by Dave Duncan
They stepped down onto the grass and into the rain. Pages came running to hold umbrellas over them. They squelched toward the river and the King, who stood on the edge of the bank within a solid phalanx of glowering Blades, incandescently furious. Someone must suffer when Ambrose looked like that.
“Thegn! It was agreed that no man except yourself was to come ashore.”
Leofric scanned the scene below with his solitary eye. “Well, sire, that would depend on how you defined ‘ashore,’ now wouldn’t it?”
Few large coastal buildings in Chivial had not been sacked by the Baels in the last decade. Wetshore had survived because it was protected by wide mud flats—black, sticky, smelly, and impassable—covered only briefly at high tide. Lord Whitney had produced plans for a grandiose memorial pier, which Malinda had rejected in favor of the simplest possible dock, just a stair down the grassy bank and a jetty running out from it. Slaughter—or possibly Revenge—was now tied up alongside this, with her dragon’s head prow staring balefully at the spectators. She was only an open box with a mast, tapering bow and stern, flaring wide amidships, menacing yet beautiful. Along either side hung shields, round and gaily painted.
What was enraging the King was that her crew had disembarked and formed up along the jetty in a double line, like an honor guard—a whole shipload of armed Baelish raiders. Helmets and weapons shone even under the pewter sky. Perhaps technically the pirates were not ashore, but they were uncomfortably close to the assembled elite of Chivial, and everyone knew what had happened at Candlefen Park, thirty years ago. That had been a wedding, too.
Spirits! Malinda’s heart had begun hammering very hard, wanting out. Here, within the Royal Guard and beside her father, she was still in his realm. Safe. Down there, at the bottom of the steps, she would enter the savage domain of her raider husband. Some part of her wanted to turn and flee in terror. Another—much smaller—part was whispering that the adventure had begun. Although Thegn Leofric might not be typical and might not stay on his best behavior very long at a time, he had at least shown her that Baels, at least some Baels, were capable of acting like civilized human beings, at least sometimes; so there might, just possibly, be a tiny, very faint chance that Radgar Æleding was not the terrifying child-eating rapist and sadist he was always made out to be.
“I say they’re ashore!” Ambrose snarled. “Get them out of there!”
“As you wish, sire. Ready, Your Grace?”
She heard her voice say, “Ready. Good-bye, Father.” And with her hand on the thegn’s arm, she began to descend the wooden steps that led down to the dock, leaving all the hundreds of guests with no bride to kiss good-bye. She had just contrived the largest mass snub in the history of Chivial.
“You know how to review an honor guard, of course?”
“I think I am capable.” Her knees trembled, her mouth was dry—the only dry part of her, because no umbrella-wielding page was going to venture close to those monsters. The treads were awkward, too short for two strides, too wide for one. Had anyone thought to tell Dove and Ruby that she had gone? She had never seen a naked honor guard before. “Aren’t they cold?” Her teeth were close to chattering.
The thegn chuckled. “Probably all freezing their buns off but not about to admit it. If they’d come ashore to do mischief, they wouldn’t have left their bucklers behind and they’d be wearing even less.”
Less than leather britches, boots, and steel helmets? Or perhaps he meant their adornments, for now she could see that every man in the crew was a glittering wonder of gold and silver, pearls and precious stones—arm rings, earrings, necklaces, boots, belts, and baldrics. There was more wealth on these brute sailors than there was on all the guests up in the park.
She reached the jetty and the thegn removed his arm. Raising her chin, she marched forward between the two lines, swords erect on one side, ferocious axes on the other. Young men, older men, green eyes staring fixedly ahead and never meeting hers. The Household Yeomen were no better disciplined and the Blades would not come close. Light shone on jewels and steel and wet skin. She had never dreamed that men could be so hairy, and in the Baels’ case hair was invariably red—ginger, auburn, copper—braids or loose tresses, beards and mustaches, often chests, arms, and shoulders too. But they were human beings, just men—some grizzled, some little more than boys. No horns, no fangs. Not even rickets or rashes or fleabites.
