Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Te‘sorthene du’dera, big man,” Tarma murmured. “When we come across someone special, like you, like Tresti, like Idra—well, you help your friends, that’s all I can say. That’s what friends are there for, her‘y?”

  “If anybody can help her out, it’ll be you two.”

  “We’ll do our best. And you know, you can do us a favor—” Kethry almost smiled at the sudden inspiration.

  “What? Anything you want.”

  “Leslac. I want you to teach him a lesson. I don’t care what you do to him, just get him off Tarma’s back.”

  The weather-beaten countenance went quiet with thought. “That’s a pretty tall ord—wait a moment—” He began to smile, the first smile he’d worn since he walked in their door. “I think I’ve got it. ‘Course, it all hinges on whether he’s really as pig-ignorant about Shin’a‘in as he seems to be.”

  “Go on—I think after that damned song we can count on that being true.”

  Sewen’s arms tightened about both their shoulders as he looked down at them. “There’s this sect of Spider-Priestesses down south; they sort of dress like Tarma—deal is, they didn’t start out life as girls.”

  Tarma nearly choked with laughter. “You mean, convince the little bastard that I’m really a eunuched boy? Sewen, that’s priceless!”

  “I rather like that—” Kethry grinned. “—I rather like that.”

  “I’ll get on it,” he promised, giving them a last hug and closing the door to their room behind him.

  Tarma went immediately to her armor-stand, surveying the brigandine for any sign of weakness or strain. Kethry put another log in the stove, then approached the wall where Need hung, reaching out to touch the blade with one finger.

  Yes—the call’s still there. And I can’t tell anything, it’s so faint—but it is Idra. The call gets perceptibly stronger when I think about her.

  “Get anything?” Tarma asked quietly.

  “Nothing definite, other than that Idra’s in trouble. How long do you think it will take us to get to Petras?”

  “With a string of thirty horses—about a month to cross the passes, then another two, maybe three. Like you said, it’ll be Midsummer at the earliest.”

  Kethry sighed. “If I were an Adept, I could get us both there in an hour.”

  “But not the horses. And how would we explain ourselves? We’d make a lot more stir than we should if we did that.”

  “And stir is not what we want.”

  “Right.” Tarma stood with a sigh, and stretched, then came back to her chair and flung herself down into it. “I seem to recall one contact we might well want to make. The Captain didn’t talk about her past much, but she did mention somebody a time or two. The Court Archivist—” Her brows knitted in thought. “Javreck? Jervase? No—Jadrek, that’s it. Jadrek. Seems like his father used to keep Idra and her older brother in tales; paid attention to them when nobody else had time for them. Jadrek was evidently a little copy of him. She’d mention him when something happened to bring one of those tales to her mind. And more imortant—” Tarma pointed a long finger at Kethry. “—she also never failed to preface those recollections by calling him ‘the only completely honest man in the Court, just as his father was.’ ”

  “That sounds promising.”

  “If he’s still there. Seems to me she said something about him being at odds with her father and her younger brother when he took over the Archivist position. He did that pretty young, since he was younger than Idra or her brother, and she left the Court before she was twenty. She also said something about his being crippled, which could cut down on the amount he sees.”

  “Yes and no,” Kethry replied, more than grateful for Tarma’s remarkable memory. “People who are overlooked often see more that way. Need I tell you that I’m glad you have a mind like a trap?”

  “What, shut?” Tarma jibed. “Now you know I’ve got a Singer’s memory; if I’d forgotten one verse of any of the most obscure ballads, I’d have been laughed out of camp. Keth, you’re worrying yourself, I can tell. You’re wasting energy.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Take it one week at a time. Worry about getting us through the passes safely I’ll get you the avalanche map tomorrow; she what you can scry out with it And speaking of snow, do you still want to hear that business about the Snow Demon?”

  “Well ... yes!” she replied, surprised. “But I hardly thought you’d be in the mood for it now.”

  “I’m jsut taking some of my own prescribed medicine.” Tarma grinned crookedly, and went to fetch the battered little hand-drum she used on those rare occasions when she chanted—you couldn’t call it singing anymore—one of the Shin‘a’in history-songs. “Trying to remember all fifty-two verses will keep me from fretting into a sweat. And hoping,” she looked down at her black sleeve, the black of vengeance-taking, “that this outfit doesn’t turn out to be an omen.”

