War Maid's Choice-ARC (69 page)

He smiled at the thought, sipped more wine, and returned his attention to the gramerhain before him. His viewpoint shifted and swooped about dizzyingly, but he was accustomed to that, and his smile went cold and cruel as he found Anshakar, Zûrâk, and Kimazh haranguing their army while shamans pounded their massive drums and no less than fifty thousand yammering, leaping, bounding ghouls salavated for their promised prey.

Not long
, he thought.
No, not long at all now
.

* * *

Sir Tellian Bowmaster leaned back in the comfortable chair, contemplating the chessboard while he considered how best to respond to his opponent’s move.

Markhos Silveraxe, King of the Sothōii, had all the fierce drive to win one might have expected in the scion of a warrior dynasty, and quite a few of his courtiers, Tellian knew, would have made sure that winning was exactly what the King accomplished. The more adroit would have contrived to lose in a fashion which disguised their intentions, but all too many of them would simply and cheerfully have thrown the game and then gushed fulsome compliments on Markhos’ skill which both they and the King would have known were as insincere as their desire to win had been.

And the King would have accepted the victory, smiling as if he were completely unaware of what they’d done. But behind his smile he would have marked them down for what they were...and he would never have fully trusted them again. Markhos was not a perfect monarch—few monarchs were—but susceptibility to sycophancy had never been one of his failings.

Tellian’s problem at the moment, however, was that although he was generally a better player than the King, this time the only options available to him were as unpalatable as they were limited. It was really unfair of Markhos to have departed from his normally aggressive, straightforward tactics and set the trap which had just cost Tellian both his king’s castle and his queen’s bishop
and
left his own king in check. Of course, it was his own fault he hadn’t seen it coming, and he rather suspected that his reaction when he realized what he’d stumbled into would have handily quelled any suspicion the King might have cherished about his own determination to win.

“You are going to move sometime this afternoon, I trust, Milord?” the King said now, and smiled as Tellian looked up at him sharply. Markhos’ sleek mustache was less bushy than Tellian’s, and the King stroked it with a thoughtful fingertip. “It’s not that I’m trying to rush you, you understand,” he continued, “but I believe supper will be served in only another two or three hours.”

“Your forbearance is deeply appreciated, Sire.” Tellian’s tone was...dry, to say the least. “Somehow, though, I suspect you’re not in all that great a hurry, though.”

“No?” The king arched an eyebrow. “And why would that be?”

“Because you have me well and truly in a hole, and you’re enjoying every moment of it.”

“Nonsense,” Markhos replied in a remarkably insincere tone, and Tellian smiled. “Well, perhaps just a bit,” the King conceded, holding up his thumb and index finger four inches or so apart. “I have lost the occasional game to you in the past. Of course,” his smile faded and his gaze sharpened, “I’m not precisely alone in that, am I? I really do hope this whole canal business isn’t going to turn out as ugly as it has the potential to become.”

“Your Majesty—” Tellian began, but the King’s raised hand stopped him in midsentence.

“I’m not suggesting I’m going to change my mind, Milord,” he said. “And you don’t have to bring in Yurokhas to see to it that I don’t. Not that his support would do you all that much good at the moment. I’m just a
bit
irked with him, given his...disinclination to obey my instructions to join me here instead of running around with that heir of yours on the Ghoul Moor.” Markhos smiled thinly. “But I’m not irked enough to change my mind about your charter. You don’t even have to get Jerhas in here for that, because the simple truth is that your entire proposal makes far too much sense for me
not
to support it. Yet that doesn’t blind me to how Cassan and Yeraghor are going to react—or to the fact that they’re hardly going to be alone when they do.”

“Your Majesty, I’m truly sorry my long-standing...disagreement with Cassan should have such implications for the Kingdom as a whole,” Tellian said. “I’m sure my ‘unnatural’ suggestion that we might actually try coexisting with the hradani would have infuriated someone else if
he
hadn’t been available, but there’s no denying the bad blood between us is like a forge bellows where his reaction to it is concerned. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit there’s enough ‘bad blood’ from my side for the thought of just how infuriated he truly is—and how badly this is going to
hurt
him—to give me a certain sense of satisfaction.” The baron met his monarch’s gaze levelly as he made that admission. “But even so, if he’d been willing to meet me even a fraction of the way, I would have been more than prepared to set aside a portion of my own increased revenues to compensate him for what I expect him to lose in trade through Nachfalas. It would have stuck in my throat like a fish bone, but I would have done it.”

