Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)
Page 40
Brengarra’s black tor and yellow lightning bolt slashed across the front of the gray surcoat. It could have belonged to a household guard. But, no, this was velvet, not wool. And it was small enough to belong to a woman or a boy nearly grown. Laral’s heart sank. “Sedrik.”
The others gathered close. “Sedrik, your squire?” asked Tarsyn, peering over Kalla’s shoulder. “Sedrik, the king’s redheaded cousin?”
“Yours, too?”
Tarsyn gave a gray-faced nod and turned away.
Laral might’ve thought the surcoat had been merely tossed aside, an unwanted burden to the squire, but the blood told him it wasn’t so. The stain darkened the right shoulder and spread halfway down the back. No cuts or holes to indicate a blade to the body. A head or neck wound, then. Like the miller’s oldest son, Sed was probably trying to fight what he couldn’t see. To defend his lady and her children.
“How old was he?” asked Kalla softly.
“Fifteen. He and Hal flipped for it. Who would go with me to Aralorr and who would stay. Hal’s coin was weighted.” Laral’s fist knotted white-knuckled in the velvet. “Is that what life is? A coin toss?” His voice sounded like a growl to his own ears. Kalla took a step back. Drys looked at his toes. Laral reared back an arm and launched the wadded surcoat for the sky. “This isn’t a game, curse you!”
He waited for the sky to thunder back, but it didn’t.
Nobody had the heart to ride much farther that day. A grim discovery after a night in the saddle sapped everyone’s strength. They rode a mile or so past the last of the firepits and took cover inside an abandoned woolshed. Clumps of yellowed fleece littered the corners. Past the stalls and chutes, several stoves lined the wall beneath large open windows. In better days, they had helped with the extraction of lanolin, but today they heated a rasher of bacon and boiled a pot of oats. Drys hummed tunelessly as he flipped the bacon on the burner. Kalla shoved another stick of wood into the iron belly, then latched the lid shut. Tarsyn opened one of his pilfered jars of marmalade and ate it with a spoon he dug from his pocket. After Drys’s comment, he didn’t offer to share his luxuries.
“Good Goddess, boy,” Drys chortled, “you carry a silver spoon wherever you go?”
Tarsyn opened his mouth, but Kalla held up a hand. “Don’t fall for his baiting. Drys likes a fight. He’s particularly surly on an empty belly. Just like all babies.”
“Hey!” Drys cried.
“Well, shut your mouth, then.”
Drys shoved a tin plate at her and slapped a slice of bacon onto it, letting the sizzling and popping of the fat do his swearing for him.
“More,” Kalla said.
Drys narrowed his eyes at her.
“For Laral.”
Laral couldn’t bring himself to stand up and fetch the food for himself. He sat against the wall with his forearms draped over his knees, hearing the bouncing of that weighted coin. Kalla offered a taut smile of condolence as she lowered the plate. He took a bite to appease her, but he had no appetite.
“Tarsyn?” asked Kalla, digging a second plate from the packs. “Bacon? Oats’ll be a bit.”
“I’m fine,” the boy said and spooned out more marmalade.
Laral groaned. “Eat the bacon, kid. You gonna survive on marmalade and wine?”
Tarsyn’s black eyebrows jumped. Was he affronted or amused? “I brought hard sausage and a waterskin from the city. Paid a fair price for them, too, with the panic going on. You don’t have to provide me with anything, Your Lordship. I’m just a lone traveler riding in the same direction as you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Laral snapped.
“I won’t be a burden,” the boy insisted. “I can take care of myself.”
“Yes, yes, you’re a fine forager. I saw for myself. Drys, dish him up some hot food. And don’t argue with me, kid.”
Tarsyn ducked his eyes, but he wore half a grin. “Yessir.”
While they ate, Laral asked, “Drys, you able to stay awake for a couple more hours?”
His friend shrugged, reluctant, and Laral detected exhaustion in the gesture.
“Good. We’ll sleep while you keep watch. Then we’ll trade.”
“What good will we do?” Kalla asked.
