by Hal Emerson
“Don’t call me that,” he responded automatically, “I’m not a Prince anymore.”
“Shut up princeling,” Leah said with a long-suffering sigh. “You couldn’t take that royal stick out of your butt if you recruited Tomaz and twelve donkeys.”
“You calling me a donkey?” Rumbled a deep, bass voice somewhere back in the trees.
“Not me!” He called back, pointing a finger at Leah. “All her!”
The bearded face and accompanying body of Tomaz moved into sight, causing the eyes to play tricks on the mind, making one think a tree had suddenly uprooted and come to life. The big Ashandel stood nearly eight feet tall, perhaps more so in the enormous woodsman boots he wore, and had a chest so deep and wide it put most boulders to shame, though some of that was admittedly the armor he had in place beneath his green and gray clothing.
“All right,” said Tomaz, his voice a deep rumble that vibrated through the bones of all within hearing. “Who’s calling me names?”
“’Twas the princeling,” Leah said, quickly taking a step to the side and bowing low in mock deference. “Though as his liege woman I am, of course, bound to defend his honor and call you an ‘ass’ as well.”
“Stop calling me that,” he said again, “I’m not a Prince anymore.”
She turned to him with an air of prim annoyance, and very deliberately took two steps forward, putting her not a foot away from him.
“Princeling … princeling … princeling.”
She watched him brazenly, waiting for his reply.
“Ass,” he said.
Tomaz let out a bellow of laughter that bristled his thick black beard and crinkled the edges of his small black eyes. Even the Exile girl quirked a wry side smile as she stepped back and moved off to her left, green eyes flashing in what was left of the day’s sunlight.
“My sister making fun of you again Raven?” A new voice asked.
This voice was a deep, rich baritone that rolled out in self-confident, honeyed waves. It came from a figure with eyes the deep red color of blood; it was the girl’s brother, Davydd. He was also a Spellblade, but unlike Leah, he was an Eshendai Ranger, which meant he spent most of his time not on espionage, but actively fighting the Empire, sometimes striking supply lines and caravans to sow discord, and other times finding and recruiting new members, though there were precious few of those. He bore a long vertical scar across one of his red eyes now, one of the many wounds he’d received from his near-death experience at the Battle of the Stand. It was far from disfiguring though – he’d already been charming in a roguish way, but now he looked downright rugged, and it suited him.
Davydd came into the clearing on foot, leading both his own horse and another mount, a huge hairy thing that looked thoroughly bored with the late afternoon expedition. Not that Raven could blame her – he himself felt this had all been a colossal waste of their time. This area had already been cleared, and it was only at the insistence of Autmaran, their commanding officer, that they had agreed to come out here once more.
“Well?” He repeated. “Is she making fun of you?”
“Not at all,” Leah said. “He’s calling me names. And Tomaz as well."
“Well, everyone knows Tomaz deserves it,” said the red-eyed young man. “Particularly since the big oaf leaves his horses around for other Kindred to take care of, even though other Kindred really dislike taking care of extra horses.”
“Hey!” Tomaz rumbled ominously, “I’m standing right here.”
“Ah!” Davydd said dryly, obviously not surprised at all. “I didn’t see you there. But funny, since you are there, why don’t you come over here, and take this huge hill of a beast off of my hands? Considering she’s yours, I might even have to insist on it.”
“We do better when we’re separate,” Tomaz said, the right side of his upper lip curling up unconsciously in a sign of disgust as he took in the sight of the huge beast of burden, the only horse they’d been able to find on short notice that could carry him for an extended period of time.
The horse, Mary, was looking back at Tomaz with an almost identical expression. She was uncommonly intelligent, and also uncommonly stubborn for a horse; in fact, if she hadn’t been so big Raven would have thought she was half donkey herself. She was so big in fact that she had been a draft horse pulling supply carts, and unlike Davydd’s well-groomed mount, her white mane and fetlocks had been allowed to run wild, making her both huge and hairy.
“Just take her,” Davydd said, tossing the big man the reins before tying off his own horse, a new sleek gray stallion, to a nearby tree.
Tomaz took the reins. He and Mary made a face at each other, and then he turned and prodded her over to the other side of the clearing where he tied her off next to a large patch of grass. Raven knew he’d never really gotten over the death of Malial, his black charger, and having Mary with him only seemed to make the situation worse. But even Tomaz couldn’t keep up with a mounted force for very long on foot, and he’d rather give up an arm and a leg than be left behind while Leah was put in harm’s way.
“The rest of the squad will be here soon,” Davydd said to them, his head now buried in his saddlebags. Looking for the maps no doubt – he really should just put them back in the same place every night.
Not everyone grew up with the threat of a whipping if he didn’t paying attention to detail, he reminded himself.
Leah nodded, all joking gone now that there was business to which she must attend. She pulled out a map of her own from one of the small drawstring bag she kept at her waist – much more practical – and then spoke to Raven offhandedly:
“You mind starting a fire?”
“Not at all,” he said.
