Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  The Aldonfulk gnomes did not reappear; Gnarrinfulk gnomes took Arcolin and his horse “by the stone,” as they put it. He emerged in morning sunlight from the side of a hill that closed behind him, and there below, on the South Trade Road, was his cohort and the Royal Guard troop.

  “Well?” Cracolnya asked.

  “Allies,” Arcolin said. “They are mustering in support of the Marshal-General; the gnome prince has decided that only the mage-hunters, not those fleeing them, have breached the old contract between Gird and gnomes.”

  The Royal Guard captain stared. “How did you convince a gnome? We tried; gnomes don’t listen. Just said law, law, law all the time.”

  Arcolin looked around. He could not see any gnomes. That did not mean no gnomes were there, listening. Whatever he said must work for both peoples. “Gnomes live by Law. They value Law. They value contracts, which are the word of Law and set the equality, the balance, between parties to the contract. Trespass breached Gird’s contract, the basis of peace between gnomes and humans.”

  “Yes, but—”

  Arcolin held up his hand. “In Law, few things—many fewer than for us—allow one party to a contract to break its terms without freeing the other completely. In this case, breaking a contract of peace would have meant war. The prince did not know that one of the very few conditions that alter contracts existed.”

  “And what is that? Some gnomish silliness?” The captain was clearly still annoyed, and worse than that, loud, and worse than both, showing contempt.

  Arcolin could not ignore that, not with the feeling that hundreds of beady black eyes were watching him from behind every rock on the slope. He glared at the man until the captain wilted a little. “I am telling you, as the Constable of this kingdom, Duke of the North Marches, member of the Royal Council, and the king’s representative in this place, that this is no way to speak of our allies. Since Gird’s day, Gnarrinfulk has honored Gird’s contract. No human has come to harm from them; they have never taken so much as a rabbit from the other side of their boundary. Moreover, they have shown mercy to those who broke it without intent, such as shepherds whose sheep strayed. Yet you speak of them as if they were fools. These are the gnomes who taught Gird warfare and the reason you and I are both Girdish. Show respect for Elders.”

  The captain reddened and looked down. “Sorry, my lord,” he said.

  “Remember it,” Arcolin said. “We are honored and very fortunate to have gnomes offer to help our king and the Marshal-General. Now, you asked what condition made it possible, in Law, for the prince to regard the situation differently. It was children: the children the mage-hunters have killed and tried to kill. Under Law, attacking innocents for what they are, rather than what they have done, is against Law.”

  “They changed their minds for children?” At least that was in a low voice.

  “Wouldn’t you?” Arcolin said. Without waiting an answer, he signaled Cracolnya, and the cohort started forward.

  “That was an impressive list of titles,” Cracolnya said, keeping his voice low. “But I notice you did not say ‘Commander of Fox Company.’ ”

  “I didn’t think it would have the right effect,” Arcolin said. “Besides, here and now Fox Company outnumbers his. He got the point.”

  “Just want to be sure you still consider us important,” Cracolnya said.

  Arcolin turned to look at him. “Important? Of course the Company’s important. None of the rest would exist without the Company.”

  “Good. I’m too old to be finding another place if you had changed your mind.”

  The closer they came to the Finthan border, the more signs of struggle appeared on the road. Carrion eaters lifting from the ground revealed bodies … first one, then another, then three together. The road itself was empty; with word of unrest, many traders had chosen not to go to Fintha this year.

  At the border itself, they saw no one at first.

  “Do we go on?” Cracolnya asked.

  “I’m not sure—” Arcolin looked around, hoping to spot a gnome. Instead, he saw a group of people north of the road, already on the Tsaian side of the border. Perhaps three or four hands of them, adults and children both, hurried along the brushy side of what might be a creek. That low ground led toward the road; his troop had crossed a dry wash only a short time ago. Farther away, still in Fintha, he saw another, larger group, on horseback, riders on either side of the brush cover as it broadened farther down the slope. They moved steadily up the slope a little faster than the fugitives as they searched clumps of brush. “There’s trouble,” he said. “Mage-hunters after those—” He pointed to each group in turn.

