The Legendary Inge

by Kate Stradling

  The two men stared.

  “Honey?” King Halvard repeated, incredulous.

  “Honey,” she confirmed. “A couple of other aromatic ingredients, too. Can’t you smell it?”

  The only thing Raske could smell was the lingering taint of death. King Halvard was no different.

  “And the significance of this is…?” the monarch prompted.

  “It’s on a part of the armor that should have been covered,” said Dagmar. “Was Captain Bergstrom wearing his full armor?”

  “Yes, everything,” said Raske. “I was coming back from lessons when the attack first began. I saw him leave his office and followed him down the stairs. The monster snatched him away before my very eyes.”

  “As though drawn to him?” Dagmar inquired perceptively.

  Raske could not reply. Everything had happened so fast. The monster had swooped in from nowhere, had honed in upon Captain Bergstrom. The first night-walker had attacked indiscriminately, though, so Raske simply assumed that this one had done the same.

  “What are you implying?” King Halvard asked.

  “This substance on his armor,” said Dagmar, and her hand hovered over that brown smear. “I think… I think it attracted the monster. I think that perhaps it was even meant to attract the monster—not to the castle itself, but once within the castle, you see. If someone knew, for example, that a night-walker would attack, and that someone wanted the night-walker to focus on one victim in particular…”

  Her words hung heavy in the air.

  “You’re saying—” Colonel Raske began, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak his thoughts aloud.

  “Speculation,” said King Halvard abruptly. “You don’t know how that residue came to be upon the armor in the first place. Maybe the soldier who transported it here ate a sticky lunch.”

  Dagmar allowed this possibility. “Maybe he did. Or maybe someone had something to gain by eliminating Captain Bergstrom.”

  “Maybe Captain Bergstrom himself smeared it on,” King Halvard replied, one corner of his mouth quirked upward in sarcasm. He pinned Raske with an accusing stare. “But why now, and not when the first night-walker was pillaging the place on a regular basis? And why Bergstrom’s armor? Why not Prince Inge’s doorframe again, hmm?”

  “I don’t know, Sire,” said the colonel, mystified.

  “Well, think about it,” said the king, and he strode from the room. “Maybe enlightenment will descend upon you.”

  In the wake of his departure, Colonel Raske turned confused eyes upon Dagmar. “Am I under suspicion for something?” he queried, for he could see no other reason for the king to focus such questions upon him.

  “Should you be?” Dagmar replied, that perceptive gleam in her eyes again.

  Raske stiffened. “Absolutely not.”

  “Then I’m sure you have nothing to worry about. Just inspect your armor for strange aromatics before you put it on from now on, all right? That warning should go double for our princeling. How’s that one holding up?”

  She had avoided calling Inge a “he,” Raske noticed. “I don’t know. I’m going to have nightmares about that squalid pit myself, so I’d be surprised if the prince fared any better.”

  “And to think it was a whim of the king that sent you two there together,” Dagmar mused. “But it was necessary, I suppose. Bergstrom’s sword had to be found and retrieved, or else destroyed. Master Torvald would haunt us all to the grave if we allowed his works to fall into enemy hands.”

  “Somehow, I think he’s more likely to haunt us for allowing his child to fall into enemy hands,” Raske replied.

  The sorceress patted his arm. “Good thing you rescued her, then, isn’t it?”

  That wasn’t all he’d done, but he was hardly going to admit his sins to Dagmar.

  ***

  Captain Bergstrom received a hero’s memorial. King Halvard even invoked the ancient practice of cremation instead of the more modern one of burial. “Bergstrom would’ve liked that,” he remarked as he watched the flaming pyre alongside Signe and Inge. “He held in reverence the old ways, always such a stickler for bygone traditions.”

  They stood on a wall that overlooked the ceremony. Inge was grateful for the distance. The sickly smell of burning death emanated from the flames, and every time she caught a strong whiff, her mind flicked back to that dank, diseased cavern beneath the mire.

