Copyright © 2008 by Violette Malan.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Steve Stone.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1450.
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VIOLETTE MALAN—
A bold new voice in fantasy
from DAW BOOKS:
THE MIRROR PRINCE
The Novels of Dhulyn and Parno:
THE SLEEPING GOD
THE SOLDIER KING
For Paul
Acknowledgments
As always. my first thanks go to Joshua Bilmes and Sheila Gilbert, without whom Dhulyn and Parno would be practicing their Shora where no one else could see them. To my friend Barb Wilson-Orange who listened to the story before it reached paper; to Sue Rohland, for her enthusiasm and helpful critiques; to Grant and Jenn Musselman (and Devin) for their unfailing support; to Stephan Furster for looking after my website; to Vaso, Maria and Jovanna Angelis, for their support, and their help in keeping me decently clothed. To Tanya Huff and Fiona Patton, always for everything. I’d particularly like to thank Brian Henry, for all those useful writing workshops, and all his support since those days, not so long ago.
Megan Primeau, better known as “Megz,” purchased at silent auction the right to have a character named after her. I salute you, the Queen’s White Blade.
One
PARNO LIONSMANE LOOKED OVER the battlefield that was the valley of Limona with his nose wrinkled. Every soldier became used to the smell of the dead and dying, but not even Mercenary Brothers ever got so that they liked it. From his fidgeting, it seemed to Parno that even his big gray gelding, Warhammer, battle-trained as he was, would just as soon be elsewhere.
“What happened here?” Parno asked.
“Exactly what was supposed to happen. Exactly what I Saw in my Vision.” His Partner, Dhulyn Wolfshead, shrugged, making the red cloak she’d won off Cavalry Squad Leader Jedrick swing around her knees. “Against odds, the Tegrians lost and the Nisveans won. Which is why, I remind you, we signed on with the Nisveans.”
“So what happened? Has the Blue Mage lost his power?”
Still looking out over the field sloping away from them toward the banks of the river Limona, Dhulyn shook her head, her lip curling back in her wolf’s smile. “Don’t be naive.”
There was movement to be seen between them and the river, the living going through the pockets of the dead.
“Well, I’m not going to rob corpses, no matter what you Saw.”
“There’s nothing in the Common Rule against it,” Dhulyn said. “I once got a very nice thumb knife off a dead man.”
“Outlander.”
“Town man.” She gave him the smile she saved only for him.
As Mercenary Brothers, they were not obliged to pursue those who fled from the field of battle, and Dhulyn—who was, after all, Senior Brother—had decided to look over the fallen instead.
“Do you think it very likely that we will find any of your kin here?” Parno said.
“No more likely than anywhere else,” she replied. “But it’s easy enough to check.”
That was true. Dhulyn’s distinctive coloring, pale eyes, pale skin, her hair the color of old blood, would make a person easy to find among the fallen of a battlefield. If, that is, there were in fact any other survivors of the catastrophe which had wiped out the tribes when she was a child.
“But you didn’t See any Red Horsemen here?” Parno looked sideways at his Partner. Her lips were pressed together, her eyes scanning the far edges of the valley.
“Come now, my heart,” he said. “We haven’t been looking, truly looking that is, for very long, a few moons, no more. Don’t lose heart so soon. Your Sight is getting better,” he told her. “Since you started using the vera tiles, it’s not so erratic.” He scratched at the stubble on his chin.
Dhulyn’s head moved in short arcs from side to side. “My Mark could be more useful if I could control it completely.”
Parno drummed his fingers on his thigh. Let her tell him something he didn’t already know. “Let’s look on the sunny side,” he said. “If we meet any more Red Horsemen, and they are anything like you, it might be more than I could tolerate.”
Dhulyn looked at him without moving her head. She gestured at the corpse-strewn valley before them. “My people couldn’t possibly cause as much trouble as yours.” She brought her heels in sharply, and her mare, Bloodbone, leaped away.
“In Battle,” Parno called out to her back.
“In Death,” answered the sign from her lifted hand.
Parno let Warhammer set his own pace as they picked their way slowly out to the eastern edge of the valley. Not much of a battle, he thought, looking at the preponderance of Tegriani on the ground. Slaughter’s more the word. The Tegriani invaders must have been shocked indeed when they began to take heavy wounds, but many were veterans of the days before the Blue Mage began to work his magics on their armies, and they had been holding their own until the Nisvean reserve, which included Parno and Dhulyn, had fallen on their left flank. Then the Tegriani had broken and run, and far more of them were cut down as they fled than would have been killed had they only stood their ground.
But then, they hadn’t expected to be killed. Even now, their dead faces showed surprise.
Parno reined in as Warhammer shied to the left. From the look of the corpse at the horse’s feet, this section had been picked over already, though a short cloak had been left behind, evidently too torn and bloody to be worth taking. The body looked to have been a man in his early twenties, his only wound the bleeding shoulder.
