Chapter 160 The First of the Month Before the Fifteenth

Night. A curved waxing moon hung in a sky washed clear as glass.

Lohenheim's south city blazed with lights as ever, and round about the South Market it was all song and dance and peace-on-earth.

The north city, where the common folk packed together — that was another world altogether. The streets stood empty of a soul; a drunk or two went humming their little tunes, tipsy-slantwise, one hand on the wall, down the lanes.

The North Market had come in for it these last days: those shaven-headed ruffians and rogues, as if working off spite, smashed whatever eye displeased them — so many a small-trade shop had shut its doors.

Everyone knew the old story: they had their protectors. The shire court would haul them in through the front door — one prison meal later, and out they swaggered again, all swing and swagger.

So long as they didn't beat anyone to death, no amount of smashing and robbing could buy them a capital sentence.

Their chief keep was squeezing usurious interest for others — and the biggest patron of all was the Windsor house.

A debt collected with land — heaven's own law and earth's own principle. Carrying off a respectable family's daughter by force? Why, her father owed, and all his kin owed with him.

The Aurelian Empire has its law: the father's debt the sons repay; if the children cannot, the kin repay in their stead. That one rule of debt-guilt binding a man's whole kin drove kinsmen either to abet the wolves — hounding families into selling sons and daughters — or to turn their backs on home wells and homeland and take the road of the drifters.

So that even a Felix could only catch them and let them go again — no very good answer for such hooligans.

This time it was otherwise: the Fairfax and Odenheim names were already tattooed onto their arms. Hold the hand much longer, and the two houses would be the Eastern Capital's standing joke.

He had been brooding on it a good while anyway; and with the ranch fire and Gareth's seizure of the Windsors' three boatloads of smuggled silver coming together, Felix settled it — tonight — and he would get in on the excitement into the bargain.

At the first quarter of the evening watch the city gates closed, and all at once a hundred torches blazed up before the shire court:

"Officers on a manhunt — idle folk stand clear!"

On the little drill-ground of the General's mansion's front court, several hundred torches had gone up as well; and at the very head of the formation stood Corin, without one thread of a smile on his face.

Their targets differed, though, by a shade.

The day after Windsor Yves died, someone had already gone off with word for Windsor Terence to come back to the Eastern Capital and take over. The man escorting the three silver boats home this time was Terence himself.

Out of Goldhaven, a thousand miles and more to the Eastern Capital, and never a ripple the whole road — only, just at the Lohenheim ferry, the Lohenheim army barred the way.

Windsor Terence gave the chancellor's name with his nose in the air — and Gareth only laughed:

"Within the bounds of the Lohenheim army, it's ours to govern. Should we search your boats to pieces, I'll call on the chancellor's residence myself and apologize. Lads — soft hands on the planks, aboard, and search every seam!"

Windsor Terence knew the secret must have leaked — that was why the Odenheims had fastened on him with so little courtesy. He hurried men ashore to carry word to the Minister's mansion.

The Minister's mansion went hot with alarm too. Three boatloads of silver — the smaller part to stay in Lohenheim, the greater part to be forwarded on to Augustburg — how could it be left held by the Lohenheim army?

"Uncle — better let them seize it first, and then send our own men to take it back by force. We have our silver in hand again; the Odenheims have lost treasury silver — a fresh crime on their heads. And if they try to hide it and not report it — then crime piled on crime!"

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Windsor Terence lacked Windsor Yves's knack for the court's turning-rooms — but his heart was the harder of the two; he had even killed with his own hands.

The old Minister turned it over a moment and nodded:

"Good. I'll have the retainers at the country estate called back for you — you and they can put your heads together over the move. A thousand days feeding the troops; one day to put them to use.

That Hugh Kestrel is a master of the bow — let him deal with the Odenheim sons out of the dark. My son is dead; I mean the Count to taste what it is for an old man to lose his!"

"Rest easy, Uncle. Trusted as I am with the great charge, I'll see it well done — and from this day serve you with a son's devotion in Yves's place."

Every step Windsor Terence took had a tail on it. He lodged at the Windsors' south-city villa, and before the gates closed, seven or eight men, one after another, slipped into that unmarked Windsor villa.

The Odenheim brothers, hearing the report, were near celebrating ahead of the day.

