by Jo Walton
Fortunately I was spared making a response for just then Marchel came in. She was greeted enthusiastically by many of the armigers, and it took her a moment to get free of them. She came over and sat beside Amala. She said something rapidly to her in Malmish. It was strange how much faster she spoke in that language than in Tanagan or her usual Vincan. I raised my eyebrows.
“I will go north, but only for a year,” Marchel said. “Now food and no questions.” Her mother filled her plate with stew. I silently passed her the last of the bread on our table.
11
Grief in my heart for kinslaying,
the red fire dies low
brother killing brother
bright swords together.
Grief in my heart for warstrife,
fire to grey ashes
towns abandoned
the din of weapons.
Grief in my heart to see thee fall
cold ashes scattered
the kingdom broken
black crows calling.
—“Lament for Avren”
The next day ap Cathvan caught me on my way out of the baths. I had been in there a long time getting the soot out of my hair. Thurrig had been using smoke pots to show us how to fight in a burning building. But now, clean at last, I was wearing my drape and the great amber brooch my father had given me. I was on my way to a feast the pennon was giving for Angas. “Starlight’s got a swelling on her rear off leg,” he said. “I’ve brought her in and put her in the king’s stable. I’ve put the special ointment on it, hard to tell how serious it is. I’m keeping an eye on her, and that groom of yours is down there, but I thought I’d tell you.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked.
“Nothing right now,” ap Cathvan said, looking at me. “Going to toast Angas?”
“I was, and I really ought to, but if Starlight needs me, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
Ap Cathvan paused, and rubbed his beard, thinking. “No need. There’s nothing to do at the moment. Not as if she’s on her own. Better to give the stuff time to work. Go down around midnight and put some more ointment on. See how she is. If she’s feverish, wake me. Probably she’s just pulled a muscle training too hard, but better to be safe. She’s in a stall on her own down at the end, away from the rest.”
Some of us had crossed the river the day before so we could surprise Angas with a roast boar. There were many more in the Jarnish woods than there were on our side. Fortunately nobody asked us where we had found it. Such hunting could have been seen as technically breaking the truce with Ayl. The boar sat, resplendent with crackling and roast apples, in the center of the table. The meat was sweet and succulent and plentiful. There were fresh and toothsome buttered turnips. Even Osvran, who most times turned up his nose at turnips as horse food, was pleased with them. There were also great plaits of oven-baked honey bread. When the servant carried in this dish Enid drew out a single acorn-flour griddle cake such as we sometimes ate on patrol and offered it gravely to Angas, bowing. He snatched it from her, gave a great bellow, and threw it out of the window. He had been feasting on his best behavior with the king and his family and the great ones for the last ten days. He ate, drank, and belched like an overexcited Jarn to make up for it, all to the laughter and echo of his friends.
The cider went around, and around again. Everyone wanted to toast Angas. Everyone had something scurrilous to say about him. I almost forgot Starlight, laughing and drinking with the others. Gormant brought out a harp and played an old wedding song, full of old jokes about plowing wheat fields and ripening fruit. Then he passed the harp along to any who could play, and there was singing as good as ever we had when bards came to play before Urdo. After laments for those dead in my grandfather’s day and a long song about how the hero Kilok stole the bristles from the giant boar Truth, ap Erbin sang a song his brother had made about the beauty and prowess of the greathorses. We were all silent a moment as the notes of that died away, then roared and stamped our feet in approval and toasted ap Erbin and his absent brother. Angas was very drunk by then, but he swore he would have that song sung at his wedding. It was near enough midnight when the feast started to break up, and I remembered I had to see Starlight. I made my way down the long curved streets to the stables. My head was spinning slightly from all the music and cider. The streets grew quieter, darker and smellier as I went downhill from the citadel. I had almost grown accustomed to the stench of cities, but it could still make me gag a little on a warm, still night.
