King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “I’m . . . meeting that fellow who just went up. Dark hair? Dark eyes?”

  The proprietor’s jolly face puckered into wariness. “Last one in was one of them Marlovan fellows. Red hair. What are you trying to pull here, pretty boy?”

  The women were eyeing him speculatively. In desperation he bent toward the surprised proprietor and whispered into his grizzled ear, “I was trained by Saris Eland of Parayid.” He added the insider code, and as the man’s jaw dropped, Tau straightened up and forced a smile at the women. “If you’ll excuse me a few moments, why don’t I entertain you both? You can pay for the price of one, and I’ll donate the second price.” He indicated the proprietor, whose surprise altered to the smile of a good bargain made.

  As the woman whispered, pooling their last coins, Tau murmured, “Where’d you send the redhead?”

  The proprietor said in a whisper, “Four suns on the door.”

  Tau galloped past them and up the stairs, grimacing. There was no possible way he was going to avoid either farce or tragedy as soon as he opened that door. He just hoped it would not be both.

  The doors were differentiated by painted suns, stars, and moons, arranged in charming groups. This was another of his mother’s touches. He raced past the triangle of three suns and was just pulling up to listen at the next door when from within came thuds and a choked cry.

  He knew the difference between cries of passion and cries of pain. He shouldered the door open into the small room furnished only with a low bed and a chair. Those within froze for the single heartbeat it took him to take in:

  The naked young man lying on the bed, a widening pool of crimson sinking into the mattress, the knobs down his thin back pale and vulnerable as he curled round his slashed gut.

  Evred, hair loose over his bare chest, one arm and his ribs slashed and bleeding, a deliberate nick dripping down into one of his wide, hazel eyes.

  And the dark-haired man standing over him with a bloody dagger, intending to play with his prey before killing it.

  Skandar Mardric jerked a glance Tau’s way.

  He had not expected the king to defend himself, which just added to the fun. Now, carried on the tide of triumph, he recognized that beautiful face, golden hair, golden eyes. “Elgar’s lover?” he gasped in amazement.

  Evred’s mouth whitened.

  Tau crossed the room in three steps.

  Mardric grinned and slashed at Tau with the knife.

  Two steps, snap-kick to the downward slashing knife hand, whirling palm-heel strike, and Mardric fell to his knees with an oof. Tau glanced once more at the young man lying there in shock, blood leaking between his fingers, and kicked again, this time straight at Mardric’s head. “Wrong,” he said.

  Mardric seemed to hear, or maybe his plans had never included the possibility of his own death; his brows crimped in pained question just before Tau’s heel snapped his head back, and he was dead before he hit the floor.

  Leaving Tau alone with one wounded pleasure-house worker, and a very shocked, angry, spectacularly bloody king who’d rolled up into a fighting crouch.

  Tau had grown up learning all about the symbolic boundaries of clothing. If you pretended it was there even if it wasn’t, then you handed back the invisible wall of reserve to those who required it. He also knew better than to castigate this self-isolated, volatile-as-fire king. Evred’s entire life was bound up with military necessity: the fact that he’d come away without a guard evidenced how desperate he was. The crushing weight of impending war day and night would distort the thoughts of the sanest man.

  Tau’s mind raced. You will not grant me the authority to speak of your duty to your Marlovans, but I can speak within my own realm.

  “I grew up in a bawdy house. I can arrange these things with a lot less risk.” He nodded toward the bed. Then, without waiting for an answer, he bent, slid his arms under the knees and shoulders of the wounded young man, and picked him up. “There will be a private exit out that way,” he added, pointing with his chin toward the other end of the hall. “Kick the door shut behind me.”

  He hurried out with his moaning burden.

  Twenty fast steps—he counted each—then he just had to get down the stairs. “Quick, help.”

  The proprietor gasped, casting an anguished look at the young man’s face and the blood dripping down his bare flesh.

  Then the screams and shouts began.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  THE sun was just lifting the eastern darkness when the Venn longboat, its sail lowered, the oars silent, drifted on the tide toward the headland above Castle Andahi’s bay.

