by Janny Wurts
Flushed, Fionn Areth dug in his heels. But the fellow's mailed fist clapped down on his shoulder with uncompromising camaraderie. 'On you go. The cooks here are war-trained, and apt to pitch fits if the duke's honoured guest doesn't show at the banquet.'
The feast took place in a vaulted hall, located above a gallery with bare floors, evidently used for sword training. Twilight was falling. Led in from the gently darkening streets, pricked by the first flare of watch lanterns - that, by Alestron's immutable custom, would be snuffed by full dark, to preserve the night-sight of the look-out - Fionn Areth was shown through an oak-beamed entry. He stumbled, wide-eyed, past walls arrayed with collected blade weaponry. Hustled upstairs, he was propelled by Talvish's firm hand into a dazzle of candle-flame. There, he paused blinking, while the on-going conversation tailed off and stopped, and the strapped door boomed shut behind him. As his sight readjusted, his panicked glance showed that his honour guard had pulled back. Isolated in front of Alestron's best blood, Fionn Areth squared his shoulders and pulled himself straight, hitched short by the treacherous trunk hose. The dandyish garment was inches too short and threatened to skim off his hips.
Since a courtesy bow would invite a disaster, the Araethurian made the best of the awkwardness. He dipped his chin in salute toward the glittering persons before him.
'Daelion's bollocks!' a deep voice said, awed. 'Dakar! What have you brought us?'
'A master-worked piece of Koriani spell-craft.' The Mad Prophet was already wedged in a stuffed chair, within easy reach of a carafe. A goblet of wine rested on his crossed knee. 'The young man was shapechanged to match the Master of Shadow as the bait for a plot that was foiled. May I present to your lordship and brothers, Fionn Areth, lately from Araethura?'
'He doesn't fill Arithon's boots, that's for certain,' someone else quipped from the side-lines.
Fionn Areth assayed an ungainly step forward, creaking in the tight boots. His sight had adjusted. Before him, broad as a shambling bear and seated backwards astride an oak chair, the imposing fellow in front had to be the reigning Duke of Alestron. He wore no jewels. The only costly glitter upon him was the high polish of chain-mail, worn under the faded scarlet and gold of an old-fashioned heraldic surcoat. A beard that, in youth, had flamed like a lion's, had grizzled to iron grey. He had eyes like steel filings, a face of lined leather, and the bastard sword cocked back at his heels could have spitted a yearling calf. 'Guest welcome, young man,' his deep voice resumed, 'from the s'Brydion of Alestron.'
The duke's bulk was shadowed by two more grey-eyed men. Large-boned, and wearing their piebald hair in a clan braid, by stance and expression, they seemed alike as two wolves culled from the same litter.
'My brothers, Keldmar and Parrien,' said the duke, his arms folded over the back of the chair and his avid gaze still fixed on the Koriani's made double. 'My mother's sister's son, Sevrand, the heir next in line
for the title.'
The successor who nodded, beer tankard in hand, was a broad-shouldered, tawny-haired giant, also armed. He lounged by the window-seat, propped on an arm strapped with bracers, a targe and a short-sword slung on his back.
The duke inclined his head to the left. 'There stands my last brother, Mearn.'
Youngest, not yet grey at the temples, the sibling just named proved to be a whip-slender version of the rest. His preferred taste embraced a rapier, but disdained the encumbrance of armour. His narrow wrists were encircled with lace, and his taut, balanced body wore tailored style, tastefully set rubies, and a doublet trimmed with gold ribbon.
Exposed before that spare, pleated elegance, and surrounded by men who wore blades like jewellery, Fionn Areth felt coarse as an unfired brick. He swallowed, then ventured through the expectant stillness, 'I am honoured to be here, your lordships.'
Duke Bransian's eyebrows lifted a fraction. Steel-clad knuckles pressed to his shut lips, he clashed a quelling fist on his chair, overriding Keldmar's and Parrien's simultaneous bid to offer rejoinder. 'The women will be joining us for the meal, along with the rest of the household.' The duke finally smiled. 'Meanwhile, we were pressing Dakar for news. Be welcome and join us, and make free to say how we might make an honoured friend comfortable.'
'There is nothing I require,' Fionn Areth declared stiffly. After his host's crisp, clanborn accents, the twang of his Araethurian origins spun drawled echoes to the farthest corner of the room.
