The Doomfarers of Coramonde by Brian Daley Read Free Book Online

situation demanded, won on the resources of eye and hand and brain
alone. It was possible, he thought, that he’d been undersold to himself all
along.
    Eliatim’s other
words came back to him, particularly those that made reference to his mother.
Had Bey, as Eliatim had implied, caused the death of that Lady, to clear the
path for Fania?
    The Tangent,
raised above the surrounding ground and gently pitched to either side, drained
itself of water quickly as the rain abated. Some traffic moved there already:
farmers on foot or with carts bringing goods to market, a troop of traveling
players bearing torches, forming a swirl of color and motion and song, an
officious dispatch rider hastening past them all, various merchants.
    Springbuck,
relieved at the lack of troops on the Tangent, was the only one bound eastward
and so, the way being wide, went quickly. The solution to the problem of his
extra horse came to him at dawn, when he encountered a band of tinkers camped
at the roadside.
    Rather than
being bound toward Kee-Amaine, they were about to swing southward. There was
brief haggling, and the Prince rode on with a considerable sum of money and
some provisions, comfortably sure that the roncin’s brands and cropping would
be promptly obliterated.
    He loosened his
cloak as the sun warmed him. Elation over his victory against Eliatim swept
into him again. He reappraised himself in light of his own simple and profound
decision to stand and fight. He was exhilarated but steady, confident but
unimpulsive.
    Fireheel
happily increased their distance eastward, and a new Springbuck rode into the
day, of a far different mettle than he with whom Fania’s forces had been so
sure they could cope.
     
    It was two days
later, and well along in the afternoon, when he reined in magnificent Fireheel
on the summit of a low hill to gaze upon Erub.
    His hunger had
been growing for hours, his provisions gone since breakfast. He would have
preferred to spend his nights in some inn or tavern on the way, if only to
sleep on a bench by the hearth, but had avoided the Tangent since that first
dawn for fear of apprehension, skirting the odd farm or crofter’s hut he’d
spied.
    Seeing the end
of the narrow, rutted road was good compensation for this, though. The little
town was in a valley spread below, and on a rise beyond stood an undersized
castle of antiquated design. He knew from his own research at Earthfast that
the castle was untenanted.
    A silence hung
over Erub as he rode past the crude daub-and-wattle hut that was its outermost
limit. He saw no one living, but came upon the dead and all-but-dead in
numbers. There were villagers scattered here and there, war arrows in them or
the bitter, evident tales of sword and lance wounds.
    He rode with
hand close to hilt and, coming closer to the square at the center of town,
encountered a remarkable thing: soldiers of Coramonde, light cavalrymen, lay
slain near an improvised barricade. Of these, many bore injuries from scythe or
pitchfork or were pierced with hunting shafts. Many others, though, had odd
wounds through their vests of ring mail, small, rounded holes; one had such an
opening fairly between his eyes and a huge and hideous gap torn in the back
side of his skull. An eldritch smell, unlike anything the Prince had ever
scented before, hung in the air.
    He decided to
continue on to the castle, wondering if the lancers had been sent to find him
or to interfere with the school that Andre deCourteney had set up. He knew that
word of his escape could have outraced him via dispatch riders on the Tangent,
if those in Earthfast knew where to look.
    He passed
through the town without seeing anyone who might have given him information,
but on the track leading up to the little castle he came up to an elderly
couple urging a recalcitrant donkey to pull a cart loaded with their personal
possessions, bedding and household goods of questionable value. The donkey
remained stubbornly seated.
    The old