“That was good thinking,” Arrow exclaimed. “And damn tight timing.”
“The plan came from what happened at Andahi, when Inda-Harskialdna fought off the Venn.”
Arrow whistled again. “Do we teach that in the academy? Another salute to Andaun. Who, by the way, really wants to retire. But we’ll talk about that later. Tell me again, with all the details. So you had Gannan still out here at the front gates of West Outpost, right? And Sindan’s skirmishers here and here....”
Arrow bent over the map, fingers tapping. Connar glanced away from the pinkish scalp under the white strands of hair at the top of his head. But there was nothing old in Arrow’s narrow gaze as he listened intently to Connar’s description of the battle at West Outpost. “...made sure none of them were left to backstab us,” Connar finished. “Then we ran back up the pass....”
And so to the end, then, the part that had kept him arguing in his head ever since, especially late at night: “I know I should have stayed at Ku Halir. But I wanted to be the one to take Elsarion down.”
“And so you should,” Arrow declared, sitting back on his heels, hands out wide. “And so you should. You would have finished him off right and proper, if the Adrani king hadn’t had the same guild and merchant groups howling at his door as I did on this side. What you want to wager there’s a band of stiff-necked guild chiefs on their way here, on your heels? Your mother and I talked about that, soon’s your runner showed up with the report. We can shut ‘em up by turning West Outpost over to ‘em. Let ‘em work out who pays for what. The guilds are stiff with gold. Let them run it!”
Connar stared, shocked. Hand over West Outpost, after all he’d done to take it? “I’d thought I’d put Cabbage Gannan there permanently,” Connar said.
Arrow flicked the words away. “I see your idea there. Good organization, heavy lancers if needed. But the same thinking goes for putting him up there at Yvan—that is, Stalgoreth. Turns out, his wife trained up with her mother—one of the best of the jarlans, everybody says so—and young Gannan learns fast. He can also quarter the First Lancers there, so they’re in position to ride hard anywhere in the northern part of the kingdom. And Stalgoreth can support ‘em. Whereas, putting them at West Outpost would mean a long supply line for half the year, which would have to be guarded.”
Connar shrugged away the logistics, his mind on Cabbage Gannan. A jarl? He wanted Gannan right where he’d put him, to be wielded as a sword when needed, because he was an excellent commander of the heavies, but kept firmly subordinate. Making him a jarl put him independent of army command, that is, under the king.... Connar bit back irritation and said as casually as he could, “You’re going to make Cabbage Gannan a jarl?”
Arrow said in a confidential tone, “He’s not nearly the horseapple his father is. Or that brother, who’s worse. And we’re going to make him change his name. Start a new family. That should cut old Gannan right out of assuming he can run Stalgoreth as well as Gannan. That boy is loyal to Noddy, who likes him. And his wife is a jarlan’s daughter from the Eastern Alliance, so I feel certain the jarls won’t howl too loud at my decision.”
As the sound of cadenced yells echoed in the window from the court below, where the castle guard was drilling, Connar made one last try. “I’d thought to suggest Stick Tyavayir—that is....” He faltered, realizing he’d forgotten Stick’s given name, and had to resort to “Tyavayir Tvei.” Though he hated making any reference to the academy.
“I know who you mean.” Arrow snapped his fingers. “This is also good thinking, but not broad enough. As it happens, I was down at the garrison while you were with Ranet and little Iris. Spoke to them both. Once Gannan is settled at Stalgoreth, the next one I want to settle is young Fath at Halivayir. The people there don’t want anyone else, but I’ve still got the jarls elbowing each other to get their sons and nephews put there. So, soft and easy. Fath to command there. In a few years, when everyone is used to the changes, make him jarl. Change the name to Fath, no more ‘vayir’ tacked on the end. That’s the old Montreivayir custom. None of the Eastern Alliance or Senelaec got it tacked on by any of our Olavayir kings, and no one’s squawked.”
He paused expectantly and Connar perforce agreed, for the first time finding himself impatient with one of Da’s decisions.
