The Lady of Han-Gilen (10 page)

“No!”
Her
vehemence brought him about. She tried to speak more softly. “I don’t want to
be packed off like—like baggage. I came to see you. To fight for you. I came to
be free.”

“You are free.” Her chin was set, stubborn; he faced her
with stubbornness no less. “You vowed to come to Ianon.”

“I vowed to fight for you.”

“Elian,” he said with mighty patience, “I can’t assign you
to one of my companies. Even if your disguise would outlast the first river
crossing, you make far too handsome a boy to thrust among an army.”

“I thought you would understand. But you’re like all the
rest.” She thrust her hands in his face. “Tie me up then. Send me back to Han-Gilen.
See me wrapped in silks till I can’t move at all, and auctioned off to the
highest bidder.”

“Elian.” He spoke quietly, but his tone was like a slap. “I
do not send either women or fair-faced boys to eat and sleep and fight with my
veterans, unless they are well prepared to contend with the consequences. Which
you, my lady of Han-Gilen, are not.” She was silent, eyes blazing; he continued
implacably, “There is a place for you in Ianon; I can provide an escort to take
you there, or to return you to your family, as you choose.”

She could have railed at him; she could have burst into
tears. She struck him with all her trained strength.

He rocked under the blow but did not fall.

She stood still, shaking, beginning to be appalled. She had
raised her hand against a king.

Suddenly he laughed.

She hit him again. Still laughing, he caught her hand; then
the other. She hurled her weight against him.

They rolled in the trampled grass, he laughing like a
madman, she kicking and spitting and cursing him in every tongue she knew.

A stone caught her. She lay gasping, hating him.

There were tears on his cheeks, tears of laughter. But his
face had sobered; his eyes met hers, dark and bottomless. Abruptly he was gone.

She rose shakily. He stood a little apart, watching her. His
face was cold and still.

Either he had grown or the world had shrunk. He towered over
her, lofty, unreachable, royal. “By the laws of war you are my captive, to do
with as I will. I can send you back to your father as one lord returns a
strayed herdbeast to another. I can dismiss you to Ianon to await my return and
my pleasure. I can keep you with me, take you and use you and discard you when
I tire of you.”

“Not you,” she said without thinking. “Not that.”

The mask cracked a very little. He stood no longer quite so
high. “No. I confess I have no taste for rape. What else can I do? I won’t
inflict you on one of my captains.”

“Then,” she cried recklessly, “let me do something else. Let
me be your guard, your servant, anything!”

He looked at her, measuring her as if she were a stranger.
She could not meet his stare. “It happens,” he said at last, “that I stand in
need of a squire.”

She opened her mouth and closed it again.

His face had softened not at all. And yet he offered her this.
Esquire. Armor-bearer. Guard and servant both, yet higher than either; to ride
at his right hand, sleep at his bed’s foot, and serve him with life and loyalty
until death or knighthood freed her.

And this lord of all lords—he had his legend. He had no
squire of his body. Not since the one who had died for him, whom he had raised
again, whom he had made a knight and a prince and a sworn brother. That he
judged her worthy of that one’s place was a gift beyond price.

“Surely,” she said, “surely there are princes vying for the
honor.”

“You are a princess.”

She could not speak.

His lips thinned. “Yes, you do well to hesitate. Any woman
who speaks to me is soon called my lover. One sleeping in my very tent, close
by me always, would lose all pretense to good name.”

Her voice flooded back, as strong as it had ever been. “What
of a boy?”

“If that is your choice,” he said, “I’ll do nothing to
betray you. But in the end the truth will out.”

“Let that be as it will be.” She knelt at his feet. “I will
serve you, my lord, in all that you ask of me; even to death, if so the god
wills it.”

He laid his hands on her head. “I accept your oath and your
service, your heart and your hand, to hold and to guard while my life lasts. In
Avaryan’s name, so let it be.”

She swallowed hard. She had said only what came to her; but
this was ritual, the binding of the vassal to his lord, complete and
irrevocable.

It was what she had come for. Perhaps. She sprang lightly up
and found a grin for him. “Well, my lord? How shall I begin?”

“By walking back to my tent with me.”

