Dragons and Destiny (12 page)

Xavier sat
still and quiet during the ceremony, his speculative gaze set on
one figure, Elliot’s sister, the fourteen year old Susan who was
standing beside Kellessa Anne Fullarton as she listened to her
brother speak his vows.

Xavier’s
thoughts were dark as pitch. He would never be a king, so be it,
but if he couldn’t be a king in name, the next best thing would be
to be the power behind the throne. He had in recent years been
bending his energies to making this happen.

His original
plan had been to marry his wife’s cousin Beth to Elliot and once an
heir had been produced, to dispose of his nephew Elliot and also
his brother Paul. He knew as well as the next man that his father
the King was ill and on his death he would have become regent for
the baby king. Beth had died in that stupid accident and he had
failed in his bid to replace her with her younger sister. Now
however, he had Conclave approval for the marriage of Beth’s
brother to young Susan, next in line to the throne after his nephew
Elliot, His mind was working hard as he thought out a new plan to
dispose of all the impediments between Susan and the throne.

I have to find
a way to get rid of my brother and that young upstart standing
there. Perhaps I should just kill the lot of them including the
three girls. Then I will be the Prince-Heir. Young Elliot shouldn’t
be too difficult. He goes away tomorrow on that ill-advised ‘Grand
Tour’ of his. An accident shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange.
Not in the islands, he’ll be too well guarded but once he is in
Argyll it will be a different story. Yes, nephew first, then the
others.

Xavier knew
that if he eliminated his brother and nieces first Elliot would be
summoned home and felt sure that the King would insist on his
grandson marrying immediately.

That young brat
will probably get her pregnant on their wedding night and all my
planning will come to naught just to spite me. Elliot must never
set foot in Murdoch again.

Xavier sat
making his plans, his well-schooled face devoid of emotion and
giving out no inkling of his thoughts, or so he thought.

There were two
men in the congregation who were paying little attention to the
service. They were watching Xavier. The Lord Marshall was one.
Peter Duchesne was sitting near the front. He had a very clear view
of the Prince-Duke and what he saw filled him with a great deal of
disquiet. Baron Peter Ross also watched and vowed that he would
protect Elliot even if it meant he had to give up his life. Lost in
his dreams and plans Xavier was unaware of their scrutiny. He rose
from his seat and left the chapel. He did not attend the
celebrations that followed. He had other fish to fry.

* * * * *

Elliot

The lengthy
cavalcade encompassing the Prince-Heir, his Companions, retinue to
the islands and servants left the palace early next morning to the
accompaniment of noisy farewells.

If Elliot felt
that the bodyguard were riding rather too close for comfort he said
nothing. He didn’t attach any significance to it. It was only later
that he began to wonder and mentioned the fact to James Cocteau who
was as usual riding beside him. The latter laughed it off in his
usual happy-go-lucky fashion.

Baron Philip
Ross and Kellen Derek Merriman remained close too. Philip had taken
Derek into his confidence and had told him of the Lord Marshall’s
concerns about the safety of their Prince.

Derek hadn’t
laughed away the danger.

* * * * *

At the same
time as the royal frigate raised her anchor at Port Duchesne,
another, smaller ship was also leaving the shores of Murdoch.

It was a
merchantman, the
Dalinabell,
bound for Argyll with a cargo
of sand, the special desert sand much sought after for glassmaking
and in short supply on the northern continent. The merchantman
often carried passengers. This morning she set sail with two.

The Skipper had
been in two minds whether to take them or not. There was something
not quite right about them. At a cursory glance they looked normal
enough. Their clothes were not new but they were of quality. This
was not unusual, merchants often bought clothing discarded by the
nobility, there was a lucrative trade in such garments. Court
fashion tended to change quickly. The men’s collars were just that
wee bit too long, the lace round their necks too flamboyant. It was
not their attire that aroused his suspicions or their accents. They
spoke in a dialect common to central Murdoch. It was their belts
that aroused the Skipper’s interest. They were swordsmen’s belts.
The marks left by the missing weapons were visible and the Skipper
was an observant man. He wondered who they really were and what
they were up to.

