Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “No,” Burek said. “I could wish they’d gone into the markets and noticed prices, especially the horse market, because that’s what I know most. If there’s bad money about—or more money than there should be—the price of horses goes up. Shoeing, too. I wonder if any of them noticed that.”

  “They were staying in a grange in Smiths’ Street. Surely some of the yeomen were smiths. But then, the Girdish are set against false weights and measures, and in Fintha they control prices. I don’t know if Marshal Harak would approve if they raised their prices, unless the cost of iron and coal went up.”

  “When we go back to the city, I can go to the horse market and talk to the smiths,” Burek said.

  “In the meantime,” Arcolin said, “let’s make sure the camp isn’t so happy to have Stammel back they get careless with the watch.”

  But Stammel himself took care of that; they heard his voice from across the camp, the familiar bellow. “And while you lot are sitting here like spinsters gossiping, who’s keeping watch? Less talk and more work!”

  A startled silence, then camp noises resumed, this time with a different timbre.

  Over the next few days, Arcolin grew used to seeing Stammel with a hand on someone’s shoulder, his head cocked a little sideways. Neat in appearance as always, attentive, alert, quick to silence idle chatter, ready to respond to any orders Arcolin or Burek gave. They moved every few days, marking the trails they found on the map; Stammel marched as fast as the others, needing extra help only on the rougher ground. Everyone called Suli “Eyes” now, but many of the troops had a nickname; he thought nothing of it.

  Arcolin suspected—but knew better than to ask—that Suli, Devlin, and others gave him special help. That didn’t matter. They had Stammel; Stammel had them. If some chores were quietly diverted from him, and others came to him because sight was not required, it was only common sense. A familiar voice, a familiar presence.

  They were attacked again one night, an attack as carefully planned as the other, and this time killed only five; two of their own were wounded. Arcolin heard Devlin, voice harsh with effort, tell Stammel to get back, get down. He felt a stab of grief, but there was no time—they fought off the attack, and when he came back, Stammel was busy, talking to one of the wounded as he held the man’s shoulders down and Master Simmitt stitched the wound. He made no complaint.

  But just before dawn, as Arcolin made the rounds, he found Stammel standing with one of the sentries. “I was wondering,” Stammel said. “About archery.”

  “Archery?”

  “I know I can’t use a sword without eyes. But I think I could shoot.”

  Arcolin felt his brows rising. “But you need eyes even more—the targets are farther away.”

  “I need someone to tell me where. I was thinking about Paks, and that trip she and the others made from Dwarfwatch. Canna was shot by someone who never saw her, Paks said. Someone just shooting blindly into a thicket. Now, if we were attacked, and I had someone to tell me where to aim—”

  “Sergeant—” Arcolin shook his head, glad for once Stammel could not see. “I never heard of a blind archer,” he said finally.

  “There’s a legend,” Stammel said. “And I’ve seen inns with that name—always thought it was a joke about the ale, to be honest. But still—if I could try with a crossbow …”

  Arcolin looked at him. “You’ve spanned one already, haven’t you?”

  Stammel nodded. “And the thing is, Captain, you know we usually have Cracolnya’s cohort. We need archers. If I can—they’ll never expect it. It’s like you said; they’re spying on us. They know I’m blind; they think I’m helpless.” His hands clenched and opened, clenched and opened. “If I can hit a target, then anyone could—we could train our own—maybe a half-file?”

  It was impossible; it could not work, but sparring in unarmed combat was not enough for a man like Stammel. He had to feel he could fight. Arcolin understood that very well. And Stammel was right—they did need more archers. They had the captured crossbows …

  “If we were in the stronghold, I’d say yes,” Arcolin said. “You’d have the space there; we’d have armsmasters to teach you. But here? We’re on campaign.”

  “Just let me try for one day, sir. If I make no progress by the end of it, I’ll say no more.”

  “All right.” What, after all, could it hurt? They weren’t moving that day, anyway. He could let Stammel try to get over the notion—though what would replace it he could not guess.

