A hand shook him awake. “My lord, there is trouble.”
Lythian blinked, escaping the sweetness of his dreams. Dreams of the princess he should never have loved, of tenderness and warmth. There was no sweetness here in this ruin, no warmth to be had. Only rain and wind and darkness. “What is it, Sir Oswin?” His voice was hoarse, his head heavy. “What trouble?”
“It’s the prisoners, my lord. There has been some bloodshed, I am told.”
Lythian grunted as he sat up, swinging his legs off the pallet bed he slept on in his tent. He rose wearily, picking up the Sword of Varinar as he did so, which he kept on hand beside him. Sir Oswin had been assigned to watch over him as he slept. He did not know how long that had been, but it felt scant, the skies still black as pitch outside. For once it did not seem to be raining.
“What time is it?”
“Dead of night, my lord. Some two hours until dawn.”
“My cloak,” Lythian said. As Oswin went to fetch it from its hook, Lythian pulled on a godsteel hauberk, glittering in the torchlight. Of late he had taken off his plate armour to sleep, to help improve his rest, but there was no time to put that on now. The chainmail would serve. Atop it he garbed himself in his blue woollen cloak, fastening it quickly at the neck with his First Blade pin. Then the pair of them stepped outside.
The night was quiet, the air cold and still. A rare thing. One of Sir Guy Blenhard’s men was waiting, a guard Lythian new as Marc Torrence, a good and faithful fellow and a man from Sir Guy’s own lands, a little north of the city. Presumably he was the one to rush here and tell Oswin of the trouble. “What’s going on, Marc?”
“Blood and butchery, m’lord, in the square.” He had a flush to his cheeks and a slight pant to his voice to suggest he’d run to get here. “Good Guy told me to come fetch you at once.”
Blood and butchery. That sounded worse than the squabble he was thinking of. “How bad is it?”
“Bad, m’lord, and was getting worse when I left.”
Lythian frowned. “It’s still going on?”
Torrence nodded. “Aye, m’lord.”
The First Blade of Vandar set off at a hard march, Sir Oswin trailing behind him, Marc Torrence hurrying to keep up. Two men-at-arms were standing guard outside the silver-blue pavilion of Lord Rodmond Taynar, wearing the gloomy colours of his house. As they passed by, the young lord emerged, rubbing at his eyes, peering at them. “What’s the commotion?” he asked sleepily. “Are we under attack?”
“Nothing so bad as that, Lord Taynar,” Lythian said. “There is some fighting in the prisoner camp. Nothing you need to worry about.”
He marched past at a speedy clip, pressing onward through the square and toward the lane that took them south through the city in the direction of the docks. The noise grew louder as they went. Loud enough to awaken others along the route, who came crawling from their shelters and tents and out of broken doorways. All peered at the skies concernedly. Some shouted out, asking if the dragons were coming. Many were already rushing for their weapons, scrambling to prepare for a fight.
Lythian put their minds to rest. “We’re not under attack,” he called to them. “Go back to sleep. If there are dragons you’ll hear the horns.”
Some heeded him, returning to their dens, but not everyone. By the time they came to the prisoner square, a trail of some dozens were following behind, eager to find out what was happening. As soon as they arrived, Lythian looked out across the cobbles and saw chaos. Scores of men had been killed or maimed. The noise was cacophonous, the fighting ongoing. Men moved through the flickering light of the torchfires, hacking and slashing and screaming.
Lythian turned to Sir Oswin and the men who’d gathered behind him. “Help break them up and stop this damned bloodshed,” he commanded fiercely. He looked to the temple along the eastern side of the square. Sir Guy Blenhard was on the steps, calling orders and trying to restore calm. Lythian marched to join him. “What in the blazes is happening here, Guy? Who started this?”
Sir Guy turned to him. He looked visibly pale and was only half-dressed. “I…I don’t know, my lord. I was sleeping when the fighting broke out. My men give different reports.”
