The King's Name (39 page)

Darien said, sounding very sure. "If we take the city, good. If not, then it will mean a tedious siege, and better conducted from as near as possible. There is the question of Urdo."

"He's dead," I said.

"Dead, but with no body to bury or burn." Darien looked as if he was looking at something far off. "People think they see him, still, as we saw him in the leaves. He speaks to me sometimes. He is one of the powers now. Nobody seems to question how he can stay near death so long. But we need to bury him or do something so that everyone knows he is gone. Do you think I should do that here and now, or at Caer Tanaga? And what happens if people see him in the land after they know he's dead?"

I opened my mouth to say that the longer it dragged on the worse it was, when suddenly Urdo was sitting there with us. I could tell that it was just the shadow of the tent and the rise of the hill, but at the same time I

could see his face in the shifting light and the way his knees bent as he sat. What I felt was contradictory, as it had been when he gave me the sword. There was so much to say that I couldn't speak, and instead I felt my mouth close with all of it unsaid. He was looking at me as if he knew it all anyway, all the things I could never find a voice to say. He did not speak to me, but turned to Darien, who was watching him silently.

"Caer Tanaga," he said. "Let the women lay me out." It was the Jarnish custom for women to prepare a dead body. "Then set me in a boat and let me go."

"They will say you are not dead," Darien said unsteadily.

"Some will always say that," Urdo said, smiling a little. Then he was gone, the sunlight and shadow no more than that.

"That would appear to settle it, then," I said. My voice sounded a little hollow even to myself.

"People shouldn't say that," Darien said, talking to the space where Urdo had been. "It will make them wonder about the White God."

The White God, of course, who the Book of Memories says came back and walked among his friends after his death, appearing and disappearing when they needed help, until he moved on to become an entirely new kind of god.

"Whatever happened long ago in Sinea, the White God is a real presence," I said, remembering the light that united everything and made all the music into one music. "I think the priests sometimes sound very sure of

things that nobody can be sure of. People who understand the gods sound like Inis, not like Father

Gerthmol."

"Urdo sang with us in the light," Darien said, as if this reassured him about something. "And Father Gerthmol may sound too sure, but nobody can understand Inis."

"I think that's the state you have to get into to really understand the gods," I said. "And if by then nobody can understand you, that's how it is. When they have dealings with us they do it at a level we can understand without needing to try to understand them. Their purposes are strange to us."

"You said they showed you the way back," Darien said. "Sometimes I feel they want something from me and

I don't know what it is."

I thought of Gangrader standing leaning against the ash and staring at me in the moonlight. I remembered how he had arranged for Darien to be born. I had stood in the icy stream and scrubbed off the mark Ulf had written on my stomach in blood, yet here he sat, twenty years
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later, regarding me evenly. I felt an urge to protect him from all of that; absurd, because he was High King and needed to stand between the gods and the people.

"They showed me a path through the wood," I said. "They gave me this spear. We were standing with them against Morthu. They may know more of things than we can, but we were all standing there together."

He looked at me solemnly. "I will never forget your darkness. I will keep to Urdo's Law, that no one god and no one faith shall be set above another."

"I will never forget your light," I said, and smiled.

—24—

"Our strength is not in stones, but hearts, but stone-strength shows how heart-strength holds."

— "The Outwall," Naien Macsen of Castra Rangor

The first time I ever saw Caer Tanaga, I was riding down from Thansethan with Garah. My breasts had been painfully gorged with milk and she had made me drain them in a ditch at the side of the road where we had been hiding for fear of Morwen's pursuit. We came out of the ditch and rode on down the highroad looking as dirty and disreputable as any two girls on greathorses ever did. Then we came over a rise in the land and saw Caer Tanaga below us, the glazed walls and towers of the citadel shining in the morning light. I thought from the first that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen. Caer Gloran had impressed me with sheer size.

Caer Tanaga won my heart with its red and white towers standing on the hill by the river like banners flying.