  Death and decay and ruin…

  She shuddered and cast off the memory. It had haunted her through the night, dredged up by darkness. As shadows fused around her, she had huddled by her only candle until the flame guttered and sputtered on the wick. Thankfully, the summer days were lengthening, chipping away at the blackest hours. Inge only hoped that, come winter with its scant and feeble light, her mind might better handle the awful trauma.

  “I thought the Adelborgs were going to the country.” A note of discontent colored Princess Signe’s voice, though she schooled away all but the faintest trace of a frown between her brows.

  Inge easily picked out the blond Lady Adelborg among the nobles and soldiers in the yard below. Lina stood next to her. Both women held a handkerchief to their face as though crying. Really, they were blocking the stench of the pyre.

  “Baron Adelborg went alone,” King Halvard said. “He left early yesterday morning, presumably while the monster was ransacking our great hall.”

  Signe’s frown manifested in full. Inge, too, muddled over the king’s turn of phrase. Did Baron Adelborg have some connection with the monster? Why associate the timing of the two events, if not?

  King Halvard allowed them no opportunity to dwell on this conundrum, but turned his attention elsewhere. “Poor Leiv—he must feel like he’s lost his father all over again.”

  “I suppose he must,” Signe agreed.

  Inge’s eyes sought Colonel Raske among the mourners. He stood on the opposite side of the fire, amid soldiers and castle guards. The colonel maintained a stony expression, his gaze fixed on the flames that licked the air between them. She had had no direct interactions with him since the incident at the mire the day before.

  “Blame the exhilaration of the moment,” he had told her, which she assumed was advice not to take his sudden kiss personally. She had heard of warriors needing to exorcise pent-up energy after a thrilling victory. In this case, she had just happened to be the only girl in close proximity.

  He could’ve at least pretended that it was something more than that, she thought sullenly.

  She lowered her gaze to her feet. “Did Captain Bergstrom have no family of his own?”

  To her surprise, King Halvard deigned to answer. “No, none. He never married, never sired any children, that I’m aware. I think he meant to one day, but it was one of those things he just never got around to doing. After Leiv’s father died, he took him under his wing and oversaw his army training. They weren’t as close as father and son, but there was a bond there. It’s a shame to have it end like this.”

  His words harrowed her all the more for the grudge she had held against the dead captain.

  The fire blazed until it had consumed its fuel and nothing remained but a pile of ashes. This King Halvard ordered his men to collect and carry to the sea. Colonel Raske and a contingent of the castle guard undertook the assignment. Inge did not see him again that day.

  The next morning, she answered a knock on her door to discover not Raske but Lind waiting to escort her.

  “Oh,” she said stupidly.

  He cleared his throat. “Colonel Raske’s in meetings with the king. I’m to guard you in his stead.”

  “I see.” She squelched her inner disappointment and followed him out the door.

  Lind was her escort that afternoon as well, first to lessons and then to dinner with Halvard and Signe. Of Colonel Raske, she saw nothing at all.

  The same pattern followed the next day. Inge refused to brood over it. She was not a spoiled child, for one thing, and the castle as a whole was in upheaval, for ano
ther.

  Almost overnight, the guards had become more sullen and surly. At first Inge had thought they were mourning Captain Bergstrom’s death. As one day passed to the next, though, she saw that it ran much deeper than that. Some of the guards were outright hostile. There were fights in the mess hall and on the training grounds. When she went to have the castle doctor check the progress of her leg wound, she discovered three soldiers with busted faces waiting for him as well.

  The doctor saw to her first and sent her on her way. Three hostile glares bored into her back as she left.

  “What is wrong with everyone?” she asked Lind beside her.

  He hesitated. “It’ll pass.”

  “What will pass?”

  “The castle guards are divided. Their leader is gone. Once the king names a new one, they’ll have their pecking order back again.”

