King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  He stepped out of the command longboat. Ulaffa fumbled his way out of the boat with the painstaking care of the elderly who seldom are put to physical exertion.

  Ulaffa bunched his robe up, extending a sandaled foot and setting it cautiously in the water. Then he trod with uncertain steps on the tide-washed beach shingle. He was so slow and deliberate one would almost think he was in secret sympathy with Durasnir and the army. But reading one’s own emotions into others, especially the prince’s own dags, was at best dangerous, at worst deliberately blinding to true motives. The Oneli and Hilda were forbidden to interact with the Erama Krona, the royal bodyguards. Durasnir did not know the strict wording of rules governing the mixing of the Yaga Krona and the Sea Dags, but he assumed they had a similar custom.

  His efficient Drenga had somehow managed to secure a mount from the Hilda.

  Durasnir turned away, scanning the shoreline road marked by darkened bloodstains. Here the last of the Marlovan jarl’s defenders trying to reach the castle had been cut off and stood their ground to the end.

  It had been a tough fight, the silent party discovered as they proceeded, weapons and mail jingling, at a stately pace. Bloodstains splashed all the way up the shingle to the rising land below the castle, stains soon to be diminished by rain, wind, and hooves and boots when the army landed to march up the pass.

  Shortly before noon they arrived at the outer walls of Castle Andahi. The sweep of the great road to the mountains had been bisected by a massive landslide—not for the first time in history—which meant the only access to the road was directly through the castle. It was a crude defense, but it had been successful many centuries before.

  Not against the Venn.

  He paused a way from the outer curtain wall, studying the castle, an impressive structure nearly a thousand years old, much reinforced since then by ring within ring of massive walls and iron-reinforced gates made of the whole trunks of trees. What had been the cost of that? Or had the ancestors of these Idayagans ignored the wood guilds and mage councils, so far away on the other side of the continent . . . and was their decline a direct result of that?

  Perhaps only Ulaffa could answer such a question. The old dag was studying the mountain heights under a shading hand, his blue robe blowing about his sandaled feet.

  Time to get to business, distasteful as it was.

  Approaching hoofbeats caused another halt as three riders traversed the scrubby land. The neat rows of tents belonging to the advance force lined the lower slope a short distance behind them.

  The two snapping banners behind the riders sharpened into detail: one, the Owl-in-Hunt of Talkar’s House, the other, the Great Tree Ydrasal. Talkar’s jowly face resolved out of the dust as he and his banner-bearers drew near, the three golden rings of the Hilda Stalna, the army commander, embroidered on the upper right arm of his battle tunic gleaming softly: no one wore torcs into battle. Durasnir wore his torcs as a subtle reminder that he was here not to interfere with command but as courier only.

  Talkar’s gaze flicked from Durasnir’s arm to his face. His expression was grimmer than usual under his gleaming winged helm.

  He can’t get the gates down, Durasnir thought, as Talkar slowed and saluted, hands together then opened out. Damnation. “Your report?”

  Talkar stated, “The gate is stronger than we had estimated.”

  “It is the prince’s will that we use the aid of the dags,” Durasnir said.

  The man’s face tightened as he saluted, palms together.

  Durasnir turned Ulaffa’s way.

  The dag said, “It will take until sundown to prepare. If you will pardon me, Commanders, I will summon the mages appointed by Dag Erkric, and we will begin the preparations.”

  So Talkar has until sundown, Durasnir thought. And now I would take any oath that Ulaffa is also dragging a sail.

  Ulaffa climbed with difficulty from his mount. His sandals crunched on the sandy gravel as he paced slowly away, the soft breeze carrying whispered fragments of his magic spells.

  Talkar raised his gauntleted hand, and the banner-bearers halted. He and Durasnir rode down a short, rocky slope toward the long beach of shingle, ostensibly to give the dag plenty of room for his spell casting, but in truth well out of earshot.

  “This order was spoken directly to you?” Talkar asked finally, after another tight-lipped, nostril-flaring silence.

