King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

The Jarlan lifted a hand. “One of the women spotted her just now, scurrying up one of the inner footpaths.” She nicked her head toward the eastern side of the pass, where Flash and his diggers were gathered above Twisted Pine Path.

  “She might want to watch the landslide from above,” Ndand said. “Maybe that kind of thing appeals to poets. We—”

  She paused, aware of the oddest sensation. The other women stilled, chins lifting bird-quick, some of their arms rising instinctively outward as if they were balancing on something narrow and rickety.

  The solid stone shuddered under their feet. They whirled, faces toward the eastern cliff, the striations in the rock barely visible as the last of the sun sank behind the headland.

  On the crag above, Keth had just finished the spell, his fingers still rigid, forming the magical sign.

  In a puff of moldy dust a huge rock appeared on the opposite cliff, causing a faint clap of an echo as the displaced air smacked out and then back again from the rocks on their side of the pass. Everyone laughed, exclaimed, and watched expectantly.

  But nothing happened for a count of five, then ten. Keth had just turned his head up to his brother in disappointment when the ground twitched beneath his toes, like a horse dislodging an insect.

  Everyone on cliff and castle wall stilled.

  Below Keth, the clitter-clatter of small rocks gradually quickened to a rock-thocking, thumping rush, and then a low, constant rumble. The ground shivered and shook as the mountainside beneath them cracked, sending waterfalls of brown dirt and dust tumbling down.

  And then the entire lower cliff crumbled with a vast roar as the falls expanded into cataracts of rushing brown dirt, clogged with stone and the roots of long-dead trees. The cataracts joined into a wild torrent, its power so terrifying and exhilarating that not just the boy but most of the men shouted in a wordless mix of terror and glee. The mountainside, unstoppable now, folded in on itself, slumping into the broad road beside the castle. The spillage piled higher and higher, heaping upward toward the solid stone curtain wall of the castle. Higher, rimming the crenellations, and spilling between the battlements in thin brown streams until the main mass poured over the top of the wall. And buried it.

  “It’ll smother the castle,” Keth screamed.

  No one heard him. He could not hear himself over the tumult.

  The flood of dirt coursed over the jumble of houses, causing the wooden additions to shiver then twist, and finally shatter, sending splinters the length of a man spinning into the eddying mass.

  The slide rolled across what was once the castle’s shared truck garden, burying all the spring planting beneath tumbling boulders, and yet the dirt still spilled outward, reaching the inner wall, then mounding up toward the battlements. And over again, filling the shorter gap between wall and the castle itself with frightening speed.

  But despite the rising pall of long-buried dust, in the fading light the men could just barely make out a gradual slowing.

  The skull-ringing roar diminished to a low, thundering rumble, and the sliding ground thinned to a rubble of tumbling stones, slowed, slowed, leaving at last a clacketing of pebbles.

  One or two last boulders thumped and jumped crazily down. And came to rest.

  Keth let out a whoop of sheer joy.

  Flash exchanged looks with his men, seeing his own amazement mirrored in their faces.

  From the inner walls, the women stared down at the slope of dirt halfway up the two east towers. Then aching shoulders were loosened, locked knees worked until trembling legs would hold up, tightened jaws released gritted teeth.

  The Jarlan tried to swallow, but her mouth was too dry.

  “All right,” she croaked, her thoughts as bleak as the sight below. She cleared her throat, coughed out some dust, and lifted her voice. “Time to get ready for our guests.”

  In the town farther downriver from Evred-Harvaldar’s enormous camp, people were out for their Restday stroll, enjoying the mellow weather. Many turned their attention east, toward the golden glow of the army’s campfires, and speculated about the warriors they planned to watch galloping by on the morrow.

  From the eastern road the sound of laughter accompanied the beat of horse hooves, as a small party of gray-coated warriors rode townward, looking to spend their money and have a good time.

  From the main street inn’s balcony Skandar Mardric glared, his mood murderous.

  Dead. His brother—the little boy who used to eat flowers and try to catch pollywogs as pets—dead. Along with eight others, and all as a result of his order.