'Nothing?' Mearn advanced, to a light-footed rustle of lawn. 'But then, you shall entertain us.'
'The goats didn't teach him to make conversation,' Parrien said. He pulled his dagger, balanced the tip of the blade on his thumb, and set the steel spinning with a deft flick of his forefinger. 'Or did they?'
His seeming twin, Keldmar, laughed into the breach. 'Words, is it? That's mockery, man. What use has this fighting cock got for hot air? That's a nice enough sword, despite the gross scabbard.' Disturbing grey eyes bored into the guest. 'Is that blade sharp, child?'
Fast as echo, Parrien launched a rejoinder. 'Never mind sharp! Can he use it?'
Keldmar considered. 'Maybe. But I'll stake you my next turn on watch that Sevrand can best the young rooster, even sunk in his cups.'
'That's lame!' Mearn cut in. 'Sevrand's no contest!' At close quarters, now, he paced round the victim, then saw fit to amend his assessment. 'Except for the boots. That could even the match. But is that a sufficient handicap, do you think, to the beer Sevrand's swilled since the watch-bell?'
'No such foolery,' Dakar said with sidelong relish. 'Fionn's not come here to make casual sport. Actually, he longs to enlist, and hopes you'll consider his prospects as a field officer.'
'Does he!' The duke shoved erect off the back of his chair. 'Do you presume, young man, you've the skill and the nerve for it?'
'By Ath!' burst in Keldmar. 'He can scarcely get dressed!'
'Oh? You oafs would measure a man by his looks?' Parrien moved, snake-fast, and recaptured his twirled dagger without shifting his attentive stare from Fionn Areth. 'Does he actually think he can meet the requirements?' Dakar shrugged, sipped his wine. 'I made him the promise I would provide him the chance to speak on his own merits.'
'No,' Mearn declaimed. 'No question about it. Another ten minutes wearing those boots, he'll be too crippled to stand for a demonstration.'
Fionn Areth shouted to make himself heard in the tumult. 'I would beg leave to try!' As quiet descended, he ignored the precarious state of his hose, and bowed from the waist to the duke. 'My lord, I should like nothing better than to be tested for mettle. I am not inexperienced. If I fall short of Alestron's high standard, I beg to enlist with your foot-troops. I'd be willing to train for as long as it takes to win my fair chance for promotion.'
'Enough!' The duke glowered to quell his pack of brothers, then joined Mearn for a closer inspection. 'We have an earnest young man who's a guest. He's declared himself to have fighting potential. Let's hear out what assets he brings us.'
Fionn Areth drew in a lungful of air. While he groped for the words to begin, Mearn lost patience. Ablaze with a wanton, mercuric energy, he started to circle, dizzy as a moth at a lamp. 'Do you write?'
'No,' said Fionn.
'Recite poetry? Ah, don't bother, boy, to open your mouth. With that hayseed accent, certainly not. Do you paint? Play music? Raise beautiful flowers? No time, I see. What do you do, then, a'brend'aia with the nanny goats?'
' What?' Fionn Areth did not know Paravian.
Mearn's pause extended. His level brows lifted. 'Must I translate?' he taunted. 'You don't speak in fair tongues?'
Before the goatherd could rise to that bait, a faint cough from the side-lines. 'The term means "dance,"' the Mad Prophet said, owlish.
Fionn Areth raised his chin, dazed by the suspicious awareness of something gone over his head. Determined, he leashed his temper. 'We breed them quite otherwise.'
'No doubt you do.' While his three brothers watched with rapacious amusement, Mearn moved again, pricking
with words. 'I see by your hands that you've never dyed cloth. You don't spin. You can't weave, you won't mix straw clay for bricks. You've not rowed in a galley, though you might have dipped water, or maybe cooked swill, or dumped slop for the rowers. Perhaps you've done that, though I doubt such. Despite the fact that nice doublet's too tight, your shoulders are slim as a maiden's.'
As Fionn Areth's hazed fury notched higher, Mearn slapped his forehead and turned a glance of discovery upon the crowding ranks of his brothers. 'Oh, now I have it! How did I miss seeing? Those lovely buttocks, those melting, sweet haunches! And those wrists! Fit for kissing. He's some fat pimp's runaway prandey! '
While Sevrand choked and exhaled sprayed beer, the victim flushed crimson, nipped by that gadding tone to recognize mortal insult. Five pairs of grey eyes, and Dakar's, of brown, waited to see how he would choose to react.
