TWOLAS - 06 - Peril's Gate (28 page)

Prince Kevor

The snowball arched on a silent trajectory straight for the crown of the duty officer's helm. It struck dead center, the dulled thump of impact giving tongue like a muffled bell. Showered under a back-falling explosion of white, the field veteran shouted and spun.

His defensive crouch and halfway-drawn sword were mocked by a chorus of pealing laughter.

'Fiends and Dharkaron's vengeance, we're a sorry enough lot!' He rammed his blade home in the scabbard and straightened, dusting chunked ice from the links of his byrnie. Caught between flushed annoyance and an idiot, boyish delight, he flowered toward the pack of miscreants who still snapped twigs in the brush. 'We are the Light's sword arm, sent to take down khadrim! Just for one moment can we behave as men on a serious mission?'

The sniggers and chortling continued without letup. The suspect frenzy of rustles moved onward through the laurel and evergreen fronting the streamlet. Someone muffled an explosive whoop. Then a scuffling fracas erupted. Amid a yowled volley of oaths, a casualty went down in a sliding tumble that splashed through the ice on the freshet. The guffaws redoubled, now laced In the victim's shrill cursing.

High spirits won out over order and discipline. The field officer chuckled. While snowmelt wicked off the ends of his hair and trickled over his earlobes, he called, 'Who's won the young prince's wager, this time?'

'Fennick, as usual,' the loser called cheerfully, probably perched on a fallen log to empty his sloshing boots.

'Well don't envy him.' The evergreens heaved and disgorged young Prince Kevor, talking over his shoulder. 'He'll wake up one day with a crick in the back, if he keeps his fool habit of stashing his silver inside the seams of his blanket roll.' His appealing, quick laughter rang through winter greenwood as another man-at-arms ankle deep in the stream called something back in rejoinder.

The devilish grin that emerged as Kevor squared up his carriage bespoke the fact the soaked wretch had not dunked his best boots by accident. The young prince's infectious temperament had won the field troop over to a man.

Nor would he escape the attentions of Avenor's women upon his return to court. Through the winter, his features had gained an angular, sure strength. If not a match for his father's unearthly male beauty, his looks held the stamped promise of character. Rawboned and gawky as an unbroken horse, Kevor showed in fleeting, stray moments of grace the tigerish poise he would carry in his maturity. His long-strided walk brought him through the trees toward the officer made the butt of his morning's antics.

He stopped, his stance square and direct as the rest of him, and ran a gloved hand through his cockscomb of russet hair. Chagrin came and went in his half-stifled smile. Unspeaking, he awaited rebuke with straight patience that was anything but a spoiled child's.

'Young master,' the duty officer began, embarrassed to feel like a pompous old fool before Kevor's disarming honesty. The snapping cold morning, or maybe the pristine blue sky, were inclined to make any rank-and-file man boisterous. Despite the ice melt running fingers of cold down the laced neck of his coif, the field veteran shrugged off his stiff effort to play the harsh disciplinarian.

'Could you lend some royal influence and get these men moving? They might, perhaps, strap on swords and get mounted?' Their orders had been to ride deep into Westwood to spare Tysan's people from predation. 'Some goodwife's babes could burn or be seized in the jaws of Khadrim while we dally.'

Kevor dropped his lanky arm to his side, the ebullience of the moment erased. In the aquamarine chill of midwinter dawn, his expression was cut steel, each line of his carriage unflinch-, ing. 'They're frightened. Understandably terrified, in fact.' He
e
xpelled a plumed breath. A small tuck cut the flesh between his brows, which were fine and dark, like his mother's.

The captain did not waste the breath to prevaricate. The best swords and mail would be little use against winged monsters that spat fire, and whose minds possessed vicious intelligence.

The young prince's lucent blue eyes again met and matched the officer's measuring survey. 'If you want my help on this matter, let the men break camp on their own. They'll find their nerves and be steadier if they're given our trust, and not pushed.'

