A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  The next room was as bad. The withdrawing room was worse, although admittedly it had been bad when she saw it last, with charred rugs and broken china littering the floor. There was an ominous stain near the fireplace.

  Down and down …

  The Presence Chamber showed signs of recent occupancy — lingering warmth, embers still smoldering in the grate, rumpled bedding. Four or five men were living here, she deduced. Her home had been defiled, and her jotunnish blood boiled in her veins.

  On the last stair Rap halted, and she heard faint sounds of music and shouting. The beat of her heart was almost as loud. The lantern faded and disappeared. Then Rap’s strong hand gripped her wrist.

  “Invisibility spell,” he whispered.

  They picked their way down, step by step. Faint light showed ahead, seeping around the curve of the stone, and then she began to stumble — not only was there no Rap ahead of her to explain that tight grip, but she could not see her own feet. He steadied her, and they came cautiously into the Throne Room, and into noise.

  Here also lay bedding, and peat glowed hot in the grate. The throne itself had been removed, but when she raised her eyes to look through the arch into the Great Hall, she saw it out there, in the middle. A young man was sitting on it, with a girl on his lap.

  Tables defined a central arena like a dance floor. Other men sprawled at those tables, with other girls, and they were laughing and jeering as they watched two more girls dancing clumsily in the center. Off to one side somewhere, a small orchestra battered away discordantly at a jig tune. Flames leaped in the big fireplaces.

  Girls. Not women. They all looked younger than herself, and most of them had no clothes on. She tasted bile in her throat. More than the increasing warmth was making her sweat inside her wrappings. Azak! Pixies …

  The men were all jotnar, roughly dressed, most of them. A few had begun to strip. They were big. She had forgotten how big jotnar could be. These fair-skinned youths were intimidatingly huge … . just youths, most of them. A few were older, but she could see none without some trace of beard. The one on the throne must be Greastax. He wasn’t much more than a boy, and he certainly did look like a young Kalkor. He was going to die if she had to kill him herself.

  But Nordland raiders never parted from their weapons, even when celebrating Winterfest.

  Here and there she recognized palace servants, scurrying to and fro with bottles and plates. She knew some of the girls, too. Friends, a few of them, and younger sisters of friends. Children!

  Perhaps there were no older women available now for such sport?

  “Gods!” she muttered under her breath. “Gods, Gods, Gods!”

  “Forty-one!” Rap whispered with satisfaction. “All accounted for. Got any scruples left now?”

  “None!” she said. “They die! All of them!”

  “Good. Let’s go a little faster, all right?”

  “Oh, yes!” She saw another dress being ripped off, and she could guess what sort of entertainment was about to follow. She almost commanded her court sorcerer to strike down these brutes as he had blasted Kalkor. But that would be too simple. If she hoped to hold her realm by mundane means, then she must win it by mundane means … or seem to, at least.

  Rap’s invisible hand tightened on her wrist. “Steady now!”

  Shock!

  She was plunged back into darkness and arctic cold, and snow underfoot. The impact disoriented her and she cried out, shivering already.

  “Sorry. I can’t zap us out of the castle. Here — through here.”

  He put her hand on a vertical edge. Her dazzled eyes had begun to pick up the moonlight again, and an opening. She recognized the postern gate, and clambered through with a visible Rap close behind her, out into the yard before the castle, silvered by the high moon.

  The sky was an iron bowl, with only a few stars showing through the moonlight. The deadly cold prickled in her nostrils and made her eyes water. Her breath was a rainbow-tinted fog, but there was no wind, and the smoke from the houses rose in soft pillars the color of the moon.

  “Why can’t you —”

  “Shielded.” He took her wrist again. “Indoors again.”

  Shock! She stumbled, and he put an arm around her, just for a moment. Her ears popped. A torch spluttered in a sconce ahead of her, and she looked around, seeing rough wooden walls and stone floor and a few closed doors. They were in one of the innumerable covered alleyways that were Krasnegar’s winter arteries. The temperature was much higher — around freezing, likely.

