“You’ve grown again,” his mother said as she came into the scullery from the kitchen.
He had been sure he would not lose control, but the sight of her, the smell of her cooking wafting in from the kitchen, took him by surprise, and a sob caught in his throat before he realized it. She opened her arms, and he was in them, crying like a fool, he thought, but he could not stop. She said nothing but held him and stroked his hair. He felt his father’s hand on his back, and shame flooded him, but his father’s voice eased it.
“About time,” he said. “You need to cry, Aris. No shame, lad, no shame at all. You loved the prince; everyone knew that, and he loved you.”
The sobs went on a long time; he couldn’t stop them. He heard his father’s feet on the stone floor, water running from the spigot, then his father returning. Cool wet cloth wiped his hot face.
“I—I didn’t stop them—”
“The iynisin? You could not. Even Mikeli could not have if he’d been there, and Gird’s grace he wasn’t. You did the one thing you could do, rouse the Bells, and that broke the spell. And then stanch the prince’s wounds so there was a chance and time for that dragon to come. Nobody blames you, Ari … do you blame yourself for not doing the impossible?”
“He … he did the impossible.”
“Fighting them, you mean?”
“N-no.” Another round of sobs filled his throat. He’d never told his father or Juris about Camwyn saving his life on the roof. Even though his father knew about Cam’s magery because Mikeli had told his Council, he hadn’t … and now it came pouring out between sobs: “… saved me … on the roof …” His mother stiffened a little, and he raised his face to reassure her. “I just slipped, is all. And the prince—he was too far away to reach my hand—and he—he flew.”
“Gird’s Cudgel,” his father said. “When was this? You didn’t go up in winter, did you?”
“No, sir. In the spring, before the king’s first progress. The prince had found a way … more than one … to the roof by finding where the roofers had left repair materials, and the king said he must not go alone, so he asked me.”
“Where exactly did you go?”
“At first onto the roof that runs south, almost to the Bells’ tower. The east side dried fast in the morning; we could go before lessons.”
“Is that where you slipped?”
“No … we were on the north side that time.” Aris tried to explain the complicated way they’d found.
“The north wing—with nothing down to King Street below?”
“It was my fault,” Aris said. “The prince wanted me to wait by the chimney stack while he scooted along the roof peak to where there’s a skylight.”
“Gods!” his father said.
“And I thought he was teasing me for being afraid, so I got up and slipped on a bit of moss and slid—”
His mother’s hands tightened on his shoulders.
“—and then the prince caught me, and then he landed on the roof, too, and we wiggled back up to the trapdoor, and when we got inside it was dark, and then his hand lit up.”
“So … you knew he had magery before that trip?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did you tell the king?”
Of course not. “No, sir. The prince didn’t want to.”
“When did he find out?”
Aris told that, and what the king had said the next day, and the punishment he’d assigned both of them.
His father sighed. “Suitable,” he said. “And I presume you don’t keep secrets from the king now, do you?”
“No, sir.”
“You haven’t shown any mage-light or anything, have you?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, then. Let’s get ourselves cleaned up for supper. We’re both travel-grimed. Your mother will have to change her apron.”
Aris looked. Sure enough, a dirty face and tears had left marks on it. But she only tousled his hair and said, “Bathhouse for the pair of you. I’ll send in clean clothes while you’re bathing. You won’t mind Juris’s outgrown hunting clothes, will you, Aris? I’m sure you’ve grown into them, and your old things will be too small.”
Juris’s old clothes fit him well enough and had the softness of long wear. Clean, with the tears eased and the old secret out, Aris came to the table hungry enough to eat for three. The familiar table, the familiar dishes, his mother’s recipes, all eased the remaining tension.
“Is that your foal, Ari?” asked the sister two years older than he. “He looks good.”
“He would,” said another. “That’s the best mare we have.”
“The best old mare,” said the first. “There’s—”
“Girls!”
“Sorry, Mother.”
“I held him within the first day,” Aris said, glad to have the conversation on a topic all the Marrakai could agree on. “He has his name.”
“Da, when Gwenno finishes her squire years, can I ask Duke Verrakai to take me?”
“What, are you going to be another knight-candidate?”
“Maybe … but I want to squire somewhere. So may I have a foal this year? Then it’d be old enough—”
“Later. Right now the topic is Aris’s foal.” He looked at Aris. “I was watching him on the way here, Ari. Very nice movement … might make a breeder. While you’re here, we’ll talk about that and I’ll teach you the chants you’ll need.”
Aris almost choked on a redroot. He was going to be allowed to train a possible breeding stallion?
The next days were full of work in the garden, in the barns and, best of all, the daily sessions with his foal. His father watched, gave a few suggestions, and added to his knowledge of the secret horse-working language. Aris helped his father and the grooms with the other foals, giving them all the basic handling and training all Marrakai horses received. He had time to ride out on Marrakai lands alone as well as with his sisters.