There was a lantern hanging in the high-arched entrance to the king’s stable, and another in a stall towards the back. Garah was in the stall with Starlight. She looked up and grinned as I came in. “I think ap Cathvan’s making a fuss about nothing again,” she said. “Look.” I walked over, past the ropes marking off the backs of stalls of the other horses. Everything cast strange doubled shadows, black and grey, making the place seem larger than usual. Garah held the lantern so I could see. Starlight nickered softly and one of the other horses answered more loudly. The swelling did not look large and was not inflamed. I ran my hand over her leg, carefully. She tried to shy away. “It’s gone down since I saw it earlier,” Garah said. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
“Good.” I trusted Garah more than ap Cathvan if it came to it. She was my friend, and she understood animals and bodies. On the road on the way back from Thansethan she had made me drain my painfully engorged breasts into the ditch, showing me how and telling me stories of cows she had seen with mastitis. When I went to the doctor at Caer Tanaga for a charm to dry up the milk she told me how right Garah had been.
“You go to bed.”
“Soon. I’m drunk, and I think I’ll sit with Starlight a little and then go to bed. You go on—there’s no need for us both to be here.”
“She really is going to be all right.” Garah stood up. “Oh, I forgot, you’ve got another missive from your admirer.” She offered me a letter and I groaned. Glyn had recently taken to tormenting me by writing me extravagantly romantic poems claiming he was pining away for love of me. I glanced at it, to check that it was nothing more interesting.
“In Apple’s stall again?” I asked. Garah raised her chin, grinning.
“He brought it round earlier. He’s got it bad.” I sighed again. “Can I have it?” she asked.
“Of course. But why?” I handed it back to her.
“I thought I might use it to try to learn to read. They started to teach me letters in Thansethan, but it was always their silly book. I thought this might be more interesting.”
“I’ll help you if you want to learn. But why do you? I mean my mother made me, and it’s useful sometimes, but not all that much fun.”
“You know how Glyn’s the assistant quartermaster? Well he was talking to me when he brought this, and he said that Dalmer, the quartermaster, started off as a groom in Avren’s service.” She shrugged, making the shadows jump. “I’m never going to be big enough to be an armiger, but I’ll be as big as Dalmer is.”
I found it hard to imagine anyone wanting to do the dull and difficult work of quartermastering, working out the amounts of everything to take on the horses when an ala set off. It was hard and thankless and there was little glory in it. If it was what she wanted I would do what I could. “I’ll help you,” I said. “Keep that poem. But in good light, and not now. I’ll just put some more ointment on this swelling like ap Cathvan said, then sit with her a little until my head clears properly. I’ll look in again before breakfast, and I’ll be surprised if she isn’t ready to run.” Garah came out of the stall, still holding the lantern.
“Will you be able to see if I take this?” she asked. “It’s the one from Apple’s stable; either I take it back now or you’d better later.”
“Take it,” I said, “there’s enough light from the other to see well enough for this.” I was pulling the wooden stopper from the jar of ointment as I spoke.
“See you in the morning
then,” she said, yawning, as she made her way out past the horses. I sat down on the little stool she’d been sitting on and made sure Starlight couldn’t kick me as I put on the ointment. She was sleepy and I tried to be gentle and had no trouble. When I saw the light coming in I looked up. I thought it must be Garah coming back, or ap Cathvan. It was Urdo and another man, one of the kings I did not know, a broad-shouldered man with a black-and-white beard and grey hair. He was carrying a lantern, and Urdo was carrying a wine jar and a golden goblet. Where the light lit the strange king’s cloak it showed red; where the folds fell in shadow they were dark, blacker than any black cloth could be. Urdo wore a white cloak as was his custom. I could see them very well though they could see me only as a shape among shapes and shadows. I was about to stand up and greet them as they walked towards me when the strange king mentioned my name.
“There are those who would have you wed ap Rhun or ap Gwien,” he said. The strength went out of my legs, and I sank down again hard, bewildered. Gwilen ap Rhun was the key-keeper of Caer Tanaga. It was well-known that the king sometimes shared her bed. Urdo laughed, and I saw that he had already been drinking for some time.
