King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “Yes, there was,” said the headwoman, finally. “I remember the stories from some ten years ago, though most of that was deemed mere rumor. I also heard other stories, from the Queen’s Runners—so more believable—that Indevan-Dal had gone to sea under another name, a name associated with the defeat of the pirates belonging to the Brotherhood of Blood two years ago.”

  Jeje hooked her thumb in Inda’s direction as she said proudly, “Elgar the Fox.”

  “Ah,” said the headman, and smiled.

  Later, as they sat in a circle and listened to local stories of pirate and Venn attacks and burnings, Jeje leaned over and whispered to Tau, “Why didn’t Inda come out with his own name?”

  Tau whispered, “Later. When we’re alone.”

  Jeje quieted. These people unnerved her, and they were coast folk: Iascans, like her own family. The inlanders might well be much stranger because they would all be Marlovans.

  Chapter Two

  “I GAVE orders for a castle attack.”

  Tdor Marth-Davan stiffened at the sound of Branid Algara-Vayir’s voice.

  This was just about the time Inda and the Vixen parted with the Fox Banner fleet. Dawn had brought the first clear spring day to the beleaguered principality of Choraed Elgaer. The warmer breezes coming through the castle’s open windows had carried the smells of loam and budding greenery. People rose with strengthened will, and laughed again. There was a pervasive, heart-lifting sense of renewal, and of possibility.

  Tdor had gone with the castle folk to begin the spring planting in the rich fields lying east of the outer wall. She did not really need to be there, but it felt right to see them choose this year’s soil and hook up the oxen to the plow.

  Her good mood vanished the moment she heard Branid’s voice. She closed her eyes and made certain her own voice was even. “A castle attack can wait. It’s the first good day. We have to get the plowing and harrowing done.”

  “It’s our tradition to have a war game on the first good day of spring,” Branid retorted, as if Tdor hadn’t spent most of her almost twenty-two years in this castle.

  He was always going to remind her that she was “just” a Marth-Davan because he wanted the authority she already had. She knew it. She’d grown up knowing it. But it was always a struggle to speak to him as if his words deserved consideration, to grant him the dignity he never granted her.

  “The Iofre said we must get the plowing and harrowing finished first.”

  Here comes the insult, Tdor thought.

  “That old woman!” Branid scoffed. “She squats in that tower of hers with her nose in her stupid scrolls. If she knew anything about defense, which my grandmother says she never did—”

  A slight noise behind Tdor reminded her of the tall, solid woman standing there. Head of the fielders, she’d worked under Fareas-Iofre since she was a girl.

  The field boss glared at Branid. His lack of respect for the princess infuriated her. Tdor sensed that fury in the woman’s audible breathing, the way she shifted on the muddy ground. But she would not speak, so Tdor had to.

  “Branid. All of us would love a game. We’ve been closed in the castle far too long.”

  His face tightened in the familiar frown of fretful anger. How could he not be aware of the mood of the people around him? They so needed a sense of hope, of control over one small aspect of life. The old prince, Jarend-Adaluin, was weakening by degrees; the long sorrow of the princess, Fareas-Iofre, whose elder son, Tanrid, had been murdered and whose younger, Inda, had been sent from home nine years ago; the fading of the magic spells that eased daily life because the distant Mage Council saw Iasca Leror as a kingdom of warmongers; the years of pirate raids on the Iascan harbors culminating in deliberate destruction by powerful Venn warships—all had steadily ground away spirit as well as strength and resource. So when Castle Tenthen’s people woke with spring’s clear light at last, they did not need any reminders of war.

  Branid frowned down at her, uneasy because she seemed to be agreeing but hadn’t actually acknowledged his order. His authority. Which he should have by right!

  The two women watched him with practiced patience— big, muscular Branid-Dal, so angry and anxious he wearied everyone within earshot, as if his steaming, boiling emotions drained everyone else’s. He balled his hands into fists, then he swiped one hand over his fair hair, which was bound up in a warrior’s horsetail.