  Five

  “Hai‘vetha! Kele, kele, kele!”

  Tarma wheeled Ironheart about on the mare’s heels in a piece of horsemanship that drew a spattering of impromptu applause from those watching, and chivied the last of the tired horses into the corral assigned to them by the master of the Petras stock market. She controlled them with voice only—not hand, nor whip. She didn’t even call for any encouraging nips at their heels from Warrl, another fact which impressed the spectators no end.

  They were already impressed by the horses. They were not the kind of beasts that the inhabitants of Petras were used to seeing. These were Shin‘a’in purebreds, and the only reason any of them had been passed over by the Sunhawks was that they were mostly saddlebreds, not trailbreds. The Shin‘a’in horses bred for trail work were a little rougher looking, and a bit hardier than the saddlebreds, in the main. There were always exceptions, like Tarma’s beloved Kessira, but the Shin‘a’in kept the exceptions for their own use and further breeding —as Kessira was being bred, pampered queen mare of the Tale‘sedrin herds.

  No, these horses were not what the inhabitants of Petras were used to seeing in their beast-market. Their heads, broad in the forehead, small in the muzzle, and with large, doe-soft eyes were carried high and proudly on their long, elegant necks; pride showed in every line of them, despite their weariness. Their bodies were compact and muscular, the hindquarters being a trifle higher than these people were accustomed to. Their legs were well-muscled and slim; they were no longer shaggy with winter growth as they had been when the trek started. Now their coats were silky despite the dust—and their manes and tails, the pride of a Shin‘a’in mount, were flowing in the wind like many-colored water-falls. And they moved like dancers, like birds on the wind, like music made visible.

  In short, they were beautiful.

  “Good enough to suit a king, eh, she‘enedra?” Tarma asked in her own tongue, feeling rather proud of her charges.

  “I should think—” Kethry began, when one of the onlookers, a man possessed of more than a little wealth, by the cut of his gray and green clothing, interrupted her.

  “What are these beauties?” he asked, in tones that bordered on veneration. “Where on earth did they spring from? Valdemar? I’d heard Companions were magnificent, but I’d never heard of anyone other than Heralds owning them, and I’d never heard that Companions were anything but white.”

  “No, m‘lord,” Kethry replied, as Tarma privately wondered what on earth a Companion could be. “These are Shin’a‘in purebred saddlemares and geldings from the Dhorisha Plains.”

  “Shin‘a’in!” The man stepped back a pace. “Lord and Lady—how did you ever get Shin‘a’in to part with them? I’d have thought they’d have shown you their sword-edge rather than their horses.”

  “Easily enough—I’m blood-sister to the handler, there. I thought to bring a string up here and try our luck.”

  “She‘s—Shin’a‘in—?” The man gulped, and eased another footstep or two away, putting Kethry between himself and Tarma. Tarma wasn’t certain
whether to laugh or continue to look as if she didn’t understand. The man acted like she was some kind of demon!

  “Oh yes,” Kethry answered, “and Kal‘enedral.” She must have noted his look of blank nonrecogni- tion, because she added, “Swordsworn.”

  He turned completely white. “I—hope—excuse me, lady, but I trust she‘s—under control.”

  “Warrior’s Oath, she‘enedra, what in Hell have they heard about us?” Tarma kept to her own tongue, as per the plan, and was keeping her face utterly still and impassive, but she knew Kethry could hear the suppressed laughter in her voice.

  “Probably that you eat raw meat for breakfast and raw babies for dinner,” Kethry replied, and Tarma could see the struggle to keep her expression guileless in the laughter sparkling in her eyes.

  “Pardon—but—what’s she saying?” The man eyed Tarma as if he expected her to unsheathe her blade and behead him at any moment.

  “That she noticed how much you admire the horses, and thanks you for the compliment of your attention.”

