The King's Peace (40 page)

Every dead one, too, of course.

Urdo came forward. Exhausted, he somehow looked more kingly than ever. He was still in his armor with his long hair streaming loose on his shoulders.

Urdo lit the fire and poured on sweet herbs and incense as the sun buried itself in the glorious colors of the westerly clouds. I was standing near the front, but afterwards everyone said they had heard every word he said, however far back they were. The gathered troops kept very quiet; there was no noise but breathing and the little sounds of people in armor shifting their weight.

"Who are you who are before me now?" Urdo began, as the fire caught. He did not speak loudly or seem to be raising his voice beyond a conversational tone. He sounded almost as if he were talking to himself. "My armigers, yes, living and dead, but what beyond that?

Not Vincans fighting for a distant city, nor yet the desperate defending their doorway, we have come together, and learned, and made a new thing. Maybe never before on the wide earth has there been such a thing."

He took a breath and straightened up and looked out, his eye running over the armigers. "My friends, you came here to fight, and fought, and some of you fell, and some yet breathe, and all of us have won the way through war to Peace."

He turned to face the mound and raised his hands, his palms turned not upwards as if invoking the gods, but outwards, towards them. Then he turned back to us and did it again, and brought them down slowly as he spoke. "I thank you all, for this is to be honored, and all of us who came to this field this day, living and dead alike, shall always be honored for making this Peace."

He drew a breath, then another. It was so silent I could hear birds in the trees. "How much honor shall be done to the dead, and to those who go on from this day, shall be found in our choices from this day forward. Our honor lies in how well this Peace is kept.

Those of us who live will mourn those of us who have fallen. We will not forget our comrades who do not go on, and not just those who fell today but all those who fell making this
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Peace, all these long years of war. This Peace will be their monument. Peace will not be easy. We scarce know what it can be yet, for none of us have known it."

He looked now as if he were looking up over our heads, to something distant we could not see.

"It does not mean we shall set down our spears; as we have won this Peace by strength of arm and will, so we will keep it. We will fight no longer for mastery over this our island but to prevent injustice or repel invasion. Those who were this morning our enemies have agreed to the Peace. What remains now is to bring all the will we had for making it to maintaining it, to go on as we have started, and to build the Peace in our actions, breath by breath, all our days."

I had heard him speak like this late at night in his tent, though before it had always been of hopes; it seemed strange to hear it spoken of as something begun. "We have chosen to be as we are, without reservation or withholding or fear. With that strength, we have made this Peace; within it, those who have not, who do not or shall not or will not, take up weapons, who have not had any choice open to them through the years of war but to avoid as they can the paths of armies, shall have this same choice, to be as they would be unto the uttermost borders of their skill, their capacity, and their desire."

He looked down again, and smiled. "None shall be bound by their birth; there shall be one law for all, where a wrong done with a king's power shall receive the same redress as a wrong done unto a king's power, that redress being founded on justice, and no single whim of woman or man."

The fire was burning well now. Urdo poured some more incense onto it, and a great plume of white smoke rose on the wind. "This is the Peace we have won, though we have it still to build and learn. We who are here today have won that Peace for all those who are not here, and for the land. What we have done this day could not have been, without those who died for it, today and on many days. We shall not forget them, in making this Peace we should not have won without them."

Then he named all those who had fallen that day at Foreth. Many around me were weeping, and I found tears on my own cheeks.

Then we sang the Hymn of Returning as the smoke took their spirits onward even though their bodies were bound under the Earth.

His words rang in my ears all down that long wet way to Magor. All I knew was war, it had been my whole life. Peace was only a word. I had to learn what it meant.

We rode on through the rain, and every night when we camped we kept watch, and the pennons took turns keeping the death watch around poor Galba. I lay down tired and thought of the new walls at Derwen, thought of feasting and songs, thought of Darien growing up strong and safe to live—but there my thoughts grew blank. I could not think how we would live, without war. I tried not to take comfort in the thought that Urdo would need the alae for a long time yet.

We reached Magor when the tenth day since we left Foreth was drawing to a close.

The rain was falhng more finely than it had been, and I had some hope it might stop before the whole island was flooded. Magor looked well. I saw that someone had been building walls and stables and barracks since I had last been there, when I first joined Urdo. It was not as large a place as Derwen had become—it looked like a lord's house with room for an ala, not like a town. The hall was built Vincan fashion, with a covered colonnade along the front. I had sent a messenger ahead as we approached, so when we drew near the household came outside and stood a moment under that shelter. I drew up the ala neatly outside the hall as best we could in the miserable weather, our brave banners and bright cloaks sodden with the weight of the rain.

Duke Galba was there and my lady mother Veniva, holding a baby about a year old, and beside them a small boy, about three years old, and behind the whole household of
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Magor. All of them had cut their hair off short. We dismounted in unison and I walked forward past the casket where we were bringing young Galba's body.

Then Veniva took a step forward out into the rain, towards the casket. As she moved she looked at me for one moment and as her dark eyes met mine I realized that I was seeing not my mother but my sister Aurien. She had grown to Veniva's height, and what there was of her hair, which had been so dark and lustrous, was turned quite white. Her dark overdress was pinned with the gold-and-pearl brooch from the hoard. She looked old and deeply grieved. As our eyes met I knew that Urdo was wrong and I had no comfort to bring here. It might do the old Duke good to know how well his son died, the boys were too young to understand. Aurien, I knew then, would understand nothing from me except that in place of her strong young lord I was bringing a corpse.

There was no time to waste unless we were to wait until the next day. They had set aside a great pile of dry wood for the pyre. It was laid well away from the house under a makeshift roof of boughs. As we walked to it we passed the line of carved stones that marked the places where the dukes of Magor had been burned. Each stone was doubled save the last. That was where Galba's mother lay, and there was space beside her memorial for Duke Galba. He paused beside the damp ground where one day his own grave would be, and walked on.