She had arrived at the end of the honor guard, the end of the jetty, the stern of the ship. One man had remained aboard. He was decently—if bizarrely—dressed in smock and cross-gartered leggings without a gem in sight. He held up a hand for her as she stepped over the side and descended a set of steps to the grated floor, feeling the ship rock very slightly underfoot. She had left her homeland, never to return.
She turned and surveyed the longship, full of oars, storage chests, confusing ropes and cloth bundles. Unexpectedly, it smelled of beeswax and faintly of pitch. Ruby and Dove were descending the staircase, escorted by a Blade. Above them, the crest of the bank was packed with neck-craning courtiers, interspersed with mounted lancers, all bleating like goats at their first sight of a dragon ship and real pirates. Thegn Leofric had boarded beside her. Suddenly he bellowed an order, and Malinda jumped.
A wave of Baels hurtled over the array of shields, their boots hitting the gratings almost simultaneously. Revenge, or else Slaughter, lurched and tipped. A moment later a second wave followed the first. She staggered. The man who had helped her aboard caught her elbow and spoke a greeting.
“Good chance to you,” she said, shrugging him off. “Thegn Leofric, you need not wait for those two women. Go without them. Depart at once, please.”
Again the thegn yelled an order. Ropes were flipped loose, oars run out, and the ship slid away from the jetty and began to turn as the wind caught her. Then something registered….
Malinda spun around. “What did you just say?”
The man smiled. “I said, ‘My lady, I am Radgar Æleding.’”
11
I have known Radgar since we were children, yet he can still astonish me. He owes much of his success to being completely unpredictable.
SIR WASP, PERSONAL COMMUNICATION TO LORD ROLAND
The drawing had not done him justice. She had never seen eyes of such intense color, green enamel, and there was no silver in the fringe of copper beard. He had cut his hair shorter…certainly did not look thirty…did not look a monster.
“Your Grace!” She began a curtsey.
“No!” His hands flashed out and caught her elbows. “You don’t kneel to me!” Their eyes met. She looked away. If he had expected some delicate courtly flower, he now knew he had bought a great hulking wench. But he had lifted her as if she were Amby, so he was no runt himself. He must have the muscles of a woodcutter.
Oh, spirits! If the Blades or the Yeomen guessed that Monster Radgar was there, within reach, she would be a virgin widow. She looked to see how far the ship was from the jetty. Not far at all, drifting aimlessly on the rain-pocked water. The oars were spread out like wings, motionless.
He said, “My pardon if I startled you. Did not your father tell you I was here?”
She shook her head. He could not have known…
The King of—her husband—frowned. “Did he even tell you that we knew each other of old?”
“Why…no, Your Grace.” Ruby and Dove and the Blade had stopped, uncertain whether or not to continue. Up on the bank, her father was peering over the heads of his cordon of Guards, and the fury on his fat face was clearly visible. He had recognized Radgar? How could he? But—
“He assured me, Your Majesty, that he had good reason to believe that you were gracious in your person and of gentle manner.”
“How kind of him!” Radgar said angrily. “Such was not his opinion when we met twelve years ago. It seems he came very close to lying to you about our acquaintance. Would you agree that he was trying to deceive you?”
Why discuss her father? Couldn�
��t he even offer to kiss her cheek? Her fingers?
The pirate raised his eyebrows. “An honest answer, my lady! Did your father deliberately hide from you the fact that he and I know each other personally?”
Bewildered, she said, “Perhaps he forgot a brief—”
“I am sure he did not. What other tricks did he use on you? What threats did he make to force you into this marriage?”
She did not understand. “Your Majesty, I wrote to you! I testified before the—”
“Yes, you did, because I would not sign the treaty until I was given assurances that you were not being forced into a union you found distasteful. I must still hear it from your own lips.”
“Your Grace…” The multitude onshore had fallen silent, staring at the longship.