  The great siege engines the army had counted on taking from the other two northern castles had been so thoroughly destroyed there was no patching them together. And on Dag Erkric’s orders, they had not brought over the implements for making their own, full as the ships had been with men, horses, and their own supplies. We will use their own weapons against the two or three castles they have on this coast, Erkric had said to the prince, who agreed with enthusiasm. Next year, when we must penetrate to the formidable Marlovan castles inland, that is the time to fill holds with the big siege weapons, if we cannot build our own out of materials we find in Idayago.

  Dag Erkric’s reasoning sounded sensible, and it certainly solved the immediate problem: use the dags to loosen the bindings in the gates to bring them down. It wasn’t fighting, it was merely the opposite of repair.

  Magic is not used in war.

  But they were using it. And if it was successful now, what would the next step be? Mages riding at their shoulders, perhaps whispering spells to ensorcel their brains, make their arms swing the sword harder and their feet march faster, without any thought on the part of the warrior?

  “It is Prince Rajnir’s will,” Durasnir said finally. “Spoken in my presence.”

  Talkar touched his fingers in acceptance, but turned his head to hide his loathing. He suspected that Erkric wasn’t sending these orders over the prince’s name, he was getting the prince to issue them himself. And forcing Durasnir to do it before the men’s eyes made it look like the Oneli felt the Hilda could not carry out their orders on their own. It was yet another tactic meant to cause ill will between Oneli and Hilda.

  Talkar faced eastward, away from the castle where his men strained with chains and horses, and brooded.

  At least he’d personally overseen the dispatch of the Jarl of Arveas. A clean death, Talkar had made certain of that, despite Erkric’s hints he would like a Marlovan commander or two to experiment with, if any were captured. Since the prince had said nothing about the disposition of enemies, Talkar and his Battle Chiefs had agreed that an honorable enemy—especially one who’d put up such a brave fight—did not deserve mind-torture by magic, the way Erkric had done with that Wafri fellow, before he went mad and hurled himself directly off a castle wall to smash on the rocks below. The very idea of taking prisoners was dishonorable in the eyes of the Venn warriors, because they were asking their enemy to dishonor himself by throwing down his weapon. Talkar suspected the Marlovans felt the same.

  Durasnir broke into these degrading thoughts with a question marching uncomfortably parallel. “Any sign of the Jarl’s heir?”

  “No.” Talkar removed his helm, careful not to poke himself with one of the stiff upswept white wings, the lacquered white feathers wired into place. He wiped his damp forehead, then resettled the helm carefully over his meager knot of hair. “He might be in the castle.” He glanced back at where Ulaffa was carefully tramping out a square—probably a transfer square. Talkar hated the way the old man mumbled under his breath, like whispering secrets under your very ears. He hated the way magic made his arm hairs bristle in a kind of warning, like lightning about to strike. “What surprises me more is that there has been no recent message from the mage scout Erkric had promised was stationed on the highest pinnacle, overlooking the narrowest portion of the pass. I was given a scroll case into which she was to send me reports of anyone she saw and killed.”

  “Dag Erkric has dags killing people?” Durasnir asked sharply.

  Talkar turned his fingers skyward in assent, his expression grim. “And I did get a report, right after we landed. She spott
ed and killed two messengers sent up the pass. But since then no word.”

  Durasnir did not ask why Talkar had sent no query. To do so would indicate a want, or a need, for dag interference in military matters. So the Hilda Commander would keep silent.

  Talkar blew out his cheeks, then added, “Any news since our landing?” A wave of his hand indicated the northern shore of Idayago.

  “Yes. You remember the murder of our observers here.”

  It wasn’t a question, it was a context. Talkar touched his fingers together.

  “Dag Erkric was in the process of replacing our military scouts with dags to be used as scouts. Like your dag on the pinnacle.”

  “Right, I understand.”

  “You apparently did not know that they all vanished overnight?”

  “No, I did not.” Talkar glanced at the mountain heights above the pass. Maybe that explained the sudden lack of reports from Dag Mekki. “Vanished, or dead?”

  “Gone. No trace, and that means no bodies left for us to find. Unlike what happened with the observers in spring.”

