by Dave Duncan
“Ranter was coming on a bit strong.”
Ringwood thumped his spare fist on the rail. “I’m sorry, True! I had him under control in Brimiarde, but I have no hold over him out here.”
“Don’t worry about it. If I didn’t know I could take care of myself, I’d have stayed up a tree in Oakendown. There’s worse around than Ranter.”
“But most men will take no for an answer. No woman can resist a Blade.”
She thought she’d done very well these last few days, even if she had come to the end of her tether now. “That’s true of all Blades, is it?”
“So they say,” he muttered, staring out at the ocean.
It was no use dropping hints, because he invariably started blushing, which just made the problem worse. In that wind it was hard to tell if he was blushing now, but the curlew’s call grew even fainter, even sadder.
“I think what Ranter’s doing is despicable,” he said.
Try it and see how it goes, sonny. How did one handle a shy lover? If she came right out and asked him, he would be utterly humiliated. The curlew refrain showed that there was interest there. He was suppressing it, denying his longing, afraid even to dream.
“Just how did you keep him in line in Brimiarde?” she asked, knowing perfectly well. “He was almost civilized most of the time.”
Ringwood grimaced. “If he could get through the day without making a fool of himself, he got time off and money to go out and buy, you know, a few drinks.”
“I thought Blades didn’t drink much.”
“He wouldn’t be drinking them. Death, True! You know what I mean!”
“Your ward told me and I couldn’t believe it. It is the most childish thing I have ever heard of. I stopped being bribed with cookies when I was about five years old.”
Ringwood looked surprised and then grinned at the ocean. “I suppose it is.” He had been thinking of himself as the child, not Ranter. She sensed him bracing himself. “What do you like being bribed with now, mostly?”
“Sweet talk.”
He turned to stare at her. She stared right back. The curlew’s cry swelled to lark song. Whatever he was seeing, the pupils of his dark eyes were growing enormous. She wondered if hers had dilated, too. Bellman and Ranter had both taken themselves out of contention for the Trudy Stakes, but she had no regrets. She knew the one she wanted now. He was just proving a little more work than she had expected.
“That’s all?” He was surprised. He hadn’t known.
“That’s often all it takes.”
Suddenly nightingales were screaming love songs right overhead—he was a swordsman, trained to act instantly. There were even hints of red flames in the vicinity, too, but he was not ready to admit that yet.
“You mean like I tell you I love you? Would that be sweet talk?”
“If it’s true it would be.” The elementals were deafening her. Maybe some of them were hers.
He drew a deep breath. “I suppose I could tell Ranter you’re my girl and he’s to take a long walk.”
“Why don’t you?”
His pinkness was not from embarrassment now, just a fine healthy desire. “Then I would have the right to kiss you.” His grin was almost a leer. “It would be an obligation!”
She’d heard of Blade reflexes, but wooo! “It certainly would be.”
“I’m freezing out here.” He put an arm around her. He was blazing like a furnace, and she was astonished at how catching his excitement was. “You want to come below, True, and I’ll tell you how much I would like that?”
This was what she had wanted, wasn’t it?
“Love to!” she said.
Love, too? To love? Two love? True love? Love True?
• 5 •
The storm took them to Furret. Conqueror had been aiming for Boileau, but Furret would do. Bellman flashed King Athelgar’s passports and dropped coins on palms presented. That took care of the formalities.
Over the next few days, Manfred bought horses, with help from Trudy, who could signal when dealers were lying, even though she knew no Isilondian. The cost horrified Bellman. Six mounts, six spares, three sumpters, and the required tack ate up much of King Athelgar’s donation to his destitute cousin. They would have to travel fast if they wanted to keep eating all the way to Krupina. Days were growing shorter, soon there would be weather to worry about, and there was a war on—Dolorth had invaded Bohakia. Although hostilities so far were reported only in the north, not close to Trenko or Krupina, ripples would be driving up prices and making people suspicious of strangers. They must press on with all possible speed, yet still husband the horses.
