Neither man smiled nor winked.
‘Oh,’ Dolmant said then, ‘before you leave, Colonel, bring me that ragged little beggar boy. I think I’ll leave him with the good brothers of this order – as an act of charity, of course.’
‘Of course, your Grace.’ The colonel snapped his fingers, and a burly sergeant dragged Talen by the scruff of the neck to the patriarch. Then Dolmant’s battalion advanced on the captain and his men, effectively pinning them against the high wall of the chapterhouse with their pikes. The sooty soldiers of the Patriarch of Coombe were quickly disarmed and then marched off under close guard.
Dolmant affectionately reached down and patted the slender neck of his white mule; then he looked critically up at the parapet. ‘Haven’t you left yet, Sparhawk?’ he asked.
‘We were just making our preparations, your Grace.’
‘The day wears on, my son,’ Dolmant told him. ‘God’s work cannot be accomplished by sloth.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind, your Grace,’ Sparhawk said. Then his eyes narrowed, and he stared hard down at Talen. ‘Give it back,’ he commanded.
‘What?’ Talen answered with a note of anguish in his voice.
‘All of it. Every last bit.’
‘But, Sparhawk –’
‘Now, Talen.’
Grumbling, the boy began to remove all manner of small, valuable objects from inside his clothes, depositing them in the hands of the startled Patriarch of Demos. ‘Are you satisfied now, Sparhawk?’ he demanded a bit sullenly, glaring up at the parapet.
‘Not entirely, but it’s a start. I’ll know better after I search you once you’re inside the gate.’
Talen sighed and dug into several more hidden pockets, adding more items to Dolmant’s already overflowing hands.
‘I assume you’re taking this boy with you, Sparhawk?’ Dolmant asked, tucking his valuables inside his cassock.
‘Yes, your Grace.’ Sparhawk replied.
‘Good. I’ll sleep better knowing that he’s not roaming the streets. Make haste, my son, and Godspeed.’ Then the patriarch turned his mule and rode on back up the street.
Chapter 15 (#ulink_6f27ac24-51ef-5b5e-9acb-4c362e5f8ea2)
‘At any rate.’ Sir Tynian continued his obviously embellished account of certain adventures of his youth, ‘the local Lamork barons grew tired of these brigands and came to our chapterhouse to enlist our aid in exterminating them. We had all grown rather bored with patrolling the Zemoch border, and so we agreed. To be honest about the whole thing, we looked upon the affair as something in the nature of a sporting event – a few days of hard riding and a nice brisk fight at the end.’
Sparhawk let his attention wander. Tynian’s compulsive talking had been virtually uninterrupted since they had left Chyrellos and crossed the border into the southern kingdom of Cammoria. Although the stories were at first amusing, they eventually grew repetitious. To hear Tynian tell it, he had figured prominently in every major battle and minor skirmish on the Eosian continent in the past ten years. Sparhawk concluded that the Alcione Knight was not so much an unabashed braggart as he was an ingenious storyteller who put himself in the centre of the action of each story to give it a certain immediacy. It was a harmless pastime, really, and it helped to make the miles go faster as they rode down into Cammoria on the road to Borrata.
The sun was warmer here than it had been in Elenia, and the breeze that skipped puff-ball clouds across the intensely blue sky smelled almost spring-like. The fields around them, untouched by frost, were still green, and the road unwound like a white ribbon, dipping into valleys and snaking up verdant hillsides. It was a good day for a ride, and Faran was obviously enjoying himself.
Sparhawk had already begun to make an assessment of his companions. Tynian was very nearly as happy-go-lucky as Kalten. The sheer bulk of his upper torso, however, and the professional way he handled his weapons indicated that he would be a solid man in a fight, should it come to that. Bevier was perhaps a bit more high-strung. The Cyrinic Knights were known for their formality and their piety. They were also touchy. Bevier would need to be handled carefully. Sparhawk decided to have a word in private with Kalten. His friend’s fondness for casual jesting might need to be curbed where Bevier was concerned. The young Cyrinic, though, would obviously also be an asset in the event of trouble.
Ulath was an enigma. He had a towering reputation, but Sparhawk had not had many dealings with the Genidian Knights of far northern Thalesia. They were reputed to be fearsome warriors, but the fact that they wore chain mail instead of steel-plate armour concerned him a bit. He decided to feel out the huge Thalesian on that score. He reined Faran in slightly to allow Ulath to catch up with him.
‘Nice morning,’ he said pleasantly.
Ulath grunted. Getting him to talk might prove difficult. Then, surprisingly, he actually volunteered something. ‘In Thalesia, there’s still two feet of snow on the ground,’ he said.
‘That must be miserable.’
Ulath shrugged. ‘You get used to it, and snow makes for good hunting – boars, stags, Trolls, that sort of thing.’
‘Do you actually hunt Trolls?’
‘Sometimes. Every so often a Troll goes crazy. If he comes down into the valleys where Elenes live and starts killing cows – or people – we have to hunt him down.’
‘I’ve heard that they’re fairly large.’
‘Yes. Fairly.’
‘Isn’t it a bit dangerous to fight one with only chain mail armour?’
‘It’s not too bad, really. They only use clubs. A man might get his ribs broken sometimes, but that’s about all.’
‘Wouldn’t full armour be an advantage?’
‘Not if you have to cross any rivers – and we have a lot of rivers in Thalesia. A man can peel off a mail shirt even if he’s sitting on the bottom of a river. It might be a little hard to hold your breath long enough to get rid of a full suit of armour, though.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘We thought so ourselves. We had a preceptor a while back who thought that we should wear full armour like the other orders – for the sake of appearances. We threw one of our brothers dressed in a mail shirt into the harbour at Emsat. He got out of his shirt and came to the surface in about a minute. The preceptor was wearing full armour. When we threw him in, he didn’t come back up. Maybe he found something more interesting to do down there.’
‘You drowned your preceptor?’ Sparhawk asked in astonishment.
‘No,’ Ulath corrected. ‘His armour drowned him. Then we elected Komier as preceptor. He’s got better sense than to make foolish suggestions like that.’
‘You Genidians appear to be an independent sort of order. You actually elect your own preceptors?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘Not really, no. We send a panel of names to the Hierocracy and let them do the choosing.’
‘We make it easier for them. We only send them one name.’
Kalten came back down the road at a canter. The big blond man had been riding about a quarter of a mile in the lead to scout out possible danger. ‘There’s something strange up ahead, Sparhawk,’ he said tensely.
‘How do you mean strange?’
‘There’s a pair of Pandions at the top of the next hill.’ There was a slightly strained note in Kalten’s voice, and he was visibly sweating.
‘Who are they?’
‘I didn’t go up there to ask.’
Sparhawk looked sharply at his friend. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ Kalten replied. ‘I just had a strong feeling that I shouldn’t go near them, for some reason. I think they want to talk with you. Don’t ask me where I got that idea either.’
