The King's Peace (17 page)

"So what good is an heir if I die? There is nobody who will be regent who could hold the land.

There will be no hiding the babe away in Thansethan and hoping for another miracle in a generation. It will be too late. If we are in time, we are only just in time. Besides, there is nothing magical in the blood of kings—who among all of you does not have as good a claim as my grandfather Emrys to make himself High King and Emperor over all of the island? If there is such magic then Gwyn of Angas has as strong a claim on the kingship as any son of mine might.

You make me feel like a horse of good breeding who will be ridden to battle—make sure he has got foals enough first, when in fact it is not one battle but a long race that must be run full strength. I know full well that I might die any day, but I will not allow that to change the way I shall live while I live, or I might as well be dead already. I will live long enough to leave behind an heir or I will not—I am but twenty-four years old.

Either there is time enough or there is not." He refilled the cup and passed it to Mardol, who took it, looking only at Urdo's face.

"You will not tell me you are living in chastity and saving your strength for the fight?"

Urdo laughed. "If I tell you different, will you promise not to mention it to Rowanna or Father Gerthmol?" Mardol laughed, shortly.

"Then why not take a wife?"

"Who should I take? You know I am not set against marriage. But I will not rush to marry just to beget an heir. There is no purpose in that. I will not marry a woman who pleases half the kings while setting the other half against me. I will not marry a woman I cannot want, or one unworthy to take her place at my side. So who should I consider?"

"Five years ago you asked me for my daughter's hand." It may have been the flicker of shadows, but it seemed that the same expression of sorrow passed over both man's faces.

"Five years ago you refused me your daughter's hand."

"I would not do so today, if she were alive to give you."

"She did well to feed the whole of Wenlad through a plague like that."

"I nearly died myself. We would all have died without what you sent from Thansethan.

I thank you for that. I should thank the monks for it. Even though I despise their God, I was more glad of their surplus food than you could easily believe. We were all ill throughout Wenlad, scarce anyone could stagger to the fields. The food rotted in the ground. It was like a curse in an old story. Many thought it was the end of the world, and some called for me to be plowed under. Yet I did not feel the gods were angry with us, and since that one season we have prospered as before. Poor Elin. The worms ate her alive from inside.

There never was a key-keeper like her. She knew what was in every storehouse, and her last words were about how best to share out what you sent us." They sat in silence a moment, then Mardol shook himself. "I was wrong, five years ago. I have said so. I was not prepared to bet so much on you. I gave you one son to train as an armiger, I did not want to risk my daughter, too."

"Elin would have made a fine queen. I wanted peace with you and your backing, and I wanted a woman like that to wife. But gone is gone." Urdo took a long pull from the wineskin and passed it to the older man. "So now. No sooner had I found an honorable solution to my mother's plan to marry me off to Eirann Swan-Neck she forms a conspiracy to marry me to Lined of Munew."

"She is heir to the land, and will remain so unless Custennin has a son." Mardol's voice was carefully neutral.

"Oh yes, heir to Munew. sixteen years old, and as pale a princess as Eirann in her way, a pious follower of the White God. You don't like that, and the land doesn't like that, and I can just picture the faces of the other kings." Urdo sighed. "I might wish Custennin had not converted, for all that his people were mostly pleased and for all that Dewin runs his country for him. I would send Dewin and Linwen up to Demedia to found a monastery if I thought Munew would survive without them."

"I thought you were sending your mother's priest, Teilo?"

"You heard that? It's true. Teilo is very holy and very sure of her own righteousness, and my lady mother can manage without her. The north could do with her. But I was saying, Mardol, that my own priest, the monks of Thansethan, Dewin, Custennin, and Rowanna would all have me marry Lined ap Custennin. Talorgen of Angas wavers and will not decide. I think he is waiting for his daughter to be old enough. I cannot marry her even when she is, she is impossibly close kin, her mother is my sister. Borthas of Tinala would have me marry his sister, though she is twice my age, and in any case I want no close alliance with that snake. Penda and his allies want me to marry the Isarnagan king Atha ap Gren, and bring in an Isarnagan army and sweep the land clear of the Jarnsmen.

