“Your Highness, a sense of humour will be of little help to you, should you be out of grace when you die. The Primal Gods you worship are nothing more than natural events to which the unenlightened have attached divinity. You should be thankful that by marrying Prince Cratyn, you have an opportunity to embrace the one true god.”
Adrina smiled apologetically, realising that she had pushed the priest far enough for one day. It didn’t particularly matter to her that they expected her to worship their god. She wasn’t a fool and had every intention of acting as if she had converted. But her own beliefs ran too deep to be overturned by a priest, no matter how clever or articulate.
“I appreciate your advice, sir,” she demurred. “I hope the Overlord will forgive my pagan ignorance.”
Vonulus looked a little suspicious, but he nodded. “The Overlord can see into your heart, your Highness. He will judge you accordingly.”
“Well, I don’t have anything to worry about then, do I?” she asked brightly.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Vonulus agreed warily.
Two days later, they docked at Setenton, the first real city Adrina had seen since coming to Karien. The city boasted a sizeable wharf district and an impressive market, but it was as dirty and crowded as every other town she had sailed past these last few weeks. A bleak, thick-walled castle, built on a rise that gave it a commanding view of the river and the surrounding countryside, dominated the walled city. This was the home of Lord Terbolt, the Duke of Setenton, and coincidentally, Chastity’s father—so Lady Hope informed her. As they waited for the ship to dock, Adrina glanced at the young woman, but she showed no obvious pleasure to be home. Rather, she kept surreptitiously glancing at Cratyn, as if trying to catch his eye. To his credit, the young prince studiously ignored her.
The sight that greeted them as they docked brought a smile to Adrina’s lips. A full guard of honour awaited them—her own Guard, Fardohnyan one and all, in full ceremonial uniform.
Her father held to the notion that vast wealth was only fun when you got to flaunt it, and he had spared no expense equipping her Guard. Five hundred strong, every man was mounted on a sleek black steed stamped with the unmistakable breeding of the Jalanar Plains. The soldiers were dressed in silver and white, from their ornate silver helms and short white capes, trimmed with rare Medalonian snowfox fur, to their white, silver-trimmed, knee-high boots.
According to Fardohnyan legend, the custom of the royal guard wearing white had come about almost a thousand years ago, when King Waldon the Peaceful seized the throne from his cousin Blagdon the Butcher. His Guard wore white so that the people would know there was no innocent blood on the hands of his soldiers. Whatever the reason, the ceremonial uniforms were gorgeous, and Tristan wore his with the confidence of one born to show-off. He really was much too good-looking for his own good, Adrina decided. She had worried that Cassandra might cause trouble in Karien. It occurred to her that Tristan was just as likely to get into mischief. All that repressed emotion at court, mixed with her brother, was a recipe for disaster.
Impressed by the sight of her Guard, Cratyn offered her his hand as they walked down the treacherous gangplank, followed by their retinue. Tristan met them at the bottom and bowed ostentatiously.
“Your Serene Highness, your Royal Highness, the Fardohnyan Princess’s Guard awaits the honour of escorting you to Setenton Castle,” he announced, rather dramatically, in Fardohnyan. “Which, I might add, is as draughty and flea ridden as every other building in this godforsaken country and I would very much like to go home,” he added, without changing his smile or tone.
Adrina turned to Cratyn. “My brother welcomes us, and pledges his life to see us safely to the castle,” she translated calmly, grateful that Vonulus was still back on the ship. Tristan really should learn to be more careful.
Cratyn frowned. “Your brother?”
“Half-brother,” she amended. “Tristan is one of my father’s bastards.”
A shocked gasp escaped Pacifica’s lips at Adrina’s casual remark, a fact that was not lost on Tristan, who was not supposed to understand Karien. He bit back a grin as Cratyn, predictably, blushed crimson.
“Ah, please tell your…captain…that we are honoured,” Cratyn stammered. “Although I hardly think the ride from here to the castle will be life threatening.”
“His Highness appears to be having some difficulty coping with your baseborn status,” she translated.
