Limits of Power (55 page)

“Did you like being on the farm?” Arvid asked.

“Yes—it's busier some ways than the Guildhouse—everyone works at something all day—but it's not all hard work. I learned to go out with the geese first, and then the sheep, though not alone. They had dogs, too, and pigs—”

It must have been a rich farm, Arvid thought.

“And you could drink right from the stream; it was so clear you could see the bottom, and it smelled good, like herbs and mint, not like the stream here in the city.”

“Would you like to stay on that farm?” Arvid asked, keeping his voice neutral. “Be part of that family, learn to be a farmer?”

The boy's face shifted expression. “I … I'm not ungrateful, sir, but … but I thought, if you came, we would be together.”

Arvid leaned across the table and put his hand over the boy's hands where they were clenched together. “I do not truly know if you are the son of my body or not, young Arvid, but I care about you as if you were. If you will, you may come with me. I am going a long journey, over the pass to the north, and then west to Fintha, the land Gird came from, to Fin Panir where the Marshal-General lives. Do you want to come, or stay in this familiar land with folk you already know?”

Now joy spread across that young face. “Oh, please—I want to come with you!” he said.

“How well do you ride?” Arvid asked.

“Ride? A horse? You'll let me ride a
horse
?”

That answered one question. “I have to buy one for you first.” And it would have to be that hardest to find of horses: suitable for a novice, calm in temperament, well trained, but with the soundness and endurance to handle a long season on the road.

“May I— Please, may I call you ‘Da'?” the boy asked.

Arvid's heart turned over. For a moment he hesitated: how could he be ready for this? The boy's expression stiffened; Arvid smiled. “If you want,” he said. “I would be glad.”

“Da,” the boy said, tasting it, the word he'd never been able to say. “Thank you!”

“Bide here with Marshal Steralt while I go find us horses for the trip,” Arvid said.

Outside, in the main part of the grange, Marshal Steralt was talking softly with his yeoman-marshal. His brows went up.

“He's coming with me,” Arvid said. “And I'm going to Fin Panir.” Steralt's expression was still challenging. “He wants to call me Da.”

“Then
be
that,” Steralt said with emphasis. “And Gird guide your heart.”

T
wo mornings later, Arvid, the boy, and Arcolin's courier rode out of Valdaire, headed for the pass as soon as light allowed. The Guild League ran to the boundary of the gnome princedom claiming the foothills, so the road continued a Guild League road, stone-paved, wide enough for two-way wagon traffic, with pedestrian and mounted travel to either side. A storm overnight had laid the dust, and even this early they passed a northbound caravan that must have started while it was still too dark to see. In this season, the road would have traffic all the way north. Once free of the city, the air smelled of rock and grass and something of the mountains—aromatic shrubs, the upland trees. To Arvid, it promised the north, his own country.

Arvid had searched both the city's horse markets before finding the mounts he wanted for the boy and himself. All four would ride or pack; the unridden ones carried their provisions. He led all three from his own mount. The boy clutched the saddle bow as they jogged along; Arvid had bought a fleece to throw over the saddle for him.

By midday they had caught up with and passed a caravan that had lost a wheel from one wagon the day before and camped overnight. They could see its dust behind them when they stopped to eat and rest the horses. The courier knew where a rivulet ran clear and cold not far from the road. Trees fringed it, their leaves fluttering in the breeze blowing up warm from the south, but already it was cooler than in Valdaire.

The boy came off his mount more spry than Arvid had expected for a novice rider who had been in the saddle a long half-day. He walked a bit spraddle-legged for a few paces, then shook out his legs and asked what he should do.

Arvid turned to the courier. “Will we take time to unsaddle and let them roll?”

“Might as well,” the courier said. “We made a good start. Unless you want to be crowded up, we won't stay in that inn at the head of the pass. I know a little flat place we can camp. Be there before sunsetting.”

“Suits me,” Arvid said. To the boy, he said, “Let me show you how to undo the girths, and you can help.”

He tied the horses to the line the courier strung between trees, then showed the boy how to unfasten the girths and told him to try that on the two shorter horses. He unsaddled his own, checked the back for signs of rubbing, and then unsaddled the others, handing the light packs to the boy to set down at a distance.

Explaining as he went, he showed the boy how to check the horses' hooves for stones or cuts, how to check their backs, how to lead them, one at a time, to water and then to grass, and it felt both new and familiar. The boy was as he had seemed earlier in the year: bright, willing, intensely alive. He did what he was told with a mixture of eagerness and solemnity that tugged at Arvid's heart, and ate a cheese-stuffed roll as they sat beneath one of the trees.

When the courier stretched and stood up, Arvid nodded at the boy. They took the horses to water a last time, saddled and packed, then mounted and were off up the trail, passing again the caravan they'd passed earlier. Now they saw caravans heading south, toward Valdaire, and the dust was thick on their side of the road. They could not move far aside, for the increasing roughness of the terrain. Arvid showed the boy how to wrap a scarf over his nose and mouth.

