“The men who killed my son wish a truce?” Saffira asked. Borenson silently cursed. Jureem had not mentioned a murdered son.
“We do,” Borenson answered, as if he himself bore some responsibility for her son’s death.
“If my husband agrees to this,” Saffira asked, “does that mean that you will quit sending the Knights Equitable against us? Will you quit slaughtering our Dedicates, and the members of the royal family? Does the Earth King have that much power?”
Borenson hesitated. It was common here in Indhopal to insist on conditions when making a bargain, in hopes of getting stronger assurances. The woman wanted confirmation that she and her children would no longer have to face the fear of murder at the hands of the Knights Equitable. It was a fair request.
But Gaborn had refused to Choose the High Marshal of the Knights Equitable, though High Marshal Skalbairn had offered to turn over command of his troops. Could Gaborn truly claim to command the Knights Equitable?
The answer was both no and yes. Gaborn did not currently command that force, but he could do so if he chose.
Still, Saffira would not want to hear a no. Could he promise her safety? Would Gaborn offer to Choose the High Marshal, if doing so would guarantee a truce?
What had Gaborn seen in the High Marshal’s heart that made him wish the man dead?
Borenson felt certain that no matter what foul deeds Skalbairn had committed, Gaborn would surely Choose him if he understood how much was at stake. The answer was yes.
“The command of the Knights Equitable has been offered to the Earth King,” Borenson said, skirting the truth. “Gaborn Val Orden would ensure peace.”
“Where is my husband now?” Saffira asked. Borenson noted that it was not the first time she had called him “my husband.” So the woman was married to him. She was indeed more than a mere concubine, she was the Queen of Indhopal.
“Raj Ahten slew the Dedicates at the Blue Tower in Mystarria more than two hours ago,” Borenson said. “I believe he will ride hard now to slaughter Duke Paldane’s troops, which are amassed at Carris.”
Again Saffira drew in a sharp breath. She had to see how much depended on her. An entire nation now lay at her husband’s mercy, like a convict with his head on the chopping block. At this very moment, Raj Ahten would be racing for Carris. The axe was falling; perhaps she alone could stop it.
“Carris is far,” Saffira said. “If I am to take endowments and ride there, we must hurry.”
“Please, do,” Borenson said.
She sighed deeply, as if she’d made up her mind. With a hint of desperation, she said, “My lord has drawn most of the palace guard off into his service. I have no one to escort me to Carris, no one but my personal guards to guide the way, and I fear that I will need the guidance of a soldier of Mystarria.”
Borenson dreaded what was coming. Of course she’d need him. A cohort of riders coming out of Indhopal would face the risk of ambush by Mystarrian troops. And Borenson knew full well that even if Saffira carried a standard of truce, the soldiers at his borders were no more likely to honor such a truce as Indhopal’s guards had been.
She needed him. He’d imagined that she’d ride with a thousand troops at her side, that once he delivered his message, he’d be free to leave.
Saffira said heavily, regretfully, “Pashtuk, Sir Borenson, would you escort me to Carris? Knowing the cost, would you enter my service?”
Borenson felt dizzy. Of course he was her best choice for a guide, her only choice if she wanted to reach Carris alive. But the price?
He was newly married. He loved his wife.
To give up his manhood! The very thought left him reeling, made him feel weak as a babe. Worse, it filled him with a sense of profound loss. What if I should never be able to consummate my love for my wife?
Could I do it? Dare I do it, even for Mystarria?
Pashtuk answered first. His answer was restrained, but spoken with a certain heaviness. “I will do so, if it pleases Your Highness.”
Borenson hedged, seeking escape. “Your Highness,” he apologized, “I fear that I cannot. Unlike Pashtuk, I have no endowments of brawn or stamina. If I were to give up my manhood, I could not ride a horse for six yards, much less six hundred miles!”
Pashtuk was an Invincible, with endowments of stamina and brawn. He might give up his manhood, and though the ride a few hours later would be painful, he could probably accomplish it. But Borenson could never manage such a feat.
