by Karen Miller
“Is it?” The swordmaster pinched the end of his nose. “Sure of that, are we?”
Clearly Tavin wasn’t. And Spirit save me, neither am I. “You should tell the king your misgivings, you should. Come to Hall with me. Tell him.”
“You tell him.”
“Tavin—” Ewen kicked his bath water to waves. “This is king’s business, this is. I’m not the king.”
Tavin looked at him from under lowered brows. “You’ll be sitting your arse in the king’s seat one day.”
“One day. Not today.”
“I’d not waste his time,” said Tavin, after a moment. “King Murdo values a proven truth, he does. I say the north’s stirring and I think it is. That’s what my gut tells me and I listen to my gut. But what my gut thinks, that’s not enough to sweeten your—the king.”
He sighed. It was true. His father the king was a plain man who liked plain facts. There was no patience in him for guesswork and half-truths and airy-fairy feelings.
“Could be we should think twice about putting down them we find with brain-rot,” he said. “Was there a word of sense Boyde could get out of those wanderers? Did he even try, or did he whip out his dagger at the first sign of madness?”
“He says they had the wits of beasts,” said Tavin, shrugging. “Raving crazy like all the rest, he says. Covered in sores and pustules and black blood. Not much point trying to chat with that, is there? Boyde says it was a mercy to slit their throats quick.”
“That may be, Tav, but how will we know what ghosts are stirring beyond Vharne’s borders if we never wait long enough to ask a man who’s maybe seen one?”
“Ewen…” Tavin shook his head, disappointed, and held out his hand for the soap pot. “Shame you don’t have my memory, boy. If you did you’d know not to ask that foolish question.”
He tossed the pot, hard. “It’s not foolish. And I remember full well what happened before. I was there, wasn’t I?”
“Then remember it was only by the spirit’s grace your mother was there too,” said Tavin, glaring. “With a dagger and no squeamish womanly misgivings, so the king wasn’t bitten and sent mad himself. Bless her, she could see with one look that talking wasn’t a thing to be done with that beast.”
Tavin wasn’t only cross-grained. Sometimes he was flint. “That man was no beast, Swordmaster. He was a misbegotten soul touched by the blight, like all the others. Not his fault. Do you say the king’s pity is a bad thing?”
“Pity’s fine when no lives are at risk, boy,” said Tavin, snorting. “But pity misplaced can kill as fast as a sword.”
They could argue about this until their bath water froze solid and nothing would change. “That madman was years ago,” he said flatly. “Leave him behind, I say.”
Tavin slathered soap across his broad, hairy chest. “Glad to.”
“But that still leaves Boyde. If we’ve got wanderers from Manemli, the king has to know. And he has to know it could bode trouble from the north.”
“I’ll send Boyde to him to make a report,” said Tavin. “Best the king hears that tale first-hand. But Boyde won’t spin it further than what he saw with his own eyes and did with his own hands. You could mention trouble in the north, if you like. Then it’s your ears the king’ll chew, boy, and not mine.”
He snatched up a handful of cooling bath water and threw it. “It’s a scrag-beard, you are!”
“Ha,” said Tavin, briefly grinning. “You want to cork me for holding my tongue?”
“I do.”
“Then tip me over turtle in training tomorrow and we’ll call it quits and even,” said Tavin. Then he sighed. “Ewen, when it comes to the king it’s not a rich man, I am. I can’t squander my coins on a maybe. On my gut.”
“You’re Vharne’s swordmaster, Tavin. The king praises you.”
Tavin pulled a face. “He’s no fool. He knows I serve him honest. But there’s reason for his doubt. Don’t cobble me hard done by, boy.”
More than ever, he wanted to know what had happened between the king his father and Tavin. And there’d come a time when he’d find out, even if he had to get Tav drunk to prise the tale loose. But until then—
“Do I misremember, or are there three more scouts still out beyond the Vale?”
Tavin nodded. “Three, that’s right.”
“Then it’s fools we’d be, to panic,” he said. “Once they ride home and tell what they’ve found, that’ll mean a different picture, I say.”
