King's Shield (41 page)

“Good.” Nightingale also kept his voice low. “As for the beacons, Hawkeye says there’s been no fires. And doesn’t he have a special duty rotation just watching the mountains?”

“Hand-picked, between him’n me and Flash.” Barend lifted his hands. “Venn sure are taking their time. Maybe the wind hasn’t changed up northside of the strait.”

They turned their eyes upward again, making sure that no one was within earshot.

Barend and Nightingale each carried a locket matched to the king’s. Until just a couple weeks ago they knew more than anyone else did, including most of each other’s news, but they’d had to go through the forms. It was Evred’s will that no one, ever, find out about the magical communications.

Now, at a glance, they discovered that neither locket worked. Both of them had been cut off from magical communication. That meant they were equally cut off from the king.

Well, what was good enough for our ancestors,
Barend thought as he yanked his sash free.

Nightingale hoped uneasily that the midday sun wouldn’t conceal the beacon fires when they did come, and Barend wondered uneasily where the king’s army was. “Ola-Vayir or Buck Marlo-Vayir reached Lindeth yet?”

“No sign of anyone,” Nightingale said.

Barend paused in the act of unbuttoning his coat, then continued. Nightingale had to bite back a protest as Barend shrugged out of the sturdy cloth and slung it across the saddle just before the stable hands took the horse away, leaving him there not in a proper linen shirt, but one of those cotton tunic-shirts he’d brought from the other side of the continent. It was all rumpled and sweaty, but Barend did not seem to notice as he retied his crimson sash.

Crimson. The reminder that this was Barend, the king’s cousin, who’d had no training except for that pirate-style contact fighting that reminded them of the women’s Odni. No fault of his own, being thrown away to sea where nobody learned anything else of use. So the men reassured one another when he broke yet another unspoken rule.

A sharp-chinned face appeared in the window above: Hawkeye, summoned by a Runner who’d heard the familiar voices below.

He waved them to come upstairs. They vanished from below, through the entrance to the newer, granite-built part of Ala Larkadhe castle, and Hawkeye turned away to await them, staring down at the desk.

The poets maintain that the most vivid memories are happiness and sorrow, but there are others who will insist that guilt and humiliation reach far deeper, so deep that they are not just vivid memories, but have the strength to motivate across decades, even centuries in a clan or kingdom. Who seeks revenge for happiness?

Hawkeye Yvana-Vayir had had almost a month to think about the news from Evred-Harvaldar, spoken from Runner to galloping Runner:
The army is on the march, and at its head the king with Indevan-Laef Algara-Vayir at his side, to command the war as Harskialdna.

Algara-Vayir. The first mention of that name threw Hawkeye back in memory to the Summer Without a Banner, the night a careless slap of his own hand struck a shivering, exhausted scrub to his death. Hawkeye hadn’t meant to hit him hard, but he’d been drunk on smuggled wine given to him by the Sierlaef himself, as consolation for being stuck on night guard duty. His companions had not blamed him afterward, and united in hiding the forbidden wine from the masters. They knew he hadn’t intended but a slap. There hadn’t even been a mark on the boy’s face, but he had died all the same.

Now, riding back to take Hawkeye’s place as commander (because no one regarded Barend as Harskialdna in anything but name) after all these years of jolting memories and terrible dreams was the boy who witnessed that. Who, for some unaccountable reason, had been given the blame for that death. Then exiled, young as he was.

By the time Barend and Nightingale arrived outside his office, Hawkeye had had time to consider what he’d say. He was technically under Cousin Barend’s command, but they had agreed on how they’d handle that fiction during their very first interview. Barend had been disarmingly forthcoming, which won Hawkeye over immediately: he devised the orders that Barend either spoke or endorsed.

Barend said, “No news north of the pass when I left.”

Hawkeye returned, “Nothing from our beacon watchers. And nothing from Ola-Vayir.”

Barend whistled under his breath. Nightingale said shrewdly, “What do you wager he’s dawdling along the road somewhere?”

“That family made no secret of wanting the north as part of Ola-Vayir.” Hawkeye tipped his head back. “Probably think because Evred’s young, they can shoulder him into it.”