“The situation in Fintha worries me,” his father said. “I don’t want the girls riding out in the woods alone this summer. We know some Finthans have come across; there could be more. We don’t have any mail in their size, and you’ve had better arms training at the palace than they’ve had here. If I hadn’t agreed to let Gwenno stay in Vérella, she could take them. But if you’re along, I trust you’ll all come to no harm. Wear a helmet and mail even when you’re out alone.”
Aris nodded. He now wore a sword, not just a boy’s dirk, and had a mail shirt, hot and heavy as it was. Camwyn had been right about that—but Camwyn had persevered, and so would he. Soon the helmet and mail felt less awkward and heavy. He enjoyed his rides in the forest as much as those across open fields and stopped in farmsteads and vills to speak to Marrakai tenants. His sisters, both of whom had been on a horse since early childhood, did not slow him down, and their chatter helped keep his mind off Camwyn.
For several tendays he saw no one on Marrakai land who should not be there. But on one ride alone, following a woods trail near the western border, he spotted footprints of several people and some goats or sheep. Shortly after that, he found an obvious campsite. The animals had been penned with fallen branches; he could see the depressions where people had slept, padding the earth with leaves.
He dismounted to examine the pen. Goat and sheep tracks looked alike to him, but the tuft of wool caught on a twig defined it: sheep. He kicked drifts of leaves apart and found a pile of offal concealed under branches and leaves. They had butchered a sheep and eaten or carried away the meat. With continued searching, he found their water source and a fire-pit with cold, wet ashes. At least they had taken care not to start a wildfire, but the concealment of the offal and the fire proved they were intruders, not Marrakai herders who’d followed strays into the woods.
Mounting, he turned and followed the tracks back down the trail to the place they veered off it. He reined in there and thought what to do. The nearest farmsteads would take him south, farther away from home. The nearest border guards were south and a
little west, even farther from home. The traces indicated several adults and perhaps a dozen sheep. The prudent thing to do was go directly home and tell his father.
He had never been known for prudence. If he could locate the group—if he could bring them in himself—he saw himself taking them up to the house, and the vision wavered. He wasn’t even a squire yet. He wasn’t wearing Marrakai colors. What if they—
The twang of a bowstring and the whirr of an arrow passing within a handspan of his head made the decision clear. He set heels to the horse and galloped away, not slowing until he was certain he was out of range. Then he took the most direct route home.
As he came out of the trees into the fields of Pickoak, the first vill on that route, he slowed to a walk. The tree for which the vill was named, the largest pickoak on Marrakai lands, stood alone in the barton’s drill field. He asked women near the well where the yeoman-marshal was.
“They’re all clearin’ ditch in the field yonder.” Two of the women pointed. “What’s the need?”
“Strangers in the woods,” he said. “They have sheep, and they’re armed with bows. Willing to shoot without speaking.”
“How far away? We should call in the childer.”
“Are any out in the woods?”
“Not today, sir.”
“Good. I’d keep them in sight. And keep your staves handy—are any of you archers?”
Two women raised their hands. One said, “I’ll fetch my bow—and yours, Sela.”
“I’ll ride over and tell the yeoman-marshal and the others,” Aris said. “And then I must ride home and tell my father.”
Hadden, the yeoman-marshal, quickly sent a third of the men back to the vill to fetch their weapons and stay there. “You think they’ll attack, then?” he asked Aris when the men had gone.
“They almost put an arrow into me,” Aris said. “They might have thought me a brigand, I suppose, but there was no word from them.” He described where he’d found the temporary camp; several of the men nodded.
“They could be here by nightfall if they follow the main trail,” one said. “No tracks of horses?”
“None but mine,” Aris said. “I need to ride on, let my father know. And I’ll alert anyone else I see on the way.”
“Gird’s grace,” they said, nodding to him.
He came into the home fields at a steady canter; far ahead, he saw men lift their heads to look toward the sound of the hooves. His father came out of one of the barns as the hounds bayed, frowning.
“I know he’s hot,” he said to his father when he was close enough. “But I had to hurry—there’s strangers in the woods beyond Pickoak. Several adults and some sheep—and they butchered one in a camp they tried to hide.”
“Did you see them?”
“No, sir. I saw the tracks and found the camp, then the fire-pit they’d hidden—all cold and wet. I was thinking what best to do when one shot at arrow at me from cover.”
“Mallin—come take my son’s horse and cool him off. I’ll want war saddles on the two freshest chargers and a spare packed for support. Aris, go tell your mother we need provisions for three days—at once. And you find a Marrakai tabard and put that on over your shirt. Get something to eat, too. We’ll be leaving in a glass, no more. I’m going to the Marshal.”
They left the homestead as a cavalcade: he and his father, four of the household men, mounted, the Marshal on his own horse, and a tensquad from the grange marching behind, each with weapons to hand and provisions in a pack. His father explained as they rode along. “They can’t get farther than Pickoak by dark even if they move fast. And you roused Pickoak—Hadden’s a good yeoman-marshal, and they won’t find the vill easy to take if that’s their plan. There’s a chance they’ll choose to go around it, or stay in the forest, or even go back west.”
“Do you think they’re running from mage-hunters, or are mage-hunters?”
