To Ride a Rathorn

by P. C. Hodgell

  To Ride a Rathorn

  P. C. Hodgell

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  To Ride a Rathorn: Copyright © 2006 by P. C. Hodgell

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  Paper versions are available from

  Meisha Merlin Publishing Inc.

  www.meishamerlin.com

  Cover art by P. C. Hodgell

  All interior art work done by, and copyrighted by P. C. Hodgell

  ISBN: Hardcover 1-892065-72-X Soft cover 1-892065-73-8

  First Baen Ebook, April 2007

  Maps

  Chapter I: An Unfortunate Arrival

  1st of Summer

  I

  The sun's descending rim touched the white peaks of the Snowthorns, kindling veins of fire down their shadowy slopes where traces of weirding lingered. Luminous mist, smoking out of high fissures, dimmed the setting sun. A premonitory chill of dusk rolled down toward the valley floor like the swift shadow of an eclipse. Leaves quivered as it passed and then were still. Birds stopped in mid-note. A moment of profound stillness fell over the Riverland, as if the wild valley had drawn in its breath.

  Then, from up where the fringed darkness of the ironwoods met the stark heights, there came a long, wailing cry, starting high, sinking to a groan that shook snow from bough and withered the late wild flowers of spring in the upland meadows. Thus the Dark Judge greeted night after the first fair day of summer:

  All things end, light, hope, and life. Come to judgment. Come!

  On the New Road far below, a post horse clattered to a sudden stop while his rider dropped the reins and stuffed the hood of her forage jacket into her ears. It was said that anyone who heard the bleak cry of the blind Arrin-ken had no choice but to answer it. She had heard . . . but so had the rest of the valley. It probably wasn't a summons to her at all, the cadet named Rue told herself nervously. Surely, she had done nothing that required judgment, even at Restormir, even to Lord Caineron.

  Just following orders, sir.

  Sweat darkened her mount's flanks and he resentfully mouthed a lathered bit. They had come nearly thirty miles that day from the Scrollsmen's College at Mount Alban, a standard post run between keeps, but not so easy over a broken roadway strewn with fallen trees. They were near home now and the horse knew it, but still he hesitated, head high, ears flickering.

  The earth grumbled fretfully and pebbles jittered underfoot. Rue snatched up the reins to keep her mount from bolting. The damn beast ought to know by now that he couldn't outrun an aftershock. Three days ago, a massive weirdingstrom had loosened the sinews of the earth from Kithorn to the Cataracts. The Riverland had been shaken by tremors ever since but, surely, they must end soon.

  "Damn River Snake," she muttered, and spat into the water—a Merikit act of propitiation that the Kendar of her distant keep had adopted.

  The hill tribes believed that all quakes were caused by vast Chaos Serpents beneath the earth who must occasionally either be fought or fed to be kept quiet. Rue found nothing strange in such an idea but had the sense—usually—not to say as much to her fellow cadets.

  Memory made her wriggle in the saddle: "Stick to facts, shortie, not singers' fancies."

  That damned, smug Vant. Riverland Kendar thought that they were so superior, that they knew so much.

  But only the night before on Summer's Eve, a Merikit princeling had descended, reluctantly, to placate the great snake that lay beneath the bed of the Silver. Rue had seen the pair of feet, neatly sheared off at the ankles, which he had left behind.

  The horse jumped again as a silvery form tumbled down the bank and plopped onto the road almost under his nose. With a twist and a great wriggling of whiskers, the catfish righted itself on stubby pectoral fins and continued its river-ward trudge. If the fish were coming back down from the hills, thought Rue, the worst must be over.

  She kicked her tired mount into a stiff-legged trot. The sun sank. Dusk pooled in the reeds by the River Silver, then over-flowed them in a rising tide of night. Shadows seemed to muffle the clop of hooves and the jingle of tack.

  They crested yet another rise, and there before them lay Tentir, the randon college.

  Rue stared. All along the river's curve, the bank had fallen in, taking trees, bridge, and road with it. Parallel to the river, fissures scored the lower end of the training fields, some only yards in length, others a hundred feet or more, all half full of water reflecting the red sky like so many bloody slashes.

  Farther back, much of the outer curtain wall had been thrown down. The fields within lay empty and exposed.

  The college itself stood well back on the stone toes of the Snowthorns. Old Tentir, the original fortress, looked as solid as ever. It was a massive three-story high block of gray stone, slotted with dark windows above the first floor, roofed with dark blue slate. As if as an afterthought, spindly watch towers poked up from each corner. To the outer view at least, it was arguably the least imaginative structure in the Riverland. Behind it, surrounding a hollow square, was New Tentir, the college proper. While the nine major houses had once dwelt in similar barracks, changes in house size and importance over the centuries had allowed some to seize space from their smaller neighbors. When they could no longer expand outward, they had built upward. The result from this vantage point was an uneven roofline of diverse heights and pitches, rather like a snaggle-toothed jaw. At least none of the "teeth" seemed to be missing, although some roofs showed gaping holes. Rue sighed with relief: she had expected worse.

  But what was that, rising from the inner courtyard? Smoke?