“You hope,” Tavin said. He stood in his tub, the bath house lamplight playing over his stitchings of old wounds. “But one thing’s sure, boy, and the king needs to be reminded. Stern to save ourselves we’ve got to be. No brain-rotted wanderers inside our borders.”
Ewen stared. “You’d kill them all?”
“It’s them or us.” With a grunt, Tavin clambered onto the flagstones. “You know how fast the rot can spread from man to man, unchecked. This is no time to go soft. The south might be as dead as it ever was, but the north’s stirring, I tell you. And no good ever came to Vharne from the north.”
Shyvie kept towels on pegs by the long fireplace, so they’d be warm for using after a bath. As Tavin dried his hair and his skin, Ewen sloshed himself wet all over one last time then came up again, spitting water.
“Could be you’re glooming for nothing, Tav.”
The swordmaster looked up from pulling on his clothes. Seemed he was heedless of his own sweat and stink. “Could be, son, but I’m not. And you know I’m not, so save your boyish quibbling and look harsh truth square in the eye, as fits a king’s son.”
He slapped the side of his wooden tub, his wet hand waking hollow echoes. “If I’m quibbling, Tavin, that’s only because you’re playing the slippery fish.”
“It’s not any kind of fish, I am,” said Tav, stamping into his boots. “It’s fishy you are, I say. Time to dress your thoughts in words, boy.”
Hostile again, they glared at each other. Then he slapped the tub again, vexed. “I have thoughts, yes. Troubling thoughts. But I don’t know, Tavin. And well-schooled I am not to talk when I don’t know.”
“Well, this is what I know,” Tavin murmured, bulky in front of the fire. “I know my years are twice yours and a few more for luck. I know when I had no more than your years the world was dark and I lived in it and fearful, it was. I know when you were a small boy the dark lifted and I thanked the spirit. And I know…” The swordmaster’s lamplit face fell into sorrow. “I know the dark’s back, Ewen.” His pointing finger jabbed. “And that’s what you know. Shame on your head for not saying it like a man. Now I’m off to see about my barracks business. Tell your brother I want him in the tiltyard with a training sword two hours past noon.”
As the swordmaster thumped his way out of the bath house, riled into a temper, he passed Shyvie’s brat coming back in, laden with clean clothes fit for a prince.
Ewen smiled, because the brat was a small boy who didn’t deserve a snarl. “My thanks.”
Grinning, the brat dropped the clothes in a pile and fled to Shyvie for another task. Ewen clambered out of his tub, snatched a warm towel from its peg and pressed the water from his hair, Tavin’s grim words echoing.
I know the dark’s back, Ewen—and that’s what you know.
Yes. He knew it. It was the creeping cold in the marrow of his bones, the rattle in the back of his throat, the fleeting shadow in the corner of his eye. Premonitions of disaster. Dread for what was yet to come.
The king scoffs at such feelings. For once the king is wrong.
With liniment rubbed into his over-used right arm, dressed snug in the embroidered wools and linens the brat had brought him and with his damp hair combed and tied back in a thick tail, he left the barracks a prince again to take his customary breakfast with the king. Five minutes inside the castle, he found his brother in a window-nook near the dining hall with his hand shoved down a maid’s unlaced blouse.
“Ow!” said Padrig, aggrieved, rubbing his head where
he’d been cuffed. “Ewen!”
Ignoring him, Ewen grabbed the maid’s wrist and hauled her out of the nook. “Encourage my brother again, Maise, and I’ll see you beaten out of the Vale. Grasp that, do you?”
“Yes, sir,” whispered Maise, a plump young armful.
“Then lace yourself decent and get about your proper tasks.”
“What call have you to spoil my fun?” Padrig complained, staring after the maid. “Spoil yours, do I?”
“What call?” Ewen stared at him. “So you want to plant a bastard in her, do you?”
Nineteen, nearly twenty, and Padrig could still sulk. “Vharne needs more people in it. That’s what the king keeps saying.”
“True, that might be,” he retorted. “So let Maise find a groom or a barracks man to fondle her tits and give her a baby for the Vale. Little brother, you can do better than a maid, you can.”
Padrig had their dead mother’s hair, a bright red-gold. He had her pale blue eyes and her short, straight nose. But his lusty swaggering was all his own. So was his smile and the laugh that made any who kept company with him laugh too. Like the weather he could shift from sunshine to rain and back again, in a finger snap.