  It had seemed a whim, after seeing one of those damned blue-coated Marlovan Runners trotting arrogantly by. One saw them everywhere, reminding everyone just who held the whip in this land. Kill the Runners, he’d said. A whim, but one that swiftly gained meaning and rightness. What better way to harass the enemy than by interrupting their communications? Intercepting them and using them? Who knew that they went armed, that they were trained to fight?

  Eight of his good men dead. Eight dead, and only one Marlovan killed. One could say he was old, yet it took five of them to bring him down.

  Time for a drink. Mardric’s foot scraped, his hand—aching to close around a Marlovan throat—lifted from the rail. He’d just begun to turn away when a lone rider trotted into view, at first only a silhouette.

  A familiar silhouette. Or was that just his desire to see the one he wanted most to kill?

  Mardric stared into thickening darkness. He had seen that rider before, always from a distance, hadn’t he? Only was this some Montrei-Vayir cousin made one of their Runners? Because he was unaccompanied and wore one of those blue coats.

  Still, Mardric’s heartbeat quickened as he leaned out so far he was almost in danger of falling, until the Runner reached the nimbus of the inn’s glowglobe.

  And Mardric laughed. The impossible had happened. That dark red hair, the bony face, the kingly shoulders, trim waist, splendid legs: unmistakably Evred Montrei-Vayir himself.

  And all alone.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “VEDRID, I can’t find any linseed oil.” Tau stuck his head inside the king’s tent.

  When the king was present, one or more of his Runners stood guard outside. But no one was on guard, and inside Vedrid and a couple of his staff were busy brushing the king’s gray riding coat and readying his bedroll. Tau noticed the coat; despite the warmth of the evening, Evred did not seem one to wander about in only shirt and trousers.

  “I think the farrier got the last of the oil,” Vedrid said over his shoulder. “Shall I send someone to the town?”

  “Yes.” Tau spared a glance through the open flap of Inda’s tent, where, in the hanging lamplight, he could make out Cherry-Stripe, Noddy, and Rat with Inda. Signi knelt behind Inda, her fists pounding on his right shoulder; she said something and the others all laughed. Inda would be fine for a while. “On second thought, I’ll go myself.”

  Yes. An evening away from academy reminiscences, old battles refought, and king-avoidance would be pleasant. The town was not far. He could ride in, find linseed oil, maybe find a pleasure house, drink a glass of local brew and look at other people besides warriors. Like women. Tau missed the sight of women. Signi did not count, shrouded as she was in those rumpled clothes that underage boys and girls wore, her manner so unobtrusive it was like she was invisible before your eyes.

  He could be back about the time Cherry-Stripe and the others—talked out for the night—would be wandering to their own tents to sleep. Didn’t matter if Inda was awake or asleep; more often than not he ended up snoring halfway through one of Tau’s kneadings.

  Tau retreated to his own tent to get some coins and drop off his knives, as there were stringent rules against bearing weapons inside a pleasure house. People needed to feel safe to enjoy intimacy—unless you went to one of the houses that made sex games of risk and pain. He undid the wrist sheaths and dropped them into his bag, followed by his Runner’s coat and plain linen shirt. O
ut came one of his fine civilian shirts and tunic-vests.

  He shrugged back into his coat, claimed one of the mounts designated for Runners to use at night, and trotted through the camp, amazed again at its immensity. It seemed there would be no end to the campfires and neat half-circle tent villages, the streaming and bobbing torches of men visiting one another’s camps, the drums rolling and tapping, songs, shouts, and laughter, but he finally reached the outskirts and then the outer perimeter. His blue coat got him past with a wave of a hand in salute, which he returned. After he’d crossed a feeder stream and passed a ridge of ancient, tangled vines that had marked someone’s border long ago, he halted long enough to unclasp his hair, tie it back, and fold his coat into the saddle pouch. He pulled his long vest over his shirt, retied his sash, and finished the ride at a trot.

  Like most western towns, he discovered, this one was not built in a walled, Marlovan castle-square or in a wheel shape, as was common in the east, but in a line alongside the river. The main street, with the best shops and wealth ier houses, bordered the river.

