Banner of the Damned

by Sherwood Smith

  Mindful of my promise to Marnda, I did not tell Lasva, nor did Lasva ask.

  From Isari:

  … and Kaidas summoned us after the Rising with tidings that we ride tomorrow to the middle pass to fetch the Murderer. He thinks the enemy capable of anything, while here we are, attempting to learn. Kaidas has sent to his Thora-Dei cousins for a sword master, but this person will not be here before harvest….

  From Ananda:

  … but why do you not answer my questions, Lasva dear? Do we cease to amuse you at a distance? You would laugh if you saw all the fellows in that horrid short hair. And Isari! I could have gone my entire life without having to contemplate just how absurd necks look from the back, and as for that grunting and stamping as they wave those rapiers about, believe me, my dear, the tang alone is enough to keep one away.

  From Darva, the Countess of Oleff, and from the look of it, more worries about Ladies Lissais and Farava, and Lord Rontande of Altan:

  L. now goes down with F. to watch R. at the Duke’s swordplay. I think she may join them. The defenders look quite odd with their hair shorn; they seem to find it martial, though I think it makes them look absurdly young. Alarcansa, when pressed, said it’s more practical, if you’re to wear a helm and…

  I scanned to the next page.

  L. seems to share everything with F., including falling in love with R. Or perhaps she is in love with F. and so tries to adore R. because F. does. The Duke of A. shows all the signs of favoring him as an aide…

  As always, I avoided the use of the word “I” and answered on precious strips of lily-paper. For Darva I described the slate shade of a slow moving river framed by red mud, a gnarled, ancient hawthorn from which a flight of brilliant crimson tzilis burst, plumage streaming as they flew skyward. For Isari I described how handsome the Marlovens looked, riding in their orderly columns, banners at the front, snapping in the wind. For Ananda, I described Haldren Marlovair’s striking profile, and how the Marlovens’ braids stayed neat over days, so they did not have to tidy their hair twice a day like we did. I never responded to any mention of the Duke of Alarcansa.

  Lasva retired behind her screen, and the other dressers returned with clothes to hang over every available surface in hopes they would dry sufficiently overnight, aided by the heat from the brazier, to be packed at dawn.

  I was on the last letter when Ivandred himself arrived, just as I was describing those droplets gleaming on his pale braids. He acknowledged me by a lifted index finger then said, “Lasva?”

  Marlovens, I had discovered, were strict about the hangings, as if they were real walls. To Lasva it was just more damp cloth. She flung it aside so we could see her and said as sweetly as always, “Please join me.”

  “I wrote to my sister.” Ivandred ducked inside and sat next to her, but he did not touch the hanging. It was for her to decide the degree of privacy.

  To her, there was no privacy.

  He said, “We will take a ship from Mardgar. That will quicken the journey.”

  Lasva tried to use his open-handed gesture as one of gratitude and politeness, but he saw it as a beckon, a come-hither.

  Color ridged his cheekbones, then he took her by the shoulders and pulled her close. When she raised her hands to his face he bent his head and kissed her. I watched the shock of the kiss go through Lasva’s body, as though the tension—the difficult emotions one sensed leashed within him—struck through her.

  She groped toward the hanging. I brought it down, then took up my cloak and stumbled over the uneven ground into the darkness outside the tent. I knew that nothing would happen in there. Lasva could not bear the idea of intimacy heard by all—her own private space in Colend had been beyond three sets of doors. So he would leave soon, but before then I had a little time to myself, which I always needed to shed the residue of guilt from my trespass against the First Rule.

  Ten steps outside the tent, I tripped over an unseen root and landed full length on the rough turf. I’d paid no heed to where I was going. Then I was startled when hands reached under my armpits and hauled me to my feet.

  “You are a little thing,” the dresser Pelis exclaimed as she brushed mud off me. She glanced around, laughed softly, then said, “I love the way you’ve south-gated Belimas, but I hope you know that with Anhar you are stroking the wrong plumage.”

  “I am doing what?” I responded, completely surprised.

