“Hello,” Mar Lon returned. He reached for his lonriset and began tuning the strings by ear, more interested in trying his new song than in chatting with a stranger.
The boy waited in silence until Mar Lon adjusted the string of highest pitch and balanced the lonriset across one raised thigh. “Play me a song?” Though the request lacked the Northern or Western amenities, the soft question in the boy’s tone lent it a courtesy Mar Lon had not heard since entering the Eastlands.
“What do you want to hear?” Mar Lon sighed, awaiting the request for a bawdy or violent tune, promising himself that, this once, he would not let it bother him. The morning breeze felt too pleasant, the sunlight too welcome.
“Play something gentle and sweet. Something peaceful.”
Mar Lon gaped, replaying the boy’s words in his head, certain he had misheard. He had tried for so long to create such an audience, without success. It seemed impossible that now it would come to him. “Something peaceful?”
The Easterner nodded. He dropped the wagon’s handle, taking a seat on the piled stones. “My name’s Abrith. I’m thirteen, and I’m going off to Stalmize in a few months to train for the war. Before I go, I want to hear some peaceful stuff. Do you know some?”
Excitement tingled through Mar Lon. Without replying, he launched into the most complicated melody he had written in the past month. The harmonies glided off the strings in smooth tones as perfect as crystals, and his voice found each note with a flawless precision nature could not match. Every combination begged for peace and promised tranquility.
Abrith’s eyes drifted closed. A placid smile softened features prematurely wrinkled by the sun.
The joyful expression seemed contagious. Mar Lon’s heart soared, and, here on a boulder in a field, he sang with a beauty none of his previous performances could match.
When the song concluded, Abrith opened his eyes. “Beautiful,” he said. “Perfect.” Then, apparently unable to leave the topic long enough to find other words, he repeated. “Perfectly beautiful.”
Volumes of ideas seemed to converge on Mar Lon at once. Still, he remained silent, afraid to say anything for fear of losing the only support he had yet found in the Eastlands.
Abrith hummed quietly, mimicking the melody line in an imitation so poor it made Mar Lon wince. The Easterner looked up deferentially, as if to ask a favor he knew would be denied. “Could you sing it again? I want to try to get the words right so I can do it for my friends. They’d love it.”
Mar Lon clamped the lonriset between his knees, holding the neck lightly in both hands. His heart pounded. “Can you bring your friends here? I can play that song and several others for them.”
Abrith’s eyes widened, aghast. “You’d do that?” Then, apparently thinking he had miscommunicated, he clarified. “My friends are all about my age. We don’t got no money to pay you.” He rose, grasping the wagon’s tow.
Mar Lon laughed for the first time in weeks. All the money in the Eastlands could not buy the elation born of a message of peace successfully taught nor the price that an appreciative audience could grant him. “No money is expected or necessary. Please, gather your friends. It would be the greatest pleasure of my life to play for them.” The vitality that seemed to course through Mar Lon drove aside weeks of despair. And Mar Lon knew he meant every word.
CHAPTER 15
Becoming Renshai
Farming villages and fields dotted the woodlands west of the Granite Hills and south of the Weathered Mountains, random as seeds scattered by the wind. Mitrian, Garn, Colbey, Arduwyn, and Sterrane spent their nights in inns or rented cottages, their route an unpredictable series of loops and zigzags through towns otherwise conspicuously devoid of weapons and warriors.
For Mitrian, the weeks went by in a whirlwind of flashing steel. Every day, Colbey worked her to exhaustion, pausing only for lessons on Renshai language, history, and philosophy, often over a meal prepared by Arduwyn or Sterrane, then pressed her to exhaustion again. Early on, nausea from the pregnancy and Mitrian’s low level of conditioning limited her practices. Then the demon would flood her mind with blood lust, driving her nearly as hard as Colbey, filling in details of the past and philosophical gaps when her mind wandered or her endurance failed.
As weeks spilled into months, Mitrian’s stamina increased. Her broad-boned frame, always slender, became firm as well. The demon settled into the steel, quivering with eager interest as Colbey’s sword maneuvers grew more complicated and Mitrian laboriously mastered them.
