King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Tau did a quick scan. Evred was still talking to a group of captains. Signi had taken her mount to the riverside, thoughtfully keeping within view of her discreet guards as always. He was alone with Inda, with as much privacy as they were ever going to get. “Inda, do you need me along on this endeavor of yours?”

  Inda slewed around, shading his eyes from the sun resting just above the hazy western hills at the edge of the vast plain. “Tau,” he said, exasperated. “I never could figure out what you were thinking. Do you want to stay, or not?”

  “All things considered, I do. But I could as well do something else. Anything else. If you don’t see a purpose for me being here.” That wasn’t getting him anywhere. “What do you want from me, Inda?”

  Inda’s eyes were honey-colored in the strong late afternoon light. His body shifted as his horse thrust her weight from one hip to the other, but his gaze stayed steady, his smile fading. “What I want . . . I got what I want. I think I got what I want. I got my name back,” Inda said, low as a breath. “Seemed easy as that. But right after it, Evred hands me this war to command. To him it makes sense—he never expected to be king. Didn’t train for it. But it happened, so he got to work. So I come home and he gives me a command I didn’t train for. But he expects me to get right to work, just like he did.”

  “As a trade for your name?”

  Inda flapped a hand as though shooing a troublesome insect. “No, no, I said it wrong. It’s a part of my name, see? With my name comes all the duties. D’you see it?”

  “I think I do.” Indeed, Tau felt that a window had opened where he’d once perceived a wall.

  “Good. Because I just don’t understand people and their reasons for doing things, not the way you do. I can sometimes hear things in their voices . . .” Inda made a quick, warding motion. “Here they come. Something’s happening. Look, Tau, I don’t blame Jeje for scouting off. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. But if you will, stay. I need you to help me see . . . what I might miss.”

  Like your king’s passion for you? His hatred for your mage, and his inability to see me?

  Evred and the others stopped just a few paces away, all peering toward the east.

  If I tell you any of those things, all I can see as a result is life becoming far more uncomfortable for all four of us. Because Jeje is right, the only one who has the power to change things is your king. And he cannot change the Venn coming, or how vexed you are at traveling only during daylight, or how ill-trained you think these men compared to our independents on the sea.

  Tau then asked a question he hadn’t meant to: “Do you think you can win?”

  Inda snorted his breath out again. “I don’t know.” He flicked a glance at the others, still busy. “Tau, we’re too slow. That is, not just the travel. We should be in the field every day, dawn to dusk, training. Like the Venn were last year. Not doing it just at dawn and sundown, while in between mud, rain, and bad wagons slow us down.” He snapped his fingers against his thigh, then said, “We have to get to the pass.” He lifted his hand, rough-palmed, scarred on top.

  “I don’t suppose they will be surprised that we found out about their surprise attack,” Tau said, watching as Evred laid his horse’s rein against its neck. The animal turned; all the horses turned.

  Inda’s expression was rarely sardonic, which made it the more startling when he lifted a brow and quirked the corners of his mouth. “Durasnir isn’t that stupid.” He swiped his hand over his head. “He’ll expect us to be as surprised as we expected Marshig to be.”

  He spoke low-voiced; Tau had a heartbeat’s time to see the king’s hazel gaze flick between Inda and himself before they were surrounded by the group, including a scout, everyone talking at once. Inda and Tau picked out the words “east road . . . riders . . . horns.”

  “Here they come,” Evred said.

  In the distance a horn blared a single triplet, over and over.

  “Riders!” a scout bellowed. And, “Khani-Vayir pennons!”

  Everyone relaxed, joking and hoots rising on all sides as a neat column of riders trotted into the outskirts of the camp, the men dividing off toward the riverside, and only the leader and his banner-carrier and First Runner proceeding down the center divide toward the crimson-and-gold Montrei-Vayir banners behind the command group.

  Signi and Tau gazed in curiosity at the young man in command. He was tall, his sloping shoulders powerfully built. His face was jowly, making him look much older than he was, his long horsetail was a thick, wiry mud-brown, his expression dour.

  Inda flung himself off his mount, laughing hoarsely. He stumbled to a halt at the man’s stirrup, sending pebbles skittering as he yelled “Noddy! It’s you!”