A brief pause ensued.
Confronted by suspended expectation, Fionn Areth ventured a thin challenge. 'You called me a name,
sir?'
'He did,' murmured Keldmar, leaned forward with bloodthirsty interest.
Mearn pattered on in venomous delight, 'Oh, that.' He fluttered his lashes. 'My tender child, are you so inexperienced? Or didn't you listen?'
Parrien provoked, grinning, 'He's from Araethura! He doesn't know the Shandian gutter name for the painted boys they geld with hot knives to serve twisted filth in the brothels.'
Fionn Areth snarled out an inchoate syllable. Then his hand moved, and his sword, which was sharp, leaped with a practised shriek clear of his scabbard.
Mearn danced back, laughing, as steel darted to spit him. 'Oh, brothers, he fights!' Whipped back by the lunge, his rich doublet glittering, he smiled throughout, and kept talking. 'The manikin fights, and most prettily even with his drawers skint down to his knee-joints!'
Fionn Areth bore in, furious, to a shrill shredding of silk, which, obliging his tormentor, had slithered to hobble his boot-tops. Mearn bounced out of range to a mocking gleam of gold ribbon. The sword whickered through air, and narrowly missed. Fionn Areth overreached, and his tight doublet tore, to a jingling shower of sprung buckles.
'Look out!' howled Parrien, bent double, tears streaming. 'He's giving us the strip show of his young life!'
As Dakar scuttled clear to secure the carafe, Mearn kicked the table into the goatherd's advance. Filled goblets gushed and tumbled onto the carpet. Glass shattered, crunched to slivers as Fionn Areth charged ahead in his misfitted boots.
'Enough!' Duke Bransian waded in and slapped down a mailed fist. The goatherd's struck weapon hit the floor, clattering. A page-boy who descended with towels dodged the flying blade. As though he mopped up after brawls by routine, he bent to sweep glass and blot puddles.
Fionn Areth, hazed wild, stood in the wrecked shreds of his clothing, rubbing his shocked wrist. He looked up. And up; while from his muscular height, the Duke of Alestron glared down at him. 'Stripling, you haven't a babe's self-control, to wipe your smeared arse with a napkin.'
The Araethurian glared back, hornet-mad, and possessed of a desperate dignity. 'Then teach me. I'll learn.' While Bransian's auger gaze bored him through, he plunged ahead with bravado. 'I'll serve. I'll black boots. I'll do anything you ask. Only let me sign on to your troop rolls. Let me march under Alestron's proud banner to take down the Master of Shadow.'
The pause was electric.
' What?' whispered Mearn. 'Kill Arithon,' said Fionn. 'That is why I came here.'
At that, the whole room exploded: every man standing rushed forward and pounced. Fionn Areth was milled down by a flurry of mailed blows, knocked bloody and flat, then spread-eagled. Three brothers s'Brydion gripped him, wrists and ankle. His right leg was crushed under the grey-haired man-at-arms, while the blonde one poised a dagger over his heart, and the duke's bastard sword pricked at his windpipe.
Only Sevrand stood rear-guard, tankard in his left hand, and his bared blade bent at a menacing angle toward the Mad Prophet's nonchalant back. 'Have you brought us an enemy?' he challenged, dead earnest.
'Irons!' snapped Bransian. 'We'll know soon enough after this wretch is put to the question.'
'No!' Dakar yelled across spiralling uproar. 'That boy's under Prince Arithon's warding protection!'
'You didn't say this!' Keldmar bellowed, fast echoed by Parrien's accusation that the prisoner was a slinking spy for the Light, and why didn't Talvish set to with his knife and gut the cur here on the carpet. 'I'll do the work and unravel his tripes, if you're snivelling, spit-licking squeamish.'
'You didn't say he was Prince Arithon's charge,' Keldmar interjected, 'Why not?'
'Yes,' Parrien echoed, 'why not? Just why shouldn't we flense him to crow-bait right now?'
Mearn's manic laughter rang through crowding heat. 'It's not obvious? I think Dakar's been clever. The ingrate who's wearing a friend's royal face requires a sharp lesson in humility.'
The irons arrived, clinking, in the care of a house-steward, who also was fit as a mercenary. Capable hands snapped them over pinned limbs.
Fionn Areth spoke, strained by the sword-point pressed to his throat. 'Where are you taking me?'
