King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “No. They all expect to be commanded,” is what I said.

  “Who can I send to the top of the pass to charge the enemy and bring ’em all behind him?”

  “Cama,” I said, surprised he even asked.

  But then I was more surprised when he waved me off for making a foolish error. “Hawkeye has to be one, and even I can see he doesn’t like Cama. It seems to have to do with the past. He wouldn’t—it’s not enough to—oh, what about Cherry-Stripe?”

  “He doesn’t think you can do it,” I said, trying to be offhand. Also, trying not to show how very strange it was to be included even at a remove in what in any other history would be called the Council of the Great, and Jeje, if that doesn’t provoke you to answer me, even if it’s a long curse against the pretences of kings if not my own pretensions, I don’t know what will.

  So Inda looks up, and snorts, just like the old days, and drums (we never knew his finger tapping was drumming, did we?) and says, “I saw that.”

  “The one you can probably rely on is Noddy. He’s like a rock, that one. I keep forgetting he’s only a year or two older than you, he seems like he’s your uncle.”

  “He was always that way, even when he was twelve. Main thing is, I think Hawkeye likes him, so they’ll work together. Good.”

  And out he shot. Will my advice net me a reward or a knife in the back? Not a dukedom, sadly, for they have no dukes here.

  Having finished dispatching a meal to the dag imprisoned up in the archive and orders for new quarters in the city, Evred went hunting for Inda.

  He strictly controlled his impatience at the crowds everywhere: they all had things to do but not enough space to do them in.

  After a thoughtful glance at his face, Kened shoved unceremoniously ahead, elbowing aside Runners, Runners’ aides, stable hands, horses and men moving this way and that, a few boys dashing between them, most laughing.

  The startled glances sent Evred’s way would have amused him at any other time, especially one without the prospect of a battle pressing against his skull in the form of constant headache.

  A brown, unruly horsetail was surrounded by taller heads, mostly blond. Was that Inda? Yes. Inda bounced on his toes, his eyes briefly appearing above the press in the court as far too many people tried to shoulder their way to their particular task.

  “It’s as ready as it ever will be,” Inda called to Evred as they worked their way toward one another, and when Evred cupped his hand to his ear, repeated it louder.

  Exasperated beyond endurance, Evred made a rare, flat-handed swipe, and Kened signaled to the duty guards to clear enough space for them to go inside.

  “What did you say?”

  “Remind me about the rings.” Inda poked his finger under the owl clasp and rubbed his scalp vigorously, making a face. “The parley room is ready for tomorrow. We’ve got the ruse all laid along. But Sponge, I need another look at that map—”

  Inda’s big, scarred hands rubbed over his face, his eyes blanked as once again his thoughts turned inward, and Evred said shortly, “Let’s go upstairs.”

  They ran up the stairs to the top floor of the east tower. Now the clamor was just a low, steady rumble far below.

  Then Inda whirled around, his coat skirt flaring, and dropped onto the top step at the landing, head in his hands.

  Below the open window an entire wing of men shouted in cadence; from behind them the rumble of laden wagons smothered the clatter of iron-shod horse hooves against stone. Evred moved across the landing and pulled the heavy shutters closed.

  Inda rocked back and forth, his unruly hair as always escaping from his horsetail in wild curling strands. Evred stared down at a lock caught in the glittering ruby dangling against Inda’s scar-slashed cheek, was overwhelmed by a skin-prickling onslaught of affection. So intense and so unfamiliar an emotion had an unsettling, vertiginous effect on his perceptions; the inexorable pressure of imminent battle fractured his habitual control. Words were so difficult, and usually so was gesture—even proximity, but now—

  Inda. Loyal Inda. Everything Evred asked Inda granted, with the unthinking generosity of the ten-year-old he’d once been.

  Evred stretched out his hand, fingers open, and just touched the sweat-damp, tousled top of Inda’s head.

  The gesture partook more of the warmth of affection than the heat of desire, but desire there was, there always was.

  Affection and desire snuffed when Inda jerked upright, his face hardened into a killing glare all the more shocking because Evred had, as yet, never seen him in battle.

  Just for a moment, then it was gone, but the deep, uncontrollable recoil forced Inda to his feet, color flooding his face.

