Horn of the River God: Book I of The Song of Agmar

by Frances Mason

  Agmar and Aedgar stood beside Wulfstan as his physician set the bone. “You won’t be able to walk or ride on it for two months, my lord.”

  “Pig’s bum!”

  “My lord, if you use it sooner it won’t set properly. If it doesn’t set properly you’ll make yourself a cripple for life.”

  “And if you’re a cripple you’ll make a bloody useless warrior,” Agmar said, “not that you were much good before.”

  Wulfstan turned to stare hard at Agmar. The men at arms nearby were suddenly silent. Then Wulfstan roared in laughter, and the tension evaporated. He laughed so loudly that his body shook and he winced in pain. He gasped, “I should have you hanged.”

  “You’ll never build gallows tall enough,” Aedgar said.

  “True enough. You lanky bastard. Where’s that other bard?”

  “Quailing in the forest, no doubt,” Agmar said.

  “No such thing,” Kalogh said, coming around the tent, “many a Fik fell to my sword this night.”

  “At least in the songs you’ll sing to gullible maids to get them to spread their legs,” quipped Agmar.

  Kalogh scowled. “I was in the thick of the fighting. What did you do?”

  “Took the castle gatehouse, and saved my life,” said Wulfstan, looking narrowly at Kalogh.

  “I swear, my lord…”

  Wulfstan waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes.” Then he shrugged. “It was dark. Wherever you were I didn’t see it, but little could be seen last night but the glint of fire light on spear point and sword blade.”

  “And in the eyes of dying men,” Agmar added. “We lost a lot of good men in the dark.”

  “But killed more than we lost,” said Kalogh enthusiastically.

  Agmar sighed. “It’s the way of war.”

  Wulfstan said, “That it is, but it shouldn’t have been last night.”

  “It was a well-timed attack, right when the armoured men reached the castle and the rest were in their cups.”

  “Too many,” Aedgar agreed, “if we’d been fully armoured we wouldn’t have lost half as many. Many died before realising what was happening, many of the rest fled to the south and west, and of the survivors who fought, few were armoured head to toe. We dragged on what we could in quick order. Some didn’t even have that luxury and fought in tunics and breeches.”

  Wulfstan said, “There must have been spies in the camp.” He threw a curious look at Kalogh.

  Kalogh spluttered. “My lord, I would never…”

  Wulfstan grinned. “No, Callow,” he said, using Agmar’s insulting nickname for Kalogh, “you’re a braggart and a coward, not a traitor. To be a traitor takes more spine.”

  Kalogh started to protest, then seemed to realise that either agreement or rebuttal would be an admission of some kind of guilt. The other three men watched his squirming with amusement.

  “No,” Wulfstan said, “there’s no way of knowing for sure, but the most probable spy would be a hanger on of the camp.”

  “As likely as not a woman,” Agmar said. “I love women, but never tell them a secret unless you want it known. They’re great for spreading false rumours.”

  “There have been whores enough working in the camp,” agreed Aedgar, nodding, “and serving girls aplenty.”

  “The serving girls are mostly from the outer march, or even further afield, and they have no love for the Fik raiders, who’ll sooner rape a girl than whisper love lies in her ear. No, if it was a woman she was among the cohort of whores. Many of them are escaped Fik slaves, but escaped slaves can have a funny way of loving their former masters. There was a time I saved a maid from her master. Had been taken as booty from the mountain tribes as a girl. She enjoyed being saved for a night while I showed her some of the sweeter pleasures of freedom. The next day she was gone. Went right back to her master.”

  “The great lover failed?”

  Agmar shook his head ruefully. “It was my first rescue. I was only a lad, and the finer points of pleasuring women were beyond my fumbling skill. She didn’t complain, not in so many words. Said I was the most gentle lad she’d known. Some women don’t like it that way. I’ve learned a lot since then.”

  Wulfstan growled, “If the one who spied on us was here I’d show her a rougher time than any Fik master, whether she liked it or not.”

  “Whichever woman was spying on us is long gone. For the Fiks to have known to come she must have left the camp.”

  Wulfstan nodded. “So we’ll never have the pleasure of stringing her up and watching her dance her way to Death’s dark halls.”

