King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  Inda had been frowning, but now his brow cleared. “In the academy baths? When did you have time?” He remembered being hustled in and out of the stone pools, the splash fights, shoving, soap flung around, towel-cracking at your butt if you weren’t wary, scrambling into your clothes (and having to unknot your socks, and finding out who did it so you could get suitable revenge later), then running to the barracks for callover, your short hair wet and dripping nastily down inside your collar. You wouldn’t think anyone would feel the least urge for sex there.

  “When you’re seventeen and you wake up with saddle-wood, you find the time. And anyplace is good. Especially for Flash,” Cama added, and they all chuckled.

  “Flash?” Inda asked, remembering the grubby boy with wild brown hair, a lopsided grin, and a taste for scrapping out behind the barracks. Flash never walked, always ran.

  The others laughed. “Flash liked everybody,” Rat explained. “And he always seemed to be able to find a place. He was first for most of the girls over in the queen’s training, we kept hearing. I don’t know how he even got near them, rules being what they were.”

  “Nobody ever said no to Flash,” Cherry-Stripe said. “He had you laughing too hard.”

  “He was the first for most of us, too,” Rat said, hands open. “So it followed we’d practice on one another until they finally gave us liberty and we could get to the Heat Street girls.”

  “I didn’t,” Noddy commented. “You lot were too ugly.”

  Crows of scorn and guffaws rose.

  “Ugly?” Cherry-Stripe hooked an arm round Cama’s neck and jerked him close for a smacking kiss but his pooched lips met Cama’s hairy, muscular forearm, snapped up in a block.

  “Ech.” Cama shoved him away and adjusted his eye patch as everyone hooted at Cherry-Stripe.

  Who turned his palm Cama’s way. “The girls insist Cama’s the prettiest of us boys. Even one-eyed. Almost as handsome as me—”

  When the pungent commentary died down Inda said, “So, what, Horsebutt went after people? They didn’t go after him.”

  “Nah.” Cherry-Stripe flicked up the back of his hand toward the general direction of Tya-Vayir. “He changed the meaning again. Called anyone who got promotion a claphair. Came to mean a lick. Worse. Sort who’d spread ’em in order to get something.”

  “It was mostly aimed at my brother’s Sier Danas after they got to go north without having to put in their two years of guard duty, and when they returned there was still no duty, just riding around the kingdom with my brother,” Evred said.

  “Buck says they would rather have had guard duty.” Cherry-Stripe chortled. “Even stall-wanding.”

  “True,” Rat put in. “Very true. My brother told me they were bored sodden and had to put up with his temper. Two years.”

  Cherry-Stripe went on, “By the time the Harskialdna pulled us out of the horsetails and sent us home, that word was in everyone’s mouths down to the littlest boys. They didn’t have any idea what it meant.”

  “My brother,” Cama’s voice was rough with old anger,

  “can step out of the baths into clean clothes and boots, walk onto a clean floor, and still track shit prints all over before he leaves.”

  “Someone called you a claphair, eh?” Noddy asked Inda, who turned his palms up.

  “Doesn’t matter. They can say whatever they want. Long as they obey orders when it counts. Anyway I don’t think I was supposed to overhear,” Inda added, then tipped his head, considering. “Though I could be underestimating ’em.” He grinned. “I don’t blame ’em. I know what it had to look like, spending those first weeks doing academy exercises again and again while I was just watching.” He flicked his fingers out, and the conversation turned to other things.

  While the camp settled in to enjoy itself for the night, far to the northeast, on the extreme western end of the strait on Drael, Fleet Commander Hyarl Durasnir stood on the captain’s deck of Cormorant, Prince Rajnir’s royal flagship, in his most formal battle dress, the polished copper torc of a Hyarl at his neck—a very rare sight. Another rare sight was the three beaten-gold bands around his right arm that signified the Stalna, the Commander. The gold winked and gleamed as he swept his glass over his fleet, all as close in as they dared, anchored down as steady as possible.

