Empire's Reckoning

by Marian L Thorpe

  “And Ruar and Helvi?”

  “I would say so, seeing them together now.”

  “Now? Were they not, before?”

  “Not when they married, no,” I answered. “Surely, Gwenna, you understand the reasons for their marriage.”

  “To create a lasting peace between Varsland and Linrathe,” she said. “And to regain Sorham.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Ruar swore he would do anything possible to regain Sorham, and he did. That he and Helvi are happy together, too, is the best outcome that could be hoped for.”

  “So even though they didn't know each other, when they make love it is more than...making the heirs?”

  Druise, I thought, I will have words for you later. “Gwenna, how would I know?” I asked, hoping my tone reflected disinterest.

  “Is not Ruar your friend?” she asked.

  “Yes, but this isn’t something we have discussed,” I said. “Friends do not always talk about this, regardless of what Druise just said.”

  “This is true, Kitten,” Druise said. “I was your father’s nurse, when he was ill, yes? So we know more about each other, maybe, than four other friends would.”

  She thought about that as we jogged along. Why was she asking these questions? It wasn't like Gwenna to be prurient. Still, she was fourteen, the same age I had been when my father had started to welcome me when he gathered with his men of an evening. The talk I'd heard had satisfied any curiosity I might have had. Which hadn't been much, because they spoke of women.

  “So if a couple isn’t in love at first, but they learn to love, like Helvi and Ruar, does making love change?” she asked, suddenly. “Or like you and Druise?”

  “Why are you asking, Gwenna?” I said.

  “I am trying to understand about political marriages.”

  I glanced over at my lover, raising my eyebrows. Could I talk about this? He shrugged, spreading his hands. “We came together over music, a shared passion. I suppose we both thought it was something brief, while I was in Casil. But, yes, things between us have changed, over the years, and for the better.”

  “So if I married Bryngyl I might grow to at least enjoy being with him?”

  “What?” Druise growled. “You are not marrying Bryngyl, Gwenna.”

  “Did Helvi suggest this to you?” I demanded.

  “No, she didn't,” Gwenna said. “All she said was that he was still unmarried, but that he would need to change that soon. If the peace is to be maintained, then doesn’t Ésparias need a better alliance with Varsland? And if Ruar can marry Helvi to ensure peace between Linrathe and Varsland, why shouldn’t I marry Bryngyl for the same reasons?”

  I swore to myself. Both her parents made connections rapidly, and usually accurately. Why should I have thought Gwenna would be any different? For once in my life, the right words came to me quickly. “Because Bryngyl is twenty-three, and he can’t wait another three years for you to be of age, Gwenna. He needs heirs to establish his line. He’s already old to be unmarried in Varsland’s eyes. So while you’re not wrong that an Ésparian bride would be advantageous in maintaining peace, it will not be you.”

  But who would it be? I waited for Gwenna to ask the question, one I didn’t have an answer for. When I glanced at her, her eyes were distant.

  “I have cousins in Han, don’t I?” she asked.

  “Yes. Talyn’s sister’s children. I don't even know their names,” I said. One was a girl, though.

  “Mathàir goes to Han twice a year. To buy horses, I know. But she would never take me.”

  I remembered those arguments, when Gwenna had been ten or eleven. Lena had cited safety, and the difficulty of bringing horses back even without a child to supervise. Privately, I had thought she wanted the time alone, free under the grassland sky. Then Gwenna had turned twelve and left for the cadet school, and the opportunity was past.

  But I did not know what Lena’s part in Cillian’s vision was, just as she didn’t know mine. Gwenna’s question had raised a possibility I had never considered. Its implications kept my thoughts occupied through most of the next hours.

  We reached the Sterre in mid-afternoon. Sheep grazed on the dyke, and the ditches on both sides were filling in, slowly, heather encroaching. Druise snorted. “This was meant to stop the Marai?”

  “There were guardposts, like the Wall,” I said, “and it was well-manned.” I understood his derision, though: Casil’s walls made the Sterre look like a series of molehills.

  “Once we cross it, we are in Sorham, aren’t we?” Gwenna asked.

