Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  The gnome shrugged. “But you erred. Do you not remember I expressed shock at the dwarf’s plan? Or was that before you came?”

  “I heard that—I had forgotten. My pardon.”

  “We can stand surety for each other’s tale,” the gnome said. “Your wound also speaks for you, and if you speak for me—”

  “Then we had best start,” Arvid said. The herbs had cleared his head and steadied him; he would have preferred an excellent lunch, a bath, and a long nap, but he had seen hard times often before. He was able to stand, and the gnome pointed northward.

  “From the top of this hill, you can see the city,” he said. “But there is a sheep trail easier to follow.”

  “I am glad,” Arvid said. Standing, in the full force of the midday sun, without his hat, he felt unsteady at first. He hung his cloak from his head, for that small protection, and smiled down at the gnome. “Let us be off, then.”

  “Is it not a problem for you humans to leave your blood behind?” the gnome asked, pointing to the blood-soaked rag of his sleeve.

  “There are no blood-mages in Fintha,” Arvid said. “Girdish don’t allow them.”

  The gnome gave a curious rasping sound. “Human blood-mages are not the only ones who work magic with blood.”

  “Then what?” Arvid asked.

  “Bury it deep or take it along and do so later. I have no strength to do it without tools.”

  “I have pockets in my cloak,” Arvid said. He stuffed the stiffened thing into one of them, and they headed for the city along the sheep trail on the side of the hill.

  Heat beat up from the rock outcrops on the hill, intensified the smell of sheep droppings and wool. Arvid told himself it was only the heat that made him unsteady enough to stumble now and then. A hot breeze came up from the land below, smelling of hay and flowers. To the east, clouds gathered slowly into clumps, then more swiftly into towers, dark at the base. It would rain—might already be raining—there, but here on the uplands the sun reigned.

  Around the shoulder of the hill, Arvid caught a glimpse of the city wall in the distance. It seemed near and far at once, as if he had doubled vision showing the real distance and his sense of how fast he could travel. He glanced at the gnome. “Do you think we can make it by sundown?”

  “I do not know all the country,” the gnome said, “but I do know there is no chasm or steep between here and there.” He squinted. “If that is a gate—if there is a gate on this side—we should find a road soon.”

  In another three hundred paces they could see a road. Here and there a tree hung over it; Arvid longed for that shade. Once on the road, Arvid fixed his mind on staying upright and moving as steadily as he could; the gnome, at his side, said nothing until they came to a well, four trees, and a bench set ready for travelers.

  “Water. We stop.”

  Arvid leaned on the well coping, feeling the cool damp air ease his face. The gnome was already up on the coping, working the windlass. “I should—” Arvid began.

  “My lord, sit on the bench. I will fetch water. I have still the carafe.”

  Arvid staggered to the bench; it felt a half-season cooler in the shade there. He let the cloak fall back from his head. The gnome brought the bucket back to the well coping, filled the carafe, and brought it to Arvid. After a bowlful of water, he felt a little better. The gnome drank, and then Arvid again. Now Arvid was aware of hunger, but no worse than he’d known other times. He wet his face and looked around. Under one of the trees, a few hardy summer flowers bloomed: blue sage, star-eye, tinset. He plucked one spray of tinset and laid it on the well coping; the gnome added the silvery-gray leaf of blue sage.

  They had scarcely started again when a party on horseback, all in Gird’s blue and white, rode up behind them and surrounded them.

  “Ho, travelers—did you see aught of a man in black and—” The speaker paused. “You! You are that thief! And this must be—”

  “I am not a thief,” Arvid said. “I am Arvid Semminson, come to Fin Panir at the request of the Marshal-General, and this is my companion, who will share his name if he wishes.”

  “Liar!” The man, red-faced now, spurred his horse closer to Arvid. “You killed Girdish knights; you stole—”

  “I killed a dwarf,” Arvid said. “I killed no knights, nor did this gnome. I stole nothing.”

  “It is gone, and your horse and pack; you must have done it!”