“Of course,” Saffira said, “I would be lenient on you, Sir Borenson. I would forbear the requirements until after I have reached my lord.”
On fast horses, he realized, they would reach Carris sometime tomorrow, near dawn.
At dawn he would pay the price, if he agreed.
The thought unnerved him. Yet he was a warrior of Mystarria, bred to battle, and his people needed him. He had no choice.
“Your Highness, I will,” he offered, proud of the fact that his voice did not quaver.
“Then, Pashtuk, Sir Borenson, look upon me,” Saffira said.
Sir Borenson raised his eyes hesitantly, looking up from the sandstone pavement into the resplendent courtyard. His gaze lingered on the children. Before him stood a handsome little boy of four or five, with finely chiseled features and eyes as dark as Iome Sylvarresta’s, but with skin that was even a shade darker than hers. He wore a princely costume of embroidered red cotton sewn with pearls. He looked fierce as he stood protectively by his three-year-old sister and eighteen-month-old brother.
The children huddled next to their mother, as frightened children will. Borenson hardly noticed the ornate fountain behind her in the empty courtyard, or the tall Invincibles that made up her personal guard, standing at her back.
For all he could see was Saffira, a slight figure of a woman with skin as dark as karob, the elegant bones and grace of a doe. All that existed was Saffira. He did not hear his own racing heart, or his own in-drawn breath.
To say that her beauty was exquisite would be meaningless. No flower petal had ever seemed so lovely and delicate. No single star in the night sky had ever filled a man with such hopeless longing. No sun had ever blazed so fiercely as she did. Borenson focused on her fully, completely, and was lost.
Every muscle in his body tightened until his legs ached and he found himself gasping, having forgotten how to breathe. He could not close his eyes, did not dare to blink.
When next Saffira spoke he was not even conscious of what she asked. When she gathered her children and led them into the palace to take her endowments, Borenson found himself scrabbling up off his aching knees, eager to follow, until Pashtuk stopped him.
“You can’t go in there,” Pashtuk yelled into his ear. “There are other concubines.”
Borenson struggled to escape Pashtuk’s grasp, but he had no endowments of brawn anymore. He had not a tenth of the Invincible’s strength.
So he scrabbled to the edge of the fountain in a daze, and satisfied himself with the thought that he could sit here, he could sit here and wait until Saffira returned.
Borenson did not regret his bargain. Cared not at all that within a day, he, too, would have to pay the price for having looked upon Saffira. It was worth it, he thought. It was well worth the trade.
So he sat like a wretch beside the cool fountain, and waited for a long hour before he fell asleep. As he did, three things became clear to him.
The first was that his captors no longer needed to keep him in manacles. He was a captive now, as much a slave to Saffira’s beauty as any man could be.
And the second thing he realized was that Saffira was not at all what he’d expected.
Raj Ahten was a man in his midthirties, who had aged far beyond that by reason of his many endowments of metabolism. Thus, he was rapidly becoming quite elderly.
So Borenson had naturally assumed that Saffira would have been a mature woman. But this beauty, this mother of a five-year-old son, still seemed a mere child herself.
> Saffira looked as if she could not have been more than sixteen.
The thought pained him. He’d known that in Indhopal, women often married young, much younger than in Mystarria. But Saffira could not have been more than eleven years old when Raj Ahten first bedded her.
Even here, the notion bordered on the obscene.
So the third thing that Borenson realized followed from the first two. In a rage so fierce that it colored the whole palace red to Borenson’s eyes, he vowed silently that—truce or no—he would find a way to make a eunuch of Raj Ahten before he killed the man.
27
LOST IN THE MIST
I paid all of that money for a good horse, and now I’m just going to kill it, Roland thought as he raced for Carris with Raj Ahten’s knights chasing close behind.