  Rue's heart clenched. For a moment, she might have been looking down on Kithorn, the bones of its slaughtered garrison lying unclaimed and dishonored in its smoldering ruins. None of her generation had been alive then, eighty years ago, but no one in the vulnerable border keeps ever forgot that terrible story or the cruel lesson it had taught.

  To the Riverland Kencyr, however, it was only an old song of events far away and long ago. After all, no hill tribe would dare to try its strength against them.

  No. Not smoke. Dust. What in Perimal's name. . .?

  The post horse stomped and jerked at the reins, impatient. Why were they standing here? Why indeed? From behind came the click of hooves and a murmur of voices. The main party had almost caught up.

  Rue gave her mount its head. It took off at a fast, bone-jarring trot toward stable and home.

  II

  Inside Old Tentir, shafts of sunset lanced down through the high western windows and through holes in the roof. Dust motes danced in them like flecks of dying fire. The air seemed to quiver. A continuous rumble echoed in the near-empty great hall, punctuated by the crack of a single word shouted over and over, its sense lost in the general, muffled roar.

  A Coman cadet stood at the foot of the hall, before one of the western doors beyond which lay the barracks and training ward of New Tentir, the randon college. His attention was fixed on the purposeful commotion outside and his hands gripped the latch, ready to jerk the door open. He didn't hear Rue knock on the front door at the other end of the long hall, then pound.

  The unlocked door opened a crack, grating on debris, and Rue warily peered in, one hand on the hilt of the long knife sheathed at her belt. A quick glance told her that the hall was empty, or nearly so. Frowning, she pushed back the hood of her forage jacket from straw-colored hair as rough-cut as a badly thatched roof.

  "Tentir, 'ware company!" she shouted down the hall. "Somebody, come take this nag!"

  A moment later she
had stumbled over the threshold, butted from behind by her horse. She caught him as he tried to shove past, then led him into the hall, needing all her strength to hold him in check. In response, he laid back his ears and arched his tail. Turds plopped, steaming, onto flagstones already littered with broken slates from the roof, downed beams, and fallen birds' nests.

  Rue glanced around as she tramped on legs stiff from riding down the long hall that bisected Old Tentir. Disordered though it was, the wonder of it struck her anew. All her short life, she had dreamed of training at the randon college and now here she was, a cadet candidate sworn to the Highlord himself.

  But for how long, whispered fear in the back of her mind, given the events of the past week. Rue set her jaw. Here she was and here she would stay. Don't think of failure, she told herself. Don't think. Look.

  In the galleries of the second and third floors, rank on rank of silver collars seemed to float against the darkening walls. Suspended from each shining ring were the plaques that recorded the career of its owner—in what class graduated, what ranks and stations held, what honors won in which battles and in which slain: white edged for the debacle in the White Hills when Ganth Gray Lord had been overthrown, blue for the Cataracts early last winter when his son Torisen had stopped the Waster Horde, black for the misery of Urakarn in the Southern Wastes, from which so few had returned, and on, and on.

  Along the lower walls hung the banners of the nine major Kencyr houses whom most of the randon served. Leaping flame, stooping hawk, and snarling wolf on the south wall: Brandan, Edirr, and Danior. Gauntleted fist, two-edged sword, and devouring serpent on the north: Randir, Coman, and Caineron. Over the two western doors that opened into New Tentir were the stricken tree and the full moon of the Jaran and the Ardeth. Between them, in pride of place over the massive fireplace, hung the rathorn crest of the Knorth, highlords of the Kencyrath for thirty millennia.

  One tenth of that time had been spend here on Rathillien, the last in a series of threshold worlds held and subsequently lost in the Three People's long, bitter retreat from Perimal Darkling down the Chain of Creation.

  The college at Tentir dated from the ceding of the Riverland forts to the Kencyrath nearly a thousand years ago. Since that time, every cadet had added his or her stitch to the appropriate banner, building it up even as its back decayed against the dank walls. Some, such as tiny Danior, showed patches of stone wall between bare upper threads. Others, especially the Caineron, looked like ungainly, pendulous growths.

  Not unlike Caldane, Lord Caineron himself, thought Rue, grinning.

  Her horse stopped and tossed back his head, nearly jerking her off her feet. A moment later, a faint rumble came from under the earth and the hall shivered. More slates fell. Birds fled out the holes in the roof. The horse backed, eyes rolling white, jerking the reins out of the cadet's hand. Before she could recapture them, he had bolted across the hall and down the side ramp to the subterranean stables. The frightened bugling of horses already in stall welcomed him.

  Rue tramped up to the cadet by the door.

  "Didn't you hear my hail?" she demanded, having to raise her voice over the rumpus. She also had to look up, the other being a good head taller than she as most Kendar her age were. "D'you know that the outer ward is unguarded and the hall door is unlocked? I thought for sure the hill tribes had broken in and sacked the place. Where is everyone?"

  The Coman cadet shot her a distracted look, and winced: the young lord of his house, looking to his standard, had set the fashion of wearing a tiny, double-edged dagger as an earring, never mind that with any incautious move it stabbed its wearer. "I heard you, but this is my post. No, the guard isn't set. We aren't back to rights yet since the last big quake, nor yet since the one before that."

