A nail-paring moon floated in racing cloud wrack as Brandark and Tothas swung down from their horses under the leafless trees. Bahzell tied Zarantha's mule to a branch and stood looking out from the woods at their objective, then turned his head as the other two stepped up beside him.
"You were right—it isn't much of a keep," Brandark murmured.
Bahzell grunted and returned his attention to Baron Dunsahnta's home. Dunsahnta had never been a rich holding, despite its position on the main road north. The current baron's father had won his title for service in the Spearman army that pushed the Empire's borders up to the Blackwater River, but he'd never had the money to build a proper seat for his barony. Instead, he'd taken over the single fortified manor in the area and expanded it. In fairness to him, his military instincts had been sound, and his "keep" would have been a much nastier proposition if his son had maintained it properly.
The first baron had laid out an extended perimeter of earthen ramparts with angled bastions to let archers sweep the wall between them, and a deep ditch had been dug at the foot of the wall. He'd clearly never intended to hold that much wall solely with his own retainers; he'd built it to cover the entire population of Dunsahnta Village and all of his other subjects in time of war, and he would have expected them to help man the defenses.
His son, however, had let the earthworks crumble. Parts of them had eroded and slipped down into the ditch at their foot, providing breaches and bridges in one, and no one had brushed back the approaches in years. Some of the saplings out there were taller than Bahzell, and what should have been a clear killing zone for archery was waist high in undergrowth. It seemed the current baron had more important charges on his purse than sheltering his people against attack.
Still, he hadn't totally neglected his security. The inner stone wall about the manor house proper was high enough, and sound, and Bahzell's night vision made out two guards at the main gate. Lanterns gleamed at the wall's corners, as well. He couldn't be certain whether there were any guards up there, though it seemed likely. But there was a smaller gate—not quite a sally port, but something similar—in an angle of the wall. It was drenched in shadow, hidden from anyone who might be standing atop the wall, and even his eyes saw no guard anywhere near it.
"There," he said finally, pointing at the side gate.
"There?" Tothas sounded doubtful. "That's a long way to go without being spotted, and you don't really expect it to be unlocked, do you?"
"I can't know till I've looked, now can I? And as for 'a long way to go'—" Bahzell snorted. "I've crossed barer ground than yon against Sothōii sentries, Tothas! Against these lads, and with all that lovely brush, it's after being no challenge at all, at all."
"You've crossed?" Brandark asked sharply. "I don't like the sound of that, Bahzell! You weren't thinking of leaving us behind, were you?"
"So I was—and am." Brandark started to protest, but Bahzell's raised hand cut him off. "Hush, now! How's a city boy like you to know his arse from his elbow when it comes to skulking in the shrubbery? Aye, and Tothas here's naught but a great, thundering cavalryman! No, lads. This is a job for someone who knows how to move quick and quiet in the grass."
Tothas started a protest, but he bit it back when Bahzell looked down at him. It would take only one of his harsh, strangling coughs to give them all away, and they both knew it, but Brandark was less easily silenced.
"Quick and quiet you may be, but there's only one of you and forty of them. At least an extra pair of eyes could watch your back!"
"So they could, but it's more useful the pair of you will be out here. It may just be I'll be leaving a mite faster than I came, and if I am, there's like enough to be someone following after. If there is, I'm thinking two men on horseback will seem at least a dozen in the dark."
"Humpf!" Brandark brooded up at his friend, then sighed. "All right. All right! I don't believe for a minute that's your real reason, but go ahead. Hog all the fun!"
* * *
The grounds inside the earthworks weren't quite as overgrown as those outside. Parts of the area, particularly around the manor's front entrance, were actually landscaped, but less attention had been paid to its flanks, and Bahzell flowed from clump to clump of brush like winter fog.