Parno leaned out of his saddle, narrowing his eyes. The bleeding shoulder? He swung his leg over Warhammer’s withers and let himself slide to the ground. Squatting, he gave the body a long hard look, and pulled a corner of the cloak over the wound—and over the corpse’s face while he was at it.
“Keep that shoulder covered,” he said, his voice a low murmur that wouldn’t travel far. “You’re still bleeding, and dead men don’t bleed. Wait until the moon’s set, if you can, and then go south a good few spans before you turn west.” He grunted in satisfaction when the man showed no reaction whatsoever and, turning away, climbed back into the saddle.
Doing his best to appear just as relaxed as he had been before, Parno began to angle his horse toward the river’s edge, away from the “corpse,” toward the bright splotch of red that was Dhulyn. She was leaning so far out of the saddle that anyone other than the Red Horseman she was would have fallen off. When she straightened, and then slid off Bloodbone’s back, Parno clucked his tongue, and touched his heels to Warhammer’s sides.
Dhulyn Wolfshead pursed her lips and blew out her breath in a silent whistle as she scanned the ground. They said all battlefields looked the same, but any real soldier, let alone a Mercenary Brother, could tell you that it depended which side you were on, victors or defeat
ed. That young man right there, for example, with his leather jerkin slipping off his shoulder, holding a bloody cloth to the arrow through his thigh—she’d wager her second-best sword he and she saw the dead and the dying around them entirely differently.
And he’d be watching her approach with an entirely different look on his face if she were an ally.
He looked away when she reined Bloodbone in and, still trying to hold the bloody rag to his leg, twisted around, stretching his hand for the sword that lay just out of reach to his left. Dhulyn dropped to the ground in time to kick the weapon just a little farther away.
“From the angle and distance,” she said, as if they were sitting across a tavern table from one another talking about the weather. “You came off this dead horse as it fell, and dropped that Teliscan blade you can’t quite reach as you hit the ground yourself.” She twisted her lips to one side, propped one fist on her hip, and measured the distances again by eye before nodding and squatting down on her heels.
“Furthermore, that jerkin is too large for you, and no soldier wearing such a thing would be riding this horse, carrying that blade, or—” she poked him in the region of his collarbone where a hard corner clearly showed through the leather. “Or be carrying a book under it.” She shook her head. “There’s others on this field not so experienced as I, who might actually believe you were just the common soldier you’re pretending to be. And they’d cut your throat for you as not worth tending. So right off, my little lordling, I’d remove that leather jerkin you’ve borrowed and get back into this nice tooled breastplate you’ve tried to hide under your horse’s carcass.” Dhulyn straightened and nudged the item in question a handspan closer to him with her toe. “Sorry about your horse, by the way, he looks like a fine animal.”
“And you won’t cut my throat?” Blood and dirt were ground into the creases of his fingers. His hair was black and curly, his eyes dark, and he looked to be naturally olive-skinned under his present dirt and pallor.
Dhulyn raised her left eyebrow, wondering if she should be offended . . . and then smiled. Of course. She pushed back the hood of the cloak she’d forgotten she was wearing. She’d braided some feathers into her hair, and hadn’t wanted to get them wet. Now the lordling could see her green-and-blue Mercenary badge tattooed into the skin where the hair had been removed on her temples and above her ears.
“I am Dhulyn Wolfshead, called the Scholar. Schooled by Dorian the Black,” she said formally.
The young man relaxed so completely Dhulyn was almost sure a tear or two leaked from his eyes. “I give you my surrender,” he said, in a voice that trembled.
“And I accept it. What were you thinking?” She crouched down on her heels and took hold of the bloodied rag, pressing firmly as the young lord stripped off the leather jerkin and struggled back into the inlaid and crested breastplate. She clucked and reached out one-handed to help him with the side ties, pushing the small bound book back into its place against his breastbone. Of course such armor was never meant to be put on by oneself, let alone while lying down in one’s own blood.
Not that much of this blood was his.
“I didn’t want to be held for ransom,” he said. “I thought I could get away.”
The young man’s head was turned away, so Dhulyn smiled her wolf’s smile. “This your first campaign, is it? Thought they’d let you walk away, did you? Well let me School you a little, young lord. If you’re not already dead, there’s only three ways to leave a battlefield in this part of the world.” She held up her left thumb. “Held for ransom if you’re important enough,” she held up a finger, “held for the slavers if you’re not, and,” a final finger, “throat cut if you’re not whole enough to ransom or sell.”
“There’s a fourth way,” he said, pulling his lips back in what was meant for a smile. Dhulyn softened her own grin. For all that his hands trembled, the boy had nerve, which was more than she could say for many a noble lord she’d met before.
“What have I forgotten, young lord?”
“Taken by Mercenary Brothers, who don’t hold for ransom.”
Dhulyn gave a short bark of laughter. “Why, how could we do that? This time next month we might be looking for work from you.”
“We’re not looking for work already, are we?”
