The Curse of Chalion - Lois McMaster Bujold [37]
Cazaril rubbed his brow, which was beginning to ache, and not from tonight’s wine. “Fear. I think.”
Palli’s lips screwed up in astonishment.
“And if it becomes known you know, they’ll fear you too. It’s not something I wish to see fall on you, Palli. I want you to steer clear.”
“If it’s that degree of fear, the fact that we’ve even talked together will make me suspect. Their fear, plus my ignorance—gods, Caz! Don’t send me blindfolded into battle!”
“I want never to send any man into battle again!” The fierceness in his own voice took even Cazaril by surprise. Palli’s eyes widened. But the solution, the way to use Palli’s own ravenous curiosity against him, came to Cazaril in that moment. “If I tell you what I know, and how I know it, will you give me your word—your word!—to drop it? Don’t pursue it, don’t mention it, don’t mention me—no dark hints, no dancing about the issue—”
“What, as you are doing now?” said Palli dryly.
Cazaril grunted, half in amusement, half in pain. “Just so.”
Palli sat back against the wall, and rubbed his lips. “Merchant,” he said amiably. “To make me buy a pig in a bag, without ever seeing the animal.”
“Oink,” murmured Cazaril.
“I only want to buy the squeal, y’know—damn, all right. I never knew you to lead us over wet ground unknowing, nor into ambush. I’ll trust your judgment—to the exact extent you trust my discretion. My word on that.”
A neat counterthrust. Cazaril could not but admire it. He sighed. “Very well.” He sat silent for a moment after this—welcome—dual surrender, marshaling his thoughts. Where to begin? Well, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t gone over it, and over it, and over it in his mind. A most polished tale, for all it had never crossed his lips before.
“It’s quickly enough told. I first met Dondo dy Jironal to speak to four, no, it’s five now, five years ago. I was in Guarida’s train in that little border war against the mad Roknari prince Olus—you know, the fellow who made a habit of burying his enemies up to the waist in excrement and burning them alive?—the one who was murdered about a year later by his own bodyguards?”
“Oh, yes. I’d heard of him. Ended head down in the excrement, they say.”
“There are several versions. But he was still in control at that time. Lord dy Guarida had cornered Olus’s army—well, rabble—up in the hills at the edge of his princedom. Lord Dondo and I were sent as the envoys, under the flag of parley, to deliver an ultimatum to Olus and arrange the terms and ransoms. Things went…badly, in the conference, and Olus decided he only required one messenger to return his defiance to the assembled lords of Chalion. So he stood us up, Dondo and me, in his tent surrounded by four of his monster guards with swords and gave us a choice. Whichever of us would cut off the other’s head would be permitted to ride with it back to our lines. If we both refused, we both would die, and he’d return both our heads by catapult.”
Palli opened his mouth, but the only comment he managed was, “Ah.”
Cazaril took a breath. “I was given the first chance. I refused the sword. Olus whispered to me, in this weird oily voice, ‘You cannot win this game, Lord Cazaril.’ I said, ‘I know, m’hendi. But I can make you lose it.’ He was quiet for a little, but then he just laughed. Then he turned round and gave the chance to Dondo, who was green as a corpse by then…”
Palli stirred, but didn’t interrupt; he signaled Cazaril mutely to go on.
“One of the guards knocked me to my knees and stretched my head, by the hair, over a footstool. Dondo—took his cut.”
“On the guard’s arm?” said Palli eagerly.
Cazaril hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “But Olus, at the last moment, thrust his sword between us, and Dondo’s sword came down on its flat, and slid—” Cazaril could still hear the sharp scraping skree of