Since then I had lived in it and come back to it a hundred times at least, in war and in peace, from the north, from the west, from the east. I had grown used to it, but it had never failed to lift my heart when I first caught sight of it. Whether it was the end of a weary day of training, or to defend it against Ayl in the war, or on a visit from Derwen, coming here had always felt special to me. In all those years this was the first time I had ever come to it by water. It looked very different from below, angled against the hill as we came toward it in the sunset.

I had been bracing myself to see the enemy banners flying from the tower. So many times I had looked up to see what alae were here, or if Urdo was back from somewhere. I looked up deliberately, and frowned. I looked at Thurrig, who looked as mystified as I did.

"Arling's a Jarn, of course; he doesn't have a banner, only a standard. Banners are a thing for civilized people," he said slowly. "Maybe they didn't bother changing it."

"Then why would they take the kingdom banner down, and why are they flying the Moon of Nene, too?" I

asked. "Arling's standard is up there, anyway. I can make it out."

It became visible whenever a gust blew Urdo's gold running-horse banner clear for a moment.

"Maybe they want to surrender," Thurrig said, but he was shaking his head as he said it. "No.

They'd have flown the kingdom flag for that, more likely than Urdo's horse, I'd have thought."

"It isn't Urdo's horse," Garah said. She had both hands on the rail and was staring fixedly upward as the ship

moved. "The running horse is the sign of the House of Emrys. I expect Mortal's flying it as his own banner."

"But he shouldn't be," I protested.

"His mother used to have it embroidered on her clothes, don't you remember?" Garah said.

"Morwen was entitled," I said. "Well, sort of." I stopped and thought about it for a moment.

"She was Avren's daughter. Even after she was married she would have been personally entitled to use her own family things.

It's unusual, but she was of higher birth rank than Talorgen. But that doesn't mean she had the
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right to pass it on to her children."

"Was he flying it when you were there before?" Thurrig asked.

"I didn't see it," Garah said. "But I didn't go outside die citadel at all. Nobody said anything about it. But what else could Morthu fly? Angas isn't there, and doesn't approve of what he's doing, so the Thorn of Demedia would be wrong. He doesn't have lands or a banner of his own."

"If he isn't a king or a great captain then he shouldn't be flying one at all," Thurrig growled, glancing up complacently at the red ship on blue that had been his own banner for fifty years.

While we were talking the ship had been creeping closer and closer, so that the city was all around us and we were almost at the wharf already. We were too close now for the war machines on the walls to reach down to us. The troops were all under the canvas awnings, ready but not visible.

I turned to Garah. She was smiling at me in a resigned sort of way. "Yes, I really am sure I want to go through the tunnels," she said, before I could speak. "Yes, I know the dangers. Morthu may have found out how I escaped and be expecting me. Yes, I have a sharp dagger. No, you can't come, you're too tall, and you're needed out here."

I sighed. "Am I really that predictable?"

Garah and Thurrig both laughed. "You might have been about to say that you wish you had just one horse with you," Thurrig put in. It had been a long trip.

The landing was almost easy. We had not been able to tell what degree of opposition we might meet. The important thing was to have all three ships at the wharf, if we could, so that we could have all our forces ready. We had discussed such things as leaping across from one deck to another if necessary. As it happened there was no need. There were a score or so of Arling's soldiers on the quayside. One of them hailed us in Jarnish as soon as we were near enough.

"Who comes to Caer Tanaga?"

"The Admiral Thurrig, at his wife's invitation, come to help some of you get back to where you belong."

"Can't be soon enough for me," the Jarnsman said.

Thurrig laughed, his hand twitching on his ax. They kept up a constant banter, all of it double-edged, as we came in. One of our sailors threw a rope and a man on the wharf caught it. He was one of the usual dockworkers of Caer Tanaga; I had seen him often enough when I had come down to cross the river into Aylsfa. He knew me, too, of course. When his eyes met mine they went wide. I put my finger to my lips, but it was too late. He let out a great whoop and leapt on the Jarnish soldier who had been talking to us. The other workers saw what he was doing and hesitated. I stood up on the side of the ship, almost overbalancing, and gave a battle cry. Before we were even off the ship there was nobody in sight to oppose us.