  Contrasted against the white beach, lines of men were silhouetted, each with his dunnage at his side. Weapons polished, helms glinting in the moonlight as the strong northern wind rippled hair and tunics. Men of the Hilda, the army, and men of the Drenga, the armed sea warriors, their rivalry buried in common cause. It would inevitably surface later but Durasnir had found that they fought harder, each trying to outdo the other. Good.

  The tide had just turned. The anchor cables no longer strained to keep the ships from crashing on the shore but had eased to a vertical line. The ships were already loaded with supplies. The flat-bottomed troop boats were neatly lined on the sand, awaiting men and horses.

  All was ready. Restday wine and bread had been shared before the call to line up, as always on the eve of battle. Even the wind was ready, blowing steadily from their homeland, warm from the sun climbing toward its highest arc of the year here in the south.

  They waited only the prince’s word.

  Under powerful glowglobes hung from the mastheads—so the army could see him—Rajnir stood just before the whipstaff, his armor glinting silvery-blue, except for the rich gold of the Tree of Ydrasal gilding his chest plate. He wore his winged helm, which he hadn’t touched since that appalling sea battle ten years ago. His neck was bare of the silver torc of heirship, the more noticeable for its absence.

  Everyone who saw that bare throat wanted to be the one to win it back for him: his success was their success, and theirs was his.

  Flanking him were the ubiquitous Erama Krona, fully armed as they always were when away from the prince’s quarters, though Rajnir would never be within a day’s journey of any fighting.

  Rajnir breathed deeply, his countenance proud and joyous as he surveyed his invasion force, ready at last.

  Their readiness was somewhat of a fiction, but it was one they all participated in. Durasnir’s long experience had taught him that last-moment scramblings and surreptitious tidyings were inevitable, no matter how long the plans, or how carefully executed. But each knew his unfinished tasks, and would see to them on board.

  It was a necessary fiction, and not just for the king’s ears far away, or for the prince’s sight. They all needed it. They were going to war; many were going to death. They would be kept busy in the tight quarters on board the transport ships as they crossed the strait.

  At the prince’s shoulder Dag Erkric waited, the wind tangling his silver hair, the grooves in his face deepened by the harsh light of the glowglobe hanging just above him.

  “Hyarl my commander.” Rajnir lifted his voice. “Let us depart.”

  The horns gave long, weird blats, reminding Durasnir of the cry of some of the bigger sea creatures up in northern waters, to be drowned out by a roar rose from shore:“Victory to the Venn!

  Victory to the prince!

  Honor to Ydrasal, nine times nine!”

  They began to move, men to boats, boats to ships.

  Chapter Thirty

  TAU and Inda had been watching the sky, sniffing the air, frowning at the quality of the light for several days. It seemed remarkable to them that none of the Marlovans noticed anything, but then they themselves weren’t certain that they’d felt that shift of the wind from one side of the world to the other. Neither said anything, wanting independent corroboration.

  Everyone knew that air currents played over land from every direction, sometimes coming from all directions during a single storm. In some places, and seasons, there would be breezes from one direction in the mornings, then the air stilled in the heat of the day to flow in from over the water at sundown.

  But the big, steady winds that drove cloud bands over the oceans, those were unmistakable to those used
to the ways of the sea.

  What Inda could not determine was whether the strait lay under the summer winds as well. Mindful of Evred’s order to keep silent about the beacons, he scanned the mountaintops as soon as they appeared, hazy and indistinct, on the horizon.

  The third morning when they met for practice, as Inda was working his right arm to loosen the stiffness that he couldn’t seem to avoid, Tau said, “Do you feel the wind change?”

  And instead of a mild yes or no while they continued on down to a good, flat, grassy spot away from the command tents, Inda stilled and drew in a long breath that Tau heard in the quiet summer air. “Third day I’ve been sure of it.” He shook his head, and to Tau’s surprise, loped back, stopping outside Evred’s tent.

  “Sponge,” Inda said softly.

  “Inda?” came an immediate answer, with no trace of sleep.

  “I think—that is, we’re pretty sure. The wind’s changed.”

  Evred was silent so long Tau wondered if the king had been asleep after all, except that Inda stood so still, his head slightly bowed. And what Evred finally said was, “I understand. Thank you.”