  “Once we have crossed the ditch beyond,” I told her.

  “And the Marai just gave it back when Helvi married Ruar?”

  “As part of the agreement to the alliance, yes. There are trade arrangements beneficial to them as well, and a series of payments over ten years. But when those are paid, and they nearly are, Sorham belongs completely to Linrathe.”

  We rode across a wooden bridge and up to the top of the dyke and along it, scattering sheep, until we reached a place where the sides of the northern ditch had crumbled under the hooves of the flock. The horses picked their way across it and up onto the moorland. My heart felt absurdly, immediately, lighter. I grinned.

  “It is not different,” Druise said.

  “Not in appearance,” I said. “Nor is the land on either side of the Wall. But it’s a different land, Druise. Wilder. Harder, and the more so as we go north.”

  He grunted a reply. I glanced at Gwenna, but she was looking ahead at the track. We rode on. Grouse scattered, calling, and deer trotted off as we approached. There was a stream to ford not too far ahead, I remembered. We’d water the horses there.

  Gwenna stayed silent. Druise began to hum a tune, and I joined in with the words. He rarely sang, for no good reason: his voice was untrained, but true. “Sing,” I called to him. “The sheep won’t mind.” He grinned, shaking his head. Pure happiness washed through me, and I laughed out loud.

  We dismounted at the stream. The horses dropped their noses to drink. I put an arm around Druise’s shoulder for a quick hug; there was no one for miles. “Sorley?” Gwenna said. “If Athàir wasn’t helping the Marai, why was he in Varsland? You told the lady Jordis he mostly was negotiating tribute. What else was he doing?”

  Chapter 41

  14 years earlier

  I rode north. The weather stayed fair, and I claimed a toscaire’s bed and food at several torps before I reached the Sterre. One day, I told myself, I’ll return as a scáeli. The thought brought little joy.

  I turned east just a little, on a track that bypassed Dun Ceànnar and would bring me directly to the fort on the Sterre where I should find Turlo. I reached it in the early afternoon. The General Turlo, I was told when I inquired, was not at the fort. The Linrathan commander was at the Sterre itself.

  “Sorley!” the commander said, grinning hugely, when I found him.

  “Gregor?” I returned the grin. “How did I not know you were commanding here?”

  “You’ve been down at Wall’s End, and busy, from what Turlo has told me,” he replied. We’d known each other from before the war, when he, a landholder’s son like me, but one with an older brother, had been part of Donnalch’s guard.

  “It’s good to see you, but I can only give you a minute.”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Can I help?”

  “Nothing wrong, exactly,” he said. “A Marai inspection party approaches. They do this, every few weeks, assuring themselves we are not encroaching on lands north of the Sterre. Or so they say. I believe, as does Turlo, that they are assessing our numbers, and the repair of the earthworks.”

  “I speak fluent Marái’sta,” I said, “it that is of any help.”

  “It might be,” he conceded. “Come. Turlo should be here, for this.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He and his scout rode east some days past, to investigate the fortifications where the Sterre meets the mountains, he said. He thought it a poi
nt of weakness. But I expected him back by now.”

  Turlo had been assigned overall command because of the Casilani troops on the Sterre; it had been thought they might not obey the Linrathan officers. If this was a formal Marai delegation, they would not be pleased to be met by a subsidiary commander.

  We watched the riders approach. Three Marai men, two more from Sorham, by their cloaks. A dozen guards. They crested a small rise and halted, unfurling a white standard.

  “What is this?” Gregor muttered, but it barely registered. My eyes were on the grey-and-green cloak of the man to the right of the Varslanders: the colours of Gundarstorp. Too slight to be my father, though. My brother?

  “Come.” Gregor snapped commands to a junior officer. Aides brought his horse, and mine. We rode along the Sterre. At the gate built into the high earth-and-stone dyke, where a wooden bridge had been dropped into place to span the ditch that ran along the Linrathan side of the border, we halted. Guards massed behind us; archers took their places on the Sterre.

  A bowshot’s distance from the dyke the Marai stopped. Deliberately, they removed swords and knives, dropping them to the ground. My brother — I was sure it was him now — and the other Sorham noble, who wore the colours of Dugarstorp, did the same. I watched carefully, but even the boot knives were tossed aside.

