A Man of His Word

by The Complete Series 01-04 (epub)

  “Courage? Me?”

  “Remember the first time we met?” Andor had asked in apparent seriousness. “I had just arrived with the caravan, and a blizzard had just arrived, also. I was looking forward to a comfortable bath and a hot bed. I discovered that the tide had closed the causeway and there was a crisis on. I didn’t understand, but I made it my business to find out, because I’m nosy. It wasn’t difficult to locate Foronod and see that he was the boss. And then he sent for a boy! I said to myself, ‘This man is crazy!’ But he asked you if you could guide the wagons and you didn’t say ‘Sure!’—which a fool might have done. You didn’t whimper excuses. You looked over the problem and set that big jaw of yours and said, ‘I’ll try!’ And then I said to myself, ‘He means he’ll try his damndest. And this Foronod hasn’t sent for a boy; he’s sent for a man!’”

  “Oh!” Then Rap had hoped he was not blushing, for he had felt immensely pleased that Andor of all men should think that of him.

  “And then I picked.you!”

  “You did. And I nearly panicked, right there. But you weren’t just risking your own neck. Any fool can do that. You were going to carry the whole town. That takes a backbone stiffer than most men’s. So I decided if you had that kind of courage to lead, I would have the courage to follow you. So I did.”

  And although Rap could hardly dare to believe that explanation, he had never asked again. If he made Andor think more about the matter, then Andor might come to the correct conclusion. He might just say “You’re right; there is nothing in it for me,” and leave.

  But Rap was thinking over the problem now, for Andor was being uncharacteristically silent, passing the bottle back and forth in silence, staring moodily at the floor. Usually he was irresistibly good company, leaving no time for Rap to brood. This day he seemed to have a problem. Was he thinking of all the festivities going on, the dozens of parties at which he would be welcome, so long as he did not arrive with Rap in tow?

  Then Andor looked up and grinned. “Drunk enough yet?”

  “For what?”

  “I want a promise. I’m going to tell you a secret and I want your promise not to tell anyone. Ever.”

  “You have it. Drunk or sober.”

  “Don’t be so rash! Suppose I told you I was planning to kill the king?” Andor’s eyes twinkled, reflecting the candle flame.

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “All right, here goes. I’ve never told anyone this, though.” He held the bottle up to examine its contents. “You and I have something in common. We both have a word.”

  Rap’s heart crawled out of a chrysalis and gently opened butterfly wings. “You have farsight, also?”

  Andor guffawed. “If you knew how many collar studs I lose, you wouldn’t ask! No, not farsight.”

  The wings were folded away again.

  “Then what’s your talent?”

  Andor grinned more widely. “Girls!”

  “Oh!” Rap knew that he must not show his distaste, or he would seem like a narrow-minded provincial, Andor was a sophisticated citizen of the Impire. Rap knew of his reputation, but he had always thought it to be mostly jealous gossip, wild exaggeration like the stories of men being kicked to jelly in alleyway brawls. He would certainly not believe that of Andor, even if the girl’s part were true. “I’d be willing to trade,” he said.

  “Not likely!”

  “But why are you telling me this? Why aren’t you out exercising your talent? All the girls are in holiday mood.”

  “You’re probably not drunk enough yet, but I’ll risk it. I’m leaving.”

  Rap’s first thought was one of despair. Krasnegar seemed suddenly unthinkable without Andor. “What? Why?”

  The bottle was thrust back at him. “Take a big drink. Listen! I’m leaving, because I’m bored. I thought a winter in the north would be exciting, but it’s dull as shelling peas.”

  “Who’s going with you?”

  Andor shrugged. “I’ve knocked about the world a lot. I thought I’d just take a horse and go.”

  “You’re crazy! Mad! Mad! Mad! What about the green men?”

  Andor shrugged, took the bottle back, and stretched out his legs. “I’ve been asking about them. I’m told that one man is usually safe. Goblins respect courage and they honor a solitary traveler. A group may get into trouble.”

  “Fingernails!” Rap shuddered. Goblins murdered travelers in horrible ways. It was said they would hand a man a pair of tongs and demand a fingernail as road toll. If he had the courage to pull out one of his own fingernails, they would let him go. If he didn’t—they didn’t.