  “Ready for your big reappearance scene?” Rap’s tone was jovial, but he was eyeing her carefully.

  She nodded. “Let me get my breath back. It’s all a bit much.”

  “Fine,” he said. “No one will disturb us. Open your hood.”

  She fumbled with lacing, hearing now a muffled rumble of conversation nearby. A sign on the nearest door proclaimed it to be the Beached Whale, and she could smell fish amid the odor of people and tallow. Now she knew where she was, down near the docks. How small it all was! How cramped, and shabby!

  “We’ll pick up some jotnar here, and then go on and collect some imps,” Rap said.

  “Suppose they don’t want to come?”

  “That’s up to you. Here, let me.”

  Brusquely he pushed back her hood as she began unfastening the coat. She was very conscious of his closeness, but he was being businesslike and did not seem to notice. Something ghostly stirred her hair.

  “Now look!” Rap held up a mirror. There was her face — pale, but stern, not terrified and bewildered as she felt it should be. Her honey-blond hair sat in waves that might have come straight from the hands of one of Hub’s expert coiffeuses, and an emerald tiara sparkled on it. The gown showing through her open coat was much more ornate than it been when she put it on, glittering with scrolls of seed pearls and sequins. Obviously Rap had his own ideas of how a Queen of Krasnegar should look, but he might be able to judge the local thinking better than she could. Yes, not bad!

  And something else … Not majesty, surely? Regality? She could not place it, but she could believe at she was looking at a queen. Was she doing that, or was he?

  “Rap! This tiara belongs to Eigaze! I borrowed it for the imperor’s ball —”

  “No, you’ve got one just like hers now.” The mirror disappeared as inexplicably as it had come. “Coronation present from me. I’ve got the weapons when you ask for them. Now go in there, Queen Inosolan, and claim your inheritance!”

  She nodded dumbly. Then their eyes met.

  “Give me one little kiss? Just one?”

  His efficient, businesslike expression faded to one of agony. “Oh, Inos!” he whispered. “Not even your fingers.”

  She closed her eyes. “You’re going to explain this to me, you know,” she said. “What you’re afraid of. I won’t stand for it!” When she looked again, he had turned to open the door. She took a deep breath and raised her chin.

  As the door swung open, she was assaulted by heat, and tumult, and a reek of cheap beer. The big room was dim, yet fogged by smoke from the oil lamps. Below the rough-plank ceiling, dozens of men were standing in groups or slouched at tables, yammering away in rowdy voices.

  She strode past Rap and headed for the brightest spot she could see. A man jumped up from his seat as she approached and wandered off without noticing her. Rap’s arm was there when she reached for it; she raised her skirts with her other hand and stepped nimbly up onto the stool.

  The racket spiraled down into sudden stunned silence. All eyes were on her. Pale faces staring, golden heads and silver. This was a jotunn watering hole, but there were imps present there, also, and perhaps that was a good sign. She must unite the factions, but surely adversity would have already drawn them closer than before?

  Men at the back scrambled to their feet to see better.

  “The princess!” a voice said in awe, and others picked it up: “The princess! The princess! …”

  �
��The queen!” shouted another in the far corner, and again there were some echoes. A few fists banged on tables. Then silence. She thought the light was brightening around her and dimming elsewhere. Her mouth was parched. No, it wasn’t —

  “I am Queen Inosolan. I have returned to claim my realm!” She dared not pause there in case someone started to scoff. “I bring weapons and I call for you to take up arms in my name and wreak vengeance on the jotn … on the invaders!”

  Rap threw a massive bundle onto the table with a mighty metallic crash. A sudden tug at her waist told Inos that she now wore a sword. She reached under her coat and drew it.

  She flourished it overhead and the blade struck the ceiling so hard that the hilt almost slipped from her fingers.

  “Who is with me?”

  The longest two seconds of her life …

  “By the Powers, I am!” a high-pitched voice cried. A young jotunn sprang to his feet a couple of tables away. He was very lanky, his blond hair almost brushing the ceiling, his face bright pink from too much beer.