His cousin Evred had been a quiet, scholarly sort of boy, but kingship had changed him. The older generation all said—in private—he was every day becoming more like the grandfather Evred and Hawkeye and Barend shared. Hawkeye’s mother had said once,
My father inherited all the trouble the Montredavan-Ans willed us, along with their crown. The only way he could see to unite the Jarls was to ride off to war, give ’em more land. But our generation is paying for that war. And that land.
He’d always thought that meant old monetary debts of some sort, but since he’d come to live here in the north he wasn’t so sure.

Barend’s thoughts were obviously running parallel. “Hope I get to be there to watch Ola-Vayir try to squeeze Evred for more land before the old wolf brings his boys in.”

Hawkeye said, “Why don’t we save ’em the trouble? Nightingale, I’m thinking you’d better go yourself down the coast road out of Lindeth until you find Ola-Vayir. Ride alongside him. Offer to be helpful. He’s not going to lag under your eyes.”

Nightingale’s grunt was midway between agreement and a laugh.

Barend rubbed his backside again. “Wasn’t that supposed to be Buck’s job?”

“Right.” Hawkeye grinned. “And Buck would cut out his own heart with a spoon before he’d risk missing the action, but there’s no sign of him, either. So that’s why Nightingale better go, just in case they got mired somewhere.”

Nightingale said, “I’ll ride out soon’s we’re done here.”

“Barend.” Hawkeye tipped his chin toward the east. “I got a Runner this morning. Evred’s just a couple days from us, and wants you to ride down and meet ’em.”

Barend chuckled under his breath. “You mean hand off command to Inda, then. And not a heartbeat too soon.”

His lack of strut made even Hawkeye grin.

Barend cocked his head. “Wonder if I’ll have to fight for it. Don’t Harskialdnas fight? I mean, in the old days, if someone wanted to challenge them for the position?”

Nightingale gave his turtle shrug.

“Challenges happened, yes. Usually at Convocation,” Hawkeye said. “Come to think of it, some of the old ballads have it happening in the field, too.” A corner of his mouth curled. “Did in the old ballad my father’s family sings, ‘Yvana Ride Thunder.’ We lost to the Montrei-Haucs, but we lost heroically.”

They all laughed, then Barend ran a hand over his broad forehead. “But isn’t that for Harskialdna as permanent rank, not for one battle? Or does he want Inda for life? Either way is all right with me. I never wanted it. Everyone knows that. Oh. It’s not me, it’s Inda, is that it? There can’t possibly be problems accepting him. I can’t believe people are that stupid.”

Nightingale tipped his hand back and forth, like a trader’s weight scale evenly balanced. “Some of ’em—coastal men, mostly—remember the pirate fights. No problem there. It’s the inland men. A lot of ’em from Horsebutt Tya-Vayir’s connections. Mostly think he’s the king’s claphair.”

Barend raised his brows. “Claphair?”

“Academy slur.” Hawkeye snorted. “Sex for favors.”

Barend looked vaguely surprised. “Not Inda. He hardly sees it when a
woman
wants him, unless she grabs him by the balls.”
And after he’d been living around that Taumad with absentminded indifference for years, it was safe to say that Inda hadn’t any interest at all in the fellows
, Barend thought, laughing inwardly. As for Evred, Barend remembered him having occasionally sent for fellows from Hadand’s pleasure house the winter before, but instead of loading any of them with privileges, he hadn’t even kept them for the night. “Naw, that can’t be right.”

“It’s just Horsebutt,” Hawkeye said impatiently, already through with the subject. He’d been remembering the men’s faces, their talk, before the battle at the Nob. “You might have to fight Inda to get the men behind him. Right before a battle, they have to believe he’s the best.”

Barend, veteran of many ship battles, recognized Hawkeye’s low, intense tone.
Just like a pirate duel on the captain’s deck.
He flicked his hand up in agreement. “I’ll rest my aching ass. Be off in the morning.”

Chapter Thirty-six

“HEY,you men!” The high voice off to Tau’s left sounded thin as a gull’s cry, as he rode a way back along the column.

Tau turned his head. A skinny, barefoot boy had darted from the hedgerow lining one side of the North Road and shouted through cupped hands.

Heads turned, then back again. An embarrassed mother marched out and grabbed the urchin by the scruff of his smock.

The boy spread arms and legs, fighting to stay. “When’s the battle?” he cried. “When’s the battle? We wanna waaaatch!”