When he named
the price for the journey the two didn’t attempt to haggle. The
Skipper nearly threw them back on to the wharf on the spot. Any
bona fide merchant would have haggled down to the last quarter-bit
and the price he had quoted was over two times the usual fare. He
shrugged his shoulders and took their coin.

“Cabin’s small
but the bunks are bug free,” he said. “Food is included in the
price.”

“We have
brought our own food,” said the taller of the two.

“Suit yourself,
no skin off my nose. What’s your business in Argyll? If it is
illegal then over the side you go. I’m an honest seafarer.”

“We’re
merchants,” said the shorter, younger man.

“You’re no more
merchants than I’m the King of Murdoch, God Bless His Majesty.”

“Just forget
about us being aboard,” said the taller one, stepping forward and
showing the Skipper what he held in his hand. “Perhaps if we triple
the amount already agreed upon it might aid you with your
forgetting.”

“Done,” said
the Skipper.

* * * * *

Wylie was
perhaps the busiest harbour on the northern continent. Only Port
Lutterell could rival it for size and it would provide the two men
with their best chance of getting into Argyll unobserved. This was
why the two had taken passage with a merchantman going to Wylie
other than one of the passenger ships. Ships using the smaller
harbours attracted more attention from the customs officials but at
Wylie, an extremely busy cargo port, the officials were
overworked.

The
Dalinabell
was well known at Wylie. The customs man who
boarded her greeted the Skipper as an old friend and gave the cargo
manifest a less than detailed perusal.

“Any
passengers?” he asked.

“No,” lied the
Skipper.

The official
noted ‘passengers nil’ in his log book.

The official
was still in sight, but disappearing when the two men appeared on
deck.

“We’ll be off
then Captain,” said the older one. “My thanks for a pleasant
journey.”

“Where you
heading?” asked the Skipper.

“Inland,” the
older man said, waving his arm northwards.

The Skipper was
sure the man was lying. The second mate called out and the Skipper
turned to see what he wanted. He did not see the two pick up their
bags and walk to the sally port. When he turned round they were
gone.

He stifled the
feeling of unease and got down to the onerous work of divesting his
ship of her sandy cargo.

* * * * *

Hilla

It was at noon
break when the letter arrived. It was handed to Juvenis (First Year
Officer Trainee) Hilla Talansdochter by the stern faced drill
sergeant. Hilla was not the only one to receive a letter that day,
not by any means, nor was she surprised to receive one. Her sister
Zilla wrote regularly, at least once a tenday and her elder sisters
who lived in Stewarton took turn and turn about to write each
month.

She glanced at
the envelope and started.
Rilla’s writing by all that’s
wonderful.
Hilla suppressed a thrill of excitement; this was
the first letter the middle triplet had sent since her
vadeln-pairing with Zawlei and their departure for Vada. This was a
treat that she had been looking forward to ever since she had heard
the amazing news.

The contents of
the letter from Zilla telling her about Rilla had been a shock to
the eldest triplet. If she was honest with herself, Hilla had never
thought Rilla would have had it in her to accept the challenge of a
Lind life-pairing and leave home to become a soldier. In point of
fact, Hilla had been a tad jealous, after had it not always been
she, Hilla who was the boldest of the three? She was the one who
had joined the army. Why, Rilla had never expressed the slightest
preference for such work and now there she was at Vada learning how
to become a soldier.

The fit of
jealousy hadn’t lasted long. She loved her triplet sister, the
three of them were closer than ordinary sisters - these ties
nothing could sever. The jealousy had disappeared to be replaced
with pride and an interest in what Rilla was doing.

Zilla’s second
letter after the event had contained a bit more information - about
their father’s anger and of Talan’s trying to put Zilla into
Rilla’s place as the wife of Councillor Horatio Ander’s son.

‘
Father has
disowned Rilla,’
Zilla had written,
‘and has forbidden me to
write to her but she said before she and Zawlei left that she was
going to write to you. Please write back to me telling me how she
fares.’

