“You might,” Garris said. “If you did, it might seal a peace with whichever—”
“And make an enemy of the other. No. Anyway, they’re just girls. Who’s where?”
“Of the women? Aulin’s been on duty with the Pargunese—her name is Elis—today. She says the girl’s very tense and frightened of something, so she asked to stay on tonight. She’ll need help tomorrow. Arian’s somewhere between Riverwash and here; she left three days ago with a message to the river guard. Binir should be on the way back from Prealíth. Lieth’s here, of course, and I can substitute men for the women in your rotation if that’s acceptable.”
“Certainly,” Kieri said. “At least for a while.” Once more he thought how comfortable he found the women Squires, with their easy competence. A pity they were all so young; he put that out of his mind, watching as Garris wrote out a new chart. “Do you need a clerk assistant, Garris?”
“No—not yet. When you get up to fifty Squires, then I will.”
“If more princesses show up at one time, it may come to that. When you’ve finished, come have supper with me—somewhere far away from the Pargunese girl’s dragon guardian. That woman is nothing like Hanlin at the coronation and much more like what I thought of as Pargunese.”
“Thank you,” Garris said. “A turn of the glass, maybe one and a half. How did the hunt go?”
“Very well. Ample game for a banquet tomorrow, and at least some of the hounds and people were mingling.”
“You can’t hurry things here, Kieri,” Garris said. Then, with a sly wink, “Except perhaps your finding a wife and getting an heir.”
Kieri rolled his eyes and made his way back to his bathing room. There, relaxing in his steaming tub of herb-scented water, he wondered about the Pargunese baths. How did they have hot pools in winter? Did they have hot springs near the palace? But hot springs usually stank—surely they didn’t bathe in water that smelled like rotten eggs. Though that might explain their sour attitude.
He heaved himself up and submitted to Joriam’s pitcher of rinse water, then dried himself with towels warmed by the fire. His bath was fine enough—more luxurious than he’d had for most of his life. He did not need whatever it was the Pargunese woman thought better.
Though the evening began quietly enough eating supper with Garris, after supper he had to decide where the Kostandanyan princess and her retinue should be housed, and that meant conferences with half a dozen servitors. Twice the steward brought him demands from Countess Settik and once from the count, who wanted his horse moved to a different stall and all the Pargunese mounts fed only the oats carried on the Pargunese pack horses. Kieri called in the Master of Horse.
“We just put those oats in the bins—I can scoop out the top layer, but—”
“Put some oats in a separate barrel for the beasts and tell him those were his oats,” Kieri said. “Sprinkle a little salt on them, and the horses won’t know the difference. Neither will he.”
By then it was time to make his way upstairs and inspect the guest suite for the Kostandanyan princess—he’d decided to put her as far from the Pargunese as possible—and then he slipped out for a few minutes into the rose garden, now lushly perfumed with both the roses and night-blooming flowers. He sat on his favorite bench and breathed in the mingled scents, sweet and spicy, trying to regain the sense of peace and confidence his elven tutor insisted he needed to connect most powerfully with the taig.
In the near-dark, with the water gurgling and splashing as it ran through the garden, he relaxed slowly, touching first the garden’s taig and then that to which it was connected. Outside the palace enclosure, just across the way, the trees on the margin of the King’s Grove … and then, as his taig-sense expanded, the King’s Grove itself, every tree distinct in its identity, its history … He sank slowly into a trance, now more familiar than the first time it happened, touching and being touched by the trees and through them other trees and all that “tree” meant—past, present, future, from the root-clutched rock below to the creatures that lived on and or visited it. He roused only when the clamor of another arrival in the palace courtyard broke through the reverie.
He took a last stroll around the paths in the garden and went up to his own rooms, not risking confrontation with another group of angry foreigners. His Squires could tell him what the Kostandanyan girl was like.
Shortly, the steward came to tell him that the Kostandanyan princess, by name Ganlin, seemed to have been injured on the way—she limped at least—and might be too fatigued to attend a banquet the next night. Kieri considered the likelihood that Count and Countess Settik would be angered by delay—probably, but he was not inclined to coddle them—and reset the date.