  He said to the ceiling, “Chart.”

  Then he whirled and sprinted to the office, trying to outrun that stomach-churning nausea, a visceral reaction from the days he lay under Wafri’s stroking hands after torture.

  Inda thumped against the map table, and threw his arms wide, as though flinging away the sensation brought by memory. Wafri is not here. It was probably a spider, or the edge of his coat.

  He fought to shed the unwanted memory of Wafri’s twisted passions, and to reclaim the insight that had eluded him for weeks. “That’s it. That’s it. I knew it would come to me, I just had to have quiet. Sponge! Look!”

  He pointed down at the map. Inda slapped the back of his fingers against the carefully detailed top of the pass. “What do you see?”

  They’d mulled over the map at least twice since their arrival, but Evred said in a voice devoid of any emotion, “Sheer cliffs at either side. Above the cliffs, the lakes on one side, and on the other, the source of the Andahi River.”

  “Exactly.” Inda breathed hard. “Evred, that’s the mistake we’ve all been making, and I knew better. I knew better, which was why I was thinking of charts: on land, water’s a barrier. In the sea, it’s your access. It’s land that’s the barrier.”

  “And so?”

  “Don’t you see? Talkar, their Hilda commander, is a land warrior. He’s going to think the same thing!”

  “But the sea commander won’t.”

  “But he’s not in their plans! They operate separately. Oh, Sponge. That’s it. People move faster on water than on land, it’s a conduit. We can use the lake on this side, at least, to get people to the top of the pass. That gives us a chance to attack from an angle and take them by surprise. If only we could get to the river on the other side, we could come at ’em from three sides, but no use in even thinking about it. From the looks of these drawings, it would take half a year to get men up those mountains. But this side? The lakes are long enough . . . looks like a few days of hard travel, and . . . Let’s get the others.” And he sprang to the door, yelling, “Vedrid!”

  The Runner appeared at the other end of the office, pale head highlighted against the gray wall.

  Inda said, “Grab Barend and the Tveis. Tau, too,” he added, whirled back and danced about the room. “That’s it, that’s it, that’s it!”

  Inda thumped his fist on the map, spun around again, thumping the walls, the door, the windowsill, the table, the chair backs, walking and talking and striking and looking anywhere but at Evred’s face. “I wish I could ask Signi, but it’s one thing to ask about the people, and another to ask her about war plans. She has to know some of them, doesn’t she? No, can’t make her do that—not fair—and anyway I will wager anything Talkar would never think to send a force up and across the lake. I know it.”

  Whirl, pound. “Is she liking it up there in that library of yours? I didn’t get a chance to go up there last night, and this morning Vedrid woke me up for the—you did see her, didn’t you?” And inwardly, It was a spider. Wafri is gone.

  “I had breakfast sent up to Dag Signi,” Evred said neutrally. Was the introduction of Dag Signi calculating or instinctive? But Inda had never been calculating in human relations.

  Inda thumped a chair back with both fists, staring at the map, but sightlessly
this time, and then he smiled, but for the very first time it was not the old unselfconscious wide brown-eyed gaze, the candid smile of childhood. It was the quick, slightly anxious smile that people gave Evred because he was the king. Sometimes anxious, sometimes cunning.

  No, he must not permit himself to think like that. It was too much like his uncle, this immediate fear of conspiracy, so immediate that it would be far too easy for fears to take on a semblance of reality, the conviction driven by just how much he would hate it. Face the truth. Inda did not react with calculation, it was disgust. No, it was revulsion.

  Inda was away again, prowling the room. “Truth is, I don’t want Signi to find out how ignorant I am.”

  Evred snorted. “You were never ignorant.”

  “No,” Inda agreed. “I wasn’t. When I was eleven. But—I thought about this yesterday morning—I don’t think I’ve read a book since. I think I’ve forgotten all the Old Sartoran letters, except the ones in my name.”

  Whirl, thump thump thump.

  “The forbidden language.” Evred looked away from Inda’s scarred hands resting on the map to the latent strength in his arms straining against the coat sleeves. And away to the window. “I saw the note you wrote to Ryala Pim when you repaid her for her fleet: the Old Sartoran was quite clear.” He did not add that he had recovered that note from the Pims, and had it still, kept in a box on the mantelpiece in his bedchamber at home.

