Crown of Vengeance dpt-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  “You speak of the Prophecy. The Song of Amrethion,” Rithdeliel said accusingly, and Vieliessar could only stare at him in astonishment. “Oh, come, Lightsister,” he added, his tone turning sharper. “Serenthon Farcarinon knew of it. He too said it spoke of an enemy to come, and that his kingship would unite the Hundred Houses against it. And so the Hundred killed him.”

  Again her answer was swift. “They killed him for fear of a collar about their throats, and for the promises he made to gain and keep his allies. I will not bribe as if I am weak; I will not flatter as if I must beg victory to favor me. I will triumph or I will die—and on the day I am crowned, there will be no High House or Low, nor will there be noble and Landbond. There will be one land and one people, and they will be mine.”

  For a long moment they stared at each other in silence.

  “It has been too long since I have risked my life for something worth the risk,” Rithdeliel said at last. He nodded slowly, as if sealing an unspoken bargain. “Very well. Say what you would have of me.”

  * * *

  The ring and hiss of steel was loud in the practice ring, where two knights mounted on destriers backed and circled for advantage. The rich smell of ripening hay filled the still air and motes of dust pounded from the straw underfoot turned the air to gold. The sun beat down on the combatants, turning the layers of metal and padding they wore into instruments of torture. Fire Moon was the hottest moonturn of the year, as if summer expended all her heat in one last profligacy before the cool of autumn and the long slow slide into winter.

  One combatant rode a muscular roan, the shields of his pearl-enameled armor enameled in the red-and-white of Oronviel. The other, mounted on a bay mare, wore the bare-metal armor and bare shields of a maiden knight. Neither spared a hand to the reins, for destriers were trained from foalhood to answer to the weight and pressure of an armored rider, to move as an extension of the knight on their back, to kill if asked.

  Both destriers knew that today was not a day for killing. Neither animal had taken the field in years, too old to bear up under the rigors of a full campaign and long days of war. They spent their peaceful retirement training future knights in the deadly equestrian dance of horse and rider.

  Rithdeliel gave his mount the signal to back out of range. Were this a battle—and were he mounted on Varagil—he would signal Varagil to spin and kick. Such a blow from a hoof could shatter bone, even through armor. Since this was not true battle, he brought his mount instead around to his opponent’s off side, so that she would have to strike across herself to defend or attack. If she turned in the saddle to strike a better blow—a common beginner’s mistake—she would be off-balance, unable to properly signal her mount and vulnerable to being either dragged or shoved from the saddle. He was looking forward to a swift conclusion to the mock-combat—this was his opponent’s first fight from the back of a destrier—but as he urged his stallion forward again, his opponent’s mare spun, slamming her rump against his stallion’s neck. Reflexively, the animal beneath him sprang sideways—only a moment of distraction, but time enough for his opponent to go on the attack once more.

  Rithdeliel backed the stallion quickly out of range and raised his sword, indicating the match was over. To continue would be to risk injury, even with peacebonded blades, for a fall or unintended kick could be as fatal here as on the field.

  For a moment his adversary sat frozen, as if she wished to continue the attack. Then she saluted in turn.

  “A good beginning,” Rithdeliel said. He patted the stallion’s shoulder and the roan stretched his neck and shook his head, as if shaking off the glamour of battle.

  “What more is there?” Vieliessar’s voice was sharp.

  “Come. Let us return the horses to the stable and get ourselves out of this armor,” Rithdeliel said, not answering.

  * * *

  He swung down from the stallion’s back in the stableyard, moving lithely in the many-jointed flexible armor, and tossed the reins to one of the ostlers. When he turned to help Vieliessar down, he saw that she had vaulted from the saddle as lightly as he, and for a moment, Rithdeliel felt the same unease he’d felt the first time he’d watched her spar on foot against Gunedwaen. Three moonturns is not time enough to make a knight, or even three years. And Gunedwaen swears she had not even held a practice sword until last Hearth Moon. She is unnatural.…

  Her back was to him; she had drawn off one heavy gauntlet to scratch her mare behind the hinge of her jaw. “I am who I need to be,” she answered as if he’d spoken.