  “Someone,” Branid stated, “has to care for our defense while Whipstick Noth is doing the prince’s border patrol. You’ve had your nose in the scrolls, too. We haven’t had what I would call a full drill yet this year. We’re soft from winter, and when the Venn come they aren’t going to send a messenger to ask if we’re ready.”

  Tdor breathed slowly. Out, in. His sarcasm flew wide of the mark; he always talked like that, like his words were arrows and she was a target.

  “I know that,” Tdor said, fighting to maintain her even tone. The years had taught her a hard lesson in dealing with Branid: he never tired of sneakery, sensing slights, escalating arguments. “We all know it. But we simply have to get the seeds in.”

  “And have them washed away by another rain? What if we get another three weeks of storm weather?”

  “We don’t know that we will. What we do know is that the growing season is on us. As soon as the planting is done, you and the Riders should be ready to attack us. We’ll drill as long as you think. How’s that?”

  It sounded like a compromise, didn’t it? She tried so hard, but she never knew how he’d hear her words.

  Branid snaked a furtive glance to gauge the reaction of the field boss. Did she think Tdor could order him around?

  But she was only watching the slow-plodding oxen in the fields. Probably just waiting for orders.

  Tdor pitied Branid too strongly to sustain hatred. He had to live every day with his horrible grandmother, who never opened her mouth without complaining, demanding, deriding. As long as she lived, she would never cease trying to shame and vex Branid into forcing his way into the heirship.

  Branid’s gaze flickered to her face, then down her trim form. Some said she was too tall and plank-shaped to be attractive, but he liked long legs, and though she was only a Marth-Davan, he knew the castle folk all listened to her.

  She wasn’t the beauty Joret Dei was. By rights he should be married to Joret now, but she’d been whisked over the mountain to marry some prince. So here was Tdor, and if he married her, he’d have his hold on Castle Tenthen. His spies all reported she seldom went down to the town pleasure house, and everyone knew that no sex made you sour. Yes, he could sweeten that tongue! And if she were in his bed, she wouldn’t be so quick to speak against him, would she?

  Branid gave a small nod. Tdor was not to think he was subordinate. She was the subordinate, a Marth-Davan here on sufferance, and he was the Algara-Vayir. Out of kindness he wanted to have her to wife, not drive her away, and she did do a fine job seeing to house defense. But the Riders must belong to him. “Very well, then. Carry on. But when you go back upstairs to your archives, my grandmother says it is past time to find the heir’s owl clasp and give it to me.” He flicked his horsetail then marched away, chain mail jingling.

  Tdor and her companion waited until he vanished around the stable wing of the castle. In the fields the oxen plodded steadily on, and those who tended the plows and harrows sang the old planting songs, in three part syncopa tions, the fast tripled grade notes rising like birdsong on the brisk air.

  Then the field boss said in a low voice, “It’s the young who listen to him, who want to be playing at war-gaming instead of real drill.” She spoke in Iascan, the language of the people the Marlovans had conquered several generations before, and with whom they now lived. Iascan was the language of everyday life; Marlovan was for war. “And also those who fear threats from his granddam Marend-Edli.” Marend-Edli made war in her own home, and all the servants and field workers knew it.

  “Tell them this,” Tdor said, in Iasca
n. “Whatever Branid-Dal says or does, it is the prince who pays them their ten flims a month, and his wife who runs the castle. The princess wishes the planting done. And games after Shield Arm Noth returns from patrol.”

  The speaker smiled, struck her hand over her heart, and they parted, the field boss to oversee the people driving the slow-moving oxen, and Tdor to tramp back to the castle through sludgy mud and fast-growing thistle-weeds. She was glad of the cool wind, carrying the scents of sedge and sweetgrass. Maybe the ground would dry out enough for a good seeding.

  Seeds. In front of her boot two lines of insects marched, some going one way carrying seeds, the others bearing nothing. She leaned her hands on her thighs and bent down. I have to look where I step, she thought. I almost didn’t see you. Do you see us? Are we great, terrible beasts? She touched her forefinger gently beside the stream of insects climbing over loam and new-sprouted grass; the insects scrambled round her finger and moved on.

  She straightened up. Branid? There. Fresh prints—an extra-long stride. He’d stepped over the insects.

