by Tony Daniel
“Are you sure?” Wulf looked around the council. “Earl Keiler?”
“Without objections, that is the will of the law-speak. Take it, Lord Wulf.”
“Do what he says, von Dunstig,” whispered Ravenelle, on his other side. “You can show them that you’re the middle ground, the one everybody can trust.”
Wulf let this sink in for a moment. Tolas put the box in front of him, and Wulf took out the scroll. It wasn’t bound by anything, so he held it with one hand and unrolled it with the other.
There were letters on there, Kaltish letters. Their shape was old-fashioned, but Wulf had read so many old scrolls and codexes that there was no problem making them out.
He read the scroll.
Then he let it drop to his lap. It immediately scrolled itself back up, not by magic but because it had sat in that shape for so many decades.
Wulf shook his head. Then he chuckled. “Blood and bones,” he said.
“What is it?” Ravenelle asked, poking him in the arm. “Does it say where the thing is?”
Wulf nodded. “Yeah. It says exactly where to find it, and I’m pretty sure it’s still there, since it’s somewhere that hasn’t been moved or even much looked at for over a hundred years. Too bad, though.”
“What’s the problem, von Dunstig?”
Wulf took a long, deep breath then replied. “The problem is that it’s in Raukenrose.”
“Pity,” Earl Keiler said. “We might have used that. We can’t even get word to those in the township.”
Suddenly a raspy voice spoke next to Wulf’s ear. It was Nagel, and she definitely wasn’t talking in a whisper this time. She wanted everyone in the Law-speak Circle to hear her. He hadn’t realized she could speak so loudly.
“Hey, boy lord, I hope you realize that you could send me.”
Chapter Thirty-Two:
The Night Flight
“Lord Wulf, allow me to present my daughter,” said Earl Keiler. He motioned to the redheaded woman with freckles to step forward. “This is Ursel.”
She was about Wulf and Ravenelle’s age. She wore a green dress with red trim and was a hand shorter than Wulf. Her red hair was drawn back with a green scarf. Her hair was nearly as curly as Ravenelle’s.
She made a curtsy. “M’lord,” she said.
Wulf bowed to her. “A pleasure, Lady Ursel,” he said.
“It’s Ursel, m’lord. Only Ursel.”
“All right,” he replied. “As you say, mistress.”
She shrugged “It’s just that I’m a foundling,” she said. “We bears are very particular about our titles.”
“You really don’t look like a bear.”
“Ursel is my adopted daughter,” Earl Keiler said with a chuckle. “She is as much one of the clan as any of my people, though, and I’ll tear apart anyone who says different.” Earl Keiler’s tone softened. “She is family. I have settled a grand dowry on her.”
Keiler fell into a fury of doubled-over coughing, and everyone waited as politely as they could while he dealt with it and stood back straight.
Wulf tried to take up where he’d left off. “Pleased to meet you, Mistress Ursel Keiler.” He turned to Ravenelle. “This is Princess Ravenelle Archambeault,” he said. “My cousin.”
“Princess.” Ursel Keiler curtsied very deeply this time, and Ravenelle looked pleased.
“Your father must think very highly of you to bring you to law-speak,” Ravenelle said.
For a moment Ursel seemed tongue-tied when confronted with a princess, but then she recovered and answered Ravenelle in a firm voice. She had a heavy Shwartzwald County accent. “I try to be of service to Papa. He says I’m good at keeping up with details.”
“She’s the lady of Bear Hall and my best self now that Hilda is dead and the boys are grown. Ursel keeps the books. She never misses anything,” Earl Keiler said. “And she never forgets. So don’t slight her. She’s a bear in that way. She knows how to strike back.”
“I’ll try to avoid that,” Wulf replied with an uneasy smile.
Ursel turned her gaze to him. “Papa exaggerates,” she said.
Ursel smoothed the fabric of her dress, rumpled from the curtsey. When she bent an arm to straighten her sleeve, Wulf saw that she had very defined muscles.
Archer’s muscles, Wulf thought.
It took years of practice to get them. This meant she was probably also a crack shot.
Ursel saw where he was looking and smiled shyly. Her green eyes sparkled with amusement. She finished tugging down the other sleeve, and Wulf found he could not take his eyes from her.
He didn’t until Ravenelle kicked him in the shin to get his attention.
“Let’s get out of here, von Dunstig,” she said in a low voice. “Bear Hall still gives me the creeps.”
Nagel didn’t know if she even was a person. There were Tier who looked much more like animals than humans. The beaver people and, especially, the mice people were like that.
But they all had some distinguishing feature that marked them as people and not just animals. She didn’t. She looked just like any screech owl. She had been raised by owls. Not owl people. Owls.
When the falconers took her as a fledgling, she’d been wild beyond imagining. She was completely unaware she had the ability to talk. She had discovered that she was far smarter than her siblings. But she didn’t feel better than them. Her parents knew things that she did not. They knew how to locate a mouse by sound alone, and how to find the best currents for soaring. She had tried hard to learn. But she had seen early on that the intense love she felt for them was not returned. They fed her. They taught her. But they would never love her. They didn’t understand what it meant.
