At a look from Errol, Rale snorted. “No. A man who’s changed his mind might just change it back. And then there’s Naaman Ru. He’s gifted with a sword and has the knowledge to take you into the dunes after Valon, and I don’t doubt that he’s a reasonable tactician. There’s much in common between a general and a caravan master, especially one who’s seen as much action as Ru. But tell me, boy, would you be willing put yourself in his hands if I died?”
The thought chilled Errol. Ru’s allegiance went as far as the compulsion the church had laid upon him and no further. And Errol did not trust the church’s compulsion to keep him safe. He gave a shake of his head.
Rale gave a mirthless chuckle. “I thought not. If I die, you’ll have to take charge.”
“Me?” His stomach seemed to be forever dropping. “I don’t know anything about tactics or leading men.” Yet inside he knew that wasn’t the whole truth. It went deeper than that. “I don’t want to be in charge.”
Rale’s dark eyebrows converged over his broad nose. Errol sensed he was dangerously close to making the man angry. “Errol, the people who long for power are ill-suited to handle it. I’d prefer to be plowing a field behind this horse rather than sitting on it, but here I am. Our wishes and wants are beside the point.”
He leaned in toward Errol. “Do you want to live?”
Errol nodded.
“Good. Now tell me what was different about this attack.”
With a long breath, Errol settled a little deeper into his saddle, closed his eyes, and tried to remember everything.
At the first arrow, Merodach had rained fire on the enemy, as if he were a squad of archers. Conger, the ex-priest, had shouted prayers and curses to warn the rest of the caravan. Then the charge had come, and Errol had moved forward to protect Adora. Despite his effort, she’d been taken.
His eyes snapped open. Not killed, taken. “They didn’t kill the princess.”
Rale nodded. “Good, boy. Very good. Go on.”
On? What else was there? He’d been forced to give up his weapon. If not for Rokha, he’d be dead. He could still see the face of the man he’d killed, eyes wide, pale with shock. Pale.
“They weren’t from Merakh,” Errol said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. They used kingdom men in the attack at Steadham. Still, it’s strange, no Merakhi and no ferrals.” His mind backtracked. “And why would they want Adora alive? They’ve got no use for her alive. She’s worth more to the Merakhi dead to ensure the royal line dies completely. It’s almost as if this attack didn’t come from the Merakhi at all.”
Rale nodded. “I came to the same conclusion.”
“But who besides Valon would want to keep us from Merakh?”
His mentor shrugged. “That’s a good question, Errol. Unfortunately, there’s no way to know. All we can assume is that whoever struck at us wants you dead and the princess alive. To me, that speaks of someone in the Judica.”
Icy waves rippled down his back at the suggestion. “The Judica? I know a lot of them hate me, but why attack? Why not let Valon do the job for them?”
Rale hunched his shoulders. “Perhaps they think you might succeed. Maybe they desire to keep the princess from accompanying you. Adora left a trail easy enough to follow.” He turned a somber gaze to Errol. “You must learn to command.”
He swallowed. “What should I do first?”
Rale nodded. “Every commander must get to know the people he leads. Men won’t die for a stranger, boy. Go check on everyone. See how they fare.”
Errol nudged Midnight forward. If he needed to know those he commanded, he would begin with Rokha. It would be easier to start with the familiarity of Ru’s daughter, and he owed her his life. He had yet to thank her for her assistance.
He advanced to the middle of the caravan to approach Ru’s daughter as she rode on the opposite side of the fur wagons. He prepared to drop back and circle around the wagon when the voice of the princess drifted to him.
“Lady Ru, I would speak with you,” Adora said. Stress laced her voice, clipped the cadence of her words.
Rokha’s laugh, deep and amused, answered the princess. “I’m not officially titled, Princess. Most of my friends call me Rokha.”
“And what do your enemies call you?” Adora’s voice challenged.
“I try not to let them live long enough to call me anything.”
“That is why I wanted to speak to you,” Adora said.
“How so, Princess?”