Everyone who has a daughter or a sister wants me to choose her, and if I do, then everyone else will resent it. Everyone has their own candidate, and their own scheme—it seems to me best to stay uncommitted and decide when there is some advantage to the decision."

"Why not Atha ap Gren?" Mardol wiped his lips and set down the wineskin. "I've heard she's beautiful, and she fights from a moving chariot with throwing spears and has many followers."

"The Isarnagans have never had a High King that lasts, and their little kingdoms are always at war with each other or with someone—they've been attacking into the west of Demedia recently. I would want to be very careful if I got embroiled there. Such a match would bring its own complications. In any case Eirann is marrying Gwyn of Angas, and I do not want to set Demedia and Cennet against me, to say nothing of upsetting Rowanna and Custennin and the monks of Thansethan." Both men took another drink and this time Mardol finished the cup.

"Do you think we can win?" Mardol asked, setting the cup down gently.

"Is there any alternative?" Urdo smiled grimly, but his voice was light. "I will say again what I said to you six years ago at Thansethan, and three years ago here to all those who came to the crowning. It will not be easy, and you won't like everything I have to do to do it, but if we believe we can do it, then we can. The gods of the land are on our side, and the Church of the White God supports me. I even have reason to believe that the gods of my enemies are not quite so implacably opposed as I had imagined. If we fight among ourselves, if we do not tax and struggle to support the alae, then we will lose, and lose forever. If we win it will be a victory for a moment only, maybe a few lifetimes. It is not possible to win forever. But it is possible to lose forever." Urdo stood up and put out a hand to help the older man up from the bench. "Now if you've said what it was you wanted privacy to say, I think it's time we found our beds."

I waited until they had gone, then stood up. My foot had gone numb and agonized me with pins and needles. Starlight was asleep. I wondered if poor Urdo had gone through all that with each of the kings. The moon was up when I got outside, and all the walls of the high city were gleaming slightly in the silver light. Caer Tanaga was the most beautiful city in the world. It looked delicate, like an exotic bird or butterfly perched on the hilltop.

By moonlight it seemed promising, magical. It was always a sight to lift the heart, to make one
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believe that peace and civilization were possible things.

Standing there in the deep night I did not doubt even for an instant that Urdo would win.

—12—

Co ld ho ov es on th e hi gh ro ad w ho ca m e by ni gh t be ari ng ba d tid in gs lea ve s on a st or m wi nd sw irli ng to ge th er ga th er ed ag ai ns t us.

Th er e

G

ut h fel l an d

G

un ulf

, Ra nd wi ne an d

Ra nk in fre sh co m e fro m

Ja rn ho lm e

Ed fri th an d

Eg bo ld in th e far ki ng do m.

Th e ba ttl eh or se m en in vo ki ng de at h.

St ea dy on se a-

str an d str on g so ns of

Si g m un d la nd lo ng in g to ok th e m far fro m th eir he ar th ho m e lo ng sp ea rs fo un d th e m re d bl oo d in gr ey m or ni ng

sh ou ld er co m pa ni on s wo n gr av es no t gai n.

—"The Winning of Tevin"

Those three years at Caer Tanaga were the happiest my life had yet known. I was young and well and among friends, learning the craft I was born to. We rode, we trained, we fought, we grew, scarcely noticing, a little older, and if things seemed not to be better they seemed also not to grow worse, for the first time in long years. We called it peace, who had never known peace in our lives, or our parents' lives before us. We drank to peace and spent all our time learning war. Sometimes, when we had a truce with Ayl and winter closed the seas to the raiders, we would go two months together without having to fight. We stayed at Caer Tanaga, for we were Urdo's Ala. Many of us were promoted away, and with our congratulations there was always a note of commiseration. When

Urdo had three pennons and everything else an ala required he would send them where they were needed to build up another three pennons there. He now had eight alae of six full pennons each. We were always taking in new recruits and training, but we knew we were special. Urdo trained with us and fought beside us often, and away from the troops he sat in council, gave judgments, and made laws. He did not call it peace, for he alone of us knew what peace was and why it was worth fighting for.

