Redoubt: Book Four of the Collegium Chronicles (A Valdemar Novel)

by Mercedes Lackey

  And as for Amily, it seemed to him she was waiting for something—and even she wasn’t sure what it was that she was waiting for. Probably not the best reason in the world for getting married, to do so because you didn’t know what else to do.

  He was flopped down in the grass watching the river and listening to Bard Tharis wax eloquent on the history of King Anders, which seemed to be a specialty of his, and wondering mostly why the weather during that worthy’s reign seemed to be entirely composed of snowstorms of monumental proportions, when he heard a familiar Mindvoice in his inner “ear.”

  :If you want your ticket, my young apprentice, you’d better get it now.:

  He blinked a little startled. Ticket? Why would Nikolas be talking about a tick—

  :Heads up!: Dallen said excitedly. :Trouble in a Temper is pounding up the Hill at a pace that is rather cruel to his horses, and little does he know what he’s in for!:

  What? And then it struck him—the memory of what Nikolas had said a fortnight or so ago. :Where’re Bear and Lena?: he asked Dallen.

  :Waiting at the gate. He won’t be let inside, not after that last display of temper, and especially not given what he has with him. And Bear and Lena have some reinforcement—Nikolas didn’t warn them, but he did warn someone else.:

  By now some of the other Trainees were getting wind of the fact that something was up and had begun whispering to each other. A couple of the Herald Trainees must have caught the edges of leaking Mindspeech and were sitting up and staring toward the main gate. Finally the teacher stopped lecturing, looking straight at Mags.

  “Trainee Mags. You’re the most likely to know—”

  “Healer Trainee Bear’s Pa is comin’ up th’ hill, an’ I hear he ain’t alone, sir,” Mags said instantly. “There’s reckoning to be trouble.” After all, this was a teacher demanding information.

  The teacher looked over the class. “I know you have a vested interest in this, Mags, since Bear and Lena are your very good friends. How many of the rest of you do?”

  About half the class shot up their hands. The teacher sighed. “There’s no point in even continuing then. Fine, I want a three-page paper from each of you on some aspect of the King’s reign by tomorrow. I want you to confer with each other and me so there are no duplicates. Remember, those of you who confer with me first will obviously be able to pick out the easiest and most obvious subjects for your papers. Class dismissed.”

  The ones who had indicated they didn’t really care what happened began a huddled conference. The rest got up and headed for the main gate. Mags was the only one who ran.

  Bear and Lena were waiting just outside the gate, and from behind, Mags couldn’t read anything other than tension in their postures. He wondered what on earth Bear’s father thought he could actually do about the marriage. He also wondered just who the man had brought with him . . .

  Surely not Bear’s ma . . . So far as he was aware, Healer Tyrall did not regard his wife as much of anything other than the vehicle by which he produced Healer-Gifted offspring. An odd attitude for a Healer, but, then, the marriage had been an arranged one, and according to the little Bear had said, he was never actually unkind to her, merely indifferent. Since she was not Gifted at all . . . and also according to Bear, sweet natured but not very bright . . .

  Hmm. Healer married to a gal with nothin’ . . . maybe. . . . Thinking about it, he could almost, for just a moment, feel a trickle of sympathy for Healer Tyrall. Could feel like a racehorse harnessed to a plow horse. And maybe that was why he had so little sympathy for Bear. After all, he had done his duty to his family by marrying the bride they had chosen for him and producing the next generation of Gifted Healers, and by his own stern code, Bear should be doing the same.

  Dammit, I hate being able to see the other side of things! For, of course, his imagination was already painting the rest of that picture. It wasn’t—it couldn’t be—all of the story, that Healer Tyrall was overly proud of his rank and position and was a tyrant over his family. He wouldn’t be a good Healer if that were all he was—and he wouldn’t be holding that position if he weren’t a good Healer. Healers, as much as Heralds, were not their own masters. Healers served a greater good. Healers put their own interests second and the needs of those who needed them first. Well, they were supposed to, anyway . . . and he imagined that Healer Tyrall was telling himself that this was exactly what he was doing. And if you came of stock that bred Gifted Healers consistently, well, it was your duty to go and make more little Healers with whatever wife you were given. By that estimation, Bear was betraying his very calling as a Healer.

