Sovereign

'Move along!' Charion ordered, and her thirty archers half ran fifty metres south and started shooting at the vanguard. Hern let his group fire two more times into the rear before marching them south as well. In just a few minutes the enemy bolted. They dropped their weapons and started running back the way they had come. Charion, waiting for just this moment, ordered her archers to concentrate their shooting against the animals drawing the carts and wagons in the baggage train, Many of the arrows hit their target, but only a few caused immediately fatal wounds, most of the animals rearing and twisting across the road, blocking it with their loads. The soldiers of the van scrambled over the animals and each other to get away. Charion now gave her final signal, two arrows fired at the mouth of the dry gully. A second later Galen and his forty warriors streamed out and slammed into the fleeing soldiers. They showed no mercy, unhesitatingly striking the enemy down from behind and flinging corpses aside to get at new targets. As the infantry hacked their way north, the two groups of archers ran to their original position to pour more arrows into the still disorganised rearguard. Some of the enemy at the very end of the column managed to escape the slaughter, but few others.

The battle was over quickly, and the gorge was filled with the smell of blood and death. Crows and even hawks were already circling above, waiting for the feast to start.

Charion joined Galen at the baggage train. He held up a handful of gold coins. 'Money!' he shouted at her. 'Haxan gold and silver. Enough to raise a small army!' He rushed to a couple of spilled boxes; straw littered the roadway, soaking up blood, and amid the straw were swords. Nearby wagons held many boxes the same size. 'And we have enough arms now to equip it!'

Charion nodded. 'We have to move,' she said levelly. 'It's possible the Chetts sent a troop to escort this column on the last stage of their journey.'

Galen grinned at her. 'If not, they will in the future.'

'And that will slow down Lynan even further.'

Galen patted her shoulder. 'You could at least offer a small smile. This is a wonderful victory! Look what you have done with only one hundred raw recruits!'

'Against equally raw, totally surprised and very tired recruits,' she said. 'But yes, the victory is important. It will help raise morale and improve enlistment.'

Galen became more serious. 'And ensure Lynan comes after us.'

Now Charion smiled, but there was no humour in it. 'With any luck.'

Ager had been given permission to ride with his clan as far as the border with Chandra. It would take three days to get there from Daavis, three days he intended to enjoy to the full. For the first few hours he set up a hard pace, eager to get the cobwebs out of his mind and those of his warriors. City living had its advantages, but it limited how you looked at the world and your place in it. Mounted on a horse, the wind in your hair, the smell of trees and earth in your nostrils, the sound of birdsong in your ear, the feel of raw sunlight on your skin, life broadened by the moment; so did Ager's grin as the city fell further and further behind.

Just before noon Ager became aware of a heavier, deeper sound in the ground, as if the surface he was riding on had changed, but then he sensed a change in his warriors, a ripple that moved up the column from the rear to the van. He looked over his shoulder and groaned, seeing with his one good eye the unmistakable figure of Lynan riding his way.

He's changed his mind and is going to ask me to com back to Daavis today, he thought. Then he noticed two other details. Lynan's pennant—the gold circle in a dark red field—fluttered behind him, and the column of riders was noticeably thicker than it should be, four horses abreast instead of two.

'He's brought his Red Hands with him,' he said aloud.

Morfast looked at him. 'Lynan?'

Instead of answering, Ager put his hand up to stop the column and waited, trying to ignore the hundred questions that rose in his mind.

A minute later Lynan had caught up. He reined in, and sitting beside him was Gudon grinning like a genial idiot.

'Decided to join us in Chandra, your Majesty?' Morfast asked lightly.

Lynan smiled at her. 'I wish it were so.' He settled back in his saddle and breathed deeply. 'I wish to God it were so.'

'What's happened?' Ager asked, suddenly impatient.

'We lost a column,' Lynan said flatly.

'Where?'

'In a gorge about a day's travel north of here. Over a hundred reinforcements from Haxus were cut down, and all the supplies and money they escorted were taken.'

'When?'

'Three days ago. Some of the survivors came into Daavis just after you and your clan left.'

'And who?'

Lynan shrugged. 'None of the survivors could tell us. It was a well-laid ambush. Archers on either side of the gorge, a reserve of infantry hidden in a gully. They didn't stand a chance.' He looked up at the sky for a moment, then back down at his hands. 'Things were getting too simple, weren't they, old friend? I should have known something like this would happen. It's just that in all the histories I've read, taking the capital of a Kingdom ends all resistance.'

'This is a civil war,' Ager pointed out. 'We don't have any histories of civil wars, except legends from the earliest days.' He could see from Lynan's face that there was something more. 'Go on.'

'The only thing all the survivors agreed upon was that the ambush was set off by a dark-haired woman.'

'Charion. We knew she had escaped.'

'To Chandra we thought, and then to Kendra.'

'Out of the way,' Gudon added.

Lynan leaned across and patted Ager's shoulder. 'Well, at least you know now that I haven't come to drag you back to the city.'

Ager looked up suddenly, startled. 'You haven't got all the banners out searching, have you?'

Lynan looked disappointedly at Ager. 'I realise it could be a diversion, to empty the city of defenders. Korigan is still there, with the rest of our army. We only need our two banners to hunt down Charion. If her force had been any larger than one or two hundred there would not have been any survivors from the Haxan column.'

Ager nodded meekly by way of apology. 'So we ride north?'

'Until we get to the gorge. Then we search for spore.'

Ager brightened. 'A hunt!'

Gudon's grinned widened. 'Truth, my friend, a hunt!'

Father Hern finished counting out two gold Haxan pieces and four silver. He carefully retied the leather money pouch, put it in his cloak pocket, and pushed the coins across the table in his kitchen. A small, dark-eyed man sitting opposite him looked at the coins for a moment, then at the priest.

'This comes from our queen?'

'You have known me for most of your life, Kivilas, and you trust me. I tell you that Queen Charion led the attack at Elstra Gorge. Hume is fighting back against the demon Lynan.'

'The demon Lynan?' Kivilas smiled quizzically at that, 'You pushing politics or religion, Father?'

'I have heard first-hand from Charion what this Lynan Rosetheme is like,' Father Hern said. 'He is a demon.' His hands shook a little and he had to place them flat on the table to stop them. 'I tell you plainly, I did not want to get involved, but after learning from Charion herself what this Lynan has become I felt I had no choice but to assist in any way that I could.'

Kivilas's smile disappeared and his face went dark. 'I have heard stories about his sister as well. I heard at the last fair that her daughter was born vomiting blood and killed two of the midwives before it could be slain.'

Hern paled. Even he, with his Church connections, had not heard that story. But he did not doubt it. 'All the Rosetheme brood are cursed, I think. There is even a tale told of Olio, whom everyone knows is as gentle as a babe…'

Kivilas nodded to show that he too had heard this.

'… performing dark magic the night Kendra went up in flames.'

'Kendra has been destroyed?' This Kivilas could not believe, and his expression showed it. Kendra was indestructible. Even Hume farmers like himself, common as muck and filled with far more common sense than imagination, believed there was something almost mystical about the capital of Grenda Lear—the capital of the world!