Rings, Clubs, and Knives "The fairies killed in the great battle at Coldgray Moor were buried in a common grave. Although the local inhabitants shun the place and claim it is haunted by the vengeful spirits of dead Qar, and I was unable to locate the grave precisely, the general area is now a beautiful, flowering meadow." -from "A Treatise on the Fairy Peoples of Eion and Xand" THEY HAD TO STOP at the outskirts of Ugenion because the Royal Highway was blocked by a funeral procession bound for the temple in the city. It was clearly a rich man's leavetaking: four horses pulled a wagon bearing the black-draped coffin, and so many mourners followed it that Briony climbed out of the wagon and joined the other players by the roadside.
"But who has died?" Briony asked one of the mourners at the back of the procession, a woman carrying a long willow branch.
"Our good baron, Lord Favoros," the woman told her. "Not before his time-he had threescore years and more-but he lost his son to the autarch's cannibals and so he leaves a sickly wife and too young an heir, may the Brothers bless his line." She made the sign of the Three.
Briony found herself doing the same thing as she turned away.
"I have never heard of him," she told Finn Teodoros quietly as they stood watching the mourners file past. "But from the sorrow I see on these people's faces, he must have been a good man."
"Either that or you see sorrow because they have lost a known quantity for an unknown, in very uncertain times." Finn shrugged. "Still, I suspect you are right. I do not see too many herring-weepers in the crowd."
"Herring-weepers?" The picture it made in Briony's thoughts made her laugh. "What in the name of goodness are those?"
"Those who will walk in a funeral parade and cry loudly for a copper crab or two, or who can be hired in a group for a single silver herring. It would be a much-loved man indeed whose family did not have to hire at least a few herring-weepers."
They watched the end of the line as it moved slowly past, the children bearing candles, the wagons carrying bread, wine, and dried fish for the temple where the body would lie in state and the priests would pray night and day to ensure the deceased's rapid progress to heaven. When the last mourners had passed and the last interested onlookers had trailed after the slow parade, Briony and Finn climbed back into the wagon. Dowan Birch snapped the horses' reins and the wagon rolled up to the city gates with the rest of Makewell's Men following close behind.
Once they had negotiated a small but adequate bribe with the guards in the gatehouse they were allowed into Ugenion. They followed the funeral as it wound up the hilly main road toward the temple at the center of the town.
"He was a wealthy man, too, from the look of all this," said Finn as they had their first look at the entire procession spread out on the road before them. "But I have heard no word of funeral games, which is usual here even after the deaths of lesser men. Perhaps it is the fear of what is happening in the north."
"And the south," said Briony sadly. "Poor Hierosol." The jolting of the wagon sent her away from the window to sit on the floor. Where was her father this moment? Alive? A prisoner, still? If Hierosol collapsed, would the autarch be willing to ransom him? And what difference would that make if neither she nor Barrick had access to the Southmarch treasury?
Could it really be true that her twin had come back to Southmarch? That alone would make something good out of the darkest spring Briony Eddon had ever known.
"You look solemn, Princess," said Finn. "As if you knew the poor soul who is being carried to the temple."
"I'm just… it's all so uncertain. Everything. What will I do when I get to Southmarch? What if the fairies have already taken the castle?"
Finn turned away from the window. "Then things will be very different from when we left. You cannot try to outthink the Qar, my lady, because they are not like men. Please indulge me in believing this one thing to be true-I know a little of them, after all."
"Why? Did you… did you write a play about them?" She tried to make it a light remark, but her sadness and bitterness spilled through. "About their charming elfin magic and how they use it to kidnap and murder innocent folk?"
Finn raised his eyebrows. "I have of course used the Twilight folk as characters in my plays, and in many different ways. If I have erred in portraying them, I suspect it was on the side of making them more mysterious and fearful than they are, rather than using them as quaint purveyors of magic rings and reassuring rewarders of blockheaded virgins. But in fact, I gained my knowledge of them in a very odd and unusual way for a playwright-I studied them."
