King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  You’d think Queen Han would help, since the Jarlan called her such a great leader, but oh, no. Not her. She was too important for drawer dunking.

  “Some kind of new noise,” Han whispered, hopping back inside the cave.

  The children huddled together, everyone uncertain whether fun or bad things were coming next.

  “I’ll be lookout,” Gdir stated.

  “No. We’ll do it just like yesterday.” Han smacked the dust off her clothes with impatient whacks.

  Lnand had no desire whatsoever to go out there and see whatever horrors made those noises. All that screaming, and the crashes. Now those terrible moaning howls, like monsters out of an old story. How could Han stand it? She was probably pretending to be brave. Everyone is pretending, Lnand thought. It’s the only way people admire you, if you act like a hero.

  So she made herself say, “I’ll stand watch. You two did it yesterday.”

  Gdir wrinkled her nose like someone farted, making Lnand want to yank her hair out by the roots.

  Han sighed. “I said, we’ll do it like yesterday.”

  “You think I’m a coward.” Lnand knew she really was a coward, but she was angry enough to bite and kick and scratch if Han said it.

  “No.” Han whacked dust off her trousers.

  “Why don’t you change into your other outfit. Those clothes are disgusting,” Gdir said.

  Han ignored her. “Lnand. Your job is the smalls. Keep them quiet. That means keep them happy. Hal and I can watch the pass, it’s just boring sitting there. Gdir and Dvar on next swap.”

  “Haldred’s only nine.” Lnand put her hands on her hips. It was working, everyone thought she wanted to be out there.

  “So’s Dvar.” Han turned a dirt-mottled hand over. “So? None of us will be alone, and I know Hal and Dvar can be quiet as mice, because they are on the games. I never knew anyone as still and quiet. Keth, too,” she added with extra meaning: even the Jarl’s son had to follow orders. “If he were here.”

  Hal had been glaring at Lnand, but now he flushed with pride. Dvar was too tired to care; she wasn’t going to whine, but she was sure she’d heard her mother screaming during the night.

  “But what about us? We’re good at games!”

  Han turned on the seven- and eight-year-old boys and girls who made up the most of the children. She didn’t care which of them had spoken. “Ndand never put anyone under nine on tower watch, so you don’t even think it.”

  Some of the eights muttered. The sevens stayed quiet, and Tlennen, Gdir’s six-year-old brother, slid his thumb toward his mouth. It tasted like grit, but everything inside his skin felt better when he sucked it. He stepped behind Gdir, so she wouldn’t see. He hated it when she slapped his hand down and said that warriors didn’t suck their thumbs. Maybe they didn’t. But nobody had let him be a warrior yet.

  Satisfied that everyone thought she was brave and eager to be out in the danger, Lnand turned away from Han, and there were all those waiting eyes. Rosebud’s lips were starting to pucker, and Lnand said in a hurry, “Who’s really big, and wants to help with breakfast?”

  “No fire,” Han called.

  Lnand heaved a loud, shuddering sigh. “D’you think I’m stupid?” She said it all the more fiercely because she’d just been looking for the natural shelf where they’d put the Fire Stick high out of reach of the smalls.

  But of course they couldn’t have a fire. Even in daylight, they’d discovered, you could see flickers on the roof of the cave from below. They’d wasted most of yesterday trying to build a wall to block the cave from view but the cave entrance was too big and they couldn’t shift big stones. And Gdir had reminded them that a stone wall visible from below would look like someone was inside, unless it was mossy and old looking.

  As Lnand set about unwrapping and dividing up one loaf and one wedge of cheese, Gdir prowled around the cave entrance to examine the wall they’d made. It was only knee height, and out of view from below. She’d checked before sunset the day before, though it had meant climbing down all the way to the pass. The horrible noises had somehow been louder there, she did not know why. She’d only taken a fast look then scrambled right back up the cliff.

  She paced to where they kept their food stash, ignoring Han. Even the sound of her breathing was irritating. Han was just the daughter of a guardswoman. Why was she made leader?

  Gdir accepted her share of the bread and cheese, looking down to make sure Tlennen had his. When she saw his clean thumb on an otherwise dirty hand, she arced her hand up to slap him, then stopped. He might drop his food, and they couldn’t spare extra. She wouldn’t let him pick it up dirty.

