A Princess of the Chameln (37 page)

Bajan sprang up, as she did. Yvand came from the shadows where she had been watching the Tulgai.

“The council,” said Bajan, “at once and secretly, Yvand, fetch those who sleep in the inn. Make tea . . . sober them if necessary. I will ride to the camp and bring Harka and the general.”

So Lord Zabrandor unrolled his map on a hasty assemblage of tables in the queen's chamber, and even before Bajan returned with the others, the force of the news was plain.

“There is Adderneck,” said Lingrit Am Thuven. “There is the last known front of the King's horde, the army of Sharn Am Zor. If the Red Hundreds come through and meet the men of Mel'Nir who are already here, they will divide our forces forever.”

“By the Goddess,” said Zabrandor, “they are too proud, committing themselves to that pass. They must not come through.”

“How can they be stopped?” asked Lingrit. “Can we warn the king? Can we bypass Mel'Nir and send our own tribesfolk over the plain?”

Aidris looked at the map. She spoke and so did Nenad Am Cham, with one voice.

“We might go through the forest!”

They stared in silence at the black curve of the forest painted upon the old seamed parchment of the map and knew that Mel'Nir had been delivered into their hands.

“A force of cavalry,” murmured Lingrit, “Three hundred, five hundred . . . is it possible?”

“We would need guides,” said Nenad. “The guild house is shut down. The forest guides quarrelled with the garrison.”

“We have guides, the finest in the forest,” said Aidris. “The warriors of the Tulgai.”

So the others came, Ferrad Harka with a bloody bandage on his arm and Jana Am Wetzerik alert as if she were on parade, crying, “Well, have you seen it? Do you have the answer?”

They did have the answer; the plan was like a live thing.

“Secrecy,” said Bajan. “We move tomorrow while the rain holds to cover all. It is given out that a troop is marching to the Adz.”

“These hundreds are expected,” said Wetzerik. “The Melniros in the south know they are coming, and so do our own opponents here. Count Ferrad, Count Bajan . . . you will see these bully boys break off soon and march south to join their expected reinforcements. But you must hold them until that time.”

Lingrit said drily, “The queen must go south with the troops of the great ambush. She will be brought safely to the king's army, and the Daindru proclaimed. I will go as well to protect her interests.”

She thrilled at the promised activity and at the same time shuddered. She would be parted from Bajan.

“The queen will be missed,” said Nenad Am Charn. “It may upset the morale of the tribes.”

“No,” said Aidris, considering. “No, I see how it will be done. I will pack up at once to move to my lodge at the camp. That will explain my absence from Vigrund. At the camp, my place will be taken by the lady Millis Am Charn, riding Tamir, my white horse, behind the lines. The tribes can share the secret a little . . . they can cheer the queen's horse instead of the Queen.”

“Who will lead the ambush?” asked Zabrandor.

“You must take the command, Lord Zabrandor,” said Jana Am Wetzerik, “for your lands are there by the Nesbath road, and you know the terrain best.”

“I will do it with good heart,” said the old lord.

Then when they had all thrashed out the question of the riders who might come along, and had chosen as troop leaders Brock for the kedran, and Batro, Jorgun and Vadala for the tribes, Zabrandor said again, “All who go along must be prepared for bloody deeds rather than knightly courtesy. We do not go to ride brave figures upon the plain but to fall upon our enemy secretly and kill him.”

There was a burst of savage laughter from the warriors of the Tulgai who followed the common speech well enough, even if they would not speak it.

“There you have our name,” said Aidris. “We are the Morrigar, the Giant-killers.”

They drank a health to the enterprise and discussed the question of their allies, the Athron knights.

“They must all be trusted,” said Aidris. “We are taking some of their veteran troopers.”

“It would be no bad thing,” said Lingrit, “if the new Count Zerrah came along, if he could be persuaded to leave the field of honor. There are many new men, you will admit, Lord Zabrandor, surrounding the young king. I serve the queen and like to see her interests well represented. She shall have the new-made count along, too.”