Arrow gave him a fond grin, and went on. “As a jarl, he can make Manther Yvanavayir Captain of Riders—not my business—and that finishes the last of the Yvanavayir mess. As for the Tyavayir redhead, Sneeze keeps talking to me about retiring. He wants to go home to Olavayir, and I don’t blame him. I would if I could.”
Arrow sighed, his gaze sliding away. “Though without my brother...well. Never mind that. I’m stuck here till I’m dead, it’s just the way of things. Anyway, for Ku Halir, between one thing and another it seems to be the garrison seeing the most trouble. We need a fighting captain there. Who better than your boy, young Tyavayir? I asked him, and you should have seen him light up. He’d be relatively close to his homeland. Your mother is trying to find him a good wife, as I’m sure you remember his was killed.”
Connar had completely forgotten. He still didn’t know what Stick thought about that. He’d been silent on the subject, though Connar knew they’d been friends. All he’d talked about was taking down Elsarion.
Arrow went on, “At Ku Halir he’ll be good. Happy. And that keeps us strong in the north.”
Connar agreed with the reasoning for all these decisions. Leaving him nothing to say.
Arrow squinted at him. “Don’t like it?”
Connar turned his palm flat. “It’s...I guess I thought...no, I see it.”
“You have to think in terms of the entire map,” Arrow said, hands widespread as he tried to read Connar’s face. But he couldn’t. He said on a coaxing note, “I know these boys are your riding mates. And if there’s a big war, which I hope there won’t be, they’ll be riding under your banner. But until then, we need to put them where they’re needed. Where we’ve got old commanders who’ve given us good years. Deserve to go home again, or if they want to stay, lighter duty.”
He looked away, somber. His voice roughened with grief. “Cub Senelaec...I remember when he was a fuzzball, black hair and all, like your Iris. Feels like it was yesterday. They say his horse stumbled over the corpses of those damned Bar Regren he was fighting off—he had a hundred of ‘em pressing in around him—and they tore him apart when he fell. Wolf crippled for life. Shit. So glad Rat Noth hammered them flat for that.”
He went on about the battle of Ku Halir, as Connar listened, aware that the reaction to Ku Halir far outstripped that to his arduous and deadly climb. No one seemed to realize how terrible that had been, but they had no reference. There were no ballads about surviving a grueling hike over a deadly mountain. Connar himself had thought it would be easy, even after Quill explained how difficult it was. Connar remembered how he’d scoffed. And why.
“...but that’s enough of a sore subject. It’s going to take a while to forget that.” Arrow sighed. “Bad. Very bad. So!”
He clapped his hands to his knees in the old way. “We try to look ahead, and that brings us to the south. While all this trouble’s been going on, we pulled a lot from our southern garrisons to reinforce us here at the royal city, and to send to Ku Halir. Though I’ve never liked leaving those Nyidri horseapples loose down there in Feravayir. Time for you to ride the south on inspection. See first-hand.”
“I thought you trusted Ivandred Noth,” Connar hedged.
“I do. But speaking of retiring, he’s got ten years on me, at least. As far as I can tell, he does his best, but those Nyidri snakes get around him. We learned that before your southern pass campaign, remember?”
Connar had utterly forgotten that false festival, but Quill’s report emerged in memory, bringing back the righteous fury he’d felt then. “There’s been no word of conspiracy since, right?”
“Right. The two Nyidri boys slithered off to Sartor. Ivandred had patrols regularly watching all the would
-be captains we were able to discover. Though he didn’t learn all of them. The jarlan interfered with any investigation of her precious ‘nobles.’” He sighed again. “Meanwhile that jarlan is squawking and squalling about something she calls the Tax Gang.”
Connar leaned forward. “Tax Gang?”
“That’s what I heard. They’re attacking here and there in the south. Carrying off loot. Though they’re not like Yenvir, slaughtering left and right. That horseapple of a jarlan’s had the frost to send sent runners demanding I do something about them. But here’s the thing. Ivandred Noth is silent. Like the subject doesn’t exist. So I want to know what’s really going on down there. If this so-called Tax Gang is a rumor the jarlan started, as a deflection. Or what. But I’m more interested in what they’re up to. If there’s any evidence of the Nyidris running another plot, then maybe it’s time for Noth to become the jarl in fact. Him, I trust. What’s more, the jarls do, too, and that’s a consideration, what with three jarlates in effect vanishing in as many years. None of it’s my fault, but it’s my rule it happened under.”
