King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  The combined forces set out an orderly camp city on the hills beyond the castle gates and the captains squeezed into the Rider barracks inside. Anonymous in his blue coat, Tau walked among the hundreds of men—some barely eighteen, others closer to forty—who all seemed excited as boys though the word had spread they would be on the ride again come dawn.

  With the added forces from the powerful eastern clans came wagonloads of supplies, which were sent on ahead. The remainder of the day was given over to repairing horseshoes, gear, and weapons that hadn’t been completed during the hasty night’s preparation in the royal city. The Marlo-Vayir forges would glow all night as the old Jarl’s grizzled Randael, known to everyone as Uncle Scrapper, whisked tirelessly about the stables, overseeing everything.

  The old Jarl, Hasta, stumped for a while beside his brother, both feeling the high glee absent since youth. Hasta reminded the older inhabitants of Cherry-Stripe, the way he kept chuckling at the honing of weapons, shoeing of horses descended from his magnificent studs, the loading of wagons with household supplies that would leave the castle scrambling.

  Buck and Fnor also moved about ceaselessly, she overseeing the division of supplies and the preparation of food, he beyond the gates, aiding in the massive task of organizing vast numbers of people for the long push northward. The castle’s resources were stripped pretty much right down to stone, but no one cared. They all felt the bright sun of history outlining themselves and their castle.

  Evred moved like a ship through the roiling currents, people flowing around him, aware of his presence and trying not to show it as they worked. With him was Inda. The Sier Danas came and went, seeing to logistical details of their own.

  When they’d seen everything, Evred signed to Vedrid, who in turn gathered his own staff with minute tilts of the head. Runners smoothly isolated Evred and Inda as they paced back toward the hall where the king was expected to preside at the meal being prepared.

  “Well?” Evred said, stopping at the foot of the wide, shallow stairs before the Marlo-Vayir great hall.

  “It’s not enough,” Inda admitted. “Not if we’re going to split in order to cover both ends of the pass. The Venn had easily twice this number out on the Ymaran plain. Probably more.”

  Evred lifted his chin. “I’m going to send my orders to Ola-Vayir from here, now that I have an idea of what we need. I will command him to raise a full decade.”

  Inda whistled. He still had to get used to the idea that Sponge could send out a Runner to raise half the fighting men in the largest jarlate.

  Evred said, “I don’t trust him, which is why I waited. He tried his tricks on my grandfather, who was forced to grant him all of southern Olara, but it’s only made him more greedy. I shall not give him more land.”

  “How will you get around that?” Inda asked.

  “Two ways. First, I am sending one of my father’s old Runners, someone Ola-Vayir cannot misunderstand or make demands of. Second, I’m going to reinforce him with Buck, who’s known to be loyal to me. Under Buck’s eye, he will not be so likely to look for ways to linger, or bargain for more concessions if he thinks I cannot do without his men.”

  Inda rocked gently back and forth, heel to toe. “So we’ll have a force going up the coast, then, to Lindeth?”

  “That’s my idea. By the time we get our men up through the middle of the kingdom and bear west, he’ll have had time to raise his force and travel, though a much shorter distance. It’s actually Buck who’s going to have to scramble.” Evred gave a brief, somewhat bleak smile. “But I know he’ll do it.”

  Evred glanced at a group of men hammering and sawing fifty paces away, making new wagons out of wood that had been set aside for something else. “I also decided we cannot risk leaving the harbors below Lindeth open, after what you told me. So I’m going to require the southern Jarls—including your father—to cover them.”

  That night they celebrated, drums rumbling inside and outside the castle. Tau wandered through the busy courts, the lamplit stables, and up onto the walls. From the sentry walks he gazed over the dark plains on which a starfield of fires glowed, most with silhouettes dancing around them, occasional shards of ruddy light glinting off swords in quick-flash beams. Clangs and clashes marked the galloping drum beats, and voices rose and fell, the cadenced words adding yet another counterpoint.

