And Caradoc certainly isn’t afraid of me, she thought. We grew up together. If my first husband hadn’t been shipwrecked in the Garioch, our friendship might have become something more than that. How little I knew, how few my ambitions as daughter of Mac Clallan Muir! I might easily have wed the son of my father’s henchman…
A sudden thought struck her. Caradoc was one of two living men who had seen her naked. No, five if she counted the priests of Yatar who delivered her children, but why should she? They’d not looked upon her as men do at women. Nor had Caradoc, when he’d rescued her from Sarakos’s bedchamber. Involuntarily she shuddered at the memory of Sarakos and his crone torturer.
My first time to lie with a man. She shuddered again. And to this day I must drink wine before I bed my husband, and that is shameful, for I love him as few women can ever have loved a man. Yet he knows, and he feels the loss. What can I do? Yatar has given us so much, we cannot complain that he holds back the final drops from the cup.
But if Caradoc had not come when he did! Involuntarily she nodded in satisfaction as she remembered the dead guards outside her room. Caradoc had killed four soldiers and taken her away through secret passages, out of this very castle.
“Coronel Caradoc,” she called, using the new title of rank that Rick had conferred on him. “You have won a great victory. Tell us of it. As hostess I command it.” And that’s why he was nervous! He doesn’t like to talk about himself, and of course he has to. “Footman! Fill Coronel Caradoc’s cup, that he will not thirst as he tells us of his victory.”
He tells the story well, Tylara thought. But he tells more than he thinks.
The situation didn’t sound good at all. The Westmen rode where they wanted to go, and their horses were so much faster than Drantos horses that they could seldom be brought to battle against their will— and they would not fight willingly unless they held an advantage.
“And so the Lord Mason conceived a plan,” Caradoc said. “I regret that he is not here to tell of it.”
Mason and Camithon stayed at the new army camp on the high plains, while Caradoc and Geminius and a number of Roman supply officers came down to Dravan for supplies. There’d been no need for Wanax Ganton to come with Caradoc, but Octavia’s presence had been an irresistible attraction.
“A wagon train,” Caradoc said. “With a cavalry escort, to travel north and west, riding quickly as if hoping to avoid the Westmen. And certainly it was a clever ruse, for within two days the Westmen saw us and began to stalk us.”
And that must have been unnerving, Tylara thought. To be followed by enemies you could not strike…
“At first they sought to draw the escort away from the wagons, to induce us to fight at a time and place of their choosing. Fortunately they did not succeed.”
Not fortune, Tylara thought. Not fortune, but good planning. Most of the cavalrymen were either Romans or Guardsmen; there would be few of the armored nobility of Drantos in that group, not if Mason had planned it. Yes, and Ganton knows that. Does he understand why?
“Arekor, the priest of Vothan who lived so long among them, said they do not like to fight at night. It is a matter of their gods and demons. Yet we did not know how much of this to believe, and we made camp more in the Roman manner than our own. But perhaps Arekor spoke truth, for although we heard their cries and saw their camp fires, we saw none of them at night.”
He took another sip of wine. “Of course we had no real hopes they would attack a strong camp, and they did not. They waited until we had loaded the wagons and were well away from the camp, then struck at us to cut us off from it.” He paused to let a steward refill his cup.
“Hundreds of them,” Geminius said. He was a young man, and his speech was careful and precise in the Roman manner. A young lordliñg, higher in rank than his years deserved, Tylara thought. Yet the other soldiers thought him competent enough. “I confess I was near unnerved,” Geminius continued. “By Lucifer’s hooves! They came swiftly toward us, a veritable flood, and there stood Caradoc, the only calm man in the column! On they came, and still Caradoc did nothing! I had thought we waited too long.”
“The Lord Mason had said ‘Wait until you see the whites of their eyes,’ and in truth we came near that,” Caradoc said. “Then we threw off the covers from the wagons, and the archers and musketmen hidden inside them fired as if they were one man. The Lord Mason had said that first firing would have the greatest effect-”
“By the Lord he was right,” Geminius said. “The slaughter among the horses was great. As great as when the Lord Mason used his star weapons at Pirion.”
“You were at Pirion?” Wanax Ganton demanded. “With Publius?”
Octavia laughed, then busied herself with a napkin.
“Nay, lord, with Legate Valerius and the Eighth Legion,” Geminius said.
“Hah!” Ganton banged his flagon against the table. “I led the chivalry of Drantos that day!”
“Lord, I remember it. Was not your helm golden? Attended by a black-clad guardsman carrying a banner of the Fighting Man?”
“Aye!”
“And you rode next to a gold-bedecked barbarian riding a great black stallion and swinging the largest sword of my memory,” the Roman said. “He was attended by the Great Banner of Tamaerthon.”
“Aye,” Ganton said. “I carried the banner of my house, not that of Drantos, for the Lord Rick was supreme that day. Ho, you do recall!”
Unlikely, Tylara thought. But the story has been told often enough, and what detail would he not have heard by now? My father is easily enough described—
Ganton’s face fell. “My only battle,” he said. “And I interrupt Caradoc telling of his victory. Forgive me, Coronel.”
Caradoc looked embarrassed.
They have had too much to drink, Tylara thought. I should end this night before one says too much.
“Come, finish your tale,” Ganton said.
“There is little more to tell,” Caradoc said. “As instructed, we fired at the horses. Westmen on foot are no match for Tamaerthan archers.”
“Nor for Drantos warriors,” Geminius added.
“Aye,” Caradoc said. “And then we brought forward the wagon with the Great Gun. Pinir the son of the smith fired it with his own hand, and lo! it did not burst. It made great slaughter among the horses of the Westmen, for it was loaded with all manner of small stones, aye and lengths of chain.”
What Caradoc called the Great Gun was what Rick called a “four-pounder.” Tylara had three in the arsenal of Castle Dravan. More importantly, she had five larger guns capable of destroying siege towers. Dravan well defended had never been taken; held by a handful, it had stood against Sarakos until he brought up great siege engines. With the new guns even those would fail…
“And thus we defeated them,” Caradoc said. “I fear it does not make a great tale.”
“But a great victory,” Ganton said. “Would I had been there.”
“You will see more of battles than ever you want,” Octavia said quietly. “And soon enough, 1 think.”
“Lord, a great victory indeed,” Geminius said. “And by Our Lord’s death, more of a tale than Caradoc would have you know! The sound of the guns frightened our horses, and when the Great Gun was fired, many were in panic. Our victory was nearly defeat, for the Westmen began to circle and dart toward us, and there was naught to hold them save the Tamaerthan archers, for the guns are not quickly readied for another volley, and our own cavalry was useless! Aye, even Romans! My own units, I confess, veterans all, were in disarray.
“Then suddenly, through the noise of battle, all could hear Caradoc. He vaulted into the saddle and rode round, rallying Roman and Drantos horse alike. ‘Follow me!’ he shouted in a voice like thunder, and he led us through and behind the Westmen, thus holding them in play until the archers and pikemen and musketeers could finish their death work. In truth it is Caradoc’s victory we celebrate here.”
“Hah,” Ganton said. “And what have you to say of this, Coronel?”
“Lord—”
“Come now, my lords,” Tylara said. “In Tamaerthon it is the custom to boast of one’s deeds. It is not so in Drantos. Which customs would you have him honor, my Lord of the North?”
Ganton took another deep drink of wine. “I will find bards to tell of his action, then,” he said. “He should be rewarded. Are there no bards to sing of this?”