The Lions of Al-Rassan (5 page)

“You will not report this to the king now?”

“I will have to think on that. Fortunately I do have a witness should I have need.” With no more warning than that, he raised his voice. “Alvar, finish doing what you have to, in the god’s name, you’ve been at it long enough to flood the yard. Come let me present you to the constable.”

Alvar, feeling his heart suddenly lodged considerably higher than it was wont to be found, discovered that he had gone dry as the desert sands. He fumbled to button his trousers and stepped gingerly out from behind the wagon. Crimson with embarrassment and apprehension, he discovered that Count Gonzalez’s features were no less flushed—though what he read in the deep-set brown eyes was rage.

Rodrigo’s voice was bland, as if he was oblivious to the feelings of either of them. “My lord count, please accept the salute of one of my company for this ride, Pellino de Damon’s son. Alvar, make a bow to the constable.”

Confused, horribly shaken, Alvar followed instructions. Gonzalez de Rada nodded curtly at his salute. The count’s expression was bleak as winter in the north when the winds came down. He said, “I believe I know of your father. He held a fort in the southwest for King Sancho, did he not?”

“Maraña Guard, yes, my lord. I am honored you are so good as to call him to mind.” Alvar was surprised his voice was working well enough to manage this. He kept his gaze lowered.

“And where is your father now?”

An innocuous question, a polite one, but Alvar, after what he’d heard from the far side of the wagon, seemed to catch a feathery hint of danger. He had no choice, though. This was the constable of Valledo.

“He was allowed to retire from the army, my lord, after suffering an injury in an Asharite raid. We have a farm now, in the north.”

Gonzalez de Rada was silent a long moment. At length he cleared his throat and said, “He was, if memory serves, a man famous for his discretion, your father.”

“And for loyal service to his leaders,” the Captain interjected briskly, before Alvar could say anything to that. “Alvar, best mount up before Laín blisters you raw for delaying us.”

Gratefully, Alvar hastily bowed to both men and hurried off to the other side of the yard where horses and soldiers awaited, in a simpler world by far than the one into which he’d stumbled by the wagon.

Late in the morning of that same day, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte had dropped back from his position near the front of the column and signalled Alvar with a motion of his head to join him.

His heart pounding with the apprehension of disaster, Alvar followed his Captain to a position off one flank of the party. They were passing through the Vargas Hills, some of the most beautiful country in Valledo.

“Laín was born in a village beyond that western range,” the Captain began conversationally. “Or so he says. I tell him it’s a lie. That he was hatched from an egg in a swamp, as bald at birth as he is today.”

Alvar was too nervous to laugh. He managed a feeble grin. It was the first time he’d ever been alone with Ser Rodrigo. The slandered Laín Nunez was up ahead, rasping orders again. They would be taking their midday break soon.

The Captain went on, in the same mild voice, “I heard of a man in Al-Rassan years ago who was afraid to leave the khalif’s banquet table to take a piss. He held it in so long he ruptured himself and died before dessert was served.”

“I can believe it,” Alvar said fervently.

“What
ought
you to have done back there?” the Captain asked. His tone had changed, but only slightly.

Alvar had been thinking about nothing else since they had left the walls of Esteren behind. In a small voice, he said, “I should have cleared my throat, or coughed.”

Rodrigo Belmonte nodded. “Whistled, sung, spat on a wheel. Anything to let us know you were there. Why didn’t you?”

There was no good, clever answer so he offered the truth: “I was afraid. I still couldn’t believe you were bringing me on this ride. I didn’t want to be noticed.”

The Captain nodded again. He gazed past Alvar at the rolling hills and the dense pine forest to the west. Then the clear grey eyes shifted and Alvar found himself pinned by a vivid gaze. “All right. First lesson. I do not choose men for my company, even for a short journey, by mistake. If you were named to be with us it was for a reason. I have little patience with that kind of thing in a fighting man. Understood?”

