King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “What we are going to do.” Her voice scratched. She cleared her throat hard. “Until the last one of us stands, is buy the king time.”

  Chapter Five

  VALDA appeared not long after Signi sent her message, stumbling forward as the magic released her, face exalted as she gazed at her surroundings.

  “Oh, it is! It is!” she exclaimed, clasping her hands. “It is a Morvende archive! I had hoped, when I discovered Mekki and the atan platform—”

  Signi waited through this tumble of words.

  Valda made a visible effort and halted. Then, laughing and crying, she embraced Signi, her voice trembling. “I have never ceased to worry about you, my dear. But I dare not linger for long. I will return later, and we will talk.”

  “Wait, only tell me this: does Rajnir send Erkric to parley with the Marlovans?”

  Valda regained some of her accustomed severity. “I never heard about that,” she stated. “Are you certain?”

  “I saw the letter myself. And a transfer token.”

  “I will find out,” Valda promised. “You have to realize I have stayed out of contact with the Yaga Krona—I must. So I no longer know—never mind. Ah, Signi, things have come to a terrible crisis for us! No, I cannot explain even that. The Hilda and the Yaga Krona are pulling at the gates at the other end of the pass at this very moment. Hisht! I shall return.”

  The Yaga Krona? Battering gates? But she was gone.

  When Evred came back some time later, he found Signi absorbed in an ancient scroll, busily making notes in Venn writing.

  He glanced in and around. He was looking for someone, probably the Morvende archivist whose hand she’d seen noting many scrolls in the collection. From the evidence she was a copyist, replacing with laborious exactitude any scroll deemed too aged to be safely unrolled and read.

  “The Runners are bringing you a meal.” Evred beckoned in a blushing youth carrying a laden tray. “I beg you will stay occupied until our conflict with your countrymen is past. Inda understands, and though reluctantly, he agrees. It seems the simplest solution.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  He closed the door. From the other side came the thump of guards taking up their stance.

  Inda lurked on the stairway at the other end of the landing. “You can see, she is happily occupied,” Evred said to Inda. “We can’t risk having the truce party spot her, and force her to go along with them. You know that they would wring from her everything she saw in our camp, every word she heard spoken. I’d do the same, in their shoes,” he added, with a faint smile. “Can you see that it is better not to put her between hard choices?”

  “Yes.” Inda rubbed his jaw. “But. Her there—Venn parley—mages. I don’t know, it makes me feel I’m sailing into an unknown harbor without a chart. So different from planning an attack.”

  Evred was surprised at the spurt of annoyance these innocent words caused. You’ve been home a full season, yet you have not abandoned your sea talk. But he dismissed that thought as unworthy. “We will carry on with our plans as if their parley had never been offered.”

  Inda stopped at one of the arched windows, his fist pounding lightly on the rounded, smooth lip of the sill as he gazed sightlessly out at the army now riding into the big stable yard below. Cama was still mounted, overseeing the orderly division of the wings. “That’s it,” Inda finally said, unaware of the long silence. “That’s it. I need to look at the map.”

  Evred did not ask what “it” might be. He led the way to the office, which overlooked the barracks court where the first two wings to ride in were milling about, gear slung over their shoulders or resting before the squared toes of their boots, as Runners dashed about. The low hubbub of male voices rose on the warm summer air.

  Inda ignored them, too, his knuckles rapping a cupboard, the wall, Evred’s desk (partitioned by Hawkeye’s neat piles), a wingback chair, and the doorway again as they walked through to the map room, a chamber in one of the granite towers. The only piece of furniture was a heavy blackwood table, legs and supports beautifully carved in a style that called to Inda’s mind—to be instantly forgotten—the elongated lyre motif of faraway Freeport Harbor on the other side of the world, in the Eastern Sea.

  “Ah.” He exhaled at the sight of the huge map.

