Time of Daughters II

by Sherwood Smith

  Connar grinned. “Because you left us all your remounts. Thanks, Braids. For those, and for the runners with the reports. Tell me everything.”

  Braids’ grin hardened. “About that.” He turned his head. “Squeak!”

  A short, round girl no older than seventeen ran out from the mass standing in the middle of Braids’ camp, in no particular order. Most of them were female.

  Squeak had a high voice. “Braids sent me’n my cousin ahead to scout. Careful, because of what happened to Trot and Badger. No wearing our coats, that was our orders. We just reached Igreth, a village on the other side of the river, a day before the enemy came in, some riding, most running, and took the town before we knew what happened.” Her gaze dropped, and everyone there knew that “taking the town” meant violence.

  “My family owns an inn at Wened, so I put on an apron and offered to help at the tavern for a bed, when really I wanted to go to ground. The enemy took over everything, demanding food and drink, without paying, and this one with diamonds at one ear, he said their captain is the new king of Stalgoreth.” She repeated all the bragging she’d overheard in a night of serving Cingon’s mercenaries, then finished, “The more they drank, the more they blabbed. They think Connar-Laef is still in Feravayir.”

  “We’ll have to convince them differently,” Connar said. “Where are they now?”

  Braids brought from inside his grubby coat an equally grubby map. “Gannan—Stalgoreth, that is—said we should take them by surprise, so he’s kept everyone back of the Reth River, here.” Braids jabbed the roughly east-west line across the map of Stalgoreth.

  “Did Gannan send you to meet me?” Connar asked.

  Braids’ gaze shifted at the name “Gannan.” He hesitated, not certain what to say. Cabbage Gannan absolutely had the right to defend Stalgoreth, no one said otherwise, but he’d talked so much about chain of command that Braids had volunteered to ride south to meet Connar. How much of that to say?

  But his hesitation was enough. “We can ask him,” Connar said easily. “Lead the way.”

  The first thing they saw on entering Cabbage’s camp were all the Stalgoreth banners. These were huge, with the long streamers called swallow-tails. Jarls carried similar banners, but seldom more than two when a jarl rode in column, or to Convocation.

  There were eight visible.

  Connar and Braids dismounted, and as runners took the horses to the picket, Cabbage came out of the command tent to meet them, his darting gaze picking out Connar and staying there.

  “Did you think we wouldn’t be able to find you?” Connar asked.

  Cabbage had readied a speech, but this unexpected question threw him. A snicker, no more than a breath, reached him, and he flushed, as Connar said conversationally, “All these banners.”

  It was on the surface an even tone, but it was completely wrong for the situation—as if it wasn’t serious. As if Connar didn’t take the Jarl of Stalgoreth and Commander of the First Lancers seriously. Two lightly spoken sentences stung Cabbage like a lash on raw flesh, and emotionally he was back in the academy.

  “We had different companies searching,” Cabbage said in the defensively belligerent tone that set Connar’s teeth on edge. “We had to send them all the way to....” The more he babbled, the more it sounded in his own head like he was covering up, when he really had just wanted a reminder that this was his jarlate, and jarls had the right to defend their own land.

  He cut himself off, and gritted, “I have a plan.”

  A brief silence, no sound but the wind flapping through the closest banners, then Connar said, “Let’s hear it.”

  They walked into Cabbage’s capacious new command tent, and sat on mats as runners brought freshly scalded coffee and pan-biscuits stuffed with sharp cheese. Cabbage began to explain his plan with a lot of justification that grated on half his listeners, and made his partisans wince on his behalf.

  Finally he noticed the flat line of Connar’s mouth getting tighter, and hastily outlined the latest observations from his scouts, who had remained out of line-of-sight of the enemy. These, identified as mercenaries, were coming in a widespread line, no order or discipline. Cabbage then outlined his plan, which was the standard defense they’d all learned back in their academy days: deflecting charge, draw the enemy, hit them on the flank, surround and destroy.