“Why did you not wait for your two ladies to board?”
“My lord husband, why don’t we sail?”
“Later!” he said angrily. “Because you knew they did not want to come? Because they had been forced into accompanying you? So what about you? You are happy at the prospect of spending the rest of your life in Baelmark bearing my children?”
“I am honored to wed so fine a king!”
“Oh, rubbish! You may be terrified or disgusted or shivering with excitement. You cannot possibly feel honored. I’m a slaver and a killer of thousands. But my mother was forced into her marriage, and I will not take you as my wife unless I am convinced that you are truly happy at the prospect. I think you were bludgeoned into it. Speak! Persuade me otherwise.”
He was bullying her, just like her father. “Unfair, my lord! I have told you already and you refuse to believe me. You call me liar?”
“I call your father worse than that. Did you not accuse him of slaving?”
She flinched under the accusing green stare. She had said lots of things, but not everything that had been reported. “I may have used intemperate words in the shock of…I mean…The news was sprung on me…I promise most faithfully, Your Grace, that I will never presume to speak that way to you.”
He scowled.
She tried to assert herself. “I am of the blood, so I will marry whom I am told to marry. I have always known this was my purpose, and I presume to say, my lord, on first sight you seem much less offensive than other suitors whose names have been bandied around me in the past….”
He sniffed. “I am flattered, but I did not mean Radgar Æleding as a two-legged male animal. All men are much the same in the dark. Most women close their eyes in the action, anyway. Kings also marry sight unseen, lady, and it is not your appearance that makes me reluctant—far from it! No, I mean any king of Baelmark. My name in Chivial is held in low esteem.”
Fire and death! Was he seriously offering to release her? A wild surge of hope almost stopped her heart, but such a solution was unthinkable and must be resisted. Her duty forbade it. So came anger: “You will force me to beg? A royal marriage is often a bridge between former combatants. What of the treaty? If you refuse me, must not the war continue?”
The longship floated slowly downstream and farther out over the rain-speckled water. The crowds on the bank continued to buzz with puzzled comment. Everyone must have guessed by now who alone could be holding up proceedings like this.
Radgar shook his head sadly. “I could have ended it any time in the last ten years, my lady. I did not want to retract my youthful boasting, and that is a foolish reason, mere pride. As it happens, there are legends of heroes who swore blood feuds but then became entangled in coils of love and so were forced to recant their oaths—I am sure you can fill in the details for yourself. Thus marriage to you would provide a face-saving excuse for me. Strange that it was your father and not I who thought to roll you up in the treaty scroll.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it quickly.
“Aha!” he said. “You thought the match was my idea?”
“That was what I was told, but I thought it was Lord Roland’s.”
“Durendal? No. He has too much honor to sell a lady himself, but he fetches when his master throws. It was all your father’s idea. He was desperate to end the war, and evidently he lied to you yet again. Well, I will end it without you, I promise.”
“Oh!” Temptation! Freedom, a chance to waken from the long nightmare! “You swear that?”
“I swear that. You are free to go.”
“You shame me!” She tried to meet the steady green stare, cold and deadly as oceans.
“I honor you, mistress. My father carried off my mother by force, but I refuse to abuse a woman so.”
Rubbish! What game was he playing with her? There was more to this than met the eye. “Indeed? What of the thousands you carry off into slavery?”
“Except that. That is war, and I hate it. I do truly intend to end it now, Princess, and you need not be sold into slavery. I give you back your freedom.”
Still she wavered. “You shame me!”
“I shame your father. Having shown the world how low he will sink, I am content. Go in peace. You need not breed pirate babies for a living.”
Anger and suspicion that she was somehow being deceived…joy and hope that the weight of half a year would be lifted from her…shame at being rejected…worry what her father would do…
Hope won.
“I will obey Your Majesty’s command.”
Radgar raised her hand to his lips. “My loss, Princess. This was not a pleasant nor an easy task. Take us in, helmsman.”