  Evred had promised him that the best map of the pass lay here at Ala Larkadhe; his uncle had captured it before it could be burned, when he first took Ala Larkadhe. Apparently, once a generation young Idayagans and Olarans had been chosen to remap every curve and cliff of the pass, as weather and wear changed them, an expedition that could take the better part of two years.

  But the result was a map of chartlike clarity—

  Chart. Inda’s thoughts forked between two trails, and regained neither. Too many things demanding his next moment.

  All right. Look at the map. You wanted this map, talked about it. There are all the details humanly possible.

  He closed his eyes and struggled to shut down the chatter of his inner voice. Now he would just look. There was the snaking long lake on the eastern side of the pass. And on the west, directly opposite, the small lakes between the circle of highest peaks that fed into the great Andahi River carving its way down to empty into Lindeth Bay, and giving the pass its name. Above Ala Larkadhe the pass roughly paralleled the river, reaching its narrowest point between enormous cliffs at its highest reach. After that it started its way down toward the north, following an ancient river bed that had once emptied into the bay below what was now called Castle Andahi.

  “That pass has to be like the Land Bridge in the south,” Inda muttered, looking down. “Says ‘narrow as a neck’ in your uncle’s writing, here, but what does that mean? No wider than a man can touch fingertip to fingertip, or wide enough to sail a capital ship through? And what kind of ‘enormous cliffs’—sheer ones, or ones you can climb?”

  Evred said, “Sheer. Rising directly to either side. Some of them are broken by old animal trails. The trails usable by humans are mostly marked—you can see the small green dots—but it would take a year or more to get an army up or down those trails. They are mostly goat paths, and even the goats are slow. A man carrying a pack would have to rest frequently, and the footing would be dangerous.”

  “Width of the pass?”

  “At the high point, you can probably get fifty mounted men in a tight line.”

  “That sounds—” Inda grimaced. It sounded wide if you thought about a couple of people ambling along. That was ‘narrow as a neck’ for an army—and narrow as a finger if you considered trying to negotiate it with a ship. “Not good for a charge, then.”

  “In desperation, maybe. The sheer walls are perhaps twice the height of the white tower here. Some are higher. The tops can be obscured by rain or snow clouds. This is before the pass ices over in early winter, and small thunderstorms might strike one side but the other will be clear and blue. Lightning hits the rocks far above.”

  Inda rocked back and forth, eyes closed. “No flank attacks, then.”

  “I assure you, there is no more formidable barrier than those walls. The only advantage is to whoever takes the top of the pass itself. Anyone coming up from the other end will have to fight uphill.”

  Inda still rocked. “Horses don’t charge uphill, right?”

  “A short distance is possible. Very short. I would say they could break lines of disorganized Idayagans, but those walls of shields you described would be best charged with the incline in our favor.”

  “How long to the top?”

  “The fastest Runners take a week and a half or so to reach the top, and the same down to Castle Andahi,” Evred answered. “In good weather. The road is steep, and there’s no place to keep remounts, so you have to take them with you. Since we have not seen any beacon fires, we can assume we have two weeks’ warning, three at the very outside.”

  Inda had opened his fist and was drumming with that hand, as his right traced over the mountain peaks where Ha
wkeye had labelled each of the beacon sites, with a notation on who was on duty at each, and when. “We’ll call it two weeks. That’s not much of a margin.”

  “Better than nothing.” A couple of quiet footfalls, and Barend joined them at the table. “My beacons give us that two weeks.” His tone was of mild approval.

  Inda turned on him. “How many know about the beacons?”

  “No one, I’ll swear. Outside of us. Hawkeye and I picked the south end crews ourselves. Not a man with a family among ’em. No one to blab to. They report directly to us before and after rotation. Flash and I picked the ones at the north end.”

  “How often do they rotate?”

  “One coming, one going, one staying every week.” Barend added, “Flash does the same at his end. Reports weekly—”

  “Reports that could take three weeks to get here, once they get down the mountain, and then sent south.”

  “Well, say, fifteen days, if they really bustle. It’s the upward ride that’s—”

  “I know. So, when did you last get a report?”