  Chapter 11: Sophie: Thedra

  Princess Sophie walked through the pleasure gardens of the palace. She loved these gardens, with their bowers and their mazes, their bushes sculpted into the shapes of mythical beasts or knights or animals, but sometimes she would stay the hands of the gardeners. She would ask them to let this rose bush or that sculpted shrub grow in wild ways, untamed by human hands. And what they touched least she loved most. At first they had been puzzled by her demands, for they seemed to suggest their skills were unappreciated. They had also worried that the queen might believe their inaction was caused by sloth or carelessness.

  But she was the princess, and a very special princess to them. She was the only and beloved daughter of the young Queen Rose. Rose had been eighteen and King Richard IV sixty seven on their wedding night. The lords had been outraged, not because an elderly king had doted on such a young woman, but because they now had to bow and scrape before a tanner’s daughter. The gardeners, by contrast, were pleased that a commoner had done so well, and looked on her child with avuncular affection, for might not one of their daughters one day marry a lord if a tanner’s daughter could marry a king? So they spoiled her, and left parts of the garden untended, despite their professional misgivings. They had learned her strange ways, and treated her with the same indulgence you might lavish on a much loved but slightly odd niece. They had left the heart of the maze completely wild for her. None but the princess would ever wander there anyway. Others would too soon be lost beyond the outer reaches. No one would complain.

  Sophie was never lost in the maze. She knew every turn, every branch, every leaf, every bud and every blossom when it flowered, and she would caress the soft velvet petals and wander deeper into the maze and breathe in the air of the soil and the sap and the leaves and the flowers. And if she was alone she would talk to them, and it seemed to her they listened.

  When she returned from that wildness at the heart of the too cultivated court she would not talk to the plants, and she would seem a normal sixteen year old princess, playing the courtly games of ladies with superficial wit, responding to the amorous suits of barons with light repartee. No one understood out there who she really was, not even her closest friends.

  “I must leave you now,” she told the rose, its petals white spattered with blood red dots, “I’ll miss you, but I won’t forget you. Your perfume is so sweet.” She put her nose to the rose and breathed in deeply. “But I hear Amelia calling, and Kat. I must return to the court.” What her mother called the real world was, as far as Sophie could tell, less real than the imagined sentience of flowers. The court was a place of disguise, where everyone played a part, as skilfully as any actor. But where an actor performed for pleasure, a courtier performed for power, and the most humble display usually hid the most arrogant hearts. Worst of all, she had to play a part herself. She sighed, and turned to leave the maze.

  She heard several voices singing behind her. Angrily, she wondered if some annoying courtier had followed her into the maze with an accompaniment of minstrels to sing a silly love song. Then she realised, since she was facing the way out of the maze, that this was impossible. They must have approached from the centre of the maze. But how was that possible? Unless they had learned her habits, snuck in here and lain in wait. These amorous courtiers were becoming more and more unbearable. Even here, in her sanctuary, she could not escape their foolishness. She spun arou
nd, ready to show them her not so sweet and innocent anger. A beautiful young woman stood there. She was more than a head taller than Sophie’s five and a half feet, and was completely naked. Her legs were long and muscular, made for swift running, her feet were bare, her shoulders were broad, and her breasts were small, yet despite all this she exuded an undeniably feminine energy that fascinated the young princess. Sophie looked in the woman’s eyes. The woman’s expression was puzzled. Sophie now realized the singing was the woman’s language. She was still speaking. It was a strange, musical language, in which the tones seemed to form a harmony, the chords of which altered in your memory even as you thought you grasped the pattern. It was like no language Sophie had ever heard before, though she had met dignitaries from across the kingdom and beyond at court.

  Sophie blinked repeatedly, trying to clear her vision, but the woman remained there, stubbornly real. Perhaps her mother was right; perhaps she was mad.

  “Who are you?” Sophie asked.