  “The only alternative is an armed escort, at least a dozen. Better two dozen. And I can’t afford to hire that many.”

  “Andor, this is the northland. The cold is a killer. It’s not like hiking across a desert or somewhere warm. You should take someone with some experience.”

  There was a pause while the candle flame danced in silence.

  “I have a better idea,” Andor said. “By the way, merry Winterfest!” He pointed to the bundle on the bed.

  “You shouldn’t have!” Miserably Rap leaned elbows on knees and buried his face in his hands. From the wine or from embarrassment, he felt sick.

  “Will the boots fit? A man’s feet are usually the first part of him to stop growing.”

  “They look all right.” Rap did not even turn his head to look at the bundle—mukluks and fur trousers wrapped in a parka, fur from young polar bears, lined with the down of ducks … garments of a quality he could never hope to own in his lifetime. He did not have to open the damned parcel. “It’s very, very kind of you, Andor. No one’s given me a Winterfest present since my mother died. But what could I give you in exchange? Horse buns?”

  “It is a bribe, of course,” Andor admitted cheerfully. “I was hoping that you might agree to share. Yours seems to be stronger than mine, so a sharing would be a gift to me.”

  “Share what?” Rap looked up in both hope and puzzlement.

  “You tell me your word and I’ll tell you mine. Two words make an adept. On my trip. I’ll be safe from cold and goblins both—if you’ll do that for me.”

  Unhappily Rap shook his head. “I don’t have a word. The king asked me; I told him the same. Do you think I would have lied to my king? I know no word of power. These horrible things just started happening to me by themselves.”

  “You must have a word! It’s too late to deny it, Raddie-boy! Yes, they’re usually kept secret, but yours is common knowledge now.”

  Rap remembered how his lecture from Sagon had been cut short. “The king told me that there were dangers in knowing a word. What dangers?”

  “Gods, man!” Andor almost shouted. “They’re valuable! Incredibly valuable! They’re magic-proof themselves, so they can’t be extracted by sorcery, but every sorcerer in the world always wants one more word, to become more powerful. One of these days someone’s going to nail you to a post and start heating irons! That’s another reason we should share—we’ll be much safer as adepts, because we’ll have abilities we don’t have now.”

  “I don’t want to be a sorcerer!” Rap cried. “I want to be a man-at-arms and serve Queen Inosolan. That’s all I pray the Gods for!”

  “Ray!” Andor said impatiently. “Two won’t make you a sorcerer, but with two you can be a champion whatever-you-want, including a champion swordsman. You’ll be able to beat anyone in the world, except another adept or a mage or sorcerer. Doesn’t that idea appeal to you?”

  “It sounds sort of sneaky.” Rap surprised himself by grinning.

  Andor chuckled and looked hopeful. “And in the forest I’ll be in no danger at all. Well, not much.”

  The forest! Swordmanship forgotten, Rap came back to sad reality. “But I don’t have a word to share.”

  Andor sighed and held out the bottle again. “All right! If you won’t, then you won’t.”

  Rap slid off his chair, onto his knees. “Andor, if I could, I would! I’d give
you mine and not want yours, and I’d try to forget mine. But I don’t have any magic words! I swear it!”

  “You must have! Don’t grovel—it’s not manly. Tell me how your mother died and what she said to you the last time you saw her. The words are usually passed on a deathbed.”

  Rap climbed back on his chair. He felt dizzy with the wine and sick to his heart. He would oh-so-gladly tell Andor what he wanted to know if he could. Andor was a good friend, the only friend he had, and he felt soiled and petty at refusing him. “Jalon has one?” he asked. “He offered to share, too, and I didn’t understand!”

  “Of course he does. No one could sing like that otherwise.”

  Rap knew that Andor had met Jalon. “Why not share with him, then?”

  Andor hesitated and then said, “We tried. We both know the same word, so nothing changed. Now, your mother?”