It was a good thing she was holding on to the boy’s leg; otherwise the start that he gave at hearing Parno’s question would have caused him to do more than hiss as his wound moved.
“Come hold his leg while I pull the arrow out,” Dhulyn said to her Partner. “It won’t hurt much, young lord,” she added, turning back to the boy in time to catch his grimace.
“Just one moment, my soul.”
Dhulyn looked up at the hint of warning in Parno’s voice. She frowned; he was lowering himself from the saddle far too stiffly for her taste. Anyone would think he was an old man.
“This isn’t just some lordling you’ve got here,” he said. “This is someone far more important.”
Dhulyn looked into the boy’s face and raised her eyebrows. He licked his lips, but said nothing. She turned back to Parno.
“Another of your High Noble Houses, is it?”
But her Partner was shaking his head. “Better. Or worse, depending on your view of it. Look at the crest on the saddlecloth,” he said, “and right there on his breastplate for that matter. This is Lord Prince Edmir himself.”
Dhulyn examined the boy again, with more interest. “Is he now? Then perhaps you can explain what happened here, Lord Prince Edmir? Where was the power of the Blue Mage that has kept you Tegriani undefeated these last two seasons?”
If possible, the boy became even paler under the blood and dirt. His lips moved, but his eyes rolled up before he could make a sound.
“He’s fainted,” Parno said.
Dhulyn shrugged. “Good. Easier to take out the arrow.”
“You noticed the fletching?”
Dhulyn nodded. “A Tegrian prince, shot by a Tegrian arrow.”
Parno squatted down beside her. “Never let it be said that the Mercenary life isn’t interesting.”
Dhulyn breathed in deeply through her nose, counted to ten in the old language of the Caids and released the breath slowly, glancing around at the faces assembled in War Commander Kispeko’s tent the next day. Parno, standing to her left, raised his right eyebrow and she raised her own in acknowledgment. Losing her temper would gain nothing. When she was sure her voice would be measured and even, she hooked her thumbs in her sword belt and spoke.
“By contracting with Mercenary Brothers, you accepted our Common Rule. Prisoners taken by us go free, unmolested and unransomed. These are the conditions of your contract with us, you cannot go back on it now.”
“Come now, Wolfshead, surely you realize the situation has changed.” The lines around War Commander Kispeko’s eyes showed how little sleep he’d had the night before.
“No situation changes sufficiently for you to lose your honor by breaking your word.” No point dancing around it, she thought.
“I wish I had the leisure to think in those terms, Mercenary.” Kispeko’s voice was colder than it had been a moment before, and his left hand—his sword hand—had tightened into a fist where it lay on maps covering the top of his campaign table. The other people in the command tent, Nisveans for the most part—a few, like the war commander himself, from Noble Houses—all reacted to her words in their own way. Many of the soldiers, even the higher ranks, grimaced, carefully avoiding anyone’s eye; but there were a few, among them Squad Leader Jedrick, the one whose cloak she was wearing, whose expressions bordered on smiles of triumph.
“This is no ordinary soldier,” Kispeko continued. “Not even a member of a Noble House, such as we might ransom out of hand. This is the heir to the throne of Tegrian.”
Dhulyn closed her lips on all the things she might have said. She knew that tone, and there was no argument the man would find convincing. “I ask you one final time, Lord Kispeko, to abide by t
he terms of our contract.”
“Wolfshead, I cannot. You must see that I cannot.” Kispeko’s hand relaxed, but his face was still set firmly. “This is Tegrian we are talking about, and we all know that behind any Tegrian force stands the Blue Mage.”
Dhulyn nodded, conscious of the chill that passed through the tent at the war commander’s words. “Not behind yesterday’s force, surely?” she said. “You cannot claim that there were any magics protecting the prince’s troops.”
Kispeko shrugged. “Possibly the Lord Prince was acting without the knowledge of his mother the queen, or of the Blue Mage. In any case, in Prince Edmir, I have a bargaining chip that will keep Nisvea safe from invasion—at the very least, a way to turn the Blue Mage’s ambitions in another direction.”
“No one has succeeded in bargaining with the Blue Mage,” Dhulyn pointed out. “He has no interest in treaties and allies.”
“But our circumstances are different from any who have tried to treat with the Mage before. Your very presence, for which we thank the Caids, has contributed to this.” Kispeko leaned toward her, his eyes fixed intently on hers. “We reorganized our troops as you suggested, holding half our cavalry in reserve, and through this good advice and counsel we have won a battle against the Tegriani—the first such victory since the Blue Mage married their queen.” As if he had heard the rising pitch of his voice, Kispeko fell silent and straightened.
“And now,” he continued in a milder tone, “not only have we bested his troops, but we have Queen Kedneara’s own son and heir.”
“Perhaps if Dhulyn Wolfshead had a country of her own, she would not speak so lightly.” The voice was quiet, but taut as a bowstring. Dhulyn did not turn her head; she knew who had spoken. She wore his cloak.
The Soldier King Page 1