We disembarked as rapidly as we could. Garah rushed off straight away to try and open the citadel gates. As we were forming up, crowds of townsfolk came pressing around us, telling us how delighted they were to see us. When they heard that the alae were coming, some of them rushed off to open the town gate. An old fat priest who had a church near the wharf embraced me as kin and actually wept for joy at the sight of me. More and more people poured out of their houses, roused by the cheers. Caer Tanaga had suffered under the invader, and now that we had come to lead them, the people were more than ready to fight. They didn't really need us, they just needed to believe they could win. They came armed with whatever was to hand: wooden clubs, old rusty-infantry swords, spades, pitchforks, kitchen knives. I don't think there was an occupying soldier alive in the lower town in half an hour. As we went up through the streets toward the citadel the little company Thurrig and I had brought swelled to become a great mob.

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As we went on I heard hoofbeats on the cobbled road behind me. It sounded like a messenger, so I called a halt. The disciplined troops halted, and the mob surged and seethed around us. They let the horseman through. It was one of the grooms from the stables. He was riding Urdo's mare Prancer, who Urdo had left

here when he rode away to war.

"What news?" I asked the groom.

"Where is the king, ap Gwien?" he asked.

"Urdo is wounded in the battle, and very near to death," I said, though the words stuck in my throat. "Darien, his heir, is High King of Tir Tanagiri."

The mob gasped, and the gasp spread out in ripples as people behind told each other what I had said.

"They told me the king had come back," the groom said, looking as if I had struck him in the face. "They came down to open the gates and they said that he had come on a boat. I thought he would need his horse."

Prancer put her dark head down to nuzzle my shoulder. She was in wonderful condition, though she was twenty years old and had borne seven foals. She had carried Urdo in the charge at Foreth and seemed ready to do it again at a moment's notice. I stroked her nose. She was caparisoned in all her finest armor.

"He isn't coming back and he won't need his horse," Thur-rig said. "But ap Gwien will ride, and the rest of us will all walk. We need to free this city in Urdo's name."

This seemed very harsh to me, but the crowd gave a great roar. It was on a different pitch from the cheering they had done before; now there was anger in it. The groom slid down and gave me Prancer's reins. I swung up onto her back and set my spear straight. Then I was doing my best to keep her from trampling anyone underfoot as we all surged forward again.

I hesitate to call what happened a battle, or even a skirmish. There was a gate before the great gate, which we called the sally gate. It led from the street into a practice yard and was most inconvenient if you actually wanted to be anywhere else, so we seldom used it. It was always kept closed. I had considered going in that way and dismissed it almost at once. It was just too difficult to get open, and too easy to defend inside.

Cinon was directing the defense of Caer Tanaga, and he thought otherwise. He must have massed as many troops in the practice yard as he could, both his own militia and some of Arling's Jarnsmen. As we came up to it, the sally gate opened and the troops rushed out, well armed and armored, fresh and ready to fight.

There might have been a thousand of them, but they could not use their numbers in the street.

The people of

Caer Tanaga fell on them as a pack of starving wolves falls on a lame deer.

I saw two women with kitchen knives take down a Jarnish warrior a head and a half taller than either of them.

After that one of them had a spear and the other his long knife and shield. That was the pattern of the whole fight. It was brief and very bloody. Prancer snorted with excitement, just as Apple used to do. She was too well trained to try to charge where there wasn't room, but she took out one man with her hooves. I killed a man of Nene and saw King Cinon being hacked into pieces in front of me. One of the people hacking was a cobbler I recognized. "There isn't time for that! He's dead already!" I bellowed. To my relief they dropped the corpse and looked about them for more live enemies.