King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Her eyes were red and puffy, her nose glowing. The surge of compassion was acute enough to make him forget the war: so had she looked all those years ago when she discovered that she was not in the final choice for Hel Dancer. He opened his arms, she walked into them, her small, strong arms wrapping around his waist, her chin knocking against his armor, which made her chuckle tearily. He pressed her against him, one hand cupping the back of her head the way he’d done so many years ago.

  The hug, brief as it was, restored warmth, reassurance. Sanity.

  But sanity brings one back to question.

  “You came to witness the fighting?” she asked, wiping her eyes with a freckled wrist as she backed away.

  “Yes.” The grooves in his face deepened.

  He snapped out his field glass as he walked to the rail and peered down the road toward the harbor. The swarm on the distant hill, the tiny glints and winks of sunlight, became a galloping force shockingly besplattered with gore, the shards reflecting the new sun off naked weapons, helms, armor.

  Signi sensed in the tightness of his grip on the glass, the rigidity to his shoulders that he was deeply disturbed.

  Valda gripped her elbows, her inward senses blinded by auroral glare around the Golden Tree. She had not planned this meeting, yet now it seemed important for the three of them to be there.

  Erkric had worked hard to isolate dags from the military, and the military branches from one another just as he’d isolated the sea dags from the Yaga Krona.

  “You must watch,” she said to Durasnir. “But we must talk as well. Did Erkric leave word of his whereabouts with any of your military people?”

  Durasnir’s brow contracted. “No. I thought all dags were enjoined to make their whereabouts known to one another, if not to us.”

  “We have to.” Signi emphasized the “we” but with a faint irony that underscored the fact that she had been missing since winter as far as her own people knew.

  “He ordered us to submit to tracers, in fact,” said Valda. “He claimed it was for our own safety, after Signi vanished. That’s why I had to vanish.”

  In the distance, a signal horn bawled, a hoarse, mournful note, followed by a couple of short blats. The Venn reformed into rough columns; some had not mastered the horses. On one of the lower hills in the distance, the glint and wink of sun on armor was just visible to the unaided eye.

  “So you believe he uses the homeland as an excuse to cover his movements?” Signi asked.

  “I did.” Valda watched the Venn riders lurch toward the city gates below. The Marlovan women crouched behind the battlements on the walls below the tower, bows taut, cut-down barrels of arrows ready. Unaware of the three Venn above them. “Now I am afraid if he does go back.”

  “Afraid?” Durasnir repeated.

  Another blat from the long, curled brass horn caused the mounted troop to rein to a ragged halt. Many of the horses jigged and backed, ears flat, heads plunging to protest riders who smelled like human blood, who sat wrong, held the reins wrong, moved wrong.

  “So you too suspect something . . .” Too many years of careful silence made the words almost impossible to say to anyone outside her circle. “Something to do with the king?”

  At the command, a Venn war party rode through the gates below, weapons gripped at the ready. The horses had bunched together, their ears forward: they smelled home.

  Outside the gates the main advance guard milled in bad formation as they struggled with the horses and waited for the warriors on foot to catch up. Looked like there’d be no more horses. To Signi their jerky gestures and sharp-angled postures signified murderous tempers.

  The commander made a gesture. One of the horsemen raised a fire arrow, aimed it at the crimson-and-gold banner over the gate. A shout went up from the men.

  The city streets were empty, the shops closed, doors locked, windows shuttered despite the heat. It seemed no Marlovans were present to see their banner burn, but everyone knew that was false.

  As the banner was consumed by pale flames, the men of the foray party moved slowly into the first courtyard of the castle, and finding it empty, to the second.

  The women on the castle walls waited, still as death.

  At the gate, the Montrei-Vayir banner dropped to the stones, smoldering. This time the Marlovans could hear the word their enemy shouted: “Ydrasal!”

  The foray party passed directly beneath the tower, helms bobbing with the rhythm of the horse hooves’ sharp, distinct clop. Mail jingled as the first foray party passed through the stable yard, out of sight.

