C. Dale Brittain (31 page)

“You realize, Roric,” she said, pushing herself up on an elbow, “that in trying to learn who your father is, you have never asked who your mother might have been.”

She felt him shrug.
 
“Some girl from one of the manors—probably not even a royal manor.
 
Hadros lets his serving-maids keep their babes, but on some of the poorer manors they dread an extra mouth to feed—or even a bastard child growing up to challenge the rightful heir to the inheritance.”

“But you weren’t just any baby.
 
The queen herself raised you as an infant.
 
Do you think you might have been hers?”

Roric sat up abruptly at that.
 
“The get of Hadros’s queen and—whom?
 
Another of the Fifty Kings?
 
One of the warriors?
 
Gizor?
 
He may have been a more handsome man in his youth.
 
But no, Karin.
 
Hadros would never have raised another man’s son as his own.”

“But you weren’t raised as his own,” she said reasonably.
 
“Valmar is the heir.
 
And if he is your half-brother as well as your foster-brother, then there is even more reason to rescue him.”

He flopped back down again.
 
“If Hadros learned his wife had been gotten with child by another man, he would have killed first the baby, then her.”

“Maybe so,” she said uncertainly.
 
“But I, the last few years, have usually been able to talk Hadros around.
 
Perhaps his queen could do the same.”

“You have not been able to talk him around on marrying me instead of Valmar.”

Karin did not answer, thinking glumly that he was right.
 
Roric’s father, whom he so wanted to find, was doubtless a housecarl somewhere—except that the child of a serving-maid and a housecarl would not be expected to be found with a little bone charm.

“And do not be so sure,” added Roric, “that Valmar himself would have no intention of marrying you if he came back alive.
 
He is not like you and me, Karin.
 
We grew up as outsiders in the only castle we considered home.
 
For years I had nothing and no one I could trust.
 
For the last two years I have had my stallion, and the last few months you—even if you
do
insist on stealing ships without consulting me,” giving her a squeeze, a smile in his voice.
 
“But Valmar has always known that he is heir to a kingdom, and had, whenever he was hurt or frightened, the support of his big sister—you.
 
He grew up with the knowledge that he had a high destiny waiting.
 
Little surprise then that he should go to find adventure with the lords of voima, to seek to do something glorious to win your love, so that when he is king he will still have you beside him.”

“I never felt I could count on Valmar the way you seem to feel you can count on Goldmane,” Karin replied somewhat stiffly, “because he
is
just a boy.
 
But if he needs me I have to help him.
 
I do intend to go to the Wanderers’ realm to rescue him, and I would feel much better if you were beside
me.
”

“I was going to suggest you and I go solve the Wanderers’ problems for them,” Roric said quietly, “then live on together in their realm of endless summer, but you do not seem interested.”

“In the meantime,” she said, “let us stay here through tomorrow to rest Goldmane, before we decide if we are going on or doubling back.”
 
She stroked his forehead and began to kiss him again, wishing that they did not have to run, wishing there were other options than the ones they had, that it could be only she and Roric together.

She spent the next day helping with the chores on the manor while Roric spent much of the day asleep.

It felt surprisingly comforting to be doing again the tasks that she had always done at Hadros’s castle, cooking, milking, drawing water from the well, sweeping, weaving, churning the butter.
 
And her work drew a compliment.
 
“Your manor must have been well regulated, since your mother taught you so well.”
 
The woman smiled as she spoke; she had been smiling all day.

Karin remembered that she was supposed to have had a mother until a few days before.
 
“Yes.
 
We were a smaller manor than this one.
 
It’s nothing but ash and scorched timber now.”
 
There were only a few maids and a handful of housecarls here, yet the woman and her husband seemed to farm an enormous number of acres, with flocks scattered across the distant fells.

“I do not think you will be troubled by those raiders again,” said the woman quietly, looking out across her lands.
 
“If anyone pursues you, they will find much to impede them.”

“Do
you
ever have trouble here with raiders?” asked Karin.

“Not since I came to live here.
 
But then almost no one travels these roads, because we are far from the sea and not on the way to anywhere that could not be reached more easily by ship.”

Karin thought that she and Roric would doubtless have to cross several more kingdoms before reaching the Hot-River Mountains.
 
“Isn’t it lonely here?”

“Only occasionally.
 
I have my children, my husband, and those who serve us.
 
It is enough.”
 
The women paused for a moment, then added quickly, “But I have been very happy to have you here today.
 
I would like to make you a guest-gift before you leave—would you accept a mare to ride, so that your warrior’s stallion need not carry you both?”

“Why yes!” said Karin, flustered.
 
“I mean, that is too generous!
 
I could not promise ever to return your horse to you.”