  Stammel took a typically Stammel approach to the practice. “How many of you think you can outshoot a blind man?” he asked a glass later. Silence. “Come on, don’t be shy. I’m betting someone a jug of ale, when we get back to Valdaire, that I can outshoot you. Maybe not today, but another day. To make it fair, you can start practicing with me.” A chuckle, somewhat nervous.

  Stammel held up one of their five crossbows. “This is a crossbow. It’s nice and short and thus good for use in the woods. Some of you have never used a crossbow, because Siger, being from Lyonya originally, likes longbows.” He pointed out the parts of the crossbow, naming them. “Simple to use—aim, pull this, then re-span and you’re set. Even if you don’t hit anyone, they won’t like the sound of death from the air.” Meanwhile, targets were set up, not far away at all.

  They were using blunt quarrels, but Arcolin still worried that someone would lose an eye.

  Stammel’s crossbow had a twig bound to the stock so it stuck out one side—to identify it, Arcolin assumed, but why? Then Stammel picked it up and brought the stock up … and the twig touched his neck just when the arms of the prod were level.

  “Ready!” he called. Downrange, Suli and Devlin stood one to either side of the target, an arm’s length away. Both said, “Here.” Stammel aimed, Arcolin could see, between the voices. He pulled the trigger. The bolt skimmed over the top of the target.

  “Two fingers above the target,” Devlin called.

  Stammel had re-spanned the bow and lifted it. Again it was level. “Ready,” he said. The other two called, and again he shot. The bolt bounced off the middle of the target. He spanned the bow again and this time shot without waiting for the others to call. The bolt hit the middle again.

  Silence. Arcolin could not believe what he had just seen.

  “Well?” Stammel said finally.

  “I think some people will be regretting that bet,” Arcolin said. “Gird’s arm, man, I didn’t think anyone could do that. How—?”

  “I’m not sure,” Stammel said. “When I found I could walk and then make my way around the grange, I remembered that even on dark nights I had good balance. I always knew where my arms and legs were, when I was upright and when I wasn’t. Siger used to say that crossbows were the lazy man’s bow—you remember he said a blind man with one hand could shoot a crossbow. Then it was a jest, but I thought … if I could figure out a way to hold it level without someone having to show me each shot … and then there were the redroots.”

  “Redroots?”

  “I was slicing redroots a few days ago, and Dev made some awful joke. I threw a redroot at him—just joking, you know—and it hit him square, he said. I threw at his voice. Turned out I could throw to any of them, though I couldn’t catch. I could throw to someone I knew was between two voices, who said nothing. Well, if I could aim a redroot, why not a crossbow?”

  “What about range—what will you do there?”

  “Practice. The sound’s different enough—I know how far away you are, Captain. I need practice to understand how much over the sound to aim for different distances, but—I can help, sir, in a fight, and not be helpless.”

  “Yes, but—none of our people will be out there to give you a direction and range. You could hit one of them by mistake.”

  “Not if I shoot beyond all their voices, at distant enemy voices. I know I’m not likely to hit anyone, but I can certainly scare them.”

  Arcolin still had doubts, but this was Stammel, after all.


  By the end of that day’s practice, Stammel was hitting the target four times out of five at a distance twice as far as at first. The others, using crossbows without the twigs to signal when the prod was level, did worse. Stammel was grinning when he came back, one hand lightly on Bald Seli’s shoulder and his crossbow hanging from the other.

  Over the next days, Devlin helped Stammel pick those who were learning fastest, and they were assigned to more practice sessions. The armorer devised a better way to attach Stammel’s levelers: iron rods with the ends beaten into smooth flanges set into the stock. As they all improved, Stammel managed to maintain a slight lead on them; Arcolin realized that would not continue forever, but they were all proficient enough to be useful in a fight, and two or three of the best were close enough to Stammel’s level to make a contest fair.