  Nine Drenga, the Oneli’s sea marines, all dressed in black, slid noiselessly overboard into the shallow water, gripped the black-pointed boat’s sides, and ran it up onto the sand without a splash.

  The tenth person leaped out, a tall, strong woman of middle years, wearing the blue robe of a dag. She stood aside as the nine swiftly used sea wrack to cover the boat.

  There were no sentries in sight. The Drenga had landed themselves well west of the patrol line.

  Motioning quietly, the leader dispersed his men in teams of three. As they progressed over the headland, in the strengthening light they spied a peculiar pall over the inner part of the bay, reaching as far as they could see between the enormous, sheer cliff walls. They moved belly flat in the brush so that they did not create a silhouette along the top of the headland, stopping when they could look down into the bay.

  Squatting squarely between the bay’s long, naturally terraced shingle beach and the narrowing gorge forming the Pass of Andahi sat a massive castle. From under the rocky ridge below the precipice the Venn crouched on, the northern branch of the Andahi River poured into the bay. The dull granite of the outer curtain wall was warm lit in the rising sun but the eastern side of the castle, still in shadow, did not look at all like their carefully drawn map. The whole east side was distorted in an enormous tear-shaped mass.

  They puzzled over that as the sun crested over the eastern headland, bringing the shadows past them, down, down into the bay, then vanishing, and at last they made sense of the startling change. Gone was the great road that they were supposed to find curving round the base of the cliffs at the east side of the castle. Instead, a sharply slanted fall of loose dirt angled up the mountain from the castle, revealing a raw wound in the mountainside.

  The Marlovans had collapsed an entire slope in order to block access to the pass.

  The dag motioned peremptorily to the leader of the nine-man team and pointed with meaning at the lower paths along the headland as she started up toward the mountain heights. This sort of thing was exactly what Dag Erkric had planned for.

  The ships of the invasion were right behind them, soon to be visible. Until then, no word must go up the pass and over the mountains to Ala Larkadhe.

  As soon as Dag Mekki was well out of sight, the Drenga leader cursed. Dags had no business interfering with a military exercise. But the Marlovans had just invited them in, with their damned mountain foolery.

  The Drenga continued along the headland single file, where they surprised their first outer perimeter sentry, who was admiring the hanging dust pall instead of doing his job. It was the last thing he saw.

  DAWN’S bleak blue light had harshened the contours of the old wooden building in the riverside market town, rendering bright paintings garish, and cozy cushions and mats into trampled, dirty wads of cloth that would not just require cleaning but restitching, the floor strewn with empty mugs and plates. Tau slowly picked his way across them to take leave of the proprietor.

  “I know there’s something missing in your story,” the owner said hoarsely. “A murderer just picks out a random Marlovan for assassination? But the knife was there, and the murderer was there, and my sister’s son with his gut slashed. I don’t know what was worse, the sight of him like that, or the panic after. So bad for business. So bad.”

  Tau gave a tired nod. He’d helped the proprietor turn fe
ar into excitement—his mother had trained him for that, too—by organizing the panic-stricken patrons in a search. When they discovered the dead man, the panic ended. Criminal found, end of threat, Tau there to congratulate everyone on the satisfying end to the mystery and to help along the spreading word.

  Then everyone had to offer their version of what had happened—no one knew the dead man—not one of us—and the proprietor offered a free round of drinks for all. Tau went up to the prettiest woman there and began an Iascan hand dance, in which one or both hands have to be touching the partner at all times. The musicians picked up their instruments and hastily assembled themselves, weaving round them a merry tune. With her willing participation they’d made their dance so lascivious everyone soon was laughing, dancing, or going upstairs to carry on.

  The proprietor, also thinking back over the surprising night, gave a short nod, his jowls jiggling. “But you earned your right to a secret or two, I’m thinking.”

  He cast a meaningful glance over his shoulder toward one of the larger suites across the main parlor, where parties with more than one partner usually disported.