  The woman ignored Sophie’s question and repeated her own, for it was a question, Sophie felt sure, even though she did not understand a single word. Sophie shrugged apologetically. The woman’s expression was angry and her tone was sharp as she repeated her question yet again. Sophie had no idea who she was or how she had come to be there. She heard Amelia and Kat calling again. She turned her head in the direction of their voices. Her ladies in waiting had known where to find her. She was, if nothing else, predictable. She cast her eyes back to the woman. She was gone.

  “I must be going mad.” She giggled. “At least I’ll understand Father a bit better.”

  “The lords are most eager for you to attend,” Amelia said, diplomatically, as Sophie emerged from the maze.

  “The same lords who despise my mother?” Sophie asked.

  They were elegantly attired in colourful long dresses that trailed on the grass. Sophie herself wore only a light summer dress, similar to what the palace maids wore, but of indecently fine fabric, almost as revealing as the salacious habits worn by the nuns of Finusthi, goddess of love. Those nuns were said by puritans like Sophie’s mother to be little better than glorified prostitutes. It provoked the puritans at court that Sophie displayed not only her ankles, but all the way up to her knees. It was disgraceful, they had complained, with many funny frowns, and her décolletage scandalised them to the point that Sophie expected, with some pleasure, they would faint. While she would not go so far as to practice so called ‘sacred prostitution’ at the temple of Finusthi, goddess of love, neither did she much admire the attitudes of the stricter followers of Naathi, goddess of marriage, constancy and, Sophie supposed, many other boring things. She wondered whether to slip her shoes back on now that she was leaving the gardens. It would provoke her mother’s ire no end if she entered the great hall bare footed. The thought of her mother’s irritation gave her enormous pleasure. But she had argued too much with her recently and, as much as she enjoyed a good pointless fight, it was becoming tiring. She slipped on the shoes, but she also took a sprig of ivy and arranged it in her hair, which flowed, in long loose golden waves that never quite became curls, halfway down her back. She blew sideways at a disobedient strand, then, with annoyance, brushed it out of her eyes.

  “What do you think?” she asked them, spreading her hands theatrically.

  “Your mother is most displeased,” Kat said, raising an eyebrow at the performance. Kat, unlike Amelia, was of noble birth, being the daughter of the late Phillip, duke Vrong Veld and Belle, the daughter of William VI and sister of king Richard IV’s first queen. Kat was also betrothed to marquis Anweld. Being descended from kings and dukes and married to a marquis she did not hesitate to rebuke a royal princess, even if through the words of queen Rose’s message.

  Sophie groaned about her thirty six year old mother, “My mother is mostly displeased. It’s a sign of age.”

  “That must be why your father is so often displeased,” Amelia said lightly of the eighty five year old king.

  “Amelia!” Sophie feigned shock. “You speak treason.”

  Amelia’s smile faded, and she looked worried. “I didn’t mean. I mean. I…I…”

  “I wasn’t being serious, Amelia. If being critical of my father’s ravings was treason the whole court would lose their heads.”

  “Perhaps some will today,” Kat suggested.

  Sophie sighed. “I hope not, a handsome lord is so much more charming when his head is attached to his shoulders.”

  “Perhaps your father will only execute ugly lords today.”

  “And there are so many of those.”

  “At least that would make the court more appealing,” Kat said.

  “It would be better if they weren’t displayed on the bridge though,” Amelia said, “an ugly face should be hidden.”

  “I agree. From now on only the heads of handsome lords should be displayed on the bridge. I will petition my father in this matter.”

  Despite the banter, Sophie was worried about the recent spate of executions. Her father was so old it seemed, even to the daughter who loved him, that he was impossibly ancient, and not a few nobles thought he might be losing his mind. Only his own immediate family seemed safe, though with madness the final outcome was uncertain. She thought he was at very least paranoid, trusting less and less the men he had always relied on. Even duke Relyan, who had been his right hand for his entire reign, was not immune. He had been publically rebuked last week.

  The great hall extended across the entire three hundred yard width of the inner, palace ring, and was a hundred yards wide. Far above their heads the ceilings arched, and by what feat of engineering never had a stone fallen, no matter the power of an earthquake. Despite its massive size there were courtiers scattered from end to end, and along the walls, at intervals of ten yards, were arrayed the massive Yeomen of the Crown, longsword sheathed at one hip, great war-hammer at the other, crossbow in hand; tabard with the royal arms, quartered with the emblem of a war-hammer.

