Now they faced one another on the dais and words rose to Damen’s lips, personal words.
But what he said was, ‘Are you sure you want to leave your enemy in charge of your fort?’
‘Yes,’ said Laurent.
They gazed at one another. It was a public goodbye, in full view of the men. Laurent extended his hand. He did it not, as a prince might, for Damen to kneel and kiss, but as a friend. There was acknowledgement in the gesture, and as Damen took his hand, in front of the men, Laurent held his gaze.
Laurent said, ‘Take care of my fort, Commander.’
In public, there was nothing he could say. He felt his grip tighten slightly. He thought of stepping forward, of taking Laurent’s head in his hands. And then he thought of what he was, and all he now knew. And he forced himself to release his grip.
Laurent was nodding to his attendant, mounting his horse. Damen said, ‘A lot depends on timing. We have a rendezvous in two days. I—Don’t be late.’
‘Trust me,’ said Laurent with a single bright glance, straightening his horse out with the tug of a rein in the moment before the order was called, and he and his men moved out.
* * *
The fort without Laurent felt hollowed out. But, manned by a skeleton force, it still had enough men to repel any serious threat from outside. The walls of Ravenel had stood strong for two hundred years. Besides which, their plan relied on splitting their forces, with Laurent leaving first, while Damen remained, waiting for Laurent’s reinforcements and then launching from Ravenel a day later.
Because it was not possible, no matter what was said, to completely trust Laurent, the morning was a thin skein of tension, drawn tight. The men prepared in true southern weather. The blue sky, high-flung, was uninterrupted except where it was cut by a crenellation.
Damen rose to the battlements. The view stretched over hills to the horizon. Set wide in broad daylight, the landscape was empty of troops, and he marvelled again that they had been able to take this fort without the spilt blood and churned earth of a siege.
It felt good to look out over what they had accomplished and to know it was only the beginning. The Regent had held ascendancy for too long. Fortaine was going to fall, and Laurent was going to hold the south.
And then he saw the haze on the horizon.
Red. Darkening red. And then, streaming across the landscape, six riders, drawing ahead of the oncoming red at a gallop—their own scouts, pounding back to the fort.
It played out in miniature below him, the army still far enough away that their approach was silent, the scouts just points at the ends of six lines converging on the fort.
Red had always been the colour of the Regency, but that was not what changed the beating of Damen’s heart, even before the far-off sound of the horn—ivory that struck the air, splitting it open.
They marched, a line of red cloaks in perfect formation, and Damen’s heart was pounding. He knew them. He remembered the last time he had seen them, his body pressed out of sight behind outcrops of granite. He had ridden for hours along a river to avoid them, Laurent dripping in the saddle behind him. The nearest Akielon troop is nearer than I expected, Laurent had said.
These were not the Regent’s troops.
This was the army of Nikandros, the Kyros of Delpha, and his Commander, Makedon.
A burst of activity in the courtyard, the clatter of hooves, voices raised in alarm—
Damen was aware of it as if from a distance, he turned almost blindly as a runner came bursting up the stairs, taking them two at a time, throwing himself down onto one knee in front of Damen and gasping out his message.
‘Akielons are marching on us,’ he expected the runner to say, and he did, but then he said, ‘I’m to give this to the fort Commander,’ and he was urgently pressing something into Damen’s hand.
Damen stared at it. Behind him, the Akielon army was approaching. In his hand was a hard loop of metal set with a carved gemstone, the etching a starburst.
He was looking at Laurent’s signet ring.
He felt the hair rise all over his body. The last time he had seen this ring, he’d been at an inn at Nesson, and Laurent had given it over to a messenger. Give him this, and tell him that I will wait for him at Ravenel, he’d said.
Distantly he was aware that Guymar was on the battlement with a contingent of men, that Guymar was addressing him, telling him, ‘Commander, Akielons are marching on the fort.’
He turned to face Guymar, his fist closing over the signet ring. Guymar seemed to stop and realise who it was he was talking to. Damen saw it written on Guymar’s face: an Akielon force massing outside, and an Akielon in command of the fort.
Guymar pushed past his hesitation, said, ‘Our walls can withstand anything, but they’ll block the arrival of our reinforcements.’
He remembered the night Laurent had addressed him in Akielon for the first time, remembered long nights speaking in Akielon, Laurent shoring up his vocabulary, improving his fluency, and his choice of subject matter—border geography, treaties, troop movements.