Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Sir King—” That was the steward, looking both scared and determined. “Bread’s not out yet, but there’s porridge-cakes quickfried and cold meats—hot sib in a few minutes.”

  “Excellent,” Kieri said. “Come now—let’s eat. Everyone needs to start this day with a good meal under their belts.”

  “My lord—” The steward bowed them into the small dining room.

  Kieri and Garris ate heartily, and soon his Squires joined in. Kieri drank down a cup of hot sib in three swallows, finishing just as Orlith arrived.

  “Sir King—I’m glad to see you’re awake.”

  “The taig woke me, as I’m sure it did you. Have you eaten?”

  “Yes,” Orlith said. “Others are coming.”

  “The Lady?” Kieri asked. “I haven’t been able to reach her through the taig.”

  “I expect so,” Orlith said.

  “Good,” Kieri said, applying himself to another porridge-cake. “We will have a busy day. I would like you to monitor the taig, so that I can deal with other things from time to time. I’m staying in contact, but I don’t want to miss anything it might tell us and yet I must attend to purely military matters as well.”

  “As you wish, Sir King,” Orlith said, bowing.

  “I’m sending couriers to bring in our reserves of rangers,” Kieri said. “And the Halveric with his troops.”

  “I thought they were already here—”

  “No.” Had Orlith paid no attention earlier? “A cohort and a half are still south, with Aliam.” Servants brought in a steaming basket of hot bread. Kieri broke off an end and slathered it with butter, then dripped honey on it. “Let this stand for the pastry,” he said. “We’re already talking business, and we must continue.”

  Garris pushed back his chair. “By your leave, Sir King, I’ll get the couriers started on their way—and yes, I’ll make sure they’ve breakfasted.”

  “Good. Whoever’s at the river should already have sent to Tsaia to warn them, as well as to us. Send also to whatever domains you think might not be touched by couriers on their way to and from the river.”

  Garris bowed and left just as Sier Halveric arrived, more flustered than Kieri had ever seen him.

  “Sir King!”

  “Sit down,” Kieri said. “Have some breakfast—”

  “There’s no time,” Halveric said. “We must do something.”

  “We must prepare for a long and difficult day,” Kieri said. “Eat, if you haven’t. I’m sending couriers to Aliam and to steadings between here and the river.”

  “How long have you been awake?” Halveric asked, reaching for the bread.

  “A turn of the glass, now. The taig woke me. When Aliam arrives, he will take command of all our forces, second only to me. I’d like you to see to provisioning, if you would.”

  “Of course, Sir King … you are so calm; are you not worried?”

  “Worried? Of course. Panicked, no. This is not my first war.”

  He felt the northern edge of the taig flinch, as if from a blow; glancing at Orlith, he saw that the elf had felt it as clearly.

  “Dry leaves and a wind from the north,” the elf said. He did not need to say more. Kieri could almost feel his own skin crisping in a blaze, as dry leaves ignited and blew through the air, lighting the dry wood of fallen limbs … but deeper in the forest, the burning leaves fell on snowdrifts and went out. “They picked an ill time to use fire,” the elf said. “Autumn before snow would be better …”

  “That may have been their original plan,” Kieri said, “which we delayed, by intervening in the matter of their king. Let us ask the gods for more snow—or freezing rain.”

  By dawn—a bitter, clear dawn, with north wind thrashing the trees—couriers were well on their way and Council members resident in Chaya were busy carrying out the tasks he had given them. Still he had heard nothing from the Lady, and Orlith, busy with the tasks Kieri had given him, merely shook his head when asked if she was aware of the taig.

  “Will you take the field?” Sier Belvarin asked.

  “Not now,” Kieri said. “Captain Talgan is a competent field commander for the Halveric troops—I’ve seen him in action—and I must trust my ranger and Royal Archer commanders are the same, though they lack Talgan’s experience. We should have couriers arriving this evening with reports.”

  The rest of the day, Kieri worked through the plans he’d made, nudging his Council into faster action by anticipating their questions and confusion. He spent an hour at midday, walking through the streets of Chaya, where rumors were already causing some disturbances, encouraging people to come to their local council if they wanted to know more. “I’m going now to talk to them,” he said. “There’s nothing you can’t hear.”