  What he couldn’t quite bring himself to say was that he wanted to be in command—and by the time he was at the end of his words, and Connar had remained silent the entire time, arms folded, Cabbage backed down, saying, “I can ride front-line with the First Lancers and draw them.”

  “Let’s do it.” Connar turned his head. “Braids, you’ll run the flank. We’ll back you up along the riverside, in case any of them decide to turn and run.”

  Cabbage Gannan had chosen excellent ground.

  The enemy was two days outside Stalgoreth’s huge castle and its adjacent trade town. They knew they were close, and decided to surprise the Marlovans by setting out before sunup. They forded their last river, sash-high in the bleak gray of pre-dawn, so that when the sun briefly rimmed the distant mountains to the east, it silhouetted the line of lancers ahead of them, shields high, the steel of the lance blades briefly throwing back blood-red glints before low, advancing clouds swallowed the sky.

  Cingon’s force wavered, shock dousing the comfortable belief that the real enemy was at the far end of the subcontinent.

  Cabbage gloried in giving the signal. Horns blared, and his First Lancers trotted in deliberate slow speed, then began the gallop, thundering over the marshy land as the eerie Yip! Yip! Yip! soared—

  They smashed through the mercenaries, whose loose command structure had been sufficient for villages and caravans. Those who had been at Tlennen Field had all run early on, talking of being vastly outnumbered until they’d come to believe it.

  Rain slanted down in showers as the horses galloped the last few paces, and then in torrents, limiting visibility to gray shapes. Braids’ skirmishers lost speed in movement and in shooting, but the closer they had to ride, the more lethal their shots, no one wasting an arrow.

  Cabbage shouted with savage joy. For him all the nerves had been in the wait, and the agonizing what-ifs. Action forced his attention to focus to one goal: he had to be the one to bring down the enemy leader, and that leader, the scouts had all reported, wore a weird-looking half-helm made of the gold he had wrested from his victims, studded with gems, that left the top of his head bare. Though anyone could tell you, gold was too soft to ward a blow—to Marlovans, the words “crown” and “coronation” were names for the oaths a new king made at midnight at Midsummer or New Year’s Firstday. Nobody had ever seen an actual crown.

  Cabbage gestured to his first runner Kendred to stay tight in case he needed his lance or his remount, and his honor guard to stay behind him, and charged again, straight at the thickest knot of enemies—who began to scatter.

  “Get them! Get them!” Cabbage roared, and the honor guard obediently began chasing the scattering mercenaries, dispatching them one by one.

  As Braids’ skirmishers were hampered by the mud fast turning to liquid brown, Connar waved his company in among them, and made certain his two sword hilts were loose and ready at each side of his saddle. He never felt more alive than when galloping toward the enemy, tucking the reins under his right knee, and drawing his swords—

  They cleaved through confused mass of Cingon’s mercenaries. Half tried desperately to form up, hampered by those who were wheeling about, seeking escape.

  A few tried to surround their leader, whether to protect him or seeking protection will never be known. Cabbage Gannan rode down on them, striking to either side with sword and shield, leading a deadly arrowhead of steel until thunder cracked right overhead, and the torrent abruptly turned to punishing hail.

  Visibility dropped to scarcely a horse length in front or to either side as Cabbage’s First Lancers went about decimating the mercenaries, and Connar’s men swept
the perimeter to make certain none got past. Cabbage lost sight of his target and charged on, unaware that Cingon had swerved toward the river with the intent of escaping—where he met, and did not survive, Jethren’s third riding.

  Cabbage rode on, shouting orders that Kendred couldn’t hear. Kendred, in turn, had lost sight of the honor guard, and Cabbage couldn’t hear him. He urged his mount to come up alongside Cabbage—and his horse slewed sideways in the mud, causing Kendred’s cold hands to slip on Cabbage’s lance. He twisted in the saddle, shifting his weight so as not to drop it, just as the horse leaped over a body. Kendred made a neat parabola over the horse’s left hindquarter, arm clapping the lance to his side—and he landed hard, one leg twisted around the lance so firmly the snap of his knee shattering nearly drowned the roar of hail.

