Inda (54 page)

Tlennen sat down. “Sindan’s? How is that?”

The Harskialdna started to pour another drink, then set down glass and bottle. “I don’t want the fumes clouding my head.” He paced across the rug and back again. “You know how I chased shadows all summer. You know that your son . . . wished to ride east with his own wing.”

“Was his reasoning sound, or was it just boredom?”

The quick look from the Harskialdna’s dark eyes was more revealing than the words that followed. “Boredom, and the wish to flush the enemy. Bring them to a fight. He went ahead. I followed more slowly, along the great road. I kept looking for outriders, signs of an army. They knew we were coming. I sent my scouts ahead to find them.” He looked out the window, frowning, then turned. “Sindan caught up with me. He heard the reports while studying the map. Waited until he and I were alone, and he said, ‘I don’t like this situation. The heir is now an easy target.’ I said, ‘For what? We are here in empty land—they have abandoned their homes, their fields and farms, even their villages. ’ He asked permission to send Runners out, not ahead as I had done, but out in orthogonals. I said I had already split my force more than I thought right, and so he sent his own Runners not east, as I had done, but northeast, southeast, all along Runner tracks, not the main roads. He kept urging me in private to greater speed, kept studying the map.”

He paused, and the king said nothing.

The Harskialdna looked down at his hands, the nails on his thumbs raw and chewed as they had been from time to time when they were young. He picked at the calloused skin on one thumb as he said, “One by one his Runners returned, reporting nothing. Nothing. Nothing, until the one from the southeast came back. He found signs of a mighty gathering in a valley against the mountains. To make sure he waylaid one of their Runners on the way south and got the plan out of him: the Idayagans had formed an army which was hiding in a river valley hard against the Mountains of Ghaeldraeth and were ready to spring a trap from the south and east to capture the heir. They planned to sweep west from there and meet me at the Ghael River with Aldren’s head on a pike they did not even know how to use.”

Though the king had known about that plan—and how close it came to success—since the day Sindan first discovered it, his gut still tightened against a cold pooling of fear.

“So my son rode unheeding straight into danger, then.”

The Harskialdna raised a hand. “Yes, but he figured out their trap before they could close it. It is I who did not suspect any such trap. Sindan also figured it out. No honest or straightforward battle, appointed beforehand. It could hardly be called fighting. But it would have worked if Sindan had not discovered them. So I gave the order to abandon camp and charge. I had—I had death in my heart.”

He turned around, a purposeless movement, then said, “And so we were in time. And—your son and his boys, they fought well against those uncountable numbers.” The king wondered what he had meant to say. “But the victory was Sindan’s. So I listen to the shouts of
Harskialdna Sigun
and preside over the victory sword dances, but it is a sham.”

The king said, “No. You gave the right orders when it was the most necessary. That is required of a Harskialdna. It is also required you listen to your scouts when you do not have enough information.”

Anderle-Harskialdna stood there, his breathing audible, his chin raised as if he listened to someone outside and far away.

“You are also not done,” the king said. “Those people in the north do not think like us, and you have learned they do not fight like us. So they will probably test us, despite the treaty. They will look for weakness. We have to be strong. Sindan acted correctly, and you did too. Now you must appear to know
everything
. You cannot seem uncertain, or they will worry at us forever, distracting us from our real purpose, which is to strengthen their borders against the Venn, who have now cut us off from the rest of the world.”

The king studied his brother closely while he spoke, and it was apparent that Anderle had not known about the sea embargo. It was also clear that something else was disturbing him.

The king rose and touched his brother’s shoulder. “I fear I have further news.” Anderle’s head jerked up. “Bad news, yes. The embargo includes every ship that carries any Iascan goods, and they are killing any Marlovans they find in the crews. Your son Barend has been lost at sea.”

Anderle’s mouth tightened. Then he said, “If he died with honor, if he died fighting the Venn—”

“We know nothing more than their ship was put to flame. Either the Venn, or the pirates who are apparently in the service of the Venn, attacked it, and I am told that the usual practice of pirates is to burn captured ships with everyone on board. Of course, he might have jumped into the sea.”