Whenever possible they traveled with merchants or other honest wayfarers who welcomed the company of three well-spoken young swordsmen. They stayed in inns, barns, or cottages, anywhere a few coins would buy them shelter. Four times they were able to claim hospitality in the homes of rich persons to whom they had been given letters of introduction. Three of those were designated Chivian consuls and one of those three was not only a Chivian himself, but a knight in the Order, the legendary Sir Beaumont, who had won the King’s Cup five years earlier and still gave such fine instruction that the swordsmen insisted on tarrying there for days—to rest the horses, they said.
Commonly they rode in pairs, most often Ringwood and Trudy out front, then Johanna and Bellman, and Manfred and Ranter bringing up the rear. Manfred was the only one of them who could stand Ranter for long. The old man just chuckled around his tooth stumps and said, “Had a horse like him once. Nip? All the time! Take your eyes off him for a moment and he’d nip you. Curry him, give him oats, be as nice as you like and he’d nip. No warning. Hitting him did no good. Just had to put up with him. But spirits, he was a strong ’un! He’d run forever.”
After that they called Ranter “The Strong ’Un” behind his back.
Similarly, “The Lovebirds” meant Trudy and Ringwood, who could barely keep their hands off each other. Usually it meant them. Soon Bellman realized that sometimes the term was used otherwise.
Three days out of Furret, one baking hot afternoon, when he was riding alongside Johanna…
“Stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what?” he asked, startled.
“Like you are in love with me!” Then she blushed and looked away.
He said, “Surely you realize I’m just reacting to my release from Ironhall? I’ve been let out into the stud pasture at last. I have to fall in love with the first woman I meet. It’s inevitable. I’m just rutting. Pay no attention.”
He had already decided that this hurt too much to be that. If his agony was mere lust, would he not chase after all women equally, as Ranter did? Why pick on one who was already married? She was practically a queen, probably one of the greatest beauties in Eurania, and he was nothing at all.
“You’re very unkind,” she said.
“I am your servant, Your Grace. If I offend, dismiss me and I will go away.”
Silence.
“Johanna,” he said, “I swear to you that I will do everything I possibly can to help you recover your son and restore him to his rightful place. If your husband is still alive, I will likewise do all in my power to reunite you with him. Then I will ask to take my leave, for I cannot live in torment forever.”
It felt as if several years went by before she whispered, “And if Rubin is not alive?”
“If you are ever so desperate that a penniless, homeless lover is of use to you, then you will at least have one of those. He will be true.”
“And in the meantime?”
“We do nothing,” he said. The words did not come easy. “We must not, for Frederik’s sake.”
“What is Frederik to you?” she said angrily.
“Nothing, except that he is everything to you and your happiness is everything to me.”
She said, “Thank you,” and did not speak again for a long time.
A couple of weeks later, in a crowded, raucous tavern reeking with tallow
smoke, Bellman went to the bar to refill his beaker and there met Ranter with his arm around a blowsy woman. Ranter was as close to drunk as a bound Blade could get, which wasn’t very, but in his case was enough to reduce his already tiny social skills to absolute zero.
“Bellman!” he said. “Bellboy?”
Bellman eyed him with disgust. “What do you want?”
The Blade laughed. “Same as you do. Difference is I’m going to get it and you’re not! I get it every night and you never do. What’s the matter with you, Master Jack? Bellman no ball man? My ward wants you. Talks in her sleep about you. Maybe I’ll have to give her what she needs, if you can’t. One word from you and she’d have her clothes—”
Blades were superhumanly fast. Bellman was not a Blade, but only his sight had failed him, not his reflexes. His fist impacted Ranter’s jaw with an audible crack, and only a bulwark of a dozen men behind the Blade stopped him from sprawling flat on the spittle-spotted floor. No one could knock out a Blade, of course. “Unconscious Blade” was an oxymoron. The men behind him crumpled under the impact, but Ranter himself bounced back upright instantly, with Invincible in his hand.