* * *
Rache Kallmirsson drew rein in a wheat field just outside the farm town of Shidran. His horse slowed to a walk, its hooves digging rents in soil riddled with the mounds of animal burrows. With every few steps, the weakened ground collapsed into tunnels. The horse stumbled, jogging Rache and reawakening the pain of his most recent battle. Eight times in as many months he had been attacked by mixed groups of white-skinned strangers and ardent Western youngsters who followed the albinos like adoring worshipers. Time and again, Rache had patiently turned the teens’ impetuousness against them. Not one returned alive to warn his companions or suggest strategy for the next assault; those Rache pressed for information invariably killed themselves or forced his hand against them. He learned only that they exalted a nameless, white god, half bird and half man.
Though Rache had won the battles, he seemed certain to lose the war. A chorus of bruises, strains, and gashes always accompanied him. The bony calluses of healing rib and collarbone breaks became familiar. His back ached, and he learned to protect his lower legs, because slashes there healed frustratingly slowly and seemed more prone to infection. A feeling of being watched harried him daily. He learned to sleep like an animal, always at the edge of alertness; the slightest sound awakened him, tense and ready for action.
Rache crossed the border of Shidran’s village proper. Between jagged rows of cottages, four muddy children rolled stones across a packed-earth road. Seeing no other people, Rache approached.
Glancing up from his labor, one boy spotted Rache and stared at the tattered, golden-haired warrior from beneath a fringe of dark bangs. Prompted by their companion, the others looked up as well. Long stringy hair swung from every head. One wore her patched and faded homespun as a skirt, cuing Rache that he faced three boys and a girl. In the other towns, he had met adults first, usually in the form of farmers tending crops. But in the manner of his tribe, Rache greeted the children like people rather than infants. “Hello.”
The boys exchanged glances, and the smallest slipped behind the other two. The girl answered. “Hallo.” She added guilelessly, “You a Nort’man?”
Rache smiled tolerantly. “I am. I’m looking for another Northman, an older man. He’s traveling with a burly young man and a woman. They have swords.” From experience, Rache had learned to focus his description on Colbey and the weaponry. Northmen were rare throughout the Westlands and swords every bit as scarce in the farm towns. “Are they here?”
The two larger boys spoke between themselves rather than directly to Rache. “He’s talkin’ ’bout Cull-bay ’n’ Garnd.”
“An’ Garnd’s wife.” Skinny and freckle-faced, the other puffed out his cheeks, looped his arms out in front of him, and clamped his hands.
His male companions giggled at the image.
The girl glared. “They’s had a great, big idiot ’n’ a li’l redhead hunner with ’ems, too.”
Rache nodded. A scrawny, red-haired archer and a hairy, dim-witted man who spent most of their time in the forests but came and went, supplying Colbey, Garn, and Mitrian with food, corroborated earlier descriptions by the townsfolk. But this was the first time Rache had heard anyone refer to Mitrian as Garn’s wife or imply that she was fat. The former rankled, but the latter prickled the edges of his consciousness with dread. Rache hesitated, hating his need to know. “What did you mean by that gesture about the woman?”
Addressed directly, the skinny boy flushed, the color highlighting his f
reckles.
The girl answered for him. “Nothin’ bad. She uz pretty an’ all.” She twirled a loop of greasy hair as if in envy of Mitrian’s thick, dark locks. “But the way she dressed in britches an’ carried on with a sword, I’da thought she uz a man ’ceptin’ she uz real pregnant.”
Pregnant. Surely Mitrian’s condition had been clear to the various townsfolk months earlier, but no adult had been crass enough to mention it to Rache. Mitrian pregnant. A baby. GARN’s baby. Numbing realization seeped through Rache. Mitrian is carrying Garn’s baby. Why? How? No matter how Rache examined the situation, it made no sense to him. If Garn raped her, why would she travel willingly with him? But to sleep with him on purpose would defy her life, her father, and everything she’s known or cared for. Rache’s own thoughts brought an answer. I warned Santagithi he had reined his strong-willed daughter in too far. No satisfaction accompanied the observation, only raw grief and revulsion. To strike back against her father’s tyranny by running off with a man was simply foolish; to choose Garn was a cruelty beyond words, a bitter, vindictive decision aimed, not against the man who had shackled her sense of adventure, but the one who had tried to set it free.