  She ran all the way back, and because there was time before her next chore, she sat down at her desk. There lay her ongoing letter to Joret. Now that the weather had cleared, she could send it over the mountains.

  But should she? She skimmed it rapidly, frowning. What a dreary thing to receive! Mostly descriptions of the long winter, punctuated by reports of Venn attacks far in the north. And at home the make-do inventions forced on them by the gradual fading of the magic spells that were such a part of daily life. Spells she grew up taking advantage of, and never thought much about—until they began to fade.

  That was the outside trouble. The inside turmoil was caused by Marend-Edli, who wanted her grandson Branid declared the heir so that she could become principal woman. What a horrible thought.

  Tdor frowned at her closely written pages. Paper was so expensive, but she wondered if she should toss it all into the fire. Strange, that her foster-sister, Joret, would someday be a queen like their other foster-sister, Hadand. Only Hadand was a Marlovan queen. Tdor could write anything to Hadand because home business was also her business. Joret had been born and raised Marlovan, but she’d married an Adrani prince. Where was her first loyalty now?

  Joret was now a princess in a land where apparently the women didn’t do any defense whatsoever. Instead, they danced, and ordered new gowns when the fashions changed, and listened to music from foreign lands, and ate things like cream cakes and delicacies cooked in the Sartoran manner.

  Tdor couldn’t imagine what “fashion” meant. Oh, she knew that it had something to do with making new clothes, or having them made, and changing things on them. But why? What difference did it make if you wore sleeves with ribbons, or embroidery, or silk instead of velvet? Weren’t you the same person underneath all that weaving and stitch-work?

  She picked up her letter, her fingers poised to pitch it into the fire. She hated the idea of some Adrani servant nosing into Joret’s papers and reading private Algara-Vayir family business. Yet, to destroy the letter and write cheerful, inconsequential natter was to cut off real communication from someone with whom she had shared her childhood—

  A knock at the door interrupted this unpleasant inner debate. With some relief she said, “Enter.”

  Fareas-Iofre herself walked in, her wide-spaced brown eyes marked with exhaustion.

  Tdor seldom spent much time in her own room. She was usually too busy. But today most of the castle inmates were employed out in the fields.

  Fareas-Iofre sat in the only other chair, her hands in her sleeves. “Tdor, this is the time of the year when I can best spare you.”

  Tdor gazed in surprise. “Iofre?”

  “Branid’s claims are a problem we cannot solve. I know that many of the younger men listen to him because he promises them anything, in particular freedom from work if they play follower to his commander. But he is not a good commander, despite Whipstick Noth’s attempts to teach him.”

  Tdor opened her hand in understanding, and the Iofre went on, “So we are now presented with a difficulty that is dividing our people. I would like you to ride to the royal city. Tell our problems to Hadand. And then, if she believes it to be a good idea, ask the king to officially appoint an heir.”

  Chill prickled the backs of Tdor’s arms, the nape of her neck. “You mean you are giving up on Inda?”

  Fareas-Iofre turned her face to the window. Tears gathered the light along her lower lids, but did not fall. She was a thin, strong woman, someone who had never seemed to age all the years Tdor was growing up. Until this last year, when her brown hair showed shocks of gray, and the lines in her face did not smooth out in the saving grace of candlelight.

  “I never ‘give up’ on my children,” she said to the window in a low voice. “But it will be ten years come summer, so I think it fair to assume he will not be home again. We must do what we can to ensure peace here because there is so little peace elsewhere in the kingdom.”

  Tdor bowed her head. “Very well,” she said, the chill grown to a ball of ice behind her ribs. But she would not complain, or indeed show any emotion. She knew Inda’s mother had to be feeling far worse. “I will leave today.”

  Chapter Three

  JEJE encountered her first inland Marlovans after a long, hard, increasingly painful day of travel. At first, seeing the others on horses was funny. No, not horses—ponies. As if there were any difference, except maybe these beasts were hairier. Oh, they were also shorter.

