He wanted nothing more than a warm body to curl around and a day, just one day, to do nothing but sleep. Instead, he was here, playing diplomat to impress not just the Challoners but a shipload of crazy Ysians as well. He wanted his brother married well and safely, and at least Ys was the final nation before the endless western sea, but he didn’t understand these people, with their jawbreaking language, their cryptic and epic poetry, and their heedless pacifism.
Thank Thunder he didn’t have to marry one of them. He’d known Mathilde for years, since he’d been just a border commander from a minor branch of the royal family and she had been his equivalent on the Challoner side of the border. He hadn’t even thought about the throne back then, so it had been a shock when King Snorri announced he was appointing an heir and all his cousins started voting for him.
He and Mathilde would do well together, though. He didn’t really see the need to spend a week sailing around the mountains to prove that the two of them were compatible. They were already friends. Wasn’t that enough for their respective governments?
Clearly not, for here they were, floating too high above the ground in a flimsy bit of wood and sailcloth he was convinced would drop out of the sky at any moment. And that was without the help of his idiotic little brother, whom he’d always thought was far too meek and mild to try crashing an airship.
Of course, Ivarr being Ivarr, he’d managed to find a new friend, one of the ship’s boys by the grease on his face. From a purely brotherly perspective, Sjurd admired Ivarr’s talent for making instant friends from every possible background. He’d love to be that at ease with strangers himself. On a diplomatic mission, however, it had its disadvantages.
“He doesn’t look like a proper prince,” the brat remarked to Hrolf, squinting at Sjurd. “He’s a bit scruffy around the edges.”
Hrolf (and, seriously, he knew they had to bring Ivarr, since he was one of the ones getting engaged, but what idiot on his father’s homestead had decided to send that muttonhead Hrolf, too?) straightened up, still looking green, and said, “You wouldn’t know a proper prince if one punched you in the nose.”
“Probably because punching people in the nose isn’t princely behavior,” the brat retorted, and then smirked at Hrolf. “Although for you, I’d make an exception.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Hrolf retorted and lunged forward.
Sjurd grabbed him by the collar and stretched out the other hand to stop the brat in his tracks. Holding them apart, he roared, “Enough!”
“There’s no need to shout in my ear,” the brat protested.
“Let me go!” Hrolf bellowed, squirming in Sjurd’s hold.
“I will,” Sjurd growled, in his best command voice, “knock your heads together hard enough to leave you both unconscious for the rest of the trip.”
That shut Hrolf up, but the brat still had to say, “You people really are barbarians, aren’t you?”
Mathilde stopped laughing long enough to say reproachfully, “I think you started that one, Cel.”
With a sinking heart, Sjurd took another look at the brat. Grease-smeared and grubby he might be, but his clothes were fine under the muck, the colors deep and the cuffs stiff with embroidery, golden patterns of complex, intertwining knots. He looked like an urchin, his fair hair sticking up in tufts and his ears too big for his face, but he was pink-cheeked and healthy. It was the eyes that gave him away, the same clear pale green as King Pryderi, passed down the royal line of Ys like their high cheekbones and peculiar sense of humor.
Sjurd looked at his brother, who was hanging his head and trying not to meet anyone’s eyes. “This is your fiance?”
“Sjurd,” Mathilde said, laying a hand on his arm. She was still grinning widely, and her eyes were dancing. “This is your future brother, Prince Celyn ap Iorweth of Ys. Celyn, First Prince Sjurd of Axholme.”
“My commiserations, cousin Mathilde,” Prince Brat said, so mildly that it took Sjurd a moment to catch his meaning.
“If he’s going to be my brother, I’m free to hit him, right?” he asked.
“In the nose!” Hrolf contributed enthusiastically, but went quiet again when Sjurd turned his glare that way.
Prince Brat sniffed. “My brothers don’t hit me.”
“It shows,” Sjurd growled, and watched those green eyes go wide.
“Also,” Mathilde said sensibly, “your brothers are six, Cel. Now, leave the poor captain alone, all of you. Get back onto the main deck.”
“Except you,” Sjurd added to Ivarr. “You can go to your cabin and think about how stupid you are.”
“Sorry,” Ivarr said, looking forlorn. Sjurd hardened his heart. In two more years, the boy would be old enough to join a border garrison. If he still had a head full of clouds, he wouldn’t survive his first encounter with a misthound.
“No mine tour, and you’re on dawn watch tomorrow.”
“Sjurd!” Even as a baby, Ivarr had happily slept well into the morning.
