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‘Berit,’ Sparhawk said to the young knight, ‘why don’t you ride on ahead and ask Kalten and the others to join us? Don’t run. Try to make it look casual.’
‘Right.’ Berit rode forward at a trot.
‘Mirtai,’ the big knight said, trying to keep his voice calm, ‘is there any kind of defensible position nearby?’
‘I was just coming to that,’ she replied. ‘There’s a kind of hill about a quarter of a mile ahead. It sort of juts up from the floor of the forest – boulders mostly. They’re covered over with moss.’
‘Could we get the carriage up there?’
She shook her head.
‘You get to walk then, my Queen,’ he said to his wife.
‘We don’t know that they’re hostile, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana objected.
‘That’s true,’ he conceded, ‘but we don’t know that they aren’t either, and that’s far more important.’
Kalten and the others came back along the column with Kring and Engessa.
‘Are they doing anything at all, Atan Engessa?’ Sparhawk asked.
‘Just watching, Sparhawk-Knight. There are more of them than we thought at first – a thousand at least – probably a lot more.’
‘It’s going to be tricky with all these trees,’ Kalten pointed out.
‘I know,’ Sparhawk grunted. ‘Khalad, how close is it to noon?’
‘About another hour, my Lord,’ Khalad replied from the carriage driver’s seat.
‘Close enough then. There’s a hill just up ahead. We’ll ride on to it and make some show of stopping for our midday meal. Our friends here in the carriage will sort of stroll up to the top. The rest of us will spread out around the base of the hill. We’ll build fires and rattle pots and pans together. Ehlana, be silly. I want you and the baroness to do a lot of laughing up there on that hilltop. Stragen, take some men and erect a pavilion of some kind up there. Try to make it look festive. Move some rocks out of your way and sort of pile them up around the hilltop.
‘A siege again, Sparhawk?’ Ulath said disapprovingly.
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Not really, but you know how I feel about sieges.’
‘Nobody said you had to like it, Ulath,’ Tynian told him.
‘Spread the word,’ Sparhawk told them, ‘and let’s try to make it all look very casual.’
They were tense as they proceeded along the road at a leisurely-appearing pace. When they rounded a bend and Sparhawk saw the hill, he immediately approved of its strategic potential. It was one of those rock-piles that inexplicably rear up out of forests the world over. It was a conical heap of rounded boulders perhaps forty feet high, green with moss and totally devoid of trees or brush. It stood about two hundred yards to the left of the road. Talen rode to its base, dismounted, scampered up to the top and looked around. ‘It’s perfect, my Queen,’ he shouted back down. ‘You can see for miles up here. It’s just what you were looking for.’
‘That’s a nice touch,’ Bevier noted, ‘assuming that our friends out there speak Elenic, of course.’
Stragen came forward from the line of pack-horses carrying a lute. ‘A little finishing touch, my Queen,’ he smiled to Ehlana.
‘Do you play, Milord?’ she asked him.
‘Any gentleman plays, your Majesty.’
‘Sparhawk doesn’t.’
‘We’re still working on a definition of Sparhawk, Queen Ehlana,’ Stragen replied lightly. ‘We’re not altogether certain that “gentleman” really fits him – no offence intended of course, old boy,’ he hastily assured the black-armoured Pandion.
‘A suggestion, Sparhawk?’ Tynian said.
‘Go ahead.’
‘We don’t know anything about those people out there, but they don’t know anything about us either – or at the most, very, very little.’
‘That’s probably true.’
‘Just because they’re watching doesn’t mean they’re planning an immediate attack – if they’re even planning to attack at all. If they are, they could just sit and wait until we’re back on the road again.’
‘All right.’
‘But we’re travelling with some giddy noblewomen – begging your Majesty’s pardon – and noblewomen don’t really need reasons for the things they do.’
‘Your popularity isn’t growing in certain quarters, Sir Tynian,’ Ehlana said ominously.
‘I’m crushed, but couldn’t your Majesty decide – on a whim – that you absolutely adore this place and that you’re bored with riding in a carriage? Under those circumstances, wouldn’t it be natural for you to order a halt for the day?’
‘It’s not bad, Sparhawk,’ Kalten said. ‘While we’re all lunching, we can sort of unobtrusively fortify that hill a little better. Then, after a few hours, when it’s obvious that we aren’t going any further today, we can set up the usual evening camp – field fortifications and the like. We’re not on any specific timetable, so a half a day lost isn’t going to put us behind any sort of schedule. The queen’s safety’s a lot more important than speed right now, wouldn’t you say?’
‘You know how I’m going to answer that, Kalten.’
‘I was sure I could count on you.’
‘It’s good, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa approved. ‘Give my scouts one whole night to work with, and we’ll not only know how many are out there, but their names as well.’
‘Break a wheel,’ Ulath added.
‘What was that, Sir Knight?’ Ambassador Oscagne asked, looking perplexed.
‘That would give us another excuse for stopping,’ the Thalesian replied. ‘If the carriage broke down, we’d have to stop.’
‘Can you fix a wheel, Sir Ulath?’
‘No, but we can rig some kind of a skid to get us by until we can find a blacksmith.’