"What do you mean?
"What I have said, Highness. No disrespect, but perhaps you would rather rest a little rather than talk. You seem to me a bit out of sorts."
She closed her eyes and tried to calm the anger that was bubbling in her, but she was not entirely successful. "I'm sorry, Finn. Don't go. I have good reason to be angry, though and so would you. Leaving out all of my innocent subjects they have harmed, my brother-my own twin!-is missing or dead and it is those creatures' fault. And they also took someone…" She hesitated, then wondered what she would have said about Vansen. "Someone I considered a friend. Like my brother, he never came back from Kolkan's Field. So I am not disposed to hear much good of these Qar."
"Fear not-I said I studied them, Highness, not that I became one. Lord Brone set me to finding out all that I could about the Peaceful Ones, as they are euphemistically termed. Paid me well for my work, too-more than I've made for any of my plays so far, whether they had fairies in them or not."
She laughed a little in spite of herself. "Tell me, then, Finn. What do you know about them?"
"I know that I do not understand them, Princess Briony. I also know that they have some great interest in Southmarch, but not why that is so."
"Because it stands in their way, does it not? Anglin, the founder of our line, was given the castle to be the first bastion against the Twilight People's return. We have held that a sacred trust ever since."
"And where did they first attack this time, Highness?"
She remembered pathetic young Raemon Beck. "Somewhere on the road to Settland. They destroyed a trader's caravan."
"And if that was where they began, why would they then travel a hundred leagues east from there to attack Southmarch? They could have gone west to Settland, a much weaker target, or if they wanted spoils they could have headed south into the Esterian Valley, full of fat merchant towns far from King Enander's protection. The northern end of that valley is twice as far from Tessis as the place they took the caravan is from Southmarch."
"What are you saying, Finn?"
"That what they have done makes little sense but for two possibilities. They came against us for revenge, pure and simple, or there is some other advantage they see to conquering Southmarch-and not the entire country, but only the castle itself. They destroyed everything they encountered on their march toward your family's stronghold, but they left Daler's Troth, Kertewall, and Silverside untouched."
"But why?" It was a moan: Briony did not need any new mysteries. As it was, she struggled just to live day to day with so many unanswered questions about her nearest and dearest. "Why do they bear us such hatred?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, Highness."
"Then find out. That is your calling from now on."
The fat playwright looked startled. "Princess…?"
"If my father does not return-Zoria grant mercy that he does, but if he does not-then I must have help. I must understand the things my father and even my oldest brother spent years learning. It is obvious that the Qar will be one of the things I must try to understand. I know of no one else who knows even as much as you do, Finn. Are you my subject? "
"Princess Briony, of course I honor you and your family…"
"Are you my subject?"
He blinked once, twice, taken aback by her ferocity. "Certainly I am, Highness. I am a loyal Marchman and you are the king's daughter."
"Yes, and until something changes, I am the Princess Regent. Remember, Finn, I count you a friend, but we cannot have things both ways. I cannot ever go back to being 'Tim' again. I will never be a mere player, even if for this moment I hide among you. My people need me, and I will do whatever I must to serve them… and to lead them."
His smile was weak. "Of course, Highness. I shall count myself honored indeed to be the Royal… what shall we call it? Historian?"
"You shall be a Royal Historian, Teodoros, that is certain." She was satisfied to see him wince, not because she disliked the round man, but because she needed him to understand how things stood now. "Whether there are others will depend on how well you do your job."
The wagon rolled to a halt and Briony heard raised voices. Worried, she patted at her knives, which she had taken to carrying in a bundle in her sleeve. A fair amount of time passed and still they sat unmoving; at last, Estir Makewell stuck her head inside the wagon.
"Why have we stopped?" Finn asked.
"Pedder and Hewney are talking to a reeve and two or three bully-boys," she said. "It seems the king's guards have been here twice in the last tennight, asking questions about certain travelers…" she cast a worried look at Briony, "… and so the reeves are stopping all the strangers they meet and asking their business, where they have been, and suchlike."
