But this makes no sense. Has Lord Draconus lost control of his Houseblades? But then, is that so impossible? There is civil war and their lord has left them. They have chosen a side and they acted — striking us first to remove the threat from their backs; and would now face the east and south without risk of being surrounded by enemies.
That makes tactical sense.
Except for the fact that our fighters were all away, and now we are here.
She twisted in her saddle to the young girl with the stained hands. ‘Lahanis. Did you see heavily armoured Houseblades? Did you see warhorses? How many attacked?’
The girl stared at her in open distaste. ‘I saw Houseblades,’ she said. ‘I saw the standard of House Dracons! I am not a child!’
‘Activity from the gate!’ someone shouted.
Feren turned with the others to see two riders emerging from the keep, picking their way down the slope. One bore the standard of Dracons.
‘They accept our challenge,’ Rint said, baring his teeth.
The two distant figures rode out to rein in directly in front of the Borderswords’ banner. The one bearing the Dracons standard thrust it into the ground, next to the first offering. A moment later, both Houseblades were riding back to the keep.
‘After we have slain the Houseblades,’ said Traj, ‘we break into the keep. We kill everyone we find. Then we ride down to the village. We slaughter everyone and burn everything. If I could, I would see the ground salted. But I will settle for shattered bones. Curse upon the name of Draconus, by the blood of my soul.’
Feren felt a chill creeping through her, spreading out through her muscles. She reached up to touch the scar disfiguring her cheek, and felt her fingertips cold as ice.
‘Everyone dismount!’ Traj called out. ‘Rest your horses and see to your weapons! Drink the last from your flasks and eat what’s left in your saddlebags!’
‘That would be leather string, Traj!’ someone yelled back.
Low laughter rippled out.
Feren hunched in her saddle, studying the wiry grasses fluttering along the crest. The baby stirred in her, twice, like a thing making fists.
Sandalath emerged from the house. Although the day was warm, the skies clear, she drew her cloak tightly about her. Her walk through the house had awakened the horror that gripped her soul, and although the bloodstains had been washed away and all other signs of the slaughter removed, the unnatural silence — the absence of familiar faces — crumbled her courage.
She had made of her room a fortress against all that lay beyond its door, but in the days and nights that followed the killings her abode became a prison, with terror pacing the corridor beyond. She feared sleep and its timeless world of nightmare visions, its panicked flights through shadows and the flapping of small, bared feet closing behind her.
It still seemed impossible that the daughters of Draconus could have, in a single night, become so transformed. She saw them now as demonic, and their faces, hovering ceaselessly in her mind’s eye, made evil the soft features of youth: the large, bright eyes and rosebud lips, the flush of rounded cheeks.
Captain Ivis insisted that they had fled the keep. But he had sent trackers into the countryside and they had found no signs of their passage. At night, lying awake and shivering in her bed, Sandalath had heard strange sounds in the house, and once, very faint, the sound of whispering, as of voices behind a stone wall. She was convinced that the girls were still in the house, hiding in secret places known only to them.
There was a forbidden room…
She saw Captain Ivis and made her way to where he stood. Soldiers crowded the compound, silent but for the sounds their armour made as they tightened straps and closed buckles. Grooms rushed about burdened beneath saddles and the leather plates of horse armour. Ivis stood in the midst of this chaos like a man on an island, beyond the reach of frenzied waves thrashing on all sides. She drew assurance from just seeing him. He met her eyes as she drew nearer.
‘Hostage, you have seen too little of the sun, but this is not the best of days.’
‘What is happening?’
‘We prepare for battle,’ he replied.
‘But — who would want to attack us?’
The man shrugged. ‘It is not our way to struggle in search of enemies, hostage. Some have suggested that the invasion of the Jheleck but delayed the brooding civil war. An unpopular opinion, but so often it is the unpopular ones that prove true, while those eagerly embraced are revealed as wishful thinking. We deny for comfort, and often it takes a hand to the throat to shake us awake.’ He studied her for a moment. ‘I regret the risk you face in our company, hostage. Whatever may befall us, be assured that you will not be harmed.’