He worked his way towards the side gate, but the sliver of moon broke from the clouds again as he started to slip out of the last underbrush. He dropped instantly back with a mental curse, but his curse became something else a moment later, for the faint moonlight glimmered on the dull steel of a helmet in the inner wall's shadows. The Horse Stealer went flatter than ever, and his eyes narrowed as the man under that helmet stirred. Had he been seen after all? But the lone guard only stamped his feet against the chill, then flapped his arms across his chest, and Bahzell's momentary worry faded into satisfaction. The gateway was equipped with a portcullis, but it was raised and the entry was protected only by a light, almost ornamental iron lattice. A flagstoned path led from the gate into a formal garden that had reverted to tangled wilderness, but if there was a guard out here, people still used that gate. And if they used it, it might just be unlocked after all.
Yet that guard was a problem. His sword didn't worry Bahzell—not taken by surprise out of the dark—but if he had time for a single shout, the hradani might as well not have come. Still, this was a problem he'd dealt with before, and against guards far more alert than this fellow seemed.
The hradani cocked an eye at the moon. A nice, thick patch of cloud was coming up fast, and he drew his dagger. He'd left his arbalest with Brandark, for it was only in tales that men obliged by dying silently with arrows in their guts. If you wanted to be quiet, you needed a knife at close quarters, and he'd coated the blade in lampblack against any betraying gleam.
He held the weapon at his side, but his attention never wavered from the guard. A tiny corner of his mind supposed he should feel sympathy for the stranger he was about to kill, but he didn't. If that fellow's friends had done their jobs, they wouldn't have a Horse Stealer in the shrubbery thirty feet from the wall. Besides, if the innkeeper knew of their baron's activities, they surely did, and anyone who served wizards deserved whatever came his way.
The cloud swept towards the moon, and Bahzell waited with the motionless patience he'd learned the hard way. Then the moonlight dimmed, and the hradani was on the move. He didn't wait for the light to go completely; he moved while it was still dimming and the guard's eyes would be adjusting to the change, and for all his size and bulk, he made no more sound than the wind.
The hapless guardsman had no warning at all. One instant all was still, as cold and boring as it had been all night; in the next, a hand of iron clamped over his mouth and wrenched his head back as if he were a child. He had one instant to see the glitter of brown eyes, the loom of half-flattened, foxlike ears, and then a dagger drove up under his chin and into his brain.
Bahzell lowered the corpse to the ground and crouched above it, ears cocked for any sound, then straightened and peered through the lattice. It had two leaves, meeting in the middle, and he detected no sign of life in the ill-lit courtyard beyond. So far, so good, but the iron gate bars were leprous with rust, and his hand was cautious as he reached for the latch handle.
He turned it gently, and hissed a curse at pinch-penny landlords as metal squealed. The sound seemed loud enough to wake the dead, but he gritted his teeth and hoped the wind would hide it. Besides, he reminded himself, noises always seemed louder to the fellow trying to creep in than to a sentry.
Hinges creaked less shrilly than the latch as he eased the gate open, and he pulled the dead guard to his feet. He leaned the body back in the angle of the wall and propped it there. It didn't look much like an alert sentry to him—then again, the fellow hadn't been an alert sentry, so perhaps no one would notice a change if they glanced his way.
The Horse Stealer shrugged and slipped through the opening. He drew the gate gently closed behind him, gritting his teeth once more as hinges squeaked, but he didn't latch it. The latch mechanism was too damned noisy for that; besides, he might be in a hurry when he came back this way.
Few windows were lit, and most of those that were glowed only dimly. Either the baron's servants were expected to get along with poor illumination, or else most of them had gone to bed, leaving only night lights behind them. Bahzell reminded himself to assume it was the former—which, given the state of the grounds, seemed likely, anyway—and turned to the one wing whose many-paned windows gleamed brightly. He worked his way silently along the wall towards it, hugging the shadows, and his keen ears were cocked for any noise while his eyes swept back and forth.
He reached the well-lit wing and allowed himself a sigh of relief, but the truly hard part was just beginning. He couldn't go about peering through windows to find what he sought. Leaving aside what it would do to his night vision, he'd silhouette himself against them. Even the baron's men might notice a seven-and-a-half-foot hradani under those circumstances, which meant he had to get inside and take his chances on who he met.