The women gave a faint smile, as if in reaction to something Karin had not said.
 
“I would be honored to have you take a mare from me.
 
And do not worry—her pace will not slow your journey.”

Karin lifted the lid from the churn and reached in carefully to take the new butter from the buttermilk.
 
“Your warrior,” asked the woman casually, meeting Karin’s eyes for one second, “is he also your lover?”

She found herself blushing.
 
“Yes, he is,” she said, turning away to wrap the butter in cheesecloth.
 
It was pointless to lie.

“I thought he might be,” said the woman without any particular expression in her voice, neither satisfaction at having her guess confirmed nor condemnation.
 
“Otherwise you would not have dared flee alone with him, raiders or no raiders.”

Karin held her breath, wondering what else this woman with the sky-blue eyes had guessed.

“If even a high-born woman needs to take a warrior to her bed to earn herself a little safety in this world,” the woman continued, staring off across the hills where her own husband and the sheep had gone, “do you not think it time women found a source of strength of their own?”

Then she did not doubt the story of the raiders on the coast after all, Karin thought.
 
“Women have strengths, certainly,” she answered, thinking of Queen Arane.
 
“We can manipulate men, use their own strength against them, because they sometimes concentrate so hard on action that women can outthink them.”

The woman turned her disconcerting eyes suddenly toward her.
 
“That is not enough,” she said, almost fiercely.
 
“We need to outfight them on their own terms, not just ours.”
 
She slowly began to smile again.
 
“And our time may come, may come sooner than any man has looked for it.”

2

The Wanderers taught Valmar how to fight all over again.

He, along with all the young men in Hadros’s castle, had learned from Gizor One-hand and grown to expect that in a real fight he would do more than hold his own.
 
The one time last year, when Hadros had come himself into the ring with him—it was shortly before the king had broken his leg—and had flattened him with a practice sword in thirty seconds, he attributed to his own unwillingness to attack his father all out.

“But I thought from what you said that I already had awesome powers here,” he objected when one of the enormous white beings explained to him the program for his training.

“You do,” said the Wanderer, turning the face on him that Valmar could not bear to look at for more than a second.
 
“But that does not mean you are indestructible.
 
The body must be made to serve the mind and spirit.
 
Your powers are much greater than in mortal realms, but the forces against which we fight could still overcome you if you were unprepared.”

They gave him a long series of exercises to do and often seemed to be hovering just beyond his vision while he worked, and frequently they asked him how his training was proceeding or gave him additional exercises.
 
He labored, sweating:
 
lifting logs, pulling himself up onto branches by his arms, running for miles to improve his wind, striking again and again with a stick against a tree.
 
The leaves of the tree were streaked with yellow, but they did not fall.
 
The cows watched him, pulling uneasily at the grass as though they did not like the flavor, and lowing querulously.

When he had done these exercises for what might have been weeks, they gave him an opponent, someone who had the appearance of a man but seemed to have no knowledge of anything but fighting.
 
He spoke very little if at all, and when he was not fighting he stood stiff and awkward, staring at nothing, but when he stepped into the practice ring with Valmar he came alive, fighting as though berserk, needing multiple blows to the head to slow him down.

The red sunset sky burned constantly above him, and Valmar quickly lost track of how many cycles of eating and sleeping had passed since he came here.
 
But his arms were finally gaining the prominent muscles he had always admired in Roric, and his beard was coming in full at last.

His father’s castle had begun to seem very far away even though this manor did not yet seem like home.
 
He wondered, running panting through the fields, how he could have assumed for so many years that he would simply grow to manhood and gradually take over the kingdom from his father without ever having gone for adventure.

And he wanted
real
adventure, not just southern booty, even though he had trouble defining in his own mind what was the difference.
 
He sang the old songs over to himself as he threw a ball against a wall, faster and faster, and tried to knock it with his sword as it flew back toward him.
 
He did hope his real challenges would begin soon.
 
Except for the sunset sky, this manor sometimes threatened to become no more awe-inspiring, no more thrilling of voima, than being back home.

And when he came in tired, and the housecarls took him to the bath house where the stones were already steaming and afterwards served him juicy meat and white bread, he sometimes found himself wishing that he was serving Karin here, rather than the Wanderers.
 
There were no women at the manor at all, and he wondered somewhat uneasily if this was another part of his training.

But when one of the great shining beings came to talk to him his heart always pounded and he looked away, trying unsuccessfully not to blush, both wondering how someone as lowly and unskilled as himself could possibly serve the lords of voima and wildly grateful to fate that he had been given the opportunity.

He tried to express this one evening—except that it was always evening—to one of the Wanderers, the one who had brought him here.
 
As he associated with them more he was beginning to be able to distinguish them, at least a little.