Connar’s spirits soared. “We can ride by week’s end.”
“Hold hard.” Arrow put up his hand. “I salute your eagerness, but there’s no ‘we.’ Not if you mean your captains. Fath is going home. I told him he can leave any time. And Tyavayir is going up to help Sneeze.”
Connar grimaced. “Well, I’ll put together a new command.”
“Do that. Start with Rat Noth. He’s good. I trust him. And he knows the south.”
“Right,” Connar said. He could ride with Rat, who did what he was told, and did it well. Rat still seemed to think that Connar had put him west of Ku Halir because he expected an attack.
“Stay through New Year’s Week at least. You should be here for your sister’s wedding. Be with your wife. She’s as good a girl as you can get. Everyone likes her. And....”
Arrow looked away, then back. “I know it’s early days yet, but both your mother and I will feel more settled when either you or Noddy get a boy. Or even Bunny and Rat Noth. Everyone says the Noths always turn out boys. Well, look how many of ‘em we have either down there at the academy, or spread over the garrisons. Not to mention the Riders. We can adopt Rat in. Your ma’s already talking about it. Between the six of you, we should be able to get us a couple of boys, and start training them up. Then everyone knows what to expect for the next generation.”
Connar suppressed a grimace. Rat Noth was like a bolt of lightning leading a charge on the battlefield, but the rest of the time he was nothing to look at, awkward in speech. Silly Bun was even worse. Connar rarely thought about the future generation—his interest was all in the now—but the idea of a jug-eared, cross-eyed, stuttering or silly future Sierlaef was repellent almost past bearing.
“Right,” he said again, determination subsuming his resentment at his evening having been planned for him by his mother. The resentment spiked the expectation he’d tried to ignore: he’d avoided Lineas for two years, but riding in, he’d known he was going to find her, if she was here. And...what? He just wanted everything to go back exactly to the way it was—but what was it? Had she really been with him out of pity?
He gritted his teeth against the irritation, and left to do his duty.
After their arrival in the main castle courtyard, as Connar went off with his family, Ghost and Stick Tyavayir were towed along to the garrison side by old academy mates, to be pumped for details.
Kethedrend Jethren hadn’t expected anyone to greet him, as he’d grown up in Olavayir, so when he came face to face with his father along with Uncle Tigger, he gaped in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Halrid Jethren, once Lance Captain of the Nighthawk Company, whipped up his hand. Jethren tensed as his father clapped his son on the shoulder. “Young Tanrid changed everything back at Nevree. Tigger and me—” His thumb turned toward his silent brother, who’d earned his name from how hard he’d tigged lances back when they were fighting for position under Mathren. “We decided we might as well come home.”
“Home?” Keth Jethren repeated, then recollected that his father had once mentioned being born in some mining village not far from East Garrison.
“But we’re staying with Hauth for now,” said his father. “Do you have liberty?”
“For today,” Jethren muttered, Ghost’s pale head vanishing through the archway ahead. Nothing had been spoken, which meant they’d get orders at morning muster.
His father grunted. “We can talk at Pereth’s quarters, while your runners get your company into digs. Hauth and Pereth want to hear your report.”
Jethren’s expression cleared at that. “He’s great,” he whispered. “He’s great. You should have seen him at West Outpost....”
“Save it,” his father whispered. “For when we’re all there to hear it.”
And so, while the royal family gathered in the queen’s suite, down in the quartermaster’s room, the Nighthawk men squeezed into Quartermaster Pereth’s office. Fish was there as well. He’d tried to avoid it by getting started on going over all Connar’s gear, but his father sent a young runner up to fetch him.
Halrid Jethren, as senior captain in the Nighthawk Company, took charge of what he called a war council.
“My boy has the most to report,” he said, ignoring Fish as a mere runner. “Let’s hear the rest of you first. Get that out of the way.”