A score of throats screamed in alarm and the crowd exploded away, leaving an open space around the combatants. Bellman reached for Bravado—and froze…
“Stay away from Blades and Sabreurs,” Ansel had warned him. He had meant, Stay away from fights. Bellman should not be armed at all, but experience had quickly taught him the difference it made. Without a sword at his thigh he was only a clerk or servant; with one he was a gentleman, accorded respect and thus better able to serve Johanna. Now he was trapped. He had begun the fight; if he drew, Ranter could kill him and claim self-defense.
Then Ringwood was between them. “Put up your sword!” he screamed at his deputy. His voice lacked mature sonorous authority. In fact, it was positively shrill, but he prevailed. Ranter complied because he could not endanger his ward by committing public murder.
Shamed, Bellman slunk away.
“Coward!” Ranter shouted. Now that the crisis had passed, the onlookers jeered in disappointment.
Later, when his blood was off the boil, Bellman sought out Ringwood and apologized. By then Ringwood had put Ranter on duty, leaving himself free to wedge Trudy in a corner and feed her sugarplums he had bought. He shot the penitent a dark glance.
“It won’t happen again?”
“No, Leader,” Bellman said. “It won’t happen again.”
“All right.” The Commander went back to his foreplay.
• 6 •
From Isilond they cut south into Ritizzia, and from Ritizzia northeast into a patchwork of petty principalities, most of them nominally parts of Fitain, all of them capable of making Bellman’s purse bleed at their borders. He was seriously worried about finances by the time they came to Blanburg. He still hoarded the bankers’ letters Grand Master had given him as return fare, but now he knew that they would not be enough to see everyone back to Chivial, if that was ever required.
Most days they took a break at noon, to rest the horses and themselves, and that day they settled in the shade of some oak trees on a knoll carpeted with shrubs and close-cropped brown grass. The golden valley was hazed with the smoke of burning stubble. Grapes and grain had been harvested; herds were being driven down from the hills for culling. The war had not come here yet, but the clouds were no longer the clouds of summer, and early snow had dusted the summits that towered ahead of them. To the north, on a hillock not too far from the river, stood a castle with a walled town draped around it like a skirt of lime wash and terra cotta.
Trudy and Ringwood lay side by side, almost indecently close. Ranter, too, was stretched out on his back, although strategically so, blocking the approach to his ward. Bellman and Johanna were sitting with very little space between them. Manfred chewed steadily off by himself, keeping an eye on the horses. Bees bumbled and hummed in the undergrowth.
Johanna gestured vaguely. “That is Blanburg town, capital of Blanburg the principality. The palace is the seat of Rubin’s cousin, the Prince.”
“So finally,” Bellman said, “we should be able to find out some news. We’ll learn what’s been happening in Krupina if we have to go and ask the Prince himself.” Not that they would, of course.
There followed a thoughtful silence, almost nostalgic. A chapter of their lives was about to end. They were all lean and brown as peasants, and in the case of Ranter and Johanna, weeks of sun had bleached their hair to silver. The fancy clothes they had chosen so hurriedly that last morning in Nocare were faded and threadbare—except for Ringwood’s, because he had grown out of his originals and almost out of their replacements, too. Back in Ironhall, Master of Rituals would have hauled him off to the octogram and conjured him to stop sprouting.
Manfred, who had worked miracles with the horses, was grinning toothlessly at the thought of being reunited with his family soon. The swordsmen were silent. Now the feinting was over and they might have to die. The Grand Duchess, sometimes Duke, who had curried her own horse and done her own laundry without a word of complaint, might very soon be reunited with her husband. It was not impossible. The very absence of news about Krupina suggested that Rubin had hung onto his coronet after all. Then Bellman would have to bow low and withdraw, leaving only his heart behind.
Or her husband might be dead, but he refused to torment himself with hope.
“How far to Krupina?” Trudy asked sleepily.