  “What brings you?” Evred’s concern made him sharp.

  Noddy’s voice was chest-deep, and even less expressive than his face. “Got a message from Cherry-Stripe that Inda was back. My cousin thought you might need a few extra mouths to feed.” A thumb hooked over his shoulder indicated his column—a wing of eighty-one men, with Noddy—busy dismounting and expanding the horse picket. “We’re here to make sure you don’t get lost on your way up north, where he’s drawing more in.”

  Noddy Toraca slipped off his horse. His heavy face split in a white-toothed grin as he pounded Inda on the shoulder, and for a moment he looked like his twenty-one years. “Welcome back,” he added.

  “I didn’t think I’d get to see you for weeks,” Inda exclaimed in delight. “All we need is Cassad and Cama—”

  Noddy said, “They were half a day off, last Galloper I got. We might catch them at the gates if we bustle. I think Cherry-Stripe wrote to every Jarl, threatening, begging, and pleading for us to be detached to ride as your Sier Danas commanders.” He turned his chin toward Evred. “With a suitable force. Said you had to move fast.”

  Inda yipped, and tired as he was, executed a few steps of the war sword dance, to general laughter.

  He didn’t even hear it. “Come! We ride as soon as they finish watering the horses. You must need something to wet your throat. I know I do.” He turned his head, still laughing. “Signi! This here’s Noddy Turtle. I told you about him . . .”

  The cook wagon’s Runners had set up ensorcelled buckets of clean water for anyone who wanted it, and better drink for those of high command. Tau started toward the cook wagon. He’d decided he could, for once, do a Runner’s job, and fetch the refreshments, only to discover Vedrid’s pale head in the crowd, ten paces in front of him.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  THEY began their heroic gallop well enough, riding at a trot down the last winding part of the road, harnesses and mail jingling. In the distance they could just make out the tops of the castle towers through the mizzle, dense gray squares against the solid gray sky.

  Evred was about to signal the change in formation for a gallop when the unseen outriders sent up a whirtler. A heartbeat later came the long, thrilling falls of a war charge from the direction of the eastern road just beyond a low hill covered with wandering sheep.

  Evred’s force halted, hearing the rumbling thud of horse hooves; it was too wet for dust to rise.

  Noddy said to Evred, “War charge?”

  “That has to be Rat Cassad.” Evred was trying not to laugh. It was strictly against all the traditions, the rules they’d been brought up to respect: you did not blow a war charge until your cavalry was about to change from the trot to the gallop into battle.

  Around the hill, as the sheep retreated sending up baas of reproach, bounced the snapping pennons of yellow and white.

  “He wants to leave us eating his mud,” Noddy observed mournfully.

  “He can eat ours,” Inda said, and kicked his horse into a trot.

  Still laughing silently, Evred put up a gauntleted hand, held up two fingers, and pointed. The column picked up the pace, with a bit of frisky bunching and sidling here and there, summarily reined in hard.

  They heard a faint cry on the wind and Cassad’s force sprang to the
gallop.

  As did Inda. Evred and the others were a heartbeat behind.

  So the triumphant ride turned into a mad dash to see who got to the main gates first, while Marlo-Vayir Riders crowded the walls, whooping and yipping as they watched the race, and laying bets on who’d get in first.

  Everyone reached the gate at about the same time, the sodden, mud-splashed war banners almost indistinguishable from one another. For a time there was a confusion of horses, mud-imprinted coats, swinging horsetails (animal and human) as everyone laughed and yelled at once.

  Inda’s mood soared. “Rat? That you?” he shouted, catching sight of a sharp-chinned face with a buck-toothed grin and a high brow.

  “My brother said better to fight Venn up here than at home!”

  “Cama! There can’t be another one-eyed Tvei!”

  “Only one I know of,” Noddy said, his flat tone implying “just as well.”

  Tall, martial Cama grinned, looking more piratical than the pirates with that black eye patch, boot knives, and two swords—one across his back and one in the saddle sheath.

  Rat Cassad leaned around Cama to peer at Signi as he whispered, “That the Venn mage? Thought she’d be bigger’n we are.”