"Shall I come out?" asked Finn.
"You can, but I think my brother is managing fairly. Still, they may ask to look into the wagon. What will we say if they ask to see inside?"
"Let them, of course," Briony said. "Finn, give me your knife so I don't have to unwrap mine."
Both Estir and the playwright goggled at her.
"Oh, come! I'm not going to fight the reeves with it! I'm going to cut off my hair again." She took a hank in her hand and sadly examined it. "Just when it was beginning to look as it used to. But such vanity is of no help. I played the boy before, I will do it again."
By the time a red-faced man stuck his head into the wagon, Briony was wearing one of Pilney's old shepherd outfits, squatting on the floor at the feet of Finn Teodoros and mending the strap of one of the playwright's shoes.
"Who are you," said the reeve to Finn, "and why do you ride when the owner walks?"
"I might as well ask, who are you, sir?"
"I am Puntar, the king's reeve-you can ask any man hereabouts." He squinted at Briony for a moment, then let his eyes rove around the crowded wagon stuffed with costumes, taking in the wooden props and hats hanging from every open place. "Players…?"
"Of a sort," said Finn quickly. "But if my friend told you he was the owner, he was lying-drunk, most likely." He gave Estir Makewell a stern glance before she could utter any outraged defense of her brother. "Poor man. He owned this enterprise once, but long ago gambled it away. Lucky for him that I kept him on when I bought it."
"And who are you?" the reeve demanded.
"Why, Brother Doros of the Order of the Oracle Sembla, at your service."
"You are a priest? Traveling with women? "
For a moment Finn faltered, but then he saw that the reeve was pointing at Estir Makewell, not Briony. "Oh, her. She is a cook and seamstress. Don't worry for her somewhat shopworn virtue, sir. The brothers are a pious, sympathetic lot-if you don't believe me, ask the bearded one we call Nevin to tell you something about the dreadful martyrdom of Oni Pouta, raped over and over by Kracian barbarians. The man weeps as he describes it, so carefully has he studied this and other lessons the gods give us."
The reeve now looked thoroughly confused. "But what… what are all these costumes? How can you be priests and yet be players?"
"We are not players, not truly," Finn said. "We are in truth on a pilgrimage to Blueshore in the north, but it is the work of our order to put on shows for the unwashed, acting out pious lessons from the lives of the oracles and the Book of the Trigon so that the unlettered can understand what might otherwise be too subtle for them. Would you like to see us portray the flaying of Zakkas? He screams most beautifully, then is saved by a winged avatar of the gods…"
But the reeve was already making his excuses. Estir Makewell led him back out of the wagon, pausing to glare back at Finn before she went down the steep, tiny stairs.
"Did you make all that up?" Briony asked quietly when he was gone. "I have never heard such nonsense!"
"Then, like the oracles themselves, I was speaking with the tongues of the gods," said Finn in a self-satisfied manner, "because as you can see, he is gone and we are safe. Now, let us find a place to stop tonight and discover what pleasure this city has to offer."
"They are in mourning for their baron here," Briony pointed out.
"All the more reason, you will discover as you grow older, to celebrate the fact that the rest of us are alive."
It was not always possible for the players to convince local authorities that they were pilgrims on their way to Blueshore. In the larger towns they sometimes got out the juggling tools and let Hewney and Finn deploy the troop's collection of rings and clubs to earn a few coppers while the others gathered up local gossip and news of bigger events. Hewney was quite nimble when he was sober, but fat Finn was a revelation, able to juggle even torches and knives without harm.
"Where did you learn to do that?" Briony asked him.