  “What do we do?” the Royal Guard captain said.

  “Save the children,” Arcolin said. “And their parents, of course.”

  Cracolnya needed no direction; he led the cohort off the road and down the slope, aiming to cut between the pursued and their pursuers. The pursuers, instead of turning back at the sight of a military unit marching toward them, kicked their horses into a gallop and yelled something Arcolin could not distinguish. The pursued stopped short, staring, then tried to run straight up the slope to the road.

  “Captain—charge them!” Arcolin looked at the Royal Guard captain and pointed his sword at the pursuers.

  “But they’re still in Fintha!”

  “Not in another twenty strides,” Arcolin said. “Go! Now!”

  “I can’t cross the border without the king—”

  “Shall I tell the king you disobeyed me? GO!” He smacked the captain’s horse on the rump with the flat of his sword; it bolted after Cracolnya and the cohort, and the troop followed. Arcolin put spurs to his own mount and caught up.

  The pursuing party split, trying to swing wide around both the cohort and the cavalry troop. Arcolin grinned. Cracolnya would be happy about that … The crossbowmen of the mixed cohort turned smoothly and shot into the flanks of the pursuers, dropping almost half of them.

  The rest, seeing this, peeled off and galloped away full speed as another flight of bolts took three of the hindmost. Arcolin pulled up. The Royal Guard captain wrestled his horse to a stop and turned back to Arcolin, yanking his sword out of its scabbard.

  “How dare you!”

  “You disobeyed an order. Would you rather I’d killed you?”

  “You—”

  “Sir!” That was one of his troopers. “Sir—no—!”

  “Problem, my lord?” Cracolnya’s voice was smooth as butter, but he held a crossbow steady, the bolt aimed at the captain’s back.

  “No,” Arcolin said. “The captain has misunderstood the situation.” He looked at the troopers loosely clustered nearby. “See if you can collect the loose horses those brigands were riding. We’ll need them later.” They hesitated but finally turned and rode off. Then to the captain, “Put that sword away and think about why you didn’t manage to draw it in the face of the enemy but only when confronting your commander.”

  “You—!”

  “Yes. As Constable and as Duke Arcolin, I am your commander in this place. I told you that before. Put up your sword.”

  Red-faced, beginning to shake—was it anger or reaction, realization of what he had done?—the captain finally got his sword back in the scabbard after a couple of tries. Arcolin sheathed his own in one practiced motion and nudged his mount closer to the captain’s. Cracolnya’s cohort was now between him and the rest of the Royal Guard contingent, alert and ready for anything.

  Arcolin went on. “If you cannot, or will not, follow my orders, I will send you away. As you are, you are a danger to my people and yours. Do you understand?”

  “I—I—you can’t do that.”

  “I can. I will. One more time: Will you do what I tell you, at once and without question, or will you go back to Fiveway on foot, unarmed, and try to explain yourself to your senior in the Royal Guard and the king?”

  “On foot? Unarmed?”

  “Of course. Why would I leave someone like you on a v
aluable charger? With a sword? Either you accept me here and now as your commander and give me the loyalty owed, or you go home in disgrace. If you make it that far.” Arcolin made his tone conversational. “Now: give me your answer.”

  The shoulders drooped. “I—I accept you …”

  “Good. I am pleased to hear it. Go back to the wagons and tell the drivers to start setting up camp. The people running from the mage-hunters will need care.”

  The captain opened his mouth, shut it, finally bit off a “Sir,” and turned his horse back up the slope.

  “He wouldn’t have lasted long in Aarenis,” Cracolnya said after he’d ridden off. He took the bolt from his crossbow and eased the string.

  “Young, inexperienced,” Arcolin said.

  “Dead,” Cracolnya said.

  “True enough. Let’s go meet our travelers.”

  Cracolnya said “Camp” to his sergeants and followed Arcolin to the group now huddled in the dry wash near the road.

  They were, as Arcolin had thought, Girdish families from a vill near the Finthan border.

  “We hear Tsaia doesn’t kill mages,” one said.