  Bright as the courtyards were, the great hall was far brighter, lit not only by torches all along the walls, giving off stupefying heat, but by carefully hoarded glowglobes brought out with increasing rarity as the magic spells faded. The massive iron-reinforced doors stood open, light and heat spilling out. Tau breathed in the warm, thick air, smelling of the pine pitch used for the torches, spiced wine, food, and too many people. In the cleared space the same songs and dances as he’d seen outside were performed, the same kind of food eaten. He found it interesting that though here, as everywhere, humans divided into hierarchies, the concept of the courtier was unknown.

  As in many of the castles Marlovans had taken from the Iascans generations before, the Marlo-Vayirs had adopted tables and benches in the formal halls. Chairs were set at the high table. Like castles, tables, benches, and chairs seemed more civilized than the mats and small, folding tables of their plains-roaming days; there was a jumble of tables and chairs and stools of various sizes extending down the long walls of the room, leaving the open space in the middle for the dancers.

  The old Jarl liked tables because his bad hip made sitting on the floor more difficult by the season. He sat at the head of the table now, relieved to rest his old bones on a cushioned chair.

  Evred sat at the place of honor midway along the high table. At his right was Inda, watching the dancing, at his left big, blond Cherry-Stripe, and next to him sat lean Rat Cassad, cousin to Evred and Barend. Across from them sat Noddy, and at his left Cama of the eye patch and curling black hair.

  They were in the middle of their meal as the harassed servants ran about.

  Tau had refined his skills at serving courtiers when spying for Inda in Bren. As the companion of the most popular female entertainer, he’d overseen expensive parties every night for most of a year, and had discovered that people forgot your presence if you held a tray in your hand or poured drinks.

  Tau joined the other Runners who, on the command of Vedrid, Captain of the Runners, reinforced the overburdened Marlo-Vayir servants. Vedrid himself was seeing to the preparations for the King’s Runners being sent out that night.

  Tau indicated with a gesture that he would take over serving wine to the high table, got a brief, grateful raised palm from the old Jarl’s equally old runner, and so he kept the oddly-shaped Marlovan wine cups filled.

  A song finished, three or four young Riders began a drum tattoo.

  “. . . the Gallop Dance, Cama!” a woman cried.

  Came peered up at the gallery, flashed a rakish grin, ran lightly down to pick a sword from the rack against the far wall, then took his place among the young men gathering. Tau enjoyed Cama’s heedlessness as most of the females in the room, at the floor tables and up above, tracked him as unerringly as flowers follow the sun.

  “What’s that?” Inda bent forward, frowning at the new sash round Cama’s narrow waist, a sash made of white and yellow silk.

  Cassad colors, Inda thought, remembering his childhood days when he’d had all the Jarl colors by heart. Cama was a Tya-Vayir, but commanding a force of Cassad men, so he wore their yellow. Inda was surprised that the sash had been hastily embroidered over in the pale blue and dark green of the Marlo-Vayirs.

  Inda reached across Evred and poked Cherry-Stripe. “Why’s Cama got your colors on that Cassad sash?”

  “Mran made that for him. Lover’s token. Haugh! Sometimes I wish we could marry who we wanted to marry. It would make the bedroom arrangements ever so much easier.”

  Noddy snorted. “But how could you afford a wedding every half year? Or would it be four times a year?”

  The laugh lines at t
he corners of Cherry-Stripe’s eyes were a young version of the same pattern in his father’s sun-browned face. “Can I help it if I fall in love a lot?” He hooted. “Isn’t it a laugh that the first one o’ us to get ourselves a son is ugly ol’ Noddy?”

  The Sier Danas grinned at stolid Noddy. “You’d think,” Cherry-Stripe went on, “that Flash would have fifty by now. Buck would have a couple—he and Fnor are disgusting. But Noddy?”

  A snort from Noddy. “You fools don’t even know what good sex is.”

  A howl of laughter.

  Noddy sat back. “My boy’ll be a great commander. As well as handsome. See it already in him, the way he drools in my face when I toss him.”

  Another howl, and everyone tried to talk the others down with insults. Inda shut them out, trying to accustom himself to the idea of Noddy tossing a baby in the air. Noddy having a son. Any of them having a son. “What does your boy look like?”

  “Me.” Noddy’s deep voice warmed as he added, “Got hair like a duck’s butt, sticks up all over.” He snorted a laugh.

