darkly. “Given that it's Koenyg's father-in-law who's been killed. I warned Koenyg that Usyn would take it amiss, but he insisted he was too busy with Rathynal approaching. Wyna was distraught.”
“Poor girl,” Sasha said sarcastically. “Meeting Usyn, I suddenly see the family resemblance. The whole Telgar family's unstable. I'm so thrilled to be related I could vomit.”
“And I'm sure your graceful presence shall do wonders for Usyn's stability,” Kessligh remarked.
“You didn't help,” Sasha retorted, determined to get some payback for all the times he'd accused her of provocation.
“I thought it best to scare him a little,” Kessligh replied, the familiar, hard edge to his tone. “He's a bundle of raw impulses right now, most of them aggressive. I appealed to the only raw impulse that might give him pause.”
“What if he thinks you're bluffing?” Damon asked, casting a wary glance across as they walked.
“I don't bluff,” Kessligh said grimly.
Damon glanced at Sasha. Sasha shrugged. “He doesn't bluff,” she admitted. “Feints and misleads from time to time, but never bluffs.”
“There's eighty of us threatening to take on several thousand of them,” Damon retorted. “What is that if not a bluff?”
“Suicide?” Sasha suggested, raising an eyebrow at Kessligh.
Kessligh shook his head. “It's a start,” he said.
EVENING, AND THE SETTING OF THE SUN behind the mountains transformed the overcast sky to a deep, ominous red. The lake seemed ablaze as they walked along its bank, headed for the walled town of Halleryn. The mountains behind cast all the land and lake into shadow, the sun long since set behind its rugged peak. The colour was mesmerising, and reminded Sasha of tales told in the Steltsyn Star, of dark spirits with eyes the colour of fire…and she made the spirit sign to her forehead; an unthought, reflex gesture.
“Stop that,” Kessligh said with irritation at her side. Of all the dinner party, he alone had eyes more for the town walls ahead than for the ill-omened sky. “I told you, the colour is caused when the lowering sun strikes the underside of the clouds instead of the top. And it looks so bright because we're in the mountain's shadow, and it's reflecting off the lake. It's very beautiful, but I tell you there's nothing otherworldly about it.”
“This is a demon sky,” Jaryd disagreed, staring upward as he walked. “Father Urys in Algery used to tell me about this when I was a lad—sometimes at evenings, when the sun god slips into his netherworld, there opens a space between Loth and our world. This is all the power of Loth spilling free, and demons with it…there's bad things afoot this night, I can feel it.”
“Aye,” Kessligh said sourly, “and if you lot don't cut the superstitious rubbish, I'll be one of them.”
They crossed the bridge above the small stream, the torches held by the Royal Guardsmen to the front and rear gusting trails of flame. Ahead, the walls of Halleryn were alive with torchlight and whipping, wind-blown banners. Their party's own banners, held aloft by the two guardsmen not wielding torches, fluttered and snapped above their heads. In the light from the battlements, Sasha could see the dark shapes of archers watching their approach.
On the far side of the bridge, she risked a glance back across the river. The Hadryn camp stretched wide among the scattered trees and farmhouses of the valley, the blaze of many fires aflicker in the cold wind. Another five hundred men had arrived that afternoon, mostly militia from Hadryn villages, without the heavy armour and equipment of the Hadryn Shields, but formidable soldiers all the same. Word was that there were another thousand infantry afoot, but delayed without the speed of cavalry. Sasha eyed the movement atop the torch-lit walls ahead. She greatly doubted the forces within would match what was building outside.
“Usyn will have enough forces before the walls to contain any breakout by tomorrow,” she said to Kessligh, folding her arms tightly within her cloak to guard against the freezing wind. “He'll then divert forces about the lake, and Vassyl will fall. Halleryn's forces will be trapped, and then a real siege.”
“We can't let it come to that,” Kessligh replied, eyes also scanning the battlements. His mood was the darkest Sasha had seen on this trip. “A siege will drag into Rathynal. Such is precisely what your father would wish avoided.”
Some horsemen were approaching along the lakeside road ahead, the back way from Vassyl, moving for the gates. The tall, metal grille stood open, but was doubtless manned to