The ship seemed to move itself on his command, like a circus horse, until the stern nudged the end of the jetty. He moved the steps for her and offered his hand. As if in a dream, she mounted to the dock and looked down at those incredibly green eyes gazing up at her. They seemed almost wistful, not the eyes of a monster. He said something flowery that she did not bother to hear.
She turned away and began to walk home. It was over. She was free. Fates knew what her father was going to say. He had offered his daughter to a pirate and the pirate had spurned her.
Ruby and Dove had already gone, but they no longer mattered. Some adventuresome pages and younger courtiers who had ventured partway down the slope of the bank were hastily scrambling back up in case the pirates came chasing them. As she neared the steps she glanced back and saw that the ship—whatever its name—had still not departed, but was again drifting aimlessly. Ahead of her the Guard had cleared the stair and the way was open right up to her father, who stood at the top, fists on hips, glaring at her. Would he throw her in the Bastion and put her on trial for treason? He must be sorely puzzled to know what the pirate king had been up to. So was she.
Unless…She spun around for another look at the longship, and at that exact instant a crossbow cracked.
In her nightmares long after, she heard the whistle of the bolt going over her head, and perhaps she did in reality. When she looked landward, her father had vanished. The howl that followed raised the hair on her neck. She had heard that same howl once before, long ago, when she was a child—when her mother died. It was the sound of bereaved Blades. Only this time it was much louder.
12
Seconds matter more than years do. One instant can change your whole life forever.
SIR DOG
Screaming in fury, Malinda raced back along the jetty until she stood at the end of the rain-soaked planks, facing the cold, gray waste of water and shaking her fist at the longship as it vanished into the mist, borne on the rhythmic beat of great fir wings. Its job was done. King Radgar had plumbed new depths of treachery. She had never been a bride, only bait. Why had her father been such a fool as ever to trust that monster?
She turned to survey the horrors. The notorious Blade Riot after the death of Goisbert IV had involved only a dozen or so Blades. Here almost the entire Guard had seen Ambrose struck down under the worst of all possible circumstances—death by deliberate violence, and not even from ambush but by an enemy they had already identified and failed to balk. The secular troops nearby would restrain the violenc
e, but they would need time to react and Blades were deadly fast.
A human tide was flowing over the lip of the bank as people tried to escape the slaughter, but few of them could keep their balance on the slope. Gaudily dressed men and women were rolling down like raindrops on a window, some of them already trailing blood. Among them went uniformed Blades and men-at-arms, even a few mounted lancers, and at the bottom they all splashed into the mud and water. Judging by the noise, there was worse bloodshed under way up in the park. The Blades, she supposed, were either trying to catch the departing pirate or punishing one another for what had happened or perhaps just lashing out in unbearable fury. She saw a couple of them manage to stop their own descent halfway and cling there, striking at anyone going past. A horse skidded down on its haunches, screaming in terror, with a lancer on its back and a Blade on top of him, sawing through his throat. The crowd in the water grew ever larger, boiling the mud to red foam. Some of the survivors were trying to reach the jetty, arms flailing as they fought their way through the ooze.
Too many people and horsemen converged on the staircase, turning it into a sluice, but then it collapsed altogether and slid down into a charnel heap, which at least blocked the end of the jetty from the demented Blades trying to catch the departed dragon ship. They might well attack Malinda herself—after all, the bolt had come from her direction and their madness did not need a reason.
So far the only other occupants of the jetty were some wounded courtiers, who had extricated themselves from the carnage at the bottom of the steps, but that was not going to last. Several men were scrambling up onto the boards from the water, and some of them were certainly Blades, still armed and crazy. How long until they stopped screaming and came to their senses?
All Blades were struck from the same die and hard to tell apart at a distance, but the first one to make it up looked like Foulweather. Fortunately he headed landward to slaughter other refugees. Sir Huntley scrambled up out of the river and went for him, both of them screaming.