  He lay where he was, head thrown back—and upside down saw Cabbage nearly plunge into Connar, coming from the right, with Jethren at shield position.

  “Oh, you,” Cabbage snarled, completely caught up in the chase. He kicked his horse’s sides and yanked the reins to one side, presenting Connar with his back and his horse’s rump as he looked for more enemies to cut down.

  Connar was a heartbeat faster in seeing only their three horses—his, Jethren’s, and Cabbage’s now moving away. His horse sidestepped to avoid a dead mercenary whose double-handed straight sword had landed in the mud hilt up.

  Instinct was faster than thought.

  Connar bent in the saddle, grabbed up the sword with one hand, and hurled it with all his considerable strength.

  It caught Cabbage square in the back, severing his spine. His head rocked back, his hands flew up, and he fell dead to the mud, his horse racing off riderless. Fierce, red-hot joy flashed through Connar—then the consequences caught up with his mind.

  He shot another glance around, then met Jethren’s fierce grin.

  Elation glowed in both faces as hail roared around them, stinging bare skin. Both mistook that shape of that elation: Connar saw completely loyalty at last, though he’d had it since the first time they met, and Jethren saw that at last he had crossed the magic barrier to Connar’s inner circle.

  Moonbeam caught up as they rode on in search of enemies.

  Kendred, indistinguishable from the mud around him, tried to rise, but pain flashed through him in such white agony he passed out.

  EIGHTEEN

  Connar rode in a zigzag so that never more than one person could report having seen him retreating in a line from where the former Jarl of Stalgoreth lay in the mud not far from the riverside.

  His mind raced ahead as the possible consequences set in. Always he came back to that wide grin of Jethren’s—the unquestioning approval of loyalty. That, and the thought of being rid forever of Cabbage Gannan infused Connar with buoyancy, though beneath it—far below—he waited for guilt to smite him; he kept imagining the shock in Lineas’s face. No. Betrayal.

  To that he said mentally, What you think no longer matters.

  The hail lifted briefly, and in that moment as a shaft of sun slanted down before being swallowed again, he saw that only Marlovans remained upright riding in every direction, those on foot taking weapons, or cutting scalp locks: by now there was an understood rule that you could only take a trophy after a man to man win, or if you were an archer, five kills.

  As Jethren’s men caught up with him, he shouted over his shoulder, “Muster.”

  The trumpets would restore order to those riding every which way. There were the horses to see to, some badly cut about the face by the hail, then the reports to monitor as runners and servants dispersed to collect animals, weapons, wounded, and dead.

  He rode southward, toward those dripping banners, and dismounted before Cabbage’s great tent. Slowly the reports came in: the one with the golden helmet definitely dead. All the mercenaries dead, their horses captured. Reports of Marlovan dead—at first no one, then one, then five, then twenty, but that turned out to be the same five counted by three separate people. There were another five badly wounded and unconscious, one of those Kendred, Cabbage’s first runner. No one recognized any of the unconscious fallen, anonymous in their mud.

  Cabbage was brought in on a cart, laid out with the foreign weapon beside him at the left, and his own sword at the right. His runners closed in around him to take him away to be cleaned up, along with the other dead. Connar felt gazes on him, not accusing, but evaluating. His heart thundered against his ribs, and he was aware that he still did not feel guilt. His worry was at getting caught, which would forever ruin his standing in men’s eyes. In Noddy’s eyes. In Da’s.

  In his captains’ eyes, and the jarls.

  “Send word ahead,” he said, raising his voice. “Full memorial at the castle. Midnight. Everything done right.”

  Approval eased faces here and there, sober acceptance in others. General exhaustion everywhere. Later, the exhilaration would be back, but for now they were filthy with mud and other people’s blood, exhausted, and covered with mercilessly stinging ice cuts.

  Two days later, they reached the castle, to find it waiting to receive its dead hero. And he was a hero to them. Riding at the front of the cavalcade, Connar had set himself to expect an exercise in hypocrisy because of course everyone would feel the same about Cabbage as he did.