  Understand what? The quality of the silence had changed, though Tau could not define how. But Inda’s manner, Evred’s long pause before speaking, it was as if some great, invisible burden had passed from one to the other.

  Keeping his questions to himself by now had become habitual, so Tau paced beside Inda until they reached the riverbank. They were alone. The Sier Danas had gone back to leading their own men in morning drill. It was too late to learn a new form, better to hone the old, they’d decided. All except Cama, who practiced both forms when he could get someone to partner him. But mornings he drilled his men, his single eye merciless. The Cassads had given Cama their dragoons, and Cama was determined to shape them to Horsepiss Noth’s standards. Better, if he could.

  Inda and Tau began the swings and twists of warm-up. Dawn was just beginning to color the east blue. Inda felt Tau’s question more than he saw it. Tau seldom spoke in front of the others anymore, and even when he did, Evred never noticed. It was strange, but Inda hadn’t pursued it. Evred was too much like Fox that way, in his reactions to people. Those two weren’t just silent, they seemed to wear their silence like clothing.

  Inda considered this particular one of Evred’s military secrets. Surely he could tell Tau. Signi was also discreet— Inda suspected she knew secrets far deeper and more world-important than anything he could even think of—but he wouldn’t burden her with things that would affect this coming battle against her countrymen. He sometimes wondered why she was still here. He knew she could do a spell and vanish any time she wished. When she spoke, she always made him see and think far outside himself, and outside of war. He was grateful for her presence, though the thought of her being by when they and the Venn met made him uneasy.

  Later, later.

  “Tau.” He already had Tau’s attention as they moved, struck, tumbled on the long summer grass, whirled, struck again. But saying his name somehow made the subject more important without his having to say so. “Tau. There is a back-up plan. Was. Is. I think he’s going to have to signal it, because we’re just not fast enough. We can’t risk being too late.”

  “Back-up plan? Signal? I take it you do not mean the flags. Or even Runners,” Tau added, indicating his own blue coat lying neatly on the bank—then striking a double blow toward jaw and gut.

  Inda’s hands blurred as he blocked, feinted, grappled Tau, and threw him to the grass. “Remember that locket thing Evred showed us at dinner in the royal city?” A puff, a grunt, and they rolled to their feet and began circling. “Evred told me recently he wears one. Barend’s up at the north end of the pass, with Flash Arveas, and he has another one, Nightingale—Noddy’s brother—the third.”

  Tau found it amazing, almost absurd that these powerful Marlovans were confined to tiny love lockets for communication. If the stakes hadn’t been so terrible, he would have laughed.

  Unaware of his reaction, Inda tried a couple of feints, then went on. “Evred is probably writing orders to Barend right now. With the winds changed here, we have to figure maybe the winds are changing up in the strait as well. I wish we knew how widespread the wind changes were.”

  Tau shrugged, though Inda’s comment had been to the air, and not to him. He whirled and swept Inda’s feet, but as Inda fell he twisted, snaked an arm around Tau’s ankle, and yanked.

  “So anyway—” A fast exchange of light blows, Tau pinned Inda, but Inda heaved with enormous strength and Tau somersaulted away before Inda could catch him. “—anyway, the Venn could be launching any time. To stop them in case they get to the pass before we do, well, Flash is going to bring down a mountain onto the road.”

  “A mountain?” Tau repeated, and Inda dropped on him.

  When Tau slapped the grass, Inda let him up. “The side of one, anyway. The Venn won’t be able to come over the pass until they take this castle squatting across the entrance. Evred says the castle is almost as big as his in the royal city.”

  Tau whistled. Then ducked and caught Inda’s wrist. Inda shifted his grip and pulled, which Tau anticipated. He was as quick as Fox that way. He matched Inda’s moves until Inda shifted his feet, then twisted, whirling Inda off balance. Whomp! Inda hit the dust flat on his back, breathing hard. Tau dropped on him, knees holding Inda’s arms down, thumbs at Inda’s windpipe.

  Tau leaned over him, his golden hair hanging down as he panted lightly. “That’s good. Isn’t it?”

