Banner of the Damned (88 page)

I began to search for the best words, but Retrend, long experienced, uttered a military summation of the situation, wonderfully succinct.

Ivandred glanced briefly at me and back as he said, “You say they carried a banner. Whose?”

I could not recall the color, much less the device. My memory was of a sodden mass of fabric blotched with unremarkable color.

“Old Algara,” Retrend said unerringly. “Brown and silver owl on white.”

“Where are they now?”

“Evrec is shadowing them.”

Ivandred flicked up his hand in acknowledgment then said, “Proceed as ordered. Same road. Leave them to us.”

Retrend thumped his fist against his chest and walked away, talking low-voiced to a couple of his lancers. Ivandred turned to me. “How did you accomplish this spell with the rocks? I thought it was impossible to
transport something into something else, but Retrend makes it sound like you did.”

“Using the transport spell we are taught, it’s impossible. But the Herskalt made me take it apart and reconstruct it, so now I understand how to modify it,” I said, and explained. Ivandred listened closely. I wondered if he was thinking of trying to spray pebbles at enemies—if he did, I thought, it would be far less terrible than using swords and lances. I coached him until he understood, then I said, “I was hoping that as little about my part would be said as possible. I cannot help what the Totha attackers will say, of course, but our folk.”

“Do not worry about the Tothans.” Ivandred’s voice and his face were devoid of emotion, but again I sustained that thrill of dread. “As for your request. I understand what you want. And I concur.” He lifted his chin toward the busy camp. “We train all our lives to defend ourselves, but the idea that some mage, even a little thing like you, could wiggle a hand, mutter something, and cause one of us to drop dead, it is disheartening.”

It is exhilarating, I thought, but enough dread remained to enable me to hide the reaction. “Yet we know only Norsunder does that kind of magic.”

He made a negating motion. “We know that is not true.”

I thought again of those terrible Venn mages. I had refused to read any more of Fox’s memoir, so I did not know the specifics, but I knew that these Venn had fought Retrend’s and Ivandred’s ancestors, and in some ballad there was probably a bloody description of what had come to pass by magic.

He let me go then, and I retired to our tent, but I was not permitted to rest.

“There is something they are not telling me,” Anhar said, arms pressed tightly across her front. “Did they cut scalps away from those people?”

I flung up my hands to ward Thorn Gate. “Nothing like that,” I exclaimed without thinking.

She exclaimed in surprise, “Then what is so terrible?”

I thought about her words, and Ivandred’s words, and found a sliver of truth, while still protecting her. “I used stage magic. It frightened them away.”

“Oh-h-h-h,” Anhar nodded, then winced. “And they are ashamed that they do not have bloody scalps?”

It would have been easy to agree, but I had already been dishonest enough. “It is more like such a ruse will never work again. Surely someone
somewhere will explain to the Tothans that it was merely stage illusion.”

“Then next time, they will attack,” she murmured, grim again.

But next time, surely, I will have a plan
, I thought, as I curled up to sleep.

T

When I asked Retrend if there was a festival day we were unaware of, he grinned, offered me a drink from his flask, and said, “The king and the First Lancers found the attackers.”

“Found?”

“They won’t be talking to anybody.”

He turned back to the celebration as I comprehended what it meant: they were all dead.

My emotions were a turmoil, but foremost was my awareness of no desire to celebrate. I retreated to our tent, where Anhar asked the expected question. “Good,” she said fiercely. “I am glad. They were going to kill us, people who did them no harm. Who they had never met! Aren’t you glad?”

“I was glad the moment he said it,” I answered. And I had been—a pulse of angry vindication, but it lasted only as long as the walk to the tents. More lingering was the memory of the leader’s face, his nose with a bump in it, jug ears a lot like Birdy’s. His horror, then the tightening of
determination. I would swear he hadn’t wanted to kill us, but that determination made it plain he would carry out his… orders? Duty? Honor?

We traveled on. The long, alternately dusty or muddy road was broken by the occasional pleasure of Birdy’s letters. The Marlovens acknowledged Restday by passing around a wine flask, but otherwise we traveled like always, and if they had other festival days, those went past unnoticed by us. Maybe the ballads or dances changed? I was never certain. I did transfer to Choreid Dhelerei on Flower Day, to visit the baker who made rolls something like Colendi lily breads. I brought those back to Anhar, who wept as we ate them in silence, the homesickness sharp and poignant in the lack of music and flowers and pretty silken clothes.

Birdy cheerfully described the plays and banquets celebrated that day in Alarcansa, not knowing how eagerly I read, nor how much it hurt to read. He had been promoted from trade statistics to vital statistics—recording and sometimes amending birth records. He was not only required to witness at births, he must now attend hearings if parents parted, or if a parent wished to adopt another parent into a family.

