King's Shield (32 page)

No,
she thought, glaring at the needle, at the basket of silken threads in their neat twists.
I have nothing to regret. Inda will never refuse to come to my bed. His dag will not make trouble in my home. That much I could see by the end of that shared meal. Everyone will be thoughtful of the others. Everyone will be kind. If Inda loves her forever, then . . . then there is more love in the world
.

She threaded the needle with the brightest red she could find, and shoved a few stitches through with such violence she pricked her thumb. She popped it into her mouth lest she stain the shirt no more than thirty heartbeats from beginning her task.

What hurts the most is that I do not know if he will come back. So I am going to make this shirt and believe he will return,
she thought firmly, and set a straighter stitch.
I will carry it with me everywhere I go, and every person in Castle Tenthen will see Inda’s wedding shirt, and they will know I expect him to come back. So here will be a sun, and then I’ll make the Algara-Vayir owl, and then maybe a ship, if I can get someone to draw me a model of one . . . and every stitch is going to bring him closer to home
.

Chapter Twenty-eight

ABOUT the time that Tdor arrived home in Choraed Elgaer at the beginning of spring’s first stretch of warm weather, far to the north Evred-Harvaldar’s army slogged their way across the mired countryside under band after band of rain.

Tau also rode past the old men who’d been seeing dashing cross-country riders all their lives, or had been among the dashers themselves.

Two old dragoon scouts sat in a boat on a placid lake, trying to fish, until the rumble of hooves sent the marsh birds flapping skyward, scolding raucously. The two eyed the ordered ranks who galloped up the road and splashed their way across the shallow end of the lake, enabling the horses to cool off and drink before they surged up the bank on the other side and vanished over the ridge.

“Montrei-Vayir pennons.” One gnarled thumb hooked over a shoulder. “Tlennen’s pup going north again. Think the Venn’re coming at last?”

“I don’t know about that, but what I do know is they’re a damned nuisance,” came the sour reply. “First good day we’ve had in two weeks, and what happens? Look at the lake, all gone to mud. It’ll be tomorrow afore it settles, and the fish all hiding down at the bottom. We may’s well give it up and paddle ashore.”

There was one other watching them ride.

After leaving Lindeth Harbor, Skandar Mardric had traveled hard and fast in search of the Marlovan army. From a hilltop opposite the lake where the two old men were rowing to shore, he scanned the long line until he spied the snapping pennons behind the king.

He felt no triumph. That would come when he had ensured Idayago’s freedom by ramming a knife between the red-haired king’s ribs.

He studied the endless columns, tear-shaped shields hanging at saddles, bows slung, lances, staves, and spears in loose hands, steel blades winking when the sun did peep out.

Mardric rode along the hilltop, hidden by the trees, until he caught up with the leaders again. The king was easy to spot, just in front of two huge crimson flags. They did not hide him, for who would dare to attack now?

Not me,
Mardric thought wryly. He laid rein to his horse’s neck and trotted back to the town he’d just left.

He had even less chance of sneaking into a Marlovan camp than into one of their castles. But he’d learned while listening for news of the approaching army that the Marlovans sometimes broke ranks for supply runs.

During the next three weeks, as he rode an easy parallel course to the army, he watched Runners arrive early to arrange for fresh grain for the animals (despite their vigilance, they couldn’t always keep theirs dry) and fresh food for people. They were welcomed, smiling, because word had spread that they always paid.

 

 

 

The ghost at Inda’s shoulder was strongest when Inda drilled, though nowhere as bright as it had been the night they stopped at the Marlo-Vayir castle. Signi continued to be amazed that Inda could not perceive it, but so it was.

The morning routine had changed. The Sier Danas were invited to join Inda’s and Tau’s predawn practice. Cama and Noddy were there every day, the latter pairing off in turn with Evred, who had begun to join them.

