Two to Conquer (10 page)

The veteran brought a tie-rope and secured the bridle of the donkey to his own bridle. Bard took Melora’s rein, thinking what a pity it was that it was not the pretty Mirella; and heard again Melora’s sweet giggle. He wondered, uneasily, if she could read his mind, and cut off the thought. This was no time for thinking about women, not with a spelled ford to cross and a battle coming up!

“For the love of all the gods, Master Gareth, set your counter-spell.”

Melora’s heavy figure was motionless on her horse. The look of strangeness, of concentration, settled down over Master Gareth’s face. Mirella’s hood slid down over her face so that nothing was visible but her small chin. Bard watched the three
leroni
, feeling the prickling in his spine that meant
laran
was powerful somewhere near… How could he tell, what was it?

Silently, feeling a curious reluctance to shatter the scary silence by a word or a shout, Bard beckoned the men forward. Still weighted by that sense of prickling intensity in the air, he twitched at his horse’s rein and urged the animal forward. The mare tossed her head and whickered uneasily, remembering

what had happened when she had set foot in the ford before.

“Easy. Easy, girl,” he urged in a low voice, thinking,
I don’t blame her at all, I feel the same way
… But he was a reasoning human, not a brute beast, and he would not give way to blind, unreasoning fear.

Urged on by voice and hands, the mare set foot into the ford, and Bard beckoned to the men behind him.

Nothing happened… but then, nothing had happened, before, until they were in midstream. Bard urged the horse on, holding to Melora’s rein, half-turned in his saddle. Behind him Master Gareth rode, Mirella clinging to his waist, and behind him, the men of the party, Prince Beltran bringing up the rear.

They were all in the water now, and Bard felt his skin tighten on his face. If the spell was working, it would strike them now, sweep down on them like a torrent. He braced himself in his saddle, feeling the prickle, prickle, prickle that was his personal awareness of
laran
at work, growing in strength as if he could almost see the flare and interplay between the spell set on the ford and the counter-spell; his horse seemed to step through a tangle of thick weed although there was nothing tangible there…

Then, suddenly, it was gone; just gone, vanished, the ford running silent and innocent, just water again.

Bard let out his breath and dug his heels into his mare’s side. The first riders were partway up the far bank by now, and he held his mount there in midstream, watching them ride past and up the other side of the stream.

For now, at least, their
leroni
had out-spelled the wizards set against them.

So far, on this campaign, the weather had held fine. But now, as the day waned, the sky grew dark with thickening clouds and toward evening snow began to fall, softly, but with persistence; first a few thick, clumped, wet flakes at a time, then thick and fine and hard, coming down and down and down with

idiot persistence. Melora, back on her donkey, swaddled herself in her gray cloak and wrapped a

blanket over her head. The soldiers, one by one, got out scarves and mufflers and thick hoods, and rode, sullen and glowering. Bard knew what they were thinking. By tradition, war was a summer business, and in winter, all but the mad, or the desperate, kept to their own firesides. There was a certain amount of danger in a winter campaign. The men might say, and with some justice, that while they owed

service to King Ardrin, this went beyond what was customary and right, and riding like this into a snowstorm which might easily turn into a blizzard in intensity was not customary and therefore the king had no right to ask it of them. How could he command their loyalty? For the first time he wished he were not in command here, but that he was riding north to Hammerfell at King Ardrin’s right hand, his sovereign’s banner bearer. The king could command loyalty from his troops, use his personal

influence and power to demand loyalty beyond custom. He could make the men promises, and make

those promises good. Bard was painfully aware that he was only seventeen years old; that he was only the king’s bastard nephew and fosterling; that he had been promoted over the heads of many seasoned officers. There were probably men in the ranks, even among these picked men he had chosen for this campaign, who might be waiting to see him come to grief; to make some dreadful mistake that he could never recoup. Had the king given him this command only that he might overstep his powers, see

himself as the green and unseasoned warrior that he was?

Despite his triumph and promotion on the field of Snow Glen, he was only a boy. Could he carry

through this mission at all? Was the king hoping he would fail, so that he could deny him Carlina?

