The Ships of Merior. Janny Wurts

While the chip fires used to season beech blocks skeined dusky smoke above the houses, the prince’s guard troop quartered in yards piled with bark for the tanner’s, or between their own laden wagons, parked amid stacks of green planks. In complete disregard for the craftsmen who spat in the path of his retinue, Lysaer visited the guild halls and the town ministry. Gold saw his officers billeted in the sheds used to season rare woods, and his lordly good manners won over the councilmen’s wives.

      Diegan waited, edgy as the captains who lost sleep to stop their men from making trouble; but the deep-seated resentments toward Tysan’s royal blood failed to spark into contention.

      Lysaer took leave of Dyshent’s council and rode out in proud form before his cavalcade.

      Unappeased, Lord Diegan forced his mount to pace Lysaer’s. ‘This isn’t Isaer, or Erdane, where a few costly gifts can turn heads.’

      The peaked roofs of the city’s mills were by then lost to sight. Ahead stretched league upon league of wild downs. Rounded, scrub-clothed hills cradled the stones of a Second Age ruin, and chipped old arches lay throttled under greening trailers of bitter vine. There, where wispy marsh-lights flocked the fogs on dank nights and the spirits of long-dead Paravians were rumoured to wander abroad, no town-bred company cared to linger. Astride his steaming, mud-spattered courser, Lysaer drew firm rein, while behind, in a welter of belatedly shouted orders, his massive column blundered to a stop.

      Straight-shouldered in a hooded cloak pinned with a sapphire, the prince waited, while the mists licked through the air between. ‘Are you for me, or against?’ he asked softly.

      Lord Diegan ignored the chill that grazed the length of his spine. He strove to stay angry, to outmatch that worldly gaze which caught and pierced him to the heart. But like an onset of sudden pain, emotion wrung the truth from him. ‘I fear for you, friend. You’re the only man we have whose gift of light can match the Shadow Master’s sorceries.’

      ‘Then give me your trust,’ Lysaer said. ‘Worry does nothing, after all, but undermine morale and abet the cause of an enemy ruthlessly prepared to exploit every one of our weaknesses.’

      The next day, they reached the crossing of the Great West Road. Against every reasonable inclination, Lord Diegan presided over commands shouted through a misery of rainfall as the crack Etarran divisions he had personally selected to protect his prince were split off and turned back to Rathain.

      Afterward, with the downpour a fringe of silver off his mantle, Lord Diegan huffed through the runnels that channelled through his moustache. “By Ath, I’ll trust you have a plan. Would it strain your royal pride too much to share it?’

      ‘You couldn’t guess?’ As sodden as the house staff and officers who attended him in gloomy huddles, but oddly outside of their misery, Lysaer shook back wet hair and laughed. ‘My Lord, your Etarrans are too loyal. All filled with brash courage and intent to ruin Arithon, which is just what we’ll do on a battlefield. But since then-numbers are too small to flush out the Shadow Master, just now their sentiments could cause problems. For our safety and theirs, they can’t be risked.’

      The long-faced secretary intended for the post of Avenor’s seneschal looked ready enough to offer protest had the prince not spurred his mount to a trot. Any mercenaries who groused over his dispersion of troops found themselves reassigned drover’s work. In rainfall and mud, the caravan slogged its way westward under half its original armed escort.

      The trouble Lord Diegan expected found them soon after the Etarran cohorts had passed from sight. A body of lancers swept down on Lysaer’s company in fast moving formation from the north. Through trailing curtains of rain, the men set as watch scouts squinted to make out their banner; the wet rendered everything colourless, except for the axe-blade sigil done in silver, and encircled by a linked wheel of chain.

      ‘That’s a headhunter company out of Isaer!’ identified an inbound rider. ‘Here under orders to spill the guts of a royal pretender, I shouldn’t doubt.’

      The doleful secretary spun in agitation to the prince. ‘Fiends plague your Grace’s stubbornness, your captain at arms tried to warn you. The bounty offered for s’Ilessid blood won’t have changed for the past five centuries.’

      Silent and whitely bitter, Lord Diegan spurred his horse to try against weather and odds to assemble a defensive deployment from mercenary captains now scattered throughout the caravan.

      But Lysaer’s fist on the bridle rein jerked the Lord Commander’s move short. ‘No, Diegan. Stay. Have your officers hold their position. You’ll start a pitched battle if our troops draw their weapons and I don’t want anybody killed. Not when I’d hoped to be asked to pay respect to his Lordship, the Mayor of Isaer.’

      Then the moment for organized defence was lost as the headhunter lancers thundered down and swarmed like bad-tempered hornets around the liveried horsemen and banners that surrounded Prince Lysaer.

      ‘We’ve come for the upstart who styles himself heir to s’Ilessid!’ The captain who shouted was bald, had a torn ear, and wore chainmail and bracers set with wrist spikes. The huge grey gelding who bore him was ugly, but unscarred, and taken by a sudden, poisonous aversion to standing still. The beast backed and sidled in half circles, gouging up spatters of soaked turf. Its rider sawed reins and cursed, while the younger of Lysaer’s liveried page boys approached and bowed, then announced in his clear child’s treble that his Grace the prince was pleased to accept invitation to call on the Lord Mayor of Isaer.

      ‘Invitation!’ The captain hammered his mount’s neck with a fist, then hauled its nose around to his stirrup to forestall a bucketing rear. ‘What gall! There’s been no invitation!’ His ire found no other outlet; underneath him, his warhorse went berserk.

      Ears flattened to streaming neck, it bit the air, crow-hopped and danced sideways on bunched hindquarters. The headhunter captain stayed astride by dint of determined fury, while the neat ranks of his riders were bashed out of formation by the unravelling temper of his mount. Lances dipped, wavered and cracked into a cursing tangle of men and disgruntled horseflesh.

      Too cynical for surprise, Lord Diegan glanced aside to find Lysaer watching the affray, his unruffled, wide-eyed dignity at odds with innocent intentions. The older page half-hidden by his horse cloths was deviously engaged with a handful of smooth pebbles and what looked like a rawhide bird sling.

      A lifetime of Etarran politics lent Diegan the presence to mask astonishment. He was prepared and listening for the low-voiced string of orders from his prince. ‘The headhunter captain’s horse is shortly going to bolt. Before it does, I’ll need an honour guard assembled, a delegation from our guild representatives and city officers, and the wagon bearing Lady Talith and her servants. This will be a state visit to Isaer, I shall make it so. But warn the men: on pain of punishment, and despite the most grievous provocation, they must hold their tongues and their tempers.’

      No fool, Lord Diegan did as he was bidden; and so he missed the moment when the headhunter’s huge grey at last tore free of restraint and exploded kicking and snorting into a tail-streaming run. Somebody dispatched an equerry at speed to chase after the luckless captain. Before the sergeant left as second in command could restore the wrecked order of the troop, Lysaer rode forward to meet him.

      ‘Never mind the formalities,’ the prince opened, magnanimously forgiving, and sure enough in stature to shake the confidence of a struck bronze monument. He followed with a phrase that caused several lancers to break into laughter. While the sergeant was torn between outrage, uncertainty, and an explosive attack of pure mirth, Lysaer managed with light-hearted, lordly arrogance to make several sensible suggestions.

      The headhunter lancers sorted themselves back into order, to find themselves seamlessly joined by the prince’s personal honour guard, a wagon bearing a woman beautiful enough to leave a man staring and silly, and a dozen trade dignitaries who were fed up with rain, and expressing thanks for the Mayor of Isaer’s timely consideration.

      At the sergeant’s stirrup rode Lysaer, at patent length and diffidence inquiring what sort of