“His Highness looks like he’s about to burst something. I’ll bet you can’t wait for the wedding. Shall we?” He offered Adrina his arm, which she accepted gracefully, with a smile over her shoulder for her fiancé.
They rode in an open carriage up the steep, cobbled streets of Setenton toward the castle. Crowds lined the route to catch a glimpse of the foreigner who would one day be their queen. Adrina smiled and waved. She was born to this, and the Kariens seemed to appreciate her acknowledgment of them. At least the townsfolk did.
After a while, Lady Madren leaned over with a frown. “You must not encourage them, your Highness.”
“Encourage them, my Lady? These are to be my people, are they not? I want them to like me.”
“It doesn’t matter that they like you, your Highness,” Madren said. “Only that they respect and obey you.”
“In Fardohnya we have a saying, my Lady: ‘A king who has the love of his people is harder to kill than one who has their enmity’. Being pleasant costs nothing.”
“It is unseemly, your Highness,” Madren insisted.
“And what of you, Prince Cretin? Don’t you care that the people love you?”
“The people love the Overlord, your Highness. It is His blessing that gives my family the right to rule. What they feel for me is irrelevant.”
“Well, you trust in the Overlord,” she told him. “I’ll just keep smiling and waving. I’m not actually a member of your divinely sanctioned family yet.”
Adrina turned back to the peasants, ignoring Madren’s frown and Cratyn’s despairing look. Tristan glanced back over his shoulder from his position at the head of the Guard and she rolled her eyes at him. He laughed and spurred his horse forward. Adrina had a feeling it was going to be a very long day.
Fardohnya was a nation ruled by a single line of monarchs for a millennium. A thousand years of Fardohnyan kings governed on the principal that a nation that prospered was a nation relatively free of internal unrest. It had proved a sound theory and consequently, little Fardohnyan architecture was designed with defence in mind. Aesthetics was the overriding concern. Besides, if one was wealthy enough, one could hire the best architects to construct fortifications that didn’t constantly remind one of their true purpose.
The Kariens did not subscribe to the Fardohnyan notion of beauty first, usefulness second. Setenton Castle was a fortress and pretended to be nothing else. The walls were thirty paces high and thicker than two men lying end to end, and the courtyard bustled with the panoply of war. Looking around her as she alighted from the carriage in a courtyard crowded with men, horses and the ringing of smiths’ hammers, she wondered if the Medalonian Defenders were as good as their reputation held them to be. She privately hoped they were. Karien was much larger than Medalon, and could overrun the smaller country through sheer weight of numbers, if nothing else.
Hablet needed a drawn-out conflict on the northern border of Medalon. He couldn’t go over the Sunrise Mountains into Hythria with an invasion force, but once on the open plains of Medalon, he could turn south with ease. Of course, the Kariens thought he was planning to attack Medalon to aid their cause. It wouldn’t be until they discovered his true destination that his treachery would be revealed. Adrina was not in favour of the plan, mostly because she would be the focus for the Karien’s fury when they realised they had been duped. Her father had advised her to plan an escape route when the news came. He had seemed singularly unconcerned that his plan might cost Adrina her head.
Lord Terbolt greeted them from the steps of
his great hall. He was a tall man with hooded brown eyes and a weary expression. But he greeted Cratyn warmly before he turned to Adrina.
“Your Serene Highness,” he said with a small bow. “Welcome to Setenton Castle.”
“Thank you, Lord Terbolt,” she replied graciously. “I hope our presence will not tax your resources unduly. And you have been playing host to my Guard. I trust they have not been a burden to you.”
Terbolt shook his head. “A few language difficulties, your Highness, nothing more. Please, let me have you shown to your rooms. You must be tired, I’m sure, and we men have things to discuss that will not interest you.”
On the contrary, Adrina was vitally interested, but it would be difficult to convince these barbarians that as a woman she might have any idea of politics or war. “Of course, my Lord. Perhaps Tristan might be of help, though? I am sure he could learn something from your discussions and he might be able to offer a new perspective, don’t you think?”
