Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  “Ah,” Connar said. “You think if we break the treaty, the Idegans’ll take it?”

  “I’m sure of it. I had to swallow that slaughter when Lorgi Idego broke off, and by the time I was strong enough to retake the north, I had a better idea of what we’d lose if I went after them. They fight like us. It wouldn’t be easy, or fast. Your ma had plenty to say about the cost. So we trade, and the letters go back and forth nice. Hal even seems like a decent enough fellow. But I don’t see any reason to hand them the Nob as a present. And half the jarls agree, which is why all the arguing.”

  “Do you think the Idegans would win against the Bar Regren?”

  “Just like you did. Twice. From the report I got back from Camerend back then, the Bar Regren all go on about personal bravery and kills and the like. No notion of training other than hand to hand. You probably saw the truth of that. I know they saw it at Ku Halir.”

  Connar turned up his hand. Rat had reported much the same.

  “But it would be a tough and bloody fight. Anyway, we’re stuck with the Nob. So...we have that treaty silver to deliver, as stipulated in the treaty.”

  Connar sighed inwardly, and resolved that the next time the silver had to go north, he’d send someone else.

  Arrow’s mind ran along the same trail. “Might next time send someone you trust. No reason you have to do it, now you’ve done it. Seen what it entails.”

  Connar opened his hand in heartfelt agreement.

  Arrow rubbed his thumbs along the upper edge of his eye sockets. “Right. Another thing. Happened not long after you left. Nearly forgot, what with one thing and another.” It was close enough to the bell...he reached for his cup.

  Connar noticed his father’s fingers tremble a little. Arrow saw the direction of his gaze, snapped his hand into a fist, and sat back on his mat. “Braids Senelaec is the new chief of the Eastern Alliance. Old Amble Sindan, who has twenty years on me, is retiring to run a stud out of Dustdancer.”

  Connar remembered hearing that the Eastern Alliance horse studs started with some famous horse, often keeping the name long after the horse had died of old age. Dustdancer was reputed to be as fast as Rat Noth’s Grasshopper.

  Arrow continued, “He traded for some mares out of Algaravayir.”

  Connar’s interest sparked. “That mare Noren was running when she first came to the Victory Day games?”

  “Two mares. Her daughters,” Arrow said. “Anyway, Braids being their new chief, I felt it in our best interest to shift him to detached duty, reporting to your Stick Tyavayir at Ku Halir.”

  Connar suppressed annoyance at this news of his carefully thought out command structure changed. But it was the king’s right. Further, Connar knew he would have done the same. Braids as Eastern Alliance chief represented an enormous potential force. Not heavy, but fast. And more easily launched in any direction if Braids was roving in the area of possible trouble, rather than locked down at one or another of the garrisons. But.

  Connar looked up. “I thought the Eastern Alliance chief was never a jarl. Not that Braids is a jarl. But he will be.”

  “I thought the same thing. Braids wasn’t going to be the jarl until the Ku Halir battle, which also boosted his rep. Amble always wanted him, and the jarls had all agreed on him, clear back when he first got out of the academy. They seem to think it won’t be a problem, his being a jarl, too. Now that he’s married to Henad Tlennen, he’ll be bringing in Tlennen cousins to help at Senelaec. Anyway, the alliance always picks their chief. I’m not about to interfere with that.”

  Connar turned up his palms. “If they don’t see a problem then there isn’t a problem. I couldn’t pick anyone better than Braids myself. Any other news?”

  Arrow waved a hand, then fisted it when he felt the incipient tremble. “Nothing but the usual gabble about troublemakers up in the northern mountains, mostly from the Ghildraith.”

  That sounded promising! “Better go inspect myself.”

  “It was not much but rumor so far,” Arrow felt obliged to add, seeing the flare of excitement widening Connar’s eyes, the sudden, quick grin. He didn’t remember Connar being one of those happiest riding hard toward blood and steel. But his expression was unmistakable. Arrow was thrown back in memory for a heartbeat. Lanrid had sometimes worn that same grin, usually just before he scragged somebody.