  Cama made motions to shut up, but Inda said, “Dag Signi.”

  Obvious to them all was the pride in his voice, the lift to his chin; Rat couldn’t think of anything to say to a Venn, much less a mage.

  Evred said, “Let’s go.”

  They wheeled their horses and rode in side-by-side, shooting questions back and forth.

  Inside the court waited yet another huge force, which was Cherry-Stripe’s own surprise. The consequence was a tight-packed, milling crowd of men and horses, as Cherry-Stripe gripped Inda, yelling into his face, “I’ve got Riders from us, and from Tlennen, and some dragoons from the Sindans!”

  They dismounted, all talking at once. From his post at Evred’s shoulder, Vedrid swept his gaze over the crowd, his fine pale hair, almost all escaped from its inadequate clasp, flying about his face. He lifted his eyes. Ah, there in the window above was Fnor, making a hand signal to her women on guard duty.

  She scanned the court and spotted him at once. They smiled the quick, inadvertent grin of lovers who’d parted amicably. Their teenage passion had entertained three clans while it lasted.

  Inda shouldered past his friends and dodged around the horses to Signi’s side, drawing her protectively against him.

  The kindness of the gesture and the scintillation of Inda’s ghost—brighter than Signi had ever seen him—caused her throat to tighten. How could Inda not see? Yet he was oblivious as he exchanged jokes with his friends. They talked over her head, or around her, or across her, always with that loud, raucous laughter that hurt Signi’s ears. They all looked alike, these strong young men, their sun-brown skin flushed, mouths wide in toothy grins, their voices like the bark of hounds on fox-scent. How happy they were! On the other side of the strait, if the long march west is over, the men of the Hilda are without doubt just as happy, just as wild.

  Even with her shoulder tucked under Inda’s and her hip jammed against his, she was isolated, in spirit and in time, if not in the physical sense. The pitiable ghost was even more isolated, and yet shone so brightly.

  But Mran and Fnor had not forgotten Signi, and Mran soon appeared, her childishly small form deftly slipping between the men.

  “Dag Signi.” She touched Signi’s offered hands. “Fnor sent me to fetch you, if you’d like to join us.”

  “Very much. I thank you.”

  Relieved, Inda relinquished her into Mran’s care, his attention promptly claimed by his old friends, who strove to outtalk one another. Rat glimpsed his sister, gave her a lazy wave, but went right back to trying to shout down Cherry-Stripe.

  “Fnor’s getting a good meal together,” Mran began, then stopped, halted by none other than the king himself.

  It was adroitly done. Already her brother, her beloved Cama, Inda, and the others were lost in a gathering crowd of captains and Runners, all full of questions. The last thing visible was Cherry-Stripe’s right hand gesticulating, and then he too was gone behind a wall of broad gray-covered backs bisected by sun-bleached horsetails.

  That left a space just long enough for Mran to realize that the King’s Runners at four points around them were there by intent.

  She gazed up into Evred-Harvaldar’s face, wondering what could possibly have happened between the time Signi and Inda left and now to make Dag Signi into a prisoner.

  “She will be with us,” Mran said quickly, in Marlovan, which Signi hadn’t understood on her previous visit.

  Evred regarded Mran Cassad, who was exactly as small and thin as she’d been when he met her years ago. She had the triangular face of most Cassads, sharper than most, her upper lip short and catlike, her eyes wide-spaced and enormous as one hand slipped protectively around the Venn mage’s arm.

  The women had obviously taken to Dag Signi, despite her Venn origins. Part of the women’s secret quest to learn magic? Mran was Hadand’s friend, and had once thanked him for civilizing Cherry-Stripe . . .

  He held out his hand: over to you.

  Mran twitched a faint smile, then bore Signi away.

  The two women left the noisy courtyard behind. The hubbub gradually diminished to the sound of their own footsteps in the cool stone hallway, as they climbed the east tower stairs to the women’s side of the castle.

  Mran stopped on the landing. Watery sunlight slanted through the old arched arrow slit, highlighting the texture of the honeycomb weave in the undyed linen of her robe. “Why are you a prisoner?” she asked. “What happened?”