  Men and women crowded into the meeting hall; Kieri told them what he knew, what he didn’t know, and when he would know more.

  “So far, the damage has not spread. It might—I do not know what this special fire is, that the Pargunese king told me about.”

  “Do the elves know? Does the Lady?”

  “The elves have not told me, if they do, and since they love trees, I can’t imagine they would keep it secret if they did. Here is what I want you to do: since we do not know yet how many they are, and exactly what they purpose, you must prepare yourselves for several possibilities.” Kieri outlined these, and explained what preparations were needed for each. “You see there is much to be done, and you can accomplish this, if you start now, and do not panic.”

  “Are you going north?”

  “Not yet.” He saw relief on most faces; it surprised him. His own troops—his former troops, he reminded himself—were most confident when their commander took the field with them. These people seemed to want him near them … but then, it was the same impulse, just expressed differently.

  Through the afternoon, his annoyance with the Lady’s nonappearance grew; he tried to ignore it, lest it further disturb the taig. But where was she? Where could she go that he could not feel at least the touch of her power? He felt less keenly another fire blaze in the north; Orlith, he saw as he looked up, was monitoring it closely.

  “I think the rangers are able to quench the fires,” Orlith said. “It is nothing new.”

  “It is ordinary fire so far,” Kieri said. “I do not trust that it will always be. If I had a weapon of unquenchable fire, I would not necessarily use it first.”

  “Why not?”

  “I would see how well ordinary fire did … I would probe my enemy’s defenses. An extraordinary weapon kept in reserve for the right moment has greater effect.”

  Orlith stared at him for a moment then shook his head. “I had not thought of that. Truly, your experience as a war leader may be more valuable than I thought.”

  “It usually is, if you’re in a war,” Kieri said. He finished the stack of orders before him. He felt stiff and stale—it would be turns of the glass yet before a courier would arrive. “I’m going to the salle for practice, and then a bath before dinner.” He pushed himself to his feet. “Aulin, Sarol, have you had practice today?”

  “No, Sir King. The others went earlier.”

  “Then come along; you can rotate in.”

  In practice garb, and with another mug of sib, he ran down the stairs, followed by his Squires, and found Carlion and Siger putting a group of lads in palace livery through elementary footwork drills.

  “I wondered when you’d show up, m’lord,” Siger said. “Knew you were busy.”

  “Busy, but not about to miss both my practices,” Kieri said. “You’d never let me hear the end of it.” He hung his sword up and began stretching, trying not to rush—it would not do to hurry through this, not in front of both senior armsmasters, one of whom knew him very well indeed.

  Sure enough, Siger came over and watched critically. “Get that elbow right straight out, m’lord. You’ve another thumb width of reach that way … and your foot’s not at the right angle.”

  Kieri moved his fo
ot, straightened his elbow—a tight muscle in his forearm twinged—and finally Siger agreed he was stretched enough to begin practice.

  “You lads, move aside,” Carlion said. “By your leave, Sir King, I’d let them stay … Siger and I intend to work you hard this afternoon.”

  “I’d welcome it,” Kieri said. He strapped on a banda, put on his gloves, and picked up a practice blade.

  “The audience or the work?” Carlion asked.

  “Both,” Kieri said, with a quick grin for the audience.

  “The middle range to warm up,” Carlion said. The two armsmasters were already there; the moment Kieri stepped up to that division of the salle, they came at him from two sides. Kieri retreated along the line of the low ledge; they advanced, trying to press as he parried stroke after stroke—but as he neared the corner, they could not both find room to close.

  Worries about the invasion disappeared, and he relaxed into the immediate moment, letting his years of practice take over, ignoring the gasps of the lads who were watching as his heel met one unstable stone that tipped beneath him. Along the side wall, then two quick strides—catching a flurry of blows on his blade—diagonally away from it. Carlion was caught behind Siger for a long moment, and could not reach him. Kieri tried to maneuver Siger so he kept blocking Carlion, but Carlion had too much space to move and too much sense to stay where he was. Still, he had a solid touch on Siger by the time Carlion was at him on the side again. Siger stood back, acknowledging a blow that would have put him out of the fight if it had been real. He would reenter the fray, Kieri knew, after a certain number of blows, as Carlion’s reinforcement.