“There are those who would have me wed anything that could walk and had a womb and wit enough not to disgrace the kingdom at table, yes,” he said. “Do not tell me you have become one of them, Mardol? Do not be afraid to speak. You have never minced your words with me, and from you I look for forthrightness.”
I knew now that this must be Duke Mardol of Wenlad, the man they called the Crow from his habit of profiting by battles others fought. He set down the lantern on the wall of one of the empty stalls and sat below it on a low bench the shorter grooms used to stand on when they were saddling up greathorses. “Forthrightness you will get, and always have,” he said, looking up at Urdo. Urdo sat beside him. “Ap Rhun is a good key-keeper, though not noble-born. Ap Gwien is of passable enough blood and proven fertile. You would make no enemies by marrying either one. It is past time you were wed, man. You have done miracles in the last five years, but it is the next five years that count. I was a fool. If you had married then you might have had a son near as old as that young brother of the bridegroom who’s been riding his fancy pony under our feet all week. You have no heir, and you are not immortal. You ride in the charge too often to think you are. All you have built rests on you, and you can’t count on living thirty years more to see an heir grow up.”
“I do not count on anything,” Urdo said, loudly, with great passion. One of the horses kicked against the stall. I shrank against Starlight’s side and hoped hard that they would not notice me. There was no way out except past them, and from the first word I had heard too much. Urdo set down the cup, filled it from the jar, took a deep drink, and spoke more quietly.
“What is it to be a king, Mardol? For you are one, too, for all that you call yourself a duke.”
Mardol spluttered for a moment. “Duke is a higher title than king. Anyone can call themselves a king. Dukes can trace their title to Vincan grants of authority.” Urdo raised his hand.
“The Vincans had no word for king. They had emperors, and they had war-leaders, for that is what Dux means in Vincan. That is the title they gave your ancestors. But to be a king is a word, a magical word. I know they call me the Duke of the Tanagans, because I ride in the charge. But that is only part of it. A king stands between the gods and the people. You know that. You do that. The land, the gods, and the people.” Urdo stared off into the darkness, and I tried not to breathe. “What is Wenlad, Mardol? Some white-topped mountains that give it its name, some farms with hides of land my clerk could number for me, three towns, six fortified places, and a seacoast? Or is it the people who dwell in those places? Or is it only a word? And if the Jarns come in force again, only a word that will be spoken no more though the mountains still stand and the waves still crash on that shore?”
“I would say it is all three,” said Mardol, sounding a little taken aback at how strongly Urdo was speaking. He picked up the cup and drank.
“But without the name there would still be a place, but it would not be Wenlad. There might be some people, fleeing, but they would not be Wenlad either. You’ve been fighting so long you’ve lost sight of what it is you’re fighting for. That’s easy to do. I could see it because I came to it fresh. It is not only our people and the Jarnsmen who are fighting over Tir Tanagiri, it is our gods and theirs battling over the land. If I lose, if this chance I am making loses, then I have lost, Mardol. Lost. The Jarnsmen will win. It won’t matter if there is a child with my name as part of his name, there won’t be another chance. The land will belong to the Jarnsmen, and to their gods, or perhaps by the greatest mercy to the White God who will hear everyone. Tir Tanagiri will be gone, fallen. Maybe you will hold them at the border of Wenlad, maybe Angas would hold them at the border of Demedia, but Tir Tanagiri will be no more. The name will mean nothing. There will be no use for a High King.” He reclaimed the cup and drained it, then turned it in his fingers a moment so that the light glinted off the gold. A dark cat slunk across in front of his feet, intent on its hunt.
