Tigana by Guy Kay (novel24 txt) 📕

began stroking it, down and down, ceaselessly, as he spoke of what had come to him in the night and on his ride; spoke of being willing, finally, to accept the price of what he was doing here in the Palm; and spoke to her about the one thing she could never have made herself ready for. About love.

She wept quietly, she could not stop weeping as his words continued to flow, as the fire slowly died on the hearth. She wept for love of him, and for her family and her home, for the innocence she had lost to the years and for all that he had lost, and she wept most bitterly of all for the betrayals yet to come. All the betrayals that lay waiting outside this room where time, which would not stop, was going to carry them.

Chapter XIV

‘Ride!’ Alessan cried, pointing towards a gap in the hills. ‘There’s a village beyond!’

Devin swore, lowered his head over his horse’s neck, and dug his heels into the animal’s flanks, following Erlein di Senzio west towards the gap and the low red disk of the sun.

Behind him, thundering out of the brown twilight hills, were at least eight, possibly a dozen brigands of the highlands. Devin hadn’t looked back, after their first startled glimpse of the outlaws and the shouted command to halt.

He didn’t think they had a chance, however close this village might be. They had been riding at a bone-jarring pace for hours and the horses Alienor had given them were tired. If this was to be a flat-out race against fresh-mounted outlaws they were probably dead. He gritted his teeth and rode, ignoring the ache in his leg and the sting of reopened cuts from his leap in the mountains earlier that day.

The wind whistled past him as they rode. He saw Alessan turn in his saddle, an arrow notched to his fully drawn bow. The Prince fired backwards once and then again into the twilight, his muscles ridged and corded with the effort. An improbable, desperate attempt at such speed in the wind.

Two men screamed. Devin quickly looked back and saw one of them fall. A handful of erratic arrows dropped well short of the three of them.

‘They’ve slowed!’ Erlein rasped, glancing back as well. ‘How far to this village?’

‘Through the gap and twenty minutes beyond! Ride!’ Alessan did not shoot again, bending low to urge more speed from his own grey. They fled into the wind along the track of the sun, between the shadowy bulk of two heathery hills and into the gap between.

They didn’t get out.

Just where the path bent to follow the curve of the encroaching ridges eight riders were waiting in a line across the gap, bows calmly levelled at the three of them.

They pulled their horses to rearing halts. Devin flung a glance back over his shoulder and saw the pursuing outlaws entering the pass behind them. There was one riderless horse, and another man clutched at his shoulder where an arrow was still embedded.

He looked at Alessan, saw the desperate, defiant look in the Prince’s eye.

‘Don’t be a fool!’ Erlein snapped. ‘You can’t run through and you can’t kill this many men.’

‘I can try,’ Alessan said, his eyes darting across the defile and up the steep hills on either side, wild to find a way out. He had stopped his horse though, and did not raise the bow.

‘Straight into a trap. What a splendid ending to two decades of dreaming!’ His voice was corrosively bitter, raw with self-laceration.

It was true though, Devin realized, rather too late. This pass between the hills was a natural place for an ambush, and the Triad knew there were enough outlaws in the wilds of southern Certando, where even the Barbadian mercenaries seldom went, and honest men were never abroad this close to the fall of night. On the other hand, they hadn’t had much choice, given how far they had to go, and how fast.

It didn’t seem as if they were going to get there. Or anywhere. There was still enough light to make out the outlaws, and their appearance did not reassure. Their clothing might be random and carelessly worn, but the horses were far from the beaten-down creatures most brigands rode. The men in front of them looked disciplined, and the weaponry levelled at the three of them was formidable. This had also been, very clearly, a carefully laid trap.

One man rode a few paces forward from the silent line. ‘Release your bows,’ he said with easy authority. ‘I don’t like talking with armed men.’

‘Neither do I,’ Alessan replied grimly, staring at the man. But a moment later he let his bow fall to the ground. Beside Devin, Erlein did the same.

‘And the boy,’ the outlaw leader said, still softly. He was a big man of middle years, with a large face and a full beard that showed deep red in the waning light. He wore a dark wide-brimmed hat that hid his eyes.

‘I don’t carry a bow,’ Devin said shortly, letting fall his sword.

There was mocking laughter at that from the men in front of them.

‘Magian, why were your men in arrow range?’ the bearded man said, more loudly now. He himself had not laughed. ‘You knew my instructions. You know how we do this.’

‘I didn’t think we were,’ came an angry voice behind them, amid a clattering of hooves. Their pursuers had come up. The trap was closed, before and behind. ‘He fired a long way in half-light and wind. He was lucky, Ducas.’

‘He wouldn’t have had a chance to be lucky if you had done your job properly. Where’s Abhar?’

‘Took an arrow in the thigh and fell. Torre’s gone back to bring him.’

‘Waste.’ The red-bearded man scowled. ‘I don’t like waste.’ He was a dark, bulky presence, silhouetted against the low sun. Behind him the other seven riders kept their bows levelled.

Alessan said, ‘If waste offends you, you won’t