  “It” must mean the necklace. His horse, his pack? Had there been other thieves, and he had not noticed? In the meantime … “Do you see a horse and pack?” Arvid said. “If they are gone, someone stole them—it was not I, for if I had taken my own horse, I would be riding, not afoot.”

  “It threw you and ran off, and no wonder,” the man said.

  Arvid sighed. Girdsmen had heads like stone; facts shattered on their preconceptions. “I am not so ill a rider,” he said instead. “I left my horse in the care of your stable, and my pack hanging from a peg in a guest room. If they are gone, then they were taken by someone else.”

  “Are you, a thief, accusing Girdsmen of thievery?”

  “I accuse no one; I merely state the facts. If it is gone, someone else took it because I did not.”

  “Where were you last night and this day, then?” the man asked.

  “Last night I was in the treasure chamber of Gird’s Hall,” Arvid said. “With the knowledge of your Marshals’ council, I had baited that chamber with a sapphire and two pieces of gold. While I was there, as I had expected, the dwarf I warned Marshal Perin about made an entrance through the rock itself. He had overpowered this gnome, and stolen power from the gnome to make an entrance. The dwarf was angry and grew stone across the door I had used; the only way out was through the passage he had created. I killed him, taking this wound—” He held up his arm. “I found the gnome still alive, and he led me through the passage to the outside.”

  “You trusted him?”

  “I had no choice,” Arvid said. “I needed his help to get out of that place—I cannot burrow through stone.”

  “He is rockfolk; he could—”

  “His power was spent; I told you. The dwarf stole it.”

  The man leaned forward, resting a forearm on his horse’s neck. “Let me tell you another tale, Arvid Semminson, that I think runs truer than yours. You and these rockfolk planned the whole thing. You let them into the treasure chamber, after they burrowed along; together you killed the knights in the corridor, you taking that wound you show so proudly. Then you and the gnome came out the secret passage; the dwarf meanwhile sealed the passage with rock, bespelled those who watched the necklace, and made off with it and your horse and pack, and—since he failed to meet you at the appointed place—you came trailing back, feigning innocence, hoping to escape the just punishment you deserve.”

  The man sat up, drew his sword, and all around the circle of horsemen came the rasp of swords being drawn. “Liar,” the man said. “Thief. You deserve death, and death you shall have, and we the reward for bringing back your corpse. Dead or alive, the High Marshal told us when we rode out. Dead it shall be.”

  Arvid did not move. “I have not yet told all I know about the paladin Paksenarrion,” he said. “It is for that I was invited here. Do you think the Marshal-General will be pleased to know you silenced one she herself asked to speak?”

  “You—!”

  “I can be killed, if so she judges, after I have spoken of Paksenarrion. But I cannot speak, if you kill me now.” He shrugged. “It is, of course, your decision.”

  “He is right, Pir,” one of the others said. “And the Marshal-General should arrive today; it will do no harm to wait. We won’t let him escape again.”

  Arvid considered pointing out that he hadn’t “escaped” in the first place, and had been coming back on his own, but in view of the drawn swords held his peace.

  “Very well,” the first man said, with bad grace. “Then get a march on, you, and don’t dawdle.”

  “Consi
dering that I’ve had no sleep, no food since yesterday, and have a wound, and my companion is not at full strength either, you may have to accept a slower pace than you, riding, would find reasonable,” Arvid said.

  “A day’s fast never hurt anyone,” the man said, wheeling his horse discourteously close to Arvid.

  “Pir—” one of the others said.

  “I’ll go tell them we found him,” the man said, and spurred to a gallop. The others looked down at Arvid with less hostility.

  “You could ride pillion,” one of them said.

  “I don’t ride,” said the gnome.

  “It would be quicker,” Arvid said to him, “but if you cannot ride, then I, too, will walk. My thanks,” he said to the rider who had offered. He took a few steps forward, but standing in the heat had affected his balance, and he nearly fell, his vision darkening.

  “My lord!” The gnome was at his side, a hard-muscled shoulder under his arm, helping him. “You cannot go on.”