  The entire population seemed to be out on the stroll along the haphazardly-lit street. There were stone posts with big glowglobe glass casings atop them, all but one dark. Until the mages returned, the glowglobes were only used in emergencies. Lanterns, lamps, and torches proliferated up and down both sides, smelling heavily of the ubiquitous leddas oil and giving the place an agreeable party air. The equally pungent aromas of Restday mulled wine and pastries and special dinners made Tau’s mouth water after weeks of smelling nothing but horse, man, dust, and the camp food whose main constituents were rye and cabbage.

  Ah. There, upriver a way, the sign of a horse’s head. Stables with tack shops were where most people bought linseed oil, as it was used for horse as well as human. Tau had been raised in a pleasure house, where they often used fine oils. Many patrons liked a rubdown before or after sex and some houses boasted people so good with their hands that patrons came just for their muscle aches to be kneaded.

  Tau peered over the strollers’ heads. Most pleasure houses were named for pleasing images—flowers, birds, songs, stars, sunset, dawn—except for those that catered to the stranger side of human desires.

  He found a sign with a painted sun, a moon surmounted by stars next door. The crowd thickened up as he neared. These two houses were clearly at the party end of town. By the time he’d threaded through groups of talking, laughing people, many holding mugs of local brew in their hands, he’d figured out that the Sun was where all the younger people went, the Moon-and-Stars preferred by the older. Music poured out from the Sun, and all the downstairs windows were open. Inside the crowd was even bigger, clapping for the dancers in the center, talk and laughter almost drowning out the musicians.

  His mother’s influence had gradually traveled up the coast from Parayid: the pleasure houses were decorated to please all the senses, the way they were in the older kingdoms on the eastern side of the continent. Murals, fine porcelain, the best scents and music, everyone dressed as artfully as imagination and the range of local fabrics could make them. Everywhere he saw signs of what he was certain was his mother’s influence.

  The music gave way to throbbing drum beats, followed by a delightful Sartoran ballad sung antiphonally by male and female voices—only reversed, men doing women’s verses and women men, which gave the song an unexpectedly bawdy layer of meaning. Auditors (those who could hear over the street noise) bellowed with laughter.

  He stopped to listen, and to thoroughly appreciate the spectacle of young women wearing soft summer robes. After weeks of nothing but men, women seemed exceptionally entrancing: tall, short, young, old, plump, scrawny—it didn’t matter. They were all delightful.

  Everyone was loose, free, bent on pleasure, so the sight of a tense body slipping between celebrants drew Tau’s eye. His attention sharpened when the man seemed familiar. Who? When? Where? Dark, glossy long hair, well kept as any noble’s, though the man wore ordinary travel clothes: the short tunic common here in the west, dun riding trousers, mocs. A fine profile, well-shaped mouth, now compressed—

  Tau chirped softly, and his mount, ears twitching, moved forward a couple of steps just as the man glanced to the right and then to the left.

  A dark, sardonic gaze brushed past Tau indifferently, obviously seeking someone, or something, else. Where have I seen that face? Tau recalled a reaction of annoyance, but not why the man had annoyed him.

  Tau leaped down and tossed a coin to one of the hopeful children lurking around, who led his mount around to the hitching post between the two houses.

  Tau had learned about stalking quarry when spying for Inda in Bren. He eased through the crowd, keeping three people between the dark-haired man and himself as he sorted memories, trying to fit the man into them.

  Skandar Mardric did not expect any interference as he patiently followed Evred, but he kept searching the crowd for those blue or gray Marlovan coats.

  The king himself wearing a plain blue coat had surprised him. So that was how Evred-Harvaldar had vanished so easily from the Nob that first time! Who’d think a king would lay aside the trappings that boosted him above everyone else?

  Mardric’s heart thumped with the thrill of danger, of anticipated triumph.

  Estral, we’re about to change history, he thought to his sister, far away in the north. Unfortunately, he could no longer dash notes off to her: the gold cases they’d so laboriously obtained had ceased transferring. Either the magic spells had faded, or—more likely—the Venn had interfered.