  He was uneasy enough that he might have questioned her further, but Varagil had sensed his presence, and a loud, demanding neigh now came from within the stable. “I am summoned,” he said briefly, walking quickly away.

  A few moments later, Vieliessar joined Rithdeliel at Varagil’s loose-box. She’d removed her helmet; her sweat-sodden hair, still too short to braid properly, was plastered flat against her skull.

  “Raemeros is a gallant steed, and she has taught me well,” Vieliessar said, watching him with Varagil. “But she cannot serve me in battle.”

  “She’ll do well enough to get you killed,” Rithdeliel said brusquely. “Even if you believe that by some fortune you can declare against the High Houses and gain anything but your death.”

  “Ah, but I will not do it alone,” she said, grave laughter in her voice. “There is Gunedwaen.”

  * * *

  “You cannot just ask for the Unicorn Throne,” Rithdeliel said.

  The three of them were in Rithdeliel’s own rooms rather than Candlebrook Manor’s Great Hall. A half-played game of xaique was set out on a nearby board; a tea service waited on the sideboard, the pot already filled with its infusion and awaiting hot water. He lived in the clutter of one who lived surrounded by servants but who had no wife and family to nag him to tidiness: half-read scrolls, half-mended bits of tack, and delicate, broken pieces of armor littered every surface except the dining table.

  “So you and Gunedwaen have said before,” Vieliessar pointed out. “And I shall not merely ask. One army takes another, just as in xaique. If I defeat the War Prince of a House and gain his domain, I gain his army as well. With each War Prince I defeat, my cause grows stronger.”

  “This plan only works if you have an army to begin with, and I do not see one,” Gunedwaen said.

  “You might once have persuaded the Free Companies to back your cause—if you promised them lands and estates and the settlement of old grievances,” Rithdeliel added. “But now…”

  Vieliessar’s flight from the Sanctuary over a year earlier had borne bitter fruit. Goaded by Hamphuliadiel Astromancer’s claim that she sought vengeance on the Old Alliance, and fearing that she would seek to bring the Free Companies under her banner, Caerthalien and Aramenthiali—of all unlikely allies—had joined Ullilion and Cirandeiron to scour Farcarinon of those who made it their refuge. The Harrowing of Farcarinon had begun at the end of Sword—a few bare sennights after she and Gunedwaen had come to Oronviel—and stretched through Thunder into Fire.

  The power of the Free Companies had been broken decisively. Of the hundreds of mercenary companies that had once sold their services to the highest payer, only Foxhallow and Glasshaven remained—surviving because these two, the largest Free Companies, possessed granted lands far to the east of Farcarinon.

  “Their combined force would not have been sufficient to take even Oronviel,” Vieliessar pointed out reasonably. “The Free Companies do not have Lightborn to Heal their warriors; Oronviel could put every knight they’d wounded back into the field the following day, and so stand against them forever—and if they acted outside the Code in order to win, Oronviel could declare them Outlaw. We have seen this War Season how outlaws are dealt with.”

  Those who had escaped the Harrowing were now outlaws in truth. No War Prince would offer them a place. The shattered remnants of the Free Companies had turned to banditry to survive.

  Rithdeliel glanced toward Gunedwaen. T
he old Swordmaster’s eyes held an expression that was half exasperation, half resignation. He knew as well as Rithdeliel did that a lone knight had no hope of conquering the Hundred Houses and making them crown her king. And both of them knew it was impossible to persuade Vieliessar of that. All she would say was that she must unite the Hundred Houses, therefore she would unite the Hundred Houses.

  “Mercenaries, or the army of a single House—both approaches are too conservative,” Vieliessar added, twisting the stem of her winecup between her hands. She glanced from Gunedwaen to Rithdeliel. “Would you trust any of the War Princes to honor their pledged word?”

  Gunedwaen’s answer was a bark of derisive laughter. “Your life is the answer to that, my prince!”

  Vieliessar nodded. “Just so. No matter what they say—what guarantees, what pledges, what hostages they give—any of the War Princes will break their sworn oath. Do you not see what that implies?”