  Then I became aware of the way she was holding my hand as her fingers caressed the dirt from mine. It was gentle but insistent in a way that caused me to stiffen.

  She freed my fingers, chuckling. “And so am I, it seems!” She fluttered her fingers mockingly and walked off.

  Thoroughly unsettled, I walked randomly in the other direction. There beyond a tangle of trees was the campfire of the Marlovens. They sounded like ordinary folk from a distance, talking, even laughing. Then I recognized a familiar voice among those laughing: Birdy!

  The voices were clear on the night air. He was trying to speak their language, and they seemed to find his attempts funny. I turned away, groping so I wouldn’t smash into a tree, for their firelight had dazzled my vision. I couldn’t bear the idea of them making game of Birdy, and I stumbled away.

  I hadn’t gone far when Birdy himself appeared out of the darkness, arms moving, elbows poking…

  He was juggling again. “Emras?” he whispered. “That was you! Did you get lost?”

  “Merely walking about.” When he dropped one of those silk bags, I said, “I thought you gave that up.”

  “The ambassador took me aside in Chwahirsland to advise me that I looked stupid when I practiced my juggling. His actual words were ‘hum-bumbler’ which, when you consider that we were in the Chwahir capital at the time, had added spice. I thought, if the queen wants me to look harmless, what could be more harmless than a hum-bumbler? So I’m at it again. There’s a stream over yonder.”

  We started down an incline, barely visible in the weak starlight peering through the parting clouds. He added with a laugh no louder than a breath, “Between the inner perimeter sentry points. I’ve learnt that much.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that though the fellows posted to guard the camp can still see us, because these Marlovens are far too efficient to permit a blind spot, we’re at enough distance that they will just see a couple of inept Colendi fumbling around. And the outer patrol, on horseback, won’t see us because they are looking outward, so the firelight won’t cloud their vision.”

  “You’ve learned a lot,” I observed.

  “I’ve learned a little,” he countered, pocketing the silks as he turned his head. “Very little, as I discover anew each day.” The glance to the side was quick.

  I turned, but it was only Anhar, and not a Marloven or our own fretful seneschal.

  Birdy continued, “But as the queen ordered, I am making myself as useful as I can.” He pointed toward a huge boulder, barely discernible in the weak blue light. “We can sit on that for a short time, I think. We’re too boring for any of them to wonder what we might be doing, but a long absence will cause notice.”

  The water-repelling spell on my cloak kept me from getting wet, but nothing warded the cold or the hardness. As I fell in step between the other two, I shivered, and he said, “Ah, getting to chat in our language feels so good. But Emras, you don’t look happy.”

  As always, the temptation to tell Birdy about the book was intense, but he could not know any more than Anhar could. “You do not mind being damp and dirty all the time?”

  Anhar’s hands came up in the shadow-ward, and Birdy chuckled. The firelight exaggerated his bony eye sockets, the edge of his jaw, and his ears. “I’m glad I was with the Chwahir so long. I learned all about sleeping in terrible places and bathing infrequently. Not that I mean to slander the Chwahir, for if our kingdom was half as cold as theirs, we wouldn’t bathe often, either. How are you two doing learning the language?”

  I said, “They don�
��t talk to us but rarely and then in Sartoran.”

  “I do not know a word.” Anhar gazed downward, revealing two fingers breadth of dark hair on either side of the part. “Are they giving you the south-gate?” she asked, looking up earnestly into Birdy’s face.

  “Ah-ye, it’s more that they’re a closed circle. Like what people say about courtiers: you can walk with them, but not among them. How long did it take before I realized that three of Ivandred’s lancers are women?”

  “Women?” I repeated, as Anhar threw up her hands again. “I did not know that.”

  “They do look all the same, don’t they? Anyway, they’re not south-gating me. I know the difference—the Chwahir south-gated us as much as they dared. How they hated us Colendi! I only learned these things after I bought a Bermundi coat and hat, then walked about the streets of Narad unintentionally incognito.”

  “So are you learning anything now?” Anhar asked.