He led his own horse over to the tree Davydd had used and tied him there. It was a sturdy brown gelding named Jack that had quick feet and quite a stoic nature. He pulled out the flint and steel he’d been given a month or so ago by Tomaz, stuck them behind thick leather belt, and moved off to gather wood.
Slowly the rest of the troop began to filter through the trees, each dressed in the dark greens, grays and browns that blended in so well with the forest brush. They were all Rangers and Rogues, those members of the Kindred who specialized in fighting the forces of the Empire through espionage, disrupting the normal workings of the Imperial cities so as to divert attention from the Kindred nation far to the south. As they approached they greeted him, some with a simple nod, others with a smile and a kind word.
“Raven,” said Melinda, a short black-haired Ranger, with a kind smile.
“Raven,” said Robbit, a sandy haired elder man who played the lute.
“Raven,” said Lorna, the other half of Davydd’s Ashandel-Eshendai pairing.
Raven. That was his name now. It felt strange to have a new name after seventeen years, though he supposed it was good from the standpoint of practicality. A week or so before the assassination attempt that had changed the course of his life forever, he had been Unnamed. It had been the first step in his Mother’s plans to have him killed; looking back now he supposed he should have known what she was preparing. Unnaming was a punishment reserved for the lowest of the low, the most despicable of outcasts; it blasted a person’s name not just from himself but from the minds of all who knew it.
And so now he was Raven. Leah had come up with it first; when he’d crossed from the Empire into the Kindred lands he’d needed a name that would conceal his identity. So, to ensure his safety and prevent Leah and Tomaz being asked inopportune questions, he had taken the pseudonym. It was what they all called him now – he really didn’t think twice about it.
Most nights, at least.
He got the fire started; it wasn’t the artful, smokeless flame Tomaz was still trying to teach him, but it was warm and didn’t seem ready to fizzle out and die, so he was willing to consider it a step in a positive direction.
He moved over to Jack the horse and opened one of the packs – a spoil of battle that he had recently liberated f
rom a dead Imperial soldier. Inside he found three stale, round loaves of sour bread. Even though they were old they weren’t moldy, and his mouth began to water. It had been so long since he’d had good sourdough bread, the kind that had originated in Tyne.
“Hey Tomaz, want some bread?” Raven asked, readying to toss him one of the loaves. The big man chuckled and didn’t look up from the enormous pot he was hanging over the fire on a small metal tripod.
“Tomaz?” Raven asked, slightly confused, thinking the big man hadn’t heard him properly and so had brushed off the question.
Tomaz looked up, eyebrows raised in polite inquiry. When Raven didn’t say anything, just raised the hand with the bread, the big man’s expression turned to confusion. And then, putting it together, his look morphed into an embarrassed smile that was rather ill-concealed.
“You are joking right?” Drawled a voice from behind him.
Raven turned to see Davydd strolling toward him, the map and a whetstone in one hand and his long Valerium sword resting casually on his shoulder. The sword looked a lot like Aemon’s Blade, the sword Raven had used to kill his brother at Aemon’s Stand: it was single-sided and thick, but where the Blade was thinner and shorter, Davydd’s sword was wider and heavier, with a thick crossguard and a solid pommel shaped like a long, curved fang. The young man’s eyes matched the red of the setting sun as it shone through the jagged teeth of the mountain range.
“What do you mean, joking?” Raven asked slightly offended by the mocking, sardonic tone of voice. No matter how often he and Davydd spoke, he always felt as if they’d somehow gotten off on the wrong foot and had never quite made it back to the right one. Raven, quiet and serious by nature, had given up trying to be friendly with the gregarious, charming Davydd. He chalked it up to incompatible personalities – some people just weren’t meant to work together without rubbing each other the wrong way.
Davydd lifted an eyebrow, smirked at him, and went to go sit over by Lorna, who was oiling a whetstone of her own, ready to hone the edge on her large Valerium war axe. Raven, feeling very much on the outside of some inside joke, turned jerkily away, awkwardly looking at Leah who was sitting next to Tomaz.
“Did I miss something?” he asked.
“Tomaz doesn’t eat bread,” she said, eyeing him as if he were some strange, foreign creature that, until this moment, she had assumed was a person.
Raven stared at her for a moment, mouth open, not understanding.
“What are you talking about?”
Leah’s mouth quirked into a wide smile that she quickly tried to cover by pressing her lips firmly together. Someone over to his right – Robbit? – suddenly had a loud attack of coughing that sounded quite a lot like hastily covered laughter.
Raven turned and looked at the rest of the troop and realized everyone was pointedly not looking at him, as if trying to give him a way out of this increasingly awkward situation.
“He ate bread all the time when we were coming south!” Raven hissed at Leah.
Leah, still trying to purse her lips to prevent a smile, tried to speak, though the sound, squashed and sideways as it was, came out half-strangled.
“Really?” She asked. “Are you completely sure about that?”
