Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  “We split the recruits already,” Cracolnya said. “Your cohort’s up to the usual start-of-season strength. I didn’t know what staff you’d want to take along for just one cohort—you’ll want a smith, I’m sure, but will you want a quartermaster? Clerk? Teamsters and wagons?”

  “Teamsters and wagons, yes,” Arcolin said. “Most will come back here with replacement supplies. Kolya’s still in Vérella; she can supervise that. A smith for certain, and one of the surgeons. Stammel, who in the cohort might make a quartermaster?”

  “Devlin, sir, if he weren’t my junior sergeant. Don’t see how he could do both.”

  “Agreed,” Arcolin said. “Others?”

  Stammel shook his head. “No, sir.”

  “We need someone,” Arcolin said. “One of the quartermaster’s assistants, then; we need him here. Stammel, talk to the quartermaster—I’m inclined to think Maia, but leave it to him.” Arcolin yawned, then stretched. “It’s time we went to bed, captains. Tomorrow will be a full day.”

  They rose; Arcolin gathered up his wet things and carried them to the kitchen, to be dried by the cooking hearth. Back upstairs, he went into Kieri’s office and looked around.

  Kieri had asked for nothing from this office, from the stronghold. Things he had bought in Aarenis or Vérella: the striped rug Tammarion had chosen, a carved box with a running fox on its lid, a favorite whetstone always placed on the left of the great desk, a candleholder of translucent pink stone that glowed with light when the candle was lit, the chest in which—as Arcolin knew—Kieri’s dead wife’s armor and the children’s daggers were wrapped in Tammarion’s troth dress. Kieri had asked for none of these.

  Not ever to return. Arcolin forced himself to take a deep breath and consider what records he might need, for either a contract or … that which he did not want to consider.

  Tired as he was, he sat up late, making notes, packing away those records he would not take in the chest where they belonged, packing the ones he would need into waterproof bags. The room seemed emptier than it should, emptier than it ever had.

  “I’m trying,” he muttered to himself, then shook his head and went to bed.

  Arcolin woke to the memory of yesterday’s surprises, and the realization that he needed to parade the whole Company. They had given their oaths to Kieri, who had now left them. They must now give their oaths to him. That ceremony could not be omitted.

  Outside, the previous evening’s storm continued, alternating brief snow flurries with rattling sleet and icy rain. Perhaps it would stop by noon; Arcolin went down to breakfast and found Valichi staring thoughtfully at the weapons on the dining room wall.

  A kitchen servant arrived with steaming bowls of porridge and loaves of hot bread. Valichi sat down and started eating. Arcolin poured a little honey, thick with cold, into his porridge and tried a spoonful as Cracolnya came in from outside.

  “Nasty,” Cracolnya said.

  “Think it will clear away at all today?” Arcolin asked. “I need to parade the Company and take their oaths.”

  The two captains stared at him, then at each other. “I had forgotten,” Cracolnya said. “If he’s not coming back—if he’s the one to break it—then we all—” His voice trailed away.

  “We all swore to him, personally,” Arcolin said. “He’s not our duke anymore, so whether the Crown confirms me or not, for the time being we need a single oath to bind us. And—” He shrugged. “That’s to me.” As he said it, he realized he would also have to travel to the villages again, taking their charters, getting the oaths of mayors and councils, making a copy for the Crown. That would take an entire day.

  “I understand.” Cracolnya dug into his porridge, eating fast for five or six mouthfuls. “I’ll do it, of course. It’s what he’d want.” He paused for a moment, then shook his head. “No, my pardon. It’s what I want.”

  “Val?” Arcolin asked.

  “Yess …” Valichi’s answer came slower; he was frowning. He was older than Arcolin, and had spent more time in the North, as Kieri’s recruit captain. Perhaps he had hoped to be chosen, if Kieri ever left. “But I can’t say as I’m willing to stay on as the only captain of a cohort, not longer than it takes to find another.”