  “Yes.” The ruddy firelight was just bright enough to outline the sharp angle of his nose and catch in curly wires of light his unruly hair. “We’ll have to sell these carriage horses when we reach the river, and since my orders are to go all the way to Marloven Hesea, my partner really wants to return home.”

  “But why sell the horses? The queen’s horses aren’t good enough?”

  “They aren’t trained for riding,” Birdy corrected. “And most important, they aren’t trained for fighting.” He yawned. “The Marlovens can’t afford to transport the carriages and the carriage horses. I don’t know what they do for money in their own kingdom, but Prince Ivandred’s purse is thin, so when we get to the other end of the Sartoran sea, we’ll all be riding. That means throwing away any ‘extra’ baggage. Except for the princess’s. You know whose will go first. Be aware of that when you repack.” He yawned again. “The perimeter guard will be around soon to shoo us back to camp. Sleep well! I fear we’ll be riding by torchlight well before dawn to make up for lost time.”

  His footsteps chuffed through the mud, and the two of us returned to our tent, each silent. I could not prevent Seneschal Marnda from going through my things as well as the belongings of the other staff, if she was ordered to.

  I would have to parrot the entire book, though I still did not comprehend it. When we reached the river, I would get rid of it. That would meet everyone’s demands.

  “You should have seen them! Or maybe not, for I tell you, we were in danger of falling off the roof, we were laughing so hard,” Kivic said, as they toiled up into the mountains, coats pulled up against occasional spits of sleet. “There was no hope any of them would catch up with the Marloven boys, no matter what their titles.”

  “Tell ‘em about the duke who put the shield over his butt,” one of the men said.

  “It wasn’t a shield, it was a breastplate,” another corrected. “Tell him, Kivic!”

  The tale had grown in the telling. What harm did it do to embellish a little? Kivic laughed with them, though the spark of his amusement was at the predictability of human behavior. He’d picked his man—the one who couldn’t resist finding duty near Kivic’s cell to hear more, and out had come the little anecdotes, one by one. This man carried the stories to his cronies among the guards, exactly as Kivic predicted.

  Their favorite story was how the arrogant Colendi, trailing ribbons and lace, scrambled all over one another to mount their horses and chase after the Marlovens. It was amusing and also reassuring, not only reinforcing how incompetent the Colendi were, but reminding them that the hated Marlovens were long gone, probably halfway across the continent by now, where they could cause no one any grief.

  “… and the Duke of Altan bawling at his servants to find the tents as he danced around, wrestling with the baldric. Which ripped right across.”

  Guffaws, as someone repeated, Ripped! Ripped!

  “I promise you, it ripped. They wear silk even to battle, those fools. And this baldric, judging from the faded color, had to be at least five hundred years old. I’m surprised the moths hadn’t gotten to it generations ago.”

  “It’s certainly moth food now,” someone said as they pulled up behind the captain.

  “Ho, here we are,” said the captain, as they rounded the last towering cliff, runnels of slushy rain slanting across the road.

  The animals halted, heads drooping. The Chwahir dismounted, leaving the horses to the equerries.

  “Let’s just take a look,” the captain said, eyeing the massive stone arch with its narrow passage that the Colendi had built generations ago to mark the border. Kivic had always wondered if any of them knew about the epithets painted and even carved on the Chwahir side. There was no such mar on the Colendi side, but the carvings were insult enough, intertwined thorny vines representing their Thorn Gate. “Stupid as they might be, there’s no use in our riding down blind,” the captain said, sending a speculative glance Kivic’s way then shifting his attention to a scout. “Thassler. Take a look through the glass.”

  This was the first sign of suspicion, making Kivic wonder what the king might have said to the captain, as the scout slogged through the mud to a standing stone, pulling his field glass from his belt.

  No matter. Kivic maintained his most innocent demeanor, and as the captain raised a hand to peer down the Colendi side of the road into the mist, Kivic shot a grin at his guard, who had ranged himself with his chosen fellows in a line. All he needed were a few moments of mad scramble to make his getaway. He’d marked his escape route on the retreat with Jurac, while everyone else was grumbling and cursing. Among the scattering of animals trails there was an overgrown path, probably the one used before the road was laid.