The ground-floor windows were little more than slits, precisely to make life difficult for intruders, but the second-floor windows were wider. Of course, they were also closed, and half of them were shuttered as well, but Bahzell picked a glass-paned door that was neither lit nor shuttered. It gave onto a small balcony, and he wondered fleetingly how comforting a prayer might have been just now for a man with any use for gods as he sheathed his dagger and jumped up to catch a balustrade that would have been beyond the reach of any human.
He worked his hands up the carved stone uprights and grunted as he got a knee over the balcony's lip and rolled over the railing. It was awkward in mail, especially with his sword on his back, and he made far more noise than he liked, but no one raised a shout of alarm.
He flattened against the wall beside the door, waiting a moment to be sure no one had seen him, then tried the latch. It was locked, of course, and the crack between it and its frame was too narrow to get his dagger through. He muttered a quiet malediction, tugged off his gloves, and dug his dagger point into the soft lead that sealed the pane beside the latch in place.
It was nerve-wracking work, yet he made himself work slowly. His hands were cold, but his fingers needed their ungloved nimbleness, and he bared his teeth as the first diamond-shaped pane fell into his palm. He laid it aside and went back to work, and an adjoining pane came away quickly. With both of them out and the supporting lattice between them cut, he could reach through to grip the next pane from both sides, and within five minutes he had a gap large enough to get his entire forearm through.
He examined the latch by touch and found the deadbolt. The door popped obediently open, and he slipped inside and drew it shut once more.
The smell of leather and ink told him he was in a library. Light gleamed under a door across from him, and he picked his careful way towards it, skirting the half-seen tables and chairs which furnished the room.
The door was unlocked. He eased it open a tiny crack and peered out on a hallway as richly furnished as the outer keep was poorly maintained. No one was visible in the only direction he could see, but there was a mirror on the facing wall, and he froze instantly, holding the door exactly where it was.
The guardsman in the hall was unarmored, but he wore a broadsword at his side as he stood with his back to a closed door at the end of the passage, and he looked far more alert than the gate guard had been.
The Horse Stealer mouthed another silent curse, then paused. A guard implied something—or someone—to guard. It was remotely possible Zarantha was behind that door; if she wasn't, then the sentry was likely there to protect the baron's own privacy, and—
His thoughts chopped off, and his lips drew back in a snarl as a high, shrill scream echoed through the thick door. His muscles twitched, but he made himself stand a moment longer. If that was the baron, and if the baron was a wizard, there was but one way to face him. The thought sickened Bahzell, yet it was the only way—he'd known that before ever setting out tonight.
He drew a deep breath, stepped back from the door, closed his eyes, and reached deliberately deep within himself.
He felt the bright, instant flare, the shock of a barrier going down, a door opening . . . a monster rousing. Jaw muscles lumped and sweat dotted his forehead, but he fought the monster. He'd never attempted anything quite like this, for he'd been afraid to. The Rage was too potent. He dared not free it often, lest it grow too terrible to control, and that had always precluded experiments. Yet tonight he needed it, and he let it wake but slowly, rationing out the chain of his will link by single link, strangling the need to roar his challenge as the fierce exultation swept through him.
The massive hradani trembled with the physical echo of the struggle against his demon. Beads of sweat merged into a solid sheet, breath hissed between his teeth in sharp, sibilant spits of air, and a guttural sound—too soft to be a snarl yet too savage to be anything else—shivered in his throat. It was a slow, agonizing process, this controlled waking of the Rage, but he fought his way through it, clinging to the purpose which had brought him here, and then, suddenly, his shoulders relaxed and his eyes flared open once more.
They were different, those eyes. Both brighter and darker, hard as polished stone, and his lips drew back as another shriek of pain floated down the corridor.
The Rage boiled within him like fixed, focused purpose, and he sheathed his dagger and flexed his fingers, then toed the library door open.