  But that was not the case, which he found unnerving, however briefly: there was genuine grief in Cabbage’s pretty wife, the popular and highly admired Maddar Sindan-An. A couple of other women spoke as well, obviously favorites. Connar couldn’t imagine Cabbage having favorites, but maybe he had been different in the bedroom. For that moment, as he stared at the still, cold body lying on the bier waiting for the Spell of Disappearance, regret seized him: never again would either of these women lie next to a warm man, but then the thought of Cabbage Gannan in the throes of sex disgusted him so viscerally he rallied, and confined his thoughts to the threatening weather, the still-stinging cuts and the bruises he hadn’t noticed as he scythed through the enemy.

  When those who wished to speak had finished, he knew what they needed to hear. “I will leave Maddar Sindan-An as jarlan until the king appoints a new jarl. As for the First Lancers Battalion, that belongs to my brother, Nadran-Sierlaef. He will choose your next commander, and where you will be stationed. But Poseid, you were with Gannan the longest, so you stand in as interim commander.”

  A murmur of approval raised a susurrus around the ring of torchlit mourners, and Connar stepped back, as the Jarlan of Stalgoreth waved the torch over Cabbage’s body three times, murmuring the Spell of Disappearance.

  With Cabbage gone, Connar’s guts eased. It was over, all except for the private, family memorial, reserved to those closest to Cabbage and his commanders, as they chose among his personal possessions and then burned the rest.

  Connar never noticed Kendred, Cabbage’s first runner, who listened from the side from a rolling chair brought out by his fellow runners.

  Kendred had woken up halfway to the castle to a devastating headache matched by the pain in his knee and in his heart. Memory had eluded him until the pain began to recede. His head still throbbed, but as he stared across the great parade court in the castle that he now recognized as a copy of that at the royal city, Connar’s voice rang through nerves into memory, and cold sweat broke out all over him.

  If that was not a dream—he still wasn’t completely certain—then the Commander of the King’s Army had murdered Cabbage Gannan, from the back. The commander who had all the power, and who had hated Cabbage. Everyone knew that.

  As voices around Kendred murmured about how the second prince was paying proper tribute, and so forth, Kendred wanted to yell, Murderer! Traitor! But would he be believed?

  Worse than that, would that Jethren, or worse, his crazy first runner, kill him, too? If only he was certain, but the memory was so blurred, so gray....

  He shut his eyes, and when the steward whispered, “Do you need listerblossom?” Kendred whispered back, “Yes.”

  H
e had to think it through.

  Jethren’s exhilaration carried him from the aftermath of that grim slaughter, slogging through pools of red-stained mud in order to restore order, to their return to the royal city. Connar never spoke of what had happened, even when the rare times they were briefly alone, but after all, what was there to say? The obstacle trying to crowd up next to Connar in chain of command was gone in one stroke. But that was the action of a true king.

  Jethren, in attaining that circle of trust at last, would proceed more cautiously. As soon as he could get liberty, he visited Hauth, who was eager for the usual report.

  Jethren had decided to keep the cause of Gannan’s death to himself, at least until Hauth and his father reconciled. It was a powerful secret—the means by which he had entered that new level of trust. He didn’t want Hauth part of it.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t use him. “With Gannan dead, there are two obstacles to my moving up the chain of command,” he said. “Senelaec is one, and Rat Noth the other.”

  “What do you mean to do about it?” Hauth said.

  Jethren had thought about it the entire ride back to the royal city. He liked Braids Senelaec. What’s more, Braids was an excellent commander. It would harm the defense of the east if he suffered an accident. But, “I just need Senelaec moved down the chain of command. What is his weakness?”

  Hauth scowled. “None, really. I only had him for two years, but I never saw anything like Holdan and his penchant for drink, or Khanivayir quarreling over imagined slights. Zheirban constantly in trouble with hothouse women. The Senelaecs are notorious for sloppy discipline, but they’re formidable in the field. Though terrible as land governors,” he added. “Usually short at harvest time, often needing royal stores to get through the end of winter. And of course there’s that ridiculous feud with the Marlovayirs.”

  Jethren grinned. “I think I’ve got enough.”