Lythian breathed out in anger. That wasn’t good enough. “Get this place in order. Now! I want the fighting stopped and the perpetrators caught.” His eyes went toward the tavern in which the women were being kept. It looked undisturbed, a pair of guards stationed there. Most of the prisoners were watching in great huddles, staying as far back from the bloodshed as they could. They were Lumaran, Piseki, Aramatian, Lythian saw, under the command of the few knights and nobles in their ranks. Few of those were engaged in the bloodshed. The vast majority of the dead were Agarathi, and those still fighting were Agarathi too, identified by the reds and crimsons of their torn and tattered cloaks, the almond eyes and dusky skin, the black hair twisted in braids.
At least fifty of them still seemed to be fighting, some with weapons, others without. Those without were screaming, leaping, clawing at the northern soldiers, trying to stab out their eyes with their thumbs. Gods, what madness is this? Those with blades were hacking, swinging, cutting wildly, a frenzy to their movement. Many were singing out their battlecry as they fought.
“How were those men armed?” Lythian shouted. “Where did they get those weapons?”
“I don’t know, my lord,” Sir Guy told him. “They must have stolen them.”
“Stolen them?” He looked again. By his count at least fifteen or twenty of the prisoners bore northern steel in their grasp, swords and daggers and axes. They would have had to pilfer two dozen corpses to arm themselves like that. So far as Lythian could see not nearly that many Vandarians lay dead. How could they possibly have stolen them?
Lythian clung hard to the Sword of Varinar, knuckles whitening. The blade was urging to be drawn, to be swung through one man and then another, to drink in dragonkin blood, to see an end to this madness and win the men back to his side. He was tempted. Gods he was tempted to put an end to all of this folly and give up on all his failed designs. His hand twitched. An inch of golden steel glimpsed the night air, glowing, but at once he shoved it back down.
No, he thought. He need not bloody his blade, and nor did he want to. These prisoners were under his protection. They had come here willingly, in many cases. He did not believe that they had been stirred to violence without cause. Northmen did this. My men. He took his hand off the blade.
“Tell me what happened, Guy. Damnit, I want to know how this began.”
The camp commander stuttered nervously.
“Speak, damnit!”
“It was them,” said a voice. Lythian turned, saw one of the guards there, a grim look on his face. He was a Barrow man, out of the Ironmoors, with that burial mound sigil of House Barrow sewn into his jerkin. “That Agarathi lot. They just went wild and started screaming and attacked. I saw.”
“From where?”
The man waved a hand. “There. Had the guard of that alley, and saw it all. You ask others, m’lord. They’ll say the same thing.”
Lythian did not trust this man. He turned back to Sir Guy. “You said there were differing reports.”
He nodded. “Willim said he saw a few of the guards enter the pen. He heard a clatter,” he told me. “Then sudden shouts and screams.”
“A clatter?” Lythian looked around. “Where is he?” Willim Winters was another of Sir Guy’s own men, a trusted man-at-arms who lived on his estate.
“In the fighting, my lord. Somewhere. I can’t see through this damnable dark.”
Lythian gave out a grunt. He could not stand by idle while the men were dying. Agarathi or Vandarian, it made no matter, they should not be fighting at all. He stormed off down the steps, shouting, “Make way,” as he went. The guards in the cordon turned, saw him coming, and backed off so he could pass. Lythian stepped straight into the square, past the posts and fencing that had been erected around the boundary. Ahead of him, to the right of the shattered fountain of Amron the Bold, dozens of men were still doing their death dance. Lythian marched straight into the fray, grabbed the first Agarathi he saw by the shoulder, turned him, and put his fist into the man’s jaw, knocking him unconscious. A second whirled, screamed, and ran at him. He too was soon on his arse. Then a third made the same mistake, leaping from the side with a dagger in his grasp. Lythian Lindar flicked a wrist, backhanding the man to the floor, and kept on going.
By then he was in the thick of it, blades flashing all around him. A dinted steel broadsword came whizzing past, cutting down upon the head of an Agarathi prisoner who was looking the other way. Lythian dashed forward, swinging upward with his arm, knocking the blade aside. It made not a mark on his chainmail. The guard stumbled back from the impact, eyes flaring in confusion as if Lythian had materialised from thin air. “Enough killing! Enough!” the First Blade bellowed at him. Others heard, saw their commander there with them, seeming unsure what to do. “ENOUGH!” Lythian roared again.