  Tarma took care to nod graciously at him, and he relaxed visibly. She then turned her attention back to the horses. The corral seemed sizable enough to hold them comfortably; she’d been a little worried about that. Let’s see—pump or well for the watering trough? And where would it be—ah! She spotted a pump, after a bit of looking. Good. One good thing about so-called civilization: pumps. Think maybe I might see if the Clans would agree to having a couple installed on the artesian wells....

  “Stand,” she told Ironheart. The battlemare obediently locked her legs in position; it would take an earthquake to move her now. Tarma unslung the sword from her back and looped the baldric over the pommel of the saddle. “Guard,” she ordered. That blade was a sweet one, and had been dearly paid for in her own blood; she didn’t intend to lose it. Ironheart would see that she didn’t.

  “You’d better tell your friend to stay clear of ‘Heart or he’ll lose a hand,” she called to Kethry, then dismounted and vaulted over the fence into the stockade to water her other charges. That bit of bravado cost, too, but it was worth a bit of strain to put on a proper show. Tarma meant to leave these folks with their mouths gaping—for that meant that the highborns would hear of them that much sooner.

  :You’re going to hurt in the morning,: Warrl observed. Thus far, the crowd’s attention had been so taken up with the horses that they hadn’t paid much heed to him. He’d stayed in the shadow of Ironheart, who was so tall that he didn’t stand out as the monster he truly was.

  And—she couldn’t tell, but he might well be exercising a bit of his own magic to look more like an ordinary herd dog. He’d hinted that he could do just that on the way here. Which was no bad idea.

  Tarma felt the strain of the muscles she’d used, and privately agreed with his critical remark about hurting. For every scar she bore on her hide, there was twice the scar tissue under it, where it didn’t show—but it certainly made itself felt. Particularly when she started showing off.

  But they were drawing a bigger crowd by the moment; the onlookers murmured as the loose horses crowded around her, shoving their heads under her hands for a scratch, or lipping playfully at her hair. She laughed at them, pushed them out of the way, and got to the pump. As she began to fill the trough, they pushed in to get at the water, and she rebuked them with a single sharp “Nes!” They shied and danced a bit, then behaved themselves.

  Tarma had been doing some serious training with them on the trail—knowing that once they were in Rethwellan she would have to be able to command them by voice, for if they spooked, she, Kethry, and Warrl would not be enough to keep them under control. Her ability to keep them in line seemed to impress their audience no end. She decided to go all out to impress them.

  She picked out one of the herd mares she’d been working with far more than the others, and called her. The chestnut mare pricked her ears, and came to the summons eagerly—she knew what this meant; first a trick from her, and then a treat was in store. Tarma ordered the others out of her way, then raised her hand high over her head. The mare stepped out away from her about fifteen paces, then as Tarma began to turn, followed her turn as if she was being lunged.

  Except there was no lunging-rein on her.

  At a command from Tarma she picked up to a trot, then a canter; after traveling all day, Tarma was not going to ask her to gallop. At a third command she stopped dead in her tracks. At the fourth, she reared—

  The fifth command was “Come—” and meant a piece of dried apple and a good scratch behind the ears. She obeyed that one with eager promptitude.

  The spectators, now thick on the fence, applauded. The horses flickered their ears nervously, but when nothing came of the noise, went back to watching Tarma, hoping for treats themselves.

  Tarma was pleased—more than pleased. Everything was going according to the plan they’d mapped out. “Patience, children,” she told the rest. “Dinner should be here soon.”

  Their ears flickered forward nearly as one at that welcome word, and they continued to watch her with expectation in their soft, sweet eyes.

  And within moments, the beast-market attendants did appear, with the hay and sweet-feed Tarma had told Kethry to order—and more than that—

  She saw carrots poking out of more than one pocket. Hmm. This was gratifying, if it was evidence of the fact that the attendants were taken with the looks of the string—but it could also be an attempt on the part of some other horsebreeder to poison her stock.

  :I’m checking, mindmate.: the voice in her head told her.

  “Keth, tell the younglings over there to hold absolutely still. I think they just want to treat the children, but Warrl’s going to check for drugging, just in case.”

  Kethry called out the warning, and the attendants froze; the whole crowd froze when they saw Warrl’s great gray body moving toward them. Now they could see just how huge he was—his shoulder came nearly to Tarma’s waist—and how much like a wolf he looked. Tarma took advantage of the situation to vault the fence again, and begin relieving the attendants of their burdens. Warrl sniffed the feed over, then checked the youngsters themselves and the treats they’d brought.