His charger thundered across a wooden bridge, dashed across the countryside. His mount wheezed as if each breath would be its last. Its ears lay flat, and foam lathered its mouth, dripped from the bit and bridle. The force horse easily ran sixty miles per hour, but the Invincibles were gaining.
Baron Poll’s mount had surged ahead half a mile from Roland. It galloped over a hill. Poll was far enough in the lead that the big knight had little to worry about.
Roland had been born to a family of shipbuilders on his mother’s side. He began to wonder if he might gain more speed by jettisoning cargo. But he wasn’t a man with arms or armor; he really had nothing heavy in his saddlebags. He’d given the green lady his heavy bearskin cloak. His purse was laden with gold. Though he’d never had a sentimental attachment to wealth, he decided he’d rather die with it than without.
The only item that really weighed him down was the half-sword that Baron Poll had given him, and he reasoned that it might be worth more in his hand than not.
So he galloped his horse, kicked its flanks, hunkered low, and clung tight.
Carris was but eight miles away, cloaked in a dense fog, yet from any hilltop he could see its white towers rising from the mist.
He looked back. The Invincibles had closed to within two hundred yards. Two bowmen at the van had strung their horse bows, preparing to shoot. Roland raced for the hilltop; his mount went airborne for a moment before its hooves thudded to the dirt road.
The force horse stepped left to avoid a rut. That alone saved Roland’s life, for just then two arrows whipped past Roland’s shoulder, missing his back by less than a foot. His mount burst ahead as it raced toward a stand of heavy oaks, their browning autumn leaves blowing in a light breeze, their trunks and branches twined with dark-green ivy.
Roland hoped the road ahead was winding, for the trees might give him some extra cover. He raced for the grove, glanced back over his shoulder.
The Invincibles drew to a halt at the crest of the hill, the morning sun glistening from their brass-colored helms and saffron surcoats.
They gazed down at the wood, then turned their steeds and raced away.
Roland wondered if they feared an ambush. Perhaps friendly troops hid in these oaks.
Or perhaps another of Raj Ahten’s patrols guarded them. Roland never slowed, and not once did he spot anyone in the small wood—either friend or foe.
When he came out on the other side, the road wound on before him. Baron Poll was nowhere to be seen. The dirt highway led up over the downs, past a small village. Hedgerows marched along the left of the road, stone fences to the right. And still no sign of Baron Poll.
I’ve lost him, Roland realized.
He’d seen a couple of paths in the wood, trails that led to uncertain destinations. Baron Poll must have taken one. But Roland had no idea which, and he wasn’t about to turn back.
So he kept racing over the downs, past the village, until the trail dropped precipitously into a patch of fog. He was close to Carris now, only five miles. And if Poll was right, this fog hid friendly troops, Duke Paldane’s troops.
He slowed his horse, not wanting to charge blindly into the mist where he could well encounter pikemen or bowmen.
A dozen yards into the thick of the mist, he knew that Poll had been right: This was no common fog.
He’d never seen such a dense fog, not even in the Courts of Tide. The mist was thick as butter, and though it had been a bright and warm morning not a hundred yards back, now it turned dark and sultry as night. Sitting on his horse, he soon found that he could not even see the road at his feet.
He feared that his horse might stumble over an embankment, so Roland climbed from the charger’s back. When he knelt so that he was at a height of no more than four feet, he could barely discern the road at his feet and the grass nearby.
So it was that he led his charger, droop-eared and wheezing, through the mist.
He’d seen the tops of the white towers at Carris rising from the fog, and he’d guessed the distance to be five miles.
Yet when he got off his horse and led it for many hours through the mist, sometimes stumbling from the road, sometimes slipping in puddles, always unsure what direction he was going, he seemed to make no headway.
The difficulty of finding a trail at all greatly increased when he reached a city or village, for then the road met many byways, and he twice found himself wandering around city blocks.
The road twisted and turned like a damned serpent, and though he followed the margin where grass met mud, after three hours he knew that he must have forked off somewhere, for he’d certainly gone more than five miles.