  Well, he was if you took a very, very narrow view of what his duty to his calling and his family was, anyway. It wasn’t too hard for Mags to imagine what Bear’s father was thinking, as opposed to what things looked like from outside his personal point of view.

  Even as Mags thought that, the sound of laboring horses grew nearer, and up over the crest of the hill came Healer Tyrall.

  And the mercenary company he had hired, about a dozen men, all armed.

  Hoo boy.

  :I am finding it hard to believe my own eyes. I have never before seen someone as supposedly intelligent as Bear’s father so thoroughly deposit a pile of excrement in his own bed, then proceed to trample it thoroughly into all the bedclothes . . . : Dallen was clearly in awe at the epic stupidity he was witnessing. Mags tried to talk to Nikolas, but all he got was a sensation of choking. Whether it was Nikolas who was choking with disbelief, or he wanted to choke the Healer, Mags couldn’t quite tell.

  The Guard alerted at the sight of armed men, and in no uncertain terms. Before Mags could even blink, they had sounded the alarm, shoved Lena and Bear behind the gate, and dropped the iron portcullis.

  Well. So much for doin’ things peaceful-like. Fine way to make yer point, Healer, declare war on the King!

  Things got a bit chaotic there for a bit. A fully armed Guard company came racing in formation to the gate. Healer Tyrall reined in his horse, which was all too happy to stop, and stared, dumbfounded, at the unfriendly reception.

  What? Did he actually not think about what was gonna happen if he did this? Mags was thunderstruck. How could the man be so unbelievably stupid?

  Or maybe he was just so used to being the one in charge that it never occurred to him that he might have had a bad idea here.

  Or maybe the heat baked his head so much it drove him crazy, or he’s got no brain left. That would be the most charitable guess, though of all of them, it was the least likely.

  “In the name of the King, throw your weapons to the ground!” the officer in charge barked, as the Guard trained bows on them all. The mercenaries, being considerably less stupid than the man who had hired them, immediately complied. They were helmed, so you couldn’t see their expressions, but Mags wondered what they were thinking. He supposed that when Tyrall told them they were to go racing up to the Collegium fully armed, they thought it was perfectly all right. It was possible they had believed him. After all, several of the highborn were permitted to have their own armed escorts at the Palace—though in practice, most didn’t bother. Well, if they hadn’t known better before, they certainly did now.

  From behind the downed portcullis, the officer continued. “What in the name of all the gods is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “How dare you bring armed men to the King’s gate? I should arrest you for treason and insurrection on the spot!”

  Healer Tyrall blinked at the officer for a moment, as if he didn’t understand what had been said to him. Then, as if it had never even occurred to him that the Palace stood here, he shot a dumbfounded glance at it, and for a moment, blanched.

  :By the gods . . . I think he completely forgot that the King lives here!: Dallen exclaimed. :All he ever thought was that this is where the Collegia are!:

  Mags could scarcely believe it . . . and yet, the man had proven himself completely blind to reality in the past.

  :He was so focused on taking
Bear away that he completely forgot where the Collegia are . . . : Dallen sounded stunned. :And he thought, if he just rode up with a double handful of armed men, he could snatch Bear up and take him away and no one would stop him.:

  But if he had made so monumental a mistake, he was not about to admit it now. He pointed at Bear. “I have come to bring home what is mine,” he thundered. “The boy is clearly demented. That scheming little daughter of a traitor probably used her Gift on him to seduce him, just as her father used his to seduce and whore his way into a high position and honors that were not his—”

  “Enough!” barked the officer, as Bear went rigid with rage and Lena did, too.

