Realm of Dragons

“You don’t like me, do you?” Finnal asked.

Rodry paused, and then shook his head. “You think I haven’t heard the rumors about you? About the House of Sighs?”

“Rumors mean nothing,” Finnal said.

“They do if they’re true,” Rodry shot back.

“And why have you decided that these are true?” Finnal asked. “I’m the son of a duke; I attract my share of jealousy.”

“A duke who stood with those who saw my sister banished,” Rodry said. He had to work to contain his anger now.

“I had no part in that,” Finnal said. “And my father… I suspect he was standing for the laws. Would your family overthrow them?”

“I wouldn’t see my sisters hurt!” Rodry all but snarled at him.

“I wouldn’t want that either,” Finnal said. He looked at Rodry levelly. “What will it take to convince you that I mean to do the right thing by Lenore? That I have no intention of hurting her?”

That was the problem; Rodry didn’t know. He couldn’t think of anything that would take away his suspicions, or that would make him see past all that he had heard about this man. He looked around, hoping for some distraction that would at least mean he didn’t have to answer. In the distance, he spied an inn; just a simple place, and probably the sort of establishment Finnal would never have set foot in. Suddenly, Rodry found himself needing a drink.

“Come have an ale with me,” he said, pointing to it. He called out to his companions, because he had no intention of that being an ale alone with Finnal. They might have to actually talk if they were alone. “I spy a tavern, men! I think we’ve hunted enough for one day, so let us celebrate our successes!”

He rode for it, wishing he could be riding to his sister’s side instead, but she’d asked him to take the time to get to know Finnal, and he was going to do that, even if he had to down a tavern’s worth of ale to manage it. She would be fine out on her journey. After all, she had Vars’s men to guard her.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

Lenore found herself looking around for her brother as her carriage trundled down to the crossroads and past it. The roads were muddy here, paved only in places and with clumps of vegetation on either side.

“Vars was supposed to meet us somewhere here, wasn’t he?” she called out to one of the half-dozen guards with her.

“I’m sure the prince will meet us in due course,” the man replied, although he sounded as surprised as Lenore felt that Vars had not done so already.

“Should we stop and wait for him?” Lenore asked. Probably, though, as the princess, she should have been giving the orders. The soldier seemed to think so too.

“If it pleases you, your highness,” he said.

“We’ve still a long way to go today,” one of her maids pointed out. She gave a disgusted look out of the carriage window. “And if we wait here, we’ll be doing it in the mud. We could at least wait for the prince at the next comfortable inn.”

Lenore sighed. Her maid had a point. More to the point, it was likely that Vars was there already. Probably he’d decided that he had no more interest than the maid in waiting out in the mud, and the thought of beer or wine had drawn him on.

Then there was the thought of the cargo they carried. They only had the gifts from Royalsport and the nearest villages so far, but even so, it seemed like too much to be sitting out in the open with. Better to press on and wait surrounded by whatever walls the inn had.

“We’ll keep going,” Lenore called to the driver.

The carriage continued to bump its way down the road, while Lenore looked out and tried to find something different in the landscape. Probably Nerra could have told her the name of every tree, pointing out the differences as they went, but she wasn’t here. Lenore hoped her sister was all right, and that Rodry had been able to find her.

She hoped a lot of things, because if there was one thing a lengthy carriage ride had time for, it was hopes and dreams. Lenore found herself hoping that the rest of the ride would be smoother, and that the people on the rest of the journey would love her as much as the ones before had. One of those hopes seemed more achievable than the other, given the way the carriage was jolting. She hoped Nerra would be found soon, and Erin, and that their father would forgive them both. She hoped her marriage to Finnal would be the perfect dream that the feasting with him had been, although why did that have to be a hope, when she couldn’t imagine it any other way?

“Almost at an inn, your highness,” the driver called out. Lenore looked out of the carriage, seeing the building ahead. It was a structure of painted wood and stone, with a thatched roof and a sign in front that had no words, only a picture of a celandine flower. A small stable stood next to the main building, obviously there to receive travelers, although there was no sign of the body of men that her brother was supposed to be bringing.

“We’ll stop here,” Lenore declared. Vars would find her more easily here than out on the open road if he’d missed her, and they would all be safer behind walls than in the open. Lenore could see the guards around her relaxing slightly at the news.