  Strange, how expressions showed up in people who might be related, but hadn’t met the other. When in certain moods, Noddy sometimes called Jarend to mind, the brother Arrow still sorely missed, though they hadn’t seen one another since Jarend rode north in ‘60. And now they never would—unless Jarend turned up as one of the ghosts people insisted haunted the castle.

  “No need,” Arrow said quickly, smothering that thought. “Winter will be on us before you get there. Also, I told Braids to ride in for Convocation. Quill said I ought to have him report to you himself.”

  “Quill?” Connar repeated.

  “Sensible. Like Camerend. When he’s here, I always ask him to bring news he’s heard on his travels. I can ask him things. He reads a lot. Like his father. I told you both, Camerend was the one who kept your mother and me from being scragged by Mathren’s men after that bloodbath. I know I told you.”

  Connar opened his hand. It was true. Arrow had repeated the story several times, until they were tired of it. Connar and Noddy had grown up hearing “Camerend says” ...and now he was hearing “Quill says.”

  “You can always ask us, Da,” he said before thinking.

  “What?” Arrow blinked, then slewed sideways to gaze at him.

  “Us. Noddy and me. You don’t need Quill.” And seeing the confusion in Arrow’s face, “When you were first king, you didn’t have anyone except for Camerend. Now you have us. Not runners. Who are just runners.”

  Arrow thought, Am I doddering? He said slowly, “I’m not new to that damn throne.” He said it in a joking tone, but his expression was not his joking expression. Connar wasn’t quite sure how to interpret it.

  But this he knew: he’d made a mistake. He said quickly, “What I meant was, you’ve taught Noddy and me, and now we’re ready to help. Whenever you want us. Don’t need to haul in the royal runners, like you did then.”

  Arrow saw Connar’s shock of realization, followed by a flinch of regret, and forced a laugh. “Noddy says the same. Well, not about the royal runners, truth to speak. He likes having them at hand. You know how he is. He’s made a scribe of that red-haired one, what’s her name, used to be Bunny’s first. You know who I mean, you and she were—”

  “Lineas,” Connar cut in dryly.

  “That’s the one. Anyway, Noddy keeps her and Vanadei doing scribe duty, because he likes to go over and over the reports, and then rehearse what he wants to say. And they don’t get burrs under the saddle, because they know his ways. So since they’re right there, I use ‘em too, the way I did Camerend.”

  Connar sensed question in Arrow’s tone, and decided to drop the matter. It wasn’t as if the royal runners were any threat whatsoever. He just didn’t want them around unless he had orders to give them. Then he had the satisfaction of seeing their backs.

  He said, “I’m glad you told Braids to ride in.”

  Arrow thumped his fist on his knee. “Good. Thought you might. He’ll come down with Wolf, who I’m told wants to be at Convocation. Though I don’t know how, considering he still can’t stand, much less sit a horse. Damn. Convocation! Half the castle is already scrambling about, starting to get ready. Seems like the last one just ended.”

  Connar remembered the previous Convocation, and all that jawing he’d endured from the jarls in a single day. Once again spoke without thinking. “Why not go to every five years? Or longer?”

  Arrow grunted. “It would be...comfortable. But Danet is right when she says discomfort is our tax.”

  “Tax?” Connar repeated, as Noddy opened his hand in agreement.

  “When I was your age, I thought I’d be randael in Olavayir. When I blund
ered, all that’d happen was my da would give me a jawing. My brother would be jarl. Then Mathren’s murdering everyone right and left me the only man standing, and I got stuck as king. Though I was still the same man, it meant that, when I blunder people die. Convocation is my tax.”

  He squinted at Connar, headache panging at his temples. He longed for a drink, but time was crawling. It was far too early. The healer had scowled at him before going on at length about drunkenness. Arrow was not a drunk. He couldn’t afford to get drunk. He was very careful about that. He drank just enough.

  The problem was, the day seemed to get longer and longer before the mid-watch bell at five, when the day was nearly done and he could relish that first sweet sip.

  Sometimes when he almost got the shakes like this, his head aching and his mouth dry, it helped to move around. Cool off. “Come on. Let’s go down to the yard. Noddy’s got the new boys from the academy seniors doing lance evolutions around this time. You might as well see how they’re shaping up.”

