Lens of the World

by R. A. MacAvoy

  King Rudof was putting his jacket over his shoulders. It was very closely fitted. Civilian clothes. “Not ‘sire.’ I am not my father, to find such a term pleasing, and the only one with a right to call me ‘sire’ is an infant too young to talk. Of course preparedness is what the lad wants, after running all night to warn us. It’s what I want, too. There can be no harm in preparing. Or do you mean us to sit tight until scouts can locate these pony-riding assassins for us? You are too careful of me, old friend.”

  The field marshal did not look away from me, nor did his eyes seek mine. It was as though he were looking at a beast or a book. “At least let me take this one in charge for you, then.”

  Rudof stood across the table from him, fully dressed and with that red hair half tamed. “That’s all I want to hear out of you, Leoue. I believe the lad is honest.

  “You tell me, Nazhuret,” said the king, leaning to me over the table. “Do you want to go with the field marshal here? I don’t mean as a prisoner but as a soldier with us? Or should we leave you here to wend your simple, glass-grinding way?”

  I had been thinking myself. My legs were beginning to cramp from the run, but I was otherwise strong enough. “Have you a wig, sir?”

  King Rudof guffawed. “If I wore a wig, lad, it would not be this color, nor this unruly.”

  “I mean, sir, if you could find a wig like your hair, I could dress in your clothes today and ride where they expect to find you. The ponymen have been told to locate you by your hair.”

  The king stood still and stiff as though he had been slapped. “In my place! As bait? No, Nazhuret of Sordaling, I thank you, but no. I will take reasonable care of myself, but I will not let you ride in my place.”

  “Thank the triune God for that, at least,” said the field marshal.

  While the rest of the camp rose, I had an hour or so to lie still, which I did where I was left, beside the map table in the king’s tent. When one is as muscle-tired as I was, it makes no difference whether rest is conscious or sleeping; it is enough not to move. When I could bear to stand again, I begged the chamberlain for a pot in which to warm water for washing, and got instead a tin tub, an attendant, and a change of clothes. First the fellow brought me the breeches and tunic of the 3rd Royal Light Cavalry, and though it was only part of a uniform and only a loan, it brought with it one of the largest temptations in my life.

  If I put this on I probably would be expected to ride with that illustrious company, and in the impending attack, if I were to acquit myself creditably, or at least without embarrassment, I might be offered a chance to gain the rest of the uniform, or

  one equally glorious. I had, after all, as good a training as any man in Velonya or the territories, and my wrestling had impressed the young king.

  In doing so I would be reclaiming the Nazhuret of three and a half years ago and turning my back on everything Powl had taught me. But the Nazhuret of three and a half years ago had died, and his ghost was not very restless. Besides, it was Powl’s Nazhuret who had wrestled and snapped rapiers for the king’s amusement, not the boy of Sordaling School, and Powl’s Nazhuret could not take the easy option of obedience to rule.

  I put the pretty tunic back in the basket and said I could not wear it because of a religious limitation.

  And then it was too big for me.

  The valet was gone a few minutes and returned with a spare suit of the cook’s boy, which fit my humor (and my frame) much better.

  King Rudof ducked into his tent, fresh and energetic as though he had slept ten hours without a dream. My appearance struck his humor as well, and his laughter had a great charm to it, but in a moment he was serious again. “You have taken a vow, I’m told. It sounds like nonsense, after last night’s games. Are you a priest or a pilgrim, then, Nazhuret, or did you kill someone in anger, to make such a stupid… ? Is all your battle skill to go for nothing? I had hoped the nation would have the use of what you showed last night.” King Rudof had donned the blue and white of a simple horseman of his own company, which suited him very well.

  I answered in embarrassment that I was more a pilgrim than a priest if I was either one, and that my training had not gone for nothing or I wouldn’t have survived to give the warning of the assassins. He paced, staring down at me, obviously wondering whether to call my statement impudence. An aide brought in breakfast, and I was given the uncomfortable privilege of eating at the table of a king who was not pleased with me. Had there not been biscuits freshly baked, I think I would not have had the temerity to swallow.