  “—a wife you could bed,” Cherry-Stripe bawled, and everyone gave up trying to talk over him. Cherry-Stripe waved his wine goblet outward toward the dancers. “Take Cama, now. He’s too good a man, doesn’t deserve Starand.”

  “He doesn’t deserve that shit of a brother,” Noddy stated. “Didn’t get Horsebutt by marriage.”

  “Horsebutt,” Cherry-Stripe repeated, making a spitting motion over his shoulder, as Tau leaned down and refilled his wine cup. “He and his coward’s excuses for not sending any men! That’s why Cama had to join up under Cassad.”

  “Coward’s excuses?” Evred repeated.

  His tone was one of neutral inquiry, but the others straightened up, or rubbed jaws, or showed in little ways that for just a moment they’d forgotten that their old friend was the king. Cherry-Stripe sidled a look at Cama, whirling on the dance floor, oblivious to the conversation.

  “Better ask Buck,” Cherry-Stripe said uneasily.

  “I will.” Evred understood their hesitation—though they all hated Horsebutt, nobody wanted to be a snitch.

  Evred turned his attention to the dancers, tapping out the rhythm on the table, and gradually the others loosened up, the talk and laughter becoming more natural, as Cassad began pestering Inda for stories about pirate battles, and every single time Inda mentioned some aspect of sailing, Cherry-Stripe would howl, “What’s that?” or cup his ear, never tiring of the joke.

  Eventually, Evred eased his chair back and sat with his elbows on the rests, the wine cup between his hands. But he did not drink from it, just observed his boyhood friends over its broad brim, his face more relaxed than Tau had ever seen it. For the first time he looked like the very young man he was.

  Would such things ever appear in the ballads? Of course they wouldn’t. No one would remember the grizzled old Jarl, the firelight making his silver hair glint like barley beards at sunset, muttering as he pushed his plate away at last that he wished he could ride with them, but his hip wouldn’t even let him sit a horse. “And it’s not like I ever saw battle anyway, outside of that disgrace of Yvana-Vayir’s winter before last. When the old king died, I was just out of the academy, doing my rounds on the royal castle walls.” The old king being the present king’s grandfather.

  Evred said, “You will be needed here.”

  The old Jarl was now alert. “What’s that?”

  Evred made a motion toward the room. “When the plates are cleared.”

  “Heh.” The Jarl grinned. “A royal order, is it? And in my house. Heh.” Wheezing with laughter, he lifted his wine cup in both hands, downing what remained there.

  Tau silently refilled it, then stood behind the Jarl, where he could observe the king. Evred lounged in his wingback chair, profile against the dark wood, watching Inda talk and laugh as his long fingers toyed with the wide, shallow Marlovan wine cup.

  Evred had not just been watching Inda, though his face was turned that way as his academy mates caught up on one another’s news amid much joking and laughter. He watched the captains at the adjacent tables, he watched the interactions between the men dancing, and he chose exactly the right moment—just after the dishes were cleared away, as everyone began to chat. His father had left an unfinished testament to Evred’s brother (who would never have read it, which was perhaps why it was unfinished), with many observations about kingship. One had been: You, as king, will end the banquets. If you have news, get their attention as soon as their stomachs are full. Never when they’re hungry, and never later, when they are too drunk to stand. If you don’t have news, but have to make speeches full of praise for the reasons I’ve already discussed, wait until they’re drunk. Whatever you say, they’ll remember only their emotions and call your effort brilliant.

  And always, always, keep it short.

  He stood up, lifted his cup in his hands, and gestured a salute toward the old Jarl of Marlo-Vayir as Buck was still outside supervising.

  As soon as he lifted the cup the hubbub of voices was replaced by the graunch of wooden benches on the stone floor as all stood.

  “At dawn we ride away to war,” Evred said, and paused, because he knew the word war would raise a shout, and a full-throated, enthusiastic shout it was. Stone rang; some shoved fists into the air, others laughed.

  “I call to defend the kingdom those whose trust and courage is the most proven. Taking his place with my Sier Danas at the lead of my army is your Randael, Landred-Dal Marlo-Vayir.”