  Arvid shook his head. “I can. It’s just the standing—”

  “No,” said one of the Girdish. “It’s not right.” He dismounted and eased the reins over his mount’s ears. “I will help you mount, and I will lead my horse.”

  “Torin, are you sure?”

  “I am sure that it is not courteous to force a wounded man to walk such a distance in the heat, without food or water. And we must go at a foot-pace anyway, for the gnome’s sake.”

  “Pir won’t like it.”

  “Pir can—” The man swallowed whatever he might have said and offered Arvid his hands to mount. Arvid would have ignored that, but when he tried to raise his wounded arm to the saddle-bow, he could not. Mounted, he looked down at the gnome.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “It is nothing, my lord. I am quite able to walk.”

  Arvid draped his cloak over his head again. In such wise they made their way to the city faster than Arvid could have walked it, and neared the gate by late afternoon. He would have dismounted when they came to the gate, but his guide would have none of it.

  “You do not need to exhaust yourself up the steep to the Hall.”

  They found the forecourt in some confusion. The Marshal-General had just arrived, having been overtaken by a search party sent out on the river road to catch the fugitives; it had returned with her. Others, sent north and west, had not yet returned. As well, two students had gone missing. Clusters of Marshals, knights, and staff were huddled here and there, all talking against one another.

  In this chaos, the arrival of another seven riders caused no notice at first but to bring grooms running out to take the horses. Arvid slid off, wrenching his arm in the process; the gnome moved up close to him.

  “There they are!” Pir, spotting them across the court and pointing, had a voice that affected Arvid like a squealing saw. “We found this one at least!”

  Faces turned toward Arvid, including the Marshal-General. She came toward him, the others shifting out of her way, and looked him up and down.

  “Arvid—you look the worse for wear.”

  “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  “You don’t look like a man who successfully killed four Girdish knights and made off with a stolen necklace, a horse, and a pack.”

  “No, Marshal-General.”

  She glanced at the gnome and to Arvid’s astonishment said, “Greetings, rockbrother. Was it you who bound up this man’s wound?” in the gnome’s own language.

  “Yes, Marshal-General,” the gnome said, eyes alight.

  “And you were with him in this … situation?”

  “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  “An accomplice, I’ll warrant,” Pir said. “I’ll tell you what I think—”

  “Later,” the Marshal-General said. “I will see Arvid, whom I invited and who is my guest, cared for first.”

  “But—”

  She turned her shoulder to him and spoke to the man leading the horse Arvid had ridden. “It was well done, Torin, to offer him a mount. I suppose the rockbrother refused?”

  “Yes, Marshal-General.”

  “Arvid, come with me, you and your friend. You will sleep in the main Hall tonight.” Arvid was not sure he could walk that far, but one of the Marshals offered him an arm, and he made it inside the cool entrance chamber of the Hall without disgracing himself. “You both need a chance to bathe and change,” the Marshal-General said. She spoke to a young man in gray. “We need a suit of clothes for this rockbrother and also for this man.”

  They moved down a passage past a long room filled with tables and benches and turned left into one furnished with two beds and opening into a small chamber with a tub and spigot and a stool. A window in the bedchamber opened onto a walled garden.

  “You will wish to stay together, I imagine,” the Marshal-General said. “You will be more comfortable here than in the School barracks, and anyway, there’s a disturbance over there right now.” She turned to the gnome and again spoke in that language. “Rockbrother, I honor your skill in wound care and do not doubt you have applied the best herbs you could find, but Arvid is a man, and I would ask that you permit one of our healers to see him. I am sure it will not lessen whatever ceremony of exchange you had with him.”

  “He was wounded by my blade in another’s hand, and he saved me,” the gnome said. “The debt is mine; my life is his; do what you will.”

  The Marshal-General glanced at Arvid; he opened his mouth to explain, but his vision darkened and he was hardly aware when he slumped, other than to think, Oh, no. He came to himself again in one of the beds. Snoring from the other bed proved to be his gnome companion, sound asleep. A dim lamp burned in the bath chamber. Outside, it was dark, as he could see between the slats of the shutters, now opened for a nonexistent breeze.