In all that time, he’d spotted not a single soldier of Mystarria, not a single defender. The water wizard’s mist might have hidden a hundred thousand men within easy bowshot of the road, but he’d never have seen one.
As he walked, he worried for Averan, a little girl hiding in some town south of here. He knew that she must be terrified, and he cursed himself for a fool for not staying with her.
And if truth be told, he realized that he was just as worried for the green woman. She’d never done him any harm, aside from having tried to suck blood out of his hand. But his feelings for her ran deeper than mere compassion.
He didn’t quite know how to express it. She was as beautiful as a Runelord’s fine lady. Though Roland fancied that he was no starry-eyed lad, he knew quite frankly that her beauty attracted him.
But he doubted he’d really ever fall in love with a woman who had fangs and green skin.
Nor could he say that he was attracted by her strength of character. So far as he could tell, she didn’t have any character. He didn’t know whether she had faith or charity or confidence or any other human virtue.
But there was one thing that he could say for the green woman: In the past day, he’d discovered that he felt… safe, when she was near.
Beyond that, he felt that she needed him, needed his wisdom and his counsel, needed him to teach her the name for the color blue, and how to wear shoes, and how to ride a horse.
No other woman had at once seemed so formidable and yet so vulnerable.
She was as impenetrable to him as the fog. The very mystery of her attracted him.
He swore to himself that as soon as he delivered the message to Paldane, he’d return south under cover of night and search for Averan and the green lady.
Roland had no illusions about himself. He did not believe that the green woman could ever love him.
He was after all a worthless man—everyone told him so. His wife had let him know it time and again. His king had thought him good for nothing but providing an endowment of metabolism. He couldn’t read words or do numbers, couldn’t fight.
Roland was reminded of Gaborn, and realized he’d never given much thought to how he would react to the rise of an Earth King.
Now, he realized it did not matter. No Earth King would Choose a man like Roland Borenson, a man who had nothing left to offer. It meant that Roland’s short, bitter life would probably remain just that—short and bitter.
When at last he did trudge out of the mist, he found that he’d gotten thoroughly lost. The sun was up well
past noon, and he could still see the towers of Carris off in the distance, some five miles. Yet he’d somehow managed to bypass the castle completely, for Carris was now south of him.
He stood for a moment, feeling weak. His tunic was wet from the mist, so drenched that he took it off and wrung it out, letting the water spill into the dirt at his feet. Then he put his tunic on and trundled back into that damned fog, wondering if perhaps he’d see better if he carried a torch.
Hours later, he found himself again outside the fog, and outside Carris, to the west this time. Now it was late afternoon.
He gritted his teeth and went back under that infernal oppressive cloud, into the gloom, vowing to watch his feet more carefully.
He had not gone far, perhaps two miles, when he heard a bell chime six times, off to his left. It was getting late, and Roland realized that a message he should have delivered shortly after dawn had been delayed now till evening. He’d spent the day wandering through this fog.
He soon found a road heading left, and after a mile was greeted by the happy sounds of castle life: the ring of hammers on mail, the curses of some lord who demanded that the vassals secure the hoardings to the castle walls, roosters crowing at the last rays of daylight.
More than all of that, he heard the sounds of crows cawing, and pigeons cooing, and gulls shrieking in the air above him.
Allowing his ears to guide him toward the city, he found a narrow road that led out to a causeway. He knew he was on a causeway because he could hear water lapping at both sides of the road, and the fog had suddenly begun to smell of algae.
At last he reached a barbican, an enormous stone gate set in front of the road.
The fog was so thick that when he approached the gate, no guards hailed him, for they could see him no better than he could see the castle.
“Is anyone there?” Roland called.
A booming voice laughed from overhead, atop the barbican. “There’s about a million of us here, good fellow. Searching for anyone in particular?”
“I’ve a message for Duke Paldane,” Roland said, feeling foolish. “A message from Baron Haberd of Keep Haberd.”
Brotherhood of the Wolf Page 33