“I want you to teach me how to fight.” Adora’s words tumbled over each other. Errol leaned toward the conversation. He’d never heard the princess sound so unbalanced, so unsure.
“Why?” Rokha’s voice was flat.
“Because I don’t want Errol to die,” Adora said.
Rokha laughed. Errol blushed.
“Do you know what you’re asking, Princess?” Ru’s daughter mocked. “You’re volunteering for bone-deep weariness, unforgiving correction, and acknowledgment that I am your superior. On top of all of that, you’re asking for blisters—and what’s not blistered will be bruised. I won’t take it easy on you just because you have a title.” Rokha’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Is that boy worth so much to you? I’m sure Erinon offers plenty of other lapdogs at your beck and call. Why go to so much trouble just to keep this one alive?”
“Errol is no one’s dog!” Adora’s voice throbbed with repudiation. “He’s genuine and kind and merciful. I want to learn the sword. If you won’t teach me, I’ll find someone who will.”
Rokha’s laughter drifted over the wagon. “I’ll teach you, Princess, but remember what I said.”
“I’ll remember,” Adora shot back. “But don’t underestimate me just because of my title. You may find yourself wearing bruises of your own.”
Rokha laughed until the princess rode ahead, her shoulders tense.
Errol dropped back to circle around the wagon to confront Rokha. This had gone far enough. She wouldn’t hesitate to beat the princess black and blue, and she’d enjoy it.
21
Beating
THE CLACK OF SWORDS drifted through camp, jarring in their lack of rhythm, accompanied by bursts of laughter from Naaman Ru’s daughter. She laughed alone. Doubtless the rest of the guards found the spectacle of the princess learning the sword amusing, but none of the watchmen present would dare allow their mirth to show. To a newcomer it would appear the men who lived their lives in the unrelieved black of the king’s guard had been carved from stone.
Errol knew better. For four days he’d lived Rale’s advice to become familiar with every guard in the caravan in case circumstance forced him to lead. Gial Orth, the flame-haired warrior from Erinon, stood erect as ever. Yet the twinkle in his eyes and the set of his mouth, pressed into a thin line that hid his lips, spoke of a towering mirth that threatened to explode any minute. Next to him, burly Lelan Nassep’s normally pale visage, now ruddy as a sunset, betrayed the watchman’s glee to those who held even a passing acquaintance with him.
Only Merodach rebuffed Errol’s efforts at familiarity. The rangy captain hoarded his words as if they were precious jewels. Errol still knew nothing of him or his motives.
The only exceptions to the silent stoicism the princess’s lessons fostered were Naaman Ru and Rale. The caravan master savored combat the way a glutton luxuriated in food. The fact that Rokha served up a nightly beating to the only princess in the kingdom only added relish to his repast. Ru hated nobles.
As for Rale, his enjoyment was more academic. He shouted encouragement to both participants, though Rokha hardly needed it. On those rare occasions when Adora managed to do something right, the captain’s praise and smile would bring an answering grin to her lips, a grin that Rokha took pains to erase with whiplike ripostes that surely numbed the princess’s shoulders.
Errol turned away, forced himself from the circus to walk the perimeter of their camp. For a few brief moments the sun shone below a break in the cloudbank, casting inky shadows
in the orange-tinted light just before it set. Two hundred paces out from camp, he climbed the hill Conger had selected as his vantage point. Rale’s decision to guard every approach to their camp would have seemed extreme a few weeks ago. Now Errol wondered if such measures had any chance to protect them.
Conger nodded his greeting as he scratched an armpit. “Evening, milord.”
Errol shrugged off the greeting. “Errol, please. I’ve never even seen my holding, Conger, and I like the sound of my own name just fine.”
The ex-priest nodded. “It fits you, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”
“How do you mean?”
Conger’s brows showed his surprise. “You mean you don’t know what your name means? I figured you chose it because of everything that happened to you.”
The man’s store of minutiae never failed to amaze him. “No. I’ve been told it’s the name I was born with.”
Conger smiled. “Well then, maybe that’s Deas’s handiwork. Errol means wanderer in the ancient language of Illustra.”