"I was not always as you see me now, Highness," her royal historian said with a sniff. "I have been on the road since I was small. I have made my living in ways honest and… not so much. Most of my juggling I had from my first master, Bingulou the Kracian-he was the best I have ever seen. Men used to go straight to church after watching him, certain that the gods had granted a miracle…"
Two things they heard again and again wherever they stopped, in every town or city of the Esterian Valley: that the Syannese soldiers had not given up looking for them, and that strange things were going on in the north. Many of those they questioned, especially the traders and religious mendicants who traveled there frequently, spoke of a sort of darkness that seemed to have settled over the March Kingdoms-not just the weather, although to all it seemed grayer and cloudier than the season warranted, but a darkness of the heart as well. The roads were empty, the travelers said, and the fairs and markets that were always such an important part of the year were poorly attended if they were held at all. City dwellers were reluctant to travel, and those country folk who could do so had moved into the cities for safety, or at least huddled now in the shadows of their walls.
At the same time, though, not even those who had been there most recently, such as a tinker they met north of Doros Kallida, could describe exactly what was happening. Everyone agreed that the Twilight People had come down out of the mist-shrouded north, just as they had two centuries before, and had destroyed Candlerstown and several other cities as they moved on Southmarch. But the siege that had begun before Briony left home seemed to have been prosecuted for most of the time since in a most strangely offhand manner, with the fairies camped almost peaceably outside the walls for months, and no fighting at all between shadowlanders and men.
But more recently that had changed, the tinker told them, or so he had heard from other travelers he had met farther north. Sometime in the last few tennights the siege had resumed, this time in earnest, and the reports were horrendous and frightening, almost impossible to credit-giant tree-creatures pulling down the walls of Southmarch, the outer keep in flames, demon-things slaughtering the defenders and raping and murdering helpless citizens.
"By now it must surely be over, may the gods help them," the man said piously, making the sign of the Three. "There can be nothing left."
Briony was so miserable after hearing the tinker's words that she could scarcely speak for the rest of the day.
"These are only traveler's tales, Highness," Finn told her. "Do not take them to heart. Listen to a historian, one who searches such tales for truth-the first reports, especially if they are passed by people who were not there, are always far more grisly and exaggerated than what has actually happened."
"So how should that soothe me?" she demanded. "Only half my subjects dead? Only half my home on fire?"
Finn and the others did their best, but that night and for several days afterward, Briony could not be cheered.
And what if Barrick really did come back? she thought over and over. After all that, have I lost him now forever? Have the fairies killed him? She lay awake in the small hours, tormented. If they have, I will see every one of those godless creatures slaughtered.
"We have a problem," Finn announced as they sat eating their mutton stew. Estir had cooked it, making up for the paltry amount of meat with a generous helping of peppercorns they had bought in the last market, so although it was not as filling as it could be, it was at least warming.
"Yes, we do," said Pedder Makewell. "My sister spends all our money on spices and we are almost copperless again."
"You are a fool," Estir said. "You spend far more of our money on drink than I do on pepper and cinnamon."
"Because drink is the food of the mind," declared Nevin Hewney. "Starve the mind of an artist with sobriety and he will be too weak to ply his craft."
Finn waved his hands. "Enough, enough. If we are careful, Princess Briony's money should last us all the way home, so enough of your carping, Pedder-and you too, Nevin."
"As long as careful does not mean drinking water," Hewney said crossly.
"The problem is what the farmers we met today said," Finn continued, ignoring him. "You heard them. They claim that Syannese guardsmen are camped outside the walls of Layandros. Now, what do you think they are doing there?"
"Making friends with the local sheep?" Hewney suggested.
Finn gave him a look. "Your mouth is your greatest possession, old friend-even more valuable than your purse. I suggest you keep both tightly shut. Now, if you have all finished filling the air with the fumes of your ignorance, give some attention. The soldiers are looking for Princess Briony, of course-and for us. We have been fortunate enough to avoid capture so far, although we were nearly found out in Ugenion and one or two other places." He shook his head. "We may not be so lucky this time, I fear. These are Enander's trained soldiers, not the local boobs and strawheads we have cozened-I doubt I shall be able to convince them we are on pilgrimage."
Briony spoke up. "Then there is only one thing to do. I must leave you. It's me they're searching for."
