But Chul shook his head at their argument. “Brannagh,” he said, somewhat apologetically. Then he pointed toward the old woman and shrugged. “Sunset tomorrow,” he added.
Creda nodded her understanding. “But even if you run all night and day, you’ll not get there by next-night.”
At this, Tevy stretched his legs. “You know your way, aye?”
Chul nodded and pointed roughly southeast.
“Aye,” said Tevy, putting his arm around the boy’s shoulders and drawing him away from the fire. “But know you that a town lies south along this road by ten mile? There’s a tavern lies hard by the road, aye? A tavern for travelers. Outside such a place, a trick Dhanani lad like you might find, shall we say, means of making the trip shorter?” He patted Chul’s shoulder and led him back to the fire. “Think on it, lad.”
Town. Tavern. He had no idea what Tevy was saying, but he grinned and nodded. “Creda,” he said, “thank you.” Then he turned to the rest. “Thank you.” And he ran off down the road to the south.
Seven
Castle Brannagh
“Slow.” Renda tapped the flat of her practice sword against the other knight’s mail. “Again.”
The knight nodded as they disengaged. But this time, when he saw her approaching, he did not stand straight on and keep his sword in front of him as he had before. Slowly, deliberately, he switched his feet and lifted his sword upright at his back shoulder, clearly offering his other shoulder to her sword in challenge.
She studied her opponent’s posture, his focus. He no longer followed every motion she made with one of his own; she was glad she had broken him of that habit. Now he rarely moved himself at all, and then, only slightly, just a small shift of his footing. Good. He had begun to see the folly of perfection.
But in the small motions, in the way he held his sword, she could see that he still did not completely understand what this position gave him or how he might use it. Strengths it had in plenty. Renda smiled behind her visor and flexed her fingers around her weapon. Likewise weaknesses.
At the first flicker of movement from her he had taken his step forward and snapped his blade into the space between them, thinking to toss off the expected collarbone strike and put his sword at her throat as he had watched her do countless times. Ah, assumptions, she thought to herself.
She had not struck at his collarbone, nor did she stay and wait for his lunge at her throat. His eyes widened to see her suddenly at an angle to him, behind his overcommitted strike, with her sword slicing down toward his unprotected knee. He hopped out of the way, managing at the same time to force his weapon down against its own arc to stop her stroke and keep it from following him back.
She could not help but be impressed at his sheer strength. Rather than push her blade against it or try to break through it, she allowed his deflection to turn her blade away and used that power to speed her sword through its own arc around her head to cut toward his shoulder again.
He flipped his sword upright and barely managed to knock her strike away. She’d turned the game on him again, and he was once again on the defensive, completely at her mercy. Except that in the next breath, he leapt in to slash at her, and this wild, artless fury was enough to make her retreat.
“Yes,” she cried, backing steadily away under his advance. She kept the tip of her sword almost still between them, moving the hilt only enough to hold off his driving attack, a fast, efficient motion that did not tire her.
She lulled him into a rhythm of strike-counterstrike until she saw that he was anticipating her blocks. Then she broke abruptly out of the rhythm to drive him back with a powerful attack of her own.
They had switched roles again. She was attacking, driving him backward, and he was defending. She watched his sword bound back and forth in imitation of what he had just seen her do, trying to catch hers at each strike, but he moved too much and had to fight the sword into position with every movement. Thus he was always just a little too late for a riposte. Worse, his reliance on his strength had exhausted him. He needed to quiet his movement and regain his composure, as she’d taught him. At last he found himself at the edge of the practice floor, exhausted and gasping for breath, and he gratefully lowered his sword in surrender.
“Do not yield now!” she shouted, still swinging her sword at him. “In my attack, I am most vulnerable.”
He raised his sword into hers barely in time to deflect her next blow. He parried another blow away, and another, but his speed and power were flagging. He was defending again. It almost seemed he was plotting his own defeat again. Why did they always do that? She pressed him harder.
“You cannot win whilst you defend! Come, strike to my heart!”
He offered a weak stab at her side.
“Slow!” she shouted, whipping her blade past each of his ears in a quick flourish. “Again!”