Rache recalled the love he had lavished upon Mitrian. He had devoted his time to her as he had to no one else but his swords, teaching her secrets serious warriors would sell their souls to know. He had consoled her from her days of dirty diapers to her years of spurned love. But the sibling kinship Rache thought they had shared seemed a lie, one more betrayal in a long string that had started with her father. Sickened, Rache lowered his head, feeling as battered and broken as an ancient toy kicked aside for a newer, shinier trinket. He struggled against the knowledge that followed naturally. By law, Mitrian’s child is Renshai. So many years I isolated myself to prevent an heir, and now Garn’s child will be Renshai.
Loathing tore through Rache, the wound to his spirit deeper than the gashes and bruises left by his battles with cultists. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached. The pain seemed appropriate, fitting punishment for the evil his joy at watching Mitrian perform sword work had caused. It was all a game to me, a chance to view the beauty of the Renshai’s perfect maneuvers without inflicting the heritage upon anyone. For a moment, Rache’s intellect rose to his defense. Mitrian begged for those lessons. How could I know she would be drawn from her father’s town or discover Colbey? But Rache granted himself no quarter. I saddled Mitrian with the cruelest, most hated legacy in the world, and I created Garn to live among Renshai. His presence alone will rob the tribe of our ancient honor. Rache concentrated on his myriad injuries, hoping physical pain would divert the anguish of his thoughts.
The girl cleared her throat. “They left yesterday. Headed west.”
Rache had expected nothing else. For eight months it had gone the same way. No matter how many times he lost and found their strange and jagged trail, Colbey and the others eluded him by a day, a week, sometimes only an hour. Always before, Rache had convinced himself that Garn was somehow leading his companions, keeping them continually one jump ahead, teasing Rache like a dog with a piece of meat. But now, in the depths of this new despair, Rache realized what his subconscious had known all along: It’s not Garn avoiding me, it’s Colbey. It was a cruel blow. And there can only be one reason why Colbey would shun the only other Renshai. Guilt slammed Rache. He clutched at the reins, blind to the children’s stares. Colbey knows I survived the assault on Devil’s Island. And he can’t face, shouldn’t have to face, the fact that the greatest swordsman in the world trained a coward.
A wild conglomeration of self-hatred, frustration, and rage suffused Rache now, and he screamed his denial to a friendly spring sky that seemed to mock him. He yanked on the rein, ripping the horse’s head suddenly to the right. The beast half-reared, then spun on its hind legs, leaping into a frenzied gallop for the town border. The children scattered, caught in the swirling dust kicked up by its passage.
Rache gave the horse its head, and it sprinted between sprouting rows of wheat, floundering as the thin-walled burrows collapsed beneath its drumming hooves. The world whipped past Rache in a maddeningly cheerful wash of budding plants and golden sun. The horse pranced, rocking in low, playful bucks at the joy of near freedom and pleasant weather. Rache didn’t care if the horse’s antics aggravated his injuries, didn’t bother to brace himself for the jolts of missteps amid the burrows, almost wished he could slip from his mount’s back and be trampled beneath its flying hooves. The two worlds he had known, his heritage of birth and the one he had adopted at Episte’s urgings, had forsaken him. Only one thing remained for Rache to live for, that for which his mother had paid with her soul. And Rache now knew the mistake she had made. The prophecy was never for me. The Golden Prince of Demons is and was always Colbey. My mother damned her soul in vain, and I live cursed by the same fate.
Like his people, it had never been Rache’s way to surrender. His iron will had brought him through battles other men would have forsaken before they started. He had weathered sword strokes and infections. With enviable patience, he had transformed Santagithi’s guards from a ragged band of semicompetent braggarts to a force as capable as the larger armies of the Western cities. The things that had driven Rache’s life, his friendships, Renshai honor, the price of his mother’s soul, had all been stolen from him at once. Nothing remained but the promise of revenge against Garn, and Rache’s love and respect for Mitrian might steal that last from him as well.