What would lie ahead for him if he failed? Would he be demoted, sent home in disgrace?

He rode ahead to join Master Gareth, who had wrapped his lower face in a thick, red, knitted muffler under the gray sorcerer’s cape. He said with asperity, “Can’t you do anything about this weather? Is this a blizzard coming up, or only a snow flurry?”

“You ask too much of my powers, sir,” said the older man. “I am a
laranzu
, not a god; the weather is not mine to command.” A touch of humor wrinkled up one corner of his face in a wry smile. “Believe me, Master Bard, if I had command over the weather, I would use it to my own advantage. I am as cold as you, and as blinded by snow, and my bones are older and feel the cold more.”

Bard said, hating to confess his own inadequacy, “The men are grumbling, and I am a little afraid of mutiny. A winter campaign—while weather held fine, they did not care. But now—”

Master Gareth nodded. “I can see that. Well, I will try to see how far this storm extends, and if we will ride out of it soon; although weather magic is not my special gift. Only one of his majesty’s
laranzu’in
has that, and Master Robyl rode north to Hammerfell with the king; he felt he would be needed more, on the northern border of the Hellers where the snows are fiercer. But I will do my best.”

And as Bard turned away, he added, “Cheer up, sir. The snow may make it hard for us to ride, but not nearly as hard as for the caravan with the clingfire; they have all those carts and wagons to push along through the snow, and if it gets too deep they won’t be able to move at all.”

Bard realized that he should have thought of that. Snow would immobilize the carts and wagons of the caravan, while the light horsemen of the picked group were still well able to ride and to fight.

Furthermore, if it was true that Dry-town mercenaries had been hired to escort the caravan, they were accustomed to warmer weather, and the snow would confuse them. He rode among the men, listening

to their grumblings and protests, and reminded them of this. Even though the snow continued to fall, and even grew heavier, that thought seemed to cheer them a little.

However, the clouds and falling snow grew ever thicker, and after a word with Beltran, they called a halt early. Nothing was to be gained by forcing grumbling men to press on through the same snow that would immobilize their prey. Riding through the snow, the men were weary and disheartened, and

some of them would have eaten a few bites of cold food and rolled into their blankets at once, but Bard insisted that fires must be lighted and hot food cooked, knowing this would do more for the men’s morale than anything else. With fires lighted on stone slabs and blazing away, fed by the fallen tree branches of an abandoned orchard—hit by the nut blight of a few seasons ago—the camp looked

cheerful, and one of the men brought out a small drone-pipe and began to play, mournful old laments older than the world. The young women slept in their shared tent, but Master Gareth joined the men around the fire, and after a time, though he protested that he was neither minstrel nor bard, consented to tell them the tale of the last dragon. Bard sat beside Beltran in the shadows of the fire, chewing on dried fruit and listening to the story of how the last dragon had been slain by one of the Hastur kin, and how, sensing with the
laran
of beasts that this last of his folk was dead, every beast and bird within the Hundred Kingdoms had set up a Wail, a keen, even the banshees joining in the lament for the last of the wise serpents… and the son of Hastur himself, standing beside the corpse of the last dragon on

Darkover, had vowed never again to hunt for any living thing for sport. When Master Gareth finished his tale, the men applauded and begged for more, but he shook his head, saying that he was an old man and had been riding all day, and that he was away to his blankets.

Soon the camp was dark and silent; only the small red eye of the fire, covered with green branches against the morning’s need for hot porridge, sizzled and watched from its cover. All around the fire dark triangles marked where the men lay in their blankets, beneath the waterproof sheets, stretched up at an angle, to protect them from the still falling snow; miniature open half-tents pitched on a forked stick apiece, each with two or three or four men beneath, huddled together and sharing blankets and body warmth. Beltran lay at Bard’s side, looking curiously small and boyish, but Bard lay awake, staring at the fire and the white-silver streaks of snow that made pale arrows across the light.

Somewhere, not far from them, the enemy lay immobilized, heavy carts mired in snow, pack beasts

floundering.