‘Wouldn’t a skid make the carriage jolt and bump around a great deal?’ Patriarch Emban asked with a pained look.
‘Probably,’ Ulath shrugged.
‘I’m almost certain we can find some other reason to stop, Sir Knight. Have you any idea of how uncomfortable that would be?’
‘I didn’t really give it much thought, your Grace,’ Ulath replied blandly. ‘But then, I won’t be riding in the carriage, so it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.’
Chapter 15 (#ulink_f1555114-d42d-57f5-977e-a233efeab4be)
The addition of a dozen female Atans added to the subterfuge of a courtly gathering on the hilltop, although it was difficult to persuade the Atan girls that their faces would not break if they smiled or that the Gods had issued no commandment against laughing. Berit and a number of other youthful knights entertained the ladies while casually clearing inconvenient – and not a few convenient – bushel-basket sized rocks from the kind of natural amphitheatre at the top of the hill. The back-side of the pile of boulders was more precipitous than the front, and the rim of the hilltop on that side formed a naturally defensible wall. The young knights piled up enough rock to form a crude kind of breastwork around the other three sides. It was all very casual, but within an hour some fairly substantial fortifications had been erected.
There were many cooking-fires around the base of the hill, and their smoke laid a kind of blue haze out among the white tree trunks. There was a great deal of clanking and rattling and shouting back and forth as the oddly-assorted force made some show of preparing a meal. Engessa’s Atans gathered up large piles of firewood – mostly in ten-foot lengths – and all of the cooks stated a loud preference for wood chips for their fires rather than chunks. It was therefore necessary to chop at the ends of the birch logs, and there were soon neat piles of sharpened ten-foot poles spaced out at regular intervals around the hill, ready for use either as firewood or a palisade that could be erected in a few minutes. The knights and the Peloi tethered their horses nearby and lounged around the foot of the hill while the Atans were evenly dispersed a bit further out under the trees. Sparhawk stood at the top of the hill surveying the progress of the work below. The ladies were gathered under a broad canopy erected on poles in the centre of the depressed basin on the hilltop. Stragen was strumming his lute and singing to them in his deep rich voice.
‘How’s it going down there?’ Talen asked, coming up to where Sparhawk stood.
‘It’s about as secure as Khalad can make it without being obvious about it,’ Sparhawk replied.
‘He’s awfully good, isn’t he?’ Talen said with a certain pride.
‘Your brother? Oh, yes. Your father trained him very well.’
‘It might have been nice to grow up with my brothers.’ Talen sounded a bit wistful. He shrugged. ‘But then …’ He peered out at the forest. ‘Any word from Engessa?’
‘Our friends are still out there.’
‘They’re going to attack, aren’t they?’
‘Probably. You don’t gather that many armed men in one place without having something military in mind.’
‘I like your plan here, Sparhawk, but I think it’s got a hole in it.’
‘Oh?’
‘Once they finally realise that we aren’t going to move from this spot, they might decide to wait and then come at us after dark. Fighting at night’s a lot different from doing it in the daytime, isn’t it?’
‘Usually, yes, but we’ll cheat.’
Talen gave him a quizzical look.
‘There are a couple of spells that brighten things up when you need to see.’
‘I keep forgetting about that.’
‘You might as well get used to it, Talen,’ Sparhawk told him with a faint smile. ‘When we get back home, you’re going to start your novitiate.’
‘When did we decide that?’
‘Just now. You’re old enough, and if you keep on growing the way you have been lately, you’ll be big enough.’
‘Is magic hard to learn?’
‘You have to pay attention. It’s all done in Styric, and Styric’s a tricky language. If you use the wrong word, all sorts of things can go wrong.’
‘Thanks, Sparhawk. That’s all I need – something else to worry about.’
‘We’ll talk with Sephrenia when we get to Sarsos. Maybe she’ll agree to train you. Flute likes you, so she’ll forgive you if you make any mistakes.’
‘What’s Flute got to do with it?’
‘If Sephrenia trains you, you’ll be submitting your requests to Aphrael.’
‘Requests?’
‘That’s what magic is, Talen. You ask a God to do something for you.’
‘Praying?’ the boy asked incredulously.
‘Sort of.’
‘Does Emban know that you’re praying to a Styric Goddess?’
‘More than likely. The Church chooses to ignore the fact, though – for practical reasons.’
‘She’s a hypocrite then.’
‘I wouldn’t mention that to Emban, if I were you.’
‘Let me get this straight. If I get to be a Church Knight, I’ll be worshipping Flute?’
‘Praying to her, Talen. I didn’t say anything about worshipping.’
‘Praying, worshipping, what’s the difference?’
‘Sephrenia will explain it.’
‘She’s in Sarsos, you say?’
‘I didn’t say that.’ Sparhawk silently cursed his careless tongue.
‘Yes, as a matter of fact you did.’
‘All right, but keep it to yourself.’
‘That’s why we came overland, isn’t it?’
‘One of the reasons, yes. Haven’t you got something else to do?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Go find something – because if you don’t, I will.’
‘You don’t have to get all huffy.’
Sparhawk gave him a steady stare.
‘All right, all right, don’t get excited. I’ll go entertain Danae and her cat.’