So it was agreed, and a lot more beside. The preparation went on in secret haste everywhere; it was already daylight, but the rain went on unabated. Aidris packed and waited; Yvand made it clear without a word that she intended to ride with the queen. At last, not more than half an hour before she left the inn, Yvand came to her and said, “It is the innkeeper's wife, Mistress Keel, my queen. She knows that you are moving to the lodge. She begs most earnestly to be allowed to speak to you.”

“I will see her,” said Aidris. “Will she ask some favor? We have certainly made a battlefield of her inn. We owe the poor woman a good deal.”

The woman came in briskly; she had arranged to see the queen alone. Aidris looked at her closely for the first time and saw a handsome, dark, lively person about forty years, with a suggestion of city manners that she could not have gained in Vigrund.

“Queen Aidris,” said the innkeeper's wife, “I could not help hearing from the kedran that you were once a kedran yourself.”

“That is true, Mistress Keel.”

“I think you took the name of Venn.”

Aidris nodded, with a very first inkling of what was to come. The woman took a letter from her pocket, a faded letter, which she handed to Aidris in silence. Aidris read a few lines and looked up amazed. The woman smiled sadly.

“I have been married to Keel the innkeeper for some years,” she said. “I was the widow of a Lienish riverboat captain, name of Lorse.”

The Widow Lorse had haunted her dreams a little in former years, but she had seen her as blowsy and high-colored. She looked at the letter, written on paper from her own writing case in the glade by Lake Tulna. Sabeth had a fair rounded merchant's script, taught her by the Moon Sisters. She had written without superscription or signature:

“You will know Loeke is dead, from a fall, and his horse brought home to Vigrund. Do not worry or fret yourself. I am travelling on into Athron and I have
guides
and
gold
and I am not alone. Loeke, not to speak ill of him, was rough work and a boorish fellow. I have a friend who travels with me, and she is a little kedran maid who calls herself Venn, though I doubt that is her real name. She is of a rich Chameln family, and they are sending her into Athron because of the Melniros in their lands. She is brave, far braver than I, in the forest, and fears neither fairies nor demons. I think she will prove my
true friend
. I have even thought we might stay together in Athron and I take a
respectable place
, as for a waiting woman with an
envoy
in Varda, where she is going, rather than the other, the Countess P. For you have always said I must look for good fortune wherever it beckons. If you do not hear from me, you will know this is what has happened.
Do not worry
, my dear, and know that I will always think of you kindly.”

Aidris could have wept at this artless letter. She looked at Mistress Keel and again the woman smiled sadly.

“I did worry,” she said, “but I told myself that Sabeth, my beautiful one, had indeed found good fortune.”

“Yes,” said Aidris. “Yes, the greatest good fortune. I like to think that I helped her to find it. She is married for four years now and has borne a daughter and will soon bear another child. Some time after she wrote this letter she met a young man of good family who later became her husband.”

“I am pleased to hear it,” said Mistress Keel.

“It would be easy for you to find out the name and estate of this man,” said Aidris, “but I must beg you not to do it and to keep your own counsel.”

“She has your friendship . . .”

“Forever!”

“Delbin was a soldier,” said Mistress Keel suddenly, “and married to a farmer's daughter. I never told her that I found this out. She liked to think that they were finer. But they were a pair of young country folk, alone in the world, without family. They died when their cart overturned crossing the Ringist. The baby was rescued, floating, and brought to the Moon Sisters. The trick of fate was that she was beautiful, lovely as a princess, and turned out upon the world alone at sixteen. It might have gone much worse for her in Lien . . .”

For an instant Aidris was tempted to ask the woman about dark matters, about Hurne the Harrier and his master, but she would not get in deeper.

“Will you keep this letter?” she asked warily.

For answer the woman reached out and took it from her hand. She smoothed it out and held a corner of the paper to the last coals of the fire. They both watched in silence as the letter burned to ashes.

“Thank you, Mistress Keel.”

“The Goddess is kind,” said the innkeeper's wife. “My prayers have been answered.”

“You and your husband will be well rewarded for the use of your inn and for your good service.”

“My Queen . . .”