Sometimes I thought about what the Herskalt had said about scribes and power and controlling information. Not that Birdy gave any sign of such intent. He delighted in people, no matter what degree, in all their variety. I relished these small, vivid glimpses into the lives of Colendi I would never meet, appreciating their very ordinariness. As for me, I wrote about what I saw, the language, historical artifacts. I talked about everything but magic.

We passed northward again. By subtle signs (and lengthened drills) the lancers revealed the anticipatory tension that I associated with Yvanavar. We camped one night short of the border. The Marlovens performed a vigorous dance in commemoration of some important battle long ago, then a flask of distilled liquor passed from hand to hand.

I heard the tail end of Retrend’s conversation as he offered the flask, “… and I will see and talk to this mysterious sword master—see if I don’t.”

“Stake?” came the laughing challenge.

In answer Retrend pulled from his boot a favorite knife, and cast it
down to stand in the soil, hilt upright. Those who were wagering against him offered weapons in their turn, amid whoops and crowing laughter.

I walked away to where Anhar was setting up our tent. “I wonder if anyone keeps the same set of weapons all their lives? Or if they get traded all around in these wagers of theirs, I asked.

“Who cares?” Anhar said.

There was no sword master, mysterious or otherwise, while we were there.

We were scarcely out of sight of Yvanavar’s gate when Retrend looked around, the low sun barely striking a glint in his red hair, as he made certain the Yvanavar escort was not lurking about.

Then he exclaimed, “Well, that was disgusting.”

One of the older lancers said, “I thought it was too early for the jarl to be heading south for Convocation. Even at a walk, he’ll get there a month ahead of time.”

“The jarlan told me that he is making stops at Torac and other places,” I said.

“Tlen,” Retrend said with meaning.

“Tiv Evair,” someone else said with the same heavy emphasis.

I mentally shrugged away politics I couldn’t even pretend to understand.

Retrend turned my way. “Did the jarlan mention the sword master?”

“Not a thing,” I replied. I did not tell them that the only conversation I had with the jarlan was about myself.
I am told that you are a Colendi scribe
.

So I was trained.

In Colend, are all scribes taught magic?

Either explain or say nothing, I could almost hear the Herskalt’s advice, and so I said,
Scribes are taught in Colend as they are taught everywhere. I learned magic after I left
.

And Tdiran looked at me just the way the courtiers at home had looked at Jurac Sonscarna.

“… sword master was on a field run with the young ones, that’s what I was told,” someone said.

“Banner games,” Retrend replied. “A little late in the season for that.”

“I’ll take my knife now,” said one of the others, and amid laughter, the weaponry began to change hands as the payoff of the earlier wager, momentarily halting when Anhar spoke up.

“I know his name.”

Everyone turned her way. She reddened. “The upstairs maid talks a lot. I listened. The man’s name is Hannik, and she said he comes from some small place beyond the Jayad.”

“Hannik!” Tesar repeated, and half the lancers laughed.

“What is droll about this name?” I asked.

“Only that every third man is named Hannik down that way,” Retrend said, with a salute in Tesar’s direction. She grinned and lifted a shoulder.

“Why?” I asked.

They all found that funny.

“Haven’t you heard that ballad, ‘The Rat and the Lion’?” Retrend asked, grinning.

“Yes. Several times. It’s about all these animals, each verse a separate one. A rat outsmarts them all and then chooses the lion as its companion after outsmarting it, too.”

“Nobody explained? It’s about Princess Rat, when she married Hannik Dei,” Retrend said.

Tesar added, “This was way back when it was all Iascans here. Before
we
came.” She struck her fist to her chest. “The ‘rat’ is Princess Siar Cassadas. In all the stories, she looked like a rat. Hannik Dei was a tall, blond fellow, son of the famous Adamas Dei of the Black Sword.”

Anhar said, “The Hannik the Yvanavars hired as sword master is blond, too.”

“A blond named Hannik,” Retrend repeated. “That narrows it down to a few thousand fellows.”

Everyone found that hilarious, then they began discussing patterns of drill, both old and new, with the easy knowledge of a lifetime of experience.

Anhar rode at my side, looking distracted.

I made certain attention was elsewhere, then asked in our own language, “Is aught amiss, then?”

“Rat.” She made a shadow-warding. “In Colend, we grow up with the fine statues of people famed for talents or actions that benefited others. And we use the gardens or the buildings that royalty and nobility build when they haven’t fame for anything else. They want to be remembered. What did this princess build, or do, to be remembered? Yet for all these centuries, she is known as Rat for her buck teeth.”