Sword of Fire

by Katharine Kerr

  “Are you safe, good maid?” he said.

  “I am now, good sir! My thanks, my very most sincere thanks, oh I was so frightened to see them prowling around. Looking for your trade goods, I should imagine.” She paused for a couple of sobs that she hoped sounded convincing. “If it hadn’t been for my two guards, who knows what they would have done to me?”

  “There, there, lass, don’t let yourself dwell on it. You’re safe now, and doubtless that lot are running for their lives.”

  It was late before the men who’d gone searching for the supposed thieves returned. They’d never found them, but they had found their horses, tied up not far from the inn. The leader of the search party brought them back inside the stableyard, and the innkeep locked and bolted the gates.

  “We’ll go through our goods in the morning light,” the merchant told Alyssa. “If aught’s missing, then these horses will make up for it, like.”

  “No doubt your local lord will want to hear about this.”

  “Him? Huh!” The merchant spat onto the ground. “Oh, he’d rule on the matter fast enough, him and one of the priests from the temple, but what good would that do? We’d still have to hunt these thieves down ourselves.”

  “You could hire a silver dagger, I suppose. They really are better than thieves.”

  “Huh. You’ve found the only honest pair in the kingdom, most like! Me and the lads will keep our eyes open and have a look around. I wager they’re still in town since we’ve got their mounts. I don’t care if it takes us all day.”

  Alyssa smiled and dropped him a heartfelt curtsy. As she told her silver daggers, they could ride safely enough on the morrow.

  “Assuming we ride fast, anyway,” she said.

  “Just so,” Benoic said. “Truly, my lady, I admire your quick wits. You saved our lives, sure enough.”

  “You couldn’t have won the scrap?”

  “Not by half,” Cavan said. “Here’s how it goes. Two of them engage me and Benno. The third stabs one of us from the side. That leaves three men on one, and the one’s dispatched like a chicken for the pot.”

  “And yet,” she turned to Benoic, “you’d stand with him?”

  “I told you. He saved my wretched life once. My thanks, my lady, and I call you that because you’re noble to me. If we had yelled for aid, would anyone have listened? Not to a cursed silver dagger. A lass crying out—truly a different matter.”

  “So I’d hoped when I did it. It just aches my heart to think of men of your own guild—”

  “When you ride the long road,” Cavan interrupted, “you can’t consider such fine points of honor.”

  “And a hundred brazens is a lot of coin,” Benoic said, “even split three ways.”

  Alyssa supposed it was, enough to spend a winter in a silver dagger’s inn somewhere, safe from the snow and alive for a few months more. Silver daggers always say they have no honor, she thought, except about their hires. You don’t want to believe them, but there we are.

  “I wonder if they’ve got enough coin to buy more horses,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. Someone put them onto me fast enough. That noble lord who made sure Benno knew about the bounty, maybe. But I’ll wager they got a few coins along with the news.”

  “We’ll have a day’s start on them at least,” Benoic continued, “and a cursed good thing, too. They’ll be coming after us.” He grinned in a surprisingly cheerful way. “They won’t be taking it kindly, outsmarted by a lass.”

  “True enough,” Cavan said, and he looked and sounded grim. “We’d best get to the sacred rhan as fast as possible.”

  * * *

  The news of Lord Gwarl’s death arrived in Aberwyn early on a bright sunny day. Two of the Fox men had survived the battle with minor wounds. They’d had the sense to flee the unequal and hopeless fight and managed to reach one of Ladoic’s vassals further south. With their cuts bound, fresh horses, and a token to change their mounts for more, they’d ridden day and night to reach Aberwyn with the news.

  Both Dovina and her mother were in the great hall, breakfasting with Ladoic, when the two filthy and stumbling-weary men staggered up to the dais. One of them pitched forward into the straw when he tried to kneel. He’d fainted. Ladoic got to his feet and hurried over, bellowing for servants to come help.

  “Your Grace,” the other stammered out, “the Bear caught us on their side of the border. Lost, Your Grace. Eight of our men and—” He paused to throw back his head and gulp for air. Tears ran through the clotted dust on his face. “Lord Gwarl is dead.”