Such moments, it was all too easy to forget that Kevor had scarcely turned fifteen years of age. The innate majesty and insight of his lineage was as yet unformed instinct, the gifted endowment that would make a strong ruler still untempered by adult experience.

The duty officer brushed off an odd grue of chill. 'If I grant your way in this, then you will promise to stay by Fennick and Ranne, and trust my judgment without swerving the next time you feel the need to play the young hothead.'

The spark of lit humor touched Kevor's eyes a split second before his quick grin. 'We'll be last in the saddle, then. Fennick just won another ten silvers. No power on this side of the Light's going to hurry him before he's cached his new hoard into his blanket roll.'

'What in the name of fell Darkness were the terms of your blighted wager?' snapped the field officer, suspicious. Given the nature of many a former contest, he winced to imagine the snowball had been tossed for a sport involving his personal dignity.

'You want to know?' Kevor's lips flexed, his smile stifled just barely in time. His merry eyes widened. 'Grace and mercy, you
do
want to know. Very well.' He glanced at the treetops, as
t
hough the first golden spatters of sun could lift his surge of embarrassment. 'Haskin insisted you'd throw your dirk at the bushes the same way you did on the
day you skewered t
he boar.'

The duty officer flushed, since that tale involved no wild animal at all, but a squire who had unwisely brought his sweetheart on a tryst too near to barbarian territory. 'Go!' He bellowed. 'Get yourself armed and mounted, boy, and I will see after the men!'

The young prince feigned a jaunty recruit's salute, then retired straightaway to the picket lines.

Struck by the unrepentant bounce to his stride, the officer paused. He wondered whether the mistake with the boar had been a glib ploy to distract him. For Prince Kevor had gotten himself summarily dismissed without even granting his royal promise that he would not stray from the strong arm of his royal honor guard.

Nor did the troop's overburdened commander find the chance to remedy the duty officer's lapse, caught as he was between chastising laggards, then seeing the cook's bread oven stowed. Argumentative as crows, the lancers mounted and formed into columns. Over the silver-foil crusting of snow, Avenor's field patrol rode out, flanked by Karfael's borrowed squads of crossbowmen and archers. Steel helms and the odd lance point flared under the dollops of sun, spilled through the tall firs of Westwood.

Eight leagues from the trade road, they followed the blazed trail left by trappers and woodcutters, crossed by the punched tracks of deer and the hectic prints of small sparrows. Fresh as the breeze on that new winter's morning, the banter of the two squires who served the young prince rang over the jingle of mail, the snap of lance pennons, and the creak of saddles and gear. No one called the boys down for misconduct. The fighting clan presence had long since been cleansed from these woods. The old blood scout who still hunted here would make himself scarce, lest he find himself killed for the crown bounty. The field officers in command indulged the high spirits of the
s'Ilessid
heir as a boon that brightened the morale of men who rode into unprecedented danger.

Two men were entrusted to keep vigilant close watch. Fennick and Ranne had been handpicked for their post from the elite of Avenor's royal guard. Their lives were pledged to protect the young prince, though in truth no one expected this assignment to invoke that extreme, selfless sacrifice. Before leaving the walled security of Karfael, Kevor had been made to understand he could accompany the field troop only as far as the cook's camp. His Grace would not be permitted to ride with the patrols where Khadrim flew. For this winter's campaign, he would observe the command at safe remove from their call to hard action.

Still near the coast, on the fringe of the wood, the patrol followed a forester's trail cut across fir-cloaked flatlands. The scattered few clearings fed browsing deer, preyed upon by nothing more fearsome than the occasional swift-running wolf pack. The troop would cast out more scouts and outriders as the rolling ground met the rockier cra
gs of the Tornir foothills.

As always, the seasoned patrol captain rode the length of the column in morning review.

'F
ool horse,' he chided, as his seal brown gelding tussled the bit in high fettle. 'You in a rush to get flamed to a cinder? Go ahead, then. Just keep on acting the flighty goose. You'll be dead meat and get left as a carcass, picked over by wolves and ravens.' The horse shook its head, snorted, and jig-stepped, long since inured to the strings of mock threats crooned by its craggy rider.