  “Or them as aren’t mages but someone says they is to steal their cows,” another said.

  “The king said no killing mages,” Arcolin said. “You are safe for now. What about your supplies?”

  The first one—he gave his name as Dorthan—shook his head. “They almost caught us in camp two nights ago—we had to run, leave everything.”

  “We have water and food up on the road,” Arcolin said.

  Soon the cohort had laid out a proper camp, and the fugitives, now under canvas, had eaten and drunk their fill. Of the nineteen, five confessed to being mages, four of them children who could do no more than make light with a finger. The fifth, a woman, had a parrion of healing. “Had it all my life,” she said. “So I thought this was just somethin’ else I’d picked up. Only they said it was magery.” All the rest were relatives of the mages or those afraid of being killed even if they weren’t.

  “No better’n brigands,” Dorthan said. “They got our sheep, our goats, our cows, our houses … It’s not right, but we’re not enough to fight ’em.”

  “What about the grange?” Arcolin asked.

  Dorthan hooked his forefingers together. “Tight as that with the mage-hunters, Marshal is. Him and his snuck around the bartons, takin’ weapons. Not that we had much.”

  “Took my fightin’ staff that I made myself,” said another, who’d given his name as Tamis. “Walked two days there and back to get wood for that, I did. Had it up dryin’ all one winter.”

  “How many of you being hunted by the mage-haters are in this area?”

  This provoked a lively argument and much counting on fingers. While that continued, the Royal Guard troop came back to camp with eighteen horses, all with saddles, and three captives, all injured. The others, they said, were dead where they lay.

  That night, mage-hunters tried to sneak into the camp. Two were caught, and one killed.

  “We can’t deal with this from here,” Arcolin said. “We’re going to have to go into Fintha and link up with the Marshal-General’s people … For one thing, that’s who the gnomes want to work with.”

  “Gnomes!”

  Arcolin looked at the Royal Guard captain, and he subsided. “We didn’t need them yesterday. We outnumbered the mage-hunters, and as you noticed, we outnumber them more now. But we need to clear a defensible area where the fugitives—these and any others we find—can live in some safety. Ideally, we’d start with vills that border Tsaia—as a buffer—and then work toward the west. And we don’t have an idea how many of the people are in which camp, for that matter. I wonder if the Marshal-General does.”

  Blank looks from the others.

  “Never mind. We’re going to take these people home and see what we have to work with.”

  “Home?”

  “Their vill. Where their houses are. And we’re going to get their livestock back, and their other possessions if we can.”

  Two days later, the villagers were back in their homes and the mixed cohort was camped in one of the fields. Stray sheep and goats had been brought back in.

  “They’ll come again,” Dorthan said.

  “I hope so,” Arcolin told him. “We will be here.”

  On the fourth day, a large group of mage-hunters appeared, perhaps a third of them mounted, led by a man in a Marshal’s tabard.

  “Your Marshal?”

  “He was,” Dorthan said. “He’s not my Marshal now.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Coben,” Tamis said.

  Arcolin rode out toward the approaching mob.

  “You there!” the Marshal said. “Magelord of Tsaia—you don’t belong here!”

  Arcolin laughed. “Marshal Coben,” he said. “The one who does not belong here is a traitor to Gird, an oathbreaker.”

  “I’m not the oathbreaker. That woman in Fin Panir—”

  “You mean the Marshal-General?”

  “That woman in Fin Panir, who should never have been a Marshal, let alone Marshal-General—she is the oathbreaker.”

  “Not according to Gnarrinfulk,” Arcolin said. “The Gnarrinfulk prince believes she has broken no oaths but your kind has … you have trespassed on gnomish lands—”

  “Only to kill mages. We haven’t hurt anything.”

  “You spilled human blood on gnome land. You broke Gird’s own oath to Gnarrinfulk, that humans would never trespass. To Gnarrinfulk, you are kteknik—outlaws—for breaking that old contract.”

  “It was hundreds of winters ago! We cannot be bound by something we never swore to.”

