous glance, then consulted the parchment in front of him.
“You murdered Lord Pieter, Lord Terbolt and His Royal Highness, Cratyn, the Crown Prince of Karien. You also murdered the priest Elfron. You are responsible for countless acts of sabotage, up to and including the destruction of the Cauthside Ferry. You are responsible for the kidnapping of Her Royal Highness, Adrina, Crown Princess of Karien, and for handing her over to the custody of the barbarian Hythrun, where she remains a hostage. You have consorted with demons and pagans and have actively assisted Harshini sorcerers. Do you have anything to say?”
“I think you left out the bit about eating babies,” he had said with the reckless abandon of a man who knows he is condemned and that nothing he said could make the situation worse than it already was.
“You will hang, Captain. Your crimes allow no other course of action.”
“Could you do it sooner, rather than later?” he quipped, enjoying the effect his insolence was having on the Karien duke. “The food in the cells is terrible.”
“You mock me at your peril, Captain.”
“I say we dispose of him now!” Wherland declared. He was a big man with a big voice and very little patience.
Roache shook his head. “These Medalonians need to see that even the mighty Tarja Tenragan cannot escape our vengeance. If we hang him here, in this isolated country village, the people will refuse to believe it. He has to die as publicly as possible. We will wait until we reach the Citadel. I want as many witnesses as I can get.”
“Then a little public humiliation will have to do. We'll put him in the stocks.”
“No. The risk of his accomplices trying to free him would be too great. He'll be confined in the camp. I intend to make an example of him that the Medalonians will not forget.”
They spoke Karien, perhaps not aware that Tarja understood them. He did not react to their words, preferring them to remain ignorant of the fact that he spoke their language fluently. If anything, Roache's determination to hang him in the Citadel gave him heart. It would be a month or more before they could get across the river. A lot could happen in a month.
Roache turned back to Tarja and addressed him in heavily accented Medalonian.
“You will be confined here and transferred to the Citadel at the earliest opportunity. If you wish to prolong your life, you will provide us with the names of your conspirators and the location of your rebel headquarters.”
“You don't seriously expect me to tell you anything, do you?”
The Duke shrugged. “One is never sure what a Medalonian considers honourable, Captain. You might be willing to barter your friends to save your own neck.”
“A word of advice, my Lord. If you expect to hold onto Medalon, you would do well to learn what we consider honourable.”
“Looking at the list of your crimes, Captain, I'm surprised you have the word in your vocabulary.”
While hardly luxurious, Tarja's accommodation proved better than he expected. He was confined to a tent in the centre of the Karien camp, guarded on all four sides by knights who held their loyalty to Karien and the Overlord above even their own mothers, Tarja suspected. They were taciturn to begin with, but as the days merged into weeks, they relented a little and from them Tarja learnt what was happening in the outside world.
The knights told him when the news arrived that Princess Adrina was now in Hythria and married to the Hythrun High Prince. Tarja appeared suitably surprised, not wanting to spoil their outrage by informing them that he had known about her marriage for some time. The news that Damin was the High Prince worried him a little. He wondered if R'shiel had had a hand in it. She had killed twice that he knew of and never shown a moment's remorse over either man. Had she acquired a taste for murder? Was the blood of the old High Prince on her hands now? The thoughts ate at him, added to the other memories of her that continued to haunt him. Memories that could not be real. Memories he had no reason to doubt.
Although he had no idea of the fate of Mandah and the rest of his squad, he learnt soon enough what had happened to the Fardohnyans they had found in the abandoned boathouse. When Paval informed the remnants of Adrina's Guard that the Kariens had arrived, instead of fleeing south, which would have been the sensible thing to do, Filip and his men rode straight into Cauthside in a futile attempt to aid the Medalonians. By the time they arrived, there were enough Kariens in the town to outnumber them considerably. The fight had been short and bloody. A number were killed in the skirmish, including Filip and Paval. The remainder were summarily tried and hanged as deserters the following day.
Tarja saw their rotting bodies swinging from a temporary gallows the Kariens had constructed in the town square when he was escorted to his new quarters in the Karien camp. He felt a pang of guilt and wondered why the Fardohnyans had risked such a fate when they could have gotten clean away. In the end he decided it was some incomprehensible idea of Fardohnyan honour that made them turn back. He had seen the look in Filip's eyes when he had offered their surrender to Damin on the border. Perhaps it was easier to die attempting something heroic against ridiculous odds than return home to Talabar to face the King. The Princess' Guard had not only deserted a battlefield, but had abandoned the Princess they'd been sent north to protect. That Adrina had ordered them to do both would not matter to Hablet. Tarja realised that the same fate probably awaited these men at home. All they had done was hasten the inevitable.
Tarja spent almost a month in the Karien camp before the rafts were completed and he was transferred across the Glass River to the Citadel under heavy guard. He saw nothing of the journey or the Citadel when the Kariens entered it in triumph. Lord Roache had commandeered a closed carriage in Cauthside, and Tarja was confined to it, night and day, for the entire trip, allowed out only once each morning and evening to relieve himself. He was transferred to a cell in the Defenders' headquarters under cover of darkness, and there he remained, completely cut off from news of what was happening in the outside world.