Yet today, the teasing play between horse and man did not win the usual lump of molasses filched as a treat from the cook. The field captain firmed his hand on the rein and sighed through his teeth in resignation. He would rather be digging latrines as a recruit than shoulder this foray through Westwood. No bracing fight lay ahead for these men, but a madness better suited to the uncanny tricks of a Sorcerer. Since time beyond memory, Fellowship spellcraft had always contained the escaped packs of Khadrim. In the sane light of reason, no veteran company of Alliance guard with steel weapons and bows were a match for such vicious predators.

Yet the packet of orders sent by fast courier from the High Priest at Avenor had decreed the Fellowship's compact was tyranny. For profit, the trade guilds applauded the edict. Since no Sorcerer had emerged to contain the flying scourge that slaughtered at whim through the north wood, no faction in Tysan's council was likely to give the matter an argument.

Beneath the thatched shadows of Westwood's dark firs, the troop captain swore with rare venom. High Priest Cerebeld's reply to his earlier letter had all but named him craven for expressing rock-hard common sense. Nor had the directive set under the Light's sunwheel seal given him any choice. Khadrim ranged at large. The guild ministers feared the marauding packs would threaten movement of commerce over the trade roads. With the Prince of the Light away to fight Shadow, the Alliance field garrison was duty bound to step into the breech.

* * *

Securely positioned near the middle of the column, Prince Kevor cuffed away the playful blond squire who leaned from his saddle and suggestively named a court maiden. 'Oh, get away! She does not! And anyway, you're ungallant to suggest such behavior in a company of right-thinking men.'

The squire grinned, insolent, while his smart chestnut gelding skittered in response to his brash shift in balance. 'She does so! Even kisses the carpet where your foot treads, and how do you know the men in this company have one set of right thoughts between them?'

'Well, for one thing,' Kevor retorted, flushed red, 'I haven't been able to escape my palace tutors long enough to go in one brothel, far less the variety we've heard discussed every night around the campfires.' While his friend puffed his chest and drew breath to rebut him, he issued a laughing challenge. 'You've been with a lady in any of those dives? Swear? Then describe her. Surely Ranne's cousin is worldly enough to have spent a paid night there. Let's ask him to vouch for the doxy you speak of.'

The younger squire with the freckled nose stoutly defended his friend. 'That leaves your Grace as the moral example?' Paused to duck a low-hanging branch, he cast a sly glance sideways. 'What about that herb witch with the owl-feather talismans who accosted you by the roadside? Did you keep that disgusting token she gave you?'

'A small white stone,' Kevor corrected. The back-snapping branch dusted his surcoat with shed needles, and the astringent scent of green balsam. 'Clean as any other quartz pebble the innocuous old bat could rake from a Camris streambed.' Tysan's heir readjusted his reins. Turned suddenly serious in his disturbing new way of casting slight matters against a larger-scale tapestry, he finished, 'She was a harmless old woman, and a subject of the realm. As her future liege,
I
was merely being polite.'

The stone in fact still tumbled loose in his scrip, untouched since the moment he had tucked it away.

'Old besom's a witch,' the older squire insisted, agile enough to duck the next branch sprung on him in punitive vengeance. 'When Vorrice finds her, he'll have her arraigned for dark spellcraft.'

'Worse
.'
mocked the boy in the lead, twisted in his saddle to stab a self-righteous finger toward his flustered young prince. 'If High Priest Cerebeld hears you accepted her charm, he'll have you called on the carpet for embracing the forces of Darkness.'

Even set amid teasing play, the name of the High Priest tucked Kevor's features to an imperious frown. 'Let Cerebeld try!' Light temper gone as though reamed by a chill, the
s'Ilessid
heir pressed impetuous heels to his mount. The blooded horse bolted into a brisk canter, and left the two squires behind in a pelting shower of snow clods.