  “No,” Bear said, putting one hand on the officer’s shoulder, and sounding far steadier and more adult than his own father. “Let him speak. Let him vent all the poison he has in him. I want to hear all of it, and I want you all as witnesses.”

  And speak Healer Tyrall did. He quickly devolved into spittle-spraying, livid rage, and Mags instinctively shielded the people nearest him from any empathic surges that might come from the man. He went on at great length about Lena, and by the time he ran out of words, if anyone had actually believed him, they would have thought her to be a very demoness in disguise, whose only goal was to turn Bear into her sexual slave. Then he went on about Bear, and no one who knew the Trainee would have ever recognized the doltish lout who was supposedly drooling at Lena’s feet. But according to Tyrall, he was something less than a halfwit who happened to have a halfwit’s savant talent with herbs, and it was his father’s duty to rescue him and save his would-be patients from him before he killed one of them. From the amount of froth-spewing about Bear’s “reckless experimentation” an uninformed listener would have been excused for thinking that Bear was a mass poisoner by this time, inclined to doctor the drinks of the unsuspecting just to see what was going to happen.

  As it happened, no one standing here was that uninformed, not even—or especially—the members of the Guard. They knew about Tyrall, and his toady Cuburn, who had actually been sent to the Guard in order to spy on (and potentially disgrace) Bear—and who had been the informant to the foreign assassins who had ultimately kidnapped Amily and put her in deadly danger. They also had been some of the first to adopt Bear’s herbal kits, because the Guard was often in dangerous situations without a Healer.

  But it was when Tyrall started in on the “licentious fraud of a priest” who apparently had been paid vast sums of money to wed the two, that Bear and Lena’s unexpected ally burst out of the portcullis-tower door, roaring with rage.

  Before anyone could move, Father Poul had used the shepherd’s crook of his order to drag Healer Tyrall out of the saddle. No sooner was the man on the ground, than Father Poul was on him, beating him mercilessly.

  “Venal am I?” he howled. “Licentious, am I? I’ll show you venal, you vile disgrace to the Green you wear! The gods know you’ve got a trouncing coming, the gods know it is overdue, and thanks be to the gods that it’s I that’s got the glory of delivering it to you!”

  It was then that Mags remembered that, besides serving the poor . . . Father Poul’s Temple was of a very martial order indeed. In fact, the priests and acolytes were instructed in the offensive use of their crooks twice a day, right after prayers.

  He also recalled that nowhere in any of the material that Mags had ever heard, on his visits to the Temple, was there a mention that they should be meek. Or peaceful. Or suffer insults at all.

  The mercenaries remained right where they were. It was very clear they did not see themselves as being obligated to save their erstwhile master from the fate he had brought upon himself.

  Eventually—but not before Father Poul had reduced the Healer to huddling on the ground and trying to protect his head and neck with his arms—the officer came out the same door and got between them. There was some muttering that Mags couldn’t make out, and Father Poul snorted, then turned on his heel and stalked down the Hill. Presumably he was heading back to his Temple. Mags hoped that if he had not worked out all of his rage on Tyrall’s body, the walk back down the Hill in the heat would leach the rest of it out of him.

  Then the officer grabbed Tyrall by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Healer Tyrall,” he proclaimed loudly. “I’m putting you under arrest.” He looked at the mercenaries. “You lot are dismissed. You’ll be leaving your weapons. Let that be a lesson to you not to listen to an idiot who bids you come riding up to the Palace, fully armed. And you can thank the gods you worship that we are certain your master told you he had permission to bring you up here in an armed state—and that you didn’t know any better.”

  There were some stiff nods and no relaxation of their tense poses. Without a word, they turned and rode away, leaving Tyrall to deal with the situation alone.

  Mags wondered if they had been paid in advance. He hoped so. He also hoped they would lodge complaints about Tyrall to the Mercenary Guild, which was responsible for the conduct of all mercenaries and their companies within the Kingdom of Valdemar. The Guild had the authority to go to the King over this—and likely would. Not only had this not ended yet, for Tyrall the punishment had barely begun.