Anderle opened a hand. According to the histories, sometimes humans did that and drowned but other times, apparently, they were taken by those who lived undersea. But they returned again so rarely one might as well say never.

Tlennen saw no real grief in his brother’s face, just anger, frustration, another disappointment. “We have the victory supper ahead of us. Or is there anything more?”

The Harskialdna breathed out slowly, twitched his chewed fingers, then faced his brother. “No. There is nothing more. If you consider this battle a success, then I will as well.”

“I do. You brought back a treaty. You and I have private reservations, but one thing I have learned from reading the records of our forefathers is that long-sighted kings always have reservations, but they know better than to show them. Part of winning battles is up here.” He touched his head. “If they believe us unbeatable, they may or may not try us, but they’ll expect to be beaten.”

Anderle’s face eased. “That makes sense.”

“Preside. Take pride. Be seen presiding and taking pride. It is only the beginning. The real war will happen when the Venn come, and everyone will be looking to you. My part, it seems, is to see that we will be equipped for battle, a job for which I am best prepared. You are best prepared to lead, and to win.”

Anderle struck his heart with his palm and then left.

 

 

 

Jarls converged on the torch-lit city from all over the kingdom, not just for New Year’s Convocation but to hear the news firsthand. Some came to meet sons who had been sent to battle; there were those whose sons had not returned, and there would be drums at First Night held in their honor, the first being for Manther Jaya-Vayir.

Queen Wisthia, loathing the smell of those ever-burning torches, withdrew to her rooms after her obligatory appearance at First Night’s supper, windows and doors shut, musicians playing soft music to drown out the never ending thunder of drums, the shouts and clashes of steel and wood ringing day and night during the eight days of New Year’s. She did not want to see her sons wielding steel, or dodging it.

She did not want to hear the tight, pain-laden, tear-repressed breathing of Ndara-Harandviar. Every day since autumn that brought no further messages from the harbors had increased Ndara’s conviction that the Venn had killed Barend. Hadand sat with her, in compassionate silence.

And so Tlennen-Harvaldar sat alone in the stands on Third Night—Debt Day in the rest of the south—which was when a few invited academy boys performed their evolutions.

Tlennen-Harvaldar watched Evred riding as captain. As heralds and chosen guards along the walls drummed, the boys rode in formation, miming a wing at the gallop, splitting into two flights to attack, then reforming, wheeling; gallop, split, sword-drill against the opponents, reform, wheel.

Evred, well into his sixteenth year, was gaining height. His dark red hair was modestly pulled back into the club of the younger boys, but it suited the clean bones of his face, emphasizing the strength one could see emerging, his high, intelligent brow. The king watched Evred’s smooth handling of his mount, the clean strike and block of his sword work. Nothing brilliant, but strong, assured. Not for Evred the vicious competition ending in blood and broken bones that entertained so many spectators. Evred’s style was something new, boring to those who had come from a distance and did not recognize the connection straight back to the summer academy game several years before. The king saw the connection, though, and contemplated how his son had taken Indevan Algara-Vayir’s little-boy gesture of rebellion in the uniting of the scrubs during the shoeing and had trained these same boys to be loyal to him.

No, not to him. There was something different about that bond, something not exclusive, the way the royal heir closed out everyone but his chosen Sier-Danas, but inclusive. The Sierlaef had made himself the center of his group. Evred seemed to have as center some obscure idea, if not an ideal: the others did not move around him like moons around a sun, but they all moved together, a chain of shared effort.

The king sighed softly. The evolution finished with a loud thunder of drums and a trumpet call, echoing in blended chords up the frozen stone. Then they rode out, breath from human and horse puffing white in the frigid air, and the younger boys ran in for their display—including many of the second class of Tveis, invited here just for this exhibition—most glancing up to see if their families were watching.