Quartermaster Pereth turned over his hand, and gazes shifted to Retren Hauth. Who said, “I haven’t spoken to the true king for a few years. He’s been on the ride, as is right. But something...strange came up while he was at Larkadhe.”
Here he laid down, with careful fingers, the paper that Lineas had drawn on.
The three blond Jethren heads bent over the paper. Keth Jethren looked back up again in indifference, followed by his Uncle Tigger, but his father whistled, eyes wide. “That’s Lanrid.”
The name jolted them into silence.
Halrid said, “Who made this drawing?”
Hauth put his fists on his thighs. “It was made when Connar was at Larkadhe. Like I said.”
“Impossible. Connar wasn’t even born yet when Lanrid died in Andahi. Somebody made this before Lanrid rode north. Preserved it.”
Hauth glared at the Jethrens. “It was made by a runner who saw Lanrid as a ghost. Fish Pereth there watched her sketch it.”
Halrid Jethren gave a derisive snort. Tigger chuckled.
Hauth flushed with annoyance, his one eye narrowing. “Then explain how that girl could have drawn it otherwise. It’s exact.” He slammed his hand on the table, making the dishes jump. “And Fish was there. Provided the paper.”
Halrid had been about to ask if Hauth had been at the bristic again. But when he looked down at the paper, he had to admit it was Lanrid to the life—the long dimples beside his mouth, even the slightly chipped front tooth. The eyes, staring right at you.
He turned it over. “I don’t know what it means. Except if it’s a real ghost, he has to be....” His harsh, derisive tone rose to question. “...watching his boy?”
“That’s what I think, too,” Retren Hauth stated. He fixed Fish with a one-eyed glare of absolute conviction. “I think he won’t rest, or do whatever ghosts do, until his boy is king. The way he was supposed to be.” He slapped the back of his fingers on the paper. “Lanrid grew up knowing that he was the real heir. He was about to ride to the royal city to take his rightful place!”
No one argued with that.
Hauth turned to Fish. “Now that you’re back, I want you to ask that runner if she’s still seeing Lanrid’s ghost. Before we approach Connar about it.”
Fish was thinking that he’d rather eat rocks, but kept a prudent silence as Halrid, clearly disconcerted by the subject, turned to his son. “Now. Your report, Keth.”
Kethedrend Jethren had been trained to give reports. He described his time with Cabbage Gannan’s First Lancers, his winter preparation for the avalanche, and then the jo
urney over the mountain and its results.
Though Fish was there, it never occurred to Keth Jethren to turn to him for corroboration, or even to acknowledge him. To Keth, Fish was only a runner. More to the point, his family were mere connections to Hauth. The Pereths had never been part of Mathren Olavayir’s selected and trained elite, the Nighthawk men.
Fish sat silently through the long report, as if he had not also walked every step of the way over Skytalon, fought at West Outpost, and followed behind Connar every step during his battles.
When Keth Jethren finished, his father grunted in approval. “Good beginning, my boy. Good beginning.”
Keth Jethren lifted a powerful shoulder. “I lost four men on that mountain and he still doesn’t trust me.”
“That will come. That will come. You have to prove yourself first. He might say he hates Mathren Olavayir—it’s to be expected, growing up hearing the eagle clan’s lies—but from what you say, he’s Mathren to the life. You prove your loyalty with your sword, and he’ll make you his right hand. Just as Mathren did. With us.” Halrid Jethren slapped his hand to his chest, his blue eyes wide and bright with conviction. “And when he’s ready to become king, it’s you who will make it happen.”
The next morning, by the time Connar left his room, bathed, and dealt with orders, he discovered through Fish that Lineas had departed at dawn.
THREE
The Tax Gang.
It’s time to catch up with Colt Cassad, who we left disgusted at the Olavayir king’s typical short-sightedness about the academy. As if Colt couldn’t have handled a bunch of randy boys!
But nobody argues with kings, so Colt continued to ride as Colt, a male Rider, out in the field, but at home in Cassad, Colt was Carleas to her female cousins. Colt felt exactly the same way inside. It was others whose traditions set up how people were to be regarded. The idea of sweating down to Sartor and enduring tortuous pain in order to change body parts that nobody saw anyway seemed crazy. He was who he was.
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