As they crossed into Khani-Vayir, Cama began conducting the early morning training for the men. He also worked evenings with Tau, who was always willing and had no other duties. Cama had been practicing in secret since Inda’s first drill in the courtyard of the Marlo-Vayir castle before he went to the royal city; Cama had expected Inda to be impressed with Marlovan skill after his years among pirates, and instead had been shocked to discover the reverse.

Cherry-Stripe had started out in racing spirits. The parts he loved were riding daily up and down the columns, sitting at the king’s campfire at night, and he especially loved commanding attack forces in the evening war games.

He would have loved the prospect of war, had not Buck taken him aside for a private talk the cold, rainy morning they departed. They’d gone up to the wall in the old part of the castle and, stolidly ignoring the cold rain, Buck had said, “Don’t think war is fun, despite all the songs and the drum beating. I told you about the Ghael Hills.”

“I know, I know,” Cherry-Stripe had said. “Your first thought is you need to pee, and your second is what’s going on? But don’t you see, we’ve got Inda!”

Buck had glared eastward toward the faint grayish blur in the clouds where the rising sun hid behind the horizon. Then he grunted. “Yes. Take a squint at that face of his. He’s all over scars.”

“Aw, that was just pirates.”

“Maybe. Here’s what I do know. Ghael Hills was near to being a massacre. None of us knew what we were doing. If Inda really does, you do what he tells you. Come home alive.”

Cherry-Stripe felt the cold grip of doubt when he remembered that his brother had to ride to back up Ola-Vayir. “You too,” he’d said.

The doubt did not stay away. His belief that Inda could do anything—including lead them brilliantly to victory—wavered hard their second day out. The men warmed up by fast ride-and-shoot lines back and forth past a target, but instead of the commands being called by Evred through the captains, Inda took over himself. Right out loud he asked the stupidest questions, like he didn’t care who heard. And didn’t the men within earshot smirk!

But Inda just rode around, Evred giving answers the boys had known by the time they were fifteen-year-old ponytails: yes, light cavalry was for harassing attacks, mostly arrows; no, they didn’t carry lances or staffs; yes the heavies still used the snap-staff, but only against enemies with no shield. How long could a horse go on charge? How about charges uphill? Did horses hold a line when under a rain of real arrows?

Evred just answered the questions as if they were the smartest ones ever aired, but then Evred had always been that way: wooden-faced, serious—you never knew what he was thinking.

Once or twice Cherry-Stripe overheard mutters go through his own men—just too low for him to take notice of, they knew it and he knew it. But he also knew that tone, and if he hadn’t, the muffled snickers would have made it clear it was a wisecrack.

After the second time he whispered to Noddy, “Why’s Inda acting like a scrub?”

Noddy leaned forward to brush a hovering insect from his mount’s twitching ear. “Because he is one,” he said.
Idiot,
his flat tone implied.

Cherry-Stripe had known him too long to care about insults. “Scrub?”

“Just in our ways of doing things.” He gestured impatiently. “Limits of horse, of men on ground.
Where
was he these past ten years, Cherry-Stripe? At the academy?”

The sarcasm was easy to shrug off. Cherry-Stripe pondered the fact that despite those scars and how tough Inda looked out there behind the tents, whirling around with no shield and steel in both hands, he wasn’t a one-man army. Could he actually run a battle against anything but pirates? Cherry-Stripe kept himself busy, and when he couldn’t ride or drill himself to exhaustion he drank to escape that question, which made it easier to sleep.

 

 

 

During these same long days of travel and practice, Evred had begun confining himself to answering questions. After a time, when Inda seemed not to be watching the sunset evolutions he’d expressly ordered, Evred could not resist asking, “What do you see?”

Sometimes Inda started, other times he’d turn his head and out would come a rapid stream of observations, often scarcely coherent. Following these headlong thoughts was like trying to swim down a rushing river.

At first, Inda’s observations were not much different than those Evred and his academy mates had expressed when they began lance training.