The king was aware of the gesture of contempt that the Sierlaef and his friends made to their siblings by not sitting in the stands. It was probably inevitable. They had seen battle. No longer did they care for academy games, and they were too young yet to yearn for those carefree academy days, never again to return.

The king turned to look for his brother.

The Harskialdna had been working hard these past few days, rising before dawn, seeing to reports, speaking to every one of the Jarls and their heirs, to dragoon captains, to Runners. He never seemed to rest; and though he did preside, and smile, and even dance the sword dance to the roaring approval of the Jarls, there was still something wrong.

The Harskialdna did not see his brother’s searching eyes. He had chosen a vantage by the stable yard archway, where he could observe both the evolutions and the Sierlaef, who stood with three or four of his followers, making loud comments as the academy boys rode past.

Or rather, Buck Marlo-Vayir led the comments. The Sierlaef wasn’t paying the boys any attention. His head was canted upward toward the stands.

The Harskialdna frowned. There was Jarend, old and gray and lined. His son next to him, academy-trained and responsive to the Harskialdna, steady and unambitious; and next to him this girl who did not flirt. Did not smile at anyone but her own family. Her straight back, her quiet hands, the deep corners at either side of her smile, all drew the eye, especially his nephew’s, but she did not respond.

No, the problem did not lie with Tanrid or his Joret.

The problem lay with the Sierlaef.

The Harskialdna frowned now at his wild colt of a nephew, who had avoided talking to him ever since their triumphant return from the north, and he had to find out why. The boy couldn’t possibly know that if it hadn’t been for Jened Sindan, he and his friends would all probably be ghosts drifting through fog-wreathed nights on the northern meadows.

It was Sindan himself who had insisted that only the king be told. The next day he was gone, leaving the conquerors to follow more slowly behind him. Yet the boy had not spoken to his uncle once during that long journey, except when he had to.

 

 

 

The Sierlaef had not been brooding about the dramatic rescue that had turned imminent defeat into triumph. He never gave the rescue a thought beyond that first surge of relief; of course his uncle had somehow found out and came rushing in. That was what a Harskialdna was supposed to do.

What he brooded about was the early part of that battle.

Tanrid Algara-Vayir could have told everyone that it was he who had commanded until the Harskialdna showed up with the main force. But at all the victory dances he sat apart, grieving over the double loss of his Runner and his cousin Manther Jaya-Vayir.

The Sierlaef knew Tanrid by now. He wouldn’t strut. He simply didn’t care what anyone thought. Tanrid was smart, he was loyal, and he could command. And the future king could not disabuse himself of the truth: he would one day be king, yet he really didn’t know how to command an army in the field.

And whose fault was that? The Sierlaef glared at his uncle. He’d been told for years that he’d had the best training in the kingdom, that in the future it would be he who would command with Buck Marlo-Vayir at his side to see to logistics, like the kings of old—and yet when they came at last to real war, he couldn’t do it.

The inescapable conclusion was that his uncle thought that someone would command for him after all. He would wear the crown and wave the sword, but others would really command. Who? Not his little brother. His uncle had seen to that. Buck Marlo-Vayir? At that battle Buck hadn’t been any better at command than the Sierlaef himself.

Tanrid Algara-Vayir? No, because he was about—

The royal heir glared up at Tanrid, who sat beside his beautiful soon-to-be wife watching the little boys down in the court. Tanrid was about to ride home. Forever. And by his side would be—

The Sierlaef didn’t notice his sixteen-year-old brother passing not six paces away, almost as tall as he was, or Buck’s teasing of his own Tvei, who had shot up to Buck’s height. He never saw the stricken face of Ivandred, Manther’s Tvei, lurking around hoping the Sier-Danas would talk more about Manther. He looked up at Joret because he couldn’t bear not to, knowing that she would only be here a few more days, and then would go home. Forever. He would never see her again. Ever. Princesses stayed at home.

No, he couldn’t
bear
that. He
had
to find a way to see her. Just once. To be alone with her, once, just once, just the two of them, which was impossible here. Short of riding to Choraed Elgaer, he couldn’t—