  After the dance, the waiting pair of women had appeared, and Tau enthusiastically kept his promise. After months of enforced celibacy (though plenty of offers had come his way, he did not think a dalliance with anyone in Evred’s army a wise idea) it had not exactly been a trial.

  The two women were just leaving, a garland dropping from one’s hair, the other softly singing, their arms around each other’s waists.

  Tau and the proprietor fell quiet as they walked past. The taller woman, dark-haired, some of her ribbons still untied, reached up to lay her hand against Tau’s cheekbone. “I’m always going to think I dreamed you.” She laughed soundlessly.

  He caught her hand, kissed it, ran his fingers along her palm as he let her go. She laughed again, and walked out of the house, and out of his life.

  The proprietor said, “You saved Ulec. The healer said he would have bled to death not two glass-turns more. And the way you got ’em all singing instead of yelling—” He groped forward, then shook his head. “If you come back this way, know we’ll give you a place, a night, a meal. Whatever you ask. Even half the business,” he added shrewdly.

  Tau smiled and moved to the door. The proprietor sighed, then turned wearily back to his disaster of a parlor.

  Tau stepped outside, breathing in fresh, pure air. It was going to be sunny, maybe even hot. Not good if he had to walk; by now his horse would be long gone from the hitching post. At least armies were not subtle about leaving trails.

  He almost stumbled into the boy sitting on the porch, arms folded over his knees, supporting his brow. At Tau’s step he raised a weary head, squinted, then said, “You know a Marlovan called Sponge?”

  “Yes,” Tau said.

  “I was to tell you that the horse is at the stable.” The boy added importantly, “He gave me a whole golder to make sure you found it.”

  And so Tau rode back, discovering that the army had not departed after all. From the dust and noise coming from the hills above the river bend, they were engaged in a war game; yes, there was Inda riding along the riverbank, watching intently.

  Tau left the horse with the Runners on stable detail, and walked through the mostly packed camp to his tent, still standing. Inside were two ensorcelled buckets.

  When he emerged, feeling cleaner if no less tired, there were several of Vedrid’s staff waiting to collapse the tent. But what surprised him was Signi waiting with them, her ubiquitous guards just out of earshot.

  She had never precisely ignored him, she just did not speak often, and never when Evred was present, unless he addressed her first. And she was so far Tau’s superior in the art of self-effacement, he’d rarely noticed her unless he sought her out.

  Yet here she was before him, her sandy hair untidy, her rumpled old clothes sun-faded, having sought him out for the first time. “The king returned last night bleeding over his eye.” She touched her brow. “I think he was hurt elsewhere, for he moved as if in pain. And he was very angry.” Her Marlovan had improved; the only reminder of her origin was her accent. She made one of her little gestures, tipped her head and smiled faintly. “No one asks a king questions—except Inda, and sometimes his friends. But you know Inda.”

  Tau huffed a tired laugh, beyond surprise. “I know Inda. I’m sure he didn’t ask.”

  “Oh, he did. Where were you, he said. You can’t vanish on us like that. And Evred-Harvaldar said back, I fell down the stairs. But I won’t trip again. And they all laughed. Is that a metaphor that I have missed, or perhaps more of their private language?”

  “Private language is my guess,” Tau said.

  “Ah. The king added these words: Your Runner caught the reins. He went into his tent, the others dispersed, and that was all. What happened?”

  Tau said, “Evred went to get laid. Why he didn’t take a couple of guards, I don’t know—he doesn’t usually seem stupid. Sure enough he was attacked, I think by an assassin. I recognized the fellow just before I killed him.”

  Ahhhh. Her mouth opened, shaping the word, but no sound emerged. Then she said with care, “If I understand right, the king used to assume the guise of a Runner when he wished to move about unnoticed. I overheard Vedrid making reference to that being the way he escaped the assassins two years ago.”

  “Maybe.” Tau was too tired to hide sarcasm. “But even he should see that there’s a difference between a prince roaming around anonymously and a king leading an army to defend his borders.”

  “Privacy appears to be very important to Evred-Harvaldar.”