“But he doesn’t speak Karien, your Highness,” Cratyn pointed out, with a rather horrified expression.
“Oh that’s all right, I’ll translate,” she offered brightly. “I’m really not tired, my Lords, and although as Lord Terbolt pointed out, I will no doubt be bored witless by the discussion—we are allies now, are we not? All that I ask is that you not speak too quickly so that I may follow the discussion. Tristan!”
Neither Terbolt nor Cratyn looked pleased by her suggestion, and poor Madren looked ready to faint, but she had left them little choice.
“As you wish, your Highness,” Terbolt conceded with ill grace.
She picked up her skirts and, with Tristan at her side, marched indoors.
“Adrina, does something bother you about these people?” Tristan asked her quietly as they entered the gloom followed by the rest of the entourage. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed Terbolt greeting Chastity with all the warmth of a man renewing his acquaintance with a distant relative.
“What do you mean?” she asked as she looked back at him. “They are fools.”
“Maybe. I just wonder if we are the ones being played for fools.”
“You pick a fine time to have second thoughts, Tristan,” she muttered as they walked the length of the rush strewn stone floor. Tall banners, depicting both the sign of the Overlord and the Lord Terbolt’s silver pike on a field of red hung limply from the walls. Presumably the red background was a romantic representation of the muddy Ironbrook. “You were the one who encouraged me to accept this arranged marriage.”
“I know,” he sighed. “I just have this feeling. I can’t define it, but it worries me. Be careful.”
“You’re the one who should be careful. Although, I have it on good authority that provided you confine your attentions to unmarried women, you shouldn’t need to worry about being stoned.”
“It’s going to be a long, cold winter, I fear, Rina.”
He had not called her Rina since they were small children. “You at least have the option of going home someday. I have to spend my life with these people. Not to mention Prince Cretin the Cringing.”
He leaned closer to her and, although speaking Fardohnyan, even if he was overheard, nobody here would understand him. “Look on the bright side. He’ll be off to war in a month or two. With luck the Medalonians with keep him there for years.”
“With luck, they’ll put an arrow through him,” she corrected with a whisper, then turned to her fiancé and smiled serenely, every inch the princess.
Cratyn was looking at her with an odd expression. Not dislike, exactly. It was stronger than that. She had a bad feeling it was distaste.
CHAPTER 14
Tarja returned to the camp late in the day, letting Shadow set her own pace, still brooding over his last argument with Jenga. The Lord Defender was trying to hold together a disparate force, Tarja knew that, and the knowledge that he was doing it through deception weighed heavily on him. But it didn’t excuse his intransigence over the matter of attacking the Kariens. The Lord Defender was willing to defend his border, but he refused to make the first move. He wanted to wait until the Kariens invaded. Tarja disagreed. The Karien camp had grown considerably from the five hundred knights that had been camped there all through summer. They should be taking the fight to the enemy and they should do it now, before the Karien force grew so large that they would simply be overrun.
Jenga was furious when he heard that Tarja had crossed the border. Using the same Hythrun tactics that were so effective in the south, on their numerous cattle raids into Medalon, he had taken a handful of men into Karien under cover of darkness and stampeded the enemy’s horses through their camp. The ensuing destruction had been extremely gratifying—it had probably set back their war effort by weeks. He’d only lost three men to injury, and had considered the entire affair a small, if significant, victory.
Jenga didn’t see it that way. He had exploded with fury when he learnt of the attack, accusing Damin of being a reckless barbarian for suggesting the idea, and Tarja of being an undisciplined fool for listening to him.
Following his desertion two years ago, Tarja had often longed for the chance to return to the security and brotherhood of the Corps. But now that he was back, he discovered it was not the easy ride he had hoped. He had liked being in command of the rebels, he realised now. He had been raised to command, and knew, without vanity, that he was good at it. Tarja respected Jenga, but had grown accustomed to making his own decisions. Jenga was a good soldier but he’d been Lord Defender for more than twenty years, and that meant he had more practice with politics than war. Tarja had spent the best part of his adult life at war with the Hythrun, the Defenders and now the Kariens. Jenga had not raised his sword in anger in decades.