  A second foray party was motioned inside. They rode up the main street into the city.

  Durasnir endured the wind-twist of inner conflict. Honor required he state one truth, the most fundamental. “You and Signi have betrayed our vows to the prince.”

  Signi stiffened. Valda half raised a hand. “Is he the prince we swore to?”

  “Can you prove otherwise?” Durasnir retorted. “I can’t.”

  “Neither can I,” Valda said. “But if you had not doubts you would not be here. Yes?”

  The hissing, humming zip of arrows echoed up from the interlocked stone canyons somewhere below. In two strides Durasnir reached the opposite rail, glass to his eye. Valda backed away, hands upraised, palms out, an instinctive gesture.

  Signi herself had backed away from a horror she could not prevent.

  Trained to locate and assess such noises, Durasnir could do nothing here, but old habit guides the nerves and muscles faster than the brain. He turned away from the rail almost as swiftly as he’d reached it.

  A third party and then a fourth were sent in, each to scout a different quadrant.

  Bone-deep pain wrenched Signi.

  The work of war went on. Gently guided by their silent surroundings, the cautious Venn forays rode straight into traps. On signal each hidden shooter took aim and killed a chosen target. The horses found themselves taken by new humans, but these ones had the right hand-talk, the right smell. The animals went peaceably to the nearly empty castle stable.

  Above, the three watchers struggled with the question that threatened to bring down the Venn way of life. Was it right to swear unquestioning obedience to another human being? Could any one person truly embody Ydrasal?

  A short series of blats from the army at the gate pulled the waiting Venn riders back into a rough line, heads turned toward their chief, who stayed apart as he dictated a message to his ensign.

  The ensign sent his message.

  In the pass just days from the highest point, Hilda Commander Talkar read the message his signal ensign had just handed him.

  He read it again, then gestured to his nearest captain. He held out a tiny strip of paper, already damp from the dreary weather, the letters running into a smear. “From Acting Battle Chief Vringir. Battle Chief Hrad died at the landing. They’re at the gates of Ala Larkadhe. Four scouting forays went in, have not come out. No signals. The city looks empty from the outside.”

  “That city doesn’t completely block the pass at that end.” The captain had known Talkar for years. He stated the obvious to focus their thinking. “We could narrow up, ride along the river into the pass. Circle around the city completely.”

  That’s what Talkar had been considering. But what about the scant numbers of Marlovans reported at the landing? “The enemy’s entire army must be in there, waiting to strike us in the back,” Talkar said.

  The captain gave a short nod of conviction. “Soon as Vringir starts up the pass.”

  Talkar’s rage was cold as the rain, deep as the abyss. Hrad had fought beside him for years. Talkar had trained those men killed at dawn, he knew most of their names. I hope you are hiding in that city, Indevan Flame-Ship, he thought. See how you like your famous pirate tactics.

  He waved to his message ensign and said, “Tell Battle Chief Vringir to burn Ala-Larkadhe to the ground.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  INDA shifted his gaze ceaselessly from the ri
ver water to either bank. He was in the lead now, Tau having hauled over when they spotted their missing man clinging in a blue-handed death grip to a low-growing tree branch. Tau’s canoe group had swerved with him, the white-knuckled steersmen determined not to vary from what Tau did by a finger’s breadth.

  Inda had thrown his entire body into the stroke, shooting them past Tau’s canoes no more than an arm’s reach away. He feared they’d come too far, and strained to hear the boom of a waterfall over the roar and rush of the river. The canoe shot over water-smoothed stones, plunging down into rushing foam. Then they raced around a massive upthrust of striated rock—and straight ahead a tall carved stone stood up above the river’s bank.

  “Marker!” Five of the men raised their paddles.

  “Stroke!” Inda bellowed, wrenching the boat over as it began to drift.

  Hastily the men resumed paddling, using such vigor they veered sharply and plowed up onto the steep riverbank. Rocks ripped holes in the wood-and-canvas sides and the nose came to rest in a holly shrub, but no one cared.