“I know you would have.” It was Markhos’ turn to sit back, laying his forearms along the armrests of his chair. “And for the sake of his father’s memory, I wish he’d been willing to accept the offer. Unfortunately, Yurokhas was right; Cassan’s mind simply doesn’t work that way.”

There was more than a hint of anger in the King’s voice, Tellian reflected, and wondered again how much of Markhos’ willingness to support his own proposals stemmed from the King’s memories of Cassan’s...incautious efforts to control him in his early days upon the throne. There were those—Tellian among them, to be honest—who were of the opinion that Yurokhas had been gifted with a significantly sharper brain than his royal brother, but there was nothing wrong with the head in which Markhos’ brain resided. In point of fact, it was remarkably level, that head, and if he was slow and methodical—maddeningly so, upon occasion—when it came to making up his mind, there was nothing hesitant about him once he had.

“I don’t suppose there’s ever a major policy choice in any kingdom where the great nobles’ rivalries don’t factor into the decision process, Your Majesty,” the baron said after a moment. “And I suppose it would be unfair—or at least unrealistic—to believe there wouldn’t be rivalries between them, no matter what else might be true or how sincere they were in their disagreements. It doesn’t necessarily need avarice and ambition to breed conflict...or hatred, for that matter. Which isn’t to suggest all three of them don’t play a role in this particular rivalry. I think Cassan and I would’ve detested each other even if we’d both been born peasants, but having the two of us as barons can’t have been easy for you.”

“Oh, you’re right about that, Milord,” Markhos agreed with a knife-thin smile. “There’ve been times I’ve actually found myself wishing one of you would just go ahead and kill the other one off, to be perfectly honest. Of the two, I’d have preferred for you to be the one still standing, although given Cassan’s...devious nature, I’m not sure I would’ve been prepared to place a wager either way. But at least if one of you’d won, I’d have had a
few
moments of peace after the state funeral!”

Tellian snorted, although he knew the King was as well aware as he was of Cassan’s efforts to accomplish precisely that end. Not that Markhos could ever officially admit anything of the sort without absolute, irrefutable proof—unless, of course, he
wanted
to bring back the Time of Troubles.

On the other hand, his extension of a royal charter is a pretty clear inclination of what he actually knows, whether he can
admit
it or not. Shaftmaster’s revenue estimates and Macebearer’s arguments in favor of our increased influence with the Spearmen are all very well, but there’s a part of him that shares the real conservatives’ suspicions of Bahnak and the hradani. Come to that, it’s his
responsibility
to share those suspicions, given all the bloodshed lying between us and them. Despite which, I doubt anyone in the entire Kingdom’s going to miss the subtext of his proclamation or doubt for a minute that he sided with Bahnak, Kilthan, and me at least in part because it lets him hammer Cassan the way the bastard
deserves
to be hammered
.

And, for that matter, I should probably admit there’s a nasty, vindictive side of
me
that bought into the entire idea so enthusiastically because I knew
exactly
what it was going to do to Cassan if we pulled it off
.

Fortunately, for all his keen intelligence, Tellian Bowmaster was given to neither second thoughts nor self-deception. He knew
precisely
what was going to happen to his most bitter rival’s political and economic power, and he was looking forward to it. None of which kept him from truly regretting the way in which their decades-long struggle had overflowed onto the Kingdom as a whole and the King in particular.

“Well, Your Majesty,” he said, reaching for his surviving bishop and interposing it between his king and Markhos’ queen, “we may not have killed each other off—yet—but there’s a pretty good chance sheer apoplexy will carry him off when he finds out about your decision!”