  The king talked while he ate, sometimes with his mouth full. This had been frowned on at Sordaling. Powl had never permitted it. “Don’t you call that fighting, when you laid my personal guard on the ground in rows—not to mention abusing the field marshal’s own men? Is your vow that you can fight for your own life but no other?”

  I had to down my food before replying, not out of manners but to gain time. My throat was painfully dry. “My limitation, sir, is rather that I cannot spill blood on… another’s command.”

  What more pointed, more offensive thing could be said aloud to the king of one’s own country? I sat with my hands in my lap and waited.

  The king’s green eyes did not move from my face. For some seconds he, too, waited, for explanation or apology. “But you can spill barrels of the stuff at your own whim, is that it? I can’t say I think much of that vow; it’s pure self-indulgence. You are saying you can brawl at any moment it appeals to you, but you cannot fight at the king’s command, which is the need of the nation.” He spoke without heat or bluster, but to get the matter straight between us.

  “No, sir, I can’t brawl at whim. Or at least I never do have a whim to brawl. But it is true that I cannot offer obedience in that matter. Not even to you, my king. That is why I can’t wear the uniform of a soldier.”

  King Rudof had a face similar in feature to Arlin’s: that is to say, long with a thin, high-bridged nose, a face close to the standard of Velonyan beauty. He was heavier-boned than the sword juggler, and the king had the redhead’s mercurial complexion, which went waxy pale as he sat upright and said, “It is not only the paid soldiers of Velonya who are bound to fight at the command of the king. Every man not an ordained priest is subject to that duty.”

  I could think of nothing whatsoever to say.

  “I can have you split open and beheaded for refusing me outright.” The youth departed from the king’s face, leaving a mask with eyes of steel. I had never seen the old king, his father, save in pictures, but I felt I was seeing him now. The two sentries at the entrance had turned their attention to this dialogue, and now they stepped through the doorway. “That is the punishment for a traitor.”

  “Yes, sir, of course you can. In that I am entirely at your service,” I answered him, and my placating words sounded ludicrous even to myself. They made him blink.

  King Rudof sat back and ran one hand through his red hair. Heavily he said, “I think, lad, that you’d best call yourself a priest while you are with this company. Of course, we will be parting ways shortly.” He rose and, lifting his long legs over the low table, went past me and out.

  First the scouts set out in pairs, and half an hour later the entire straggling procession creaked forward. Every man jack of them ignored me, and no cook’s boy asked for his shirt and breeches back. I suppose he wouldn’t wear them after they’d been on the man who insulted the king. I stood on the highest point of land nearby and watched for the king himself to pass.

  I would have missed him entirely, for there was no red hair to be seen. All the Royal Light Horse were riding in leather headgear, which extended down the back of the neck and into a low visor over the eyes. Nor was he beside the field marshal, where I would have expected to find him, but in the middle of the front row of the lower officers. I finally picked him out by the chestnut horse he rode, which seemed a little grand for the commonality of cavalry and which was a color to appeal to any redheaded rider.

  The other
companies had their own versions of this helmet, and the three marshals were concealed beneath hats or helmets as well. The foot troops went bareheaded, as was standard, but I noticed as they marched that any men of exceptionally brilliant hair color had been moved to the inside of the row and column.

  This was a better maneuver than my own “wig” idea. Instead of having a false redhead, they had no visible heads of hair whatsoever.

  I hefted my pack from which my own clothes, washed and fullered for me while I rested, hung smelling of wet wool. I was feeling a profound disappointment in myself and in my meeting with King Rudof, and I pulled apart our short, unsatisfactory conversation in my mind, wondering how I might have had it come out otherwise without lying to the King of Velonya.