The driver pulled the carriage in front of the inn for Lenore to alight with her maids, and it struck her just how quiet the place was. Weren’t inns normally bustling places, filled with the sounds of raucous celebration? Maybe she had that wrong; after all, Lenore spent far less time in such places than the likes of Vars or Rodry.

“I’ll take the carriage to the stables, your highness,” the driver said, a couple of the guards going with him to protect the goods they’d been given.

She walked in, surrounded by her maids and the remaining guards who had come with her, and immediately knew that something was wrong. There were people there, sitting in place, but they were far too still as other figures moved among them wearing steel and leather. Lenore hadn’t seen enough of the stillness of death to know it by sight, but she could see the cut throats of the men there, the stab wounds and the marks of strangulation. Against the silence, she could hear the whimpers and cries of a woman from somewhere upstairs, and she knew that what was happening there was every bit as bad.

The living figures turned to her, and Lenore saw the marks of King Ravin’s army emblazoned on the armor of men and women. They had a variety of weapons with them, from swords to strange, many bladed daggers, and they moved with a quiet coordination that terrified Lenore almost as much as the blades.

“Princess,” one of the men said, “we had expected more men with you.”

“Still, it makes it easy,” one of the women said. “Means we don’t have to poison a regiment.”

“There is that,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Lenore demanded, trying to sound braver than she felt, trying to buy time, or find a way to talk clear of this, or just understand. “How are you here?”

They shouldn’t have been there; Southern soldiers shouldn’t have been able to cross the bridges.

“Oh, we’re the ones King Ravin has been putting in place for a while,” the man said. “His best. One by one, over the bridges, in with the merchants. Men and women, because no one thinks a married pair will be killers.” He smiled over at one of the women. “Isn’t that right, dear?”

“Absolutely,” she said. She looked at Lenore with a gaze that promised awful things. “Can I cut her?”

“You know the king’s orders for her,” the man said. “Suitably broken, suitably used before she’s brought to him, but intact. I don’t think that includes your games, Syrelle. You can have one of the others.”

“Oh, I suppose so, Eoris. They all scream well enough in the end.”

The man nodded, and that nod seemed to be a signal, because the others surged forward.

“Back, Princess!” one of the guards with her called, stepping forward to try to slow them, to give Lenore space in which to run.

He died.

He died so quickly that it didn’t even count as a fight. Lenore had heard stories of heroic combats and seen her brother Rodry practicing with swords. This was nothing like that. There was no back and forth flash of blades, no witty talk, no chance for the guard. He was simply hacked down by a sword stroke so fast that Lenore barely saw it, while the rest of the southerners leapt at the other guards, thrusting blades into chests, dragging them across throats.

Lenore knew that her only hope was to run. She turned to do so, and saw one of her maids dragged to the floor by one of the soldiers, pinned there while she fought to get away. She saw a guard cut down, and in it all, Lenore wanted to help, but she couldn’t; she couldn’t persuade her body to do anything but run.

She ran, pushing her way clear of the inn, bursting out into the open sunlight with a scream that she hoped would attract the attention of any help nearby.

“We’re under attack!” Lenore cried out, racing for the stables. There were still two more guards in the stables, along with the driver. She just had to pray that he hadn’t unhitched the horses from the carriage yet, because right then the only hope was to flee. There was no hope to fight, not against foes like these. She sprinted for the stables, hoping she would be in time, hoping she would keep ahead…

Lenore reached the stables and saw the bodies there. The two guards lay on the ground where they had fallen, clearly cut down in seconds. The driver swung from a noose, legs still kicking as he died. Even as Lenore stared in horror, a man stepped from the shadows, dangling another length of rope

“Hmm, Eoris said that you might come this way,” he said. “But I thought he was mistaken. Tell me, are you going to fight?”

“Please,” Lenore begged, but all the time she was doing it, her hand was creeping down to her eating knife. “Please, I’ll do whatever you—”

She lunged with it, hoping the element of surprise would make up for what she lacked in skill and strength. Instead, she found her opponent twisting aside, and that rope tangling with her hand, wrenching tight and ripping the knife from it. In another second, he’d somehow caught her other wrist, tying the two together behind her.