  The days shortened perceptibly, though the southern heat lingered; Arcolin thought of the coronation that had happened tens of days ago in Tsaia and wondered what it had been like. He could not imagine Dorrin as a duke, really. Or the young prince as a king, for that matter; and he must attend Autumn Court. He began counting how many days it would be, how soon he would have to leave the south to make it there in time.

  River Road, Tsaia

  Marshal-General Arianya rode steadily westward, glancing aside now and then at her most unexpected paladin. If, indeed, Paks was in any way her paladin despite being on the list in Fin Panir.

  Paks at Kieri Phelan’s northern stronghold had been surprise enough—alive and well, with the powers a paladin should have—after the way in which she had left Fin Panir. That had been miracle upon miracle, Arianya thought, though complicated by the actions of a Kuakgan.

  But now—though it was hard to see the paladin in the blithe young woman who rode along so easily, plum juice running down her chin—now Paks was more than that. Arianya had never heard of such a thing as that silver circle on her brow. The stories she’d already been told, including that meeting with the thief who claimed to have brought her out of Liart’s lair, went beyond imagining.

  “Want a plum, Marshal-General?” Paks asked, holding out a handful. She’d bought the plums from a farmer that morning, just after they left Thornhedge Grange, and clearly intended to share them out before lunch.

  “Thank you,” Arianya said, taking one and biting into it. “I hope the king will let us see Dorrin’s gift again when we pass through Vérella. I’d like to make a sketch of the designs.”

  “If the necklace is part of that set,” Paks said. “I wonder if it’s magical as well.”

  “I was worried about that,” Arianya said. “Magelord jewels … possibly royal … that’s not something we should have in our treasury.”

  “Why not?”

  Gird wouldn’t like it was the obvious answer. Arianya paused. “It’s a danger to those who don’t know how to control its power,” she said instead. “I’m not sure Dorrin could. Though anyone who could mend a well the way she did … that’s power, all right. Remember the old story about the magelord who sent a whole river into a well and flooded a fort that way?”

  “That’s when Gird’s friend Cob was hurt, wasn’t it?” Paks asked. “It’s in the histories we had to read. Those scrolls I brought—do they tell the same story?”

  “Yes, in more detail. But the point is, magelords could control water, or some of them could. And Dorrin can.”

  “She thinks it’s because of Falk,” Paks said. “She prayed.”

  “She may wear Falk’s ruby, but she’s not just a Falkian knight,” Arianya said. “When she killed the man—her father, she said, wearing another man’s body—that wasn’t a prayer to Falk. That was magery.”

  “It could be both,” Paks said. She bit into another plum and spat out the stone into her hand, then tossed it to the base of a hedge to the river side of the road. “Alyanya’s blessing,” she said.

  Arianya glanced back, half expecting the stone to sprout then and there and bear flowers and fruit by the end of summer. No, that was silly. “I don’t see how it could be both,” she said. “Gird wouldn’t—surely Falk wouldn’t—”

  “But she’s his knight,” Paks said, as if that made everything clear. “And I know he talks to her.”

  She sounded so certain. Arianya remembered feeling that certain and being wrong, terribly wrong. But she was not a paladin. “I wanted to ask you about that place where you found the scrolls—was it like Luap’s Stronghold in Kolobia?”

  “No—at least—not exactly,” Paks said. “It was more elvish. Macenion—the part elf I was with—said elves had built it.”

  “I never heard of elves going under stone,” Arianya said. “Even in Kolobia, there was no sign elves lived under stone.”

  “Iynisin—”

  “Yes, of course, iynisin—but they’re evil. Elves are—are the Elders, guardians of the green world.”

  “They can be wrong,” Paks said. “Just like us. The Lady thought Kieri Phelan was unfit to rule.”

  “You think they were wrong to build the elfane taig?”

  Paks shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Neither did Arianya, but as Marshal-General she had a duty to the Fellowship; she must know right and wrong beyond the limits of the Code of Gird, to govern wisely. A chill ran down her back.

  “Tell me everything you remember about that place and about the Lady,” she said.