  FIFTEEN

  Maddar Sindan-An, Cabbage Gannan’s wife, stood back and eyed the fine House tunic Kendred, Cabbage’s first runner, had finished sewing. Then she turned to Cabbage’s current favorite, Fnor-Tailor (differentiated from Fnor-Beekeeper), who had selected the fabric and supervised the dyeing.

  Old Stalgoreth’s colors had been green-edged gold, but only Marlovan kings could have gold. Cabbage hadn’t wanted to use his family’s colors of purple-edged green—they were supposed to be Stalgoreths now, not Gannan, anyway—so Maddar had suggested the opposite.

  But purple was a very tough dye to sustain through a lot of fabric, so Fnor-Tailor had recommended compromising on a purplish blue with green edging, with no device as yet. Cabbage was afraid to choose one without the king’s approval.

  Cabbage eyed himself in the polished steel, scowling. “Does it make me look false? Like I’m pretending, or something? Who wears green on blue? Or maybe you’re right about the device, and we should go back to the old Stalgoreth, what were those flowering things? At least this looks much better than that moth-eaten old tunic Da wears. As it should, as my jarlate is more than twice the size of Gannan. But what if Connar makes me last of all the jarls, stuck sitting in the back....”

  Maddar listened to the tone, not the words. When he started talking like this, dithering then bragging, always coming back to Connar Olavayir, she knew he was going back to his old anxious self, the Cabbage lurking under his brother’s and father’s bullying fists.

  “I think this will do. Fold it up,” she said to the waiting runners. To Snow, she canted a look.

  “And I’m going to make certain they packed that pot of strawberry compote I made,” Snow said, following the runner and the servants to the door. “You’ll be glad of it long before you reach Ku Halir.”

  “Cabbage,” Maddar said when she and Cabbage were alone with Fnor-Tailor.

  Fnor put her hands up on his shoulders, digging her thumbs into the thick muscle there and rubbing in a soothing circle. Maddar looked on approvingly as she considered what to say, and how to say it.

  Cabbage was big and strong and brave. The women who got fire for men said he was handsome. Maddar saw in his quick, uncertain temper and his tendency to brag when he was most uncertain, the boy who had been cruelly bullied by his dreadful father and brother. She didn’t know if the fact that Cabbage was a terrible judge of character and situations other than fighting was a result of that bullying, or just him. She was glad that he listened to her, but she knew he would listen to anyone who was consistently nice to him. Which made her all the more grateful that he seemed to pick good-hearted women as favorites.

  While Fnor expertly rubbed his shoulders, and the tension began to ease from his posture, Maddar said, “You are an excellent jarl. You are also Nadran-Sierlaef’s chosen, Commander of his First Lancers. He will be the next king. Connar will take orders from him. It doesn’t matter what he thinks of you. You’re a jarl now, a king’s man.”

  Cabbage’s forehead wrinkled again and he muttered fretfully, “If there’s a war, I’ll be under Connar.”

  “And he’ll give you the same orders you had at Tlennen Field, when you broke the enemy lines. And when you broke that West Outpost. And wasn’t he the one who sent Keth Jethren and his men to you to train in lance tactics? Not to anyone else. To you.”

  Cabbage sighed. “Yes.” He grinned a little. “I tried to recruit him. He’d be great.”

  Maddar was done with the subject of Keth Jethren, who had reminded her a little too much of Lightning Season in human form. Maybe it was that first runner of his, the one they called Moonbeam. Nobody would tell her what his real name was, and he didn’t, or couldn’t, speak.

  That wasn’t what bothered her about Moonbeam. Nor the scars on the visible parts of his body. She’d seen the signs of bullying in him, too. You didn’t dare raise your hand inadvertently on the periphery of his vision, for example, or touch him accidentally. But unlike Cabbage, who flinched—and even Jethren, if you came up behind him—Moonbeam would get this crazy look, like he was a breath away from gutting you with one of the knives he always wore. Then other times he’d sit with a flat stare, looking through you, through the walls, as if he watched the sun beyond the world. She had been glad when they left Stalgoreth, and she hoped that Cabbage wouldn’t be successful in recruiting either of them back, no matter how good they were with lances.

  Shaking off the memory, she said, “You and Connar-Laef might not get along at rec time, but he knows your worth. We all do.”