  But Rap knew that there was no help there. As happened every few years, fever had swept into the town from a visiting ship. People had been dying every day. Anyone becoming ill in the palace was removed at once. It was his first year in the stables. He had spent a morning mucking out and gone home, expecting his mother to be there working at her lace, as she usually was, with his lunch ready and a smile and a hug and a little joke about her working man. It had been two days before anyone thought to tell him where she was, or why she had gone. Even then he had not been allowed to go and see her. She had died on the third day. So there had been no deathbed farewells, no secret words of power passed.

  He told the story and Andor looked baffled.

  “She came from Sysanasso,” Rap said. “Perhaps their magic is different and they don’t use words of power?”

  “Yes they do. I’ve been there.” Andor had been everywhere. He fell silent, looking sulky.

  Despite himself, Rap reached out with his mind and saw those glorious soft furs on his bed. The thought of owning them was like the thought of a hot summer’s day and a picnic on the shore with … with Inos or someone. He could not accept such a gift.

  “Well!” Andor brightened again. “What I really need is a good sorcerer, as the saying goes, but I shall find a companion, some man who is good with horses, courageous, dependable …”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Andor. To go by yourself would be very foolish. I’m very sorry you’re leaving, but I shall feel happier if I know you took someone with you who knows the north. And I’m very grateful for the gift, but I can’t accept it.”

  “I hadn’t finished! Here, last drop.” Andor handed back the bottle. As Rap was draining it he said, “Courageous, dependable, preferably a seer—”

  Rap choked.

  He finally stopped coughing and gasping. “No! I’m not a trapper or a seal hunter! I’m a city boy!”

  “You’re a man, Rap. A good one.”

  Rap shook his head. He certainly was not man enough for that madness—weeks of trekking through forest, with wolves and goblins …

  “You’re a man!” Andor insisted. “Being a man is not a matter of whether hair grows on your chin, lad. It’s inside your head. Some males never make it at all. Being a man is rolling up your sleeves and telling the world ‘Now I’ll play by the real rules—no more wooden swords. If I succeed, then the credit belongs to me, not my parents or teachers or employers, and I shall savor the prizes without guilt, knowing I earned them. And if I fail, then I’ll pay the penalties without whimpering or blaming anyone else.’ That’s what manhood is, and it’s up to you to decide when it starts. I think you made the decision that night on the beach, my friend.”

  Friend? But what was this friend asking him to risk? Rap was very glad he had declined that gift. Brave was good, rash was not.

  “I am proud to be your friend, Andor,” he said, struggling for words with a strangely heavy tongue. “And if I thought my help would be of value, then I would give it eagerly. But I think I would just be a liability to you. Really!”

  “The king is dying.”

  Right on cue, the candle guttered and went out, leaving faint starlight and a long silence.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sagorn is. I’ve spoken to him. Do you want to hear it from him, or will you trust me?”

  “Of course I trust you! When?”

  “Can’t say when. Not today or tomorrow, but he’ll never see grass again. That’s what Sagorn says, and there are no wiser doctors than he.”

  The enormity of it felled Rap. All his life King Holindarn had ruled Krasnegar, a remote, benevolent, all-seeing father to his people, and all the more so to a boy with no father of his own. He had seemed as stable and permanent as the rock itself. The thought that one day he might suddenly not be there was impossible to grasp.

  “Inos! Oh, poor Inos! when spring comes, she’ll be waiting for the first ship to bring his letters and instead it will bring that news.”

  “Who knows what news it will bring?”

  “What do you mean?”

  In the darkness, only his farsight told him that Andor shrugged. “When a king dies, his successor had better be on the spot and ready.”

  “You mean someone may try to steal the throne?” But obviously that was what Andor meant—stupid question. Try to behave like a grown man, dummy! “Who would do that?”

  “Anyone who thought he’d get away with it. Sergeant Thosolin has the armed men. Foronod may think he’d make a better monarch than a slip of a girl, and many would agree. Furthermore, the news is sure to reach Nordland before it gets to Kinvale, and the temptation to the thanes will be fresh seal to orcas. If Inos is not right here, then she has very little chance of ever becoming queen. That’s my guess, anyway.”