Sleep pressed heavily across Laral’s eyes. The bacon tasted like wood, and the oats clogged in his throat, but he ate every morsel because Andy and his girls needed him to. “Drys has to sleep sometime. I figure with three pairs of eyes keeping a lookout, one of us might spot something unnatural in time. We’ll head out early afternoon, make a few more miles.” The days had grown long at least; they would make good headway before sundown.
After they washed the cooking utensils and bundled away the food, Laral curled up under a blanket. He was asleep before he’d made his head comfortable on a pile of burlap sacks. He didn’t even care that under the late spring sun, the woolshed had begun to swelter. What felt like minutes later, Drys shook him awake. Laral jolted upright. “Trouble?”
Drys shook his head. Red rimmed bloodshot eyes. “My turn.”
Laral hoisted himself to his feet, folded his blanket, and nudged Tarsyn with a toe. The boy alone, it seemed, had come equipped with a proper bedroll, though the heat inside the barn drove him to sleep atop it. After Laral had fallen asleep, the boy had changed out of his elaborate court garments and into a sensible hunting outfit of dark green suede and cool linen. The lace at his cuffs was still too long for purely practical purposes, however, and the brown riding boots still rose past his knees, but at least they didn’t need bows to stay in place. At Laral’s nudge, Tarsyn scrambled from his bedroll as if running from a nightmare. His hand went for the scrawny sword on his belt, then wakefulness dawned across his eyes. His sword hand rose to the crick in his neck instead.
“I dreamed it was tomorrow, and we were too late.”
Laral couldn’t afford to think about that. “Kalla? You awake?”
She groaned and rolled stiffly to her knees. “The older I get, the more I hate the saddle.”
“Tarsyn, see if there’s a way onto the roof. Kalla, we’ll watch from those platforms.” In the corners of the woolshed, the floor was raised to provide places for storage. Laral shifted crates and tools aside. The slats that made up the wall had spaces between them, wide enough to fit a couple fingers through. Glimpsed through them, the highway cut a glaring white path east and west. There should’ve been merchants, farmers, herds of sheep, wealthy travelers in shiny carriages stirring up dust along the road, but there was nothing.
A pack of dogs trotted across an overgrown pasture, showing no signs of alarm. The only sound came from Tarsyn thudding around in the rafters, trying to find access to the roof.
Laral and Kalla traded platforms, in the hopes that fresh eyes might see what the other missed. A short while later Tarsyn stomped down a rickety flight of stairs. “No luck. Just more storage.”
“Come stand with me, then,” Kalla said.
“How do we know what to watch for?” Tarsyn asked, peering through the slats.
Unless the ogres laying siege to Brynduvh had revealed themselves, the boy had yet to slap eyes on one.
“You’ll know them when you see them,” Kalla vowed.
Laral strode off for a new vantage point. If he was any judge, those two would accomplish more chatting than watching. He made a slow circuit of the woolshed, pausing every few feet to peer through the slats. Wind in the grass, shadows of pigeons flicking past. Nothing suspicious except the lack of people.
Half an hour later, Kalla and Tarsyn were still in the same corner. Laral approached them to break them up and send them to new stations, but their conversation caught his attention.
“… garra I said so, but Sedrik was a bastard,” Tarsyn muttered in a petulant fashion. “I mean that figuratively, of course. Nearly six years younger than me, but he never spoke to me unless he had some clever new joke about…,” moody shrug, “…my parentage.”
Given Tarsyn’s red-brown complexion,
Laral guessed his father had been one of the Mahkah-pi. Though how a well-bred lady and sister to a queen had come into contact with one of the nomads was anyone’s guess.
Kalla was well-mannered enough to avoid prying into that subject. “You knew Sedrik well, then?”
He replied with a grunt and a shrug. To his credit, he leant on a crate so he could peer through the slats while he talked. Or maybe he just preferred to avoid Kalla’s eye. “I was kept separate from the legitimate sons and daughters. I was the one they didn’t talk about. After Arryk was enthroned, I heard that he was placing his cousins and aunts and uncles in good positions. I never expected him to consider me. I’m not fit to lick his boots, but he’s never shown me anything but kindness.”
