Lescari Revolution 03: Banners In The Wind by Juliet E. McKenna Page B

themselves. Tathrin had seen two take a barrel of apples from the column's provision carts. He hadn't needed to save them from the quartermaster's wrath. Sorgrad had taken the man aside for a genially menacing word.
    Tathrin had been glad to see Triolle men open their hands and hearts to the hollow-eyed Carlusians. But this morning he rode a few horse-lengths ahead of a mounted group of journeymen who didn't hide their disdain for such unfortunates. Their apprenticeships completed, they cherished ambitions of setting up their own workshops. Many of their fathers were eminent among Triolle's guildsmen, providing the coin to buy the horses the youths rode with all the awkwardness of novices.
    No Lescari duke wasted his coin training mounted forces. It was quicker and cheaper to thrust a halberd into a reluctant militiaman's hands and to hire mercenary horsemen. Too late, the dukes had learned the error of their ways, as the fearsomely skilled lancers of Dalasor had helped Evord win this war.
    But none of these callow youths was prepared to sacrifice his dignity by admitting defeat and dismounting. Or, from what he'd overheard, to give up the chance of fleeing at breakneck speed if danger threatened. Contempt soured Tathrin's stomach.
    He gazed northwards but a rise dense with coppices blocked his view. Had Kerith warned Failla? Had she fled Ashgil or would she simply be in more danger on the open road?
    Couldn't these Triollese march any faster? The guildmasters had kept him waiting a full day before they agreed to muster a militia. They had complained and protested like their journeymen sons riding behind him. No, Tathrin realised, the youths had moved on to a new topic.
    'Those northern barbarians sacked Tyrle? The ones from the Mountains?'
    'No doubt about it. The Soluran kept them leashed in Carluse but they slipped their collars here.'
    'Did they kill Duke Garnot?'
    'I wouldn't be surprised.'
    Tathrin took a deep breath. He was loath to rebuke these self-important youths. Too many of the Triollese looked to them in their fathers' stead. If he sent them scurrying back before they even reached Ashgil, this militia column could dissolve into chaos.
    'Didn't you see the uplanders in our streets, when the Guilds yielded to the Soluran and opened our gates?'
    That peevish voice was Brimel's, journeyman and assiduous toady to Triolle's pre-eminent brewer, a man who owned half the taverns within a day's ride of the town.
    'We were overrun before the noon bells,' he sneered.
    Overrun by mercenaries who drank in his master's inns and tupped the whores renting the houses he owned in back alleys. Tathrin didn't doubt a share of that coin jingled in Brimel's acquisitive pockets.
    'The curs infested the shrine to Maewelin.' Halarey, plump journeyman baker, couldn't have been more disgusted if he had found sewer rats in his bread troughs.
    'Were they causing trouble?'
    Tathrin was relieved to hear Akaver's mild tones. The lean tailor's shrewdness had impressed him before.
    'Not as such,' Halarey admitted grudgingly. 'But they heaped cloth-wrapped bones in front of the goddess's statue.'
    'Forbidding anyone to touch the foul things,' added Brimel, indignant. 'At least the Dalasorians burned their dead, like decent men.'
    The swarthy horsemen had then raised great earthen mounds over the massed pyres of their fallen comrades and their steeds. Tathrin didn't think such rites had been seen this far south in time out of mind.
    Quenel the blacksmith spoke, deceptively kind-faced. 'We went to throw them out--'
    Tathrin's horse tossed its head as he gripped his reins. But no, he would have heard about any trouble. Gren and Sorgrad would have been in the thick of it.
    '--only Old Mayet had a fit of the vapours at the thought of strife,' Quenel continued contemptuously.
    Tathrin breathed a sigh of relief. He must thank the aged stonemason on their return to Triolle.
    'You'd think the old fool would show more concern for goodwives and widows making