  Dovina found herself standing without being aware she’d risen. Behind her Rhosyan screamed. Dovina spun around and caught her mother’s arm.

  “Come away, Mother! Up to the women’s hall.”

  Rhosyan screamed again and shook her head no. Dovina hauled her bodily to her feet. The messenger was pouring out details, horrible details.

  “They took his head, Your Grace. Right there in the road. I saw them when I looked back. The captain—the point of his sword—”

  Rhosyan fell silent, her face stretched and dead pale, her eyes wide, her mouth working. Dovina half-shoved, half-carried her mother to the stairway. Darro came running to help, and together they managed at last to get her upstairs and into the women’s hall. Her maid hurried over and led her to her chair while Dovina told the lass a version of the news that omitted the horrible details. In but a few moments Ladoic rushed in and hurried to Rhosyan’s side.

  “Why did you send him?” Rhosyan was gasping for breath between words. “Why? Don’t you have sworn men for that?” She paused for a brief flurry of tears. “Well, don’t you?”

  Ladoic’s face had drained to a corpse-like gray. He knelt beside his wife but said nothing. All he could do was open and shut his mouth like a landed fish. Dovina knelt at her mother’s opposite side and clasped her hand in both of hers while Rhosyan sobbed aloud. Her maid hovered behind the chair.

  At length Ladoic rose and collected himself with a deep sigh that seemed torn out of him.

  “My love, forgive me,” he said. “I beg you. Forgive me.”

  Rhosyan never looked his way, merely continued to sob. Ladoic turned on his heel and strode out of the chamber.

  Dovina stayed with her mother until somewhere in the middle of the afternoon, when Rhosyan finally grew exhausted. With her maid’s help, Dovina got her mother to drink some unwatered wine, then got her into her bed and perched next to her. She stayed, stroking her mother’s hair, until Rhosyan slept. Dovina got up and motioned to the maid to take her place.

  “I’m going down to see to the gwerbret,” she whispered. “Stay with her.”

  “Of course, my lady.”

  Dovina found her father pacing back and forth on the dais in the great hall. Standing around him were the captain of his warband and his councillors, talking of provisions, horses, riders, spare weaponry. When he saw her, Ladoic raised a hand for silence.

  “I’ll return in a moment,” he said. “Dovva, come walk a bit with me.”

  They went into a side chamber for their talk. Dovina braced herself, sure he was going to blame her meddling in politics for Gwarl’s death, but his actual response shocked her.

  “I should have listened to you,” Ladoic said. “I never should have sent him.”

  It was Dovina’s turn for the wordless stare while he twisted his mouth into something that might have been meant for an ironic smile. At last she found words.

  “Father, it’s done now and over.”

  “So it is, so it is, and there’s no bringing him back from the Otherlands. Standyc will pay for this, him and his cursed Bears! Insulting the honor of my clan this way! They could have taken the lad and impoverished me with the ransom, couldn’t they? For your mother’s sake I would have paid it.”

  “But not for your own?”

/>   “I’d have rather paid Standyc back in his own blood.” His voice had dropped to a growl. For a moment he trembled. With a sharp sigh and a breath, he controlled himself. “I’ll miss Gwarro. He had twice the wits of his brother.”

  “He did at that.” Dovina felt her own voice clot with tears. She’d never loved her brother, but he was bloodkin, and she would miss him, nasty little remarks and all. “He was too young to die.”

  “Truly. Well, Standyc will regret this yet. I’m going to start by demanding he turn over the man who took the head. So I can hang him. Breaking every law! Barbaric!” He shook himself like a wet dog. “Standyc won’t comply, of course, so there we’ll be.”

  At war, she thought, no matter who else pays with their crops and young men and daughters. She might have spoken against it, but she knew she had no hope of averting so much as one needless death.

  “As you think fit, Father,” she said. “I take it we’re not going to Cerrmor.”

  “We’re not.”

  “Good. I can stay with Mother, then.”