“I get it,” Inda exclaimed, one bright day a week northward, as the men rode wearily around and around in their own dust, their hands drenched with sweat inside their gauntlets, tendons in their right legs quivering after long practices pressing the lower end of the lance holster against the mount’s side.

Cama and Rat were the opposing captains. They galloped up and down the line, shouting orders to bring the evolution to a close.

“I see why you train in circles with the damn lances,” Inda said to Evred as Rat and Cama looked their way. Evred raised his fingers, and Cama signaled yet another evolution, riding with seeming tirelessness at the fore, lance steady, which kept mouths determinedly shut in the ranks behind him.

“You build strength.” Inda watched Cama’s skilled lead, his powerful arcs with the lance. “He can put that thing wherever he wants to.” When the evolution ended, he lifted his voice. “Now I want to see a charge.”

Cama raised his fist, divided them into lines with himself in the center.

“So . . . one of us might even have to lead the front lines of a charge, especially if we don’t have dragoon lancers. If any of us can find ourselves in the front lines, then we all have to know what lancers can do.”

Cama gave a curt nod to his signal man, the charge was blown. The horses knew that sound: they began to walk in line, then to trot, and on the next signal they galloped hard at Noddy’s men two hundred paces away. The lancers locked down their heels, couched the lances with the back end in the holster, and tigged the shields held out by Noddy’s men as they rode past. Then they play-fought as the second and third lines charged and joined the melee.

Inda almost fell off his horse, he leaned so far out, as if leaning would clear the dust.

“What do you see?” Evred asked again.

“The weakest part is just after the charge,” Inda said, scowling at the ragged line of horses milling about. “Do they ever finish in line?”

“No. Oh, in demonstrations on the parade ground, sure. But not in battle, when enemies are shooting at you,” Evred said. “It’s why we have the second and third lines so tight after the first. Our horses hate strange, untrained horses. The Idayagans don’t train their horses any better than they do their men. Our horses also hate dead bodies. In the real records, not in the herald reports meant for archives, I’ve found time after time that they always break and run. And the men, losing their order, lose sight of one another. It’s why we never use anyone but experienced dragoons in the first and second lines, but third can be mixed dragoons and riders. If the first two hold the line during the fighting, the third does as well.”

“The Venn use their heaviest men in front.” Inda’s eyes narrowed as he tried to see past the dust. “They make a wall, standing shield to shield.”

But all he could make out were silhouettes: he had to listen for, and try to make sense of, the hoofbeats on the ground. Something you didn’t worry about on the ocean.

“They had few horses, but those were big. The men wore full, heavy armor,” Inda said. “The men on the ground get into these square formations, shield held to shield, spears out if they are flanked.”

“As long as they don’t have the spears out in front for the horses to run onto, our dragoons can break one of those,” Evred predicted.

“Can we armor our chargers?”

“Yes. It slows them, but it works.”

Inda rocked in the saddle. “So we can break those shield walls.”

“In the records we could. We sweep around them, attack from two sides or more. There’s nowhere for a square to march, so they break up and then it’s every man for himself. That’s why our ancestors stopped using that formation.”

Inda exhaled, short and sharp. “I used fire ships like dragoons. No one else did,” Inda added. “It seemed so obvious.”

Evred said wryly, “Well, pirates are free that way.”

Inda snapped his head around. “What do you mean? You said something like that before, once, I think, when we were talking about the Brotherhood battle, but we got sidetracked.”

“We always get sidetracked,” Evred retorted, laughing for a moment. “You were
pirates,
Inda. You took ships, you did not build them. So you never had to deal with the Sartoran Wood Guild, who—I assure you—has the power of the Magic Council behind them. We have to deal with them, lacking as we are in forests. And even if you have them, the Mage Council comes down hard on anyone who cuts down a forest—”

Inda looked amazed. “I knew that. Or, I once did. I even remember where I sat when Mother told Tdor and me about the old days, when humans were nearly exterminated and magical balance and all that. But I don’t know, I didn’t think of it when on the seas.”