  At the edge of the ditch on the Sorham side, where no bridge crossed the gap, the men halted. I tried not to look at Roghan, hoping my tell-tale face was schooled to impassivity, and that any flush would be attributed to the cold wind. “What do you want?” Gregor demanded, in Linrathan.

  “This is the Earl Olavi, and his brother Tavö,” the man from Dugarstorp replied, pitching his voice to be heard, “and the Earl Aaro. They come with a proposal for the Teannasach of Linrathe, one to bring peace to both our lands. I am Dugar, Harr of Dugarstorp, and with me is the lord Roghan, who holds Gundarstorp.”

  My brother held Gundarstorp? Then my father was dead. I tried not to react, focusing on Dugar. He was a good ten years older than I, and his body had broadened and his hair thinned since I had seen him last. Nor had he been Harr, then. He waited. I saw his eyes fall on me, and the recognition, quickly mastered. He did not turn to Roghan.

  “You will submit to being searched, and your guard will remain where they are,” the commander said. “I am Gregor, commander of the Linrathan troops here. With me is the lord Sorley, toscaire of Linrathe. He will act as translator, so that I am convinced that no words are misconstrued. That is acceptable, my lords?”

  I rode forward to repeat the instructions. As the Marai made gestures of assent, I allowed myself a glance at my brother. He met my gaze with no expression at all.

  We reined our horses off the bridge, allowing soldiers to put the second bridge in place over the northern ditch. Gregor watched as the five men were escorted into Linrathe and searched, carefully.

  Satisfied, Gregor nodded. “Your horses will be fed and watered,” he said. “You too could use food and drink, I expect?”

  “We would prefer to ride to the Teannasach as soon as possible,” Dugar said, not bothering to translate for the Marai.

  “Nonetheless, it will be an hour before I can allow that,” Gregor said civilly. “Your horses too must be searched, and your harness, and a messenger sent ahead to the Teannasach, as you must realize. Five northerners riding into Dun Ceànnar without advance warning to their guards, even with our escort, would be met with force.”

  Dugar nodded. “As you say. Food and ale, if you have such, would be welcome. My thanks, Commander.”

  Gregor swung down from his horse, so I did the same. As I did, Roghan moved so he was close to me, although he continued to look away. I turned to the Marai, repeating what Gregor had said, as Dugar hadn’t. Questions jumbled my thoughts. Why was Roghan here? How had my father died? The commander had begun to move towards the fort. Beside me, I heard Roghan murmur 'kelika'.

  Kelika. Our local word for a sled. We had been eight and eleven, that March day. The weather had been mild for a week before it had turned, a wind from the northeast bringing temperatures below freezing overnight, and an icy crust on the snow the next morning that meant fast sledding.

  But while the snow had frozen, the lake ice, weak from the thaw, had not, or not beyond a surface skim. We had swept down the hillside, laughing together on the sled, and onto the lake. And through the ice, almost immediately. It was the immediacy that had saved us, the lake just shallow enough for me to stand, to pull Roghan up into my arms and struggle across the short distance, through the energy-sapping freezing water and the soft ice to the shore. I remembered his terrified tears, and my shaking fingers as I tried with flint and steel to light a fire, praying incoherently, huddling close to it when it caught and began to burn. When its heat had warmed and dried us enough, we made a pact of silence before we plodded over the hill to home, to explain how we had jumped off the sled just before it went into the lake.

  Kelika had become our private code for any secret to be kept from our father and the other adults. I had forgotten it until now. I met his eyes, smiled a bland, toscaire’s smile. “Yes,” I said, in Linrathan, pausing for a moment before I continued. “You have travelled far. I am sure you will be glad of a short rest.”

  “Your understanding does you credit,” Roghan replied. His hair, once nearly as pale as mine, had darkened. When I had left Gundarstorp, he had been shorter than I, and slight; now he stood half a head taller, and his shoulders told of hard work with sword and axe. But his voice, uncannily like my father’s, held the soft accents of Sorham I had worked hard to lose, a requirement for a scáeli. I swallowed, hard.