  He nodded, then hurried back to his men and the planning for the war.

  But just before sunset a pair of royal speeded couriers arrived with messages that changed everything. Dovina was up in the women’s hall when she heard the great bronze bells at the harbor temples ring. She leaned out of a window and listened, counting. Three pulls on Manannan’s bell, answered by three pulls on the Goddess’s—a royal galley had just rowed into harbor. She hurried to the door of her mother’s chamber and saw her safely asleep with Magla in the chair beside her.

  “Did you hear the harbor bells?” Dovina said.

  “I did, my lady. Could it be the king coming here?”

  “I truly doubt that, but it’ll be a message from him, sure enough. I’ll be going downstairs in a bit. Should my mother wake, send a page to fetch me.”

  Dovina waited upstairs to give the message time to reach the dun. When she came down, she found two men in the royal livery of red and gold kneeling at her father’s side as he sat at table. Councillor Nallyc sat at his other side and whispered to Ladoic, who nodded agreement now and then. When Dovina hesitated to join them, Ladoic waved her forward and pointed to her usual chair.

  “Here’s a second ugly blow to the day.” Ladoic tossed a curled sheet of pabrus in her direction. “Read it.” He glanced at a hovering page. “Take these two men to the kitchen hut. Get them fresh food to take back to the galley.”

  With much bowing and murmured thanks, the men rose and hurried away. Dovina picked up the parchment and smoothed it out. Nallyc looked both surprised and annoyed that she’d been given the message, while Ladoic leaned back in his chair, sipped his ale, and stared across the hall to a row of heraldic shields hung up under the rafters.

  The letter began with many courteous greetings, recitation of Ladoic’s titles and honors, and ritual hopes that he and his kinfok were well, a rather unfortunate courtesy considering the other news of the day. The meat of the message, however nicely phrased, read as an outright order from the Prince Regent.

  “You will honor us by coming to Cerrmor before taking any action against Standyc, gwerbret of the Bear clan holdings, in the matter of this dispute over certain fields and pastures. We have sent the same request —” Request? Dovina thought. Hah! “— to Standyc, that he wait upon us immediately. We trust that you will make all possible speed in journeying thither, where we shall join you as promptly as the kingdom’s affairs allow. Any violence that may break out between you and your men and those of Standyc will be assessed as damage against the laws and the kingship, whether such unpleasantness occur in your territories or in Cerrmor or on the road to Cerrmor.”

  Dovina rolled the letter back up and handed it to Nallyc, who returned it to the polished silver message tube, ornamented with etched wyverns, in which it had arrived. Ladoic looked at her with one eyebrow raised.

  “I gather we’re going to Cerrmor after all,” Dovina said.

  “Most assuredly.” Ladoic set his tankard down on the table. “But not for a few days. I’ll send messages back to the regent with his messengers to tell him of Gwarl’s death.”

  “Good. I doubt if Mother will be strong enough to come with us, and I don’t want to leave her straightaway.”

  “No more do I. Ye gods, this cursed day must have flown out of the gates of hell!”

  “Truly. You know, you’d best send a copy of this decree to Donno. And of course the news, but we don’t want him marching off on his own to avenge his brother.”

  “He wouldn’t be so stupid. I lie—of course he would. Nallyc, get a scribe up here! We need to send Tieryn Adonyc a cursed strong message.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace.” The councillor rose in a flapping swirl of black robes. “I quite agree. Shall I also send a separate note to his own adviser? From me, like, begging him to exert all possible influence.”

  “Excellent idea! Do that, and my thanks.”

  The delay in leaving for Cerrmor gave Dovina the chance to visit Lady Rhodda Hall and consult with her allies. On the morrow, once she’d made sure that Rhosyan felt stronger, she took Darro and returned to the scholar’s compound. She left her page with the groom and pony cart outside the gates and went in alone. She was just crossing the lawn to the collegium when Mavva came running to meet her.

  “Is there any news?” Mavva blurted out. “I’ve been so worried.”