“I can,” he agreed. “But Ewen, must a man marry to scratch an itch?”
Ewen thumped his brother’s shoulder. “No. But when he’s the king’s son he needs to be careful how he scratches it, he does. Said that before, I have. Remember it this time. Have you broken bread this morning or do you eat with me and the king?”
“Waiting for you, I was,” said Padrig, flashing his charming, mischievous smile.
He grinned back. “And it’s touched, I am. Next time think of a more useful way to wait.”
Bumping shoulders, they wandered along the corridor to the dining hall. The king was already seated at the high board, his neatly clipped dark red hair silver-glinted in the morning light. Hearing them enter, he looked up from the parchment unrolled across his empty plate.
“Food’s on its way. Eat fast, you’ll have to,” he greeted them. “And forgo Hall you will, Ewen. There’s a man blighted in the Eastern Vale. It’s both of you I’m sending to deal with the strife.”
Surprised by that, Ewen slid into the chair by the king’s right hand. Padrig took the chair on the left, his sulk over the buxom maid forgotten.
“Blight in the Eastern Vale, Father?” he said, concerned. “That’s not happened before.”
Vharne’s long years of struggle were written deep across the king’s thin face. “No,” he said heavily. “It’s news I much mistrust.”
“And there’s more to mistrust, I’m sorry to say,” Ewen told him. “One of Tavin’s scouts is back from the rough country. He put down three brain-rotted Manemlims, close to the border.”
The king’s sparse eyebrows lifted, his gaze cold and critical. “You learned this crossing swords?”
Careful, careful. “Tavin’s sending the scout to you during Hall.”
“And I’ll send Tavin—” the king started, then held his tongue as servants entered bearing platters of food and a large jug of ale. He rolled the parchment, tucked it inside his leather vest then sat back as his plate was filled with coddled eggs and hot flatbread and pottaged meat.
Served after him, belly rumbling, Ewen breathed in the warm, welcome aromas. Once Padrig’s plate was filled, and the remaining food and ale jug was left on the side board, the king picked up his knife and spoon. His first swallowed mouthful was the signal to eat.
Ravenous after training, Ewen ate as fast as manners allowed. Easily he could shovel it in, but the king frowned on a rowdy table.
“Father,” said Padrig, around a mouthful of pottage, “this blighted man in the Eastern Vale. Is he of Vharne, or is he a wanderer stumbled over the border?”
With his plate only half-emptied, the king shoved it away as though food was a disgust to him. “The message says he’s a Vale man.”
Leaning back in his chair, Ewen exchanged a look with Padrig behind the king. His own mouthful of flavoursome flatbread tasted abruptly like ashes. He washed it down with some ale.
“Father, we’ve not had any in the Vale infected for months.”
“Nigh on a year, I know,” said the king. The lines engraved in his face seemed to sink further into his flesh. “This bodes nothing good, it does.”
He dropped his gaze to his plate. Do I tell him? I should tell him. I’ll leave Tavin’s fears out of it and speak only for myself. “Father…”
The king stared. “You mouth the word as though I’ve put a sword to your throat, you do. Would you say something? Say it, you should.”
He could feel Padrig staring, too. “Father, it’s not a man for fancies, you are. But I can’t be a good son and hold my tongue on this. There’s a fear I have, that trouble’s stirring in the north.”
The king’s short fingernails drummed on the board. “A fear with proof, or without it?”
“Wanderers from Manemli proves something is wrong,” said Padrig. “Blight in a Vale man? That’s wrong too, it is. And Ewen’s a canny one, Father.”
“He is,” the king admitted, his stern expression easing. “Another canny one is the swordmaster. You talked of this in the bath house, Ewen?”
Sorry, Tav. “Father, I did.”
Again, the king drummed the high board. “I’ll talk with him on it, I will, before Hall. You two should ride now. Get to the Eastern Vale, see to the wanderer, and we’ll talk when you return. Padrig—”
“Father?” said Padrig, wisely leaving aside his displeasure that he’d not had time to clear his plate.