Bransian spared no sympathy as his shaken prisoner was hauled by the scruff to his feet. 'West tower dungeon,' he declared forthwith. 'The irons stay locked. Under Arithon's bond of protection, you say?' At Dakar's nod, the Duke of Alestron stepped back, 'Then his Grace had better collect his goods, quickly. I don't care fiend's get if the wretch rots in the dark till the rats pick him down to a skeleton.'
'The tower guard's apt to spit him,' Mearn warned, his evil smile still in place.
Parrien's agreement chimed in lightning fast. 'A shove on the stairs, or a slip with a knife. I'd do that, myself, there's enough provocation.'
'You're turncoats!' Fionn Areth gasped, faint with shock as the hold on him viciously tightened, and someone's badgering blade nicked through skin. 'Traitors gone over to Shadow!'
'We are Arithon's men,' said Duke Bransian, complacent. 'And my brothers are right. You're a damned idiot with a tongue that the breeze flaps to every fool point on the compass. Leave you to yourself, you won't last an hour. Sithaer, without help, I doubt we can get you out of my sight without somebody hasty pinning your liver up on my wall for a trophy!'
At Dakar's concerned glance, the duke finally smiled. Still murderously vigorous, he had all his teeth. 'Don't worry, man. He'll have Arithon's feal backing. Vhandon and Talvish will serve as his wardens. Let them handle the puppy as they see fit, and keep him breathing against all comers.'
'That's rich!' Keldmar whooped. 'We'll take bets to see who winds up bloodied first.'
'Or better,' Parrien attacked with bright relish. 'A thousand royals on whether Vhan or Talvish is willing to die, defending a priest-sucking goatboy.'
Summer 5670
Last Home-coming
Of nine Companions who marched with their Earl's war-band from Halwythwood, eight had held the blood-soaked ground in Daon Ramon and broken the net of Alliance forces that had closed on the Master of Shadow. Five were killed in the red slaughter on the field. A sixth succumbed during rearguard action, defending a ragged contingent of scouts as they slipped through the lines and took flight. Cienn, who was seventh, was dispatched for mercy, by the knife of a steadfast friend. The eighth, single-handed, had been charged to defend the s'Ffalenn prince through a desperate retreat to the Mathorn Mountains.
Against odds, alone, he survived to return.
Braggen came south and entered the forest on foot to avoid leaving tracks for the head-hunters. He crossed the north fork of the River Arwent in the heat of high summer and paused to trap a black fox. As he intended, his smoke fire to finish the cured hide drew the clan scouts who watched over the downlands near Caith-al-Caen. News was exchanged, and directions.
Under the regal crowns of the oaks, the warm air scarcely trembled. The fragrance of greenery clung thick as glue, shafted with sun through the heat haze. In the shade
d glens, the deer drowsed through midday, fawns asleep while the does stamped off flies. Braggen slipped on his way, his step just as furtively silent, and his strapping frame lost in the brush.
Worn lean from the trail, he arrived at the s'Valerient chieftain's encampment in the lucent glimmer of twilight. He carried the pelt slung over his shoulder and the black brush strung at his belt.
The pack of clan children discovered him first. 'Look! It's Braggen! Braggen's alive! Another Companion is back!' Like starlings, they descended, calling his name. Their eager hands plucked at his clothing. He tousled heads, fended the boys off his knives, and detached the girl toddler before she wore the caked mud from the last stream he had forded.
No welcoming crowd of adults came forward. No one mentioned the loss of his clan braid.
Instead, given space out of mourning respect, two men were sent by the watch. They arrived unaccompanied, armed and dressed in the fringed, forest leathers that carried no other adornment. The expected, tall figure was slightly ahead, with the other sturdy and short, striding fast through the failing light. The children all scattered. Left standing alone, his heart heavy in him, Braggen confronted Sidir, and after him, Eriegal, whose round face was no longer merry. 'We are four. After us, of fourteen, only Deith is still living.'
Deith, who had not gone with the war-band, but remained in Strakewood, holding the tenuous ground in
Deshir since the massacre at Tal Quorin that had savaged a whole generation.
Now, the other survivors were fallen. Against crushing numbers and impossible odds, their lives had been given as well, to win their prince free of Lysaer's massed assault on Daon Ramon Barrens.
Braggen, who was not a demonstrative man, bent his close-cropped head, overcome. 'I knew there were deaths. Just how many, the scouts would not tell me.'