  The officer let go of the Healer, who was now ashen-faced where he wasn’t black and blue. “As it happens, we had warning that you were going to pull this hare-brained nonsense, and the King already passed down his ruling on what we were to do if you were stupid enough to carry it out. Intentions count for a great deal in this Kingdom and we know you didn’t intend treason.”

  Tyrall’s shoulders sagged with relief.

  “However, you did intend forcible kidnapping. So, the King has directed that your victim be the one to pass judgment on your intentions toward him.” The portcullis rose, and Bear stepped out to the other side.

  Mags held his breath. He still couldn’t see Bear’s face from here, and he wondered what Bear was going to say.

  Finally, Bear spoke, and his voice was cold. “I don’t know this man,” he said. “It is true that we share a name, but there are many Tyralls in this Kingdom, and no one I would call Father would ever act in this foolish and treasonable manner. I declare he is of no relation to me. It’s of no consequence what he says about me, and as for his insults to my wife, well—”

  Bear looked at Lena, who raised her chin. “The Companion isn’t concerned with what a donkey says about her. Nor is the eagle in the least bothered about the insults of the foolish cricket. If you listen to dogs barking, and believe what they say, then you have only yourself to blame for getting upset.”

  Bear nodded. “So, there you have it. I don’t care about insults, my wife doesn’t care about insults, his actions only bring disgrace on the Healers of his House, and I am not one of them. Let the Healers’ Circle decide what to do with him.”

  And with that, he took Lena’s hand, turned on his heel, and the two of them walked stiffly away, leaving Healer Tyrall looking stunned—and as if he had aged a hundred years in that moment.

  5

  Mags eyed the customer across the counter and behind the barred window with a suspicious expression on his face. Rightly, of course. The man was new to the persona Mags was currently wearing but long familiar to the Weasel and his deaf-mute nephew. He knew better than to present the Weasel with ersatz goods, but Mags was just about certain he was sly enough to try selling imitations to the new man behind the counter.

  The customer eyed him back, blandly; he was a cool one, Mags would have to give him that much. But Mags just did not like the color of the item sitting on the counter between them.

  “We’ll jest be testin’ that, then,” he said, reaching for the allegedly “gold” button.

  “That won’t be needful!” the customer bleated. He snatched the button up and fled out the door, exactly as Mags figured he would. The button had been heavy enough for gold, but Mags suspected a lead core. He also suspected the coating was nothing like gold . . . or, at least, had very little gold content. Clearly, t
he fellow hadn’t thought that the Weasel’s latest hireling had the intelligence to scrape something across a touchstone and add a little acid.

  Well, good. Now he knew not to come to the shop at all unless he had something worthwhile to sell.

  Mags was actually in disguise, and he was enjoying himself to the hilt. When Nikolas decided that Mags should be able to man the shop alone, they had discussed having the “nephew” be responsible and had discarded the idea pretty quickly, for all the obvious reasons.

  So they had invented a new persona; there was no way that Mags could present himself as old enough to be the Weasel’s friend, so it had to be another relative. The obvious choice was the older brother of the deaf-mute—that would account for “family resemblance.”

  After a few lessons in establishing his new appearance and demeanor from Nikolas’ actor friends, he had established a personality and a basic background. People would expect surly—but the Weasel was already surly. So, instead, Mags went for something as close to his own personality as possible. All he had to do was work out “if I wasn’t a Trainee, how would I react to all this?”

  He imagined himself plucked from the mine, given a couple of baths and semidecent clothing and regular feeding, then trained up to the duties of the store and aged about six years. So . . . he was as good-natured as the surroundings and circumstances would allow, figuring that whoever the Weasel plucked out of poverty would be so grateful to actually have a job that let him eat regularly, he’d never complain about anything. But he was also tough, young, hot-blooded, and not going to take anything off anyone except for his uncle, and he looked as if he were willing to be absolutely vicious to anyone who even thought about cheating the Weasel. As for stealing, well—