It is a sad thing to outlive your children.

Even under the shelter I doubt the pyre would have burned in that rain except for all the hair we piled onto it. The armigers had even trimmed their horses' manes and tails and there was so much hair that they said afterwards that Galba was so beloved he needed no wood but returned to ash on hair alone. Emlin and some of the armigers set the casket firmly in place. I set Sweyn's weapons and the spear we had drawn out from Galba's body under the place in the casket where his feet were. As I did so I remembered that in my saddlebag I now had Ulf s swords ready to take to my brother Darien's grave in the woods to fulfill my vow. The ala stood quietly in ranks, bareheaded, their short hair slicked dark in the rain. I could not tell rainwater from tears on their faces.

The older boy, Galbian, his father's heir, took the torch and set it into the wood, then stepped solemnly back. He must have been practicing because he did it very well. The firelight reflected off the wet leather of the armigers armor. Duke Galba spoke, and Emlin spoke. Then we sang, but Aurien was silent until we had finished. Then she let out a great howl, and squeezed the baby tightly so that he howled as well. I took a step to go to them and take the baby, but Duke Galba laid his hand on my arm and shook his head. He understood better than I did.

Little Gwien was a good reminder for Aurien then. There are old songs where grieving widows fling themselves onto their husbands' pyres.

As Duke Galba put incense on the pyre there came a great trumpet blast from the hall.

I spun round, as did more than half of the ala. It was a messenger's signal, urgent and desperate news. I knew I should have stayed and watched until the pyre burned down.

Even though peace had been declared, I could not ignore it. Everyone was at the pyre. I signaled to two of the decurios and walked back through the rain to the hall, trailed by the two pennons. Aurien gave me a look fit to freeze my blood as I left.

The first thing I noticed about the red-cloak was how tired his mare was. She looked about ready to drop with exhaustion. I was horrified that anyone could treat a greathorse like that. Only then did I realize that the man on her back was Senach Red-Eye.

"Sulien ap Gwien with troops, thanks be to the White God and all the hosts of heaven!"

he said. He was swaying in his saddle.

"What's happened?" I asked, reaching up to help him down. He slid to the ground and lurched into my arms. He would have fallen if I had stepped back.

"The Isarnagans have landed," he said, his face uncomfortably close to mine.

"What Isarnagans?" I asked. "Black Darag's?"

"They didn't say," said Senach, bitterly. "I didn't stop to ask, but I expect so. We have an alliance with Allel after all."

"Get something for the red-cloak to sit on, someone," I said. "Now, where are they?"

"They landed away on the far western end of Derwen where not many people live and they're coming inland, a great huge army of them, on foot. Thousands of them." One of Galba's armigers brought a great carved wooden chair from inside the hall, and Senach collapsed gratefully into it, his hands working on the eagles carved on the arms. I went down on one knee in the mud beside it so he would not need to waste breath speaking loudly.

"I was taking the news of the Peace to Derwen when we heard a rumor of them, and I went to see. They're not far from Derwen town, I'd say about a day's march then. There's only one pennon inside, under the lord your brother."

"I have Galba's whole ala here," I said, and I was calculating distances as I spoke. I turned to the decurio on my left. Somehow, even though it was a disaster it was a relief to be giving orders and doing something I understood. "Govien, get your fastest messenger to ride to Caer Gloran with this news straightaway. Send the next fastest to Derwen to tell Morien ap Gwien that we are coming. Get another ready to ride to Urdo at Caer Tanaga as soon as I have written a message. Get Emlin here right now. Get the quartermaster. Get anyone else who is well trained in logistics, trained by Dalmer or Glyn. Get Duke Galba, tell him—give him my deepest apologies, but say it is an emergency and we're going to have to ride tonight."

—25—

At meat they sat, uneasy peace forced by their feasting in the king's hall.

Talk fell to fighting, the hard-fought war between the borders long disputed.

Emer was boasting, keeping count seized heads slaughtered, the slain of Oriel.

Provoked past endurance, Conal Cernach replied in kind, corpses of Connat.

Beaten in bragging, Emer sat sneering

"Bold the boasts you gave against me.

If you should meet my mother, Maga, that would make the counting different."

Conal standing flung a fresh head rolling the rushes, crashing by her feet;

"So you say, but see, I know her, met we have, and here is Maga!"

— "Lew Rosson's Hall," a Jarnish retelling of an Isarnagan story

All of it, the scrambled start, the night ride, the scouts' reports, faded to nothing as I looked down at Derwen at sunrise, surrounded. The ala had been riding all night and were bone-tired. I thought it wise to let them have some rest while I sized up the situation. I left Ernhn setting up camp near a farm about five miles north of the town. It was the farm I had been visiting the day the Jarnsmen first came to Derwen. We reached it just before dawn, but the farmers were already about the place, milking the cows. The woman I had helped to heal was still there with her daughter and her daughter's husband. She remembered me at once. I asked about her son who had liked singing, and was sorry to hear he had died of the same fever that had killed my father the year before. She knew nothing of the Isarnagans and had not been away from the farm since midsummer. She was planning to go to Derwen again when the harvest was in, if the rain had not spoiled it all. It was strange to talk to someone for whom Derwen, five miles away, an hour's easy walk, seemed farther away than Caer Tanaga did to me.

Her concerns were all with the weather and the crops and beasts, if the world had sharp corners
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at the edges of her fields it would not have changed her life much. When I told her I had come from Magor in the night she made a gesture of blessing towards the old stone guardian at the farm gate.

Then she said that the horses must be very tired and offered us some food. I did not burden her with explaining the distance beyond that we had come in the last ten days and accepted the food gratefully on behalf of the ala.