  Best finish quickly, if he could. Kieri shortened his blade, coming in fast to parry Carlion’s attack then make his own—a blow with the shortened blade, a leg-trap with one leg, and finally, when Carlion fell, a touch with the pommel to Carlion’s neck.

  “Yield,” Carlion said.

  “Accept,” Kieri said. Instinct made him roll aside, just as Siger swung at his back from behind; the blow hit Carlion instead, though Siger pulled it.

  “Hold,” Carlion said, and Siger grounded his blade. Kieri and Carlion got up, both breathing heavily. Carlion grinned at him. “You are not so out of practice as I thought, Sir King. It’s going to be annoying in a few years—you half-elves do not slow with age in your fifties or sixties or seventies, and we human armsmasters do. With you, I realize how much I’m relying on experience and tricks instead of bladework … and you have grown stronger and faster since you came.”

  “Indeed you have,” Siger put in. “But then, though you worked daily last year back in Tsaia, you had no such salle nor as many to work with.”

  “Or the constant attention of two such armsmasters,” Kieri said. “Now, sirs, if you’re ready—”

  “Sir King!” That from Sarol, at the door. “A courier’s come!”

  Kieri shook his head. “No, I must go. Damn the Pargunese!” He turned, leapt lightly over the low barrier between the middle and low sections, stripped off his banda, and handed it and the practice blade to one of the other Squires. He belted on his own sword and hurried into the palace.

  Garris met him in the main passage. “He’s in my office, with a pot of sib and some food. I thought you’d rather meet him in privacy—”

  “Yes, indeed. Who is it?”

  “Not a Squire—a Halveric soldier who rode straight through from Talgan. Says his name’s Beldan.”

  Kieri felt a cold chill down his spine. “Garris, are you sure?”

  “He’s got a Halveric uniform on, Halveric-style sword. Why?”

  “Stay close,” Kieri said to his Squires. And to Garris, “Talgan knows that any message he sends will be taken on by a King’s Squire at the first relay station. That’s what we agreed.”

  “But he has the message pouch—and he said it was a special hand-to-hand only—”

  When they came to Garris’s office, the door was open and the office empty. On Garris’s desk, the message pouch with the tooled Halveric insignia lay invitingly open, a scroll just showing; it looked wet on one side, as if the courier had ridden through a stream that splashed up onto it.

  “He must have gone to the jacks,” Garris said.

  “I think not,” Kieri said. “They tried assassination once; no reason they would not try it again—don’t touch that!” he said sharply, as Garris reached for the message pouch. Garris stopped, hand out.

  “Why?”

  “Was it wet when you first saw it?”

  Garris frowned. “No … I don’t recall …” Then he paled. “Poison?”

  “It might be.” Kieri’s mind raced. Where was the enemy? Would the man have fled, leaving the poisoned “message” behind? Or would he have stayed behind to accomplish more mischief? In the kitchens, poisoning the food? In the stables, poisoning the horses? “Are you wearing mail, Garris?”

  “Me? No, I don’t—oh.” Garris’s gaze sharpened. “Are you?”

  “No—I changed for practice. I’ll put it on—I want every Squire in mail, and that includes you. Everyone who has it—and send someone to the kitchens—to the stables—” He stopped and took a breath; it would not do to sound so worried. “We must be careful, but steady. I will go change.”

  Upstairs, Aulin and Sarol inspected his rooms before he went in. He decided to risk a quick bath: Joriam had it ready, herb-scented, with towels warming before the fire. The old man smiled at him, came to help him out of his clothes.

  Pargunese hot baths might be better than this, but he found it hard to imagine. He eased into the hot scented water, and Joriam sluiced warm water from the ewer over him. He would have enjoyed a long soak but could not spare the time. Joriam said, “Soap, my lord—” Kieri turned just in time to see the old man’s eyes go wide—and an arrow take him in the throat. Joriam slumped; the soap dropped into Kieri’s hand.