  “More than that.” It was a relief to talk, tired as Tau was. He needed to sound his ideas, to determine if his insight was only misunderstanding. “He sometimes gets even more lost inside his head than Inda does. But he’s a king, so no one can force him back.”

  “I hope you tried.” Signi touched her fingertips together. “For his own sake.”

  “I did.”

  They turned away from one another and toward the hills, where mounted shapes hurtled in and out of the considerable dust. Evred was just visible beyond Inda, no more than a silhouette himself.

  “I hope he won’t resent it,” Tau commented.

  Signi’s green-brown eyes were wide in the strengthening morning sunlight. “You think he will? Why? Did you lay a debt upon him?”

  Tau snorted. On the hill Cherry-Stripe emerged from the dust, yipping at the head of a tight flying wedge of young men on the chase of a scattering of Rat’s dragoons. “Gratitude wins great renown in ballads, not in real life.” Tau lifted a shoulder. “In real life as often as not people hate you for doing them a good turn.”

  She did not deny it. “When the doer of the deed assumes moral superiority, but you have not done so. Do you think Evred-Harvaldar so small-minded?”

  Tau shook his head. “The camp is here. And I found a horse waiting, when he could have taken it back.” He drew in a deep breath, feeling the first pangs of a headache as the sunlight glinted off metal and glared on the light-colored dirt. “Small-minded, no. Complicated, yes.”

  A whoop went up from the other side of the hill and a moment later the war gamers galloped back. Tau gestured toward the Runners carrying his rolled tent to the wagon. “And certainly not rancorous.”

  Signi opened her hands as the arriving warriors abandoned their mounts to be watered and strung with the remounts. Fresh horses were readied, and some waiting slices of stale nut-bread handed around; the supply wagons had already rumbled ahead. Signi walked toward the picket line to meet Inda, leaving Tau to follow.

  They were on the move before noon, everything exactly as it had always been, as if the night before had never happened. Or as if Tau had dreamed it, but he had not dreamed the crunch of the assassin’s chin and the snap of his neck under his heel—nor had he dreamed the fire-charged beauty of blood-smeared, naked Evred, all muscle over long bones, and hard hazel eyes.

 
; Tau’s own walls had nothing to do with physical privacy, but everything to do with the danger-fraught haunts of the heart.

  He suspected Evred would not say anything to him or about him, that things would go exactly as before. So he would not question it, or even think about it. Because every step brought them closer to battle, where the summary cut of a Venn blade could resolve all questions.

  But for now . . . he sank his chin down onto his collar-bone and dozed as his horse plodded behind Inda’s.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  LIET-RANDVIAR Arveas assumed a stern look. She knew very well how bitterly the children had been complaining, which was why she’d been firm. Girls of fifteen—old enough for the queen’s training—could stay to defend the castle. There was a single fourteen-year-old boy, the cook’s prentice, who had begged to stay, saying he’d be fifteen in two weeks. The other boys his age were down south at the academy.

  All the parents had backed her up, some so intensely they’d frightened their children, who stood before the Jarlan now. The littlest ones were very small and bewildered, clutching the hands of older sisters or cousins. She was grateful there were no babes in arms. Sending three-year-olds to hide out for who knows how long was heart-wrenching enough.

  “Your orders,” the Jarlan began, studying the oldest three girls in turn—expectant Gdir, stone-grim Han, chin-lifted Lnand. The latter furtively watched the others for their reactions. “Your orders are as follows. Hadand, you are in charge.”

  Han straightened up, her spine rigid. When anyone used her full name, they were serious.

  Gdir flushed with anger.

  The Jarlan saw that and sighed inwardly. She’d tried so hard to raise a tough future Jarlan, maybe too hard. Or maybe Gdir would have been . . .

  I am out of time. “My choice is not a judgment on any of you. You’re too young for anyone to be certain how good you’ll be in the future as leaders,” the Jarlan said, not looking at Gdir. “I picked Han for this mission because she’s closest kin to me. That happens in command. It’s not fair but it’s a clear, easy chain of command. Get used to this. When there’s an emergency, people will make things as easy for themselves as they can, and sometimes that means ignoring all the expectations of rank.”