The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [146]
“Then why not go back to Cerrgonney?” Garin said. “I doubt if anyone would arrest you or suchlike. Cerrgonney lords are always short of folk to tend their lands.”
All the alleged farmer could do was stare wide-eyed at Garin. Laz suppressed a grin.
“It’s their goddess, I suppose,” he said to the Envoy. “Come now, my good man, you worship Alshandra, don’t you?”
The fellow swallowed heavily and glanced away.
“What be it to you?” he said at last.
“Naught,” Laz said. “Shall we go back to camp, Envoy?”
“Just so,” Garin said. “My thanks for the information.”
Voran and Brel decided they had no reason to wait until morning for the attack. They led their forces to a spot midway between the two farms, then split them into two squads of mixed cavalry and axemen. When they marched off, Laz followed the squad targeting the first farm.
The battle, such as it was, ended quickly. The axeman broke down the gate. The prince’s riders poured into the farmyard. When armed men rushed out of the farmhouse and the barn, the front rank of swordsmen cut them down with an efficiency that reminded Laz of slaughtering sheep. The man who’d posed as a farmer in the parley ran out a back door and headed for the wall, but riders chased and caught him. They dragged him back alive, more or less, to face Prince Voran when his highness returned from the second raid.
When the swordsmen dismounted, they began to loot the farm, as methodically as they’d slain its defenders. Laz rode round to the shed. He dismounted, ran to the door, and lifted the bar free of its staples. He was about to open it when it swung wide, pushed from the inside, to reveal the portly pale-haired fellow with the brand on his face. He was clutching a leather saddlebag to his chest. He stared at Laz, tried to speak, but only stared the more.
“I’m not a lovely sight,” Laz said, “but we’re rescuing you all the same. You’re a free man.”
The fellow began to weep in two thin trails of tears. His head trembled, shaking no, no, no, as if in disbelief. Laz caught him by the arm with one hand then took his horse’s reins with the other. He led them both around the looters and out of the compound to safety.
By then Prince Voran had arrived with some of his men—the rest were stripping the other farm—and other prisoners as well, two men and a woman, to join the pair captured at the first farm. Voran had Bren and a raft of servants brought from the army’s camp, the servants to deal with the captured supplies and livestock, Bren to identify the prisoners. Four of the prince’s riders made the prisoners kneel in front of Voran, who dismounted to look them over.
Laz and the freed slave hurried over to watch. At first the prisoners glared at the prince in cold defiance, but when Bren rode up, the men swore and the women began to weep, clinging to one another. Bren dismounted and trotted over to kneel at the prince’s side.
“That fellow there on the end,” Bren said. “He’s Lord Burc himself. The other’s his brother, Lord Marc.”
“And the women?” Voran said.
“Their wives, Your Highness. Truly, they all lived little better than farmers, even in that dun where I found you.” Bren shot Lord Burc a look of sheer contempt. “Some king you are now, eh?”
For a moment Burc seemed to be about to speak, but he shrugged and kept silent, as did his brother.
“Very well,” Voran said. “I promise you that your women will come to no harm, Burc. I’ll find them a place of refuge. But I’m taking you and your brother back to Cerrgonney to answer the charges of reiving and murder laid against you there.”
“And just who be you, then?” Burc said.
“Voran, Prince of the Gold Wyvern, Justiciar of the Northern Border by the command of the High King himself.”
Burc turned his head and spat onto the ground. The Wyvern men hauled the prisoners up and dragged them away in the direction of the army’s camp. Prince Voran mounted again and led the rest of his escort after them, leaving the servants to deal with