  “We all need co-captains,” Arcolin said. “I’ll be hiring captains, either in Vérella or Valdaire; I’ll send them north.” He leaned on his elbows. “You two take your cohorts away tomorrow, if the weather mends at all. Cracolnya, you take the other surgeon and smith; Val will be near enough Burningmeed for a Marshal to help with healing and they have a smith. I can’t leave for another day at least: I need to find the village charters and take them to Duke’s East and West, for all to take oaths on and sign. Val, let the merchants travel with you, if they want an escort, or they can go ahead.”

  They looked startled, but nodded.

  By midafternoon, the storm had passed, though furrowed clouds still covered the sky. Arcolin had the Company paraded in the main court, cohort by cohort, to take their oaths. He gave the same speech to the recruits the Duke had given to every year’s recruit intake. The veterans, who had already been told as much as he knew, gave their oaths willingly, as near as he could tell.

  The Vonja agents chose to ride with Val’s cohort to Burningmeed and travel on to Vérella by themselves. Arcolin spent the evening with one of the Company clerks, collecting the documents he would need the next day, making copies of those he would need in Vérella, rechecking his lists.

  Next morning, the storm had blown past, leaving a thin skim of high cloud. After breakfast, the other two cohorts left, Valichi’s down the road to Duke’s East, and Cracolnya’s straight across country toward the rising sun.

  Stammel had Arcolin’s cohort busy at once, cleaning barracks Arcolin was sure the others had left spotless, but it kept the troops busy. Arcolin gathered the bundle of charters and other documents he needed, and rode for Duke’s West first.

  “Can you hold a Duke’s Court before you go?” Foretson asked, as he signed the charter under Arcolin’s name.

  “I’m not a duke,” Arcolin said. “Authorization for a Ducal Court would have to come from Vérella. All I can do is hold petty court, same as usual.”

  “That would help—if you can stay a glass, I’ll have Donag and Arv come in—they’re wanting a ruling on a field boundary.”

  Once court began, others came in with problems; it was after midday when he rode for Duke’s East, to do it all over again. This time he set up in the Red Fox common room. Duke’s East had fewer cases for petty court than Duke’s West, and he made it back to the stronghold before dark. There he found everything ready for next morning’s departure.

  Another clear morning. Arcolin looked around the inner court, imagining it as his—if the Crown permitted—and strode out the gate to the main court, where Stammel had the cohort ready, in marching order. Arbad held the roan ambler. Arcolin mounted and looked back at his cohort—the young faces still unblooded, the veterans with their weathered skin, their scars, their eyes full of experience. Stammel gave him a crisp nod.

  Was he really doing this, really taking a mercenary cohort to Aarenis by himself? As commander? He put his hand in his tunic, feeling Kieri’s signet ring. No more time to doubt. If he could not do it, after all those years of serving with the best commander he’d ever known, north or south, he was a fool—and Kieri would not have trusted him with the Company. He lifted the reins and nudged his horse into motion.

  As always, the villagers in Duke’s East came out to wave as the cohorts passed. Arcolin smiled at them, called out greetings to the mayor, to the innkeeper, to the village council members.

  The world had changed. The sunlight, despite a clear sky, felt thinner, muted. The trees looked different, the little river beneath the bridge; the road he had ridden so many times, so many years, looked new, untrodden, unknown.

  He scolded himself, told himself it was the same: the road, the trees, the sun, the world itself. One man could not make that much diff
erence.

  He knew he lied.

  At the border of the Duke’s territory, the post Valichi had set up saluted them as they marched past on the road to Vérella. The marches were no longer than usual, but they seemed both longer and shorter as his mood shifted again and again.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Vérella, the palace

  Mikeli, crown prince of Tsaia, listened to his best friend, Juris Marrakai, joking with Mikeli’s cousin Rothlin Mahieran about the behavior of their younger brothers. Dinner this evening felt almost normal again, with his friends around him and the worst of the peril—his advisers had said—over. Fourteen days had passed since Kieri Phelan left for Lyonya, and nine since the paladin’s ordeal ended. For a full hand of days, the city had been in turmoil as city militia, nobles of the realm, and Marshals of Gird sought to find and destroy Liart’s followers.

