#warhounds

Zandina froze with a mug of tea halfway to her lips. She never would get around to drinking it.

Slowly, she ordered: “Say that again.”

The courier was soaked to the bone, shivering despite his own tea and the spare cloak she’d tossed over him the moment he entered her wagon. His eyes were hollow and baggy; if he was truly in Varcheg yesterday morning he could not have slept. The horse he rode in on was half-dead, and even that must be a remount.

If what he said was true, the Ban Acani would compensate him tenfold. And Zandina, despite herself, could not think why anyone would drive themselves to these lengths for a lie.

The man took a shuddering breath. His voice rasped when he repeated the message; but it was steady and sure, all the same.

“The Lady Ira,” he said, “is being moved. They were travelling south from Varcheg.”

Zandina was tempted to point out that it would be difficult not to go south from Varcheg, but held her tongue. The implications were ringing in her blood, making her lightheaded.

“Her guard was not more than a dozen men,” the courier continued. “If local gossip holds even a drop of truth, regarding the movements of the Sturgian Butcher’s wives—”

Zandina held up a hand. 

She didn’t need to hear the rest. 

Spicevendor was, in truth, a polite euphemism. Oh it had been true enough, once, and Zandina had certainly spent long hours with Lord Najun plotting the reborn Ban Acani’s caravan routes. But she had also commanded the clan’s spy network for seven years—and Siya had only known about that network for the last five. Zandina’s “caravan” ran at a loss these days more often than not; it was, at best, a convenient smokescreen. No doubt some rumor of Ira’s transfer would reach her from her own sources within days…

…but by then it might be too late. None of the so-called war brides were ever seen walking in the city itself, save for occasionally being forced into the stands at a tournament. They were rarely if ever transferred between the holdings of the Howling Serpent clan—clan? Mercenary group? Brigands with heraldry and lower than dirt, in her opinion.

And Stelja had a cruelly practical approach to hostage-taking. One man—one—had attempted to siege Kranirog Keep, years back, and rescue his wife. Some archon of the Western Empire, and for once she could forgive the man his loyalties, because he had raised an army for the woman he loved and been met with her severed head at the gates.

But this time she was in the open. Ira was in the open, and that meant—

“There’s no time,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. It was nobly done, but even if we could fly we can’t stop them from reaching Kranirog.”

Unexpectedly, this didn’t faze the courier. “No, ma’am,” he agreed. “But my employer—the master of my caravan—believes, as do I, that they will be forced to remain there for some time.”

Zandina slammed her accounts closed and shoved them to the side. Groped blindly for a map case, and fumbled a route map of the Northlands open on the trunk that served as her table. Traced the faint line of a trade road, hoping, praying…

“Perhaps no more than a single night,” The man warned. “Though the weather will favor us. This is mild rain in the south, mistress spicevendor, but in the mountains it howls; and the Butcher’s men are weaklings at heart, and will not wish to risk—” He hesitated. “I…they are likely to remain under cover, and give your people time to muster.”

Zandina, feverishly measuring distance-over-time with a brass drawing compass, glanced up sharply.

“Risk what,” she said. She tried to keep the bite from her tone, and managed no worse than ‘unyielding’. When she got nothing but a miserable expression, she said firmly, “I need to know everything.”

He squeezed his eyes closed. 

“Yes, ma’am.” A deep breath. “They will not, cannot, travel in foul weather. They cannot risk…there would be too much danger. To—to the infant.”

The faint scratch of Zandina’s distance marks went silent.

She looked up, very slowly, from the map. 

“The full message I was charged to deliver,” he said quietly. “Was: Ira Pethros travels south from Varcheg, on open road and but lightly guarded, with a babe at her breast.”

The drawing compass wavered. Before she was Siya’s spymaster, Zandina the Spicevendor had been her sworn sword.

“I,” she promised, softly, the whisper of silk over steel, “will have Caladog’s head for this.”

The man watched her. “My master…did not seem to harbor any doubts, any belief rather, that learning this would lessen your willingness to rescue the lady…”

By his delivery, he had not shared Sorji’s confidence. That he held it back, then, only raised him in her estimation; unfortunately at the moment she was nearly too blind with rage to care.

“Lessen…?” Zandina’s voice was barely audible. “Oh, no. No, she has no idea what she's unleashed. We may have to risk an assault, now. We can’t intercept, I’m sorry; but if we can draw out the garrison, fly a false flag, set fires—keep them from knowing we’re there for Ira—”

“You do your clan credit, mistress, and I was wrong to doubt you. But stay your planning a moment; we doubt very much that they intend to leave her at Kranirog.”

“Explain.” Then her eyes widened. “Aster.”

It was a recent development. Word had reached her from her little birds only in the last fortnight. Aster Castle awarded to the Howling Serpent clan by High King Caladog, in recognition of their service and courage in battle…

The courier smiled, or tried to. “Yes, ma’am. The Butcher has lusted for Aster Keep—”

“Please,” Zandina winced. “Another phrasing.”