At his side Beltran said softly, “I wish Geremy were with us, foster brother.”

Bard laughed almost noiselessly. “So did I, at first. Now I’m not so sure. Perhaps two green boys in command are enough, and we are well off to have Master Gareth’s experience and wisdom; while

Geremy as an untried
laranzu
rides with your father who is well skilled in command… Perhaps he thought if we three went together it would seem too much like one of the hunting trips we used to ride on, the three of us, when we were only lads…”

“I remember,” Beltran said, “when we three were younger and we rode out like this. Lying together and looking into the fire and talking of the days when we would be men, and on campaign together, in command, in real war and not our mock battles against
chervine
herds… Do you remember, Bard?”

Bard smiled in the dark. “I remember. What mighty campaigns and wars we planned, how we would

subdue all this countryside from the Hellers to the shores of Carthon, and beyond the seas… Well, this much has come true of what we planned, that we are all on campaign, and at war, just as we said when we were boys who hardly knew which end of a sword to take hold by…”

“And now Geremy is a
laranzu
riding with the king, and he thinks only of Ginevra, and you are the king’s banner bearer, promoted in battle, and handfasted to Carlina, and I—” Prince Beltran sighed in the darkness. “Well, no doubt, one day I will know what it is that I want from my life, or if I do not, my father and king will tell me what it is that I will have.”

“Oh, you,” Bard said, laughing, “some day the throne of Asturias will be yours.”

“That is no laughing matter,” Beltran said, and he sounded somber. “To know that I will come to power only over my father’s grave and by his death. I love my father, Bard, and yet at times I think I shall go mad if I must stand at his footstool and wait for something real to do… I cannot even go forth out of the kingdom and seek adventure, as any other subject is free to do.” Bard felt the younger lad shiver. “I am so cold, foster brother.”

For a moment Beltran seemed, to Bard, no older than the little brother who had clung to his neck and wept when he went away to the king’s house. Awkwardly, he patted Beltran’s shoulder in the dark.

“Here, have some more of the blanket, I don’t feel the cold as badly as you do, I never did. Try to sleep.

Tomorrow, perhaps, we’ll have a fight on our hands, a real fight, not one of the mock battles we used to take so much pleasure in, and we must be ready for it.”

“I’m afraid, Bard. I’m always afraid. Why are you and Geremy never afraid?”

Bard snorted brief laughter. “What makes you think we’re not afraid? I don’t know about Geremy, but I was afraid enough to wet my breeches like a babe, and no doubt I’ll be so again, Only I haven’t time to talk about it when it’s happening, and no wish to do so when it isn’t. Don’t worry, foster brother. You did well enough at Snow Glens, I remember.”

“Then why did my father promote you on the field, and not me?”

Bard half sat up in the darkness and stared at him. He said, “Is that flea still biting you? Beltran, my friend, your father knows you have all you need already. You are his son and his legitimate heir, you ride at his side, you are already acknowledged just one breath away from the throne. He promoted me because I was his fosterling, and a bastard. Before he could set me over his men, to command them, he had to make me somebody he could legitimately promote, which he could not do without

acknowledging me specially. Promoting me was only sharpening a tool he wished to use, no more, not a mark of his love or special regard! By the cold whirlwind of Zandru’s third hell, I know it if you don’t! Are you fool enough to be jealous of me, Beltran?”

“No,” Beltran said slowly in the dark, “No, I suppose not, foster brother.” And after a time, hearing Beltran’s silent breathing in the dark, Bard slept.

Chapter Four

In the morning it was still snowing, and the sky was so dark that Bard’s heart sank as he watched the men going glumly about the business of caring for their horses, cooking up a great pot of porridge, making ready and saddling up to ride. He heard muttering among the men to the effect that King Ardrin had no right to send them out in winter, that this campaign was the work of his fosterling, who didn’t know what was proper and right; who ever heard of a campaign like this with winter coming on?

“Come on, lads,” Bard urged. “If the Dry-towners can ride in weather like this, are we going to stand back and let them bring clingfire to hurl against our villages and our families?”