  “None, but there won’t be for some while, truly. Is Lady Tay here today?”

  “She is. I gather she knows about it.”

  “Most definitely, and that’s just as well. I think she’s willing to help us if she can. We’ll have to be careful how we phrase things, so she can’t be blamed should my father find out she knew.”

  “Splendid!” Mavva paused to look around her in such a suspicious way that she might as well have shouted that they were discussing a secret. “When are you leaving for Cerrmor?”

  “In a few days.” Dovina debated telling her about Gwarl, but the news would spread quick enough without her whipping it along. “I’m hoping that Alyssa will arrive soon after we get there.”

  “I wish I could go with you.”

  As they walked back to the hive together, Dovina had a sudden idea. “Mayhap you could. We could pretend you were my maid—nah nah nah, that would be too demeaning.”

  “I wouldn’t mind, if it meant I could go. After all, I’m only a commoner.”

  “You’re not only anything, Mavva. You’re a scholar. Never forget that.”

  Mavva smiled like the breaking dawn. Dovina went on thinking.

  “I’ve got it. You can be my fellow guardian of the bookhoard. Well, if Lady Tay says you may leave the collegium, of course. Let’s find her and ask.”

  Lady Tay was working in her private study on the second floor of the main broch. When they came in, she wiped her pen on a bit of rag and laid it down on her desk. Both younger women curtsied.

  “I’m here to cause more trouble,” Dovina said. “If you’ll forgive me, my lady.”

  “Indeed?” Lady Tay raised an eyebrow. “What is it now?”

  “Soon I’ll be dragged off to Cerrmor by my father. I’d like Mavva to go with me as a fellow guardian of our bookhoard.”

  “Ah, I see. Your plot. Will Alyssa be in Cerrmor?”

  “I can hope, my lady.”

  Lady Tay waved at the bench in front of her desk. Dovina and Mavva sat down and waited while the lady stared out of the window in apparent thought. Finally she sighed and looked their way again.

  “Dovina, will your father provide for Mavva as part of your retinue?”

  “I’ll insist, my lady. I’ve got lots of dresses, Mavva, so you don’t have to worry about looking well turned out.”

  “My thanks, my lady. I really was worrying about that.”

  “Very well, then,” Lady Tay said
. “Now, we do have a certain amount of coin that could go with you. It’s part of the gift from Queen Carramaena of the Westlands. From what I’ve heard of her, she’ll be well pleased to see it spent on books. There are some shops near the law courts in Cerrmor that might have some titles that we should have in our hoard.”

  “Near the law courts.” Dovina glanced at Mavva. “No doubt we could find an escort to take us there. My alleged betrothed is a bookish man.”

  “Indeed? Well and good, then.” Lady Tay considered for a moment more. “I’ll give you a list of books we could use, but if you see some treasure, I’ll trust your judgment.”

  “My thanks, my lady.” Dovina felt herself blush at the compliment. “I’ll do my best to choose well.”

  “I’m sure you will. Has there been any news of our wandering scholar and her silver dagger?”

  “None, my lady.”

  When Dovina returned to the dun, she found her father drinking at the table of honor with Adonyc seated to his right. Both men had bound black ribands around their heads as a sign of mourning, and she reminded herself that she needed to do the same. She curtsied to Ladoic, ignored her brother, and started for the staircase, only to pause when she realized that they were talking about the bardic demand for a justiciar.

  “The regent isn’t going to trouble himself for their sake,” Adonyc was saying. “Pack of vermin, really, gnawing away at our sacred traditions.”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain of that,” Ladoic said. “There’s a precedent up in Cerrgonney.”

  “They don’t have a gwerbret up there. That’s the trouble. They need to apportion out the land into proper rhannau and find the right men to rule them.”

  “And deal with the aftermath?”

  Adonyc opened his mouth to speak, then merely shrugged and drank his ale. Feuds upon feuds, Dovina thought. A lot of men dead.

  “If he does appoint a justiciar here, it would be interesting.” Dovina came back to stand at her father’s left. “From a legal standpoint, that is.”