The mother thrust her son back through the ancient hedgerow, leaving behind the sound of her scolding and his rising wail of protest.

“Ye might tell us,” an old man wheezed from a rocky outcropping above a slight bend in the road. “Where it’s gonna be, so we can hide ourselves.” And he cackled, as if at a very good joke.

From his clothing and the crook he was a shepherd. Sheep grazed over the slow incline rising toward those sky-touching mountains, evidence of a catastrophic landslide ages ago. The long flat slope had long been tamed by old trees and complicated long-grass communities, patch-worked on the eastern slope with farms. In the center, guarding the narrowing entry into the mountains, sat Ala Larkadhe, shaped like a crown with its mysterious remnant of Old Sartor in the weird white tower soaring above the newer granite castellated city.

Tau turned back to the crowd of people alongside the road. Some sat in the trees planted by some long ago noble, or peered over the far older hedgerow; most stood out in the open, faces upturned. Many hostile, most awed, though they hadn’t meant to be. But the sight of the long, long columns of warriors on their beautiful horses with the tear-shaped shields and gleaming helms hanging at their sides, the warriors’ hair pulled up into those martial tails just like the horses’, the tight gray coats with the long skirts, the composite bows, and above all the long swords with the wickedly curved tips in the saddle sheaths—it all impressed them. The Marlovans rode so well—they made it look so easy—they seemed easy, talking quietly, or looking at the countryside, but not answering back because (though the watchers did not know it) the captains had issued orders that the men were to remain aloof, no matter what. No comments, no questions. If they didn’t look they wouldn’t see the backs of hands, or spitting. Most important of all, they were not to answer questions.

It had been easy to ignore the first gawkers, but they had been coming out in greater numbers over the past couple of days. Now, within two days’ ride of the city up there on the slope, the warriors had other things to think about.

Tau clucked to his mount, passing a pair of dragoons, one saying, “What’s that tall one with the long leaves?”

“Corn,” his riding companion replied. “Don’t you southern boys know anything? That’s corn. Just you wait until you taste cornbread.”

Tau was past, and did not hear the answer. A commotion ahead caught his attention: a signal from the outriders.

Everyone’s attention snapped forward as dust rose around a pair galloping toward the great war banners at the front of the column. When the dust settled, the word passed back that Barend-Harskialdna Montrei-Vayir was with them.

Two Harskialdnas!

Inda hadn’t any such thought in his head. Alight with joy, he was about to yell “Barend!”

Barend saw him, but his mouth stayed tight. His posture stiff.

Inda’s joy cooled to question as Barend leaned back, clumsily halting the horse, who snorted, ears flat, whuffing in protest at the heavy hand on the reins. Barend snapped his fist to his chest, the salute returned thoughtfully by his cousin Evred-Harvaldar.

Inda turned his gaze between the two, and as Evred gave the signal to ride on at a company trot, Barend slid a glance Inda’s way, one thin brow ever so slightly raised, a corner of his mouth curling up.

Intrigued, Inda pulled back, ceding the Shield Arm position next to the king. For the first time, he dropped behind to ride with Signi and Tau.

Tau took in the alert glances of the men behind them, the furtive whispers. Everyone expected something to happen.

 

 

 

The king’s army camped directly south of the city of Ala Larkadhe within a hard day’s ride up the slope. Tau and Signi were taken by surprise when, in place of the usual drill, Evred gave the orders for two fires and then summoned the pair of Harskialdnas to his tent. Surprise was followed by apprehension when they witnessed the hand signal that Evred made when he wanted privacy, and the Runners formed an inside perimeter, not even Signi’s guards within earshot of the royal tent.

In the privacy of his tent, Evred flicked a considering glance from one to the other, saw the unguarded grins, and his brow cleared. “Barend?”

“We have to make it good, see.” Barend laughed. “Hawkeye agreed. Men have to see a tight win, commander against commander. Like pirates, Inda.” And when Inda made a noise of disgust, “If I rode in friendly, well, then they don’t expect a tight win.”

Since his return home, Inda had come to the conclusion that his boyhood knowledge of history, once seemingly so complete, was far too sketchy. He smothered a laugh. “I’m to challenge you? I guess I can see it. But we really don’t want a pirate duel, do we? Guts on the deck?”