  Inda flung his hands wide. “Alphabet, yes. I can do my name, like I said. I can even sound out a few words. What I missed the most when they first put me to sea—besides home—was reading. But then I got over the habit.”

  Voices echoed up the stairwell. The moment of privacy was nearly gone, maybe lost forever. Touch was denied Evred; he had to make certain he had not lost the little of Inda he did have. “I’ve been reading the private records of kings, when I can,” he said, hearing the falsity, the calculation, in his own attempt at lightness. “I’ll show you one day. You would never believe why my revered ancestor Anderle Montrei-Vayir never wore a crown, though we took everything else from Iascan custom.”

  Inda looked up, and there was the old wide-open curiosity, the grin of anticipated humor. No revulsion, better, no awkward consciousness.

  “He had one made, but it kept slipping over his ears, bending them. Once someone laughed.”

  Inda snorted. “He didn’t have the wit to have it fixed?”

  “They’re metal. You either make it so tight it won’t fall, then it hurts, he said, or it’s so loose your ears dog down. You can’t line it, like armor, it looked ridiculous. So it was either kill everyone or chuck the crown.”

  Inda was laughing as Cherry-Stripe charged through the door. The others almost trod on his heels, and the room filled with the smell of damp wool as Cama growled, “Damn rain!”

  Cherry-Stripe demanded, “What’s the joke?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but flipped up the back of his hand toward the sky. “Rain holds off all summer while we’re sweating up the road, and now the horses are penned up eating their heads off. They’ll be bellyaching just in time for us to ride to war.”

  “Muck our way chest-deep through mud to war, more like,” Rat said as he flung the casement wide. “Phew, it’s like a sweat-box in here.”

  A gust of wind returned a hissing spray of rain; papers circled like mad white bats and the map rattled on the table. Everyone cursed Rat, who hastily slammed the casement shut again.

  Hawkeye, coming in last, contemplated Vedrid’s Runner-exact rendering of Inda’s order: Grab Barend and the Tveis . . . There had been no sign of collusion to take away his command, just the unthinking comradeship of the academy—the way Hawkeye had felt about Jasid Tlen and Cassad Ain and Buck Marlo-Vayir, and about Manther Jaya-Vayir and Tanrid Algara-Vayir before they died.

  Sure enough, Inda’s gaze slid right past him. He had not been excluded, he’d been forgotten. Inda, after all, did not know Hawkeye, had never known him.

  Hawkeye backed up against the wall as the others closed up around the table, and at a sign from Evred, Inda said, “Hawkeye and Noddy, you’ll be in command going up the pass. But we’re going to split our force.”

  Relief washed through Hawkeye. His cousin had been more than fair. He would command the lead force, as was right. And though one of the Sier Danas was also being sent, at least it was Noddy Turtle Toraca, who wasn’t on the strut like Buck’s and Horsebutt’s scrubby brothers.

  “Split?” Cama repeated. “You sure that’s wise?”

  “Look. You tell me,” Inda replied, and explained his observation again, gesturing along the pass.

  All of them comprehended the shift in perspective from land to sea once it was explained. It was simple enough, but you had to see water as a conduit, and not a barrier.

  “So here’s the basic plan. Charging is our strength, with speed and fast maneuvers. Speed and maneuvering is going to be about as useful as shit in shoes.” Inda thumped the pass on the map. “With these cliffs on either side, what we need is heavy and steady. Dragoon lancers in front. As heavy and solid as you can get, instead of fast, because I think it’s going to be their heaviest foot against you.”

  “You changed your mind about them being mounted?” Cama asked in surprise.

  “Don’t know.” Inda thumped the map. “I still think a lot depends on how many horses they brought. And on how good they feel about their fighting skills on horseback. But now, after seeing the map, and those mountains, I’m thinking they’re going to hate those sheer walls as much as we do. When I saw them drilling with horses, it was out on the plains of Ymar.”

  “Why don’t they have enough horses?” Cherry-Stripe asked. “I thought they had everything.”