Gradually, the fields broke to forest. The horse’s pace slackened to a walk, and Rache guided it through the tangled web of woodlands. Apparently no longer needed, no longer even wanted, his every reason for existence had disappeared and nothing remained but to end his miserable life. He drew his dagger from a pocket of his leathers. Calmly, his mind traced the route of knife to heart, the careful maneuvering that might admit sharpened steel between the ribs. Clutching the reins in his opposite hand, he probed the lean, hard muscles of his chest, defining the bony ridges and gaps. Yet Rache held the knife. He did not fear the weapon or death; he had waited eagerly and too long for the killing stroke that would send him to Valhalla. But suicide was a coward’s way that would bar him from the haven for dead warriors as completely as death on a sickbed.
Again, Rache knew the certainty of being watched. He reined his horse in a clearing beneath towering deciduous trees that blotted out the sun with a cloak of spring leaves. That strangers would intrude upon his misery enraged Rache. The constant pursuit that had haunted him for eight months fueled his anger. Nothing could compare with the chance to die battling enemies, and Rache knew his disdain for his own life would only add to his battle skill. Without need to defend, he could concentrate all his efforts on attack, spilling enemy lives as well as his own. Excited by the opportunity to solve all his problems at once, Rache listened, trying to locate the others and afraid he had imagined them.
Rache froze, sifting sound from the brooding stillness of the forest. A breeze ruffled the leaves overhead. He followed the path of their noise. Beneath the steady rattle, a branch snapped. Smiling, Rache wheeled his horse to meet the sharper sound. “Come out!” he shouted.
No answer.
“Come out!” Rache called, louder. His horse dropped its head, snuffling for greenery amidst the rotting pulp of drying leaves. “Sniveling pack of cowards. You want me? Come get me! I’ll cut you into pieces for the ravens. And your ugly bird-headed god as well.”
Still no response. The sound did not recur.
Frustrated, Rache traded the dagger for one of his swords. He wrenched up the horse’s head, forcing it a few steps nearer to the border of the clearing. “Who are you men who slink like curs, afraid to face one crippled soldier? I’ll kill you all. The more the better. This world needs fewer cowards.”
This time, a man stepped from the foliage, backlit by a stripe of sunlight through the younger trees. Strawberry blond braids framed a weathered, predatory face some fifteen years older than Rache’s. Though li
ght, his skin bore the natural pallor of a Northman rather than the strange, ivory hue of the Leukenyan priests. He kept his left side toward Rache, twisted just far enough so Rache could glimpse the sword on his right hip. Something about the man’s appearance struck Rache as odd. At first, he attributed the feeling to the reversed location of the sword belt. But Rache had learned to fight with both hands or either, without preference. Two of Santagithi’s guards were left-handed, and Rache had sparred with them as frequently as any other. He had also drilled Mitrian far harder on left-handed techniques than right to overcome her long-standing bias.
The stranger spoke in the Northern tongue and with the gruff singsong of the far North. “Well met.” He added, as if in afterthought, “Rache.”
Confusion displaced most of Rache’s rage. He had expected a pack of crazed cultists or perhaps a spy hired by Garn or Colbey to keep Rache at bay. A Northman in the Westlands seemed odd enough, but to find one trailing him and with knowledge of his name went beyond all possibility.
A ghost of a smile touched the Northman’s features and disappeared so quickly that Rache was uncertain he had seen it at all. “My name is Peusen Raskogsson. Of Nordmir.”
The name struck a spark of memory. Rache recalled having heard it before in the same dialect and nearly the identical voice, that of the dangerous-looking lieutenant whose men called him Slayer. Peusen. Valr Kirin’s brother. Now that Rache had placed the kinship, the resemblance seemed uncanny. Peusen looked the older of the two by about a decade, yet there was nothing soft about the Northman. Despite his friendly greeting, Peusen held a defensive crouch, his left thumb hooked, not quite casually, on his sword belt. Coarser white hairs wound through the red-gold of his braids, curled through his bangs and colored his sideburns silver. And, now that Rache had taken a closer look, he recognized what had struck him as peculiar about Peusen. His right arm ended at the elbow. He carried the defect so nonchalantly and easily that it had escaped Rache’s notice on first inspection.
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