King's Shield (54 page)

“Who’s arguing with orders?”

“You’re doing it right now. I said go away, and you started to argue.”

“Shut it, Gdir,” Hal whispered, his pale eyes sidelit in the strengthening light. “I think something’s happening.”

All three ducked down and peered across the pass and down at the far end, where a massive crevasse opened into the tunnel. They saw nothing.

“I am not arguing,” Gdir stated, turning back to Han. “I am quite reasonably pointing out the duty that you should be doing.”

“You wouldn’t point out the Jarlan’s duty.”

“That’s because she always does everything right.”

“This.” Han flung her hands out. “Is an argument.”

Gdir wanted to say Lnand argued, but she didn’t want Lnand hearing her name and rushing over to pretend to be hurt so everyone would pet her.

Han looked in the same direction, and snorted again. “You know she’s the worst pug in the world. But at least she’s doing her job.”

Gdir couldn’t express the depth of her loathing. Lnand was the worst pug of all the castle children, always wanting to be petted and cooed over for just doing her duty. Duty was to be done because everyone trusted you to do it. They shouldn’t have to praise you for it.

Han grinned. “Giving her orders is like trying to swim in mud.”

“Then you should fight her,” Gdir stated, though she knew Han wasn’t a coward. In fact she so much wasn’t a coward she didn’t see the hint about cowardice.

Han made a face. “Waste of time, and it hurts. Hurts twice.”

Gdir had to concede that, though not out loud. In a scrap, the idea was to get your enemy pinned, so they gave in and behaved. Most stuck with it, but some needed to be scrapped over and over. Lnand was one of those.

Lnand also didn’t scrap fairly—she bit and pulled hair and scratched, getting you in tender places that didn’t show. And if you got her down, she always fake cried and sometimes even snitched. Then you got the thrashing for scrapping—and you still had the bite marks and throbbing scalp. But at least everyone knew you weren’t a snitch. Though why that was any good when she got away with it, nobody could say.

“Seems better if she thinks she thought of it.” Han wound her hand in a circle, including Lnand and the smalls. “If I’d told her to, you think she’d be crawling around with them right now, being foals? No, because she’d still be arguing. Just like you.”

“Maybe. If the sevens and eights were watching,” Gdir said, though she felt unmoored, as if the discussion had drifted like a little boat in a pool. Gdir frowned, trying to find her way back to the point.

Start from Lnand, who just always had to be the center of attention.
Her father’s the same way,
Gdir’s mother had said once, when Gdir complained about her.
Why he’s never kept a mate longer than two years, in spite of him being as good a baker as any at the royal palace.

Gdir knew what
that
meant. When she was exactly Tlennen’s age, and they’d just arrived to live at Castle Andahi, she’d immediately gone exploring. She’d been curled up in what would become her favorite spot, a tiny jutting ledge where one of the towers joined the wall, where somebody small who didn’t look down could sit and look at the mountains folding away toward the sea. She’d heard voices coming—the Jarlan and Ndand.

Ndand had said, “. . . and Star Indran wants to go back to Tlen-Sindan-An on the next caravan. She’s parting with Cousin Dodger.” And then—her exact words—“Star says she might not be a ranker’s daughter, but she can take a hint when she’s become just another duty to dodge.”

The Jarlan had laughed, and her words started to fade away as the two passed along the sentry walk. “Second woman this season, and we’re already short-handed. But who can blame them for not wanting to come up here? We’ll have to reorganize the watch slates again, and . . .”

Duty, that was the point. You couldn’t get promoted if you didn’t do your duty, and apparently you couldn’t even have a mate if you didn’t do your duty. Duty was the purpose of life! Duty and everything clean and in order, it was so
important,
and Han wasn’t
seeing
it.

Gdir sucked in her breath to tell Han exactly how stupid she was, when Hal knocked Han with his elbow. “Told ya.”

As the three watched, tall men with horned helms emerged from the tunnel, their silvery armor glinting in the sunlight just topping the mountains behind the children’s cave.

“Those are Venn,” Hal whispered.

“Shut it,” Gdir and Han both said.