"Spoken like the heroine of a tragic tale," said Finn. "But with all respect to your station, Princess, if you believe that you are a fool."
For a moment she bristled-it was one thing to be talked to in a familiar way, another to be called a fool by a commoner!-but then she thought of how poorly she had been served by flatterers and thought better of it. I cannot have friends who will not tell me what they truly think. Otherwise they are not friends, only servants.
"Why shouldn't I leave you, Finn?" she said. "I broke the king's law by running away-went against his express order. And I am certain the Lady Ananka has been poisoning his ear even more busily ever since. By now, I am probably guilty of the loss of the entire Syannese Empire…"
"You are certainly the one they are most interested in, my lady," said Finn. "But do not think for a second they are not searching for us, too. Why do you think we've so often made Dowan fold his long legs like a grasshopper and squeeze into the wagon with you? Because he is the easiest of us all for someone to recognize. Even if you were not with us, Princess Briony, they would not let us go. We would be taken, and then… persuaded… to tell all we know of your whereabouts. I doubt any of us would ever see freedom again."
A sudden misery washed through her, so strong that she could only put her face into her hands. "Merciful Zoria! I am so sorry-I had no right to do this to you all…!"
"It is too late to change that," said Hewney. "So waste no tears on us. Well, on Makewell, perhaps, who hoped for an easy life buggering orphan boys back in Tessis, but he was outvoted."
"I will not bother to answer such a ridiculous charge," said Pedder Makewell. "Except to say that my interest in boys is purely defensive, since they are the one thing I can be sure you haven't given the pox to…"
Finn rolled his eyes as the others laughed. "Gods, you are a crude lot. Have you forgotten that the mistress of all the March Kingdoms is traveling with us?"
"Too late to worry about her, Finn my old blossom," said Makewell. "She curses like one of us, now. Did you hear what she called Hewney the other night?"
"And without cause," the playwright said. "I simply stumbled against her in the dark…"
"Enough!" said Finn. "You all jest because you do not want to talk about what is before us. The Royal Highway is not safe. The king's men are waiting for us outside Layandros, and even if we manage to sneak past them, it is still several days walk to the Syannese border."
"So what do you propose, Finn? " Briony asked. "You sound as though you have a plan."
"Not only does she have better manners than the rest of you," the large man said, "she has more wit as well. But I suppose it would be hard not to," he added, glaring at Hewney and Makewell. "In any case, a few miles north of here is a small road which turns east off the highway. It looks like nothing much more than a farmer's track-in fact that is what it is for the first few miles. But after a while it joins another, larger road-nothing as large as what we've been on, but still, a proper road, not just a track-and passes through the edge of the forest. On the far side is a Soterian abbey, so that we will probably only have to spend one night in the woods, then will be welcomed, warmed, and fed in the abbey the next day."
"Through the edge of the Black River Forest?" said Dowan Birch. It was the first time the giant had spoken.
"Yes," said the playwright. "Of course."
"I did not know it stretched so far west, that we could reach it in a day or less." His long face was troubled. "It is not a good place, Finn. It is full of… of bad things."
"What is he talking about?" demanded Pedder Makewell. "What sort of bad things? Wolves? Bears?"
But Dowan only shook his head and would not say more.
"We will be in it scarely a night," said Finn. "We are nearly a dozen and we have weapons and fire. We even have food, so we do not need to forage. We will stay together and all will be well-and more than well. Come, do you really want to chance our luck with the king's soldiers?"
Several of the others tried to get Birch to explain what he feared, but the big man would not be drawn. At last, for lack of a better plan, they all agreed.
They reached the fork in the road before the next morning's sun was high in the sky. A few other travelers shared the road with them, mostly local folk, and they all watched with surprised curiosity as the Makewell troop left the main road for the bumpy forest track.
