The Invisible Chains - Part 1: Bonds of Hate (30 page)

Hemarchidas came riding beside him and some time later general Iftang Busskal joined him at his left side. They kept looking at each other, at him and then at each other again. After a few minutes Anaxantis burst out laughing.

“OK, guys, out with it. What's on your mind?”

“What's on our mind?” Hemarchidas fumed. “The price of carrots on the market at Ormidon, of course. What did you think was on our minds?”

“Don't misunderstand me, my lord,” Iftang said, “I love being out of the camp, and as far as I am concerned I like nothing better than accompanying you on your trips, but I must admit I am a little bit curious as to why you need the whole cavalry.”

Anaxantis laughed out loud. It sounded like a mountain rivulet tumbling down the rocks on a slope.

“Oh, Iftang, haven't you guessed by now? You, Hemarchidas? No?”

They both gave him an empty stare, which made him laugh still harder.

“I am a Tanahkos,” he shouted to the open road before him, “and I am going to steal me a duchy.”

“He positively glows,”
Hemarchidas thought with a sudden pang of longing.
“He looks like a young god setting out to conquer the world. Are young gods capable of giving love? Do they even need it? Or do they prefer to be worshiped from afar?”

Anaxantis turned to the general with a smile that could have melted rocks.

“By the way, Iftang, my friends call me Anaxantis.”

“And how—”, Hemarchidas began.

“I'll race you to that bridge there,” Anaxantis yelled and grinned at him. “Hyyya.”

He gave his horse the spurs and darted away, his blond hair trailing behind him.

“Anaxantis,” Hemarchidas shouted after him. “Slow down. You don't know this road. You'll break your neck. Slow down, you little fool.”

Seeing that all his warnings went unheeded, he gave his own horse the spurs while turning to the general.

“Follow him,” he yelled at the general.

They both raced after him. Hemarchidas with a grim look on his face, Iftang laughing out loud.

“Oh, I'll follow him. To the seven pits of Murokthill and back if need be. I'm thirty two and I feel more like twenty when I'm with him than when I actually was twenty.”

“I'm getting too old for this,”
Athildis thought while she stared out of the window of her room.
“The youngest of that nest of vipers he may be, but I'd better not underestimate him. They say that he forced his brother, not only to resign as lord governor, but to renounce his name and lineage as well. Who would have thought that one day a descendant of that horrible Bordomach would find a new perverse use for that preposterous piece of legislation? They also say he is pretty like a girl. Maybe he fights like a girl too. Well, this old girl has been far longer in the game than he has.”

She heard a soft knock on the door and, having recognized by its typical rhythm who it was, said “Enter”.

“After all these years he still knocks.”

“You're worrying again about tomorrow's visit of the prince?” the man who entered asked when he saw her distressed face. He was sixty nine, a year older than Athildis.

“Yes, Threnn dear, I don't have a good feeling about this.” She hesitated. “We can take him, can't we?” she added, unsure of herself.

“Of course we can, my love, we'll run circles around him. We'll make his head so dizzy with hundreds of little facts and dozens of reasons why we can't do more than what we're doing, he won't know what is fore and aft anymore. Tomorrow evening we'll stuff him with fine food and pour so much wine into his pretty little mouth, that he won't be able to think straight anymore. Then we'll offer him five hundred men, double what we promised him and his brother. He'll go home feeling like a conqueror.”

Threnn laughed reassuringly at her and caressed her cheek.

“You'll see... Remember how we fooled his grandfather, Portonas?”

“Portonas? Portonas? Bordomach you mean. Yes, I remember. But then we were young, Threnn, and we bit in every new day with that hunger that only the young have. And every bite we took tasted fresh, not dry and stale. Arranulf was still with us... More than twenty five years he is gone now.”

She sighed.

“I still miss him every day, as I am sure you do. Do you think he ever knew?”

“About us?” Athildis shrugged. “I'm almost certain he did. He never said a word, though. He loved me too much. And he loved you too much. He always knew that my... my needs were far greater than his. Once, when you and I were together, I thought I heard something, but nobody came in, and a few minutes later we heard him singing to himself down the stairs. It took him a while to get upstairs ,and by then we were quietly talking as if nothing had happened. I've always suspected that the noise I heard was him, but that he silently went away. He didn't want to lose either of us and probably reckoned that his honor was safe in your hands. As it was. Do you know I couldn't have told you who's child little Arranulf was, his or yours? Neither could he, but he didn't mind. Not too much, anyway. On one of those bright days, when we watched you teaching our son some stupid man-stuff or other, he said that our boy was lucky to have two fathers.”

Threnn smiled at her.

“Sadly enough he needed his spare father, and now he himself rests beside his true father. Both times you had to take the reins of the duchy in hand. Once when your husband died and you had to safeguard the inheritance of your son and then again when he in his turn died much too soon, and you had to do the same for your grandson. Both times you did a marvelous job, my dear.”

Athildis looked at him.

“I could only do it because I knew I had you by my side. Little Arranulf has the mandotmeros, the wolf's eye, so his father must have been the son of my husband. Sorry, dear, he wasn't yours. The mandotmeros runs only in the ducal family of Landemere, once every few generations. Some would call it a deformity, but it's only a strange mixture of colors in one eye that give it a fierce, penetrating quality and I'm glad he has it. It proves his legitimacy beyond any shadow of a doubt.” She took Threnn's hand. “But that doesn't mean that you weren't my son's true father as well, my love. It was you who raised him and made a man, a duke out of him, just as you raised his son, our grandchild.”

