Suddenly, the air whistled again. Kall braced, but the expected killing blow never came. Instead, Dencer fell to his knees, cradling his right hip.
A horse thundered up the strand of beach, kicking sand up against black flanks. Its rider tossed aside an empty crossbow and drew a short blade as he came.
Dencer had crawled to his feet by the time the rider reached him. Kall could finally make out the man's face. He was one of Kall's personal guardsmen, assigned by his father. "Haig!" he cried.
The rider ignored Kall's shout and swung down from the still-moving mount, sword leading. Dencer hastily blocked with his bow, the only weapon he could bring to hand in time. The sword bit deeply into the wood, cleaving it nearly in two.
Dencer pushed back and thrust the older man off. Haig's attack came in a bull rush, clumsy and imprecise, as if he hoped to finish his opponent off quickly and move on. Dencer dodged a second thrust, at the same time groping with the bolt that had penetrated his armor. His hand fell slack, and he swooned.
Haig pressed the advantage, driving in close for a quick kill, and played right into Dencer's feint. Dencer dropped heavily to the sand on his good side, swept one leg behind and in front of Haig's knees and twisted. The older man bent sideways and hit the ground. In the same breath Dencer sprang to his feet, running full out for the trees.
Haig cursed loudly but did not follow. He sheathed his sword and ran for the water, picking a path across the rocks.
"Haig," Kall cried again when he reached them. "Morel—the house is—"
"Besieged, aye," the man said curtly, hoisting Aazen up in his arms. "Stay behind me." His eyes were on the tree line as they picked their way back to the shore.
"Where is Father?" His heart pounding, Kall knelt on Aazen's other side as Haig laid him out on the beach. "Does he live?"
"He did, when I left him to come for you." Haig caught Kall by the arm and guided him to the arrow still planted in Aazen's shoulder. The man's hands were square and brown. Traces of gray beard lined his cheeks and chin, yet for his age he was easily twice the width of Kall, with muscle as firm as the gauntlets encasing his wrists. He shrugged off a sand-stained cloak and spread it over Aazen.
"Remove the fletchings," he instructed Kall. "Be quick, but do not aggravate the wound."
Kall did as he was told, snapping the feathery ends off an arrow he might well have helped build. The thought jarred him, and his hands trembled.
Aazen was white to the lips. He hadn't spoken. He would be thinking of his own father, Kall realized. An attack on the house would put Balram in the heart of the battle. "What of Captain Kortrun?" he asked. "Does he—"
"Mind your work!" Haig snapped.
Kall flinched and fell silent. He threw aside the fletchings and waited while Haig helped Aazen to a half-sitting position.
Haig looked the boy in the eyes. "This will hurt."
Aazen nodded, his expression resigned. "Take it—"
Before he'd finished speaking, Haig drove his arm forward. From Kall's angle, it looked as if he were trying to wrench Aazen's arm out of its socket, but the sound was nothing like that.
Cold sweat broke out on Kall's arms. He felt like retching. Aazen's body convulsed, but he stayed eerily silent as Haig tossed the bloody arrow aside, unstoppered a vial of milky liquid, and poured it down the boy's throat. His head lolling, Aazen slid into unconsciousness. A trickle of white slid down his chin.
"He'll live," Haig said grimly, putting the empty vial back in his pouch. "He's endured worse."
"What did you give him?" Kall wanted to know, but Haig had already pulled Kall to his feet, and was dragging him to the black horse.
"A healing potion." He mounted and reached down a hand for Kall.
"We can't leave him!"
Haig made an impatient sound in his throat. He hooked a hand under Kall's armpit and hauled him bodily onto the back of the horse.
"Young Kortrun will be safer than either of us," he said. "Now, if you would care to aid your father and fight for what remains of your house, we will ride swiftly and with no talk at all. If you fall off, I will not stop for you." He looked back at Kall. "Do you understand?"
Wordlessly, Kall nodded. Haig had never reproached him like this before. He'd never spoken to him at this length in all of Kall's life, though the old man had been a permanent fixture in Kall's memories since he could walk. The common jest, whispered among the guards, was that Haig preferred the company of his horse to that of people and needed no woman to warm his bed. But the subdued old man who'd shadowed his steps on the streets of Esmeltaran was not the same person who sat before him now. Where had the strength and the steel in his eyes come from?
Those eyes raked him from head to foot, noting, Kall thought, his lack of armor. He'd left the pads on the rocks of Lake Esmel with Aazen's violin. Haig reached down and freed a curved shield from where he'd hooked it to the saddle horn.
"Here," he said, thrusting the shield at Kall. "Protect yourself when we get close to the grounds." He shook his head as he gazed at Kall. "Tymora's miracle Dencer was confused. In your smallclothes, with your hair wetted down, you both look just alike."