On the night of the dinner, the two princesses and their guardians appeared at opposite ends of the passage and stopped, obviously startled to see one another. The princesses, Kieri noted, looked surprised but delighted; their guardians glared.
He made the welcome speech he’d planned and then led the way into the dining room. With most of the Council gone for the summer, Kieri had invited others to fill out the table, including off-duty King’s Squires. He hoped seeing the women Squires in formal garb would convince the princesses’ guardians that they were well-bred, proper ladies as well as Knights of Falk and King’s Squires.
Formal attire for women had never caught Kieri’s interest; he had seen a lot of it since being crowned, but knew he understood little of the covert messages sent by the length and cut of a sleeve, the width and draping of a skirt, the amount and placement of lace.
On his right hand, Elis of Pargun wore pale blue, and on his left hand, Ganlin of Kostandan wore pale green. They faced each other across the wide table; somewhat to Kieri’s surprise they were not eyeing each other with jealous speculation.
Countess Settik had already complained about the seating, insisting that Elis should sit beside Kieri at the head of the table, that no proper banquet could be given with one long table instead of a U-shaped arrangement, the head table seating at least five. Then she had tried to insist that she sit next to Elis, “as is only decent,” but he was not about to have that poisonous woman any closer to him than he must.
He found the two princesses puzzling. Elis, the taller, had silvery-blond hair and light gray eyes; she sat erect, almost stiff, in a blue gown that lent only a little color to her eyes and none to her face. She spoke little to him, in a cool, remote tone, answering his first polite questions without enthusiasm and ignoring Sier Halveric to her right. Mostly she looked down or across at Ganlin. Her hands were larger than he expected; they looked strong and capable; he saw a mark on her heart-hand that might have been a training scar. He wondered what had made it.
Ganlin, another blond, had more color—hair more yellow, blue eyes, and more color in her face. More animation in her voice and face, too: Kieri noticed her smile for the man on her other side, Sier Belvarin. She answered Kieri’s questions with a smile. And yet—she looked most at Elis, as Elis looked most at her. And yet again, Ganlin’s hands looked like Elis’s—more the hands of a young woman trained to boys’ pursuits than the soft hands of an idle princess.
Kieri glanced down the table. Countess Settik, across the table and down eight places from Elis, was obviously trying to catch her eye and signal something. The man next to her, Sier Halveric’s eldest son-in-law, a man of phlegmatic temperament, already looked frayed, and Kieri was glad he hadn’t asked any of the younger men to sit there. Elis avoided her guardian’s gaze. Ganlin’s guardian—one of her aunts, he’d been told—was chatting with Garris, the King’s Squire next to her.
No, Kieri thought, nothing could make him marry a Pargunese. Yet courtesy demanded that he share his attention between the two girls. Perhaps if he got them talking more … “Do you know each other?” he asked. They locked gazes across the table at each other rather than at him. Both flushed a little; he had the sense that one wanted to nudge the other under the table, but it was too wide.
“Um … no, lord king,” Ganlin said, with Elis a beat behind with her. “We’ve met, lord king. That’s all.”
So both were prepared to lie; Kieri had not lived so long not to recognize the signs of a covert agreement of some kind. “Well,” he said, “perhaps you should become more acquainted. Pargun and Kostandan are, after all, neighbors.”
“My guardian wouldn’t—” “They don’t want—” came simultaneously from both girls.
Oho. Another complication. He could imagine that the guardians would have preferred to present only their own princess to avoid competition, but since they were both there, surely it was natural for girls that age to spend time together. He struggled to find some topic that might interest them, but he had no idea how princesses were reared, what they valued. Taking a cue from their hands, he said, “Do you like horses?”
A patch of color came out on Elis’s cheek. “Very much, lord king,” she said quietly. “I—I like to ride. Fast.”