Alvar jerked his head up and down. He took a breath and let it out. Before he could speak, the Captain went on. “Second lesson. Tell me, why do you think I called you out from behind the wagon? I made an enemy for you—the second most powerful man in Valledo. That wasn’t a generous thing for me to do. Why did I do it?”

Alvar looked away from the Captain and rode for a time thinking hard. He didn’t know it, but his face bore an expression that used to induce apprehension in his family. His thoughts sometimes took him to unexpected, dangerous places. This, as it happened, was such a time. He glanced over at Ser Rodrigo and then away again, uncharacteristically cautious.

“Say it!”
the Captain snapped.

Alvar suddenly wished he were back on the farm, planting grain with his father and the farm hands, waiting for one of his sisters to walk out with beer and cheese and bread, and gossip from the house. He swallowed. He might be back there, soon enough. But it had never been said that Pellino de Damon’s son was a coward or, for that matter, overly shy with his thoughts.

“You weren’t thinking about me,” he said as firmly as he could manage. There was no point saying this if he sounded like a quavering child. “You pulled me out to be a body between Count Gonzalez and your family. I may be nothing in myself, but my father was known, and the constable now realizes that I’m a witness to what happened this morning. I’m protection for your wife and sons.”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them it was to see Rodrigo Belmonte grinning at him. Miraculously, the Captain didn’t seem angry. “As I said, there was a reason you were chosen to be tested on this ride. I don’t mind a clever man, Alvar. Within limits, mind you. You may even be right. I may have been entirely selfish. When it comes to threats against my family, I can be. I did make a possible enemy for you. I even put your life at some risk. Not a very honorable thing for a leader to do to one of his company, is it?”

This was another test, and Alvar was aware of it. His father had told him, more than once, that he would do better if he thought a little less and spoke a great deal less. But this was Ser Rodrigo Belmonte himself, the Captain, asking questions that
demanded
thought. He could dodge it, Alvar supposed. Perhaps he was expected to. But here they were, riding towards Al-Rassan through the pine-clad hills of Vargas, which he had never seen, and he was in this company for a reason. The Captain had just said so. They weren’t going to send him back. Alvar’s customary nature seemed to be returning to him with every passing moment.

Alvar de Pellino said, “Was it an honorable thing to do? Not really, if you want my true thought, my lord. In war a captain can do anything with his men, of course, but in a private feud I don’t know if it’s right.”

For a moment he thought he had gone too far. Then Ser Rodrigo smiled again; there was real amusement in the grey eyes. The Captain stroked his moustache with a gloved hand. “I imagine you caused your father some distress with your frankness, lad.”

Alvar grinned back. “He did caution me at times, my lord. Yes.”

“Cautioned?”

Alvar nodded. “Well, in fairness, I don’t know what more he—”

Alvar was not a small man, and there had been nothing easy about life on a northern farm, and even less that was conducive to softness during a year of service with the king’s army in Esteren. He was strong and quick, and a good rider. Nonetheless, the fist he never saw coming hit the side of his head like a hammer and sent him flying from his horse into the grass as if he’d been a child.

Alvar struggled quickly to a sitting position, spitting blood. One hand went feebly to his jaw, which felt as if it might be broken. It had happened: his father’s warning had just come true. His imbecilic habit of speaking whatever he thought had just cost him the opportunity any young soldier would die for. Rodrigo Belmonte had opened a door for him, and Alvar, swaggering through like the fool he was, had just fallen on his face. Or on his elbow and backside, actually.

Holding a hand to his face, Alvar looked up at his Captain. A short distance away the company had come to a halt and was regarding the two of them.