  They picked the gear out, shaking and wringing out the excess water. The men they’d rescued stripped, shivering violently, and wrung out their clothes.

  “Spread ’em on the rocks,” Inda said. “We’ll eat and then start down.” He jerked a thumb at the plinth, which Evred was climbing up to inspect more closely.

  The rescued men warmed up in the sun and their clothes baked dry on the rocks. A short time later Tau’s boat appeared. Leaning into the paddle from the hip, he brought the canoe smartly up onto the riverbank.

  The men leaped out, sorting gear and themselves. By then someone had started a campfire, prompting men from each riding to plunge into the water and hand catch swimming trout. Others broke apart the canoes so they could use the wood and canvas; trout were sizzling on former canoe ribs as Evred skidded down the hillock from the plinth.

  “The carving on that thing is worn but readable,” he said. “I don’t recognize two of the alphabets. The third is Sartoran.”

  “Ancient or modern?” Inda asked, swinging and stretching his legs.

  “Modern. I don’t think the marker is that old.” Evred accepted his share of the food.

  “Might have been replaced.” Inda waved his bread in a circle. “I’m going to take a look around.”

  Behind the plinth lay a clearing circled by mossy boulders that looked like they’d been set before Iasca Leror was named. The trail began at the far end, lined by melon-sized stones.

  Inda wandered barefoot a way down the trail, wincing when he stepped on small rocks. Only a few months wearing boots and the bottoms of his feet were already losing their toughness from the years of shipboard life. He grimaced, bending to examine the trail. It was packed hard, scoured low along the center in the way of trails used for centuries.

  He straightened up, unlimbering his glass, and swept it over the mountains. No sign of villages, but they had to be out there.

  When he reached the riverbank again, everyone was dressed and the gear had been redivided, accompanied by some not-so-soft muttering about having to share arrows with idiots who lost their packs. Most of the men had shoved a sock into each toe of their boots.

  Inda dropped onto a boulder and fingered some damp paper from his pocket. He uncapped the travel pen from the ink nub, wrote, Where are you and Cama?, put it into the gold leaf-etched case, and sent it to Cherry-Stripe.

  The answer came back before Inda had counted nine nines.

  We’re on the way down. We found each other on opposite sides of the lake. Cama’s boys are force-marching on the north side of the lake, us on the south. Villagers say we’ll come out on either side of the high point of the pass.

  Evred said, “How long would you guess they are from the pass?”

  Inda shut his eyes, mentally considering the map, and its drawings of the pass and the lakes relative to Ala Larkadhe. He still did not really have a sense of land travel, especially in mountains. “Three days?” He slapped his side and exclaimed, “Another!”

  He opened the case, took out a badly crumpled paper. Evred recognized Barend’s large, backhand scrawl, and his breath tightened in his chest.

  “Venn outnumbered us too bad, and broke through.” Inda’s voice roughened as he gave Evred the details. “They started killing us to take horses, but Buck pulled our people out. Venn’re on the way to Ala Larkadhe.”

  Evred’s heart hammered against his ribs. “Send Buck to harry their back.”

  “Later. Not enough of us to make a difference, so let’s protect Lindeth. Venn’re going to want to bring those ships in, soon as they hold Ala Larkadhe. We might have a chance there. Barend knows some good pirate tricks.”

  Evred’s throat was tight; he was too angry about the defeat to speak. He turned his thumb up.

  Inda wrote and sent the command.

  When the last of the Venn invasion reached their advance force outside of Ala Larkadhe’s city gates, the horns moaned and blared, bringing the Hilda’s southern invasion force into squares. They sat in place to eat and drink. Ensigns and their own orderlies passed around water from the stream alongside the road, and then waybread stuffed with dried and salted fish.

  As they wolfed down their meal, Acting Battle Chief Vringir’s ensigns walked among them speaking orders.

  Signi, Valda, and Durasnir watched from the tower.

  Durasnir observed the issuing of small bundles that surely were sticks and leddas oil soaked hemp: torches. Valda watched the commander gesturing toward various parts of the city as he talked to a group of armor chiefs. The way his hand chopped the air, he seemed to be dividing the city.