Training was exhausting. There were times when we were glad enough to hear of a raid, for glorious war seemed almost like a rest in comparison. I had thought I was fit and strong before I came to Caer Tanaga but it was only now that I came into my full strength and stamina. I could practice riding formations to signals all morning and teach swordplay until the light left and fall asleep exhausted to wake and do it all again the next day. On rare days off we drank ourselves silly and got into fights with the other pennons. We played endless games of fidchel or dice. We complained constantly. It was always too hot, too cold, too wet, or too dry, the floppy
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practice lances too floppy, the real lances too hard, the weighted swords too heavy, and we were always tired and muddy. Yet if anyone stopped me to ask, I knew that I was happy.

After two years Osvran was made praefecto of our ala. At that time I was made decurio and given command of the fourth pennon. I was twenty-one then. I felt proud and confident, even though I had shaken in my boots when I'd been picked out to lead a real charge as signifer only a few months before. I swore I would go easier on my armigers than Angas or Osvran had been to me, but after only half a month Masarn was complaining that he knew my face better than he knew his wife's. I worked us all hard until the Fourth Pennon was the best, and then we worked to make sure we stayed the best.

A year later, Urdo sent us north to Tinala in the autumn.

"It's not the dead but the fled I'm worried about." Osvran was tugging his moustache and staring down over the edge of the bank. Down in the reeds at the edge of the river the shells of two Jarnish ships were burning. "We know how many we killed, or we will when Glyn comes up with Borthas and his foot soldiers," he went on. "I didn't count them on the field.

There wasn't really time—anyone?" He glanced up at us. I shook my head along with the other decunos.

"Four hundred?" I suggested. Osvran frowned, still looking down at the two smoldering ships. In three years the raiders had learned enough not to let us capture them. Their own boats in Thurrig's hand were our best weapon against them, and they were coming to know it.

Last spring, bold Larig ap Thurrig had even taken the war to them and raided Jarnholme.

Everyone envied the troops who had gone with him, even though only two of his eight ships made it back.

"It's a shame we couldn't have been after them faster," ap Erbin said. I agreed that King Borthas had been slow in signaling that we could pursue, but held my tongue.

"They came this far, or some of them. Whether the king and his sworn men were here, who knows," Osvran said, wisely ignoring this remark. "Maybe they had more ships and went off in them. Maybe they went to ground. I just wish I knew where they were now."

"If Urdo were here," said Galba, voicing what we were all thinking. To a king, the rivers and trees will sometimes speak of the passing of strangers, and the abode of men.

They had little enough to say to us. If the wind had news, it was only that the grey clouds would send ram again soon.

"Unless the land twists terribly, then this is the Don, and over the river is Jarnish land,"

Enid said. "We must be looking at what the map calls the province of Valentia.

Tevin, as they call it now." I looked over at it. It seemed the same rolling grassland with broken woodland we had been riding over since we left the highroad. On a hillcrest stood a crumbling stone tower. There was no sign of life, except for one incurious sheep grazing on the riverbank.

They could have been in the nearest clump of trees; laughing at us, or many miles away. It was just before noon, as far as I could tell through the clouds. It was always hard to tell how long a battle had lasted.

"There's another river four or five miles off away east," said Rhodren, gesturing.

"According to the map. The"—he squinted at it—"the Derwent? Then it all becomes fenland, low-lying and marshy, lots of little channels, until you get to the sea. I don't know if the channels are freshwater or salt. Can't think why anyone wants this soggy land anyway. It's unfarmable by civilized methods. Can't we just let the Jarnsmen have it?"

"Jarnholme was a lot like that." Enid stared across at the moorland on the far side of the river.

"But shut up, Rhodren!"