  Barend lifted his head. “I brought it myself, when I reported in.”

  “So when is the next due?” Inda asked.

  Barend spread his hands. “Three days, maybe four, even five if there’s bad weather.”

  Evred added, “If anything at all went wrong with the beacons at that end, we can trust Flash to have sent us word some way. And if there’s real news, even bad weather won’t hold them up.”

  “Right.” Barend’s broad forehead creased. “What’s wrong, Inda? The beacons will be as near as sending a letter by magic as we can make it.”

  Inda did not hear him. He was staring at the map, feeling that almost-vertigo again, just the same as the first day he’d looked at Evred’s far less detailed map back in the royal city. “This thing’s as good as a chart, all the details. Wait. I almost had it, something to do with charts—”

  “I don’t mind saying—” Hawkeye clattered in through the door behind them. “—I don’t trust this parley any farther than I can throw these soul-ripping mages. I’ll wager anything you like it’s an excuse to nose around here and report in by magic.”

  “They’re mages. They can nose by magic without a parley, and no one can stop them—” Inda stared fixedly at his hands.

  “Inda?” Evred asked. “You were saying?”

  “I forgot.” Inda’s hands smacked down. “I think I was saying two things. Neither of ’em any use, or they’d stick. Let’s go look at the rooms we’ve got available.”

  The first day or so in the old robbers’ caves were mostly fun for the Castle Andahi children.

  The three ten-year-old girls had been on plenty of overnight expeditions before, though usually with one of the older girls in charge, and they’d never take any of the ones everyone called the smalls—the children under six. Six was the age castle children got their first jobs, carrying dishes to dunk in the magic buckets, running messages, delivering small tools or packets of food out to those working in the gardens or outside the walls, and of course wanding horse stalls.

  Hiding out felt at first a lot like an extra-exciting overnight. One the adults had ordered them to be on. It wasn’t until yesterday that things began to change.

  Han rose before dawn and climbed out of her bedroll. For the first time since their arrival, the air was chilly. She crept past all the sleeping figures to the mouth of the cave, then she crouched down, grinding her chin on her knees as she glared out at the swirling drifts of fog.

  At first, it had been wonderful not to have to brush her hair or bother with bathing. She hated going wet and chilled to breakfast. While she didn’t mind going without a bath—that was part of the fun of overnights—her scalp felt gritty. She’d already had a small argument with Gdir about the fact that Han hadn’t brought a hairbrush, and Gdir had said that meant she was a bad leader.

  Han crunched up her toes, considering how she could get the hairbrush without having to admit she was a bad leader. She knew Gdir would make her say it before she’d let her use hers.

  Somebody whimpered in the back of the cave where they’d made their camp. Had to be one of the three-year-olds. Han held her breath, hoping the small would go back to sleep. At first, the smalls had all just run around, laughing and splashing in the little stream that ran across the very back of the cave to vanish down a mossy crack. But yesterday they’d been more fretful than happy, whining a lot. What a relief when they finally got to sleep!

  The seven- and eight-year-olds had gotten bored with staying inside the cave. They wanted games outside. No, not on the floor of the pass. That was orders, they couldn’t go there, but they could be on the mountainside, couldn’t they? Why not? Just to there? Han had gotten tired of the questions long before the sevens and eights got tired of pestering her.

  A dusty rustle from behind made her half turn, as nine-year-old Freckles shuffled out, her toes grimy. Freckles shoved her bristly braids back, the reddish-blond hair imprinted with brown blotches of dried mud. “Babies are waking up,” she whispered. Then she made a face. “Why’d we have to have babies on the overnight? Three isn’t a small, it’s a baby. They don’t talk good, and twice Rosebud’s forgotten the Waste Spell and we’ve had to dunk her drawers in the bucket.”

  “We can’t blame her for that. Some don’t learn it right away. The Jarlan told us Flash didn’t.”

  Freckles giggled at the idea of a grown-up learning the Waste Spell, but it was more habit than humor, then she made a face. “I never got an overnight until I was six. It’s no fun with them.”

