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of war - I will not be punished or even sanctioned for my actions."
"You'll never see Captains' Council. You'll die with my teeth in your throat."
"Perhaps." Aouel studied him with an even look and said, "But you are bound
and I am free. Yours is the throat you should be worrying about." He shrugged
and turned to those who had helped him put together the coup. "Any sign from
the House?"
"Not yet."
He nodded and stripped off his dagger and belt, then his shirt and boots. When
he stood in his breeches alone, he said, "In a moment, I'll either be back or
dead. If I die, kill the prisoner, then leave by the front gate."
Then he walked toward Galweigh House's great main door, his heart pounding in
his chest. It was easy enough to say the words, "I'll either be back or dead,"
but harder to make himself walk forward knowing that they were true, and that
a crossbow quarrel might sprout from his chest in the next instant.
He held his hands up, palm forward. He was stripped of his weapons, stripped
of everything but a pair of broadcloth pants and a gold Tonn medallion that
hung around his neck.
As a pilot in a position of trust, he had known most of the old Galweigh codes
and signals. He remembered them - but they were old. If Galweigh House had new
codes, and new guards, he could only hope that someone among them might
remember the old ones. Or that someone might recognize him and believe what he
had to say.
Kait, crouched at one of the crossbow slits beside Dughall and Ian, listened
to the fighting in the landing field die down.
"Betrayal from inside the ranks," Dughall said, and managed a thin chuckle.
"Even if we're unlucky and the enemy wins, we won't have as many to fight."
"We'll know one way or the other soon enough." Ian stood and raised his
crossbow, and Kait heard him carefully slowing his breathing. She looked
through her narrow access across the ragged field, and saw what he was
watching - a man, stripped to nothing but pants, his empty hands held
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high in the air, walking toward them.
Her eyes were better than Ian's - her Karnee vision picked up details his
purely human eyes could not. By the weak light of the stars. she could see his
Rophetian braids, the amulet to Tonn around his neck, the puckered flesh of
the old scar that ran the length of the left side of his chest.
She said, "Lower, your weapon, Ian. I know him." "That you know a man does not
mean that he is your friend," Dughall said. "Vincalis - "
Kait cut him off. "Vincalis didn't know Aouel. I do. If he approaches, he does
so as a friend."
"Aouel?" Dughall pursed his lips. "I would be inclined to trust him, at least
to a parley. Do you see any behind him who have their weapons aimed at
him,.not at us?" "No," Kait said.
"I can't see anyone out there at all," Ian muttered. "Except the one who walks
toward us - and him
I can barely make out."
Kait watched him lower his crossbow. "I don't envy you your eyesight." She
kept her own pointed at the ground and said, "So do we let him in, or go out
to meet him?"
"I think we let him stand with his belly to a crossbow and talk through the
slit," Ian said.
Dughall said, "I agree with Ian. Let's hear what he has to say be-:ore we make
any compromises. I
could get Ulwe, I suppose. She could read his intentions as he came toward us,
and perhaps those of the soldiers in the field." Kait nodded. "Get her."
Ulwe, Alcie, and Aide's two children hid in the first siege room, behind a
secret panel in the wall just behind the great entry. The room had probably
been intended originally as a place where the owner could position a platoon
of his soldiers when he didn't trust his visitors, but the Galweighs, always
secure in their own power, had never needed to use it in that manner. It had
been, for them, the first of many secret rooms filled with food, water,
armaments, and other necessary supplies - and the first of many rooms the
conquering Sabirs had stripped bare.
Dughall left, and returned a moment later, the little girl following him
closely. Without saying a word, she crouched and closed her eyes, and her body
went rigid with the effort of her concentration.
"He hopes you will recall the old codes," she said softly, "because he has no
way of knowing the new ones. He planned this . . . trick. He overcame my
father. They have him bound in the tall grass, surrounded by soldiers. He's
very angry." She sounded so sad, speaking of her father held prisoner by the
men he'd thought would help him win her back. "Your friend will bring you no
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