Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,71

du Tancret might be arrogant enough to think he could defeat Lucidia on his own.

Certainly, he was arrogant enough to start a wider war over the harassment of Gherig.

Still …“Time will unmask him.”

* * *

Time withheld its judgment. Nassim began to suspect that Black Rogert had acted impulsively because he had found himself in possession of several momentary advantages. He had the Gisela Frakier for only a few weeks. And he had recruited a sorcerer, about whom Nassim’s spies could learn nothing. Not his name, whence he came, how he managed to work beside Rogert’s Brotherhood allies, notorious for loathing sorcery.

Three times the sorcerer acted against Tel Moussa. Thrice his efforts did no obvious harm. Three times Bone and old Az hunkered down inside the tower, remained calm, and endured.

Black Rogert stayed in the field himself only a few days, then returned to the wicked pleasures of Gherig. He left the siege work to others.

The crusaders did not patrol far from their line of investiture. Nassim gathered fighters in the hills nearby. Reinforcements came from Shamramdi. Indala was concerned.

Nassim ambushed the Gisela Frakier when they started back to their tribal territories, up on the frontier with the Rhûn. They fought bravely and appealed to Gherig for help. Help did not come. Black Rogert was done with them. They were on the discard heap. No matter to him that he might want to hire Gisela Frakier again tomorrow.

Nassim did not have the strength to exterminate the traitor Pramans. He did hammer home the point about the folly of becoming an ally of Rogert du Tancret.

A week later the truth made itself known.

The crusaders attacked a vast, rich caravan from Dreanger headed for Lucidia and the silk road beyond. The caravaneers had refused to take the harsher but safer path through the eastern desert. They believed a bribe to Rogert would guarantee safe passage.

Rogert seized all the goods and made captive the few people not slain outright. Those were all people who could be ransomed. The dead and captured both included important Chaldareans from the Eastern Empire. Among the dead were Dreangerean diplomats headed to Shamramdi and Lucidian ambassadors coming home.

Young Az observed, “At least this time there were no women from my granduncle’s family.”

But there had been Praman pilgrims by the hundred, going to visit shrines in the east or returning from shrines in the west. They had been robbed and butchered without concern for their religion or status. To Rogert they were all Unbelievers and vermin. There was no market for them as slaves. Murder was the obvious way to be shut of their hungry mouths.

“He’ll get a war for this,” young Az predicted. “It’s a prince’s duty to protect pilgrims. Even Unbeliever pilgrims.”

“Or, failing that, to avenge them so nothing wicked happens to the next band.”

Nassim bemoaned the disaster. But it had happened miles away and without warning. It was over before the news reached him. He could have done nothing, anyway. His forces were not concentrated. In retrospect, though, he thought he should have anticipated something of the sort, based on du Tancret’s past behavior.

Before the attack the crusaders bled most of the strength from the lines around Tel Moussa. Nassim took advantage of that to launch frequent counterattacks against what, in the end, proved to have been a calculated distraction.

A brace of new falcons arrived from Haeti, having evaded interception along the way.

15. Wrong Place, Wrong Time

The Perfect Master approached Khaurene late in the day. The setting sun liberally splashed the golden light for which the Connec was famous. He meant to bypass the city and would have done, but circumstance adjusted his thinking.

A year earlier Brother Candle would have gotten behind Khaurene’s walls to escape Patriarchal invaders and revenant things of the Night. Now the great dangers were bandits and itinerant heretic hunters from the Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy. The Writ of several recent Patriarchs banning the Society had not taken hold in Arnhand, where those grim monks had been multiplying like mice, with Anne of Menand’s blessing. There was a new Patriarch, Serenity, now. Society vermin were coming out, getting into everything, everywhere, excepting those counties in the eastern Connec where the locals were not in the least reluctant to invite them to become participants, as targets, at archery practice.

Bandits were no threat to a wandering Maysalean Perfect. Bandits were a homegrown peril. Those desperadoes knew the holy men carried nothing worth stealing. Even their ragged clothing had no resale value.