For several days they had been passing through wilder and wilder country, but now it was suddenly ten times as apparent. The great expanse of the Royal Highway had meant that it passed mostly through open areas, and even when it didn't the very size of it meant the trees on either side were widely separated and offered little impediment to the sun. As soon as they turned east onto Finn's track the oaks and hornbeams suddenly seemed to shoulder in on either side like curious folk coming to see what strangers had entered their lands. Suddenly the sun that had been their companion for most of the journey was absent for long stretches. Gone were the occasional sounds of farmers calling to other travelers on the road, or summoning their straying sheep or cows back from some high place. Other than the noise of the wagon's wheels, the wind in the treetops, and the occasional muted trills of birdsong, the players' new route was all but silent.
Also, it turned out that Finn had not been entirely correct: the farmer's track, which is what it had looked to be when they left the main road, in places came to seem something much more chancy, more like a track for animals than people, so that the wagon often became stuck and required much work before it could be shifted and set rolling again. They had barely reached the outskirts of the forest when the hidden sun began to dip behind the western horizon and shadows stretched out across the world.
"I don't like it here," Briony said to Dowan Birch, who walked beside her. Because of the bad road and the absence of other travelers she and the giant had left the wagon and were walking behind it like everyone else, ready to push it out of the next ditch.
The place reminded her of something she could barely remember, her lost days after Shaso died and Effir dan-Mozan's house burned down. Something about the way the shadows moved, the way the uneven light made the trees themselves seem to be turning slowly after she passed, felt secretive, even malicious. Because of it, she had pulled out the talisman Lisiya had given her and had been wearing it for hours.
Dowan shrugged. He looked even more gloomy than Briony. "I do not like it myself, but Finn is right. What else can we do?"
"Why did you say… that there were bad things here?" she asked.
"I don't know, Highness. Things I heard when I was small." He looked hurt by her smothered laugh. "I was small once, you know."
"It wasn't just that," she said. "It was that, and… and… and you called me 'Highness.' I mean, look at you!"
He frowned, but wasn't entirely displeased. "I s'pose there's different kinds of highness, then."
"Did you grow up somewhere near here? I thought you were born in Southmarch."
He shook his narrow head. "Closer to Silverside. But we had many travelers coming from the country to the market in Firstford, which was over the river. My father used to shoe their horses, if they had them."
"How did you come to Southmarch, then?"
"Mar and Dar took the fever. They died. I went to my uncle, but he was a strange man. Heard voices. Said I was made wrong-I was getting big, then. That the gods took my parents because… I don't remember, truly, but he said it was my fault."
"That's terrible!"
Another shrug. "He was the one who wasn't right. His head, you see? The gods gave him nightmares, even in the daytime. But I had to run away or I would have killed him. I traveled with some cattle drovers up to Southmarch and I liked it there. People didn't stare so much." He colored, then looked up. "Can I ask something, Highness?"
"Certainly."
"I know we're going to Southmarch. But what are you going to do when we get there? If those Tollys still have the crown, you see? And if the fairies are still there. What will any of us do?"
"I don't know," she told him. That was the truth.
Just before dark they stopped and made camp. The players shared the meal with a great deal of boisterous noise, as though nobody wanted to listen too carefully to the sounds of the forest night around them, but what was more unusual was that they did not stay up late. Briony, squeezed in between the warm, reassuring bulks of Dowan and Finn Teodoros, rolled herself tightly in her cloak and clutched Lisiya's amulet to her breast.
A few times, as she floated in the river of dream, she thought she could hear the demigoddess' voice, faint and beseeching, as though Lisiya of the Silver Glade were being pulled away in another direction. Once she thought she saw her: the old woman stood by herself on a barren hilltop, waving at her. At first Briony thought the demigoddess was trying to get her attention, but then she realized that what Lisiya was trying to tell her was "Go away! Go away!"
She woke, shivering, in the nearly pitch-dark of midnight, with only the faintest light from the campfire embers to show her where she was. Her eyes were wet, but she could not remember anything in her dreams that should have made her cry.
It could not have been much after the middle of the day, when the sun should have been at its highest and brightest, that the world began to grow dark. A superstitious panic ran through the troop until Nevin Hewney pointed out what the rest of them should have realized immediately.