The King laughed. There might have been just an edge of sourness in that laugh, but it was genuine. And probably owed something to the fact that the move of Tellian’s bishop allowed him to exchange one of his knights for the baron’s remaining castle.

“I
would
like to see his reaction,” the King admitted, setting the captured castle to one side. “Unfortunately, not even a king can have everything.”

* * *

The sheer, wild exhilaration filled her mind and heart with a fiery intoxication.

The fiercest gallop upon the back of the fleetest warhorse ever bred paled to insignificance. Perhaps—
perhaps
—a warhorse might have touched, ever so briefly, that headlong, booming, drumroll speed, but it could never have sustained it, never maintained it for more than the barest handful of minutes. Yet the mighty muscles continued to stretch and play, the matchless heart thundered not simply with exertion but with the untamed, unquenchable power of a courser’s dauntless will, and Gayrfressa’s link to the energy which formed and sustained the entire universe burned like a coil of lightning. It poured that energy into her, and her hooves spurned the earth not for mere minutes, but for
hours
.

Leeana Hanathafressa was part of those booming hooves, shared those straining muscles, tasted that energy and felt it pour through her. She was submerged within the wild rush of speed, feeling it as Gayrfressa felt it even as she felt the wind of their passage whipping at her braided hair, bringing tears to her eyes. It was the first time since their bonding that Gayrfressa had truly loosed the incomparable speed and endurance of her kind. They’d touched
moments
of such swiftness, yet until this moment, not even Leeana—a wind rider herself, wife and daughter of wind riders—had truly grasped what it would be like. Now she knew...and as she rode the tornado named Gayrfressa, she and her hoofed sister merged on an even deeper, even more complete level.

Dimly, in the back of her mind where her own thoughts resided separately from this driving charge across the Wind Plain, she understood that part of the magic was her own love of running. Her delight in the speed of her merely human feet, of the deep breaths pulsing in and out of her lungs, of the steady, elevated beat of her heart. She knew that love for herself, and so she truly shared Gayrfressa’s passion to outrace the wind and give herself to the thunder of her hooves—to gallop until even
she
could gallop no more. And as that thought wended its way through her own mind, she felt Gayrfressa touch it with her and sensed the mare’s agreement, exalted and joyous despite the gravity of their mission.

She raised her head, green eyes slitted against the wind, gazing ahead. Few creatures on earth could match a courser’s sense of direction. Gayrfressa knew exactly where they were headed, and she burned her way across open fields, vaulted dry stream beds and small creeks, slowed just enough to maintain her footing as she forged across a broader watercourse, carrying both of them arrow-straight toward their goal. Leeana knew the land around Chergor well, if not so intimately as the terrain around Kalatha, yet she could never have picked out the shortest path to her father’s hunting lodge as Gayrfressa had. She wondered how the courser had done it, yet that was something not even Gayrfressa could have explained to her. The huge chestnut mare simply knew where her destination lay, and no power on earth could have deflected her from her course.

Now Leeana blinked on tears, and her heart rose as she recognized known landmarks. They were no more than a quarter-hour from their goal, the way a courser galloped, and she lowered her head once more, lying forward along Gayrfressa’s neck, cheeks whipped by the courser’s mane, and laid her palms against her sister’s shoulders and the bunchy, explosive power of her deltoideus muscles. She flattened herself, molded herself to the courser, and they and the wind were one.

* * *

Tellian stroked his beard, looking down upon a chessboard which had done nothing but grow progressively (and inevitably) worse from his perspective.

“Mate in three, I believe,” the King said genially, and the baron snorted.

“I believe you’re correct, Your Majesty. And in the interests of moving on to allow you to do something more worthwhile with your time—”

He reached out and tipped his king over, conceding the game.

“I won’t pretend I’m not savoring this moment,” Markhos told him with a smile, beginning to reset the pieces. “Of course, I’m sure you would never be so undutiful as to point out that I’d need to do this no more than...oh, another couple of hundred times to pull even with you.”

“I don’t think it’s quite
that
bad, Your Majesty,” Tellian corrected with a smile of his own. “It couldn’t be more than a few
score
games—certainly not
hundreds
.”