Johanna shrugged. “Depends how we go. South and around the Siril Lakes to Zolensa would take at least a week. Or we can continue north from Blanburg to Trenko and come in by Pilgrim Pass. Maybe five days, yes, Manfred? I’d rather not go past Vamky. Straight in through Brikov would be quickest, if Manfred can find the way for us. Can you, Manfred?”
He chuckled. “With my eyes shut, my lady.”
“You see,” the Duchess continued, “there are only two real possibilities. One is that my husband still rules, in which case I collect our son and go home to him. More likely he is dead, Volpe is Grand Duke, and Karl is Marquis of Krupa. In that case I collect my son and go back to Chivial to accept the sanctuary Queen Tasha generously offered.”
This was the best of all futures for Bellman. Johanna had finally accepted that she could not overthrow a usurper singlehandedly, and that a dispossessed son was better than a dead one. The dark side of that future was that she was still nominally a duchess, and Queen Tasha might cut costs by marrying her off to someone.
“What if Duke Rubin is alive and in jail?” Ringwood asked, rising to one elbow.
Johanna shrugged. “Or if the nobility rejected Volpe’s usurpation and civil war is brewing? Every possibility, however unlikely, requires me to visit Brikov, because that is where I left Frederik. Count János is an ally and he will know what has been happening these last seven months.”
“I can tell you that,” Ranter told the sky. “Talked with a band of merchants from Krupina last night. Got all the news.”
Ringwood said, “You what?” and sat up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Telling you now. If you want to hear.”
“Where did this happen?” the Duchess asked sharply.
Ranter yawned, still prone. “In the cathouse. Bunch of us were sitting around in our—”
“Ranter!” his leader shouted. “Tell us now!”
“Yes, Leader.” He sat up, smirking. He counted one on his fingers, glancing around to watch reactions. “Grand Duke Rubin still rules.” Two. “Grand Duchess Johanna died in an accident last spring.” Three. “Three days from now, Grand Duke Rubin is going to marry Lady Margarita, daughter of Margrave Ladislas of Trenko.”
“If this is your idea of a joke—”
“He speaks the truth,” said Trudy. “Doesn’t mean the merchants did.”
Bellman took Johanna’s hand. She was shaking.
“A stepmother for my son?” she demanded. “Where? I mean the wedding. In Trenko?”
“I
asked that,” Ranter said smugly. Somehow he was even more obnoxious when he was right than when he was wrong. “In Krupa.”
“Weddings are usually held at the bride’s home.”
But there’s going to be an enthronement right after, see? The last duchess never got enthroned, so the Margrave insisted on it this time, they said. I think they were just gossiping about that, but the big affair’s in Krupa on the fourth of Tenthmoon. That’s three days from now, isn’t it?”
“Three days!” Johanna whispered.
“Say!” Ranter said. “Wonder what’ll happen if you turn up at the wedding?”
Ringwood groaned. “Idiot! It would be over our dead bodies. Good report, but you should have told me the moment you got back last night.”
“Too tired.” Leer.
“We’ll discuss that later.”
Silence. Bellman deliberately said nothing. He had been leader ever since they left Chivial, mainly because Johanna deferred to him, but from now on Ringwood must carry the burden, whether he wanted it or not. They were in the battle zone. They had just gone on war footing.
But it was to Bellman that Johanna turned. “Was I wrong? Was it Rubin who came to Fadrenschloss after the accident, not Volpe? Has Rubin been trying to kill me all this time?” Her voice rose shrilly. “And kill his own son? Is that it? If he has no heir, he’s a better marriage prospect for Ladislas’s girl, so she can breed him another? Is he such a monster? Did he plot to put us both on that coach and then drive it off a cliff ? With two other people? Just to marry that…child?”
“Shush, love! You were married to him for years. Is he such a monster?”
“No! Never. I know he has faults, but he’s kind, and gentle, really.”
“And,” Bellman said, “even if he did murder his first two wives, he wouldn’t dare risk killing you as well. Three in a row would be too much. And his own son as well? No, Volpe’s the family killer. Volpe had the motive and the means. I still think he’s behind it all.”