  :They’re fine, mindmate,: Warrl told her, cheerfully. :And about ready to soil themselves if I sneeze.:

  Tarma laughed, and patted the one next to her on the head as she took his bale of hay away from him. “They’re all right, Keth. Um—tell them to wait until I’ve finished, then they can give the children their treats so long as they stay out of the corral. I don’t want anybody in there; they get spooked, and it’ll take half a day to calm them down again. And tell them we won’t need any nightwatchers, that Warrl will be guarding them when I’m not here—that should prevent anybody even thinking about drugging them.”

  Warrl sprang over the fence with a single, graceful leap. The horses, of course, were so used to his presence that they totally ignored him, being far more interested in their dinner. With a fence between themselves and Warrl, the attendants calmed down a bit.

  Tarma completed her task, and (with an inward wince) vaulted the fence a third time, to return to where Ironheart still stood, statue-firm.

  “Rest,” she said, and the battlemare unlocked her legs, and reached around to nuzzle at her rider’s arm. The others were getting fed; she wanted her dinner.

  “Hungry, jel‘enedra?” Tarma murmured, letting her have the handful of sweet-feed she’d brought with her. “Patience, we’ll be at the inn soon enough.”

  She cast a glance over at Kethry’s companion. His eyes were taking up half of his head.

  “Warrl, would you mind staying—”

  : If you send me a nice haunch of pig as soon as you get there.:

  “And a half-dozen marrowbones already cracked; you deserve it.” She swung up into her saddle, and turned to Kethry, who was smiling broadly enough to split her face in two. “So much for the barbarian dog and pony show, she‘enedra,” she said, stifling a chuckle. “Tell t
hese nice people they can go home, and let’s find our inn, shall we?”

  “So how barbarian do you want me to look?” Tarma asked her partner, as they strolled down the creaking wooden stairs of the inn to the dimly lit common room. “And what kind? The aloof desert princeling, the snarling beast-thing, what?”

  “Better stick with the aloof desert princeling; we don’t want these people afraid to have you near the Court,” Kethry chuckled. Tarma was plainly enjoying herself, willing to act any part to the hilt. “Brood—that always looks impressive, and you’ve certainly got the face for it.”

  “Oh, have I now!” They were continuing to speak in Shin‘a’in between themselves; it was better than a code. The likelihood of anyone knowing Tarma’s tongue, here in a country where tales of Shin‘a’in were obviously so outlandish that they feared the Swordsworn, was nil.

  The common room went absolutely silent as they entered. Tarma stepped in first, looking around sharply, as if she expected enemies to emerge from beneath the tables. Finally she gave a quick nod as if to herself, stepped aside, and motioned Kethry to precede her. She kept a casual hand on the hilt of the larger of her daggers the entire time. She’d wanted to wear her sword, but Kethry had argued against the idea; now she was glad she’d won. If Tarma had worn anything larger than a dagger, she might well have caused a panicked exodus! As it was, the impression she left was a complicated one; that she was very dangerous and suspicious of everyone and everything, that she and Kethry were equal, but that she also considered herself in charge of Kethry’s safety.

  It was a masterful performance, carefully planned and choreographed to avoid a problem before it could come up. The people of the primary religious sect of Rethwellan took a dim view of same-sex lovers, and the partners were doing their best to make that notion, which was inevitably going to occur to someone, seem a total absurdity. This touch-me-not bodyguarding act Tarma was putting on was hopefully going to do just that—among other things.

  They took a table with seats for two in a far corner. Tarma motioned for Kethry to take the seat actually in the corner, then took the outer seat so that she would stand (or rather, sit) between Kethry and The Rest Of The World, Kethry signaled the waiter while her partner turned her own chair so that the back was up against the wall, and finally sat down. Tarma continued to watch the room from that vantage, broodingly, while Kethry placed orders for both of them. Conversation started back up again once they were seated, but Kethry noted that it was a trifle uneasy, and most of the diners kept one eye on Tarma at all times.