Under Laral’s toes, the wooden floor creaked; Tarsyn turned and startled at his nearness. “Sorry, m’ lord, I didn’t mean…”
“It’s none of my business if you liked your cousin or not. And none of us are fit to lick the White Falcon’s boots. On that we agree.” He cracked open the barn’s great sliding door, peered past each corner of the barn. A delightful breeze swept the sweat off his forehead.
“…king fast friends?” he heard Kalla ask.
Tarsyn replied with another eloquent grunt. “Lord Brengarra is his fast friend. Me? His favor has been invaluable, no doubt, but even that can’t change the way the world works. I speak the words, smile the smiles, play the games, whatever I must do to make a place for myself. Seems I have to work ten times harder to keep my footing than proper heirs. Their fathers’ names hang on their shoulders like jewels. Keys to a club I can never enter.”
Laral wondered about Eliad. They’d been raised together as squires, and Laral had seen how hard Eliad worked to become a man his father would be proud of, and he’d seen the hurt when King Rhorek paid him less than no mind.
“For a long time I declined Arryk’s invitation. I tried everything I knew to make my own way. Lost every coin I scraped together.”
“Gambling?”
Silence followed Laral’s question. He slid the great door shut and turned to face the bastard boy.
Offense hardened Tarsyn’s mouth. “No.”
“Drinking?”
The boy heaved a sigh so heavy that his shoulders sagged. “Just trying to feed myself was enough. My mother wanted to send me money, but I wouldn’t let her, because in the end it was really his money.”
Laral didn’t ask who the “he” was. Tarsyn’s bitterness told him all he needed to know. “You could’ve joined the army.”
“I did.” Tarsyn raised his chin. “Well, navy, actually.”
Laral didn’t bother hiding his astonishment. He had expected this fop to be too squeamish for squalor below decks and the rigors of pirate-hunting.
From one blink to the next, the boy’s mood brightened remarkably. His hand patted the polished hilt at his hip. “It was in Dorél that I picked up this. The masters of the rapier are remarkable in their speed, their grace, their deadliness. Arryk brought a trainer over for me. I’m almost—”
“Why didn’t you stay in the navy?” Laral cared less about Arryk’s generosity than about this boy’s ability to commit himself.
Tarsyn detected Laral’s disapproval. “I wasn’t thrown out. Promise. You can check the records. I took a wound. We chased down pirates smuggling live cargo out of Gildancove—”
“Live cargo?” Kalla asked.
“Girls. As you can imagine, it came to a fight. It was rather embarrassing. The surgeon feared I might lose my foot. Not a heroic wound, I guess. Leg still pains me on occasion. Anyway, by the time I recovered, my ship had sailed without me. Without a war, the Admiralty was docking ships. They gave me a discharge. I was devastated. So that’s when I took the king’s invitation to come to court.”
Dining on swan and sleeping on perfumed silk was a last resort for this young man?
“Still, I wouldn’t be a wallflower. I insisted he give me something worthwhile to do, so he has me training under his chamberlain. It isn’t as exciting as the high seas, but the wage is good.”
Laral didn’t buy it. “You will not accept charity, that’s obvious, but you would marry for it.”
Tarsyn choked. “Excuse me? That is horribly unfair!”
“It is fair!” Laral bellowed. “I will do everything short of murder to protect my daughter and her interests, and I don’t trust you as far as I can throw you.”
Tarsyn clenched his fists and squared his feet.
Kalla’s eyes had grown round. She raised a hand between them before they came to blows.
The stare-off drew out as the heat inside the barn soared. The boy ground his teeth and color flared across his face, but to his credit, his hands stayed at his sides and his mouth stayed shut. A single tear spilled from his eye, taking Laral by surprise. What had squeezed it out of him? After a while, Laral nodded, seeing it. Lord Brengarra is like all the rest. Humiliation, deep and old and exhausting, that’s what it was. But Tarsyn had learned to stand his ground, despite the shame that must be burning in his face and eating at his belly.