Braced by the winter breeze in his face, Kevor shrugged away the recurrent premonition that the High Priest's eyes watched his back. He had never trusted Cerebeld. The instinctive avoidance that carried throughout his childhood had catalyzed to dislike on the solstice, when the night sky had erupted in portents. That hour had brought him to take his first stand as crown prince. Every man in the city garrison knew his act had stayed Avenor's populace from running riot in fear.

The affray had aroused the High Priest's enmity, as well as the adulation of a people the
s'Ilessid
heir must one day rule. Now more than ever, Kevor dared not voice his bone-deep distaste for the crown's practice of burning the wretches the Light's tribunal convicted for sorcery. Often thoughtfully private, where most boys his age might indulge their outspoken opinion, Prince Kevor could but hope Gace Steward's sly scrutiny overlooked his strained bearing, each time Tysan's justice consigned the condemned to the sword and the faggots.

He had found space to breathe, away with the field troop, released from the tight expectations of royal birthright and the incessant demands of court politics. Fair mornings like this one, traveling in the company of men under the vaulting branches of Westwood, he could sometimes forget he was the Divine Prince's heir. He could snatch the rare moment and run his fine charger, and imagine himself free of obligation.

Kevor pressed his horse faster, at one with the beast as it swerved right and left, carving a track through the trees. Fir boughs and mane slapped his red cheeks, and the air filled his lungs to intoxication. The sky overhead shone a limitless blue, beckoning mind and spirit with the promise of dreams that could break every earthbound constraint.

In piquant rebellion, the prince wished the stolen moment might last until his horse was blown to exhaustion.

Responsible recognition hard followed, that his mount deserved better respect. Worse than that, if he indulged his whim, somebody else's reliable reputation must bear the inflexible consequence. Soon enough, one of his honor guard must spur his mount to overtake, understanding a boy's natural yearning for space, and apologetic for the duty his oath had lifesworn him to follow.

This time, it was Ranne's horse that thundered alongside. The guard's good-natured face was politely averted, the blunt set to his shoulders a statement clearer than speech: he had lagged behind for as long as he could stretch the reasonable limits of protocol.

Kevor reined in, too acutely aware the man would suffer the captain's displeasure if he continued to vent his explosion of youthful frustration. While the big gelding under him blew snorts of white steam and curvetted in headshaking protest, Kevor tipped back his chin and let the icy air blast down his collar. The heat in him still burned, regardless.

Ahead and behind on the quaint forest track, the field company rode armed in their polished city steel, bravely turned out in matched surcoats. They advanced uncomplaining, their banners and bearing immaculate, despite an assignment that would carry them into unimaginable peril. Sword and lance were no match for packs of creatures who breathed fire, and flew on sail wings over sixty spans wide. Their pledge to serve the Light in north Tysan must inevitably lead some of their number to an untimely, horrible death.

Kevor found, after all, he could not tame his feelings, or endure in straitlaced, princely decorum.
Who were the almighty Fellowship Sorcerers, that they should allow these staunch men to ride into the breach, and stand down the threat of Khadrim? Where were such paragons of the mysteries now? If their vaunted forces of spellcraft could avert the promise of disaster, why had they withheld their strong arm?

'Merciful Light!' the prince ground through locked teeth. His personal aversion for Cerebeld aside, he would still have to wonder. The lives in this company felt too well set up, the unnamed list of men soon to suffer and die too smoothly groomed as political martyrs. Their loss could only lend more blazing fuel to the Alliance's strident stand against sorcery. With the Prince Exalted away to fight Shadow in the east, Cerebeld and his acolytes needed no better excuse to fan the embers of war and heap more blame and condemnation on the Fellowship. The Sorcerers made ready targets, with their secretive, unbreachable powers, and their iron adherence to an outmoded law that bound growth and trade to the strangling terms of the compact.