Now Rilla had
written a letter and Hilla couldn’t wait to read it. She bit her
lip in frustration. The eldest triplet knew that she wouldn’t be
able to anytime soon. After the noon meal she and the other Juvenis
had classes to attend, classes that would keep them busy until
Seventh Bell.

She took the
letter with a word of thanks and tucked it inside her uniform
tunic.

Like the other
infantry officers in training within the Garda Academie Hilla’s
uniform was navy blue. Cavalry, both heavy and light, wore dark
green.

Thought Hilla
as she finished her meal and began to gather up her plates and
cutlery; if Rilla had been so bent on adventure why hadn’t she come
to Settlement, joined the cavalry and then they could have been
together? Then she remembered Zilla’s words.

‘…
it all
came as a tremendous shock to our sister but I’m sure she’ll do
well and be happy with her Zawlei. One day you must meet him. He’s
a most magnificent creature.’

One day,
thought Hilla,
I will.
She put her dirty plates and cutlery
in the correct slots on the trolleys, which once full the kitchen
boys would wheel to the kitchens.

She turned to
her great friend amongst the Juvenis who had also received a
letter. Jen Durand looked none too happy because like Hilla she
would have to wait some bells before she could begin to read too.
Her sister’s first child was due any day and Jen was anxious for
news.

Both year
groups of the officers in training, the Juvenis of the First Year
Staticum and the Senis of the Second Year Staticum lived their days
according to a rigid timetable. For the Juvenis the pre-noon bells
were dedicated to class work, the afternoon bells to physical
lessons. In the Second Staticum year this was reversed.

“Come on Jen,”
said Hilla. “We’ll be late and what will Leftenant Hallam do if we
are? Fatigue duty for the next tenday if we’re lucky and more if
we’re not.”

Jen allowed
Hilla to steer her out of the refectory.

“You know well
enough he’s not likely to come down on us that hard. Even a blind
man could see that he’s taken with you.”

“You’re
imagining things,” said an embarrassed Hilla, a flush searing her
hot cheeks.

“He does, he
does,” teased Jen. “He finds you
most
attractive.”

“Rubbish,” hot
coals wouldn’t have made Hilla admit that she found the handsome
young Leftenant equally interesting. “Don’t be a vuz,” she added in
a cross voice, cheeks beginning to return to normal.

The two, with
the other forty-six Juvenis were by now marching towards the
practice buildings. Their practice armour was stored there in an
old ramshackle building, once, rumour had it, it had been the
meeting hall of the earliest settlers.

Hilla reached a
long arm to the rack and pulled hers down with a grunt. The armour
the Garda wore was comfortable but not light.

Back in the
first days after landing and faced with annihilation, the settlers
had looked back to the history books for inspiration about how to
protect themselves in a battle. The Garda armour was the result. It
was loosely based on the Roman Legionaries of first century Earth.
It hadn’t changed much during the intervening centuries although
the short Roman ‘skirt’ had been replaced by leather trousers with
thigh and shin plates. The Garda continued to fight with the short
Roman sword, carried the long shield, fought in formation and
drilled endlessly in the different manoeuvres that had made the
legions so effective in ancient times.

Today the
Juvenis were to train with pikes and not the sword or javelin that
Hilla loved. Armour on, she and Jen marched out to the practice
field where Drill Sergeant Jillson was waiting for then, the racks
containing the pikes at his side.

Hilla hated the
pike. Carrying it made her arms ache. The trick with pikes was the
ability of the pike-squad to keep the pikes doing exactly the same
thing at exactly the same time. Unfortunately the pikes had a
tendency to do exactly the opposite. The command ‘about turn’ was
often the one that spelt doom for trainee pike-men and pike-women.
Last time they had practiced Hilla had committed the ultimate sin.
The unwieldy pike had slipped out of her hand as she had slammed
the base into the ground prior to turning. It had wobbled for a
moment or two then toppled to the ground, threatening to knock out
if not kill her fellow squad members.