  "Huh," said Rue.

  As far as she could see, Tentir had gotten off easy. In contrast, sections of Mount Alban had been displaced all the way to the Southern Wastes, then north to Kithorn, before finally snapping back to their foundation. Parts were still missing. That morning, when Rue had left, the scrollsmen and women had been searching with increasing urgency for the upper levels' privy.

  The Coman flinched as something overhead shifted. Grit rattled down into his upturned face.

  "A week we spent," he said rapidly, "sweating in the fire timber hall below, expecting every minute for the whole keep to collapse on our heads. They said the old buildings were the safest and no one dared go out for fear of being swept away by the weirding, but still . . . all the new cadet candidates jostled together—Ardeth, Caineron, Knorth, the lot. . . No discipline. Fights. As for the Merikit, I wish they would come! Tentir is a proper hornet's nest, just waiting for some fool with a stick."

  "Haul, there! Haul!" roared a stentorian voice outside, over the general tumult.

  The Coman threw open the door. Cadets thundered past, rank on rank, feet booming on the boardwalk. They ran grimly in cadence to the now distinguishable shouts of the drill sergeants standing in the middle of the training square:

  "Run! Run! RUN!"

  The Coman waited for a momentary break between squads, then darted out. Rue, craning out the door, saw him reach a cadet who had tripped, fallen, and been trampled before his mates could scoop him up.

  "Down!" shouted the commander of the on-coming squad.

  Rescuer and victim fell flat. The ten-command hurdled over them two by two, a ripple of heads rising and falling like water over a hidden rock, lucky that none of them tripped. Then they were past. The Coman lurched to his feet, supporting the fallen cadet. They flattened themselves against the wall as the next squad thundered by, then staggered back to the door. Rue reached out to pull them in. All three collapsed in a heap on the hall's flagstones.

  "Get off me!" someone in the pile said thickly.

  They sorted themselves out with much cursing and some flaying of fists, one of which caught Rue on the ear. She staggered backward, shaking her head to clear it.

  "What's wrong with you people?" she demanded, but instinctively she knew: the former Lord Coman had been a staunch Caineron ally, but the new one, Korey, was wavering. Caldane was said to be furious about that, and the young cadet whom they had just rescued was a Caineron. Here, writ small, were all the tensions between their houses.

  The Coman shook the smaller boy until he stopped trying to fight and the teeth rattled in his head. Then he propped him against the wall.

  "This . . . has been going on . . . for hours," he panted, leaning against the doorpost. "Punishment run . . . ha! D'they want . . . to kill . . . us all?" For the first time, he regarded Rue closely. "You're that border brat . . . aren't you? The one that came down . . . from the Min-drear High Keep. One of Brier Iron-Thorn's ten-command."

  "Bloody Thorn," muttered the Caineron. His nose had begun to bleed. He groped for his token scarf and snuffled wetly into it. "Damn, bloody turn-collar. S'if M'lord Caldane wasn't good enough for her. . ."

  "He wasn't," said Rue, glaring. "Ten serves the Highlord now."

  "Your ten-command was out Merikit-hunting and went missing without leave during the storm." The Coman regarded her speculatively. "We thought you'd been swept away. Better if you had been. You're in dead trouble now, brat."

  Rue glowered. "We had things to do."

  "Tell that to the Commandant. I reckon he's about fed up with you Knorth. We all are. Crazy, the lot of you. D'you still check under your bed every night for Gerridon, or maybe for a darkling crawler like the one your precious highlord claims to have seen here last fall?"

  Rue set a pugnacious jaw. She knew that he was baiting her, that the Coman and the Knorth were on even less easy terms than the Coman and the Caineron, but this touched on her lord's honor.

  "What d'you mean, 'claims'? D'you think it couldn't happen? You Coman live at the southern end of the Riverland. Here in the north, things happen. We're closer to the Barrier than you seem to realize and what's behind that, eh? Perimal Darkling itself! Some days at High Keep, you can see Master Ger
ridon's House looming through the mist like it was about to push its way right through."

  Behind the now sodden scarf, the Caineron snorted. In that muffled sound was all the contempt with which his lord Caldane regarded all things darkling, or anything else not of immediate use to him.

  "You don't believe me? Well then, who d'you think was behind the Waster Horde, pushing, when we fought it last winter at the Cataracts? Darkling changers, that's who. Our own kind, once—Kencyr, fallen with the Master, warped in the shadows of his house."

  The Coman grinned. "So the singers of Mount Alban say, especially that creepy Ashe. If you want to label anyone 'darkling,' how about a dead woman who won't lie down, much less shut up? As for the rest, some people will swallow any singer's Lawful Lie. And I wouldn't brag about the Cataracts if I were you, brat: Folk may recall how the Highlord acquired a sister at the edge of the Escarpment—with a flash and a loud bang, apparently. He's the last pure-blooded Knorth, isn't he? So where did she come from? The whole thing's another Lawful Lie, if you ask me . . . and what are you smirking about?"