Part 37 (2/2)
”Bodies across their saddles! Leave no man who fought,” ordered Himar. 'Then mount up and ride out.”
Anna continued to hold the lutar with her right hand as she flicked Farinelli's reins, her eyes scanning the darkness to the west and north.
The sound of hoofs and the heavy breathing of mounts and tired lancers began to rise over the crackling of dwellings burning and the scattered low moans of wounded men. Rickel and Lejun continued to flank Anna, their s.h.i.+elds held high.
Behind the Defalkan lancers, as they reached the center of Pamr and turned their mounts northward on the road to Lady Gatrune's hold, flames hissed and built to a roar, casting flickering shadows across charred bodies left on the bloodstained clay.
Anna swallowed and moistened her lips. ”1 should have spent the time to find them.” She wanted to shake her head. To think that...all those people dead because one overs.e.xed chandler wouldn't take no for an answer. Or because you couldn't find another way out of the situation. Were you just stupid, not realizing just how much Defalkan men regard women as property? And too tired because you were pus.h.i.+ng too hard to reach Denguic? ”I should have.”
”I would wager that last spell of yours did so,” suggested Jecks. ”Could you tell such?”
”I think so. . . but I don't know. I'll check when we get to Lady Gatrune's,”
Anna answered, looking into the darkness ahead. If you can... if you can sing another spell tonight.
”Torches! To the van!” ordered Himar. His voice lowered as he let his mount drop back, and as he addressed the Regent. ”I like this not. Were the holding not close, I would ask that you have us make an encampment.”
”Should we stop? I'd rather have friendly walls around us,” Anna replied, ”but I probably caused this by wanting to go on.” Probably? Definitely... it's all on your head.
”I have sent scouts out, as if the land were not ours,” Himar said, ”but I would press on, so short is the distance, but with care. Great care.”
Anna decided to continue keeping the lutar ready.
”I also,” said Jecks. ”Still, it is an ill night, without the bright moon.”
Anna scarcely would have called the small white disc of Clearsong bright, not compared to the bright moon of earth. ”We couldn't see it anyway.”
”Mayhap not, but the clouds oft roll in under the evil moon when it rises.”
Could that be? There's still so much you don't know. Dark-song rising... pitted against sorcery... and where are the stars, the army of unalterable law? Her laugh was hoa.r.s.e.The torches shed only minimal light, and with Clearsong not in the sky, and the heavy low clouds blocking even starlight, the column moved slowly northward.
Even after perhaps half a gla.s.s, no lights betrayed the hold, although Anna knew it was but a few deks out the north road from Pamr. The air still smelled smoky despite the breeze out of the north.
Smoke drifted toward the Defalkan riders, reaching them in waves, waves Anna could smell more than see. The smoke came from dying fires, but with an odor both similar to and different from that she had created in Pamr.
”Oh, no...” murmured the sorceress. ”No...”
”Torches forward! Ready arms!”
There won't be any need for arms.
Anna was right. The holding was silent as death, and the dim light of the torches revealed the first bodies at the gates, bodies savagely hacked into near unrecognizability, mercifully cloaked in the dimness of the dark night.
”An ill night, indeed, my lady,” Jecks said. ”I am sorry. Most sorry, for I know the ties and grat.i.tude you bore all who were here.”
Anna held the lutar ready, though she knew she would need it no longer. Not tonight. Then, you really didn't think you'd need it coming into Pamr, either.
More bodies lay along the lane to the hold. A hold, that had burned, leaving the stone-and-brick sh.e.l.l. From the ruins glimmered but faint coals.
”Purple company, check the stables. Green company, Yujul-check the barracks, over there. The rest of you search the grounds. By company now...” When he finished directing the lancers, Himar turned toward Anna. ”Wait, if you would, Lady Anna.”
Anna reined up and waited in the darkness barely broken by the torches, surrounded by guards in the ruins of a hold she had thought friendly and strong.
When the lancers confirmed that the grounds were indeed empty, Anna finally dismounted and walked up the ash-strewn steps toward what had been the entry to Gatrune's hall. At the threshold, as if he had tried to hold back the horde, lay a dark-haired, dark-bearded figure. Within the light of the torch held by Kinor, sprawled more than a half-score of figures. Others lay farther away from Firis.
”Most would not die so well,” murmured Himar.
Anna swallowed. The das.h.i.+ng captain had always claimed Anna had brought him fortune. Not this time.
”Lady... if you would abide, with your guards,” Jecks suggested.
The sorceress and Regent nodded, knowing what he had in mind. ”I'll wait here.
You won't find anyone alive.”
Jecks' lips curled, but he did not speak as he and Himar stepped gingerly through the ruined doors.”Was this the work of the rebels?” asked Jimbob, his voice simultaneously puzzled and deferential.
”They weren't rebels,” Anna said slowly, finding she still clutched the lutar.
”They were deluded men spelled with Darksong by a young man who didn't understand, and who didn't want to.”
”Peasants...”
”No.” Anna kept her voice level. ”Your grandfather was right about the evil that can be done with drums. Two men did evil, and the others died because of it.”
”Could you have done aught-” Jimbob's question halted with the jab to the ribs from Kinor.
”If I had ... then we couldn't have gone into Ebra, and we'd be facing another enemy to the east.” You hope your judgment was correct. Enough people had already paid.
The returning glow of the torch showed Jecks and Himar as they walked slowly back through the ruined doors toward Anna and the others.
”Both the lady. . . and her son...” Jecks' voice was flat, emotionless.
”I should have acted before.” Anna could feel the dampness on her cheeks.
”You could not. . . not if you wanted to ensure that Ebra remains an ally,”
pointed out Jecks. ”Even you, mighty as you are, can do but what you can.” Jecks paused, then asked more gently, ”Would you have wished to kill men who had done nothing then, suspecting only that they might do ill?”
Anna winced at the question. You had thought about it.
Was that another part of being Regent? Choosing when no action was without negative consequences? Letting things happen because there was no proof of evil that could justify action? Or was that just the lot of Defalk?
”You can do no more until first light,” Jecks said gently.
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