  Had I had more time, or had the situation been less immediate, I might have been able to convince him that my peculiar style of combat was a matter of involuntary reflex, or too peculiar and too primitive to have military application. If I could only have made it to seem that he was rejecting me instead of (horrendous thing) the other way around. But I doubted that at my best and most prepared I could have made the truth please him better than it did. As Powl would have said, the only solution is to stay away from the centers of power entirely. But even Powl would not have had me let King Rudof walk into a trap of assassins unaware.

  I saw them all go by me, even to the last heavy wagon of pavilion bracings, and then I trotted off in the same direction but aiming slightly right and off the road, so that in a very few minutes I was even with the Royal Light Horse again and then ahead of them. The fact that I could not be an obedient soldier did not mean I was going to stand by and let Velonya’s enemies attack the king.

  Behind me I heard hooves splashing mud, and I was mystified as to whom it could be. I was jogging a path that wound amid the hills while the whole troop of the king were down on the flat by the road, except for the sentries, who had gone ahead. There was no hiding in the grass here, for it was sparse and ankle-high, so I stayed where I was, my hedger in my hand. Perhaps the king had decided he could not brook my impudence after all and had sent out soldiers to drag me back, or to kill me where I stood.

  When the single rider came into view I felt surprise and an overwashing of inevitability that it should be Arlin again, wearing the one suit he seemed to own and riding his dainty gray. This time, however, he had two horses, the other being a bony chestnut he led without pack or saddle behind him, I waited for him to catch up to me.

  “I expected to find you below,” he said without preface. “I didn’t think you’d be able to walk today, let alone leap the hilltops.” He leaned over and put the spare horse’s bridle into my hand.

  I looked up at the beast in even greater confusion. “Did you… steal this horse, Arlin?” I asked him, and he grimaced. “There you go again, little moralist I did not steal it. It was an extra. Get on.”

  I did not argue further. Mounting was difficult with the bulk of the pack and my weapon in my right hand, but the beast stood quiet. “It’s an old cavalry horse,” he said. “Not sprightly, but used to anything. And it’d better be, carrying you.”

  The horse had the sort of spine that projects above the rib cage a good ways. I would not choose such a creature for bareback riding if I were given the choice. “I’m not such a clumsy rider as that, fellow. It’s only that lately I haven’t—”

  “Believe it or not, optician, I didn’t mean that as an insult. Though”—he turned and gave me a disgusted glare—“you certainly deserve a few. And after I vouched for you to the king.”

  “I am sensible of that.” I pressed the horse even with Arlin’s, “I owe my liberty to that introduction. Perhaps my life.”

  “You owe me nothing,” he said, reversing his attitude completely. “I think you could have taken them all down. All the Royal Guard and the field marshals, too.”

  “I think the king ought to be grateful to you as well,” I continued over his words. “If I hadn’t had a chance to warn him about the attack coming… you do believe me about the assassins, don’t you?”

  “That’s where we’re going,” Arlin said without changing his sullen expression. “You’re going to show them to me.”

  I did not imagine that the Rezhmian nomads had slept late this morning, so to be yawning where I had left them the night before. We saw no sign of activity along the east–west road, but I had not expected them to prepare their assault so close to the king’s night camp. In only a few miles we would reach the intersection where that broad road ended and the traveler must turn south and uphill to the broken mountains of the border, or north along the precipitous hills I had walked the past few days. That north–south road was narrower and more uneven, and the ground rose close at either hand.

  Assuming the nomads had excellent scouts (or some other information concerning the movements of the king’s company), they would have done as I had done to escape their discovery the night before, and traveled parallel to the road behind the first or second ridge of downs—where we were heading now, in fact.

  The day was going to be cold and windy, and the white cook’s linens were not sewn for warmth. When I began to lose feeling of the reins in my hands I called a halt, dismounted, took off my pack and then my shirt, and put the woolen homespun next to my skin. This caused Arlin to announce that he had changed his mind about my origin, for anyone who could wear such a garment on bare skin had to be base-born. The cook’s shirt I put over my head, with the sleeves pressing back my frozen ears and tied at the nape of the neck. I advised my companion to leave me where I stood, lest he suffer the embarrassment of being killed by invaders in the company of a fellow as sartorially backward as I.