  He and his friends had wanted to take part, prove their courage, in those raids on the city’s underground lairs. Their elders had refused to risk them despite their protests. Instead, his friends had been kept at home to guard their families, while he and his younger brother had been confined to the palace, closely guarded. They’d all been told to stay close, be careful, be alert, report anything suspicious.

  But finally the city quieted, and the High Marshals had declared it safe enough to relax some restrictions. Once more his friends were together, sharing a meal, as they had so often before. When the door opened, Mikeli expected servants to bring in the next course, but instead saw one of the palace guards escorting a man in Girdish blue and gray, a yeoman by his tunic, travel-stained and obviously near exhaustion.

  “My lord prince,” the yeoman said, his voice hoarse with cold. “I bear urgent news.” He glanced around the table, as if uncertain which was the prince, then dug into a pouch and produced a crumpled scroll.

  “Here,” Mikeli said. The man handed him the scroll and he unrolled and began reading. The words “well-armed troops … refused your order … Pargunese … magery … treason” sprang out at him. “Treason!” The word escaped before he could stop it; he heard the surprise, the horror, in his own voice. He forced himself to silence, and looked up, scanning the room. The startled faces of his dinner companions, their mouths open, stared back at him. Juris Marrakai, Rothlin Mahieran, Rolyan Serrostin, all dukes’ sons whose fathers sat on his Regency Council. Manthar Kostvan and Belin Destvaorn, counts’ sons whose fathers were also on the Council. He glanced at the messenger, noting the air of suppressed alarm.

  “Treason?” That was Juris Marrakai, quick-eared and quick-witted as always. “Whose? Not Phelan’s, surely?”

  “No.” Mikeli caught his imagination by the scruff of the neck, mastered his tongue, and tried to think how to say it. If he could say it at all to these, the friends he’d asked in for a quiet supper. The guilty party was also on his Regency Council.

  “Not Phelan’s,” he said, this time more calmly. “Someone else, against us and against him. He was ambushed, but survived. The paladin reached him in time.” To the messenger: “Sir, your name, if you please?”

  “Piter, my lord,” the messenger said. “Yeoman-marshal of Blackhedge.”

  “Were you a witness to this?” Mikeli tapped the scroll.

  “No, my lord. To make haste, it was passed hand to hand, like. But the Marshal, he had it from the other Marshal, who was there, and he told me some. It’s Gird’s grace—”

  Mikeli held up his hand and the man fell silent. “Gentlemen,” he said to his friends, “this is grave news, and I must meet with those senior in the realm, your fathers among them. I must go at once—”

  Juris Marrakai pushed back from the table. “Sir—Your Highness—if it is treason, you must not go unguarded—”

  Mikeli tried for an easy laugh; it came out more as a cough. “I am hardly unguarded. The palace guard—”

  “We are your friends,” Juris said. “You can’t leave us out; you can trust us—”

  But could he? If a councilor could turn traitor, anyone might. He looked again at the papers—for now he saw there were two. One from Ammerlin, commander of the Royal Guard unit he had sent with Phelan, and one from Phelan himself. He held up his hand, and his guests stayed where they were, silent.

  The second note, in Phelan’s clear, even script, said much the same, more briefly and pointedly.

  And I beg you, sire, that you take all precautions. A man who will so disobey your express order at the margin of your realm will have designs on your reign. I have seen this too often in Aarenis to doubt it. Forgive my presumption; I speak now as one king to another: you must not fail to destroy this threat, at once. For the sake of both our realms.

  As one king to another: treating him as fully adult, as an equal; that respect steadied his pulse. For the sake of both their realms. Long at peace, but for minor incursions along the northern border, Tsaia had trusted in the stability of its neighbors to east and west. If Lyonya fell, if he himself fell, both kingdoms would be in peril. Verrakai’s troops had used magery, Ammerlin said. Used the power of evil priests of an evil deity, the same who had tormented a paladin day after day beneath the city. Despite himself, the prince shivered. For a moment, he allowed the thought Why me? Why in my reign? but then thrust it aside. This was what kings did—dealt with whatever came. Kieri Phelan, thirty years his senior, believed he could do it: he must.

  “What did you say to the captain of the guard?” he asked the messenger.