  The density of courtiers grew as Sophie and her ladies approached the throne, and when they reached earshot of the king a count from the midlands was kneeling before the dais. He was asking the king for a licence to endow a chantry where six White Monks and twelve poor men might pray for his recently deceased father, “so that Sun might shine on his face, even in the dark realm of Death.” Near the throne, whispering to the king, was a man in blindingly white habit, on its front a golden sun with golden rays, the arkon of Thulathra, and Lord of the Exchequer, Ramon. Beside him was the abbot of the Order of the Sun, his habit also of blinding white, but only gilt at all edges. Recently the king had grown especially fond of the Priests of the Sun and the White Monks. Sophie looked down at her own dress, which had faint green stains from the garden. She wondered how they kept their habits so clean.

  Near the priests stood Augustyn, running his hand over his white forked beard, his grey eyes watching the king warily. Until recently he had been the one most likely whispering to his own advantage in the king’s ear, but the king’s senility had altered much at court. Across the other side of the great dais stood his secular rival, the small, wiry Amery, duke Vrong Veld, small dark eyes beneath thick black mono-brow glaring at Augustyn with undisguised hatred, the nostrils of his large straight nose flaring.

  Sophie looked up to the throne next the king’s and met the eyes of her mother, dressed in long grey dress to satisfy the strictures of the puritan sect. She frowned at her daughter, looking her up and down with disapproval. Beside her was the arkena of Naathi and a cluster of the goddess’s priestesses and the Grey Nuns, all dressed in distinctive garb, the grey habits covering every bit of flesh except hands and a small patch of face, frowning beneath grey wimples, their hems touching the ground to conceal the feet but not longer, as that might suggest extravagance. The effect was completed with thin bloodless lips, pressed firmly together, and narrowed judgemental eyes scowling at the court. Sophie let her eyes wander and scratched her thigh, accidentally lifting
her hem in the process. When she looked back her mother’s eyes had narrowed even further than those of her favourite cultists. She hoped her mother’s attraction to the puritans was a passing phase.

  “The queen my mother seems happier than usual,” she quipped to Amelia.

  Amelia giggled, then, noticing that the queen’s disapproving eyes had settled on her she crept, shrinking, behind Sophie.

  “You’ll never have peace if you always provoke your mother,” Kat said.

  “It takes so little,” Sophie sighed, “I do love her, but she’s become so strange lately. I wish she would be a little more understanding.”

  “Nobody understands me,” Amelia teased her.

  “Not even my best friend,” Sophie retaliated, pouting affectedly at her friend.

  “Here comes your brother.”

  Sophie turned to greet her half-brother, Arthur – Prince Norwalds, Warden of the North, as the Crown Prince was traditionally titled. While he did not approve of his stepmother, he had always been kind to his sister. She could always be sure of an ally in him, especially against her mother. He was dressed in his usual way, puffed knee breeches emphasising his athletic legs in crimson hose, his evenly stuffed doublet emphasising his fit physique rather than hiding it as a pea’s cod bellied doublet would. The younger courtiers already began to imitate him, and would soon relegate that ridiculous fashion to history, though the older courtiers, more conscious of their swelling bellies, might find some religious excuse to criticise the new. Arthur’s blue velvet hat was topped with a scarlet plume to match his hose. At his side was a rapier in a fine gilded scabbard, on the hilt of which he now rested one hand. Even if he had not been the son of a king his height, good legs and broad shoulders, and his handsome face, olive complexion, aquiline nose and startlingly green eyes would have ensured him the hearts of the young ladies of the court. Both Kat and Amelia were infatuated with him, and whispered to each other as he greeted his sister. His son, prince Richard, was with him, a slightly reduced replica of his father, and threw his arms around Sophie unselfconsciously. He was already taller than her though he was only twelve, and even though he was slim, the beginnings of adult musculature suggested he would eventually reach the stature of his powerfully built father. Katherine, Arthur’s wife, greeted Sophie and her ladies, protectively putting her hand on her son’s shoulder. She was especially attached to Richard, having lost so many other children.