Kings of the North (17 page)

O
n the night of the dinner, the two princesses and their guardians appeared at opposite ends of the passage and stopped, obviously startled to see one another. The princesses, Kieri noted, looked surprised but delighted; their guardians glared.

He made the welcome speech he’d planned and then led the way into the dining room. With most of the Council gone for the summer, Kieri had invited others to fill out the table, including off-duty King’s Squires. He hoped seeing the women Squires in formal garb would convince the princesses’ guardians that they were well-bred, proper ladies as well as Knights of Falk and King’s Squires.

Formal attire for women had never caught Kieri’s interest; he had seen a lot of it since being crowned, but knew he understood little of the covert messages sent by the length and cut of a sleeve, the width and draping of a skirt, the amount and placement of lace.

On his right hand, Elis of Pargun wore pale blue, and on his left hand, Ganlin of Kostandan wore pale green. They faced each other across the wide table; somewhat to Kieri’s surprise they were not eyeing each other with jealous speculation.

Countess Settik had already complained about the seating, insisting that Elis should sit beside Kieri at the head of the table, that no proper banquet could be given with one long table instead of a
U-shaped arrangement, the head table seating at least five. Then she had tried to insist that she sit next to Elis, “as is only decent,” but he was not about to have that poisonous woman any closer to him than he must.

He found the two princesses puzzling. Elis, the taller, had silvery-blond hair and light gray eyes; she sat erect, almost stiff, in a blue gown that lent only a little color to her eyes and none to her face. She spoke little to him, in a cool, remote tone, answering his first polite questions without enthusiasm and ignoring Sier Halveric to her right. Mostly she looked down or across at Ganlin. Her hands were larger than he expected; they looked strong and capable; he saw a mark on her heart-hand that might have been a training scar. He wondered what had made it.

Ganlin, another blond, had more color—hair more yellow, blue eyes, and more color in her face. More animation in her voice and face, too: Kieri noticed her smile for the man on her other side, Sier Belvarin. She answered Kieri’s questions with a smile. And yet—she looked most at Elis, as Elis looked most at her. And yet again, Ganlin’s hands looked like Elis’s—more the hands of a young woman trained to boys’ pursuits than the soft hands of an idle princess.

Kieri glanced down the table. Countess Settik, across the table and down eight places from Elis, was obviously trying to catch her eye and signal something. The man next to her, Sier Halveric’s eldest son-in-law, a man of phlegmatic temperament, already looked frayed, and Kieri was glad he hadn’t asked any of the younger men to sit there. Elis avoided her guardian’s gaze. Ganlin’s guardian—one of her aunts, he’d been told—was chatting with Garris, the King’s Squire next to her.

No, Kieri thought, nothing could make him marry a Pargunese. Yet courtesy demanded that he share his attention between the two girls. Perhaps if he got them talking more … “Do you know each other?” he asked. They locked gazes across the table at each other rather than at him. Both flushed a little; he had the sense that one wanted to nudge the other under the table, but it was too wide.

“Um … no, lord king,” Ganlin said, with Elis a beat behind with her. “We’ve met, lord king. That’s all.”

So both were prepared to lie; Kieri had not lived so long not to recognize
the signs of a covert agreement of some kind. “Well,” he said, “perhaps you should become more acquainted. Pargun and Kostandan are, after all, neighbors.”

“My guardian wouldn’t—” “They don’t want—” came simultaneously from both girls.

Oho. Another complication. He could imagine that the guardians would have preferred to present only their own princess to avoid competition, but since they were both there, surely it was natural for girls that age to spend time together. He struggled to find some topic that might interest them, but he had no idea how princesses were reared, what they valued. Taking a cue from their hands, he said, “Do you like horses?”

A patch of color came out on Elis’s cheek. “Very much, lord king,” she said quietly. “I—I like to ride. Fast.”

“Then you should ride,” Kieri said, relieved to have found some common interest. “We have both an indoor school and the Royal Ride—a long stretch of grass through the forest. Perhaps if Ganlin—”

“I like to ride,” Ganlin said without his asking. “But—but more informally.”

Kieri felt his brows rise. “Informally?”

“My—my aunt thinks it improper to ride astride.”

“Does she indeed? Here, most women ride astride,” Kieri said.

“Really?” Elis’s voice rose; down the table, Kieri saw Countess Settik glare at her, and Elis looked down.

“My aunt says it’s not proper for a princess,” Ganlin said more quietly. “Certainly not while visiting … I used to …”

“We both did,” Elis said under her breath. She stabbed a medallion of venison with unnecessary force.

“Then consider that you are free to use the Royal Ride,” Kieri said, applying himself to his own meal. He glanced down the table to where Arian, just back from Riverwash, was listening to Count Settik of Pargun and Kaelith doing the same with Ganlin’s male escort—her uncle or uncle-in-law, Kieri assumed. It would have been pleasant to have them at his end of the table; the Squires often ate with him. For a moment, he transposed the Squires and princesses, imagining them as the latter, but he put that out of mind.

Dinner progressed from course to course; Kieri tried a few more
topics with the princesses but could not sustain any conversation with them, as Elis seemed both angry and frightened, and Ganlin took her cues from Elis. They were so young … not only in age, but in experience. Kieri found himself thinking of Paksenarrion, as he often did—not much older than these girls, the age his daughter would have been if she’d lived. His Estil would have been much more like Paks; he could not imagine either of them in a formal dress. And these girls, with their capable outdoor hands … were they really princesses, or … or what? As far as he knew, Pargun and Kostandan had no women soldiers—rude jokes had been made about that from time to time—so he would not have expected princesses to learn soldiers’ skills. Yet if an enemy wanted to send in agents—even assassins—young girls pretending to be princesses might evade suspicion.