  There was a moment of silence. “To me, it implies I would sign no treaty with them if my life depended on their keeping of it. But I am sure this is not what you mean us to understand,” Rithdeliel said with ponderous sarcasm.

  There was a brief flash of laughter in Vieliessar’s eyes, though her face remained composed. “But you are right, good master Rithdeliel. No treaty with any of the Hundred has worth. So from declaration to victory, my campaign can run only one War Season.”

  Gunedwaen threw up his hands in exasperation. “It is not enough for you to say you will make the Hundred declare you High King—now you will defeat them all in one summer!” At his feet, Striker raised her head inquisitively, then lowered it again, seeing nothing interesting was happening.

  “As you say,” Vieliessar said mildly, raising her cup to drink. She refused to speak further of her plans that evening, and the talk turned to gossip of the coming Harvest Court.

  Four great feasts turned the wheel of the year: the Kite Festival of Flower Moon, the Fire Festival of Fire Moon, the Midwinter Feast of Snow Moon, and Harvest Court.

  Unlike the other festivals, its time was not fixed: Harvest Court fell upon the first full moon after the Fire Festival, whether that lay in the moonturn of Harvest or not. Loremasters said it was the oldest of the festivals; storysingers spoke of a time before the building of Celephriandullias-Tildorangelor by the first High King, when the folk had not lived beneath roofs of stone, but roamed the land following the great horse herds, a time when the harvest the name spoke of was not grain, but souls—for it was their claim that Harvest Court had once marked the half of the year in which the Starry Hunt had ridden over the land, taking whom it would as its prey.

  At Harvest Court, by ancient custom, any might approach the War Prince to receive justice, no matter how humble their degree.

  * * *

  The gates of Oronviel Keep stood open. Across the outer courtyard—a space designed to box in attackers so they could be slain from above—the massive doors of the Great Hall stood open as well. Trestle tables were set out beneath the fruit-heavy trees of the castel orchard as well as in the Great Hall, for at Harvest Court, War Prince Thoromarth held a great feast for all who wished to attend. There would be horse races and foot races; prizes given for the most elaborately decorated loaf of bread, the most enticing new tea blend, the most beautiful weaving, the best new song and poem and tale—even for the most elaborate illusion cast by Oronviel’s Lightborn. The feasting and games would begin at dawn the morning after the full moon and continue until sunset on the seventh day afterward, and in between the contests and the celebrations, War Prince Thoromarth would hear the petitions of any who came before him. Even an outlaw or a traitor knight could come to Harvest Court and be heard, for all the Houses of the Fortunate Lands declared peace and truce for the whole of the festival.

  The day was summer-warm, and the high windows in the Great Hall had been flung open to let the last of summer into the keep. From the makeshift race course laid out between the orchard and the craftworkers’ village—a space more often used to muster Oronviel’s troops for battle—came the sound of cheering and hornsong. Horses raced in the morning when it was cooler; in the afternoon, once the prizes for the winning horses had been given, there would be footraces.

  Within the Great Hall, Oronviel’s great lords, and any others who wished to see, were gathered to hear their master give justice. Rithdeliel watched impassively as yet another petitioner stepped forward. He’d considered and discarded the idea of bringing Vieliessar and Gunedwaen to Harvest Court to beg sanctuary. It was true that Harvest Court was the time when banishings and outlawing could be set aside and pardoned, but Gunedwaen had been Caerthalien’s prisoner and Vieliessar fell under the Sanctuary’s dominion. And Thoromarth of Oronviel was no fool.

  The clatter of sabatons against the stone of the outer courtyard roused him to instant alertness.

  The figure who appeared in the doorway wore armor enameled in silver, as if to mock the unadorned plate of the unfledged knight. Her tabard and cloak were pure white, as if she came to Harvest Court to seek knighthood, but silver spurs gleamed on her feet and she wore swordbelt and scabbard. The empty scabbard was the only concession she made to the fact that she was entering the presence of a War Prince, for her helm was locked into place, rendering her anonymous.

  “Rithdeliel—who comes?” Thoromarth asked.

  “I do not know, Lord Thoromarth,” Rithdeliel answered, forcing his voice to show none of the anger he felt. He was not forsworn—in truth, he did not know.