The woman curtsied low and went away again. Aidris, in the few moments alone that were left to her, pondered, on this special day, on the lives of women. Her own life seemed to her hardly a woman's life at all, with none of the softness that women were supposed to enjoy and, thank the Goddess, not much of the Shame and violence to which they were subjected. She drew out the scrying stone and saw the Lady at once, looking out with a fierce expression.

She said, “Is it well? Do you know our purpose?”

For answer there was only a whisper.

“Go swiftly!”

A hand held up a snake very tightly, behind its head, as if to squeeze the creature to death. The sign was plain: Adderneck. So from this lady, whom she thought of as having been “a true woman,” loving and being loved and fighting for those she loved with “a woman's weapons,” including magic, she received, on this day, only a call to battle.

Then it was time. Yvand, dressed for the journey, came in with Aidris's fur cloak, and, shining-eyed, slipped around the queen's wrist a wreath of ivy leaves, wet from the rain. They went down the stairs, and Telavel waited with the escort. She took some time to visit Tamir in his stall and bid him farewell. Then they rode to the South Ride in the steady rain, and there she parted with some of the escort, chosen by lot, for they would all have ridden with the queen.

The South Ride was packed with mounted troops, eerily silent, riding off by companies into the forest, with order kept by a few drumbeats and muffled shouts. There was a shelter, hardly a tent, set up on the right of the broad field, under a large oak tree. Bajan stood waiting with a tall woman, his sister Ambré, whose husband led one of the companies of the Morrigar. There was a Shaman, a holy man, brought from the camp of the Nureshen, and Lord Lingrit and Nenad Am Charn to see that all was done well.

So, in the rain, with the movement of the army all about them, she took Bajan's hand and they spoke to the priest and were married. The Shaman, a mild-eyed man, not impossibly old, with a long braid of hair looped over his shoulder, invoked the blessing of the Goddess. Bajan gave her a heavy silver ring with a fire opal, and she gave him a gold ring. They kissed. She was numb and cold and wished they were in bed at the inn, or in some mountain camp, in the bridal tent, where none came except to leave food at the door.

She tried to smile for his sake, but when she embraced Ambré, her new sister, they both shed tears. Lord Lingrit had one of his servants stand forth with a stirrup cup for the whole party, of strong fine brandywine out of Lien. So they gulped or sipped the fiery spirit and healths were drunk to the queen and to Danu Bajan, the new consort. Then Gerr of Kerrick, Count Zerrah, was there, mounted upon Firedrake, ready to ride with the queen. She kissed Bajan once more and mounted and rode off in the midst of the kedran company with Lord Lingrit on one side and Gerr on the other; so they entered the forest. There was a bird call from the mustering tent, and Akaranok swung himself up on to the front of the queen's saddle.

“Straight on for two leagues, my Queen,” he said, “then we turn southeast for Aldero.”

The pace was fast for the whole of the first day. The six hundred riders of the Morrigar swept down upon Aldero, drank it dry and swept on again, by smaller trails, bearing always southeast. The way was downhill; the kedran company, with the queen among them, camped in a clearing that the Tulgai called Six Ways. Megan Brock, wearing a hood to protect her stitched cheek, went about inspecting the horses, trying to cheer the women in their cramped quarters. There was one fire for twenty riders that night, and they knew they must soon turn to cold food as they came nearer to the pass.

Aidris broke off her dice game with Lingrit and Gerr and walked out to find some air. The crowded camp reeked of damp horses and burnt broth. Not far off she heard other riders passing by; an owl called, a true owl, not one of the Tulgai. She managed to sleep a few hours on this first night and in the dawn rose up with the wakers going about.

The going became harder. They rode uphill, the forest trails were narrow, the rain and cold unceasing. There was casting about and cursing when the company of the Nureshen failed at a meeting point. Aidris became aware that many of the kedran, whether from Athron or the Chameln lands, did not love the Tulgai, hated to be directed by a dwarfish creature that swung down whistling from a tree. Yet Megan Brock held them together, and the little men did their work marvellously well. After the long day riding, with her legs ready to fold under her and her body aching, she groomed Telavel as she had always done and fell into an exhausted sleep.