This time, he jabbed and nearly touched her armor before she whirled out of his reach and knocked his sword aside. Finally, with utter disregard for his own defense, he thrust in clumsily to clank his sword against her mail. And found her tip at his throat.
“Well done, Lord Kerrick!” she cried when they had disengaged. She stripped the practice helmet and coif from her head and beamed at him. “Well done, indeed.”
“To think I once held my swordsmanship in some esteem,” he laughed, still out of breath. He unbuckled the straps on his helmet. “For all that I have lain countless enemy in the ground, I cannot so much as gain a clean touch on you.”
“You have. But you fight as if you still fight demons.” She watched Kerrick take off his helmet, just as she always did. It seemed to her patently unfair that while her own hair hung down her back in a miserable sweaty braid, his fell in damp chestnut curls about his shoulders. How was it that fresh off the sparring floor, a man should look so…so…
She noticed the amused look in his blue-gray eyes. She was staring. Ignoring the heat rising in her cheeks, she picked up the practice swords and dismissed the thought before it could fully form.
“Truly,” he went on, “it’s occasion for fanfare and feasting should I but graze your armor.” He took a clean towel from the rack near the door and dried the sweat from his flushed face and his hair. “And this, as you kill me.”
“Hardly so.” She bound the oilcloths around the two practice swords and placed them into the glass cabinet.
They had this same discussion in one form or another every time they practiced together, but she didn’t mind. Of all the knights, only a few were any challenge to her even with practice weapons, and none but Kerrick kept a sense of humor about it.
“No, truly,” he smiled and tossed the towel to her. “Saramore, Amara, Peringale, these I defeat regularly; at least,” he allowed, “as often as they defeat me. But not you.”
“Nonsense.” She blotted her braid. “You defeated me just now.”
“Ah, but I did not live to tell about it!” he laughed. “Survival, I suppose, should be my next goal.”
She smiled. “And a worthy goal, indeed.”
“One of many,” he mused. He leaned back against the wall to watch her dry her hair and folded his arms. “You are a treasure, lady.”
“I, sir?” She self-consciously folded the towel she’d been using—his towel––and set it on the shelf. “Not so. I smell of sweat and sword oil, and I hear I have a bad temper.”
“Yet even so, sweat, sword oil and bad temper be damned,” he laughed, “An your father would allow it, I should marry you on the spot.”
She looked up at him in surprise, and his joking tone took on a shade of shame hanging in the silence of the practice hall. Marriage? This was something new. The whole conversation had just become highly inappropriate. She was, after all, his commander.
“Lord Kerrick,” she said slowly. “Such jest is…” She shook her head. “The house is in mourning, after all.”
His smile faded. “Lady Renda, if you would marry me,” he said earnestly, “then it is no jest.�
� A moment later, he was beside her, his hand on hers. “And I should count myself the most blessed man in all Syon for it.”
She did not move, did not breathe. She had no training for this. She found herself on the defensive, trying to quiet the strange panic rising in her mind, scrambling to regain her composure.
“At last, I seem to have caught you off guard, my lady.” He laughed gently and looked into her eyes. “Renda, as my commander, as a knight, I speak of you in the same breath with Amara and Saramore, with Lord Daerwin himself, but you must know…” He looked down with a sad smile. “Sometimes, I wonder that you cannot feel it when our blades touch, all these hours we spend together. I wonder that you cannot hear it in my voice or see it in my eyes.” He kissed her hand. “Or here.”
She drew her hand away self-consciously. What was he saying?
He shrugged. “Is it any wonder I can never defeat you?”
For all the gods, her heart was racing, and she was suddenly desperate for space, for air, for someone to rescue her from this strange conversation. He was no danger to her, yet her hands were shaking, especially the hand he had just kissed. Why did she suddenly feel like an awkward child around this knight who was one of her sworn brothers?