But as she came to his side, he paused. His eyes were fixed on
her.

She looked down. The bindings of her garments had weakened
in the struggle; they parted even as she moved, baring her breast and the long
deep weals there.

His hand went out, but did not touch her; his breath hissed
between his teeth. “You didn’t tell me of that.”

“It’s nothing.” She pulled the broken laces free, angrily.
“Damn! Now everyone in the world will be able to see—”

Gently but firmly he set her hands aside and eased back coat
and shirt. She did not resist him, at first for defiance, and after because
there was nothing shameful in either his look or his touch.

The wounds were red, inflamed, a steady pain which she
schooled herself to ignore. Yet where his hand passed, even where she was most
tender and most cruelly tom, the pain lessened, faded and shrank and was gone;
the scarlet weals paled to scars and vanished.

His hand rose to her cheek. She caught it. “No,” she said.
He blinked, caught between power and its refusal. “Let me have my own pain.”

“It will scar,” he said.

“I’ve earned it with my foolishness.”

For yet a moment he was still. Then he bowed his head.
“Here,” he said in the most ordinary of tones, holding out a bit of leather
from his belt, “see if this will hold.”

It would, admirably. With her shirt well and tightly laced
and her coat belted against the world, she strode with Mirain into the clamor
of the camp.

Mirain’s lords gathered around his tent, and their clamor
sounded for all the world like the lowing of cattle. When he plunged into the
midst of them with Elian at his heels, their silence was abrupt and absolute.

Elian admired it; even Prince Orsan had not mastered that
art as Mirain had. He stood in the center of them under the Sun-standard and
settled his arm easily, lightly, over Elian’s shoulders. “See,” he said, with
no more greeting than that. “I have a new squire. Galan, my lords and
captains.”

Later she would match the faces to the names out of Mirain’s
legend. Now they were a blur: curiosity, hostility, haughty indifference. One
or two were envious. One or two, perhaps, wished her well.

One gave her nothing at all. He stood a little aloof,
glittering in his finery, meeting her gaze as he had in the winestall.

“Ho, Vadin!” Mirain called out in pure and hateful
exuberance, “I’ve found us a new recruit; or your brother has, with a little
help from his scouts. What do you think of him?”

The Lord of Geitan made his way through the clustered
captains. Elian, looking up and up, knew that he would hate her.

He looked down and down. He was cool, proud, running those
splendid eyes over her disheveled and travelworn figure. Pausing. Raising a
brow the merest suggestion of a degree.

Her probe met a wall. It was high, it was broad, and it was
impenetrable.

His face betrayed nothing but consummate northern arrogance.
His voice was neither warm nor cold, although she knew he had a temper, a hot
one; it was in all the tales. He could be as cruel as any mountain bandit, as
gentle as any sheltered maiden.

“So this is a red Gileni,” he said. “Red indeed! I’ve seen
fire that was paler.”

“So this,” said Elian, “is a Ianyn of the old breed. I’ve
seen eagles who were humbler.”

Vadin startled her speechless: he grinned, wide and white
and irrepressible. He looked exactly like Cuthan his brother, no older and not
a whit wiser. “By the gods, you’ve got a tongue on you. A temper too. What do
you do for sport? Trade insults with dragons?”

“Only if they insult me first.”

He laughed, undismayed. “I wasn’t insulting, I was admiring.
We love copper, we savages. What a wonder to grow one’s own.”

“Pretty, no?” Mirain’s eyes glinted on them both, and flicked
round the circle of faces. “My lords, I am at your disposal.” As they bowed, he
returned to the two who still faced one another and said, “Vadin, for charity,
take my squire in hand. He’s had good training, but he’s a stranger here;
there’s much that you can teach him.”

The Ianyn bowed his high head. Mirain smiled his swift
splendid smile and left them, striding swiftly, with his lords in a gaggle
behind.

Elian watched him go, and considered hating him. He had
abandoned her. She was alone, a stranger to all that was here, where everyone
had his duties and his place. She had nothing but the clothes she stood in and
the throbbing weals on her cheek.

Slowly she turned to face her guide. Vadin was
expressionless again, and no doubt seething. He was the right hand of
An-Sh’Endor, chief of the lords and generals; for a certainty he had duties far
higher and more pressing than the nursemaiding of one young foreigner.