  “You are bound by your Marshal-General’s word, which she and every other Marshal-General since Gird swore to,” Arcolin said. Some of the others in the mob were listening now, then murmuring to those behind them. “Gnarrinfulk has no patience with kteknik humans: for gnomes, to be outside Law is to be outside life.”

  “You are outside law,” the Marshal said. “You are a mage, and in the Code of Gird—”

  “I am not a mage, and the Code of Gird does not support killing children.”

  “They’re mages! Evil!”

  Arcolin heard hoofbeats behind him. He hoped it was not the captain again.

  “Sir.” A quiet young voice. Not the captain, then. Kaim.

  “Yes?”

  “Captain Cracolnya says the mule has foaled a cow.” A pause. “A three-legged cow with one left horn.”

  Another force, not quite as large as this, approaching from the west.

  “How interesting,” Arcolin said. He could not be sure Marshal Coben had heard. In the interest of greater confusion, he raised his voice. “Well, Marshal, did you hear? The mule has foaled a cow.”

  The Marshal paled. “A … cow?”

  What was that about? He’d never heard of a Marshal afraid of cows. “A cow, yes.”

  “What color cow?”

  The Company had never used cow colors in their code, only the number of cows, legs, and horns. What color cow would most confuse this Marshal? Arcolin took a guess. “Dun,” he said.

  “You lie! You have never seen Gird’s Cow! You are not a true yeoman of Gird!”

  Gird’s Cow? Was the man wit-wandering? But if it distracted him … “Yes, dun,” Arcolin said cheerfully. “A very nice cow, in fact.” He didn’t mention the three legs or one horn.

  “If you were really Girdish and Gird supported you, then an army of Gird would march over that hill—” Marshal Coben flung out his right hand, pointing to the west. “But since you are not …”

  “Look at the hill,” Arcolin said. Out of the corner of his eye, he had seen movement there, and now, rising above the crest, was a Girdish blue banner with a device he did not recognize at first. Not the “G” for Gird or the entwined “GL” for Gird/Luap. It looked more and more like … a cow.

  As the force carrying the banner crested the hill, Arcolin could see th
at several were Girdish knights and more were Marshals, with ranks of yeomen behind them.

  “That’s hers—the mage-lover’s!” Coben turned in his saddle, yelling at his followers. “Get ready to fight.”

  The approaching force halted partway down the slope. One of the riders, a Marshal, trotted toward the vill; Arcolin did not turn to watch. That would be someone sent to find out who the soldiers in maroon and white were and reassure the villagers that the newcomers were not mage-hunters. He backed his mount a few paces; no use getting caught in the melee or mistaken for one of these.

  When he heard hoofbeats behind him again, he thought it must be Kaim with another message from Cracolnya, but instead he heard a voice from the previous year.

  “My lord Duke … I did not expect to find you here.”

  “Arvid!” He had to look. Arvid indeed, only instead of a merchant’s garb, he wore a Marshal’s tabard and insignia. “You’re a Marshal?”

  “I also find it hard to believe,” Arvid said. “You should hear the rest of it, but I have a message to deliver.” He turned to Marshal Coben, who was staring at him.

  “Coben, you have broken your oath to the Marshal-General; you are summoned to the Marshalate for judgment.” Arvid’s voice rang out over the murmuring of Coben’s followers.

  “That mage-loving viper—”

  “Should you refuse to appear, your name will be summarily struck from the rolls of Marshals, and you will be declared outlaw in all Fintha, bait for any man’s sword. In the meantime, you are no longer Marshal of Norwalk Grange; another Marshal will take over.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.” The faintest hint of amusement in that, then Arvid’s tone hardened again. “By order of the Marshal-General of Gird and the Judicar-General. You will hand over your medallion and your tabard—”

  “I will not!”

  “—or it will be confiscated.” A long pause during which Coben turned purple. “Also by me.”

  “You would not dare!”

  “Oh, Coben …” Arvid’s voice had gone honey-sweet. “You have no idea what I would dare.” His gaze swept over Coben’s followers. “Nor have they.” Several of them moved back, bumping into those behind them.