When she made no reply, he laughed self-consciously. “That’s not to say that I could defeat you otherwise, mind you. Oh dear, this is not going at all as I had planned. Let me try again. Dear Renda.” He looked at her and smiled. “I know I am but one of your father’s lesser knights, and I’d be a fool to think I deserve your favor over the countless other noblemen who are no doubt vying for your hand, but I flatter myself that you do not abhor my company,” he said, encouraged by the hint of a smile that crossed her features.
No, she did not abhor his company. She would not have him think she did. The truth was that she often sought him amongst the other knights more than just for want of a good natured sparring partner—more even than simply for his sense of humor or insight. But beyond that, she had never given the matter much thought. She had never allowed herself to consider him in any light other than as one of her father’s knights, and now he spoke to her of marriage. Everything was changing so quickly.
“Now, I admit, I have very little just now,” he went on, “but I am my father’s heir since…”
She looked down. His elder brother, Dwen, had fallen in the same battle where Roquandor had died. He was one of the first of her father’s knights given to her command for exactly that reason.
“Renda, I offer you lands and title, the title of Viscountess of Windale. Sooner rather than later, as it happens. My mother sent word that my father…” His brave smile wavered. “Thus my proposal now, rather than at a more suitable time. But talk of illness and death ill accompanies talk of marriage.” He looked into her eyes. “It comes to this, and only this. If you would so honor me as to be my bride, I will dedicate my life to your happiness.”
So many changes, so quickly. Moments ago, they had been two knights sparring on the practice floor, and now she felt this strange tension between them, this uncertainty. No matter what she said, everything between them would change.
“Kerrick, I truly do not know what to say.”
“Why, anything at all, as long as you don’t say no.” He grinned. “I know this must seem quite sudden.”
“Beg pardon, my lady,” called one of the maids from the doorway. She knocked and pushed the door open enough to peek in before she curtseyed to both knights. “A Dhanani rider has arrived for you bearing this message.” The maid could not conceal her smile as she presented the sealed scroll to Renda. “He waits in the sheriff’s audience chamber. Shall I keep him company?”
Grateful for the interruption, Renda took the scroll from the girl and looked to see her own name scrawled in bold strokes across the case. Then she turned it over to see the seal. A single arrowhead imprint in brown wax, surely the mark of Aidan. “Offer him food and drink, all he wants,” she called to the maid without looking up, “and bid him wait. I may have a reply.”
The maid smiled and curtseyed again and closed the door behind her.
A message from Aidan. She smiled. She had not seen him since the end of the war, nor had she heard from him since the last of the Dhanani victory banquets. He had been busy with his tribe, renewing ties and soothing resentments, delivering women of their infants and easing the pains of the dying. She turned the scroll over in her hand, grateful for the dark green ribbon wound around it. The ribbon was the traditional Dhanani assurance of good news, and good news was particularly welcome just now. But how very odd that he should have sent a horse and rider. Why had he not come himself?
She heard the door open again and looked up to see that Kerrick was leaving.
“Lord Kerrick,” she called stupidly, not wanting him to leave unacknowledged and not sure what else she might say. Not sure what she felt. She managed an apologetic smile. “Must you go?”
“Surely I have embarrassed myself enough for one day.” But his tone was, as always, good-natured, and he grinned at her. “In truth, I must take my watch within the hour, and you have matters of your own to attend. Now, at least,” he shrugged, “you know my mind. Soon I hope to know yours. Fear not, Lady. We will speak of this again.” With that and a salute, he left her alone in the chamber to read her message.
* * *
Chul sat at the long wooden table in the servants’ dining chamber, the fire warming his back while he heaped his plate high with food from the serving trays. Occasionally his eyes would look upward at the heavy stone sky that enclosed him or at the doors leading out. One led to the kitchen where the kindly old woman, Greta, shouted orders to the maids who kept stopping their work to look in on him, and one to another part of the castle he had yet to see.
“And set more bread to rise, or there’ll be none for the knights’ supper. Well?” he heard the old kitchen matron say behind the kitchen door, “Quick, now! The boy’s hungry!”
Then she threw open the door with her hip, plates in both hands.
“Oh, the poor darling,” Greta clucked at him, “you must not have had so much as a crust of bread the whole way! A growing boy must eat! There now.”