The first ones were on horseback. As the children watched, the one with white wings instead of horns on his helm made a motion with a gloved hand toward another who carried a long oddly shaped brass tube. Like a trumpet, but not straight. This man put his lips to it, and his face turned crimson as he blew out a long, weird note, like the lowing of cattle when thunder is near, followed by a couple of loud owl-hoots and then a low bra-a-a-p.

“Sounds like a mountain farting,” Hal whispered, snickering.

Han didn’t hear. She held her arms tight against her, rocking back and forth, her mouth pulled awry, lower lip trembling.

Gdir stared at her, about to accuse her of cowardice when the enemy couldn’t even see them, way up here. But then she realized what it meant, why Han looked like someone had slapped her.

If the Venn were here, it meant the castle had fallen into enemy hands.

 

 

 

Inda wished even more strongly for Tdor—or Tau—when he finally got Evred alone just after dawn. Inda had risen early, bolting down breakfast over a last talk with Hawkeye and Noddy in the officers’ mess they shared with the other Sier Danas. When the two left to mount up, Inda discovered Evred up in the map room, reading the day’s logistical reports gathered by the captain of the watch.

They were alone, everyone else either gone or busy, so Inda told Evred Signi’s good news. He’d expected to see his own elation mirrored back, but instead Evred had reacted like someone struck blind and deaf. Half a riding of men old enough to know better were coming back from liberty drunk. They wove their way, singing loudly, directly under the open window, but Evred did not move.

Inda ducked out and snapped his fingers at Kened, who was on Runner duty. After making motions of grabbing the idiots by the hair and dunking them head first into the horse troughs (to prevent a far worse punishment; Evred was strict about drunkenness and sloth), he jerked a thumb toward the courtyard. Kened comprehended at once, and leaped down the stairs five at a time.

When Inda got back into the map room, Evred still stood motionless, one hand on the map, the other holding the papers. Through the open window the drunks’ caroling abruptly ended. That was followed by some thuds, a muffled “Ow!” and the rackety-clack of heels on the stones: the sounds of a hasty withdrawal as Kened and the door guards muscled the delinquents away.

Evred didn’t hear that either.

He faced, alone, a terrible struggle. Should he not be accustomed to bitter choices by now? At first, his anger had burned ineffectively round the image of Signi, but he knew she was only the messenger. The Morvende had made the real choice explicitly clear on his very first visit. They had permitted him access to the archive because he’d come to make peace. He was here to defend his kingdom now. Perhaps they knew, perhaps they did not; they lived deep in the mountains somewhere in the great range.

One thing was for certain, though: if he opened the archive to its platform and moved warriors through, the Morvende would know right away, and they would see it as an act of war.

But Inda said they needed to do it.

Inda watched Evred’s blind gaze, his tense profile. What to do now?

Unexpected relief arrived with the guard Runner sent to let them know that Hawkeye and Noddy were ready to ride out.

Evred blinked. He recovered the room, Inda waiting, the Runner in the doorway. This was the deceptive relief of postponement, not a release from choice.

But he would accept what little he was given. “We must see them off.”

 

 

 

The entire city agreed.

The night before, once Hawkeye had flung the damn magic token down the deepest steam vent at the back of the baths, he had been afire to depart despite darkness and rain, so determined was he to reach the top of the pass before Cama. But Noddy had said with his usual stolidity, “Inda’s gonna send the main body after us at the gallop, like as not. Let’s be the ones to remember remounts. Grain for the animals. Supplies. They won’t.”

Hawkeye flicked an interrogative look his way, and Noddy said, “Inda’s learned about ten years worth of academy gaming in a couple of months, but he still thinks horses are ships.”

Noddy was right. Hawkeye bit back his impatience and they went to the stable to issue the orders to have everything ready for dawn. The reward was an evening of relative quiet, which Hawkeye spent with Fala, his beloved. His wife, Dannor, had only stayed a couple of months in Ala Larkadhe. She’d made enemies so rapidly Hawkeye had had to constantly stop his work to negotiate, remonstrate, reestablish peace. Then came Evred’s wish that their generation begin the next generation, and Dannor had been enraged that the king would interfere in their private lives. She had no intention of being burdened with supervising squalling brats ten years before she should reasonably be expected to do so.