“Then you should ride,” Kieri said, relieved to have found some common interest. “We have both an indoor school and the Royal Ride—a long stretch of grass through the forest. Perhaps if Ganlin—”
“I like to ride,” Ganlin said without his asking. “But—but more informally.”
Kieri felt his brows rise. “Informally?”
“My—my aunt thinks it improper to ride astride.”
“Does she indeed? Here, most women ride astride,” Kieri said.
“Really?” Elis’s voice rose; down the table, Kieri saw Countess Settik glare at her, and Elis looked down.
“My aunt says it’s not proper for a princess,” Ganlin said more quietly. “Certainly not while visiting … I used to …”
“We both did,” Elis said under her breath. She stabbed a medallion of venison with unnecessary force.
“Then consider that you are free to use the Royal Ride,” Kieri said, applying himself to his own meal. He glanced down the table to where Arian, just back from Riverwash, was listening to Count Settik of Pargun and Kaelith doing the same with Ganlin’s male escort—her uncle or uncle-in-law, Kieri assumed. It would have been pleasant to have them at his end of the table; the Squires often ate with him. For a moment, he transposed the Squires and princesses, imagining them as the latter, but he put that out of mind.
Dinner progressed from course to course; Kieri tried a few more topics with the princesses but could not sustain any conversation with them, as Elis seemed both angry and frightened, and Ganlin took her cues from Elis. They were so young … not only in age, but in experience. Kieri found himself thinking of Paksenarrion, as he often did—not much older than these girls, the age his daughter would have been if she’d lived. His Estil would have been much more like Paks; he could not imagine either of them in a formal dress. And these girls, with their capable outdoor hands … were they really princesses, or … or what? As far as he knew, Pargun and Kostandan had no women soldiers—rude jokes had been made about that from time to time—so he would not have expected princesses to learn soldiers’ skills. Yet if an enemy wanted to send in agents—even assassins—young girls pretending to be princesses might evade suspicion.
Vonja outbound, a tenday after Midsummer
Jandelir Arcolin, at the head of slightly more than a half-cohort of his soldiers, had been on the move all morning, trying to catch up with a band he believed had attacked his camp a few nights before. They moved north on a trail running along the west flank of a ridge. Along the ridgetop, Arcolin knew, was a footpath, rocky and difficult. Below this trail—the widest of the three—was another, twisting around the many swampy areas at the headwaters of the little streams that fed the tributary in the valley. Beyond were fields and then the same north-south road they’d taken from Cortes Vonja.
In the humid midday heat, the woods’ rich green smell competed with the sharper odors of sweaty men and mules. Sweat trickled steadily down his face, his back, his sides. Arcolin resisted the impulse to take off his helmet and let the air cool his head, but spared a thought to the men left behind in camp, including the three who’d suffered burns when fire arrows set a tent alight. The cohort was understrength now, not even counting the ones left behind in the city to help with Stammel. Thirteen dead, another eight in addition to Stammel unable to fight.
The inexorable mathematics of war would soon reduce the cohort’s effectiveness to the point where he’d have to tell the Cortes Vonja Council he could do no more without reinforcements. Though his cohort had killed more of the enemy than they’d lost, the so-called brigands, unlike any ordinary brigands, had not disappeared or quit harassing them. They were being supplied from outside—that was obvious—but who had the resources of men and money? Was it really Alured the Black? Or was another adversary at work?
Arcolin’s horse snorted; he yanked his attention back to the moment. Ahead of him, on the trail, he saw a pile of horse manure, fresh and glistening. His first impulse was to press forward faster; perhaps they were catching up with the fugitives. He looked around. He saw nothing, heard nothing but the creak and jingle of armor, harness, and packs from his own cohort. Too quiet, more than the simple noontime stillness. He passed back a hand signal, and his troop moved off the trail downslope, into the woods.