  Kratharkran, the smith, prompted a voice inside her ear, but she knew Krath. How he had grown!

  “Mastersmith Kratharkran, you are welcome! I appoint you leader here. Issue these weapons, and bring your squad to the bailey. I shall meet you there with others. The raiders are all gathered in the Great Hall, and we are going to kill them!”

  “Aye!” Kratharkran roared in a squeak absurdly ill suited to his size. Others jumped up, also, and then stools were falling all over the room, boots clumping.

  “Gods save the queen!” Kratharkran piped, and a chorus echoed him, “Gods save the queen!”

  Rap had gripped her wrist again. She jumped down, and her sword miraculously — and fortunately — vanished as she did so. Invisible hands steadied her when her coat caught on the stool. Rap pulled, and she headed for the door as a great drunken clamor of shouting and falling furniture filled the room behind her.

  She was out in the passageway and running, being towed by Rap.

  “Beautifully done! Oh, beautiful!” he shouted back at her.

  “You did it, not me!” She laughed aloud, and he turned his head to smile at her.

  Then he flung open the door of the Southern Dream and dragged her inside before she could draw breath. The ceiling was even lower, the light even dimmer, and most of the clustered heads around the tables were dark. Well, imps should be even more willing to kill jotnar, although it might take more of them.

  Again she was up on a stool; again the light seemed to draw in around her. She had her speech ready — too ready, for she began almost before there was silence. “I am Queen Inosolan. I have returned to claim my realm …”

  The same crash of weapons from Rap, the same shocked silence …

  Longer …

  Freezing, horrible silence!

  Impish Krasnegarians were less easily aroused than their paler-skinned countrymen. Her new euphoria sank into dread. She saw her tiny amateur rebellion being stomped to bloody pulp by those ruthless young professionals up in the castle. She saw her own armed jotnar victorious but turning on the imps in civil war. She saw all kinds of disaster.

  “What, cowards?” she shouted. “I have fifty jotnar behind me. Will none of you come also to avenge your sisters and your daughters?”

  Muttering …

  Hononin the hostler, to your right, said the invisible guide.

  “Master Hononin? Where is your loyalty?”

  The wizened old man clambered to his feet, more bent and wrinkled even than she remembered. His eyes glinted angrily at being thus singled out. “I am no fighter, Princess.”

  “Queen!”

  “Queen, then.” He looked unconvinced.

  “And neither am I, but I am Holindarn’s daughter, and I am not a coward! Sometimes we must all stand up for the Good.”

  “You bring another army like the last one?”

  “I brought no one, but I offer you blades. Now, do the imps hide under beds and let the jotnar have all the swords?”

  “No!” a few timorous souls somewhere said uncertainly.

  “Well, then … ” Hononin’s angry old eyes settled momentarily on Rap, and paused. Inos wondered what message might be passing there, or what sorcery in use. Then his gaze flickered around the room, and the bent shoulders straightened. “When you put it like that, ma’am, I wouldn’t mind spitting a couple of those young brutes myself.”

  Inos’s head swam with sudden relief. She swayed on her perch and felt her shoulders being steadied. “I appoint you leader, then. Bring your men to the bailey with the others! Revenge!”

  A shout of “Revenge!” sprang up, but she thought she heard a few of “Gods save the queen!” also. Then she was on her way to the door again.

  “Even better!” Rap crowed, hauling her along the alley. She was breathless, soaking wet inside all her cumbersome garments. He almost dragged her up a long flight of stairs to the Sailor’s Head.

  That was where she first noticed women present, and she added a new command: “Women come, also, and attend to the girls those animals stole! They must be rescued unharmed!” And there it was the women who started the shouting.

  The Golden Ship …

  The King’s Men …

  The Three Bears …

  She had never realized how many saloons Krasnegar had. She made a note to tease Rap about his experience with them all. And they were not a third of the way up the hill yet.