  Signi went cold when she observed the subtle signs of battle-experienced men reacting in surprise, even shock.

  Then a long blat brought the men to their feet and into line. War bands were ordered to mount up and trot into position outside the city walls. Others took up a stance blocking the city gates.

  The rest formed up into offensive squares—helms on, shields up edge to edge, swords at the ready—and marched inside the city, each to a specific area.

  One man per party passed by the armor chief’s fire keeper to light his torch; the rest of fire teams carried the entire army’s supply of leddas oil until the ships could offload the barrels down in the hold.

  Valda exclaimed, “They are going to fire the city!”

  Signi turned on Durasnir. “There is nothing but women and children and old people in this city.”

  From each square’s torch man thin drifts of smoke reaching lazily skyward on the heavy summer air.

  “If there is nothing in this city but women and children, it was women and children who killed the scouting parties,” he returned. At the rejection in her face he said quickly, “I hate it as much as you do. But I cannot interfere. This is Talkar’s battle to command. Vringir down there has his orders.”

  Valda pressed her hands to her face. “He must think the city is full of warriors.”

  “It is,” Durasnir said.

  “No it is not,” Signi exclaimed. “I have been here several days. I spent all of yesterday down in the caverns where the water flows from beneath the mountains. They have the baths there for city and castle. I was renewing the spells, and saw everyone who came to bathe. The men are all gone, except for a few wounded, leaving boys ten and under, or men over sixty.” She opened her hands in supplication as she faced Durasnir. “Can you not tell Hilda Commander Talkar?”

  “No.” His voice was gentle, but decisive.

  “No,” Valda said at the same time. Her eyes were full of tears, her face distraught as she added, “Fulla is not supposed to be here, do you not remember? Or you, or I.”

  “It wouldn’t matter even so,” Durasnir said. “In his eyes, the killing of our scouts means the inhabitants are warriors.”

  Signi remembered the armed women in the Marlovan royal city. Hadand and Tdor, so quiet and reasonable and kind—and every time they moved, there was the glint of p
olished hilts inside the gap in their sleeves, the glimpses of knife hilts in their boot tops when their voluminous trousers swung at their long strides.

  It was true. The Marlovan women were warriors. Maybe two or three hundred of them, and easily ten times that slowly assembling around the city in a circle, so that no one would escape alive, but the fact was inescapable.

  As if someone below had heard her thoughts, an eerie noise whirtled through the air. Heads snapped skyward.

  The Marlovan women on the walls knelt on the sentry walks between the battlements, testing bow strings, pulling arrows close. The woman almost directly below Signi had an untidy gray braid. Her gnarled first and second fingers trembled as she expertly nipped the feathers of her arrows between them.

  When the war parties had marched within arrow shot of the defenders on the walls, two more screamer arrows arced over the city.

  Drilled and smooth, the women jumped up and took aim. Zzzzip! Sssst! With smooth, rapid, and deliberate skill they began shooting at the invaders.

  Arrows clacked against upraised shields.

  The Venn angled their shields high as they walked in cadence down the street toward the old, carving-decorated guild house on the opposite side of a broad square from the western castle entrance. The Venn crossed the square at a run, and spread efficiently out. The ones on the outside shielded the ones who smashed windows with rocks. The next two slung dippers of oil through the jagged gaps, followed by twists of straw touched to torches. On to the next window.

  The shields could not ward efficiently against trained archers when the men were in violent motion: arrows hit two men as they reared back to fling the oil. They crumpled, and were promptly replaced.

  A short blat from the Venn signal man and the back rows of each square raised bows, took aim at the bobbing figures on the walls. Arrows hissed and clattered in both directions now.

  An arrow thunked into the woman directly below Signi, twisting her around like a cloth doll. She fell onto the safety walk, where she writhed at the feet of a young woman loosing arrow after arrow. The shooter glanced down once, face white and blanched, then she bared her teeth and kept shooting as fast as she could.