  “Isn’t Colonel Raske acting as their leader?” she inquired. From what she had observed, Raske had played that part even before Captain Bergstrom’s death. He had led their trainings and issued orders, and everyone obeyed. Now, with Bergstrom gone, Raske’s authority as the ranking military figure at the castle was unquestionable. It only made sense that the full weight of the captain’s duties had fallen on his shoulders.

  “Colonel’s half the problem,” Lind muttered, so low that she almost didn’t hear it.

  She scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes. “He used magic out in the open, in front of everyone.”

  “So? I thought everyone already knew about that. Hasn’t he used it before?”

  “Not in broad daylight. Not for everyone to see. It’s one thing to hear rumors and another to witness something firsthand. You should understand that: no one’s treated you the same since you first used your father’s spell.”

  “Everyone’s been more aware of me, but they haven’t been hostile.”

  Lind chewed on his upper lip as he considered how best to respond. “You weren’t there,” he told her at last. “When you went under the water, we all thought you’d slipped and fallen. Colonel Raske tossed his sword and his cloak on the shore and went in after you, but you weren’t there anymore. The spell he used—it wasn’t the same as the one you cast, wasn’t the same as others I’ve seen him cast, either. He summoned a star out of nothing and then hurled it into the waters, and it continued to burn as it traveled to find you. The magic’s only part of the problem, though. The story of the night-walker beneath the mire…” His voice trailed off as indecision warred upon his face.

  “What about it?” Inge asked.

  “There’s only his word of anything that happened down there,” Lind finally said. Even as this sentence left his mouth, shame descended upon him. “It’s not that I don’t believe him—of course I do!—but after we came back to the castle, some of the men started speculating. Colonel Raske was a castle guard before he was a colonel. There’re plenty who believe that he’s been promoted because of his father’s merit rather than his own, that his deeds have been inflated and elevated beyond what they really are. It’s rubbish, of course! But this crop of castle guards weren’t with us at the Border War—they haven’t seen him fight, not properly. If he says there was a second night-walker, I believe him. If he says he killed it, even without any proof of its death, I believe him. It’s just some jealous, petty men who think he’s told the tale to curry even more favor with the king. The resentment started with a few. It’s spread from there. The castle guard held Captain Bergstrom on a pedestal. Now, he’s not only dead, but they don’t even have his sword as a relic to remember him, and the easiest one to blame for that is Colonel Raske.”

  Inge listened to this whole speech with her mouth agape. “They think there was no night-walker? I have an injury on my leg that says otherwise! I was trapped in that disgusting pit and saw it for myself! I’d be dead if not for Colonel Raske!”

  He shifted his gaze uncomfortably. “I know. They’re not being logical, but once an idea like that takes root, a person can find all sorts of explanations: you’re a magician too, so you were in league with him; you were both in league together with Prince Osvald; you gave the injury to yourself; the whole episode was planned from the start.

  “It’s rubbish—I already told you that!” he added when he saw that she was about to burst with fury. “It’s just, once someone’s decided that they want to believe something, that’s what they’ll believe. Nothing you say or do will convince them otherwise. Come on, Your Highness. You’re going to be late to your lessons.”

  Inge did not heed his appeal for haste. On the contrary, her slow steps came to a halt as some of his words stuck in her mind.

  “What does any of this have to do with Prince Osvald?” she asked.

  Lind looked upon her with wide eyes but then immediately turned away. “Nothing. You must’ve heard me wrong.”

  “I didn’t hear you wrong.”

  “Then I misspoke.”

  “You didn’t misspeak!” She flew to his side, anxious. “What does it have to do with Prince Osvald? Is he somehow connected to the night-walkers?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Lind insisted. She grabbed his arm but he pulled away. “Please, Your Highness! You’re going to be late!”

  She would have gladly skipped her lessons, but she could see that Lind was done talking. He was usually a man of few words anyway. It was a wonder she’d gotten such telling details out of him at all.