Silence closed around the cohort when they had moved ten paces off the trail and closed into a fighting column again. Arcolin backed his mount down the slope. He could just see Burek at the other end of the column. Arcolin’s horse lifted its head, ears pricked toward the trail. A few moments later, Arcolin heard a rustle of leaves, someone moving down the slope across the trail from them. He could still see nothing. He glanced at his troop. None of them moved, waiting his signal, Devlin’s eyes flicking from him back to Jenits, Jenits watching Devlin.
Louder rustling. Now, because they were so silent, he could hear a few individual footfalls, someone slipping and bumping into a tree, harsher breathing. Suddenly, far off on the left flank—what would have been ahead of them if they’d kept going—he heard a man’s voice, an obvious command. Louder noises near the trail, bushes thrashing as men pushed their way into that open space, more noises now on their left front.
A well-constructed little ambush, if it had worked. Was this all of it? Suddenly his horse threw up its head and blew a rattling snort. Arcolin looked up and caught sight of someone who seemed to be walking on air parallel to a massive oak limb. His mind refused to accept it for an instant, then he knew: he’d seen sailors in Immerdzan port, feet on a rope slung below the horizontal poles—what did they call them?—resting their elbows on the … the yard, that was it. Guards, he’d been told, to keep thieves off the ship in harbor and fight pirates at sea. Even as this ran through his mind, he signaled Devlin, backed farther downslope … surely not all the trees were rigged, just those around planned ambush sites.
A shrill whistle sounded loud as a scream, and yells followed as the enemy charged toward the trail. Arcolin risked quick glances upward, aware that any one of them could end with a crossbow bolt in the eye—ropes rigged on both sides of the trail but none here … or here. His own troops backed down the slope in order; the brigands followed, more raggedly as they rushed to close and the slope pulled them on.
His cohort reached the lower trail, the one skirting the wet ground around tributary headwaters. Arcolin halted them, and in the seconds before the enemy reached them they had time to form the tight, protective formation—the flexible tight, protective formation—he wanted.
The first enemy charged out of the woods, five—six—seven—the fastest, least controlled—and tried to stop, still slipping, sliding—and then, desperate, charged into the waiting cohort and died. Behind came more—a ragged line—and hoofbeats of more than a few horses. Those on foot arrived first—fifteen—twenty—with a motley collection of shields and weapons, including two short pikes. The first rank held them off without difficulty. Devlin dispatched one of the pikemen, and Jenits took the other.
Horsemen burst out of the cover, thre
e close together, three more behind, clearly intending to break the formation. At his signal, Arcolin’s formation split, opening a lane through which the horses charged even as their riders tried to halt and turn them. One, indeed, managed this, but at the cost of slowing his mount so much that Arcolin’s soldiers easily surrounded him and pulled him off.
The rest of the brigands fled back into the woods; those whose horses were mired in the swamp floundered through the muck, and a tensquad caught and killed three of them. Two more fell to the crossbows they’d captured on that first patrol.
“That’s more like it,” Devlin said, surveying the row of brigand bodies. “And if we were better with our crossbows, we’d have had more of them. What warned you about the bowman in the trees, Captain?”
“My horse as much as anything,” Arcolin said, patting the sweaty neck of his chestnut. “And I saw how they’d been picking us off despite our scouts. They’ve got sailors up on the trees.”
“Sailors?”
“Remember the harbors we went through? The guard sailors up on those crosspieces—the yards, they called them—standing on those ropes slung below when they weren’t walking on the yards themselves? They’ve rigged trees beside the main trails, at least in some places, and can shoot down on us.”
“That’s bad,” Devlin said. “We didn’t see anything like that in Siniava’s War.”
“No. But Alured was on our side then. These will be pirate friends of his, I have no doubt. They’ll be able to look right down and see our scouts—and our scouts aren’t looking up. This fellow must’ve been four or five armspans up—that would be no height to a sailor.”
“What do we do?” Burek said.
“Today? They’ll expect us to pursue, and they’ll try to lead us back where their aerial bowmen can attack … so we’re not going to do that. Today we take the swamp trail back south, as if we’re running away, then we’ll cut back upslope, cross the main trail, and go right over the ridge.”
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