  Beyond the closed door, he could hear footsteps and voices, but not what they said. Some passed … more silence … then immediately outside the door he heard voices again.

  “I’ll just look,” one said. The door opened. The Marshal-General, in a simple blue shirt, sleeves rolled up, over gray trousers.

  “I’m awake,” Arvid said. “But he’s not.”

  “I’ll be brief. Do you remember waking once before?”

  “No.” He hated the thought of that.

  “You roused enough, after you were cleaned up, to drink a little soup. Your wound has been healed, though we can do nothing for the blood loss. If that bloody mess in your cloak pocket—and dear Arvid, I do not wish to think what purpose you find for all those pockets—is all your own blood, our healers think that is quite enough to explain what happened.”

  Arvid squeezed his eyes shut a moment. So now the Marshal-General and doubtless all the other Marshals knew some of his secrets … and the cloak was the easiest of his tools to use, most times.

  “I travel a lot,” he said, his voice coming out in a croak. He had never felt more like a rain-sodden rooster, tail feathers limp and dragging.

  “Indeed you do. I will not worry you tonight, but if you are awake, the healers say more food would be a good idea.”

  “And then?” Was this a last meal?

  “And then a night’s sleep, and in the morning we shall talk.”

  His stomach grumbled, and she wrinkled her nose at the sound. “I’ll have a bowl of beef broth and all-heal sent in, and some bread. And more water.”

  “The door—”

  “Is guarded. You have nothing to fear, Arvid.”

  He wasn’t so sure, but as the gnome snored on, and a woman with a broad friendly face brought him the food, he ate and—snoring or no—slept. He woke to children’s voices in the garden outside; it was broad day already, and they had been sent, he gathered, to pick herbs for the kitchen.

  The gnome’s bed was empty, but he could hear splashing from the bathing room. He lay, feeling less soreness in his shoulders and hands than he’d expected, even if his arm was healed … he looked, and the bandage was gone, but a clean white scar, thin as a string, outline
d the slash.

  Well. He sat up; his head spun for a moment. A cream-colored shirt embroidered with stars and flowers around the neckline and a pair of gray trousers were folded on the table. He glared at them. He wore black. He did not wear Girdish clothes, except he had no others, and he was not going to walk around bare-skinned. He put on the clothes—they smelled of sun and herbs and were pleasantly soft-rough on his skin—and tried standing. Yes, he could stand, but he felt weaker than he’d hoped.

  The gnome came out of the bathing chamber, dressed now in a sleeveless brown jerkin and green trousers, both too wide for him and held on with a leather belt. “They had only dwarf things,” he said to Arvid. “It is not discourtesy. Our clothes will be clean and dry later today, they said.”

  “Do you have others at the inn where we met?” Arvid asked.

  “I do,” the gnome said. “But I am not sure—the dwarf may have hidden them, or perhaps he did not even pay the score. And he could have taken my money—”

  “We have two gold pieces,” Arvid said. “Those were mine, from my own purse.” At least … he’d had them the day before. But there they were, on top of his folded cloak. His sword belt and sword, too, and all his other blades, neatly laid out. Either the Marshal-General wasn’t planning to kill him, or she hoped he’d give an excuse. He thought about that as he went in the bathing chamber, splashed water on his face and hands, and made use of the jacks-hole, here set in a raised platform and provided with an elaborately carved seat. Surely that wasn’t Gird’s idea … but he remembered this had been a palace before Gird’s time.

  He was pulling on his boots over thick gray socks when a tap came at the door. It was, again, the Marshal-General.

  “You look better,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the table. “Feel free to arm yourself if you wish. I was quite impressed, by the way.”

  “If you were going to kill me, you had your chance,” Arvid said. The embroidered shirt soured his mood. Flowers!

  “You’re my guest,” the Marshal-General said. “I don’t kill guests. You need breakfast, you and your companion.”