  Talkar let his breath trickle out, glanced at the busy Ulaffa, then said uneasily, “No trace?”

  “Dag Erkric himself went to the south. Found and destroyed the Marlovan and Idayagan communication scroll cases, once he located them.”

  Talkar grimaced. “How does he do that? Magic eyes watching everywhere?” He grimaced again.

  “I’m told that magic leaves a trace in the air, like scent, and the dags are like dogs who sniff out what we humans cannot. He doesn’t even have to touch their devices, which are much more simple than ours. He just casts a ward around them.”

  Talkar raised a hand. “I don’t know what that means, and I don’t want to.”

  “Very well. After he broke our enemy’s means of magical communication, he searched for traces of our dag scouts. This was while we launched the invasion. There he had no success. He returned to the flagship before we rowed to Trad Varadhe for the prince’s inspection. He reported to the prince in my hearing that all the locals south of the pass are talking about the great Marlovan army no more than a day or so outside of the city of Ala Larkadhe.”

  Talkar’s granite-solid jaw tightened. “Then we have to get to the top of the pass first. An army two days’ ride from the city at that end? That leaves us a day to take this castle. Because the reports put the climb from either end at roughly equal. That’s tight.”

  These words caused a pang of regret in Durasnir for his deliberate procrastination. But he dismissed it. A day could not make that much difference, judging from the poor defense they’d encountered so far. Of primary importance was resistance to Dag Erkric’s insidious plan to insert his mages into the conduct of war.

  “Dag Erkric has readied a plan for that, too,” Durasnir said.

  “A plan to get us to the top of the pass faster?” Talkar asked, lifting his helm again to rub his sweat-soaked, metal-baked head.

  “No, it’s some sort of ruse.”

  Talkar pursed his lips. His innate distrust of the interference of dags appeared to be warring with his desire to get up that pass as swiftly as possible.

  Ulaffa finished making his square, laid a series of transfer tokens down, then turned an inquiring face their way. They rejoined him, standing well outside of the square. A short time later, half a dozen blue-robed dags appeared.

  At Talkar’s somewhat ironic gesture a party of warriors, all of them rigid with unexpressed resentment, conducted the dags to the walls. There they began examining the massive hinges and conferring with one another, while the invasion force watched.

  Durasnir had no more excuse to be present. Ulaffa would transfer back to the ship whenever he wished, using one of those instantaneous transfer spells. One heartbeat here, the next there. The warriors hated that, too.

  Durasnir and Talkar exchanged salutes. Durasnir signaled to his waiting marines and was rowed back to the flagship.

  Once again on the Cormorant, he retreated to his cabin to wait. Now he was left with nothing but the familiar, internal struggle with the concept—unexamined all his young life, now haunting him in his aging years—of one very young man embodying, in his person, the will of an entire people.

  Especially when one was not certain how much of his will was truly his.

  Chapter Three

  “ IGNI!” Inda’s voice broke into her sleep, light as it was.

  She opened her eyes. It was dark, though she sensed the proximity of the sun somewhere below the eastern horizon. She sat up, brushing her tousled hair out of her face. “What is amiss?”

  “Messenger. From the Venn,” he said, setting a candle down on the single camp stool. “I mean, from Ala Larkadhe, with a message from the Venn. They came in by magic.” Inda frowned. “Can they do that with whole armies?”

  “No,” she said, poking her elbow out of the bedroll and leaning her cheek on her hand. “That is why Dag Erkric desperately wants Norsunder’s rift magic. You need such great spells to transfer great numbers. More then three together, and the three feel the wrench at triple strength.”

  Inda whistled. “Glad you told me that. All right. Evred needs you to tell us what their message means. I’ll be with you,” he added, and he couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss her, so sweetly she lay curled up in their bedding, drowsy, her sandy hair wisping about her face. His hands reached for the softness of her curves, though he knew that Evred was waiting.