  Across the room, in the door to his bedchamber, stood a grinning stranger wearing a palace tabard; he held a short bow in one hand and an arrow in his teeth. Spitting the arrow into his hand, he said, “I do like it when they’re naked and helpless.”

  Kieri hurled the soap at the man’s face; the man put up his hand instinctively, dropping the arrow. As Kieri surged out of the tub and grabbed the ewer Joriam had set down, he saw the man fumble at the tabard, as if he expected to find an arrow there, and then dive for the one on the floor. Before he could reach it, Kieri was on him, smashing the heavy ewer in his face, a foot and then a knee in the man’s belly, hitting him again with the ewer, and again … the anger he thought he’d worked off in the salle roared through him like the winter wind, even when the man lay still, blood running from his nose and ears. Kieri raised the ewer again … and stopped. He could hear his own harsh breathing and nothing else. The taig—he must think of the taig. The man was dead. He might not be the only assassin—and his people needed their king, not a wild man.

  He looked for the fallen arrow, found it, and stood up carefully, watching where he stepped in case of any other hazard. As his pulse slowed, he felt chilled … Joriam, poor old Joriam … and who else? How had the assassin made it this far? How had he known where to go? Was it safe to call out?

  His hands were blood-splashed; he dipped them in the still-warm bathwater, plucked a warmed towel off the rack by the fire and dried his hands, rubbed himself with it. Then he went back to the assassin, picked up the bow, put the arrow on the string, and walked into his bedchamber. He heard a cry from the corridor just as he saw the bodies of Aulin and Sarol and heard someone running toward him.

  He had just presence of mind to drop the bow and grab his sword from the rack when two white-faced Squires, Edrin and Lieth, appeared. “Sir King!”

  “An assassin,” Kieri said. “I killed him, but not before he killed those Squires and Joriam, I’m sorry to say.”

  “He—you—you’re alive!”

  “As you see,” Kieri said. They had both seen more than anyone here but Joriam; after a bath the old scars always show
ed clearly. “I need to dress,” he said, laying his sword on the bed. Joriam, bless him, had set out clothes for the evening in the bathing room, but he was not going back in there, not immediately. “The bodies are in the bathing room,” he said. “Joriam took an arrow in the throat. The Seneschal should be told, to honor our dead.”

  The bedroom felt cold after the bathing room; he went to his closet and began dressing, as the Squires called for more help.

  “How many dead so far?” he asked.

  “A groom, a bootboy, Aulin and Sarol, Joriam,” Edrin said. “Garris told us all to put on mail. Most of us keep our mail with our travel packs, in the stable; I had just put on mine when someone found the groom’s body and called out. Lieth and I ran for the palace. The other one—”

  “Other one?”

  “Claims he’s a Halveric. Garris and the steward found him in the back passage; claimed he’d been to the jacks—”

  “Is he alive?” Kieri asked, shrugging into a velvet tunic over his mail. He reached for the sword belt, snugged it, then sheathed the great sword.

  “Yes, and bound to a chair in Garris’s office. Sir King—how did you do it?”

  “He flinched at the soap when I threw it,” Kieri said. “Beyond that, the gods were on my side, I suspect.” Dressed, armed once more, he felt better, though the anger simmered.

  Now he heard more people coming, voices he knew: the steward, the Seneschal, Sier Halveric.

  He started toward the door, but Edrin moved in front of him.

  “Sir King—are you—you’re not hurt!” That was Sier Halveric.

  “No, I’m not hurt,” Kieri said. To the Seneschal he said, “Aulin and Sarol died in my defense; Joriam also. And I understand an assassin also killed a groom and a bootboy. They should be treated with all reverence, and I am still unsure of the customs.”

  “Sir King, all will be done,” the Seneschal said. “I have called for the burial guild; we will take the bodies and prepare them. By your leave, I will begin here.” He knelt beside the Squires’ bodies.