He made no move to step through it as it swung gently, silently wide. His thoughts were crystal clear, gilded in the Rage's fire yet colder than ice, and he simply stood watching in the mirror as the guard at the head of the hall looked up. The sentry frowned and opened his mouth, but another scream—more desperate than the others—came through the door at his back, and he grimaced.
Not the time for a prudent guard to be disturbing his master, Bahzell thought through the glitter of the Rage, and his ears flattened as the sentry drew his sword and started down the hall. He was better than the gate guard had been, and his head turned in slow, small arcs, as if he sensed some unseen danger. But he couldn't quite bring himself to raise the alarm over no more than a door that had opened of itself. Perhaps, he thought, the baron had failed to close it securely and some gust of wind through the library windows had pushed it open. Unlikely though that seemed, it was far more likely than that someone had crept past all the outer guards, scaled to a second-floor room undetected, and then opened the door without even stepping through it!
Yet even as his mind sought some harmless reason, his sword was out and his eyes were wary. He reached the door and stood listening, unaware Bahzell could see him in the mirror. He reached out and gripped the door in his free hand, drawing it further back to step around it, and as the door moved, Bahzell, too, reached out. His long arm darted around the door with the blinding, pitiless speed of the Rage. He ignored the sentry's sword; his hand went for the other man's throat like a striking serpent.
The guard's eyes flared in panic. He sucked in air to shout even as he tried to leap back, but that enormous hand didn't encircle his neck. It gripped the front of his throat between thumb and fisted fingers, and his stillborn shout died in an agonized gurgle as Bahzell twisted his hand. A trachea crushed, ripped, tore, and then the Horse Stealer stepped out into the hall, and his other hand caught the guard's sword hand as the strangling sentry tried frantically to strike at him.
The guardsman's free hand beat at Bahzell, but the hradani's grip was an iron manacle upon his sword hand. He couldn't even open his fingers to drop the weapon, and Bahzell Bahnakson's cold, merciless smile was the last thing his bulging eyes ever saw as his crushed windpipe strangled him to death.
Bahzell held the body until it stopped twitching, dragged it back into the library, and lowered it to the carpet. Steel rasped as he drew his own sword, and then he went down the hall with the deadly tread of a dire cat.
The carved door was locked, and Bahzell raised a booted foot. He drove it forward, and the door crashed open as its lock disintegrated.
It wasn't a woman who'd been screaming; it was a boy—naked, no more than twelve, bound to a stone table, his chest already a bloody ruin of oozing cuts—and a silk clad man leapt back with a startled cry as his door flew wide.
"What in Carnad—?!" he snapped, whirling towards the intrusion, but the oath died in his throat and his eyes went huge. He stared at Bahzell in disbelief, then dropped his razor-edged knife, and his hands flickered.
Something tore at Bahzell, twisting deep in his brain, but he barely felt its pain, and the wordless snarl of a hunting beast quivered in his throat. He bounded through the door and kicked it shut behind him, and Baron Dunsahnta paled as his spell of compulsion failed. He spat a phrase in High Kontovaran, hands moving again, but the force of Bahzell's Rage filled the very air. The baron had never encountered its like—never imagined anything like it—and the terrible power of the curse of the hradani lashed at him. Not even a full adept could have adjusted for its impact, for the way it twisted and reverberated in the energy fields about him, and the baron was little more than a journeyman. The bolt of power which should have struck Bahzell down flashed up from the baron's hands in a dazzling burst of light that accomplished absolutely nothing, and then that huge sword whistled at him.
Baron Dunsahnta screamed as the flat of the blade crashed into his left arm. Bone splintered, hurling him to the floor, and a boot slammed down on his right elbow. He shrieked again as more bone broke, then wailed in terror as a hand gripped his robe and snatched him up. Brown eyes, harder than stone and colder than death itself, stared into his, and he writhed in agony and strangling panic as the mouth below those eyes smiled.
"Now then," a voice that was inhuman in every sense of the word said coldly, almost caressingly, "I'm thinking it's time we had a little chat."