  Cabbage began to relax a little at that. But he still fretted. “I don’t see why Connar hates me,” he mumbled. “He looks at me like a dog turd on the carpet.”

  “That’s his problem. Nobody here looks at you like that. The king thinks highly of you, or he would have put someone else here. Nadran-Sierlaef also thinks highly of you.”

  Fnor spoke up, adding her fluting voice to Maddar’s. “It’s true! Just the other day I overheard Cook while putting up the bread telling the steward how good you are to go out weeding the kitchen garden on Restdays, when the kitchen staff gets to sleep in. The people think a good jarl is great on the battlefield, but the best jarl is one who cares about them in little ways.”

  Cabbage’s sulky mouth eased, and he muttered, “I like weeding. Clears my head.” His voice lightened. “The people in the northern trade towns salute me when I ride by. And nobody made them do it.”

  “That’s right,” Maddar said encouragingly. “They know your reputation, one you’ve earned. So ride down to the royal city and take your place among the jarls. You won’t even have to look at your father if you don’t want to. Have a good time. Go out with Nadran-Sierlaef to your favorite spots. Drink, dance, sing.”

  Fnor whispered in his ear, “Visit the Sword and get laid. If you learn any new good tricks, bring them back for us to try.”

  And when Cabbage grinned, Maddar finished, “If there’s exhibition riding, tell the boys how great they are, because some of them will want to ride with you one day. Have fun, and bring back all the news.”

  Cabbage Gannan rode out with Riders from the First Lancers—men he’d been with since his days at Lindeth. The few with families had moved them to Stalgoreth, and two of the single men had found local wives. As Cabbage rode away from the enormous castle that the king had bestowed on him and his progeny to come, he smiled past the new banner, streamers snapping in the wind, to the Riders. His father hadn’t let him have anyone from Gannan, not that he needed any of them. He was building his own clan. Well, he would as soon as he and Maddar had children. She’d said they would do that after they turned thirty. Too much to do before then. Weird to think thirty wasn’t all that far off. Thirty!

  That buoyant sense of pride and satisfaction carried him down the south road through increasingly sharper weather. At the great crossroads, where the north-south road met the east-west, Cabbage spotted the Senelaec heir’s crimson and black pennant outside the posting house. In
side he found Braids loitering, waiting out a storm boiling over the eastern mountains. Braids hailed him with a grin, and Cabbage hosted them to dinner, over which they decided to ride together down to Senelaec, and thence to Convocation.

  Cabbage worried about his place in the jarls’ hierarchy, and of course, he worried about encountering Connar. Braids worried about his da insisting on going, when he was still so weak. Of them all, the only one with unalloyed anticipation was Kendred, Cabbage’s first runner. As a boy at Gannan, he’d found life something to endure. Getting away on Cabbage’s army assignments had been good, but there was always the dread of a return to Gannan.

  All that had vanished at Cabbage’s appointment as jarl, and now Kendred was finally getting to really see the royal city, not just the royal garrison, as had happened on their last, brief stay, before the jarl promotion. Maybe that would include a tour of the famous academy (he suspected Cabbage would not be able to resist bragging, if no other opportunity presented itself), but one thing for sure, he expected to visit pleasure houses he’d only heard about through endless reminiscences for ten years.

  The weather continued to be fretful, at best, encouraging as fast a ride as the horses could manage. Braids knew Cabbage of old. An afternoon of enduring the bragging alternating with complaining brought the usual reward. Cabbage settled down, in his own mind having established himself a step higher in hierarchy. Since Braids didn’t give a spit for rank, they jogged along amicably, Cabbage falling in with all Braids’ carefully worded suggestions (usually preceded by “Do you think we should....”), which brought them to Senelaec.

  Wolf had never regained his ability to walk. The Senelaec runners and carpenters had experimented with different types of chairs and carts on wheels, finally coming up with one that was small enough to carry Wolf inside and out. It had pegs worked into the frame at the back so it could be raised and lowered into notches.

  For this trip to Convocation, they had rigged up a rope-hung raft suspended from a frame, pulled by two powerful horses. It jounced and swung unmercifully, but Wolf insisted that the ropes took the sting out of it—and he kept calling for more speed.