Laral decided he’d tested the boy enough for now. He glanced through the slats as if the row hadn’t happened. Barely above a whisper, he said, “Arryk approves of you well enough to deliver letters between you and my daughter. A king behaving like a courier, for you. Whatever did you do to prove your worth to him?”
Tarsyn’s rage wasn’t a shouting kind of rage. It was colder than that. “If a man cannot see my worth with his own eyes, it’s my fault. I apologize to you, my lord. I surely failed somewhere. Lady Kalla.” He bowed sharply in her direction, then strode off across the barn.
Kalla refused to acknowledge Laral for the rest of their watch.
~~~~
27
The Crossroads lay far behind them as dusk began to settle. Laral inspected the highway stretching out long and gray under a lavender sky. No wind, no shadows. Avoid roads and bridges, the falcon had warned him, but signs of his family were only to be found on the road; if he strayed too far, he ran the chance of losing them. Ahead, a stand of trees clustered on both sides of the highway. The shadows beneath the branches were thick as ink. “Drys?”
His friend rode half a horse-length ahead. “It’s clear.”
From the rear, Kalla said, “It’s not that I don’t trust your eyes, Drys, but should we go around? If I were to set up an ambush to waylay humans…”
“Aye, this would be a great spot,” Drys agreed. “If the ambushers were humans. You gotta think like an ogre, Kal.”
“And how does an ogre think?” she asked, smirking.
A grin tugged at Laral’s mouth, too. If anyone could think like an ogre, it was Drys.
“Why bother with trees if you can use a veil and ambush us from anywhere?”
“That’s a disturbing thought,” said Tarsyn. He appeared more nervous than his understatement implied; one hand clutched the haft of his rapier, the other held the reins high and tight, ready to turn his pony around at the first sign of danger. Irritated, the pony danced sideways and tried to reclaim his head.
“Disturbing? Indeed. But never fear,” Drys sang, wagging his head. He seemed to have come to terms with his gift, if not its source. It gave him an edge over his lifelong friends, and being ‘the short one,’ Drys was always looking for an edge. “I’m sure Thorn Kingshield hisself would agree with me. These trees are safe.” A flourish of his hand made the declaration official.
“Who is Thorn Kingshield?”
Drys guffawed and turned in the saddle. “Where the hell have you been, boy? Do Fierans not teach history to bastards?” He faced the highway ahead again and muttered to himself, “Hnh. Who’s Thorn Kingshield, my arse.”
Kalla started to explain, polite lady that she was, but Tarsyn grinned and waved a hand at her. He knew very well who Thorn Kingshield was. There was no one alive in all the Northwest who hadn’t heard one tale or another. But when a man has to explain his boast, it sucks the wind out of it.
Yet that which was peaceful revealed decay. That a spider could successfully spin a web across what should be the artery of a kingdom proved that no one had been this way in hours, perhaps far longer.
A shriek tore at the shadows. The sparrows took flight in an explosion of wings. Laral whirled, drawing his sword. He expected ogres to be tearing Kalla limb from limb, but Kalla was reaching a hand toward Tarsyn. The young man flicked the spider from his shoulder and raked the web from his face. When he saw everyone staring at him, he raised his chin and stammered an apology.
Laral snapped his sword back into its scabbard and fought to still his racing heart. The corners of Drys’s mouth curled wickedly. Laral knew what his friend was thinking and slugged him in the shoulder. “Leave it be.”
Drys rubbed the ache from his arm, muttering, “No fun at all,” and set off down the road again. They weren’t far out of the trees when he began chuckling to himself. “Hey, Tarsyn,” he called over his shoulder, “have you heard this one?” He sang off-key, so loudly that the veins popped from his neck. The tune was familiar, something out of a child’s songbook, but the words were new:
“There once was a dandy from Cayndale
Who wore bows in his hair without fail
‘But I carry a spoon,’
Cried he under the moon,
‘To slay icky spiders so frail.’ ”
“Drys, for the Mother’s sake,” Kalla hissed.
“Aye,” said Tarsyn with a cool note of restrained rage. “I’ve heard it. Many a time.”
“Really?” asked Drys, the word sliding like barbs into skin. “And here I thought—”