“I’ve had to do that to my sons, too, once or twice,” Rodrigo said. He was, improbably, still looking amused. “I’ll doubtless have to do it for a few years yet. Third lesson now, Alvar de Pellino. Sometimes it is wrong to hide as you did by the wagon. Sometimes it is equally wrong to push your ideas forward before they are complete. Take a little longer to be so sure of yourself. You’ll have some time to think about this while we ride. And while you are doing so, you might consider whether an unauthorized raid in Al-Rassan by a band of Garcia de Rada’s cronies playing outlaw might take this affair out of the realm of a private feud and into something else. I am an officer of the king of Valledo, and while you are in this company, so are you. The constable attempted to suborn me from my duty to the king with a threat. Is that a private matter, my young philosopher?”

“By the god’s balls, Rodrigo!” came an unmistakable voice, approaching from the head of the column, “What did Pellino’s brat do to deserve that?”

Ser Rodrigo turned to look at Laín Nunez trotting his horse over toward them. “Called me selfish and unfair to my men. Guilty of exploiting them in my private affairs.”

“That all?” Laín spat into the grass. “His father said a lot worse to me in our day.”

“Really?” The Captain seemed surprised. “De Rada just said he was famous for his discretion.”

“Horsepiss,” said Laín Nunez succinctly. “Why would you believe anything a de Rada said? Pellino de Damon had an opinion about anything and everything under the god’s sun. Drove me near crazy, he did. I had to put up with it until I wangled him a promotion to commanding a fort by the no-man’s-land. I was never as happy in my life as when I saw his backside on a horse going away from me.”

Alvar goggled up at both of them; his jaw would have dropped if it hadn’t hurt so much. He was too stunned to even get up from the grass. For most of his life his quiet, patient father had been gently chiding him against the evils of being too outspoken.

“You,” Ser Rodrigo was saying, grinning at the veteran soldier beside him, “are as full of horsepiss as any de Rada I’ve ever met.”

“That, I’ll tell you, is a deadly insult,” Laín Nunez rasped, the seamed and wizened face assuming an expression of fierce outrage.

Rodrigo laughed aloud. “You loved this man’s father like a brother. You’ve been telling me that for years. You picked his son yourself for this ride. Do you want to deny it?”

“I will deny anything I have to,” his lieutenant said sturdily. “But if Pellino’s boy has already driven you to a blow I might have made a terrible mistake.” They both looked down at Alvar, shaking their heads slowly.

“It may well be that you have,” said the Captain at length. He didn’t look particularly concerned. “We’ll know soon enough. Get up, lad,” he added. “Stick something cold on the side of your face or you’ll have trouble offering opinions about anything for a while.”

Laín Nunez had already turned to ride back. Now the Captain did the same. Alvar stood up.

“Captain,” he called, with difficulty.

Ser Rodrigo looked back over his shoulder. The grey eyes regarded him with curiosity now. Alvar knew he was pushing things again. So be it. It seemed his father had been that way too, amazingly. He was going to need some time to deal with that. And it seemed that it wasn’t his mother’s pilgrimage to Vasca’s Isle that had put him in this company, after all.

“Um, circumstances prevented me from finishing my last thought. I just wanted also to say that I would be proud to die defending your wife and sons.”

The Captain’s mouth quirked. He was amused again. “You are rather more likely to die defending yourself
from
them, actually. Come on, Alvar, I meant it about putting something on your jaw. If you don’t keep the swelling down you’ll frighten the women in Fezana and ruin your chances. In the meantime, remember to do some thinking before next you speak.”

“But I
have
been thinking—”

The Captain raised a hand in warning. Alvar was abruptly silent. Rodrigo cantered back to the company and a moment later Alvar led his own horse by the reins over to where they had halted for the midday meal. Oddly enough, despite the pain in his jaw, which a cloth soaked in water did only a little to ease, he didn’t feel badly at all.

And he
had
been thinking, already. He couldn’t help it. He’d decided that the Captain was right about Garcia de Rada’s raid taking the matter out of the area of a private feud and into the king’s affairs. Alvar prided himself that he had always been willing to accept when someone else made a shrewd point in discussion.

All that was days in the past. A swollen but not a broken jaw had assisted Alvar in the difficult task of keeping his rapidly evolving thoughts to himself.