“I’ve got my eyes well and truly open about Fax, m’dear, and hiding from him is not an option!”
“There’s nothing you can do, Groghe,” Robinton said, shaking his head. “By the time you can get there, he’ll have completed his looting and be on his way back to Nabol.”
“Well, then, the guards he’ll have left at Ruatha shall see me and my men lining the border, MasterHarper, and know that they may not encroach on my lands.”
“I’ll rouse the Hall. You’ll need as many men as you can muster,” Robinton said.
“Not you, though,” Groghe told him.
Down the hall came Grodon, the current Ford Hold harper, already armed.
“Good lad,” Robinton said, catching him by the arm. “Go to the Hall. I want every journeyman and apprentice, anyone who can ride and carry a sword, to mount and go with Groghe. If anyone challenges this order …” He could not continue.
Grodon gripped his shoulder. “No one will unless they’re too deaf to have heard the drums.”
“Good man.” And Robinton watched him clattering down the hallway.
Groghe was banging on doors to speed up the mustering, and the place was alive with armed men and anxious women. Robinton laid his head against the back of the chair, his eyes drooping.
“Here.” Lady Benoria held up the limp hand in which he still held the cup. She filled it again, tears of distress marking her face.
“Are you sure … about the … children?”
He nodded. He would never forget those lifeless little bodies.
How could Fax possibly claim Ruatha too? Ah, and his heart sank: Lady Gemma.
“Are you hurt?” Lady Benoria exclaimed, touching his arm in anxiety.
He laid one hand on his heart, a dramatic gesture perhaps, but it certainly expressed the coldness which had seized him at the core of his being.
“You should rest,” she said. “I am,” he had the strength to say, and she went away and let him close his eyes.
Silvina shook him awake. She and Oldive saw him down the stairs of Fort Hold and across what seemed an awfully wide court to the Harper Hall and his bed. Sebell appeared, holding up a glowbasket to light their way up the stairs.
“Nip?” he asked as Silvina and the lad pulled off his boots.
“Took another mount and was gone. Looked like death warmed over,” Oldive told him.
“I made up some food for him,” Sebell said.
“Good lad!” said Robinton, grateful once more for Sebell’s adroit assistance. He wondered where Nip would have gone and why, but it was too much to think about and, as he laid his head down, he realized that his cheeks were wet. The last thing he knew, Silvina was covering him with the fur. As if anything would ever cover over the memory of that early morning scene in Ruatha Hold!
Fax had the country thoroughly stirred up. The major western Lord Holders, resolute Oterel, Tarathel, Groghe and Lord Sangel of South Boll, made an orderly march to Nabol to meet the grinning and unrepentant Fax and protest his usurpation of Ruatha Hold and the murder of the entire Bloodline. Robinton joined them with his senior Masters, who were now all too aware of the full tragedy at Ruatha. Nip’s report stated that not only the Lord, his Lady and the children had been killed, but anyone in the Hold who was known to have claimed any Ruathan Blood.
In the cramped main Hall of Nabol, Fax, surrounded by contemptuous soldiery, listened to what they said and then told them that if they were not out of his Hold by nightfall, he would order them all slaughtered for trespass.
No one doubted that he would implement that threat.
“You are not Lord Holder of Nabol or Crom or Ruatha by any right, other than that of conquest,” Tarathel said, stiff with outrage but impressive with dignity. “You will usurp no more lands without full contest at arms.”
Fax smirked, glancing at the grinning faces of his guards. “Any time you like,” he said, obviously delighted at the prospect. “Is that all you came to say? Well, out with you then!”