  “Nothing, Your Highness. Never saw him. Just told the guard at the gate I had to see you, it was urgent, I had dispatches under the seal of Gird.”

  Mikeli paused to order his thoughts. If he called out, someone would come, but in a bustle; time would be wasted. He had messengers here whom every palace guard knew.

  “Manthar.” Manthar Kostvan stepped forward. “Take this note—” He scrawled rapidly, poured on hot wax, stamped it with his seal ring. “—to the officer of the guard. I want the palace gates closed to all—no one to enter or leave, no matter what rank. He must alert the palace guard inside, but quietly. We want no panic, no confusion in which someone might be missed. Then find your father and ask him to come to—” He paused. Meet where? Where was safe? Who else would he need? The Knights of the Bells, certainly. “In the Knight-Commander’s chambers, near the Grange Hall. I’m going there now. Go swiftly, but do not raise an alarm.” Manthar nodded and hurried out the door. “Belin.” Mikeli scrawled another note, and sealed it, as Belin nodded. “Escort Piter here to the steward, make sure he gets a meal and that someone takes charge of him, lest the traitor strike him down, then go for your father with the same message.” He handed Belin that note; Belin and the messenger left.

  Mikeli looked at the three dukes’ sons still standing at his table. They all looked back, brows bunched a little as they tried to puzzle out what was going on.

  “Gentlemen—you deserve to know what is amiss. Let me read this to you.” He read Ammerlin’s message, glancing up from line to line to gauge their reactions. Shock, horror, disgust, anger. When he finished, and let the scroll curl up, they burst into speech.

  “I can’t believe they would—”

  “After the paladin proved Duke Phelan—the king—was the king—”

  “Even a Verrakai—”

  “But what can we do?” Rolyan Serrostin, practical as ever, said it first.

  “Are all your fathers in the palace this night?” Mikeli asked.

  His cousin and Juris Marrakai nodded; Rolyan shook his head.

  “My father isn’t far away,” he said. “He only went to have dinner with my great-uncle, a few streets west. I could fetch him—”

  “There isn’t time,” the prince said. “And I’ve already ordered the gates closed. Roly, you stick with me. You two, go find your fathers.”

  “You need more than one of us with you,” Juris Marrakai said. “My father’s dining with Duke Mahieran—Rothlin or I could find both—”

  “I’ll go,” Rothlin said. “My f
ather was going to take yours to the stable afterwards, to talk horses—you know how they are when they get started. I know which stall they’ll be hanging on the door of, if they’re not still at table.”

  “I’ll stay, then,” Juris said.

  “Tell your fathers I must meet them urgently,” the prince said. “If they are alone, tell them it’s a matter of treason, and who, but otherwise, only that it’s urgent. Go now, and quickly. If any of you come to the Knight-Commander’s chambers before I do, let him know there’s trouble and I’m on the way. Roly? Juris? Let’s go.”

  “Not without arming,” Juris said, nodding to the prince’s private chambers.

  In moments, Mikeli had belted on his sword and the young men had retrieved theirs from the racks. Roly and Juris each checked that their saveblades were in place. Roly’s, Mikeli remembered, was an ancient stone-bladed knife, supposedly brought all the way from Old Aare when his ancestors came over the sea. His own—he checked it—had been his father’s, given to him after his father’s death.

  As they went into the passage, Mikeli felt his skin tighten on his body as if he had gone out in midwinter in summer clothes. For the first time in his life, he thought he knew how the older men felt, who had faced death. His training, he realized, had been only a shadow of the real thing. Kieri Phelan had been in danger, and so had others, but he himself had always been protected.

  In the Knight-Commander’s chambers, they found Beclan Mahieran, Knight-Commander of the Bells, and Donag Veragsson, Marshal-Judicar of Tsaia, enjoying mulled wine and pipes and toasting their sock-clad feet before a crackling fire. Their damp boots stood propped on bootholds a careful distance from the hearth.

  “You look grim, nephew,” Beclan said. He didn’t rise, but raised a hand in salute. “What’s amiss to bring three of you young rascals here this time of night?”