  “Jarlan’s orders,” Han said.

  Freckles sighed. For both girls, that was the end of the matter. Lnand wore you out demanding to know why, and Gdir complained about Han’s orders (and about the Jarlan putting her in charge), but Freckles didn’t care why. The grown-ups never made sense anyway.

  Lnand came out, briskly dusting her smock and knee-trousers. “I don’t think Rosebud feels good. Her face is hot, and her cheeks are even redder than her hair.”

  Han ground her toes harder into the cool, silken dust. “Then she should sleep. That’s what the healer told me, the time I got fever. You sleep, and drink some listerblossom steep.”

  “I’ll use the Fire Stick.” Lnand flung a braid back with a self-important air. “I know how to make steep. First thing they teach us in the kitchen.”

  Like I haven’t known that since we were eight! “In the way back. Remember Ndand’s orders,” Han cautioned.

  Lnand rolled her eyes. “I’ve been baking since I was smaller than Rosebud!” she retorted, and marched away, shoulders twitching with righteous indignation.

  Han clamped her jaw on a retort. She loathed the way Lnand told you things you knew, except exaggerating them, making her younger, or the work harder, and hinting that you were stupid. But Lnand had been the best with the babies. When they’d started to whine for their parents, Rosebud starting the other pair of three-year-olds off, Lnand had sidetracked them by telling stories and making pretend people out of rocks. When they got bored with that, she built a pebble castle for them to smash.

  Gdir appeared. She looked like she’d just come from the baths, her smock and trousers neat, her braids shiny and straight. “Sun is nearly up. It’s time for warm-ups,” she said in that if you-were-a-good-leader-you-would-have-remembered voice.

  Han dug her toes so hard that one foot cramped.

  “After that, what’re we going to do?” Freckles asked, turning to Han.

  Gdir flushed, crossing her arms. She hated it when the others turned to Han.

  “I have a new game,” Han said, though she really hadn’t yet. But she would by the end of breakfast, she vowed to herself. She could make up a new sort of training game, and—

  A sharp boom cracked between the canyon walls. Han scrambled back, followed by Freckles. Gdir recoiled, then lunged forward, peering out.

  “Get back,” Han snapped.

  Gdir ducked, then straighten
ed up in affront. “It’s just thunder,” she snapped back.

  But she knew it wasn’t. They all knew it wasn’t.

  Everyone stayed in the cave that day.

  Gdir was even quiet about the brush, so Han reinforced Gdir’s insistence on everyone getting clean and changing into fresh clothes. They had to renew the water in the bucket between each child, dragging it from the stream. The older girls scrubbed the smalls down, then dunked their old clothes, and spread them on the lip of the cave in the brief sun, which shone hot and still. The smalls ran around happily in their skin, even Rosebud, who seemed better after drinking listerblossom laced with big dollops of honey, and sleeping during the long session of warm-ups and knife drills.

  Just before sunset, when they were eating thick slabs of bread with cheese toasted on it, another of those loud booms echoed up the pass, quicker than the flight of a hawk.

  The smalls ignored it this time, but the older girls exchanged looks. They went on with their games, just as usual. But that night, no one spread bedrolls out to be away from others, they laid their bedrolls side by side, in a clump. All three big girls made certain the smalls were in the middle.

  The smalls had dropped to sleep and the older girls were each drifting on different thoughts when, faint but distinct on the strong wind from the sea, the screams began.

  Chapter Six

  JUST before dawn, Valda reappeared in the archive. This time she held a token flat on her palm. Signi recognized a tracer-token, warded against certain spells that Erkric might perform.

  Valda took in the bookshelves extending in at an angle toward the center, the rolled up bedding on the floor, the shallow dishes neatly stacked on a tiny table by the door. Early as it was, the Marlovans had been up earlier and Signi had already eaten. “If Erkric moves, so will I,” she said, angling one of the chairs so she could see the door as well as the token resting now on her knee.