  When they reached Vérella, Arianya pointed out the Verrakai city house to Paks as they rode past. Though the street door was closed and the ground-floor windows shuttered, upstairs the blue-and-white-striped curtains waved gently in the breeze. A new staff had been fitted beside the front entrance, now bearing a small pennant with a small blue V on gray.

  “Her house wards must have done that,” Arianya said. “She had no standard out at Midsummer.” They rode on to the palace gates—opened at once for the Marshal-General of Gird and a paladin. Arianya asked audience with the king, and within the turn of a glass had explained her request.

  “If the necklace is royal regalia,” the king said, “how did part of it end up in a brigand’s lair so far away from the rest?” He led the way to the treasury, where the Verrakaien gifts were set apart from the rest. He opened the chest, then lifted out the items one by one, setting them on a table.

  Arianya stared at the crown, the goblet, the contents of the box. “I can’t imagine any of the Verrakaien selling part of the set, but it certainly looks similar in design.”

  “It could have been stolen,” Paks said.

  “What bothers me,” Arianya said, “is the way the pieces seem … alive in some way. I saw that ring Duke Verrakai found under the floor. And you and she both say these things were controlled, somehow, by blood magery—that can’t be good. I wonder how dangerous it will be to bring the necklace and the others together.”

  “Did the ring make the whole stronger?” Paks asked.

  “Duke Verrakai didn’t say anything about that,” Arianya said. “She didn’t think it was evil in itself. Then again, she’s a magelord.” Arianya shook her head. “It’s annoying. All my life I’ve considered magelords inherently wicked—any with magery, at least—but I can’t see Dorrin that way.”

  “I must know,” the king said. “One way or the other, I must know if it is part of the same set. If it is … would you sell it?”

  “To you? Why would you want it? It’s not your regalia; you already have a crown.”

  “I don’t know,” the king said. “I just feel that if it is part of the same set, they should be together. They’re not really mine, but for now I’m their guardian.”

  “You say that as if they were alive,” Paks said. “As if they had a will.”

  “You said you saw the crown rise in the air,” Arianya said. “So did the king.” She turned to the king. “And if they are not yours, then whose are they, and what will happen if you keep them?” Arianya did not want to imagine the king—or queen—who might come to claim them.

  “I don’t know,” the
king said. “I would be more comfortable, to tell the truth, if they were not here. What do you think now, Marshal-General? Is that necklace part of the set?”

  Arianya nodded. “If it’s not, it’s made by the same hand as made these—and both rockfolk and elves claim they did not, whoever that may have been. And there’s only one way to tell. They must be brought together. I don’t suppose you’d lend them to me to take to Fin Panir.”

  He hesitated. “If it were me alone … but, Marshal-General, if it is known that the Marshal-General is bringing a magelord crown to Fin Panir, how will that sit with the Fellowship?”

  Arianya thought for a moment. “Not well,” she said. “But the cloth that wraps the crown is definitely the same design as what we found in Kolobia, and we know there was a priest of Esea, which is what they called the High Lord. The High Lord’s Hall in Fin Panir is the only surviving holy place built for Esea Sunlord. Perhaps these were made for such worship, and would be at peace in those precincts.”

  “I had not thought it might be made for a god,” the king said. “Would these things be worn by a priest, then?”

  “Possibly. Who knows what their priests wore?”

  “I will think on it,” the king said. “To some of my nobles, the obvious value of these things is taken as surety for the behavior of Dorrin Duke Verrakai. To dispose of them—even to you and the Fellowship of Gird—may cause comment for me, as well as what Girdish opinion might be of you.”

  Arianya felt a prickle of irritation. “We cannot live our lives by others’ opinion, Sir King.”

  “No, but neither can we utterly ignore them if we wish to rule our people well. You could consider bringing the necklace here, you know.”

  “So I could,” Arianya said. “In fact, that was my first intent, to see if it matched. But seeing again that embroidered cloth, so like an altar-cloth, it occurred to me that we might learn more—and more safely—if the pieces were brought together in a place of worship.”