"It's a storm," he said. "Clouds covering the sun."
Despite the thickness of the trees around them, the forest did not seem like a place in which they wanted to weather a bad storm. Makewell's Men and their royal charge did their best to hurry ahead, hoping to reach the abbey, or at least high, dry ground before true darkness fell. The road was wider here, crisscrossed by some other forest tracks, which made Briony feel hopeful for the first time in hours. Surely they must be nearing a place where people lived!
It was Finn Teodoros, laboring along at her side, who first saw the faces in the woods.
"Hist," he said quietly. "Briony-Highness. Do not turn, but in a moment look past me on my left. Do you see anything strange?"
At first she could make nothing out of the complex, meaningless pattern of light on leaves-the graying of the day only made it harder to tell what was light and what was surface-but then she saw a glint of something a little brighter than what was around it. A moment later it resolved itself into a smear of orange fur and a bright black eye. Then it was gone.
"Sweet Zoria, what was it?" she whispered. "I saw… it looked like a fox. But it was the size of a man!"
"I do not know, but that was not the only one," Finn said. His usual lightness of tone was gone, his voice tight with fear. He walked forward, carefully looking only straight ahead, and whispered in Hewney's ear, then trotted a few more steps to talk to Pedder Makewell.
As she watched him, Briony saw another trace of movement in the dim, wavering light, this time on the far edge of the road, ahead of them and slightly to one side. Another strange, beastlike face appeared for a moment from behind a tree, then was gone, although for a moment she could have sworn it rose straight up into the air before it disappeared. Frightened, Briony stumbled and almost fell. Goblins? Fairies? Some outriders of the twilight army that had attacked her home?
Suddenly beast-men crashed out of the trees on either side, shrieking like demons.
"To me, to me!" Pedder Makewell bellowed. Briony saw him grab his sister and thrust her behind him, so that the wagon shielded her back. Makewell had a knife, but it was a poor thing, little more than a blade for cutting fruit and sawing over-tough mutton. Still, he held it up as though it was Caylor's Sighing Sword, and for a moment Briony almost loved the man.
"Together!" Finn Teodoros called. He had the wagon door open and was pulling out what arms they had, many of them little more than props. The beast-men had paused just inside the belt of trees and now were slowly advancing.
"Throw them down!" shouted the first of the things in a loud, angry voice. "Throw down your weapons or we kill you where you stand." It was with something like relief that Briony saw that he was no magical creature but only wore a half-mask. Several of the masked men had bows, the rest were well armed with spears and axes and even swords.
"Bandits," said Nevin Hewney in disgust.
The leader walked toward him, grinning beneath his crude fox face. "Watch your tongue. We are honest men, but what are honest men who cannot work? What are honest men whose lands have been stole by the lords, who know no law but their own?"
"Is that our fault?" Hewney began, but the bandit chieftain cracked him hard across the face with the back of his hand, knocking the playwright to the ground. Hewney got up, cursing, blood running between his fingers where he held his nose. Dowan Birch held him back.
"Bone, Hobkin, Col-you watch them," the leader said. "You others, take what they have. And chiefly search that wagon. Go to it, men!" At this his eyes, which had been flicking from one member of the company to another, lighted on Briony and widened. "Hold," he said quietly, but his men were already busily and loudly at work and did not hear him. He walked toward her where she stood beside Finn Teodoros. "What have we here? Young and fair… and passing for a boy?" He leaned toward her, his breath rank. He was missing most of his teeth, which made him seem older than he truly was. The two pegs in his upper jaw protruded below the rim of the fox mask, and for a moment it was all too much for Briony. She drove her knife up at his belly, but he was a man who had been living on the edge of things for a long time: her thrust came as no surprise. He caught her wrist and twisted it hard. To her shame, the pain made her drop the knife immediately.
