‘If I submit to your soldiers, and give myself up to my uncle’s justice,’ said Laurent, ‘what happens to my men?’
‘Your crimes are not theirs. Having committed no wrongs except loyalty, they will be given their freedom and their lives. They will be disbanded, and the women will be escorted to the Vaskian border. The slave will be executed, of course.’
‘Of course,’ said Laurent.
Councillor Guion spoke. ‘Your uncle would never say this to you,’ he said, reining in beside his son Aimeric. ‘So I will. Out of loyalty to your father and your brother, your uncle has treated you with leniency you never deserved. You have repaid him with scorn and contempt, with negligence in your duties, and with wanton disregard for the shame you bring to your family. That your selfish nature has led you to treason does not surprise me, but how could you betray your uncle’s trust, after the kindness that he has lavished on you?’
‘Uncle’s immoderate kindness,’ said Laurent. ‘I promise you, it was easy.’
Guion said, ‘You show no remorse at all.’
‘Speaking of negligence,’ said Laurent.
He lifted his hand. A long way behind him, two Vaskian women detached themselves from his troop and began to ride forward. Enguerran made a movement of concern, but Touars motioned him back—two women would hardly make a difference here one way or the other. At the halfway mark of their approach, you could see that one of the women’s saddles was lumped, and then you could see what it was lumped with.
‘I have something of yours. I’d chide you on your carelessness, but I’ve just had a lesson in the ways that the detritus of a troop can slip from one camp to another.’
Laurent said something in Vaskian. The woman dumped the bundle from her horse onto the dirt, as one shaking unwanted contents from a pack.
It was a man, brown-haired and lashed at the wrists and ankles like a boar to a pole after a hunt. His face was caked in dirt, except near the temple, where his hair was clumped with dried blood.
He wasn’t a clansman.
Damen remembered the Vaskian camp. There were fourteen prisoners today, when yesterday there had been ten. He looked sharply at Laurent.
‘If you think,’ said Guion, ‘that a fumbling final play with a hostage will stop or slow us from delivering to you the justice that you deserve, you are mistaken.’
Enguerran was saying, ‘It’s one of our scouts.’
‘It’s four of your scouts,’ said Laurent.
One of the soldiers leapt down from his horse and went down on one armoured knee beside the prisoner, as Touars, frowning at Enguerran, said, ‘The reports are delayed?’
‘From the east. It’s not unusual, when the terrain is this broad,’ said Enguerran.
The soldier sliced open the bindings on the prisoner’s hands and feet, and as he pulled at the gag, the prisoner lurched into a sitting position with the stupefied movements of a man fresh out of harsh bindings.
Thick-tongued, ‘My lord—a force of men to the east, riding to intercept you at Hellay—’
‘This is Hellay,’ said Councillor Guion, with sharp impatience, as Captain Enguerran looked at Laurent with a different expression.
‘What force?’ Aimeric’s sudden voice was thin and edged.
And Damen remembered a chase across a rooftop, dropping laundry on the men below while the sky above wheeled with stars—
‘Your rabble of clan alliances, or Akielon mercenaries, no doubt.’
—remembered a bearded messenger falling to his knees in an inn room—
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ said Laurent.
—remembered Laurent murmuring intimately to Torveld on a perfumed balcony, gifting him with a king’s ransom in slaves.
The scout was saying, ‘—carrying the Prince’s banners alongside the yellow of Patras—’
An ear-splitting note from the horn of one of the Vaskian women drew a returning sound, like an echo, a distant, mournful note that rang out once and then again, and again, from the east. And cresting the sprawling eastern hill, the banners appeared, along with all the glinting weapons and livery of an army.
Alone of all the men Laurent did not lift his eyes to the hilltop, but kept them trained on Lord Touars.