Red Rowan: Book 3: Return of the Reluctant Hero
Page 43
As he came out into the passageway, his escort leapt to attention and saluted.
Rowan raised his eyes heavenwards for a moment and said something that made a couple of the younger Guardsmen blush and then wonder about thunderbolts from above, but their fellows laughed at their discomfiture.
“This is something else I’ve got to shut up about, I suppose?” he said sourly.
“Aye, laddie, it is,” Cade chuckled as they set off for the Ball.
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Rowan thought quickly as he headed down the stairs of the barracks. Yes, his ankle would stand up to what he had in mind to do now, after Telli’s well-intentioned but – to Rowan’s way of thinking – completely unnecessary and very irritating effort. Instead of walking sedately at the bottom of the steps, he headed off at a fast trot, perversely pleased to hear foul cursing and the clatter of sabres and spurs behind him as his escort tried to keep up with him with some sort of decorum. Purely in the interests of being a pest, he detoured up to the battlements putting on speed as he went. He ran past the initially startled, then very amused, night Watch and around to the stairway nearest the Ball Room and ran down that too. Then, his irritation gone, he stopped outside the building to wait for his followers. They were a good long way behind, he saw happily. Mind you, the day he couldn’t outrun a bunch of Wirrans, especially Wirrans in full dress uniforms carrying sabres, was the day he’d give up. Regardless of his ankle or anything else.
“Hello Ivan, hello Rogen,” he said to the very surprised lads at the entrance to the building. There’d be more senior troopers on the main doors to the Ball Room inside. “You two look very smart tonight.”
“Er… thank you, Sir. So do you,” Ivan managed as both recruits hastily saluted. But surely he’d seen a big honour guard headed for the Champion’s rooms, hadn’t he? He wondered what the hell had happened to it. Suddenly he heard many feet thumping down the stairs from the battlements and he tried not to let his imagination run away with him.
“Sir, where’s the, er…?”
“’Tis probably them coming now, I think, Ivan,” Rowan managed to keep a straight face though he was dying to laugh at the recruit’s expression, “We took the scenic route and they seemed to get, um, caught up on the way.”
“Oh.” Ivan exchanged a quick glance with his friend.
“Did they have to open up the whole thing tonight?” Rowan deftly changed the subject.
The Ball Room was a single huge building, normally divided into the Grand Ball Room, the Lesser Ball Room and the Great Dining Hall, but for very large functions the dividing doors could be removed to make one immense space. On very rare occasions, such as tonight’s Champion’s Ball, the indoor salle that ran right along the back of the building was spruced up and pressed into service too.
The recruits nodded.
“Aye, Sir. There’s a hell of a lot of folk in there, Sir,” Rogen said. He tried not to stare as Rowan’s escort straggled up, trying to get themselves into some sort of order as they came.
Cade was unsurprised to see Rowan chatting with the recruits. He’d made his point, and he wouldn’t upset proceedings any more than that. Probably. He hastily grabbed his friend’s arm before he could disappear into the Ball Room.
“No you don’t, you mad bugger!” he said, exasperated but amused too, “Now you’ll have to wait till the rest of the lads catch up and straighten themselves out and get their bloody breath back.”
“Will I?” Rowan looked at him innocently and then laughed, his good humour restored. “Aye, all right. Mind you, some of those lads need to be a hell of a lot fitter.”
He heard a slight scuffle overhead and looked up to see a small black shadow climbing up the ivy that all but covered this part of the Ball Room. It stopped at a high clerestory window and turned to look down at him. Rowan wasn’t completely surprised to see the pair of bright green eyes that glowed at him in the lamplight. He laughed to himself. He’d thought he’d been so clever, keeping Scrap safely in his rooms, but the little cat must have forsaken its new blanket and sneaked out when he’d gone back for his sabre and all those silly buggers had saluted him. And now here Scrap was, happily settling himself to watch the festivities. Good luck to him.
“Come on, Cade,” he said to his friend, “If the lads haven’t got their damned breath back by now, they’ll be left behind. Let’s get this over with.”
He tossed his braid back over his shoulder, checked that his medals were straight, and strode forward as the buglers sounded a fanfare.
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Josef sat beside Rose in the middle of a big group of Rowan’s friends and kin, wide-eyed at everything he saw at the Champion’s Ball and starting to wonder if perhaps he was an ignorant savage after all. He and Rowan had always got on well, even more so since he’d wed Rose, and they’d been friends for a good while. But seeing Rowan at work in the Trophy competition had been stunning. Of course he’d known that Rowan was a very good swordsman, he was the Champion after all, but Josef hadn’t truly realised just how good he was until he saw the calibre of competitor that Rowan had casually and seemingly effortlessly wiped the floor with. Amazing, truly amazing. Nobody’d ever looked like they were going to beat him, in spite of his dodgy ankle, and he’d not lost a single round. Rose said he’d done the same in the last Trophy too. Josef shook his head thoughtfully.
And all this business of the, er… what was it called, now? The Star of Yaarl. He knew something of Messton and Trill, but he’d never even heard of the damned Star of Yaarl before he’d come here, and then he’d heard of little else as Rowan had worked his way through his opponents. Seeing the medal in the Museum, hearing the note of hushed, awe-filled respect in the young recruit’s voice as he’d taken them back to the Gate that night via the Memorial, and then seeing the great Memorial in daylight a couple of days later… it had all made him see his little brother-in-law in a completely new light. And now, though he didn’t yet know it, he was about to be utterly flabbergasted.