The Yisti knife, had the bandit known it, was probably worth more than the rest of the players' possessions combined, but he had chanced onto prize he liked better and she had all his attention. "You are pretty enough in your way, girl," he said, pulling Briony close. "Did you truly fool these yokels? Did they think you a boy? You will be happy to know that Lope the Red is not so easily gulled. You belong to a real man, now."
"Let her be…" Finn began angrily, but the bandit cuffed him and the playwright fell heavily to the ground and then struggled to rise as Lope the Red shoved at him with his foot.
Briony stared at the bandit chieftain and suddenly recognized something in him. He was a beast, a thief and a bully, but he was also the strongest and the smartest of these men: if the world continued in the same mad fashion as it had of late, many such men would be rising up from the shadows, and some of them would make kingdoms for themselves.
This is the truth, she thought. This is the ugly truth of my royal bloodline and every other. Those who can take power take it, then leave it to their children…
Finished amusing himself with fat Finn, Lope pulled Briony close again. Then, as the bandit chief reached out a dirty hand to feel for her breasts beneath her loose shirt, he suddenly cried out in pain and staggered back a few steps, the knife which he had twisted out of Briony's hand standing quivering from his thigh.
"Bastard!" said bloody-faced Finn, hauling himself onto his knees. "I meant that for your stones!"
The rest of the bandits had turned at their chief's shout, and stood staring as he took a staggering step toward the playwright. "Stones? I'll have your stones off, if you even have any, you eunuch jelly." He waved his hand and two more of the bandits hurried forward, overcoming the struggling Finn in a matter of moments and throwing him to the ground, then pinning him there with the weight of their bodies. Lope the Red pulled the knife from his leg with a contemptuous shake of his head.
"In the meaty part. Ha! You are no fighting man, it's clear." He leaned forward. "I will show you how to use a knife on a man…"
"No!" shrieked Briony. "Don't hurt him! You can do whatever you want with me!"
The bandit laughed. "I will do whatever I want with you, trull. But first I will carve this one like a joint of beef…"
The air hummed and Lope the Red stopped for a moment, then slowly straightened up. He lifted his hand to his face and tried to take off his mask but found he could not: an arrow, feathers still trembling, had pierced his brow just above the eye and nailed it to his skull.
"I…" he said, then toppled backward like a felled tree.
"Take them!" someone shouted. A dozen armed men crashed onto the road from out of the trees. Arrows were buzzing in every direction, like furious wasps. One of the men who had pinned Finn to the ground leaped up in front of Briony only to fall back against her an instant later with three feathered shafts quivering in his chest and guts.
More arrows snapped past her. Men screamed like frightened children. One of the bandits clutched a tree as if it were his mother; when he fell away he had left it painted broadly with his blood.
Briony threw herself down on the ground and covered her head with her arms.
The Syannese soldiers dragged the last of the bandits' bodies onto the pile. "All here, Captain," one of the men-at-arms said. "Best we can tell."
"And the others?"
"One dead. The others only have a few small wounds."
Briony scrambled to her feet. One dead? Estir Makewell was on her knees, sobbing. Briony hurried toward her but one of the soldiers grabbed her arm and held her back.
Estir turned from the tall man's corpse and pointed in fury at Briony. "It's your fault-your fault! If not for you, none of this would have happened and poor Dowan would be living still!"
"Dowan? Dowan's dead? But… I didn't…" There was nothing Briony could say. Even the other members of the troop, Estir's brother, Nevin Hewney, even Finn, seemed to stare reproachfully at her from the spot where the guards had rounded them up.
The soldiers wore Syannese colors but an insignia Briony had never seen-a fierce red hound. Their captain stepped forward and looked her sternly up and down. His beard was long but carefully shaped; a bright white plume adorned his tall helmet. Briony thought he had the look of a man who thought himself quite elegant. "You are Princess Briony Eddon of Southmarch, late of our king's court in Syan?"
No point in denying it now-she had done enough harm. "I am, yes. What will happen to my friends?"
"Not for you to think about, Mistress," he said with a grim shake of the head. "We've been looking for you for days and days. Now come with me and don't make trouble. You're being arrested, you are."