  Inda tapped out, and Tau dropped his hands. “For us,” Inda said, a little hoarsely. “But with the road gone, there’s no way from Idayago to here except through this ancient waterway tunnel somewhere under the castle. Our people have to hold the castle. Alone. Until we get there.”

  Tau’s lips parted. “Shit.” He pulled Inda to his feet.

  Barend woke sticky and hot. His head ached. They’d drunk too much iced birch beer the night before, sitting on the battlements of Castle Andahi in hopes of a breeze, chattering as they drank. Barend had brought the recipe for birch beer from the east. There was plenty of black birch up here along the north. Add yeast to the distilled sap, some of the precious sugar left from the days when Idayago still had trade with the islands, and it had become more popular than cranberry punch with the castle folk.

  Especially with ice. That was the one good thing about those blasted high mountains. The few trusted men who traded off beacon-watch always brought down ice from the heights, packed inside a number of closeweave bags. Since there were traders who made a living doing that, it was easy enough to lie and say they’d bought it, and thus they could have iced punch almost every night.

  Every night of this hot weather, because for ten days—Barend had been counting—they’d woken up to a bright blue sky and still, warm air. Was this the summer shift in winds? What he needed was a good storm, straight out of the northwest, then he could be certain. But no thunder had wakened him.

  What had? He scratched his head vigorously as he sat up, and when the locket slid over his bare chest, he started. The locket!

  He thumbed the catch, and sure enough, there was a tiny rolled piece of paper inside. First thing in the morning? That could not be good.

  He grimaced, fingering the paper open. The tiny letters twinkled and danced. Reading had never come easy even when he was young. He’d had some sympathy for his cousin Aldren-Sierlaef, who couldn’t make sense of letters at all. That is, he’d had sympathy until the Sierlaef began taking out his frustrations on Barend and Evred with his fists.

  Barend scowled at the tiny print, then reluctantly rolled out of bed. He pulled on his pants and shirt and ran down the hall, the stone cool on his bare feet, bursting into Flash’s bedroom directly downstairs from the old Jarl’s suite.

  There seemed to be two shapes under the tumbled sheets. Of course Flash was in bed with someone—he always was in bed with someone. Even if he went to bed alone, lovers came looking for him, Barend
had learned.

  He found Flash’s dark hair on the pillow, and peered past. With relief he recognized the pale yellow hair of Flash’s wife, Ndand. She knew all the kingdom business.

  “Flash,” Barend said.

  The two started, Ndand yawning as she pushed a braid out of her face. “Oooh, Barend. Why did you—” She yawned again, more fiercely. “—wake us up?”

  “Don’t you ever knock?” Flash added with mild injury.

  “No. You’d not answer, and I’d have to come in anyway.” Barend sat down on the bed. “Since it’s just you two here, I can get you to read that.”

  Flash sat up abruptly when he saw the tiny paper in Barend’s hand. His expression tightened as he angled it toward the weather-smoothed arched window, the shutters open wide to the balmy predawn air. “Evred says they’ve got summer over the mountain, and he’s still a couple weeks outside of Ala Larkadhe. We’ve orders to smash the road, and Barend, you have to ride south to join him.” He balled up the paper. “Last, Dad is to abandon the harbors and pull everyone back to defend this castle.”

  The three had spent far too much time speculating and calculating distances, especially in the past few days. The truth was, if the Venn came first, with or without the road collapsed, they would be the only ones defending the entire north shore of Idayago.

  Ndand was the first to move, jumping out of bed and whirling her cotton robe round her slight, hard body. “I’ll order the horses and supplies for your Runners, Flash.”

  Flash dropped his hands to his knees. “Dad and the others should have been here by now.”

  “Well, they aren’t.” Barend flung out his empty hands. “So let’s send the rest of our Runners to every castle. All at the same time. Faster than just one fellow stopping everywhere along the way.”

  “Good.” Flash grinned. “Past time to bustle Dad along.” Flash reassured himself with laughter. His wily old father was probably presiding over the destruction of every dock and siege weapon used to fling stones at pirate ships. And he’d want to do it at all three harbors, then maybe even set up some traps and pitfalls. He’d love that, but such things did take time.