Ranne's surprised gasp could be heard, even through thudding hooves and the noisy jangle of gear. Kevor jerked his head sidewards, flushed with embarrassment. He had never meant to blurt his viewpoint aloud. Nothing else would serve, now, but to air his thoughtless lapse into heresy. If true justice was answered, should he not be the one to pose the most searching questions? He was a crown prince with an inquiring mind. If he was ever to become the sharp statesman his father was, he must be expected to test the dangerous, harsh edges of Tysan's existing crown policy.

'Well, do you think it's right that the herb witch by the wharf in Karfael was put to death?' Kevor demanded of Ranne, low voiced. 'Go on. Why not answer? Does the memory of her screams not trouble your sleep?'

Under the resin-filled silence of the fir trees, the exchange of ideas could remain a secret between them.

'The poor woman's gone,' Ranne said in flat refusal to further the conversation.

'She burned to death in terrible agony, and for what? Now we have poor mothers dying in childbirth. Ones who don't have the coin to pay healers.' Once started, the young prince found he could not stem his blazing torrent of doubts. 'Merchants can buy fiend banes by swearing oath of debt to Koriathain. But what about the dairymaids who don't own the milk they toil to churn into butter? Should they go hungry because iyats knock over their settling pans? Tell me, how many northcountry farmsteaders are too lazy to haul their cheap tin all the way to Avenor to be warded by Cerebeld's vested acolytes?'

'Your Grace, such questions are far better posed to the Divine Prince, your father.' Ranne shrugged. His familiar, hawk profile stayed uncomfortably faced straight ahead. 'I'm a swordsman, not a state minister. It's hardly my place to make free comment on Avenor's established crown policy.'

'Those are words from the mouth of a brainless sheep, not a man with a mind and a conscience!' Kevor blazed back. 'You're hotter than that, Ranne, and so are Karfael's poor, who now have nowhere to turn for everyday succor and healing.' He paused. Too piqued not to make futile response, he stopped
h
is restive horse short, his profile adamant marble, unwarmed by the strayed mote of sun that fired his hair to dulled copper.

If
my father was the avatar our people acclaim,
then why are Cerebeld's acolytes not out in the countryside dirtying their white tunics, ministering to the misery in the hamlets?'

He faced Ranne again. His blue eyes beseeched, all but humming tears for the point he
must not for honor speak aloud:
why mortal men armed with naught else but steel should be riding against winged packs of fire-breathing monsters.

Heart torn as he shared the young prince's dilemma, the guardsman pledged to safeguard his life found no ready answers. His. powerful frame seemed diminished by that failure, and his posture less sure in the saddle. 'One thing I know, boy,' Ranne said in gruff sympathy discarding the honorifics of station, 'Best not say what you think around Fennick. He and I both gave our oaths to your father. You may hold our personal loyalty through affection,
but our first allegiance is pledged to obey the Divine Prince.'

Indeed, Kevor knew. Each day, he lived with the shaming remorse. Two men's lives could be forfeit in public dishonor, should the integrity of their oath ever come to be questioned or broken. He held his death grip on the reins, not ready for capitulation. 'Then rest assured I will seek out my father when he returns from his war in the east.'

'Fall back, then,' Ranne pleaded. 'Before we make the field captain uneasy. He doesn't like you riding at large, not without twenty lances at the ready for your immediate protection.'

A stickler for keeping even casual promises, Kevor spun his big gray back toward the main column of the company. His earlier burst of exuberance was gone, and his subsequent anger bottled. The winter forest had lost its allure. He scarcely heard the spritely scolding of chickadees, as he fell in line beside Fennick's charger, with Ranne's a demure stride behind. The young prince rode, still preoccupied. The memory of the disturbing old woman who had grasped at his stirrup troubled him. She had worn owl feathers braided into her white hair,
that had seemed outlined in unearthly light.

Her unsettling words lingered, along with the stone talisman now nestled among his belongings:
'For you, boy, as true a scion of Halduin's line as your
s'Ilessid
father is false. The wisdom of Ath lies in every small stone. This one holds a pledge wrought to keep you safe. All life is a gift.
As
you value yours, let this token guard you from threat.'