They still had only six thousand of the twelve thousand Defenders they could count on, and a thousand Hythrun Raiders from Krakandar. As he thought of the Hythrun, he wondered, as he had already done countless times, where Damin Wolfblade was.
Nobody had seen the Warlord for nearly a month—not since the argument with Jenga after the raid, when he announced that he was going to speak with his god. If Almodavar knew where he was, he wasn’t saying. The grizzled Hythrun captain seemed unconcerned by his Lord’s absence. If Damin wished to speak with the God of War, to seek his blessing, then his troops were not about to object. They fervently believed Zegarnald would help them. They were counting on it, in fact.
When he reached the camp, on impulse Tarja turned toward the scattered Hythrun tents. Perhaps Almodavar had heard something. It was becoming increasingly difficult to reassure Jenga that Damin had not simply deserted them.
He rode through the camp, acknowledging the occasional wave from the Hythrun troops. The Raiders were much less respectful of rank than the Defenders. Among the Raiders, one earnt respect through battle, not promotion or pretty insignia. But some of these men had faced Tarja on the southern border. They knew him for a warrior and found nothing strange in their Warlord’s alliance with his former enemy.
The Defenders had been far less accommodating. They resented the presence of the Hythrun and made no secret of it. Tarja thought that much of the impressive discipline the Defenders displayed was designed to show the Hythrun how things were done in a “proper” army. The Defenders despised mercenaries, and most of Damin’s Raiders were just that. Tarja was a little more tolerant. Had the rebellion not intervened, he would likely be a mercenary himself, by now. But feelings ran strong between the two camps and fights broke out frequently. In the beginning, Tarja and Damin had organised training bouts between the two armies, ostensibly to foster some sort of cohesion between the two forces. Three fatalities put paid to that laudable sentiment, and Jenga had ordered them stopped. Now the training was strictly segregated.
He reached the centre of the Hythrun camp and discovered a large number of the Raiders in a cheering circle, obviously wagering on some sort of contest. As he neared the group a cheer went up, almost drowning out an unmistakable cry o
f pain. Tarja dismounted curiously, threw the reins over Shadow’s neck and pushed his way through the crowd.
The source of the Hythrun entertainment proved to be two boys, both bloodied and wounded. The brawl must have been going on for quite some time, by the look of the two combatants. The older of the two was a well-muscled, fair-haired Hythrun lad of about sixteen, an apprentice blacksmith that Tarja had seen once or twice around the forge. The younger boy couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven and was unmistakably Karien, but despite the difference in their sizes, he appeared to be giving a good account of himself, although he was clearly on the brink of collapse. His freckled face was almost totally obscured by blood, his clothes torn, his eyes burning with hatred. He was staggering to his feet as Tarja pushed through to the front of the crowd.
Tarja winced sympathetically as the older boy ran at the disoriented Karien lad and delivered a kick to the boy’s chin that snapped his neck back almost hard enough to break it. With a pain-filled grunt, the Karien boy dropped to the ground. Breathing heavily, the apprentice laughed, triumphantly standing over his vanquished foe. He reached down and snatched the pendant from around the boy’s neck and held it up high to the cheers of the spectators. The five-pointed star and lightning bolt of the Overlord glittered dully in the afternoon light. Someone started up a cry of “Finish him!” which was quickly taken up by the rest of the spectators. The apprentice grinned at the chant and pulled his dagger from his belt. Tarja glanced around the Hythrun and realised, with horror, that they were serious.
“Enough!” he shouted, stepping into the clearing, his red jacket stark against the motley browns and black chain mail of the Hythrun.
Silence descended on the circle of Raiders. Only then did Tarja wonder about the advisability of walking into the centre of thirty-odd Hythrun Raiders crying for blood. The Raiders stared at him, their stillness more threatening than their chanting. He covered the distance to the startled apprentice and snatched the dagger from his hand.
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