  In the headquarters, we gathered round a table; ale and bread and sheep’s cheese were brought. The northerners were hungry. After some minutes, Dugar pushed his empty plate away. “So,” he said. “You will want to know why we are here.”

  “I will,” Gregor said evenly. “What is this offer that will bring peace?”

  “Nothing I can speak of, except to the Teannasach,” Dugar said, with a shake of his head. “But it is a real one, not a ruse to bring the Marai into Linrathe. I risk my life, and so does young Roghan, and the earls, were any of our countrymen to have seen us crossing the Sterre.” He looked my way. “You, Lord Sorley, I trust.”

  “You know these men?” Gregor said.

  “I do,” I replied. “From childhood.”

  “You will go to Dun Ceànnar with them? Act as a translator for the earls?”

  “Certainly. It was where I meant to go next, in any case.”

  Chapter 42

  It was long past dark when our tired horses plodded along the long track leading to Dun Ceànnar. Men with torches had joined us, our faces examined in the flaring light, mine and the officer riding with us given a long examination. But I had recognized the man who held his torch up to see my face, and called him by name, and even remembered to ask after the health of a child who had been ailing the last time I had been here. Satisfied, he moved on.

  In the confusion of torches and men and barked questions, Roghan brought his horse close to mine. “Sorley,” he said, his voice barely audible. “An unexpected meeting. You are well?”

  “Well enough, Roghan,” I murmured back. “I am toscaire, as you heard, and scáeli, too.”

  “It was all you ever wanted,” he answered. “I am glad. I have a son. He is two now.”

  “An heir then, for Gundarstorp,” I replied, genuinely pleased. “He is Gundar, I suppose?”

  “No. Hairle, we call him. For the rightful heir, you understand, for whom I hold the lands as a steward.”

  Roghan had named his son for me? “What did Gundar say to that?”

  He looked away. “Nothing good. He would not call the boy by that name. But he is dead.”

  “I know,” I said. “Dugar said you held Gundarstorp.”

  He nodded, a bare shadow of movement in the dark. “He drowned, trying to save a fishing boat from the rocks.”

  “When?” />
  “In the spring.”

  There was time for nothing more. The Dun Ceànnar guards shouted, and we rode up to the house. In the arched great hall, Ruar waited for us, noticeably more a man than he had been in the spring, taller, his face more defined. Daoíre sat beside him.

  In adequate Marái’sta, Ruar greeted his unexpected guests, telling them firmly there would be no discussion this night. “Food, and drink, and a little music,” he said, “and then to bed. The morning is appropriate for diplomacy, not a late night after a long ride.”

  Music. Ruar’s words had given me an idea. I could not talk with my brother as I wished, but I could sing. With Bhradaín’s permission, I could entertain Ruar’s guests.

  Dun Ceànnar’s scáeli had no objection. When the food was eaten, and only cups of ale remained in front of our visitors, I stepped up to the low dais with my ladhar. “Our Teannasach has called for music,” I said, “and I will be your singer tonight.”

  I sang the danta, the last verses completely unaccompanied, as the last verses of a lament sometimes were. I sang the more complex ending, speaking of the debt owed, the reckoning of the price paid that must be made in every heart after war. I had written these verses over this last summer, after Cillian’s warning to me of Casil’s possible intentions towards Linrathe. I wanted Ruar to hear them, before the Marai made their proposal.

  And, I admitted, I had wanted Roghan to hear what I had done since the invasion, and where my loyalties lay. Had lain. He had named his son for me. There was a message there, just as there was in the fact that he was here with these Marai earls.

  I finished, bowed, and left the dais, returning to my chair and a cup of ale. Down the table, Roghan caught my eye. He nodded, in acknowledgment and approval. I wondered, suddenly, what Ruar thought, and Daoíre: they both knew the two brothers of Gundarstorp sat at their table tonight.

  “Your usual room is damp, my lord Sorley,” the steward said, “so I have put you here.” He opened the door to a smaller room, but one with a fire burning brightly and wine warming on the hearth. Wine? I saw the door that would open onto the adjoining room. There were two cups on the hearth.