  “Two ribbon-pricks with the pair of buckets,” the scout reported, the epithet “bucket” pertaining to the judiciaries’ hoods. “Waiting about thirty paces down the road.”

  The captain turned Kivic’s way. But before he could speak, Kivic said with all the disgust he could muster, “Look at ‘em. Summoning us like we’re servants.”

  If he’d done his work right, that “us” could goad the captain, along with the memory of that humiliating defeat. If the captain said “you,” then it was on to plan two, far less easy.

  But the captain reacted with a grim face, his horse shifting beside him. “If they want him, let ‘em come and get him,” he said, and Kivic’s pet guards reinforced that with Yes, let ’em fetch, mutterings.

  After that, everything proceeded as Kivic had hoped. The masked judiciaries didn’t speak, of course, for justice is supposed to be neutral, but the sodden defenders in blue nudged their horses forward, one calling in Colend’s language, “Send the accused forth.”

  The captain, bolstered by his men, called, “What?”

  The Chwahir grinned.

  The fool in blue repeated his request in passable Chwahir, but the captain, enjoying the grins of his men, said again, “What?” causing a general chuckle.

  Kivic was thrilled—people were so predictable!

  The pair of Colendi rode a few steps closer over the flagged road. “Send forth the accused,” the one repeated in Sartoran, gloved hands cupped around his mouth.

  “Come and get him,” the captain roared back.

  The pair trotted closer to the stone arch, and the judiciaries also rode forward, as if pulled by strings.

  When they were nearly in reach, Kivic’s guard spoke right on cue, “Let’s teach these scum a lesson.”

  “Let’s see how stupid those buckets look with their bare faces hanging out,” Kivic said to the men nearest him then stepped sideways until he was outside of the captain’s peripheral vision. From there he shied a small stone at the nearest Colendi. Up came the sword—out came all the swords—the Chwahir roared through the archway, nearly stepping on each other’s heels in their hurry to get through the narrow gap, and the fun was on!

  For about two heartbeats. Then the hillside erupted with Colendi, who had been crouched like brigands behind rocks and trees. Who would have thought they’d have the w
it to plan for an ambush? Ah, well. All Kivic needed was for the brawl to spread fifteen paces down the trail.

  He slipped past a knot of struggling men, slid in the mud, righted himself, ducked through the arch, got his feet on the flagged stones and shifted past another knot, ignoring the surprised hail from his guard, “Hey, Kivic, give us a hand here….”

  Kivic dashed past, found the old path—and came up short when a man stepped out from behind a juniper, sword in hand. “Where are you going?” the man asked pleasantly.

  Kivic stared. Tall Colendi in a theater version of a battle tunic, edged with heavy blue silk, black hair under the towering, silver-chased helm that didn’t keep the rain from pouring down his neck, black eyes. Wasn’t this the destitute baron who’d married his way into a rich dukedom?

  Kivic drew in a breath of pleasure. His kind of man! He leaned forward and said conspiratorially, “I can make you a king.”

  The black eyes widened, then the fellow threw his head back and laughed.

  Shock flashed through Kivic, followed by anger and intent.

  For Kaidas, it was the first time he’d laughed since he and Lasva were together. But the reminder of Lasva doused the hilarity and just in time, given that the Chwahir whipped a knife out from his clothing and darted at Kaidas, quick as a snake.

  Kaidas belatedly swung the rapier, but not before the point of the knife struck him a palm’s width above the navel. The point turned on the fine mail the queen had ordered him to wear, but the force of the blow nearly doubled him.

  He gasped, choked for breath, alarm bringing his arm around to protect his front, the sword swinging with it. The Chwahir darted out of the way of the blade, then lunged again, this time for the throat. Kaidas stumbled back, the sword swinging but too slow, damn the soulripping thing. Fury burned through Kaidas, white fury, his breath rasping, as he put his entire body into a two-handed swing, the correct forms of dueling forgotten.