  Signi let out her breath slowly. What thread of truth could she offer Mran without creating more knots than skein? “Your king has treated me honorably.” Which was true. When Evred could not avoid speaking to her, he was scrupulously polite, and his Runners, surely hand-picked, kept a respectful distance in guarding her. “But he cannot forget I am Venn, and mage.” And he does not know that I could leave at any time. Nor will he know, unless I choose to leave—but then I could never come back.

  “Inda hasn’t said anything?” Mran asked, doubt creasing her broad forehead.

  “He either does not notice, or pretends not to notice. I think . . .” Signi considered. “I think the guards’ presence is a compromise between Inda and Evred. Neither of them has to say anything to the other, one not trusting me, the other demanding trust. Because, you must see, they trust one another to the last degree.”

  “Signi, you are a good woman,” Mran stated, echoing what Fnor had said after the previous visit. Mran did not add Fnor’s subsequent comment, Too good for that ill-mannered pirate boy they’re all drooling over so disgustingly. Fnor had been irritated to discover that Inda had not offered Baukid, the house’s tailor, so much as a copper in vails for sitting up all night remaking Buck’s old coat. Even after Cherry-Stripe had said reasonably, Remember Inda’s been overseas the last ten years. Everybody knows, no foreigner’s got the least idea of proper custom.

  “It is my turn for a question,” Signi said, making a gesture of appeal.

  Mran had forgotten the strange way Signi moved. It was beautiful: she didn’t walk, she glided. Even when she sat on a mat to eat it was like a dance, the way she arranged her clothes, the way she sat, even the way she arranged her feet. “Ask,” she said.

  Signi touched her fingertips in thanks. “Your family, the Cassads. You were here before the Marlovans came. It is said that they were seers, the old Cassadas. Seers of the world outside of that of humankind.”

  Mran leaned against the stones, arms crossed. Laughter ran through her body, made her fluting voice breathy as she said, “Way long ago. Then they got lazy. And so?” An ironic gesture toward the arrow slit. “And so we became Marlovans. Why do you ask?”

  “Do you see ghosts?”

  Mran pursed her lips. “I don’t. But some in my family do. My grandfather, yes. And my poor third-
cousin Kialen, who was supposed to marry Evred-Harvaldar. Hadand thinks she ended up living more in the ghost world than in ours. You can’t really say she took her life, but more like took off her body the same way we take off a robe.” She brushed her hands over her sleeves. “And you asked because?”

  “Inda carries a ghost,” Signi said softly. “And I think he might be from here. Or knows someone here: Dunrend? Hened Dunrend?”

  Mran straightened up, her eyes wide, pupils enormous. “Yes. The Dunrends are connected to the Sindans. Hened was mated with the old Jarlan’s niece. A Runner. She’s here now, so she can take word back to the Jarlan about this gathering.” She shook her head. “Never mind that. What are you asking, whether we should tell anyone?”

  Signi touched her palms together. “Among the Venn, the seers are much honored. But among you?”

  “There aren’t what we call seers,” Mran said. “In fact, you won’t hear much about ghosts at all, thought a few do see them. Hadand’s father does, by her account. Anyway we just don’t talk about them. My grandmother thinks this is because Evred-Harvaldar’s first ancestor, Anderle Montrei-Vayir, killed old Savarend Montredavan-An, who’d conquered us.” She thumped her flat chest in a gesture of ironic humor. “And after that Anderle slowly went mad, because he couldn’t sleep without seeing Savarend’s ghost come into his room. Knife sticking out of its back and everything. Since then, people tend to think ghosts go with treachery, but they don’t say it.” Her brows snapped together. “Did Inda kill Hened?”

  “No, no, Inda says Hened Dunrend died most honorably, defending him. Inda still grieves over his death.”

  Mran whistled softly, a fall of notes Signi recognized as the Marlovan Hymn to the Fallen. “I wouldn’t tell anyone,” she said finally. “It can’t do anyone any good at all that I can see.”

  Signi bowed. “It shall be so.”

  “Well, come in and eat and drink and rest,” Mran said practically, glad to move away. Silly as it was—she knew very well the mind took its burdens right along with the body’s—she also knew that from now on, that landing was going to feel haunted.