“I’m sure this ship has latrines you could scrub as well,” Sjurd added, just to see the indignation on his brother’s face.
Prince Brat chose that moment to share, “I really don’t like him.”
“He grows on you,” Mathilde said.
“Like a fungus?”
Her lips twitched, but she simply said, “I hope you have a change of clothes on board, Celyn. If I were you, I’d change before King Pryderi catches you.”
Prince Brat looked down at his grease-smeared finery and actually blanched. Then he bolted. Ivarr took one more look at Sjurd’s face and went after him, the ever-loyal Hrolf on his heels. Sjurd sighed, and turned to offer his apologies to the captain. Really, keeping track of his own family was hard enough. How did anyone expect him to manage a kingdom?
Well, he thought grimly as he followed Mathilde back to the main deck, they probably didn’t. King Snorri had a good few decades in him yet, and by the time he passed the Empire would be in spitting distance. His blood kin hadn’t chosen him as heir because they thought he’d make a good king. They’d wanted a general.
Mathilde was waiting for him on the main deck. She linked her arm through his with a smile. “He’s a good boy, really, young Celyn. He’s not had an easy life. His mother was captain of the ship the Empire seized a couple of years back.”
“Executed her and the ambassador, didn’t they?” Sjurd asked. He remembered the incident, not least because it had finally brought the Ysians into an alliance with the mainland.
“Celyn’s like her, from the stories I’ve heard. True-hearted. He just hasn’t learned yet when not to talk.”
“You think too well of everyone,” Sjurd grumbled, although it was one of the things he liked about her. She saw things clearly enough, but had a gift for forgiving what Sjurd simply found irritating.
She tucked herself more carefully against his side, discreetly taking some of the weight off his bad leg, and he sighed in relief. She might be wearing all her finery today, but she was almost as battle-hardened as he was, and knew exactly how much he was hurting. She was a strong arm in a fight as well, and he’d happily have her at his back in battle. At least their respective kings had been kind enough to match two friends together. He could have been landed with a far less practical princess. He didn’t have the time or the patience for a great romance, but they respected each other and would live well together. They would have strong children.
Although, of course, their children would need to be strong to survive when the Empire came. At best, the Empire took royal children as hostages. More often the children were enslaved or simply slaughtered.
“Such a grim face,” Mathilde commented.
Sjurd shrugged. “We live in grim times.”
She sighed a little. “But we cannot change that by dwelling on it. I refuse to live an unhappy life, no matter what is coming. If we face our fate with honor and courage, we have done enough. I will not let them make me sad as well. So, look.” She waved a hand at the view. “Di
d you ever see something so lovely?”
The morning sun was catching on the mist below, washing it with gold. The swelling sails above them caught the light as well, their white cloth shining brightly. The sky around them was so clear a blue that Sjurd was surprised they could breathe the air without tasting it, and the wind was cool, crisp and fresh on his cheek.
The mountains were a very long way down.
“Just how high up do you think we are?” he asked Mathilde, trying to keep his voice light.
She wasn’t fooled. “You, afraid of heights? I thought you were supposed to be fearless.”
“Heights are not a problem,” he protested. He was fine on even the highest mountain. He just didn’t care for having nothing more than a flimsy bit of wood between him and open air.
Mathilde continued to tease him, and he grumbled at her and watched the sails rather than the valleys, but her company and the bright sun were slowly relieving the tension in his shoulders. He felt a long way from the world, and he wondered if this was what made the Ysians pacifists. It was hard to imagine the dank shadows of a morning ambush when you were fluttering along like a mildly purposeful cloud.
Then the ship lurched suddenly beneath them, and he grabbed Mathilde’s arm a little tighter than he’d meant to and, to his embarrassment, squeaked, “What was that?”
She didn’t call him out on it, bless her kind heart, but just said soothingly, “A contrary wind, perhaps.”
Then it happened again, the ship tipping slightly to the side before it righted itself with a hard jerk. Sjurd locked one arm around the rail and the other around Mathilde, and looked around for someone who could tell them what in the name of Thunder was going on.
The brat prince was racing up the deck towards them. Sjurd let go of Mathilde to grab him and demand, “What’s happening?”
“Let go of me!” the brat yelped. “The ship’s in trouble and I need to help!”
“You’re not a sailor,” Mathilde said. “Let them do their job.”
“In an emergency, everyone helps!” the brat stated indignantly.