Vonja outbound, a tenday after Midsummer

J
andelir Arcolin, at the head of slightly more than a half-cohort of his soldiers, had been on the move all morning, trying to catch up with a band he believed had attacked his camp a few nights before. They moved north on a trail running along the west flank of a ridge. Along the ridgetop, Arcolin knew, was a footpath, rocky and difficult. Below this trail—the widest of the three—was another, twisting around the many swampy areas at the headwaters of the little streams that fed the tributary in the valley. Beyond were fields and then the same north-south road they’d taken from Cortes Vonja.

In the humid midday heat, the woods’ rich green smell competed with the sharper odors of sweaty men and mules. Sweat trickled steadily down his face, his back, his sides. Arcolin resisted the impulse to take off his helmet and let the air cool his head, but spared a thought to the men left behind in camp, including the three who’d suffered burns when fire arrows set a tent alight. The cohort was understrength now, not even counting the ones left behind in the city to help with Stammel. Thirteen dead, another eight in addition to Stammel unable to fight.

The inexorable mathematics of war would soon reduce the cohort’s effectiveness to the point where he’d have to tell the Cortes Vonja Council he could do no more without reinforcements. Though his cohort had killed more of the enemy than they’d lost, the so-called brigands, unlike any ordinary brigands, had not disappeared or quit
harassing them. They were being supplied from outside—that was obvious—but who had the resources of men and money? Was it really Alured the Black? Or was another adversary at work?

Arcolin’s horse snorted; he yanked his attention back to the moment. Ahead of him, on the trail, he saw a pile of horse manure, fresh and glistening. His first impulse was to press forward faster; perhaps they were catching up with the fugitives. He looked around. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the creak and jingle of armor, harness, and packs from his own cohort. Too quiet, more than the simple noontime stillness. He passed back a hand signal, and his troop moved off the trail downslope, into the woods.

Silence closed around the cohort when they had moved ten paces off the trail and closed into a fighting column again. Arcolin backed his mount down the slope. He could just see Burek at the other end of the column. Arcolin’s horse lifted its head, ears pricked toward the trail. A few moments later, Arcolin heard a rustle of leaves, someone moving down the slope across the trail from them. He could still see nothing. He glanced at his troop. None of them moved, waiting his signal, Devlin’s eyes flicking from him back to Jenits, Jenits watching Devlin.

Louder rustling. Now, because they were so silent, he could hear a few individual footfalls, someone slipping and bumping into a tree, harsher breathing. Suddenly, far off on the left flank—what would have been ahead of them if they’d kept going—he heard a man’s voice, an obvious command. Louder noises near the trail, bushes thrashing as men pushed their way into that open space, more noises now on their left front.

A well-constructed little ambush, if it had worked. Was this all of it? Suddenly his horse threw up its head and blew a rattling snort. Arcolin looked up and caught sight of someone who seemed to be walking on air parallel to a massive oak limb. His mind refused to accept it for an instant, then he knew: he’d seen sailors in Immerdzan port, feet on a rope slung below the horizontal poles—what did they call them?—resting their elbows on the … the yard, that was it. Guards, he’d been told, to keep thieves off the ship in harbor and fight pirates at sea. Even as this ran through his mind, he signaled Devlin, backed farther downslope … surely not all the trees were rigged, just those around planned ambush sites.

A shrill whistle sounded loud as a scream, and yells followed as the enemy charged toward the trail. Arcolin risked quick glances upward, aware that any one of them could end with a crossbow bolt in the eye—ropes rigged on both sides of the trail but none here … or here. His own troops backed down the slope in order; the brigands followed, more raggedly as they rushed to close and the slope pulled them on.

His cohort reached the lower trail, the one skirting the wet ground around tributary headwaters. Arcolin halted them, and in the seconds before the enemy reached them they had time to form the tight, protective formation—the
flexible
tight, protective formation—he wanted.

The first enemy charged out of the woods, five—six—seven—the fastest, least controlled—and tried to stop, still slipping, sliding—and then, desperate, charged into the waiting cohort and died. Behind came more—a ragged line—and hoofbeats of more than a few horses. Those on foot arrived first—fifteen—twenty—with a motley collection of shields and weapons, including two short pikes. The first rank held them off without difficulty. Devlin dispatched one of the pikemen, and Jenits took the other.

Horsemen burst out of the cover, three close together, three more behind, clearly intending to break the formation. At his signal, Arcolin’s formation split, opening a lane through which the horses charged even as their riders tried to halt and turn them. One, indeed, managed this, but at the cost of slowing his mount so much that Arcolin’s soldiers easily surrounded him and pulled him off.

The rest of the brigands fled back into the woods; those whose horses were mired in the swamp floundered through the muck, and a tensquad caught and killed three of them. Two more fell to the crossbows they’d captured on that first patrol.

“That’s more like it,” Devlin said, surveying the row of brigand bodies. “And if we were better with our crossbows, we’d have had more of them. What warned you about the bowman in the trees, Captain?”

“My horse as much as anything,” Arcolin said, patting the sweaty neck of his chestnut. “And I saw how they’d been picking us off despite our scouts. They’ve got sailors up on the trees.”

“Sailors?”

“Remember the harbors we went through? The guard sailors up on those crosspieces—the yards, they called them—standing on those ropes slung below when they weren’t walking on the yards themselves? They’ve rigged trees beside the main trails, at least in some places, and can shoot down on us.”

“That’s bad,” Devlin said. “We didn’t see anything like that in Siniava’s War.”

“No. But Alured was on our side then. These will be pirate friends of his, I have no doubt. They’ll be able to look right down and see our scouts—and our scouts aren’t looking up. This fellow must’ve been four or five armspans up—that would be no height to a sailor.”