  Cherry-Stripe flushed down to the collarbones at having his family name said out loud so unexpectedly. He grinned around in obvious pride.

  Evred took in the drink-ruddy, triumphant faces, grins of anticipation, laughter, pleasure. “But I am also calling upon the Jarl of Marlo-Vayir, Aldren-Dal, to ride to the coast to reinforce our men there, in case the Venn bring ships to our shores.” Let any Venn spies assume that means he’ll ride up and down the coast.

  Buck was still outside, monitoring his people and resources, both taxed to capacity by this enormous gathering. Everyone in the hall shouted, some drumming with spoon and knife handles on the tables.

  Laughing, Cherry-Stripe knocked his chair over and ran from the hall to tell his brother the news. Cama leaped on the table, saluted Evred with his wine cup with such enthusiasm the wine sloshed to the table, bright as blood. “Evred-Harvaldar Sigun!” he shouted.

  “Evred-Harvaldar Sigun!” the crowd roared as one.

  Cama then turned with a flourish, his coat skirts flaring. “Indevan-Harskialdna Sigun!”

  “Indevan-Harskialdna Sigun! Sier Danas Sigun!”

  The shouts rang up the stones. Evred, smiling at last, saluted the room full of people, fist to heart.

  Thump! Fists to hearts, which beat for joy, exhilaration, triumph.

  Everyone then turned to his or her neighbor to exclaim, laugh, ask questions no one listened to. All except the old Jarl who sat back looking after his second son, his face grim—almost grief-stricken. He was proud, yes, but the prospect before him was not glory, not with both sons going off to war. The prospect was duty—and death.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Hadand: I arrived home last night. How strange it is that you shall read this the very day I write it. Assuming, that is, you find it right away—that you have time to go to your trunk and check the gold case, or wherever you will keep yours.

  Whipstick’s voice echoed up the walls outside Tdor’s open windows, the men’s responsive shout reverberating from the stone. Tdor leaned out to look down at Whipstick in the court. He wasn’t smiling—he never did running drill—but she could see pleased anticipation in the way he strode back and forth, and she heard it in the men’s enthusiastic responses to his shouts. They were happy, because they’d been ordered to the harbor to reinforce the dragoons already guarding it.

  Happiness. She considered that, absently running the quill through her fingers. Should she write about how strange that was, happiness at
the idea of being hacked to death, at hacking apart other men? But that was duty, so why shouldn’t they enjoy it? Maybe she should write about how happy she was to be home. She liked the royal city, and seeing Hadand as queen, how well everything seemed to be going, how much the women admired her. But oh, small as her room was, worn as the castle furnishings were, it was so, so good to be home. But would Hadand misunderstand?

  Of course the weather stayed cold and sodden the entire ride down, holding me up at bridges over swollen rivers, forcing us to ride around puddles the size of ponds. When did the skies clear? Yesterday. But it was only a day after I got your message about Evred’s orders.

  Another shout, followed by a confused clatter of horse hooves.

  Fareas-Iofre was full of questions about Inda, but as soon as I told her about the orders, she said her questions could wait.

  Tdor ran the feather over her ear. How long had it been since she’d thought Fareas-Iofre so cool, so calm, so free of the tangle of emotions that seemed to be confined to the young? Tdor poked the pen at a glob of dried ink (time to make some more) as she thought back to her childhood, and her comfortable conviction that adults didn’t feel love when they got old. Only what, really, was “old”? Until just a couple of years ago, Tdor had never considered the fact that Fareas-Iofre had been younger than Tdor was now when she was taken away from the people she’d grown up with and told that she was going to marry a man twenty-five years her senior. And everyone had expected her to be pleased because that would make her a princess.

  Your mother and Whipstick decided that the Adaluin will not be told about the Venn possibly attacking the western harbors. You must know by now—your mother said a Runner went north while I was coming south—that your father had one of those brain-spasms, and his right arm and leg don’t work. They say he is not in pain, he dreams like in winter. So Whipstick will take the riders to our harbor to reinforce Captain Noth’s dragoons. Everyone in the castle is full of jokes about how Horsepiss Noth can deal single-handed with ten, twenty, thirty mere Venn.