Sjurd cut across him. “What do you mean, in trouble?” His voice came out harsher than he’d intended, and he swallowed hard. Dying in battle, fine. Falling out of the sky to be smeared across the rocks below like jellied prince, no, no, no. The ship jerked again, and he dug his fingers into the brat’s shoulder, fighting back panic.
“There’s no need to leave bruises,” the brat complained, as if he wasn’t the least bit concerned by their imminent and violent deaths. “The ship’s not supposed to do this. She’s only three years old, and the virtue shouldn’t have gone out of her wood yet.”
“Yet?” Sjurd repeated.
“All ships drop in the end,” the brat said philosophically. “Such is life.”
“This has happened before?” Sjurd demanded. “And you people still let us board this thing?”
That, finally, riled the brat. “Llinos is not a thing. She’s a lady. And for your information, it takes centuries, and there are plenty of warning signs, and only an idiot would sail on a ship that was close to her final voyage. Now, let me go.”
“Not until you tell me what’s wrong with this ship,” Sjurd demanded, as it bucked again. His stomach rose, and he swallowed hard. Men were clearly not supposed to fly.
It was Mathilde who answered that question, though, probably because she was the only one of the three of them still scanning the valley below. Raising her arm, she pointed into the mist below and yelled, “Hound!”
Her voice belled out across the creaking tumult on deck, and Sjurd saw every one of his people and hers go tense, even as the Ysians looked confused.
Following her pointing arm, he saw the shadow in the mist: a dark green smoky haze rising out of the silver veil that hung across the forest, the unmistakable sign of a misthound crouched on the ground below, its bony jaws open and its miasma billowing out.
He turned back to the brat, his head clearing now he knew the cause of all this. “Tell the captain to swing away from that and make landing at the next guard tower.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s a misthound,” Mathilde said grimly, already reaching to twist her loose hair up out of her face into something more suited for battle. “They eat magic.”
Sjurd was already striding towards his cabin, whistling his guard close. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the boy head for the quarterdeck again, Mathilde close on his heels. Good. She could explain it to the Ysians while he decided who to pull from the honor guard to deal with this. Let her explain how the misthounds consumed and held every scrap of magic they encountered, and how the Empire trained them to bring it back to their masters to be siphoned into Imperial caches. There was no free magic in the Empire— no ogres, but no healing simples or flying ships, either. All magic belonged to the Emperor, and was allocated out to his favorites as he decreed. Mathilde knew as well as he did that the Empire’s first move against its conquests was to send the misthounds into their territory to consume any hint of magic. They excused it with mealy-mouthed stories about wild beasts and natural migrations, but Sjurd knew the difference between a wild dog and a trained hound as well as anyone.
When their hounds had sucked the soul from a land, their mage cohorts came next, the Emperor’s puppets hanging off the strings of power he fed them. In the wake of their destruction, the legions marched, ready to garrison every town and offer the terrorized people the “mercy” of Imperial law and order.
Every year, he fought more hounds, and still they came slinking over the borders and settling into lonely places to breed more young.
Before long, they were anchoring off the top of a solid stone guard tower, causing much excitement among the resident guards, most of whom came rushing out to gawk at the rare sight of an Ysian ship this far inland. The sailors let down a rope ladder, and Sjurd scrambled down as fast as he dared, calling for the post’s commander.
He was not much more than a boy, seventeen at most, but he met Sjurd’s greeting with a sharp salute and a steady gaze.
“Misthound,” Sjurd said curtly. “League and a half, south-southwest.”
The boy’s shoulders sagged a little, but he simply said, “I’ve got five men injured, but we’ve got horses and weapons, and the other nine are fit to ride.”
“What happened?” Mathilde demanded over Sjurd’s shoulder, and he saw the moment when the boy looked at her properly and, as most of them did, lost his heart. For the first time, he stuttered, “Er, six hounds in the last week, ma’am. We’ve sent for reinforcements, but…”
“We’ll ride with you,” Sjurd said, cutting him off. He trusted Mathilde, but she was still the representative of a foreign government and didn’t need to know about the increasing strain on their supply lines.
When he and Mathilde rode out, bows and modified boar spears slung from their saddles, he glanced up at the ship as they rode below its shadow. Ivarr and Hrolf were hanging over the rail, and they both saluted as he rode by, but it was the brat prince who caught his eye. He was watching very solemnly, the sun shining in his pale hair, and he waved awkwardly to Mathilde, a little too late.
He looked afraid, and Sjurd could think of nothing that would comfort him.
In Heaven and Earth Page 15