“We can’t know for certain until we find them,” his father said. “But my guess is they’re mage-hunters who assumed you were a magelord. Some of those people think all the nobles in Tsaia are, and though you wore no colors, the horse you were on would give you away. We don’t want any mage-hunters bothering our people, and though I have sympathy for those fleeing mage-hunters, I have no right to displace my own people to make room for them.”
“But if—”
“The Marshal-General should deal with it, Aris. Not saying it will be easy, but it’s her job. She’s head of the Fellowship, and the Fellowship rules Fintha.”
“But suppose you saw someone being chased—hurt—and it wasn’t safe for them to go back?”
No answer for several strides, then: “I don’t know, Aris. Of course I would help them—stop the attack however I could—but—I have my own people to think of as well. I’m sure someone would say there’s plenty of land for all, but if we clear more land, where will we get the wood we need? We’ve been managing the forest land for generations, providing wood for everyone to build with, wood for cooking … and it’s been in good balance. I don’t know—I don’t know who would know, barring elves, and I can’t see myself asking them—how much we could clear and still have that balance. And the same would be true for all the fief holders.”
Another silence, longer. Then his father went on. “When the Lyonyan queen was here, she said something about the taig in Lyonya, about their forest and how Tsaia seemed to have only fragmented taig. She hadn’t seen our forest, only those blocks of woodland near Vérella, but I could tell she disapproved. And she’s half-elf. Full elves … I wonder if all would be woodland if they ruled.”
“Is Chaya as big as Vérella?”
“No. Not from what Mahieran says. And fewer humans all around. There’s no town between Riverwash and Chaya, for instance, and it’s several days’ ride at ordinary traveling pace. Only two or three farmsteads—quite small—not even a vill. He found the forest oppressive, he said. Too tall, too dark, too empty.”
“The elves at Fin Panir didn’t seem bothered by the lack of forests,” Aris said.
“Did you have much speech with them?”
“No, sir. They said I was too young.”
“Do you know if they were from the Ladysforest or another place?”
“Somewhere far to the west—the one I met was Ardhiel, who went with the expedition to Kolobia with Paks.”
They arrived in Pickoak in the dusk to find that no strangers had shown themselves that afternoon or evening. Men were posted as watchers outside the vill, and all the livestock had been penned.
“Glad to see you, m’lord,” Hadden said. “And you, Marshal. You’ll need a place to stay …”
“We brought provisions,” Marshal Nerrin said. “Don’t trouble yourselves. A camp will be good training.”
Night passed without incident. The next day, Aris waited in the village with two of the house guard while his father took the rest of the small force into the forest with a guide from the vill. “You’ll be a help here,” his father said. “In case they circle ’round—you’re my logical representative.”
He spent the day walking about the vill, learning everyone’s name, down to the youngest, and collecting bits of information that one person after another thought his father should know … but would not bother his father by telling him directly. The vill had two wells, but one needed relining … and all the stone thereabouts was hard to shape into flats. Where could they trade for flats? There was a child showing mage-light, yes, but it was only one finger and “that Hadden, he says it’s not worth tellin’ the Marshal, but what if them mage-hunters come?” Widow Eskinsdotter had a rooster with a double comb, and one of them spotted black, and that was a bad omen, Granna Neslin said, along with “too many good years makes a bad one come double.” It had been a dry winter and not enough rain in the spring; she predicted a bad harvest.
The troop did not return that night. Aris worried, wondering if he should ride out to find them in case they needed help, but decided to stay, as his fa
ther had bidden him. The next morning, he was up early, but that day was like the one before until late morning, when one of the village lads spotted someone running out of the forest edge and back in again. “Looky there, sir! I see ’em now, just there.”
Aris, after a long look, could also see the occasional flicker of blue showing between the leaves … someone moving parallel to the forest edge, back and forth, as if looking for the best place to emerge … or as if waiting for others. The vill settled into midday somnolence, the sun’s warmth having become heat in the last tenday. He and others watched the forest edge from inside the buildings.
Another boy was first to see a sheep emerge from the forest and drop its head to graze in the open. Then another and another. And finally an adult in a long blue shirt, gray trews, and a hat, with a shepherd’s crook and a bow, stepped out and began moving the sheep along the grass, just outside the forest. In a few minutes, the shepherd turned, waved, and three obvious children came out of the woods and ran to the flock.
“What should we do, sir?”
Aris looked away from the window. “I don’t know. If we go out, they may dive back into the woods, and I know my father will want to find them and talk to them.”
“Think they’re mage-hunters?”
“No … I think they’re fleeing mage-hunters. Maybe that one shot at me thinking I was one.”
“Or maybe mage-hunters was on their trail.”
“That, too,” Aris said, still watching. The children were now positioned along the woods side of the sheep, the adult nearest the vill. Then a thought occurred. “Do you think the Finthans know any Tsaian family sigils? Would they know this is Marrakai land and recognize this?” He touched the red horse on his green tabard. “I was wearing Juris’s old hunting jerkin before.”
“Might work,” said one of his father’s men. “But you should have someone with you.”
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