  All around the hall, watchers flurried like a cote of doves and whispered urgently to each other. But no one tried to impede the silver knight’s progress as she walked slowly and deliberately the full length of the hall.

  “I give you good greeting, stranger knight,” Thoromarth said, as she stopped before him. “Remove your helm so I may look upon your face, and say what justice you would have of Oronviel.”

  “I would have Oronviel’s lands, her knights, and all who lie in your hand. By the most ancient law of the princes who rule, I challenge you to single combat without quarter, and when I win your nobles will yield Oronviel to me and your heir will swear fealty.”

  “You are mad!” Thoromarth hissed.

  “Your pardon, my lord prince,” Eiron Lightbrother, Chief of Oronviel’s Lightborn, said quietly, leaning over to speak softly in Thoromarth’s ear. “This is law, made in the time of Mosirinde Peacemaker, and all the princes bound themselves to obey. At Harvest Court, such a challenge can be made. It must be accepted.”

  Rithdeliel knew that what Eiron said was far from impossible: the Hundred Houses had bound themselves to many rulings in Mosirinde’s time. None could be set aside without the agreement of all the Houses together, something unlikely to be forthcoming.

  “Withdraw your petition, stranger knight, and you may leave my hall unharmed,” Thoromarth said when Eiron stepped back.

  “I do not withdraw it,” the silver knight said. “I demand of you combat for all you hold. This is the second time of asking.”

  There was a long moment of charged silence, then Thoromarth laughed. “You shall have your battle—” he said.

  “Father!” Princess Mialvialla had half risen from her seat.

  “Silence!” Thoromarth snapped. “I say, you may have your battle, stranger knight. But I know the old law as well as you. My champion will meet you, not I. By the law you so imprudently invoke, mine is the right to choose the time and place. On the last day of the Festival, on the assembly field at midday. Present yourself then or hold yourself foresworn, and a coward.”

  The silver knight bowed. “I shall be there, Thoromarth Oronviel.”

  She turned and strode from the hall. Neirenmeirith Lightsister separated herself from the onlookers and followed.

  “An amusing end to a tedious morning,” Thoromarth said brusquely, getting to his feet. “Come. We may be in time for the last of the racing.”

  * * *

  On the day appointed, five days after Thoro
marth’s morning court had been so rudely interrupted, the nobles of Oronviel gathered on the assembly field.

  The craftworkers had enclosed the space Eiron Lightbrother had indicated with strong wooden panels painted in the red-and-white of Oronviel, leaving two gaps in the panels wide enough to ride a horse through. The barrier would keep onlookers away from the two combatants. A raised platform had also been constructed; a framework above it hung with pavilion-weight silk to shelter those below from the midday sun. Lord Thoromarth and his favorites would have an excellent view of the battle.

  How could she do such a thing as this? The question repeated endlessly in Rithdeliel’s mind as he waited just outside the arena. It was a betrayal that hurt more keenly than being sold to Oronviel so many years ago. He had trusted her. He had loved her for Nataranweiya’s sake. She held Gunedwaen’s life in her hands. And this is what she does with it!

  His edginess communicated itself to his mount; Varagil sidled and tossed his head nervously.

  “Be easy, old friend. It will be over soon,” Rithdeliel said, patting the burly grey’s neck. He was Thoromarth’s champion, as the Warlord always was. If he had been free to do so, he would have ridden to Candlebrook and laid her in chains, Lightborn or no, but even if Thoromarth were willing to excuse him from his Harvest Court duties, he would certainly have Rithdeliel followed, and then all would come out regardless.

  Perhaps she will not come, he thought, glancing toward the sky. If she has told Gunedwaen of her plans— If he found them out by some other means—

  Then he heard the roar of the onlookers and knew he was not to be spared. He spurred Varagil forward.

  She walked into the arena as calmly as she had walked into Harvest Court. The only change was that she now carried weapons: broadsword and dagger. The dagger was not to fight with; it was carried by the komen to cut themselves free of harness or even their own armor on the field. Rithdeliel was grateful she had not come mounted, for Thoromarth would instantly recognize any animal she rode. He supposed it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference once her identity was discovered.