Chul smacked his lips as she plopped two plump roast quail on his plate with a generous ladling of cherry cognac sauce and an ample helping of something she had called soufflé.
Chul looked up at her gratefully, his mouth still stuffed overfull with hot buttered bread and the last poached egg, even while he grabbed at the roast quail. He had never seen so much food in one place, and he doubted he would again. “Good,” he grunted in Syonese around his food, nearly spilling it back onto his plate.
“Oh,” laughed Greta with obvious pleasure, “but don’t slow down now, lad. I’ve roast leg of lamb on the fire, and for dessert, some Amaranth St. Guiron, lovely, lovely, steamed in brandywine with crunchy little trunkala berries all over the top, delightful.” Then she patted his shoulder and picked up the empty serving plates to carry back to the kitchen.
“Chul?”
The boy looked up in surprise, having just lifted the quail to his lips and taken a messy bite.
He was suddenly conscious of the cherry sauce dribbling from his chin. In the doorway stood an Invader woman unlike any he had ever seen. She wore her long dark bronze hair in a style like those of the other Invader women, in curious twirling vines and waterfalls about her head and shoulders, so completely unlike the cropped hair of the tribeswomen that he could not help but stare. She wore one of those impossible gowns that drug the ground about her feet, and at first glance, she looked like the rest of the Invader women he had seen. But even a boy of fifteen could see she was not like them. Her eyes were like those of the eagle, he saw, amber and clear, farseeing. Her young face was strong and wise, and it spoke to him of honor, of courage. Of grief.
Renda of Brannagh is fully as valiant a warrior as our own chief.
But she looked so different from the dirty armored knight who had come back to the trib
es with Aidan. Still, the eyes were unmistakable.
“L–Lady Renda?” he ventured.
She smiled and bowed her head graciously. “Welcome to Castle Brannagh.”
Chul hesitated. The proper greeting from a manchild to a warrior was to cross the backs of his hands over his forehead, an acceptance of all the warrior would teach him. Obviously such a greeting to a tribeswoman would be a dire insult. On the other hand, Lady Renda was not a tribeswoman, and she was properly a warrior. But since Aidan had ridden with her, she probably understood something of their ways, and she might take offense. Either way. He looked away, hopelessly entangled.
Greta came to the boy’s rescue from the kitchen with new platters full of neatly carved roast lamb and her famous Amaranth St. Guiron.
“Ah,” Renda laughed, “I see Greta has found someone to feed at last.”
“Indeed, my lady,” crinkled the old woman. “Oh, it’s not since Master Roquandor was a boy, gods rest him, that I’ve seen such a good eater!” She settled the platters right beside Chul and began piling more food on his plate. Then she looked up at Renda. “Oh, but there’s plenty more, child! Sit you down, and I shall fetch you a plate!” And then, just as suddenly as she had entered, Greta bustled from the room.
“Chul,” said Renda, taking a seat at the table. “You know that night will fall within the hour.”
The boy nodded, nibbling at the quail’s absurdly tiny leg.
“So.” She crossed her hands atop the table. “I have just come from my father’s chambers, and he and I are agreed. We should be pleased to keep you as our guest tonight at Brannagh. Tomorrow after breakfast, Gikka will come to fetch you, as Aidan has requested. Would that suit you?”
The boy looked at her a moment, then glanced at the table heaped with food. He nodded vigorously.
“Splendid.” She drew a sealed scroll from her sleeve and held it out to a maid. “See that this message reaches Graymonde Hall tonight.”
But the girl did not seem to hear her. Chul looked up in the brief, awkward silence to see the maid simply staring at him, her thoughts transparent on her face, so much so that he suddenly felt undressed. Aidan had warned him that Invader women reacted strangely to Dhanani men—strangely, he had said, but not unpleasantly. He’d tried to press Aidan for details, but the shaman had only smiled an odd and almost wistful smile. Still, Aidan had cautioned him to stay clear. While Invader women were very friendly to Dhanani men, or more likely because of it, Invader men tended to be jealous and distrustful of them.
Sword of Hemlock (Lords of Syon Saga Book 1) Page 11