Hawkeye had pointed out that if she were at Yvana-Vayir, she could hardly be expected to have his heir. She’d thought that over. Hawkeye’s parents were dead, his brothers in their last year of the academy, those bratty girls they were going to marry in their first year of the queen’s training. Dull as Yvana-Vayir was, at least there would be no one to get tiresome about what they considered to be her duty.

So Dannor moved out of Hawkeye’s rooms to go back to Yvana-Vayir, and Fala moved in. Fala was a potter. She’d opened a local business so that she could be close to Hawkeye. She made familiar dishes for the Marlovans; the Idayagans and Olarans preferred the tulip goblets and flat plates of the east.

Fala had also volunteered to serve with the new Randviar’s women on castle defense duty. So she was there this morning, standing next to the Randviar on the sentry walk adjacent to the white tower as thunder rumbled warningly in the northwest.

Below, Hawkeye and Noddy rode at the head of their six wings plus attendant Runners and stable hands, leading an impressive train of riderless horses and tarped wagons carrying supplies for a much larger force: horse armoring, bags of grain, and freshly scythed summer hay. They also carried a single wagon full of rusty old helms from the castle, leftovers bought as surplus by the Idayagan king the generation before. Many riders had none; most hated helms, especially these full-head ones with their narrow vi sored view, but Evred had insisted they take them. And wear them.

To the echoing sound of drums, and voices chanting the oldest and most stirring of Marlovan ballads, Hawkeye’s and Noddy’s men passed through the back gates of the castle into the city streets below. Inda, Evred, the Randviar, and the male and female sentries watched them wind through the old streets to the northern gates of Ala Larkadhe, under the shadow of the ancient tower. The northern gates stood open and beyond them lay the first great curve of the pass.

After a generation of Marlovan rule, the city was a mixture of adaptable Idayagans, Olarans, and Marlovans who had moved in as families of warriors and to carry on subsidiary business. Those who could not abide the conquerors had moved away or been forced out.

The atmosphere was tense and moody, with pockets of cheering, under the first heavy wet splatters of another storm. To civilian eyes, these gray-coated men with their shields and helms and jingling chain mail seemed a great army.

The women on the walls watched soberly. Their men were mostly in the castle guard, impatient to be riding after the dragoons. Fala stood next to the Randviar, motionless despite the rain streaming down her face, through her hair, dripping on her clothes. Her fingers gripped her bow tightly.

When the last of the wagons rumbled out of sight, Tdiran-Randviar and Fala turned away, the older woman scowling deeply.

The Randviar, Tdiran Vranid, was Hawkeye’s great-aunt, who had come to run the defense of the castle when Dannor left the spring before. She glanced back just once as the last of the strings of remounts walked through the northern gates and vanished around that first curve.

She turned away and dealt Fala a well-meaning buffet. Fala lifted her head. She tried to smile, failed, and walked away silently to the women’s guardhouse to keep herself busy making arrows until her next duty rotation.

Inda and Evred ducked under the awning outside the upper level sentry guard station; while splats of rain felt pleasant on the face, the prospect of having to wear a soggy coat through the rest of the day wasn’t.

“Better get used to it,” Tdiran-Randviar said to Evred and Inda, cackling as rain hissed in gray arrows against the stone walk and towers, the overhangs pouring sheets of water. “The locals are all saying this here is a little breeze. To let us know the winds are bringing a big one.”

Blue flickered above the mountain peaks, mostly obscured by clouds. Inda wondered how far up Cherry-Stripe and Cama had gotten, hoped they wouldn’t be struck by lightning. Then he swung around to face the Randviar.

“So. Now that it’s just us,” she began.

Inda had learned by now that when people said the obvious, they usually had something else on their minds. Something that might be problematical. So he said to the Randviar, “What kind of defense—”

“Inda!”

The shout echoed up the tower stairwell.

“Tau?” Inda said doubtfully.

“Inside,” Evred said.

They entered the round room, bare stone except for the battered table of the guard captain on watch, the duty roster, and an ensorcelled jug of water.