  We had reached the hill above the intersection of roads, and there was nothing to be seen below except the rectangular outline of an old building foundation. It might once have been a small inn; what other building would stand alone so close to a border between unfriendly nations I don’t know. Nor do I imagine the place had prospered or survived very long. I remembered very well the glossy, charred wood of the village only a day’s walk from here, and the vandalized grave.

  It had been King Rudof’s intention to turn north at this junction and continue his review of the realm with Morquenie and Satt territories, but I had no way of knowing whether the Red Whips knew the king’s habits only, or his intentions as well. The former might be learned through stalking, and by the use of spyglasses like mine. The latter meant treachery. I did not let my horse top the bare hill, but pulled him up a few yards below, on an uncomfortable slope. Arlin stared puzzled for a moment but followed my lead. “You don’t want to be seen on the skyline, is that it?” he shouted over the wind.

  I nodded and bellowed back, “Neither do the Rezhmians! They’ll be somewhere down between the rises, spread out like the trickle of a stream! Hard to see, even from close by!”

  “A hundred men, hard to see?”

  Again I nodded, and because I don’t have a voice for bellowing, I led him down into the shelter of the hills. “They could hide more than that number. It was those tactics that caused the defeat of our army in the last incursion. Remember?”

  Arlin snorted. “How should I remember? I wasn’t even born then.”

  “Neither was I, but I studied my lessons.” I didn’t know why I was continuing to act like an arrogant schoolboy in the presence of this fellow. My manners distressed me, and I determined at that moment to behave myself, especially since I might be about to be cut down by enemy arrows. It would be a shame to die disgusted with oneself.

  I turned north and went very cautiously along the path I had run eight hours before. My companion did not object, but he asked how I had chosen this direction, and I replied that if the assassins were working by chance, they would be as likely to

  be north as south of the crossroads, and if they had information, they would likely be north. That gave north two chances out of three.

  It was easier to ride down here, where a seasonal stream ra
n over new grass. I let my old horse pick his way, and as Arlin had intimated, the beast was no fool. It also was easier to talk, which Arlin did. He returned to the subject of my vows and limitations, and interrogated me strictly, while his pretty mare danced left and right over the trickling water, wasting a lot of effort trying to keep her feet dry.

  Was I permitted to drink distilled liquors? he wondered. To gamble? To wear silk? To fornicate, perchance? To marry? I replied with what restraint I could muster (for the subject had received overmuch attention in the past day) that what I was not permitted to do was to give over responsibility for my actions. Not to another, nor to chance. That in itself was a vow among vows and a limitation encompassing most other limitations. I said this much and then I asked him to leave off, for as we rode I was trying to see through the hills themselves, and hear noises not yet made.

  Arlin did leave off, for he was offended. He spat on the ground and prodded his mare over the stream, yards away from me, where he rode on in a pretense that we were two separate travelers with no connection, until his mare squealed and reared and he called out.

  My beast stood calmly enough over the two bodies thrown between large rocks. The old cavalry gelding was used to the smell of blood. The uniforms had been blue and white. I said the obvious: “The king’s scouts.”

  Arlin dismounted and turned one of them over. The tailored coat had been pierced many times by a blade. “I knew this man somewhat,” he said. He held his sweating horse with a firm hand on the headstall.

  Without getting down I could read the tracks coming around the hill from the road and then leading north in our direction. Only hoofprints. No shoes on the hooves, either. I remarked to Arlin that the Red Whips might as well not have feet, for all the walking they did.

  He sprang up in the saddle again, and his mare quieted from the accustomed weight on her back. Without another word I motioned him behind me, for there was movement between the hills to the west, by the road. I pressed the chestnut slowly forward.