B
y the time they reached the South Trade Road in Tsaia, at Fiveway, the boy rode like an expert. Arvid avoided the inn where he usually stayed—where thieves lurked—and instead found them a room in a private home, paying for stalls for their mounts in a livery stable a short walk away. He noticed that a man traveling with his son was more acceptable than a man alone. The family welcomed them without any sign of concern.

Although the South Trade Road that led west to Fintha was less busy than the Guild League road or the road to Vérella, scarcely a turn of the glass passed that they did not overtake or meet someone coming. Most were single wagons, or pedestrians, or riders, not caravans. Arvid could not help comparing this trip to the previous summer, when his companion had been a stolid gnome determined to be no more than a servant. Instead, he had the boy—wide-eyed, much of the time, seeing places he'd never seen nor heard of. Eager to talk, eager to learn … Arvid did not mention the little cairn of stones that covered a thief's body when they came to it. The boy, however, pointed it out and hopped off to place a stone on it for luck. “Maybe it's a hero's grave,” he said. Arvid did not correct him.

Arvid chose to stay on the South Trade Road all the way to Fin Panir. They camped by the road most nights, buying food in the towns but avoiding the inns with their fleas and bedbugs. That meant avoiding granges as well; Arvid knew he should be attending drill each fiveday, but after all, these small granges probably held drill only one night in five, and it might not be the night he camped nearby. Traffic diminished the farther they went, and at last the road turned north toward Fin Panir.

Arvid recognized the well he and Dattur had reached the year before. “The city's not that far ahead,” he said. “You'll see.” In fact, riding at a good pace, it was less than a sun-hand before they reached the south gates.

The Marshal-General's letter wasn't needed to clear the city gates; Marshal Porfur's letter—impressed with the Marshal's seal and stating “On Gird's service for Marshal Porfur, Ifoss Grange”—was sufficient to gain entry to the city and then to the Fellowship's precincts on top of the hill.

The Marshal-General was crossing the courtyard from the High Lord's Hall when he rode in and glanced at him—then stopped short and frankly stared. “Is it you, Arvid? Did you find that necklace?”

“Marshal-General,” he said, dismounting and bowing. “I fear not: I was taken by the Thieves' Guild in Valdaire and nearly killed. I am certain, however, that it went to Valdaire and on eastward from there. I suspect it is now held by the man claiming to be the Duke of Immer.”

“And you were then trapped in the South by snows, I suppose,” she said. She shrugged. “Well … if it's gone, it's gone.” When he said nothing, her eyes went from him to the boy, still on his horse, and then back to Arvid. “Do you have other business with me, Arvid? My pardon, but I have a meeting now—”

“Your letter,” he said, fumbling at his belt pouch. “I must return it—they took it, but I recovered it after I escaped.”

“What about your gnomish friend?”

“He is with Count Arcolin … Marshal-General, the story is long and you are in a hurry. And I have a word from Marshal Porfur of Ifoss Grange as well. But we can wait.”

“Helfran—” The Marshal-General waved to a yeoman. “See these guests have a place for their mounts and refreshment. I will see them later.”

“This way,” Helfran said. He led them into the stables to untack and loose the horses into a small paddock obviously made from dividing a larger one into three with a temporary fence. He brought buckets of water for the barrel. “We're full up, you see,” he said. “No guest rooms in the schools, either. We've had more traffic this summer than two seasons past. Marshal-General would've told you, but she's already late for that meeting and she hates late. First it was magery, and then that elf showed up again in the High Lord's Hall and she had to talk to him…”

“What elf?”

“I don't rightly know. Just some elf in fancy clothes like they wear and a crown sort of thing on his head—”

“Not the Lady of the Ladysforest, then—”

“Oh, she's dead. Died in the spring; didn't you know?”

“I've been in Aarenis.” It would not do to show his surprise. Magery? Elf from somewhere other than the Ladysforest? The Lady dead? “I thought elves were immortal,” he said. Everyone knew elves were immortal.

“Killed by kuaknom—the tree-haters, that turned evil after the Severance.” Helfran twitched his shoulders and changed the subject. “You can leave your packs in the main court until you find a room somewhere, if you want. The inns aren't all full, just us up here, mostly. There's a nice little inn, my brother's sister-in-law runs it, just a few minutes down on your right, across from a grange, and I know they've got room because I ate breakfast there this morning. Why doesn't she send some of 'em down here? Pia asked me, meaning the Marshal-General, and I couldn't say except all them Marshals hang together like grapes on a stalk.”

The hint could not have been stronger if he'd outlined it in red paint. But if there was no room here, he and the boy did need a place to sleep. “How long do you think the Marshal-General's meeting will take?”

“More'n half the afternoon, most like. Near suppertime. There's all them Marshals in for the meeting they hold every three years … lots of meetings, that is, really. Council on changing the Code's been at it since spring.”

“Then we'll go find a room,” Arvid said.