  Her lips, so giving, her smell like summer grass and blossoms on a cool wind, arrowed straight into his brain. No, it arrowed straight to his arrow. He backed away, trying not to laugh, and saw her smiling, her eyes reflecting golden flames of the candlelight.

  It was like that at night too. She wondered as she rose and hastily pulled on her travel-worn smock and riding trousers how long his ardor would last, and why such things were so mysterious, so wholly uncontrollable. She loved lying in his arms at night, at peace. She would have been happy just doing that on this long, terrible ride surrounded by Marlovan warriors, and curtained only by a leddas-and-canvas tent that did not really muffle sounds. But for him proximity ignited the fires of desire, and those, once quenched (as quickly as they could, as silently) caused him to drop into slumber, leaving her lying awake, body content, mind anxiously seeking answers to questions she could not ask, except of herself.

  They emerged from the tent into the lantern light. Evred-Harvaldar looked past Inda’s foolish little grin of sexual desire temporarily thwarted; there was no corresponding smirk in the woman’s face. Her eyes focused inward, her expression the blind one that either meant mental turmoil or she was doing magic. No, he had to assume goodwill. Honor required it, and her self-effacing behavior during this long journey—she under guard—had been exemplary.

  Evred handed Signi the letter.

  Signi bent to the nearest lantern and read fast, her brow lined and tense. “Can you not read it? This is written in your own Iascan. It is from Prince Rajnir. He wishes his dag to parley under truce, on Restday, three days hence.”

  “There was a thing with it,” the Runner explained. And on Evred’s motion, the runner held out a metal disk with Old Sartoran glyphs on it.

  Signi only had to glance once. “Ah. That is a Destination token. Did he give you phrases to say when you place it upon the ground?”

  The Runner repeated what the Venn messenger with the truce flag had told him, there at the city gate: simple words in Old Sartoran, freighted with a transfer spell.

  “It will transfer Dag Erkric to wherever you place this token,” Signi said.

  “Or one of us to their arms?” Evred asked, tone dry. “And I use that term in the fullest possible sense.”

  “No. The disks are different for that kind of transfer.”

  Inda said, “That’s true. I used one once at Ghost Island.” Evred’s head snapped his way, his eyes narrow and remote, and Inda knew what question would come next. He quickly explained what Signi had said about transfers and rifts, a
nd they all saw Evred relax.

  “Very well,” Evred said. “But we will prepare an appropriate reception first.” He gestured for Hawkeye’s Runner to take charge of letter and disk again. Motioning to Inda and Noddy, “We will ride ahead. The rest can follow us into the city.” He raised his voice to the Sier Danas, now straggling from their tents, buttoning coats or tying sashes. “Rat! Cherry-Stripe! You two and Cama bring them in. Barend. You ride with us.”

  We did not mean just the commanders, but their personal entourages as well. Tau, as Inda’s Runner, was left to sweep together his and Inda’s belongings and give commands to the waiting runners-in-training for mounts.

  The sun was still well below the hills to the east when they raced by streaming torchlight out of the camp, leaving the warriors cleaning weapons and talking among themselves. No morning drill for the first time—but there would probably be no more liberty.

  Evred rode at the front with his Harskialdna and his cousin at either side, Noddy behind them, and from the sound of occasional hoots and crows of laughter, it was clear that no resentment had been harbored in the upper ranks at the permanent shift in command.

  Tau and Signi rode side-by-side—Signi for the first time without her guards.

  Stars twinkled overhead as they cantered behind torch-bearing Runners up the smooth, well-tended road. The setting moon still gave faint light. As they rounded a rocky outcropping, pungent with the scent of dry needle-grass and goldenrod, and spotted the glistening white tower projecting above the city, Signi swayed once in her saddle. As Tau urged his horse to close with hers, one hand reaching out, she shook her head and straightened up.

  Tau dropped his hand. She’d slipped; Tau had made many riding errors before learning how to sit these scanty saddles.

  Tau glanced ahead. The old academy friends rode together, talking back and forth in low, laughter-punctuated voices. Noddy was saying, “. . . so I’ll raise my Inda to scrag your boys on sight. You better raise ’em to fear my name—”