  Shorter was good. Before they’d lost sight of the village, Tau managed to slip off the skimpy quilted saddle twice, just by looking around when the beast shifted its weight. The boy who accompanied them to an inn shook with laughter, his face crimson as Tau picked himself up, cursing vilely, and climbed back on.

  To Jeje’s eyes Inda rode like a prince. He sat tall in the saddle, riding with an easy assurance that he previously had exhibited only in fighting practice.

  Inda was scarcely aware of the muscle strain of riding again. The sounds, the smells, even the way the light fell across the stubby green grass shoots on the sloping plains all brought back his childhood with an intensity that made him answer the others’ questions somewhat at random.

  And at first Tau and Jeje asked lots of questions about birds, plants, hills that they passed. Inda sometimes answered, though when he gazed off at a hawk on the wing, his mind distant, the boy answered.

  By midday no one spoke. Tau winced at every jolt of the horse. At sundown, when the road brought them to an inn at the edge of a small riverside trade town, Tau dismounted and his knees nearly gave out. He clutched the stirrups of Jeje’s saddle and whispered, “My balls are crushed. No wonder Marlovans fight all the time. They can’t possibly have sex.”

  She snorted and scrambled down. They followed the others into a courtyard, where the village boy took over the ponies. There seemed to be more room for horses than for people, Jeje thought, looking around. Three sides were stables. The structure was built largely of a warm, honey-colored stone that she was to discover all over the interior of Iasca Leror, instead of the ubiquitous gray stone of most other castles.

  A lookout, bow to hand, sat in a tiny window under the peak of the baked tile roof. They’d reached Marlovan land, all right.

  Inda’s party walked inside as the sun touched the horizon in the west. A land horizon, not the sea, Jeje thought, resisting the sense of being stifled. I chose to be here.

  The inn was crowded inside. The people dressed pretty much alike, fitted tunics and riding trousers on the men, long robes over riding trousers on the women. The children dressed much like ship rats: shapeless smocks, few of them dyed, and baggy trousers gathered at the knee. They wore woolen stockings and flat-weave mocs, which reminded Jeje of her childhood on shore. The shoes would be kicked off on the first nice day and not worn again until the first day of frost when the sun had bent north again for winter.

  The main difference was their speech, so qui
ck with sharp consonants, very different from the northern slur. She’d always thought of this as “Inda’s accent”—one of those personal quirks, like a twitching eye, as she’d never heard anyone else use it. She’d learned after meeting Fox and Barend on the pirate ship Coco that this was actually the Marlovan accent.

  Inda’s head jerked up, his eyes wide at the soft, sinister sound of hand drums. Jeje’s neck prickled.

  “You’ll join us for Restday drum?” the innkeeper, an old woman, asked.

  Inda’s mouth had gone dry at the first tap-tap-tap. He opened his hand in assent and walked numbly into the common room, where the drummers gathered one another with little nods and shoulder shifts as they settled into a rhythm. Three established the beat, and the rest added a counterpoint. The galloping tempo resonated with Inda’s childhood memories, shaking loose emotions he had worked so hard to shut away.

  Over by the fireplace a group of young children sang songs that were familiar to Jeje; familiar, too, were the rye pan biscuits passed around by the women. Everyone sent uneasy looks at the three newcomers, as if evil intent was woven into their eastern-style long jacket-vests, wide-sleeved linen shirts, deck trousers, and mocs. Or maybe it was the bloodred glitter of rubies in their golden hoop earrings. Pirate earrings.

  Would these people know that the rubies attached to their hoops signified pirate ship kills and not the destruction of traders? Jeje wondered, and then answered herself: of course they wouldn’t. Marlovans had no fleet. They knew nothing about ships.

  Tau took the rye biscuit handed to him by the innkeeper: the outer crust crispy, the inner bread heavy and nut-flavored. His memory shot back to his mother’s house in Parayid Harbor and the elegant little cakes she always served on Restday as her senior worker poured the expensive Gyrnian wine. Restday had been an easy day on the Pim ships, which Tau joined in his mid-teens, before pirates destroyed that life. Pirates did not keep ritual days except at a captain’s pleasure. Inda’s fleet had gotten out of the habit.