He took that in. His adopted father, Warrel Dymon, had told him his mother had chosen the name as she faded, dying from the blood loss of a difficult birth. Errol shook his head. Was it prophecy or just Deas’s idea of a joke? Maybe it was both.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Errol, how come you’re not with the princess?”
The clack of practice swords came softer out so far from camp, but he could still hear them. Not the laughter, though. The distance and trees muted that. “There’s nothing in her lesson I want to see.” He kicked a stick farther down the grassy hillside, then lowered himself to the turf and leaned against the rough bole of a glass-leaf oak. “She’s got to be the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met. What can she learn in a few days?”
Conger nodded. “Aye, there’s steel in that one. There’d have to be for her to defy the Weirs as she did.”
“Why would anyone besides Lord Weir care?”
Conger laughed, then held up a hand in apology. “I keep forgetting you don’t really know the kingdom, milord.”
His envious sigh surprised Errol.
“I wish I could be a simple priest again,” Conger said. “I’d find a village so far from Erinon that no one knew its name, and I’d stay there until the passage of time made me ignorant.”
The naked yearning in Conger’s voice pulled at Errol, and his eyes stung. “What happened, Conger? Why did you stop being a priest?”
The man in front of him, familiar and yet unknown, gave a soft laugh. “That’s a short question with a long answer.”
“Still,” Errol said, “I would hear it if you’re willing.”
The ex-priest shrugged. “As you wish, but it’s not a surprising tale. I grew up the third son of a very minor noble in western Avenia. The title went to my oldest brother, Alin. Father managed to arrange a favorable marriage for my second brother, Nicu.” Conger spread his hands palms up. “With the title safeguarded by his first and second heir, it was up to me to find my own calling, not that I minded overly much. I didn’t want the responsibility of the title, and poor Nicu married some chattering magpie of a girl.
“After some consideration I narrowed my options to three choices. I could enter the priesthood, offer my sword to the king or some other noble, or become a merchant. Father didn’t have the money to set me up as a merchant, and my head for numbers isn’t the best anyway.”
Errol nodded. “So you entered the priesthood.”
Conger raised one eyebrow. “No. I enjoyed the sword, and the idea of forsaking wealth and women didn’t appeal to me. I became one of the countless swords for a very powerful duke.” Conger’s gaze became significant.
“Weir?”
“The very same. Father gave me a letter of introduction good enough to place me as a lieutenant. In time I might have become one of the duke’s captains.”
“What happened?”
“There was a fight, not much more than a skirmish, really, with a band of brigands in the Silviu Forest. We surrounded them, called on them to surrender, but they wouldn’t. Can’t say as I blame them. It was the blade or the noose after all. We beat them, but they carved us up pretty good.” Conger stopped, lost in his memory.
“Then what?” Errol prodded.
“We took our dead and wounded to the nearest village, hardly more than a collection of huts on the edge of the forest, really.” He shook his head. “I’m not sure how they managed to rate a priest, but it was a good thing for us they did. Pater Gavril came and tended us.
“As healers go, he was only fair, but I tell you, boy, the peace of Deas flowed from his hands. I saw men in horrific pain become calm and smile at his words. Dying men crossed to the other side with peace and surety. I thought I’d give up anything to be able to show the love of Deas like that. So I left my sword and became a priest.
“Then I met Mina.” Conger hung his head. When he lifted it again a moment later, he avoided Errol’s gaze, watching instead the empty road that wound down the hill. “Oh, Errol, do you know what it means to find the one? Such powerlessness is the boon and bane of Deas. Five years after I took my vows, I did what is not lawful for a priest to do—I took a wife.”
“You left the priesthood?”
Conger shook his head. “No. The church might have forgiven me for that. We kept our marriage secret, instead. I employed Mina as my housekeeper.” The ex-priest squeezed his eyes shut. For a moment Errol hoped he would stop, leave his tale unfinished.
