Heirs of the Blade_ Shadows of the Apt_ Book Seven - Adiran Tchaikovsky [135]
He remembered Siriell, and how she had been building her own principality in miniature: yoking together violent men like Dal and making them work in partnership, laying the foundations of a community.
So much for that.
A few days ago he had acquired another thirty men, the first batch that Mordrec and the others had recruited, so he had decided it was time to go hunting once more. They had found a barge heading for Leose and captured it – there had been no guards, for word of Dal’s activities was slow in spreading, and there had been little brigandage in these parts for years, thanks to Siriell’s moderating influence. Dal had thought the barge attack had passed without bloodshed, but then the barge’s master, for inexplicable reasons, had attacked one of the brigands as they were exploring the hold. In the fracas that followed, five of the barge’s crew of six had been killed, but Dal shed no tears for them. If it was useful to have a reputation that said those who surrendered would live, it was similarly useful to make it known that those who resisted would die. That was the code of wise robbers by land and sea all over the world. As a compromise, he had let the final bargeman go unharmed, just to spread the tale.
The barge had originally been heading here to Sara Tela, and Dal and a few companions had then seen it to its destination. On arrival the headman had come down to the quay with his servants and household, eager to get the goods unloaded and ready for the tax collectors. Sara Tela was a wretchedly poor place, Dal had noted, the houses small and shabby, the land around it half barren, the fields mean. He had grown up in just such a place, living on land that could barely support the people farming it, let along a hierarchy of increasingly distant nobles.
Even as the man approached, Dal had put an arrow into the headman, before the eyes of his family and followers. Some of the rest had fled, others had tried to fight, but the bandits outnumbered them, and had arrows already nocked. It had been a short and miserable piece of business, and most of the locals had not run, but simply watched, not remotely minded to step in to save their headman or his henchmen, and maybe curious as to what Dal would do next. They had gathered their children close to them and watched. We are poor, their silence seemed to say. Will you take that from us, too?
A ripple had gone through them when Dal had sent his Scorpion lieutenant, Ygor, over to the storehouse to force open the door. Barad Ygor was a showman at heart and, after severing the rope ties with his claws, he had thrown the door wide and stepped back dramatically.
Now Dal Arche’s followers were finishing up their looting, taking everything of value and loading it on the barge, before burning whatever was left behind. Those villagers who had fled would find all the days and months of their lives undone, and perhaps they would starve. Where would they go? Perhaps they would seek solace from their betters, begging at the steps of the nobility whose solemn duty was to provide for them and protect them. Dal did not rate their chances highly, for he had seen the face of the nobility, and by actions such as this he was going to hold a mirror up to it.
See what your rulers truly are, he thought. I have seen, and so shall you.
He would wager that the Salmae would be slow to offer succour to those he was now making homeless, but they would be quick to avenge this slight on their honour and this infringement of their feudal rights, just as they had not been able to leave Siriell’s Town alone and in peace.
Soul Je jogged him with an elbow abruptly. Company was approaching: a party of riders galloping alongside