Raven opened his mouth to say yes, that of course he was, when he suddenly realized that while he’d seen the big man handle bread, he’d never actually seen him put it in his mouth. He’d seen him pass it, pack it, parse it, but never, not once, had he seen the giant actually eat it.
“Wow,” Raven said, “that’s embarrassing.”
“Finally!” Davydd sighed from where he sat, “I’ve been saying that about your ears for months now, I’m glad you came to the realization yourself!”
As if on cue all of the gathered Eshendai and Ashandel burst out laughing, the mirth all the more intense because it had been left boiling so long under a lid of courtesy. Raven pointedly ignored Davydd’s comment, assuming a dignified silence even though his ears were glowing a very un-dignified red.
“How did you never notice that?” Leah asked, her mouth quirked in a small, wry side-smile, her head cocked slightly to the side.
Raven shrugged, unable to come up with a good answer, and remained silent. Leah’s smile faltered and slowly disappeared, seeing that he wasn’t joining in with the laughter. She was surprisingly good about catching onto his moods even though he had long years of practice hiding them.
“Raven!” Called one of the Eshendai in their group – Hethyr, a young woman with long blonde hair and an easy smile. “I’ll take it.”
Raven tossed the loaf to her, and she smiled and nodded in thanks.
“I’ll take one as well,” said a silver-haired man called Olivier, whose accent spoke heavily of his origin in the city of Tibour, one of the most isolated cities of the Empire that had developed it’s own strange dialect of hard “r”s and flat “a”s.
He tossed a loaf to this man as well and then turned away, keeping the third one for himself, and retreating away from the fire, secluding himself on the outskirts of the camp, trying not to think about the fact he’d just made a complete fool of himself once again. It always went like this – things would be fine, and then he’d do something that would show he wasn’t truly one of them, which only served to emphasize the cultural gulf between them and heighten his discomfort about his own mixed loyalties. And so he ate his bread feeling somewhat glumly, and also quite confused.
After a while, soon after he’d finished his loaf, Tomaz’s stew was ready, and they all gathered round with various bowls – some metal, some carved wood, a few ceramic – as the giant dolled it out in steaming, chunky spoonfuls. Raven took a large helping in his tin bowl, knowing it wasn’t likely to last very long. The big man was a great cook even with access to only a few ingredients, and there was very little likelihood of seconds.
Raven took his bowl and went back to sit by the edge of the campsite, and soon found himself joined by Leah. On the other side of the fire, Davydd began to tell Robbit and Olivier a story about some woman he’d once known – ‘known’ being a euphemism here, Raven realized as the story progressed – that had them all hooting with laughter and making ribald jokes with accompanying gestures. Lorna got in on it as well, making a few comments every so often in her low, husky voice that had all of the three men clutching their sides. Hethyr and Melinda sat off to one side, and when Robbit had the good grace to apologize, Melinda replied with something that left them all in stunned silence before sending them into another, larger, fit of hysterics.
Tomaz joined Leah and Raven, and the three formed their own little circle, as they often did. When they had first done this, Raven had been worried the others would think less of them for closing off from the group, but he’d come to realize that no one minded. Leah and Tomaz existed as a strange outside entity among the other Rangers and Rogues; they were well liked, but they kept to themselves, and the others all seemed fine with it.
“Sorry about that,” Tomaz rumbled, breaking him out of his thoughts. He looked up and saw the big man smiling – an expression full of equal parts contrition and amusement. “I thought you’d known this whole time I can’t eat bread.”
“Can’t?” Raven asked, more interested than embarrassed now that the rest of the group wasn’t listening. Other members of the group continued to filter in through the trees, forming small circles of their own, until all the members of their full group of sixty – fifteen Ranger pairs like Davydd and Lorna, and fifteen Rogue pairs like Tomaz and Leah – were present.
“He calls it his primal nature,” said Leah with a grin.
“Indeed I do!” rumbled the big man proudly, reaching out a tree trunk arm and knocking her off balance. Well, he’d have knocked anyone else off balance, but since it was Leah, she just bent backward, tucked her head, and used the momentum to roll up onto her feet, grinning widely at him. She didn’t even spill her soup.
“Of course!” Raven said, ignoring for the moment this stunning f
eat of dexterity. He was remembering something he’d heard long ago about the breeding program put into place to produce Guardians. He opened his mouth to say as much, but then remembered the fact Tomaz had been a BladeMaster was not widely known among the Kindred; as a former member of the Children himself, he could understand the big man not wanting others to know his personal history. BladeMasters were the most elite of the Guardians who served as bodyguards to the Empress Herself. Tomaz bore the sign of his office tattooed into his back, a huge seven-pointed star; it was a symbol as hated among the Kindred as the trilliope itself, the sigil of the Empress.
“Do you remember my older brother,” Raven said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “the one of the ornithological persuasion?”
They both nodded, though Leah rolled her eyes at him. He was of course talking about his brother Geofred, Prince of Eagles, second son of the Empress and Prince of the Province of Eyrie.
“I remember him talking about how he and the … twelve friends of his?”