Kall would have asked what he meant, but Haig dug his heels into horseflesh, and they were away.
CHAPTER THREE
Esmeltaran, Amn
12 Eleasias, the Year of the Sword (1365 DR)
The grounds were deserted. Haig's boots crunched gravel as the big man dismounted in the outer yard. He pushed Kall between himself and the horse. They moved in a line right up to the entry hall. The doors were wide open, and Kall could hear fighting within. Morel's servants—guards who had not turned traitor, even members of the household staff—fought with men in hoods. Kall had counted five such on the beach, including Dencer, and there were more inside without sand on their boots.
"Whatever happens, stay at my shoulder where I can see you." Haig spoke rapidly, reaching for the short sword affixed to his saddle. "I don't know how skilled you are with a blade, but if you get the chance to stick this in something, don't hesitate, do you hear?" When Kall nodded, he went on, "We're badly outnumbered, so remember, this house is no longer your home. It's their ground until we drive them out. Anything is a weapon to that end." He handed Kall the short sword and took a second, broader blade from a sheath. Large emeralds adorned the hilts, marks given to all the blades of Morel, from the lowliest rusted dirk to Balram's elegant long sword—a mark of Morel's success in gems and fine ornaments.
Kall's father scoffed at Amnians who draped their wealth over themselves with no context. Dhairr's gesture to even his lowest-ranking servants had clear meaning: Morel had the means to protect his own.
But he had never planned for an attack from within, an attack that amounted to a betrayal by family. How many of the men in hoods bore emerald weapons? How many would Kall know personally if unmasked?
His chance to find out came when they entered the main hall. Two of the hooded foes darted in from side rooms, as if they'd seen them coming. Haig put himself in front of Kall and ran at both, grabbing up a large Calishite vase from a side table. He smashed the expensive item in the face of the hood to his right while simultaneously batting a raised sword out of his way. Dazed, the attacker fell back, unresisting, allowing Haig to charge forward to engage the foe to his left.
Kall stared at the scene, retaining only the presence of mind to raise his weapon while he watched the old man fight.
Screams filled the air as Gertie, one of the maids, hurtled from the hallway into the crystal display front as if she'd been thrown. Fragile glass panes shattered under her weight. Her hands and arms were bloody when she picked herself up, but she kept running, bolting across the hall. Her usually meticulously combed curls hung loose and wild from her bonnet. A gloved hand snagged her hair, jerking the maid's head back into the doorway to the kitchens.
Kall watched in numb horror as the hand drew a knife in a crooked, horizontal slash across Gertie's throat. For a breath, the young maid's eyes met Kall's across the room. Then she saw the blood pouring down her dress and raised her hands as if she could stop the flow.
Kall charged forward, away from the safety of Haig's back. Instead of engaging the man with the knife, he ran a wide circle. Before the man could realize what he intended, Kall had wedged his sword between the wall and the display front and pulled, levering the heavy glass case away from the wall. Piles of crystal, wood, and glass came down on the hooded man, knocking him back into the kitchen. The last Kall saw of the man was the Morel emerald glinting in his knife, alongside a ruby in a nest of gold loops.
Kall dropped to his knees next to Gertie, but the maid was already dead. Above her ruined throat, her eyes stared vacantly at the ceiling. Kall felt bile rise in his throat, but a glint of gold in the blood pool caught his eye: Gertie's necklace, a small medallion emblazoned with Lathander's sunrise. The assassin's knife had cut it away. Kall scooped it up.
He caught black movement out of the corner of his eye and spun, sending his sword out in a wide, reckless arc. Another hooded figure danced back, Kall's blade swishing across his opponent's stomach to tear fabric if not flesh.
Blindly, Kall followed with a backslash, cutting up and diagonally from hip to shoulder, driving forward in a rush as he'd seen Haig do.
Kall was not a novice to sword play. When he was younger, his father had decided to personally train Kall to fight. Never had the man paid him so much attention. Kall had reveled in it, learning all he could. His skills steadily grew, but his father's interest in teaching waned over the years in favor of seeing to his business and the security of his house. Kall could feel the burn of disuse in his sword arm.
He risked a glance at the old man. Haig had pulled the hood from the foe harrying him on the left. White-gold hair tumbled down a black cloak—Isslun's. She puckered her lips saucily at Haig even as her hand went for the dagger at her belt.
Haig got there first. He slipped the weapon from its sheath and with a grin shoved her away. Immediately, an identical face from the right met him. Aliyea—twin to Isslun—had recovered from the hit with the vase and removed her hood to fight openly beside her sister.
Kall's sword went skittering across the marble floor. Distracted, he'd let himself be disarmed. "Haig!"