So she had come to live in the mews. It was there, with fauns and men speaking around her, she had first understood language. It had taken her many months, but finally she’d learned how to make the whistling air that passed through her beak when she exhaled into understandable Kaltish words.
It excited her when one day she discovered that she could easily understand what the fauns and men wanted her to do. Hunting came naturally to her. They had tried her as a “make owl,” and she knew she’d done amazing work. The eagles were easy to anticipate and to lead. She might be able to talk like a human, but she could definitely also think like a raptor.
She had felt that she was waiting for something. The love she’d felt for her parents she’d buried so deep she hardly knew it existed any longer. But then the boy had come, and everything had changed.
He was her boy. Hers. And she was his. It wasn’t mating. She didn’t want that. She wanted another kind of love, the fierce love she’d once felt and had seemed to lose. She wanted to be able to devote herself to a being who was capable of appreciating her, who maybe one day might come to love her.
It was a harsh love. A fierce bloody love. Often it came across as dislike, but she didn’t mean it that way.
Now she had something to do. She had information to deliver that might make a real difference in a world she’d always thought she was too little to affect.
Flying to the castle was familiar to her. She’d sometimes been released in nearby fields and expected to return to the mews herself, so she had flown there several times. Nagel never forgot a landscape.
She came in at night.
When she landed in the castle mews, she was in for a shock. They were empty. Most of the birds had been taken out on the hunting trip to the Dragonback Mountains. The birds that stayed had not been fed or watered. Most were dead. Those that were alive were famished and thirsty.
Here she could do more. She did not have hands, but she was clever with her beak, and she worked the mews doors open. The survivors could get out. Not that they would thank her. Raptors didn’t feel gratitude.
She took a moment to get back her sense of direction, then headed for the castle itself. She was almost stabbed by a guard. He saw her, reached up with the tip of his poleax. The ax tip cut across her belly.
&
nbsp; But it was only a small wound. Her strength returned. She waited, sitting quietly on a gargoyle above the main door until a Sandhavener opened it from the inside. She ducked through the small opening, feeling more like prey than hunter at the moment.
Now she could make her way inside the castle.
She doubled back several times to avoid notice. But by listening and following a guard on watch, she discovered where the bedchambers were.
The heir was not present. She had expected not to find him. But neither were any of the others Wulf had told her to look for. The older sister. The elf woman. The warrior boy who was Wulf’s friend. Even the mother.
In the end, Nagel had to deliver her message to the little sister. The one named Anya.
After considering, Nagel realized that this was not a terrible plan in any case.
Anya was a little girl, but not too young to understand. She would maybe be unguarded. Even if Nagel could find him, approaching the eldest boy seemed out of the question. He would just shoo her away or, worse, he or one of his men would cut her out of the air with a sword for bothering him. Even if she had found the sister, the mother, or the elf, they were old. She would have to take a lot of time convincing them she could be trusted.
And even though she was Tier, they were not used to Tier who looked exactly like the animals they were paired with.
No, the little girl was the one who would listen to a talking owl who only had a little time to deliver her message.
Anya was a human. She could then get the other humans to believe her.
So it would be Anya von Dunstig.
The only problem was, she’d never seen Anya.
Then she heard someone call out Anya’s name, and saw the little blonde-haired girl slip into her room. This had to be Anya. She looked very much like a young Wulf.
She had to approach and not be seen by anyone else. This was dangerous.
Nagel loved living, but she wasn’t afraid of dying if she had to.
But first she had a message to deliver.
Chapter Thirty-Three:
The Archer
They stayed at Shwartzwald House. The earl’s residence was a huge wooden structure on the edge of Bear Hall township. There were lots of rooms, and Wulf and Ravenelle both got their own bedchambers.
After Wulf settled in, he met Ursel Keiler again. She knocked and entered with another bear woman to bring Wulf new clothes. They also brought a hauberk—a chainmail shirt—and a small set of armor. This included a cuirass breast and back plate, cuisses for the thighs and greaves for the shins, sets of bracers for arm covering, and a helmet with a grima noseguard. The set was light. It all fit into a flannel bag that could be tied onto a packhorse.
When he’d looked over the armor, Ursel gave him a swordsman’s cape. It was bright red with yellow piping and was marked with the symbol of Shwartzwald County, the Dragon Hammer. This was embroidered in orange and darker red tessellations across the cape. It was held in place by a clasp and by a padded leather poulon that belted across his shoulder.
“The cape belonged to my brother when he was a cub,” Ursel said. She sent the bear woman out, and she returned with a sword. “This is my father’s short sword. He wanted you to have it. He used it in the Little War.” The bear woman left, and returned with a buckler.
“Your brother’s when he was a cub?” Wulf asked. He set the buckler aside, but drew the sword out of its scabbard. The scabbard itself had leather loops to attach it either to a belt or to a strap over the back.
He gave the sword a twirl to feel its weight. Perfect. He thought about how much Rainer would have liked the feel of it.
Then he slid it back into its scabbard.
“Tell you father thank you,” Wulf said. “This is a fine sword.”