A sudden fanfare of bugles made him jump.
“Great bloody hells! Now what, Rose?” he whispered.
“Hush, love. They do that to announce the Champion,” she said softly.
“Bloody noisy buggers,” he said as he stood and turned towards the doors at the far end of the huge Ball Room.
“All Guardsmen are bloody noisy buggers,” one of the g’Hakken nearby said with a grin, “They’re always blowing damned trumpets and bashing away at fraggin drums and tramping about in their great boots.”
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Rowan strode down the centre of the Ball Room at the head of his Honour Guard of twenty-one, his head up and his back straight. He looked magnificent, his dark green shadow silk jacket and black dress trousers beautifully tailored and immaculate, his black g’Hakken boots gleaming softly, his braided hair shining silver in the lamplight with the last twelve inches or so of it loose and falling past his hips in shimmering waves. And his medals… as Jasper had said, nobody’d worn the Star of Yaarl for nearly two hundred years, and of course nobody had ever worn three Champion’s Medals. The whole lot together were simply stunning.
Usually there’d be cheers and applause as the Champion made his entrance, but this time there was complete silence save for the Honour Guards’ footsteps in perfect unison.
Every Guardsman there, no matter his rank or which province he was from, stood to attention and saluted and the remainder of the men, women, dwarfs and two trolls bowed their heads in respect as Rowan passed. He looked astounded for a moment, but he didn’t falter. He reached the spot at the front of the room where his kin were standing and turned to face the silent, awestruck crowd.
“Thank you,” he said, “Thank you for the honour you do me and the Star.” For a moment he wished he’d thrown the damned thing over the battlements while he’d been up there.
He looked uncertain for a moment more, and then he was once again every inch the Champion… the triple Champion, the hero of Messton
and Trill, and the holder of the Star of Yaarl.
“I’d like to ask you all to pause for a few moments now, please, to remember the Guardsmen of Messton and Trill… to remember their sacrifices and their suffering, and to remember their courage and honour.”
Every head bowed.
A minute later Rowan raised his head.
“Thank you. We must never forget them. But all the same, and with all respect to them,” he smiled suddenly, “They’d be the first ones to tell us to bloody get on with it and enjoy ourselves tonight, that this isn’t about them or the Star. So, I have a Champion’s Decree for tonight…” what the Champion wanted, the Champion got, and that went doubly at the Champion’s Ball. Rowan hadn’t issued the famous Decree after his other Trophies, but tonight he would and he knew he’d shock everyone there to the core. He’d outrage a good percentage of them as well. He was looking forward to it.
His eyes sparkled with mischief as he continued, “Please, with all respect to the memory of those men, there’s to be no more saluting the Star of Yaarl, or me either, for tonight. And no more calling me ‘Sir.’ My name is Rowan, please use it,” he tried not to laugh at the various looks of shock, horror and blank amazement in the crowd and smiled again as he saw Fess trying not to laugh too, “‘Tis the Champion’s Decree, my friends. Thank you. And now, tonight is for all of us handsome, charming competitors to be sweeping the lovely ladies off their feet and making their less dashing menfolk writhe with envy,” he looked over at Stefan, Axel and several other Trophy contestants standing not far away, “So, shall we make a start on it, lads?”
There was an enthusiastic “Aye, Rowan!” and cheering from the competitors. By custom, the Champion took to the dance floor first and he and his lady would have it to themselves for the first circuit before being joined by the other competitors and then by everyone else. For a moment Rowan wished with all his being that Zara was there to share it with him this time, and then he turned to face Rose, bowed, and took her hand.
“With your permission, my lady,” he said as he kissed her hand.
“I’d be honoured, my lord,” she said gravely, knowing full well what he’d just been thinking because she’d been thinking the same.
“The honour is mine, my lady,” he assured her with a wink and led her into a waltz. He’d danced the first dance with Rose at his previous two Trophies and she was as graceful and lightfooted as he was himself.
“You’re a bloody silly ratbag, Rowan, truly. Mind you, I can see all that saluting business would get very damned wearing,” she smiled up at him, “Oh, and you look amazing, by the way… like you’re wearing a bit of the forest… no, you look like you’re a bit of the forest yourself…” she added, fascinated by the shifting shadows and hues of the shadow silk jacket as they moved under a great chandelier.
He smiled at her, thinking that was probably the highest compliment anyone could ever pay him and certainly the one he’d value the most.
“I am, my heart. I’ll always be a bit of the forest…” he said softly as more and more dancers came to join them.
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Thank you for reading this book and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. My apologies for the delay in its being published.
The Red Rowan trilogy is as follows:
Red Rowan Book 1: Forester’s Son
Red Rowan Book 2: All Gone, the Gods
Red Rowan Book 3: Return of the Reluctant Hero.
If you liked the trilogy, you might also like:
Red Rowan – The Bewitcher of Beasts & other short stories, a collection of short stories that didn’t quite make the cut to be incorporated into the trilogy… the line had to be drawn somewhere!
Helen Gosney April 2015
Contact me at redrowanHG@hotmail.com
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