The king gestured at the dining hall doors. “Go ahead to the barracks. See to your horses—and hold your tongue. It’s a private word I want with your brother.”
Padrig knew better than to question the king. “Father,” he said, snatched up his half-eaten flatbread, and withdrew.
The king held out his emptied goblet. “Pour me more ale, Ewen. Then hear what I have to say.”
CHAPTER SIX
Refilling the goblet, Ewen glanced at the king. “Was I wrong to talk of Boyde and the north with Tavin? No slight to you was meant, by him or me.”
“No slight is taken,” said the king. “After my death the kingdom’s caretaking falls to you. It’s offended I’d be if you took no interest in Vharne and the Vale.”
So Tavin and the king could agree on that much, at least. Ewen handed the refilled goblet to his father, but didn’t retake his seat. “I thought you’d scoff at my misgivings, I did.”
“Scoff I would, if there weren’t more wanderers crossing into Vharne,” said the king, and drank deep.
Ewen folded his arms. “But they are. It bodes ill, I say.”
“Most ill,” the king agreed. “Since the sorcerer’s fall, Vharne has muddled along. We’ve kept ourselves peaceful. We’ve avoided tangling with anyone beyond our borders. But it’s determined they are to tangle with us, it seems.”
“Must it be seen as a tangle?” he said, after a moment. “If trouble does stir, is facing it alone the best choice?”
“Ewen…” The king frowned at him. “Years of silence beyond our borders, there’s been. Now the silence breaks, but not with words of friendship. No. All we see of our neighbours are brain-rotted wanderers. An alliance with madmen? You’d advise that, you would?”
“Of course not, Father. But are all men beyond Vharne’s borders mad?”
“That I cannot answer,” said the king. “And I’ll not risk scouts or barracks men into those other lands to find out.”
It was a sensible decision. Vharne wasn’t so overflowing with men they could be thrown away on such a risky adventure. “This is what you wanted to tell me?”
The king thudded his goblet to the board. “No.”
Then what is it? he wanted to demand. But he held his tongue, for his father was a deliberate man who frowned on being chivvied. Waiting, he retrieved his own goblet from the high board and drained it.
“Ewen, I
want Padrig blooded.”
He stared, feeling the pottage and egg curdle in his belly. Blooded? “Father—are you sure?”
“It’s past time,” said the king, his bleak gaze trained on the sky beyond the dining hall’s one unshuttered window. “No stripling, he is. But he carries on like a youth, he does. It’s a worry to me. If trouble’s coming I need two sons I know can meet it. Blood him, Ewen. That’s my wish.”
Hand pressed to his heart, Ewen nodded. “If it’s your wish, then I’ll do it, of course I will. But why do you tell me? Why not tell Padrig yourself?”
“You’ll ride nigh on five hours to reach the Eastern Vale and this poor, afflicted wretch,” said the king. “In five hours he can wear his tongue out with questions, Ewen. You’re blooded. Since you were fifteen it’s six wanderers you’ve put down. He’ll take it easier from you, he will.”
Which was another way of saying the king and his younger son didn’t always deal so easily together. Where Murdo was deliberate, Padrig could be careless. Where Padrig looked for laughter, Murdo preferred serious discussion. It was all to do with temperament, and little with the natural affection between a man and his son.
“Father,” said Ewen. “What else must I know?”
The king pushed back his chair and stood. “You’ll see your mother’s cousin Nairn in the Eastern Vale. He’s got the wanderer confined.” He crossed to the nearest shuttered window, unbarred it and let in the light. Then he moved to unshutter the rest. “See this is dealt with out of the common eye, Ewen. I want tattling tongues silenced. When it’s barracks scouts who find the brain-rotted, no news of them spreads. It’s different, this is. I want Vharne and the Vale protected. I don’t want it woken to unrest.”
“What’s happened won’t be secret where this man was taken,” he said, feeling fresh air stir through the dining hall. “He’ll have family, most like. Friends. Unless he was taken in the dead of night, there’ll be witnesses.”
The king turned from the last unshuttered window, his face hard. “And you’ll silence them. It’s relying on you I am, Ewen. I must stay here, since it’s needed I am for petitions in the Hall. But even if that wasn’t so, I’d send you and Padrig.”