“I will,” Ursel said. “I hope you use it well. May I ask what your plan of attack is?”
“I thought I’d look to your father for that.”
“He does know a thing or two about fighting,” Ursel replied. She smiled slyly. “And I know a thing or two about sneaking up on your quarry.”
Wulf arched an eyebrow. “That’s very intriguing, Mistress Ursel. What do you suggest?” He pointed to a nearby chair and nodded for her sit down.
“They’ll expect us to come in from the southwest,” Ursel replied. She gathered her skirt and lowered herself in the chair. “But we don’t have to. Not at all. We can go east a league or more south of the city. Come up the Valley Road and attack from the east. That will also be good for a dawn attack. The sun would be at our back.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“We have many traders here and friends along the way who know the roads well. There are lesser known paths. Shortcuts through the forest. And we own the forests.”
“The otherfolk do, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“You know them well, don’t you?”
“I spend a lot of time in the woods.”
“So we should circle to the south of the town, come in from the east,” Wulf said. “Anything else?”
“I believe Father was thinking of some kind of diversion.”
Wulf nodded. He sat down across from her. “You and Earl Keiler seem to have thought this sort of thing out pretty well.”
“It’s…well, since my mother died and the scrofula has gotten so bad, he and I spend a lot of time talking about the old days. Fighting with the duke. All the plans they considered. It was very close, you know. We could have lost the Little War.”
“Yeah,” Wulf said. “I got a lot of history lessons from Master Tolas. A lot.”
“Maybe he was preparing you.”
“For what? Otto is going to be the next duke.”
“You might be of use to the mark in all kinds of ways.”
“I guess.”
She rose from the chair. “Take it from me,” she said. “Things hardly ever turn out the way we think they will. But that doesn’t mean they can’t turn out happy in the end.”
Wulf rose, facing Ursel. They were very close, and he reached over and took her hands. “Thank you for the sword.”
They stood together for a moment wordlessly. Her hands were warm. Her freckled face seemed flush, and she wore the slight smile, almost teasing, that Wulf was coming to see was her normal expression. Finally she sighed, and spoke. “I’ll leave you to your dressing. Good night, Lord Wulf.”
“Good night, Mistress Ursel.”
With a quick curtsey, Ursel and her bear-woman maid left his room.
It was good to get out of his old clothes. He’d been in them for three days. He’d fought in them. One arm and the chest of his shirt had been soaked with his own blood and Ravenelle’s tears. He’d also been spattered with other people’s blood, both from his father and from the man he’d killed. He’d run through briar-filled woods. He’d ridden through dust and rain.
The clean clothes were Ursel’s. They were men’s clothes she used for travel in the woods. They were tight for Wulf and too short in the sleeves and ankles, but he only needed to wear them long enough to have his other clothes washed.
After Ursel left, Grim brought in hot water in a basin and Wulf gave himself as much of a bath as he could. He didn’t really need to shave yet, but he gave his face a scrape with a razor to clear away the fuzz.
Then he put on Ursel’s clothes. They smelled of lavender. He imagined her skin probably had the same faint odor. For a moment he imagined what it would be like to take her in his arms.
But thoughts of Saeunn blotted out the daydream. He felt guilty having thought too much about Ursel when Saeunn was in danger.
His own clothes came back one bell later with the grime gone and most of the blood scrubbed away. His boots were clean and polished.
Although she’d said she wouldn’t be back, Ursel looked in one more time.
The bed looked inviting. The heat from the fire is his room was making him sleepy.
“You’ll let me know if there is anything else you need?” she s
aid.
“Yes, I will,” Wulf replied. “I wish we’d met under better circumstances.”
“Me too, Lord Wulf,” she said.
She smiled at him and brushed red hair from her face. Those green eyes. That milky skin.
She curtsied, then turned and left.
Wulf looked at Grim, who had been watching.
“What?” he asked the faun.
“Nothing, m’lord.”
“Tell me what you think.”
Grim considered a moment. “Could do worse, m’lord.”
“How do you even know? She’s not a faun.”
“A faun could do worse, m’lord,” Grim said.
For a moment, Wulf felt a tinge of jealousy—but then thought about how stupid that was. So what if Grim was attracted to the foundling girl?
She was showing every sign that she liked him, Wulf. He wasn’t used to this kind of attention. The castle girls never gave it to him. If they drooled over a von Dunstig, it was Adelbert, who was very handsome and romantically in love with the ocean.
She barely knows me, Wulf thought. I’m just a von Dunstig to her.
I’d love to see her shoot that bow.
He thought about Ursel as he settled down in the first comfortable bed he’d seen in two days. He imagined her nocking an arrow, drawing her bow, then sending the arrow into a target.
Then he imagined her doing it naked. Would she have freckles everywhere?
Grim dropped a piece of wood onto the fire. The sudden crackle and flying sparks brought Wulf back to the present. He thought about his father’s injuries, he thought about Raukenrose and his family, probably under siege in the castle.
Poor Anya. She must be so afraid.
But she will be looking after her, Wulf thought. She’ll keep Anya safe.
She is there.
And it was Saeunn Amberstone’s face he saw as he drifted to sleep.