They had men laid on outside the city as well, true — but the Windsor country estate was over large, and open on every side at that; make a stir, and a man could slip away easy as breathing.

Just as the last chase after Hugh Kestrel had lost him, and the daylight burning of the fodder likewise — men with their escape roads laid beforehand are hard men to catch.

Now, with their smuggled silver held, the very men they hunted had come into the city of their own night.

"Good! Borne it all this while, and the day's come at last — not one of these killers to be let off!" The General brought his palm down on the table. To tip the Windsor house over, first hack off these henchmen of theirs who fed the beast.

And Corin's fury ran past even that.

Joren was the first of his own clansmen he had brought out — no mean hand at horse and bow, brave withal, only something rash. But that he would die today in the killers' snare — that no man had looked to see.

"General — Corin begs the battle! If one killer gets away tonight, Corin will take the fault on his own head."

At the General's nod, Roland waved them over before the ward map of Lohenheim.

The torch-bearing men out of the General's mansion filed into the Minister's ward; a hundred-odd without torches, Corin at their head, slipped into the wards near the South Market, and without one sound of a voice ringed the villa where Windsor Terence lodged.

"Gareth Odenheim! Who fed you the gall to come search the Minister's mansion? Don't think that because you held our boats today, you can go emptying a slop-pail over the Windsor name."

A steward of the Windsor house stood blocking the great gate, without one thought of giving way.

On a mere "we hear the fierce brutes who burned the ranch have gone to ground in the Minister's mansion," you'd turn the whole mansion inside out? And after this, anyone at all comes knocking — and we must throw the main gate wide for him?

Gareth wasn't nettled in the least. His whole charge was to stand at that gate and grind them down, soft and stubborn — and to give the Odenheim men their opening to slip out and find Windsor Terence:

"The ranch fodder is army supply — a blaze like that one, I daresay Augustburg itself saw it. Our Lohenheim army has no way out either: fail to lay hands on the men, and His Majesty will never spare the Odenheim troops. Pray step in and announce me, steward."

"Hmph! You wait!"

The steward flung his sleeve, turned, and went; the Minister's great gate shut fast behind him.

"Commander Odenheim — someone's over the wall from inside."

"Follow him at a distance."

The wall-climber, off to carry the word, was a house slave bound for Windsor Terence.

Gareth had come in the open light, and on honest business besides; the household guards could not set themselves directly against him. They must wait for him to force his way in — or for cold arrows to throw the outside into disorder — and then the house troops could strike from within, matching the blows from without.

The Odenheims were no swaggering soldiery — but the Windsors had clean forgotten: a tiger with its claws drawn in is a tiger still.

The house slave trotted the whole road, came to the villa, knocked at the back door, and slipped his body inside.

The Odenheim watchers sent on before had tailed the place a good few days now. The courtyard looked cold and still — but the greens the serving-women carried in and out every day would have fed twenty and more.

In the small hours the ox-cart came round for the night-soil, and the buckets the house set out — fewer than thirty people would never have filled them to that weight.

This evening at dusk, eight men had slipped in one after another. Reckoned up, besides the servants, the house held close on thirty retainers.

"Nansen — you watch. The moment steel comes out, take them. Morn — cover me."

Corin dropped his one order, took two men, and went up onto the roof opposite.

He had barely settled into his crouch when the villa stirred: out of the main hall, all at once, came a whole body of men, breaking apart, each for a side-gate in one direction or another.

Corin kindled and drew: a fire-arrow flew for the main hall's doorway — and with a crack it burst before the hall.

In the black night the sudden crack startled every assassin just stepping out or about to — and the first thought of each was to bare steel and guard himself.

"Take the assassins! Don't let them run!"

At Nansen's one word of command, the guards lying hidden all about came pouring out.

And Morn called, low: "I see him — the archer! On the wall!"

From his rooftop Corin saw him too — Hugh Kestrel, who had already gone out the gate, turned back into the courtyard, and gone up onto the main hall's roof like a shadow.

At the instant Corin's fire-arrow flew, the sharp-eared Fletcher had caught the bowstring; and along the arrow's track he marked Corin on the opposite roof.

He had turned back toward the house — and so it was he saw the fire-arrow burst before the hall.

Never had he seen a fire-weapon like this; something in him shook. He had one thought only, and it was this: he must not be allowed to shoot again.

Kill him!