  Her mind raced for another subject, anything that might open him to conversation again, to another slip of the tongue. “What’re they going to do about a new Captain of the Castle Guard?” she asked.

  Grudgingly he replied. “The king has to appoint a new one. The position will go to one of his senior colonels.” Then, he buttoned his lips together and continued down the hall, refusing to say anything more.

  If Lind wouldn’t discuss Osvald with her, likely no one else would, either. Inge had all but forgotten about the banished prince; if he and King Halvard were at odds, he could easily be an enemy of the castle. The division among the castle guards, then, was even more dangerous in how vulnerable it made them to outside attacks. The sooner things returned to their proper order, the better it would be for everyone.

  ***

  A week after the captain’s funeral, with the oppressive atmosphere still thick upon the castle, Halvard at long last summoned the castle guard to his great hall. Inge and Signe were both present, positioned on either side of the monarch as he surveyed the rows of men before him. Colonel Raske and his tiny contingent from the border stood together with the distinguished senior colonels Lind had mentioned.

  A handful of nobles and courtiers assembled at the edge of the hall. Inge saw her brother slip in at the very back. She couldn’t blame him for being nosy. She couldn’t blame any of them. It was only her sham position that gave her such a good vantage point, or she would have been tempted to spy as well.

  “It is a hard task to recover after the loss of a leader,” King Halvard told his men. “The one sure truth of this life is that no man may hold it forever. As soldiers and as servants of the state, our allegiance remains fixed upon the higher law, upon its ideals. We give our loyalty to the living king and to the living captain. Only through such loyalty may we profess to honor those who have gone before us. Jannik Bergstrom is no longer the Captain of the Castle Guard; he will never return to that position. Remember this well. Your loyalty and your oaths belong to your new captain, and to your king.”

  He called upon them then to renew that oath of loyalty, to which the company answered with a resounding chorus. A nervous excitement filled the air as they waited to hear the name of their new leader. Many eyes stole a glance toward the cluster of colonels assembled off to the side, wondering which had been summoned to fulfill this role.

  “Colonel Raske,” King Halvard said abruptly.

  Raske jerked in surprise. “Your Majesty?”

  “Henceforth,
you are Captain Raske of the Castle Guard. Such is my decree. The company is dismissed.”

  Dismay and horror flashed across Raske’s face. An audible gasp had cut across the room when the king spoke his name. Now, a hum arose among the soldiers and spectators alike.

  “King Halvard—” Raske began to protest.

  “You will not disobey an order from your king,” Halvard interrupted in iron tones. Silence swept through the hall. He looked only at Raske, his eyes steely as he continued. “I have no need to explain my choice. Captain Raske, please assume your proper duties.”

  A muscle moved along Raske’s jawline. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said. Then, he repeated the king’s previous order. “The company is dismissed!”

  Several men snapped to attention. Others scattered. Amid the confusion, Raske himself strode from the hall.

  “Poor Liev. He doesn’t seem very happy, Papa,” Signe observed.

  “No, I imagine not,” King Halvard said. Then, he turned to Inge. “My son, follow after him.”

  Inge might have questioned the purpose of this command, but she was already on the edge of her seat watching Raske leave. At the king’s word, she bolted down through the dissipating ranks of soldiers, for once grateful for an issued order.

  She kept sight of Raske’s retreating back in the corridor beyond the hall. “Colonel!” she called.

  He paused just shy of turning a corner. “Captain,” he corrected her, his voice bitter.

  It was their first opportunity to speak since the mire. Of all the things she wanted to say to him, all the imaginary conversations that had gone through her mind in the past week, nothing had really prepared her for this moment. She took refuge in the circumstances.

  “The change of assignment isn’t to your liking?” she asked, sarcasm thick on her voice.

  Raske was ever the loyal subject. “I will obey the dictates of my king.”

  “Even if you want to punch him in the face for it, right? Even if he’s a lunatic. Oh, what’s so bad about being Captain of the Castle Guard, anyway?”