She sighed.

“It all went so different from what we had hoped, didn't it?” Threnn said softly. “We were almost ready. Everyone knew that Berimar was finished, that he couldn't hold on to the Devil's Crown. If Bordomach hadn't moved so fast, it could very well have been that the royal House of Landemere would be sitting upon the throne now, and that you would be the queen-regent.”

“Were we ready, you think?”

“Oh yes, Arranulf was a master strategist. But who would have thought that Bordomach would risk his bid for the throne with barely eight thousand men? Arranulf was clever enough to send envoys to both him and Berimar, each promising exactly the same, that help was on it's way. Nothing in writing of course. When Berimar fell on the Karmenian Hill, our envoy in his camp quietly disappeared. Of course, a token Landemere force was underway. And came too late. A ploy we have since used a few times with good results.”

“I've always suspected Bordomach knew we were playing both sides. Remember that border dispute we had a few years after he became king? I don't recall exactly, but it was about a few meadows. He decided against us and for... for...”

“For Ramaldah. I think you're right. It was his way of saying that he knew what we did during the struggle for the Devil's Crown, that he would let it rest but that we should never forget who won in the end.”

Athildis shivered although it was warm in the room.

“What if he hadn't let it rest, Threnn?”

“Arranulf was ready, my dear. Like I said, he was a master strategist. Anybody in his place would have done one of two things. Either prepare the duchy for a long fight and make it as impregnable as possible, or take the field and meet Bordomach head on and throw it all upon one battle. Arranulf didn't believe in a defensive strategy. In the long run it was a losing game, he used to say. You hem yourself in, while your enemy can pick his own good time to attack you and draw upon outside resources. In the meantime yours, which are finite, are slowly dwindling away. No, if Bordomach had marched against us we had a plan ready. We would have occupied Amiratha in a lightning fast campaign. That would have given us control over its vast resources and ample space to retreat if necessary. We could have held out indefinitely in the hills of Amiratha and we knew Bordomach couldn't afford a protracted war, not with his claims on the throne as flimsy as they were. He needed Ximerion to be peaceful as quickly as possible. So, in the end, after having considered all options, he left us alone. You could even say Arranulf had won the face off. Without shedding one drop of blood.”

“Those are the best battles, aren't they? The ones that are never fought.”

Threnn laid his hand upon her shoulders.

“So, smile my love. This Tanahkos is just another one we'll have to hoodwink. We'll pull the wool over his eyes and send him on his merry way, laden with a lot of empty promises and a few glassy stones he will take for diamonds. We'll have gained another few years of peace for the current Arranulf to grow up and learn the ropes.”

“I don't know, Threnn, it is as if I can feel Bordomach's cold shadow looming over the duchy.”

“Nonsense, my dear, you'll find him in his mausoleum in Ormidon, under a stone, spreading lies even in death, saying that there lies Portonas the Third when only the bones of Bordomach the Robber are to be found there.”

Athildis smiled at him. Once more he had managed to assuage her fears and give her renewed courage. She looked at his old face, wrinkled and bald, but when she stared in his eyes she saw for a moment the young man with the brown wavy hair she had fallen in love with. Out of the corner of her eyes she thought she could see Arranulf, with his generous, mocking yet indulging smile, who she had loved equally.

“Where you ever jealous of Arranulf?”

She suddenly had to know.

Threnn looked at her with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Of course I was jealous of your husband, but jealous of my friend? Never.” He shrugged, but smiled at the same time. “In the end I think we both decided that you had enough love for both of us... But, come, leave the past to the past. The present needs us and we have to be ready to give all, like the Landemere battle cry says.”

Athildis straightened her back and nodded in agreement.

“All for Landemere,” she said with fresh energy.

“You're putting quite a lot of food in there, Renda,” the chief cook grumbled disapprovingly.

Renda kept filling her basket and then put a clean cloth over it.

“Well, it's the young man's eighteenth birthday and his brother has asked me to prepare him something special.”

“Renda, Renda, you're far too weak hearted. You're a pushover.”

“He is all alone there in that tower with his little brother gone, the poor sod, and it is his birthday. Nobody should be alone on his birthday.”

“That arrogant git,” the chief cook snorted. “I bet he's not so conceited anymore.”

“He's actually quite a nice young man. I think that was all an act, that so called pretentiousness, you know. What with everybody pulling at him. Did you ever stop to think that it couldn't have been easy for him? So young and all those responsibilities.”

“Not easy? We, we don't have it easy,” he muttered.

He remained silent for a few minutes, thinking she was too good for this world.

“By the way, I'll have you know that I've got responsibilities too, you know.” He turned his back to her and started cutting some vegetables. “Like for instance those fresh meat pies, there in the corner, I still have to count them. As it is I wouldn't even notice if one or two went missing. We can't have that, can we? See,
my
responsibility.”

“Yes,” Renda replied while she hastily stuffed two meat pies in the basket.

“And those wine flasks, there in the crate near the wall. For the life of me I couldn't tell how many there are and which are full or empty. I must check them. Again,
my
responsibility.”