“Ah. My apologies. She has—desired—it is a great accomplishment for her,” he said, giving up. “She has petitioned in the past to be granted that fortress, and met with no success before now. The keep at Aster is nearly impreg—nearly unassailable. She is transferring her household, and the vast majority of her men. Lady Ira’s guard is unmarked, thus…”

“Thus getting her inside the walls before word gets out that she’s left Varcheg,” Zandina finished, mind racing.

“If the Butcher desired her prize at Kranirog, she would not have risked moving her to Varcheg at all,” concluded the courier. “Nor would that be sensible. I beg your pardon for my bluntness, but Rhagaea’s daughter even despoiled is too valuable a pawn to risk. Not all who would deny the Howling Serpent such a prize—forgive me—care overmuch whether the Lady Ira lives.”

“No sense taking her out of a fortress in a walled city, and moving her to a lone keep, you’re right. Mind you the same argument could be made for Aster…” Zandina closed her eyes and counted, distracted. It was still too far, even if the storm delayed them by days…

“The Butcher is irrational,” said the man, which was a wild understatement. “But Aster Keep is in truth the finest of her possessions, even including the city of Varcheg and all its revenue. It is nigh impossible to crack those walls, aye; but it is also Battannian in truth, deep in trackless mountains and sheltered at the core of their strength. And—”

“And the one thing Caladog ever denied her.” Zandina nodded slowly. “Yes. She would value that more highly than anything. She would want to consolidate her power…”

“She would want,” the courier said with no small hint of bitterness, “Access to her favorite toy.”

A long silence. Thunder rolled softly over the plains, outside.

“Forgive me,” he said, subdued. “My disrespect is not for your lady.”

“No forgiveness necessary,” Zandina replied, carefully neutral. “I share it.” Then,  “Aster Castle. Aster…we can’t. We can’t, I’m sorry, Siya—with that kind of head start, and we could barely get the Warhounds here within four days—”

“Do you not—” The courier looked stricken. “I apologize. We had hoped—your own caravan guards, or that you might have friends.”

Gods, if only. But their caravan guards were youths, mostly; young recruits with leather and spears. Solid and true, and skilled enough for bandits, but even two to one they would be no match for elite Serpentguard. It would have to be the Warhounds, and she said so.

“For a light guard…” She was trying, desperately, to find an answer. The least-time route stayed well south, centered in the mild and dry Calradian lowlands until they were deep in the Western Empire before hooking north into Battania. But even that was too slow unless she could find some way to shave off days of travel. “Not—we don’t need Lady Siya with two hundred lancers at her back. Horse archers, a scout force…”

He leaned forward in fascination as she measured. “Truly? In a day? That is a very great distance.”

“With remounts, properly spaced, and a few sleepless nights? Twenty-five of our finest could travel that distance like birds. But—”

“Can it not be done, mistress?”

“You’re asking us to cross the continent!” She gestured violently at the map. “And we can do it, which is what’s killing me. They wouldn’t have their own mounts, but pour silver out like water and I could get them there in less than a fortnight; maybe much less. But we can’t do it faster than a smaller group with half the distance to travel.”

Unexpectedly, at that, the young man smiled.

 “Forgive me, ma’am,” he said. “But you reckon distance like a southerner. May I?”

She handed over the measuring compass. He shortened it dramatically, checked the new measure against the map’s scale, then shortened it again, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Optimism?”

“Experience,” he countered, and began reworking her estimates of the path the Serpents would follow. “You would not know. No sane woman would trade in Battania when she could winter in the Great Desert instead.”

“Nahasa,” Zandina corrected by reflex. “Go on. You’re certain?”

“The snows are deep and every river treacherous.” He traced along one of the routes she’d been measuring, the least-time path from Kranirog to Aster, then swiped his hand over the map to erase the faint charcoal sketching. “Half those routes are impassable already, save to experienced men with snowshoes. And they cannot travel by night, nor in rain or snow.”

“If pushed to it—”

“Not with a babe in arms.” He gave a tight smile. “I am Sturgian, mistress spicevendor, from Tyal. The cold by night is bitter in those mountains and wet furs kill. The Butcher is many things and cares nothing for a child’s life in principle, perhaps; but this one is both trophy and shackle. She will not, I think, kill it by deliberate exposure.”

That was more faith in the Butcher of Sturgia than Zandina wanted to stake Ira’s life on, but it wasn’t wrong.

“What route would they take.” She couldn’t afford to hope. Couldn’t. But she’d never argued with a local about travel times in her life and wasn’t about to start now, and…if he was right. If he was right, and they would have to stop that frequently—if it snowed again even once, if they were delayed one extra day at Kranirog…

The route the man sketched was... If the Warhounds could pull off top speed…Aster was close enough to the southern foothills. Just close enough. And those passes never closed, not this early in the season.

“And there is one last mercy,” he concluded. “Which is: While your men ride with all the speed that can come of love of justice and their Lady, the Howling Serpents may not even know they are in a race.”

She sketched the math out, feeling feverish. Assuming a rescue party left Onira in less than three days…

Zandina stood, threw open the curtain wall, and grabbed her door guard by the collar.