  The injustice of it burned like lye. “Then why doesn’t the king send for her?”

  Andor sighed and adjusted himself to a more comfortable position. “Sagorn says that he refuses to admit he’s that sick. He can’t keep food down, he’s in constant pain—but he’s not going to admit anything. Secondly, he refuses to risk men’s lives. Which is stupid, since half the men in town would volunteer. But he has forbidden any expeditions.”

  Poor Inos!

  “Is that the real reason you’re leaving, Andor? To tell her?”

  Andor’s teeth showed faintly in the gloom. “It’s nothing to do with me, laddie.”

  More silence, then he said quietly, “But we could travel together until we got over the mountains. Once we’re in the Impire, it’s easy, and I would see you on the right road for Kinvale. We could hire a guide, if you want one, but you’d have no problem there.”

  Rap’s hands were shaking, and he clasped them together on his lap.

  A long pause …

  “Wooden swords, Rap? Or the real thing now?”

  “I have no authority! Who would believe me?”

  Andor did not even bother to answer. Inos, of course.

  “Appoint myself? Disobey the king’s command?”

  “Where is your loyalty, Rap? To the king or to her?”

  Darkness and silence.

  “If you must choose—and now you must—then where is your loyalty? Do you not think that Inos would want to be at his side in his last days?”

  Rap did not need to answer that question.

  It was a craziness. The odds were appalling. But Inos would want to be at her father’s side, and Inos was his friend—or would be, were she not a princess. Andor was right, as usual. In such an emergency, Rap must prove his courage, prove his manhood to himself, and show Inos his lo … loyalty.

  He shivered. He was not sure which scared him more, the weather or the goblins. He had seen goblins hanging around the harbor. They were short, very broad people with gray-brown skin and jet-black hair. They called themselves the green men, and in certain lights their skin did have a greenish tinge in the brown, like old tarnished brass. In summer the men wandered around wearing an indecent minimum, each one usually followed by three or four women covered from head to toe. But all the stories agreed that they practiced torture.

 
It was a hair-raising thought—setting off with Andor on a journey through that cold, a journey that would take weeks. The air itself could kill.

  “When?”

  “Now.” Andor was smiling again now.

  “Now?”

  He pointed to the window, which was glowing more brightly silver. “The moon is rising. Everyone is so busy getting ready for Winterfest that we won’t be missed.”

  “But … we need supplies!”

  “Name them. I’ve got my list, let’s hear yours.”

  “Four horses. Bedding. Food. Fodder—lots of oats. Weapons. A pot to melt snow …” He dried up and Andor chuckled.

  “I thought of a few more things, but it isn’t really very many. No wooden swords?”

  Rap gulped, smiled, and said, “No wooden swords.”

  Andor reached out a hand to shake. “Good man! If we get caught by bears in the harbor or by a blizzard in the hills, we’ll die, but that we have to chance. Otherwise we just keep going—the hills, then the moors, then the forests, then the mountains. Once we’re over them, then it’s plum cake. Three weeks in summer … say five now. Then a week for Inos to get ready. Angilki will lend her some men, I think, or she can hire some. Five weeks back. Three months, or four at the outside. Sagorn thinks he may just last that long. Remember, he has a word of power, and that will help him.”

  Sagorn had said the words made their owners hard to kill, and he had glanced at the king when he said it.

  “The king has a word, too?”

  Andor nodded. “Inisso had three, it is said, and he divided his power—one word to each of his sons. I can’t believe he would have done anything so stupid, but that is the legend. Kalkor of Gark probably knows one of them, even yet. He’s a superb killer, a thane’s thane. Duke Angilki must have one, ’cos he’s an utter idiot, but a demon with wallpaper—so I’ve heard—and the kings of Krasnegar have always had one. That’s how they have retained their independence for so long. But if Inos doesn’t get back here before her father dies, then it will die with him. The throne is not all she will be cheated out of, Rap.”

  “But how could we collect all that stuff and get away unseen?”

  “I told you—Winterfest. No one will question you, anyway. , They’ll assume you’re doing something for Foronod. And you can walk around in the dark! Where are the bedrolls kept, the thick ones?”