  Considering what Mardric and his inner circle had done to their spies, it seemed a fair trade. The thought made him smile. Besides, there was no more planning to be done. Estral had her orders, and Mardric’s long-sought target had just walked with typical Marlovan arrogance right into easy reach. Two deaths and a vast empire falls. Then three kingdoms regain their freedom. All accomplished by you and me, Estral, a victory that will be the sweeter as our brother is now another of their many victims. Have you thought about what you’ll ask for your reward?

  Evred-Harvaldar moved up in the waiting line on the men’s stairs, twin to the stairs on the other side of the main room for those who wanted a female partner.

  He spotted a couple of the Marlovans on liberty on the far side of the room, and turned his shoulder before any of them could look up and catch his eye. He didn’t care if they saw him from the back; what he didn’t want was to talk, to smile or laugh with them anymore than he wanted to choose a partner from among the dancers circling so smilingly among the townsfolk, for that meant chatter, a decent pretence of interest, of friendship. Evred did not want any of that, nor did he want to give it: it was sensible, it was sane, to rid the body of unwanted passion; it was not an act of celebration.

  I love the beloved that loves not me—the triune heart, symbolized by clover. Evred had discovered that in the ancient white tower of the castle of Ala Larkadhe where they were heading, in an archive so old its origin was impossible even for the Morvende caretakers to know. He’d found the saying written in Old Sartoran. After seeing that, he’d recognized the clover symbol when it showed up in poetry and verse histories, one of many symbols of hidden motivations and consequences. He’d once found it comforting to see in old texts that all the range of human variation had been experienced. Shared—

  “Your turn.”

  He started. Discovered a pair of young women standing behind him, one laughing, the other’s impatience becoming a slow head-to-toe of speculation.

  He turned up his palm in polite thanks, and left them giggling and whispering behind him as he trod up to the landing where the plump, balding proprietor waited, a broad smile on his ruddy face.

  Tau, just squeezing inside the front door behind a large, loud party of merrymakers, spotted the dark-haired man on the lower stair on the men’s side. The fellow was in the act of extending a hand to push past two young women who were arguing with the proprietor. “If we’re sharrrr-ing a fell
ow, we should onnn-ly pay for onnne,” a woman declared with the earnest exaggeration of the tipsy as the dark-haired fellow attempted to slip behind her. But he was prevented by the woman swaying backward a step as she raised a dramatic hand, pointing a finger toward the ceiling. “One!”

  Tau peered past her at the fellow, who tried again to get past her, his entire body tense with impatience.

  His reaching hand tweaked harder at Tau’s memory—that hand, where had he seen it? Close, close, yes . . . gripping his arm. Lindeth harbor, the guild mistress’s house. That same hand stopping him from following Inda, just after the pirate battle, when they’d gone to pay for supplies at Lindeth. He recalled those sardonic dark eyes, the drawling voice that did not hide hostility, Is he really Elgar the Fox?

  So who was the fellow chasing after now? Puzzled, Tau flicked a glance to the top of the stairs, a heartbeat before another familiar figure vanished down the hall. An instantly recognizable figure despite the blue Runner’s coat: that height, those shoulders, and above all the long, dark red horsetail Tau’d been riding behind for weeks.

  Evred? In a blue coat?

  Alone?

  Tau pinched the skin between his brows. Could this possibly be some assignation? He watched the dark-haired man squeeze past the women at last as they leaned forward, both arguing with the proprietor. Tau’s interest sharpened when the man pressed past the second woman, a hand going revealingly to his side the way one did to steady a hidden weapon.

  Assignation—or assassination?

  The sharp inward goad of danger propelled Tau through the last of the crowd and up the stairs. Tau grimaced at how very angry Evred would be if Tau thrust his way in on a privately planned encounter, but instinct was against anything planned on Evred’s part, especially with this Lindeth fellow.

  Tau tried to slip past the women—but his own looks worked against him. One of the women gasped, lips parted, and Tau nearly tripped when the proprietor stuck out a foot. “Who are you?”