“The guards didn’t ask,” Derry said contemptuously, raising his head in defiance. “Besides, my messages were not intended for guards. I was on my way to Duke Ewan’s army in the north, on king’s business. I stumbled on your encampment quite by mistake.”

“Aye, ’tis indeed a mistake, lad,” Campbell murmured, his eyes sweeping Derry suspiciously. “Ye were taken whilst prowling around the edge of the camp, ye lied to the men who asked your identity, killed a soldier who tried to take you into custody. And ye have no credentials or messages on you, nothing to indicate that you are what you say you are, and not a spy. I think that you are a spy. What’s your name, lad?”

“I am not a spy. I am a royal envoy. And my name and my messages are not for your ears!” Derry said hotly. “When the king finds out how you have treated—”

In a flash, Campbell was on his knees beside Derry, his hand twisted in the neck of Derry’s mail and pulling it choking-tight as he stared his captive in the face.

“You will not speak to me in that tone, young spy! And if you hope to see a ripe old age, which appears unlikely the more ye talk, ye’d best hold yer tongue unless you have civil words upon it! Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Derry winced as the man tightened his grip on the mail, biting back a smoking retort that surely would have been the end of him, if he had voiced it. With a slight inclination of his head, he signaled his acquiescence and took a deep breath as the man released his throat. Even as he wondered what he was going to do next, Campbell took that decision out of his hands.

“We’ll take him to his lordship,” he said, getting to his feet with a sigh. “I have nae the time to fool with him. Mayhap the Lord’s Deryni friends can weasel the truth out of him.”

As his words sank in, Derry was dragged to his feet and herded along a muddy path toward the center of the camp. There were questioning looks as they went, and several times Derry thought he saw faces turn toward him with near-recognition in their eyes. But no one approached them, and Derry was too busy trying to stay on his feet to look at anyone too closely. Besides, it didn’t much matter whether he was recognized now or not. Bran Coris would know him instantly, and what he was about. Nor was the reference to Bran’s Deryni allies comforting.

They skirted a sparse grove of oaks to emerge in the headquarters area, where a splendid tent of royal blue and white dominated the center of a broad patch of velvet green. Other tents of only slightly lesser size and splendor surrounded the central area, their brilliant colors and standards vying with one another for attention. Not far away, the wash of the great Cardosa River ran its swollen course across the plain, the water high and muddy-brown in this run-off season.