  “Everything you can pack into ships,” Barend reminded him. This was not a new topic, but it was the first time Cherry-Stripe was paying attention. “Can’t bring enough horses and enough men. If every man needs one horse and at least one remount, where do you put ’em in the ship?”

  “On the pole things, of course.” Cherry-Stripe cackled at his own wit. Then sighed when no one else laughed.

  Inda said, “Next year will probably be different because they’ll expect to face us on our plains. So back to the pass. They might have some chargers in front, but I’ll bet Talkar will trust his heavy marchers, the ones I watched in Ymar.” And to Cherry-Stripe, with faint emphasis, “Their shields are these big, heavy curved rectangles, much heavier than their round ones. They can either aim ’em forward or lift ’em high on command. But they can’t aim ’em in both directions at once.”

  Cherry-Stripe was careless, but not stupid. He grimaced. “I did hear you say that much, when we were sweating on the road north.”

  Inda turned his gaze on the rest. “That’s why I want archers up on the heights. So you, Cama, and you, Cherry-Stripe, are going to take your sharpest archers up there.”

  “No horses? Just bows?” Cama asked doubtfully. “What if we can’t get up there in time? Then we’re useless.”

  “That’s why you leave now. Cross that string of lakes, which puts you almost at the top of the pass. Sit tight until we come, because that’s our first line of defense. If we can push on down the pass toward Idayago without meeting the Venn, then you get back to the lake and go north—see, there’s an old mountain path more or less parallel to the pass—and meet us again at Castle Andahi. You’re our secondary force, our surprise. If we could only get at ’em from this side, we’d have a great plan: attack from the front, flanking support from the heights at either side. As it is, we’ll have one side.”

  Cama’s jaw tightened. “I’ll copy the map soon’s we’re done talking. We’ll be out of here tonight. But how much of our arrow cache do we take?”

  “As much as you can carry. Don’t worry about us. This morning the Randviar showed me the cache she’s had the women making ever since Evred sent the word north to get ready for the invasion. She says every Marlovan family donated wooden furniture to be cut up for arro
w shafts. So we’ve got that in addition to everything we brought.”

  He paused as the others made appreciative noises.

  Noddy rubbed his ear. “Since you won’t be able to ride up those trails, that means no saddlebags.”

  “We’ll wear our fighting clothes.” Cama shrugged. “More space in the packs for arrows.”

  “They’re gonna smell us clear up the pass.” Cherry-Stripe cackled again.

  “No they won’t,” Noddy said, wooden-faced as always. “There’s thousands of ’em bringing their own stink.”

  “Knocking the trees flat.” Cherry-Stripe hooted.

  “We’ll pick up scatter-wood and feathers on the way.” Cama squinted down at the stylized forest symbols on the map. “Make more when we camp.”

  Cherry-Stripe had also been studying the map. “I see how we’re reinforcing Noddy, but all these wiggly lines mean canyons, right? With mountains between.” He jerked his thumb downward. “How can we possibly coordinate an attack like that, when we’ll be sweating up some mountain top and they’ll be in the pass? I can’t believe whirtlers or signal flags are going to work.”

  Inda faced Evred across the table. “Sponge?”

  Evred endured another inward struggle. This subject of the magic cases was not new. He’d decided against trusting them, a decision reinforced when the lockets had abruptly ceased to function.

  Inda waited. They all waited.

  Evred knew he was going to give in, though he distrusted magic, Venn, and golden cases whose origins were obscure. The truth was, until the Marlovans had their own mage, he would never know if what appeared to be a distinct military advantage was just a magical trap. And even a Venn mage could have his own goals.

  Just like Dag Erkric was closing his grip on Prince Rajnir of the Venn, by using magic.

  Hatred burned through Evred. He loathed depending on something he could not control. “If we agree on a code.”

  Inda’s smile was his quick, unguarded, real one. He snapped his fingers. “Good idea.” He remembered Fox saying just before they’d faced Marshig, Codes are fun, but the first thing you forget in action, unless it’s drilled into second nature. “But it’s got to be simple.” He dug into his inner coat pocket, pulled out a golden case, and dropped it onto the table, where it gleamed with rich highlights. “You’re each going to have one of these.”