“Of course we were found out. We were far too young and giddy in our love. The rest of the story goes quickly. The church stripped me of my robes, almost excommunicated me. A year later, Mina died of a wasting disease that no healer or doctor could cure. Everyone said it was Deas’s judgment.”
“What do you say?” Errol asked. For reasons he couldn’t identify, Conger’s answer would help determine his own response to the church and its compulsion. In the ex-priest he had at last found someone whose pain at the hands of the church approached his own.
“I say bad things happen. Sometimes it’s because of the choices we make, and sometimes it’s because of the choices other people make . . . and sometimes it just happens.”
“Maybe that’s all there is,” Errol said. “Maybe there is no Deas directing our way.”
Conger shook his head in denial. “I’ve often wondered that myself. It can seem that way, because we have the power to choose, but then I remember that priest on the edge of the Silviu Forest. There was more than just him at work.”
Silence fell on the two of them. Unwilling to diminish Conger’s pain by speaking of any other matter, Errol didn’t speak. He waited.
At last, Conger sighed again, his eyes still lost in wishes and denied chances. “The Weir family is the most powerful in the kingdom, lad. Your princess has chosen to mortally offend them by spurning Lord Weir’s suit and running away.”
“But she’s the niece of the king,” Errol protested. “Isn’t the king more powerful than the Weir family?”
Conger nodded. “That’s what most common people think, and in Erinon that’s probably true, but off the island the Weir family holds more power than you can imagine. Their wealth is nearly limitless, and that wealth is crucial in the event of war, boy. Swords have to be paid for. When the Morgols or the Merakhi come, it’s the nobles that will be doing the paying—and since Weir will be paying more than anyone else, that gives him a hold on the king.”
“And Weir’s price is Adora.” Lead filled Errol’s stomach.
“The game goes deeper than that, boy. The Weir family boasts not only the most powerful duke . . .”
“But the most powerful benefice as well,” Errol said.
Conger nodded. “The Weir family means to take the throne, lad. They deny it, of course, but the meanest peasant in Erinon or western provinces knows it to be true.”
“But L—” Errol clamped his teeth against mentioning Liam’s name. “The next king is supposed to be chosen by lot.�
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Conger’s smile mocked his innocence. “Which benefice sent you out, boy?”
Errol shrugged. It wasn’t news. Everyone knew. “You know as well as I—it was Benefice Weir. He wants Adora for his nephew.”
Conger’s smile grew. “Is that all he wants?”
The beginning of horror began to gnaw his gut, and his head spun.
“That’s right, boy,” Conger said. “Without an omne to verify the lots, Weir can buy or threaten every man in the conclave. Anyone who stands in his way will end up dead.”
Errol turned to stare back at the camp. “The watchman who volunteered . . .” He couldn’t finish.
“Right again. Every one of them will lay down his life for you to keep Weir from buying the throne after Rodran dies.”
“But what about the barrier?”
Conger spat, punctuated the action with a few savory words. “The Weirs don’t believe in anything but their own power, boy.”
A distant clack brought his attention back to Adora. She knew all this. How could she not? “What can I do to help her?”
Conger laughed. “That’s the spirit, boy, but the answer is right in front of you.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve never seen anyone improve as quickly with a weapon as you, lad.” Conger offered a diffident lift of his shoulders. “How did you do it?”
Errol laughed at the memory. “I spent every spare moment getting stronger or working the staff.”
Conger nodded. “Aye, that’s how it’s done.”
So. Errol braced his hands against a gnarled tree root and pushed himself to his feet. “Thanks, Conger.” He grabbed his staff and headed back toward the camp.
The noise led him back, but the silence between sword blows grew. By the time he stepped between two of the flat-bottomed wagons, they’d stopped altogether. When he caught sight of Adora, he understood why.
Sweat stained the sleeveless cotton blouse that clung to her as she knelt in utter exhaustion. Her blond hair hung in a stringy tangle as she panted, face toward the ground. Adora’s shoulders were a wreck. Welts and bruises covered every square inch of the princess’s arms from shoulder to elbow. A trickle of blood flowed from a cut on the left one.
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