“So what good is an heir if I die? There is nobody who will be regent who could hold the land. There will be no hiding the babe away in Thansethan and hoping for another miracle in a generation. It will be too late. If we are in time, we are only just in time. Besides, there is nothing magical in the blood of kings—who among all of you does not have as good a claim as my grandfather Emrys to make himself High King and Emperor over all of the island? If there is such magic then Gwyn of Angas has as strong a claim on the kingship as any son of mine might. You make me feel like a horse of good breeding who will be ridden to battle—make sure he has got foals enough first, when in fact it is not one battle but a long race that must be run full strength. I know full well that I might die any day, but I will not allow that to change the way I shall live while I live, or I might as well be dead already. I will live long enough to leave behind an heir or I will not—I am but twenty-four years old. Either there is time enough or there is not.” He refilled the cup and passed it to Mardol, who took it, looking only at Urdo’s face.
“You will not tell me you are living in chastity and saving your strength for the fight?”
Urdo laughed. “If I tell you different, will you promise not to mention it to Rowanna or Father Gerthmol?” Mardol laughed, shortly.
“Then why not take a wife?”
“Who should I take? You know I am not set against marriage. But I will not rush to marry just to beget an heir. There is no purpose in that. I will not marry a woman who pleases half the kings while setting the other half against me. I will not marry a woman I cannot want, or one unworthy to take her place at my side. So who should I consider?”
“Five years ago you asked me for my daughter’s hand.” It may have been the flicker of shadows, but it seemed that the same expression of sorrow passed over both man’s faces.
“Five years ago you refused me your daughter’s hand.”
“I would not do so today, if she were alive to give you.”
“She did well to feed the whole of Wenlad through a plague like that.”
“I nearly died myself. We would all have died without what you sent from Thansethan. I thank you for that. I should thank the monks for it. Even though I despise their God, I was more glad of their surplus food than you could easily believe. We were all ill throughout Wenlad, scarce anyone could stagger to the fields. The food rotted in the ground. It was like a curse in an old story. Many thought it was the end of the world, and some called for me to be plowed under. Yet I did not feel the gods were angry with us, and since that one season we have prospered as before. Poor Elin. The worms ate her alive from inside. There never was a key-keeper like her. She knew what was in every storehouse, and her last words were about how best to share out what you sent us.” They sat in silence a moment, then Mardol shook himself. “I was wrong, five years ago. I have said so. I was not prepared to bet so much
on you. I gave you one son to train as an armiger, I did not want to risk my daughter, too.”
“Elin would have made a fine queen. I wanted peace with you and your backing, and I wanted a woman like that to wife. But gone is gone.” Urdo took a long pull from the wineskin and passed it to the older man. “So now. No sooner had I found an honorable solution to my mother’s plan to marry me off to Eirann Swan-Neck she forms a conspiracy to marry me to Lined of Munew.”
“She is heir to the land, and will remain so unless Custennin has a son.” Mardol’s voice was carefully neutral.
“Oh yes, heir to Munew, sixteen years old, and as pale a princess as Eirann in her way, a pious follower of the White God. You don’t like that, and the land doesn’t like that, and I can just picture the faces of the other kings.” Urdo sighed. “I might wish Custennin had not converted, for all that his people were mostly pleased and for all that Dewin runs his country for him. I would send Dewin and Linwen up to Demedia to found a monastery if I thought Munew would survive without them.”
“I thought you were sending your mother’s priest, Teilo?”
“You heard that? It’s true. Teilo is very holy and very sure of her own righteousness, and my lady mother can manage without her. The north could do with her. But I was saying, Mardol, that my own priest, the monks of Thansethan, Dewin, Custennin, and Rowanna would all have me marry Lined ap Custennin. Talorgen of Angas wavers and will not decide. I think he is waiting for his daughter to be old enough. I cannot marry her even when she is, she is impossibly close kin, her mother is my sister. Borthas of Tinala would have me marry his sister, though she is twice my age, and in any case I want no close alliance with that snake. Penda and his allies want me to marry the Isarnagan king Atha ap Gren, and bring in an Isarnagan army and sweep the land clear of the Jarnsmen. Everyone who has a daughter or a sister wants me to choose her, and if I do, then everyone else will resent it. Everyone has their own candidate, and their own scheme—it seems to me best to stay uncommitted and decide when there is some advantage to the decision.”