  Then he pulled her into a side corridor and stopped. “Listen!”

  She listened — a deep roar, far away, like surf or continuous thunder. It was all around them. The town had come alive like a stirred anthill.

  “The men of Krasnegar!”

  “Rap! We’ve done it! We’ve done it! No, you did it.”

  “It was you,” he said softly.

  It was the weapons, mostly. Even an adept should not be this effective, and she suspected he’d put a sorcery on her, a majesty. But he gave her no time to ask.

  “Fasten your coat! Some of them are ahead of us. We’ve got plenty already, and they’ll collect more. Ready?”

  Shock!

  Again, cold and dark like hammerblows … She gasped and clutched her coat over her chest. “Rap! You didn’t give me time!”

  “No time!”

  They were standing at the postern gate again, and he was staring back across the drift-filled yard, awash with moonlight. A narrow track across it had been trampled clear by many feet, leading from the mouth of Royal Wynd, the covered way that connected castle and town. A wider opening in the walls marked the start of the wagon road, but that would be filled with snow, abandoned until springtime. Yet now it showed a flicker of light, the same yellow glow that shone on the undersides of the drifting vapor clouds rising from every chimney.

  “Gods!” Rap said. “The whole town’s coming!”

  And Inos could hear the singing — there was an army fighting its way up the street, and probably another coming up the covered walks. She tried not to think of the dangers, of people being crushed. She had started a revolution and must pay the price, whatever it turned out to be.

  Her teeth started to chatter.

  “Sorry!” Rap murmured absentmindedly, and at once she was cozy warm all over, from ears to toes. He was still clad in only the simple pants and half-unbuttoned tunic he had worn indoors in Kinvale. His boots and shirt were thin, southern wear, his head was bare.

  It was the postern that was bothering him. For eight months of the year the castle gates stood closed, drifted shut by thick snow. Only the little postern gate stayed open always, just wide enough for a man or a horse. An army could not pass through such a slot.

  Rap stuck his head inside and peered around, then came out again. “Evil-begotten nuisance, this shielding,” he mumbled. Again he studied the far side of the court. “If the raiders wake up in time and can get here to hold this door, then I’ll have to show my hand. I think I’d rather do it this way. Come on!”

&nb
sp; He pulled her back along the snowy track a few paces. Even as he did so, she heard the gates creak. Slowly, noisily, and occultly, the two great flaps began to swing forward, crunching mountains of snow ahead of them. When they stood about halfway open, Rap released them.

  “That should be enough,” he said. “I wonder if anyone will ever think to ask who opened the castle?”

  The noise of singing was louder now, the chimney smoke was glowing brightly overhead. A line of lights came into sight up the hill — men bearing torches, twenty or more abreast, floundering through the snow, cursing and stumbling. They were being propelled by the rank behind them as inexorably as Rap had moved the gates, and that rank by more behind it. The steaming mass advanced up the hill as irresistible as moving pack ice. Any man who fell was going to be trampled, but those first brave leaders were having the worst of it. The rest were finding easier going, and the singing came from them. Another mob suddenly erupted from Royal Wynd, a darker company against the snow, men without torches. They continued to pour into the courtyard, and now the main mass was at the top of the road.

  “Come on!” Rap took Inos’s wrist again, and they ran before the advancing horde — through the barbican, past the guardroom door, into the bailey. Her father had fought a losing battle every winter to keep the bailey as clear of snow as was practical, but this year no one seemed to have tried very hard. She floundered through drifts as Rap pulled her over to the armory steps.

  “Stand up here!” he said. He was not even panting; his stupid boots were probably full of snow. “Here they come — hold this!”

  Somehow Inos found herself teetering on top of a wall and clutching a monstrous torch, hissing and spluttering, with leaping flames as long as her arms. It was so heavy she almost dropped it.

  Before she could complain, the archway flickered and rumbled. With swords shining in the light of their torches, with their feet crunching on the hard-frozen snow, with voices raised in defiant song, the men of Krasnegar stormed into the bailey.