His lips twitched. “I’ve done it before,” he said, driving
her behind her strongest shields. “Come, youngling. We’ll make you one of us.”

oOo

At the beginning of their progress Vadin acquired a servant,
a great hulk of a man who bore with ease the weight of clothing and weapons and
the odd necessity.

“No kilt for you, I think,” Vadin said as she contemplated
one in utter dismay. “My lord likes to see his people in their own proper
dress. Even,” he added with a curl of his lip, “in trousers.”

She kept her temper in hand. It was not easy. “Don’t you
sometimes find a kilt rather uncomfortable? In the saddle, for example? In the
dead of winter?”

“In winter we lace our boots high and pin our cloaks tightly
and laugh at the wind. In the saddle,” said Vadin, and now he was certainly
laughing, “which is where all of us are born, we’re perfectly comfortable.”

“I’ll wager you cheat and wear breeches underneath.”

“Would you like me to show you?” He laid a hand on his belt;
his eyes danced, utterly wicked.

Elian closed her mouth and set it tight. Yes, she hated
Mirain. Of all the men in all his horde, why had he thrown her on the mercy of
this one?

“Southern kit,” Vadin said to the quartermaster, blissfully
ignorant of her fury, “in the king’s colors. Dress and campaign issue both, and
be quick. My lord will be waiting for it.”

The quartermaster all but licked the Ianyn’s feet. Likewise
the armorer, who measured Elian with much commentary on her fine boyish figure,
and how much growing room was the lad likely to need?

“Not overmuch,” replied her insufferable guide. “We’ll take
a knife now, and a sword. The three longswords you forged for my lord before he
found one that satisfied him—bring them out.”

“But, lord, they—”

Vadin’s voice did not rise, but the man stopped as if
struck. “The king’s body squire must be armed as well as the king himself.
Bring out the blades.”

They were plain, yet perfect in their plainness: pure,
unadorned, deadly beauty, forged not of bronze but of priceless steel. In the
Hundred Realms, few even of princes had such weapons. Prince Orsan had two;
they were the greatest treasures of his armory. Neither was as fine as these.

She tested each with the reverence it deserved. Each fit
well into her hand. But one, lifted, settled as if it had grown there.
“This—this one,” she said unsteadily, tearing her eyes from that wondrous,
shimmering edge.

oOo

When she left the armorer’s tent, the sword hung
scabbarded from her belt, and she walked a little the straighter for it. Even
Vadin’s presence seemed less of a burden; as he led her toward the cavalry
lines, it slipped from her mind altogether.

The north was famous for its seneldi, and Ianon above all;
and these were the cream therefrom. Even the draybeasts were fine strong
creatures; the war-seneldi, horned battle stallions and tall fierce mares, were
magnificent. Elian walked down the long lines, among the penned wagonbeasts and
the remounts, pausing here and there to return a whickered greeting.

Alone of them all, one son of the night wind was free to run
where he would. He was as black as polished obsidian, without mark or blemish;
his horns were as long as swords, his eyes as red as heart’s blood. He trotted
through his domain with such splendid, royal arrogance that even the stallions
made no move to challenge him.

“There goes a creature worth a kingdom,” Elian said.

“If any king could master him,” said Vadin. “No one but
Mirain has ever sat on the Mad One’s back.”

The senel came closer. Grooms and idlers were quick to clear
his path. Even Vadin stepped aside, without fear but with considerable respect.

Elian stood her ground. She was no less royal than the
stallion; while she had no hope of becoming his master, she was certainly his
equal.

She was full in his path. On either side stretched a long
line of tethered mounts. He snorted and flattened his ears. “Courteously, sir,”
she said.

His teeth bared. He pawed the ground.

“If you harm me, my lord may not be pleased.”

He seemed to ponder that, lean ears flicking forward, back.
As if in sudden decision, they pricked. He stepped forward. With utmost
delicacy he lowered his head and blew sweet breath in her palm.

She ran a hand over his ears, along the splendid arch of his
neck. “Indeed, lord king, now you may pass. But if it would please you, is
there one of your herd who would consent to carry me?”