  “As soon as you eat, wash up,” she muttered, glowering. “And if I see that thumb in your mouth again, I’m going to thrash you. No Tlen sucks their thumb.”

  Tlennen’s resentment burned like a ball of hate in his middle. He knew she was wrong. She always said they were Tlens of the primary family, not just Rider-cousins, and they were better than anybody, but Tlennen remembered Keth used to suck his thumb. He’d decided he would stop thumb sucking when he was eight. Sometimes you’re just not ready for things, like riding a horse over fences. Thumbs were like riding in that way.

  Gdir glared at Han, who sat with Hal just inside their wall, where they’d found the best vantage down to the pass, at least as far as the last great curve, just where the tunnel opened. Out of sight was the long downward slope of the pass, gradually widening—an ancient landslide, Flash had told them. Really ancient. Even more ancient than the tunnel, which had been where the river went after the slide, until that, too, changed, going deeper underground somehow. She wasn’t sure why she found that comforting, but she did.

  Thinking about that was better than thinking about Han’s bad leading, and how unfair it was of the Jarlan to pick her. Gdir was betrothed to Keth! She was future Randviar! She was primary-family Tlen! Of course, you couldn’t keep rank if you were terrible at training, but Gdir could shoot as well as Han, could beat her with right-hand knife, and almost with left. They ran and climbed about the same. So why wasn’t Gdir leader?

  Gdir looked around irritably. The cave was filthy again, and they all looked like little pigs rooting for vegetable parings. She turned on a wrestling pile of eights—all boys, of course. “Why aren’t you clean so we can start warm-ups?” she asked, loud enough for “leader” Han to remember her duty.

  Scowls and mutters were the only answer, but at least the boys broke apart and headed for the stream.

  Everyone else began doing their chores, even the fives taking each end of a bedroll and shaking it the way she’d showed them, though far too listlessly to actually dislodge dirt.

  She nipped one end and gave the bedroll a snap. A cloud of dust rolled off. The child at the other end pouted at having her arms wrung; the one she’d replaced laughed at the cloud.

  “Do it that way,” she said, and satisfied that she had just cause, she marched across the cave to Han. “Why won’t you do your duty?”

  “Go away, Gdir.”

  “You’re supposed to be leader. I seem to be doing the real work, like cleaning up and seeing that the brats don’t just fight all day, while you just squat there pretending to be a warrior. Why aren’t you giving those orders?”

  Han snorted. “Because you’re doing it. That means I don’t have to argue about those orders like I do all the others.”

  “Who’s arguing with orders?”

  “You’re doing it right now. I said go away, and you started to argue.”

  “Shut it, Gdir,” Hal whispered, his pale eyes sidelit in the strengthening light. “I think something’s happening.”

  All three ducked down and peered across the pass and down at the far end, where a massive crevasse opened into the tunnel. They saw nothing.

  “I am not arguing,” Gdir stated, turning back to Han. “I am quite reasonably pointing out the duty that you should be doing.”

  “You wouldn’t point out the Jarlan’s d
uty.”

  “That’s because she always does everything right.”

  “This.” Han flung her hands out. “Is an argument.”

  Gdir wanted to say Lnand argued, but she didn’t want Lnand hearing her name and rushing over to pretend to be hurt so everyone would pet her.

  Han looked in the same direction, and snorted again. “You know she’s the worst pug in the world. But at least she’s doing her job.”

  Gdir couldn’t express the depth of her loathing. Lnand was the worst pug of all the castle children, always wanting to be petted and cooed over for just doing her duty. Duty was to be done because everyone trusted you to do it. They shouldn’t have to praise you for it.

  Han grinned. “Giving her orders is like trying to swim in mud.”

  “Then you should fight her,” Gdir stated, though she knew Han wasn’t a coward. In fact she so much wasn’t a coward she didn’t see the hint about cowardice.

  Han made a face. “Waste of time, and it hurts. Hurts twice.”

  Gdir had to concede that, though not out loud. In a scrap, the idea was to get your enemy pinned, so they gave in and behaved. Most stuck with it, but some needed to be scrapped over and over. Lnand was one of those.

  Lnand also didn’t scrap fairly—she bit and pulled hair and scratched, getting you in tender places that didn’t show. And if you got her down, she always fake cried and sometimes even snitched. Then you got the thrashing for scrapping—and you still had the bite marks and throbbing scalp. But at least everyone knew you weren’t a snitch. Though why that was any good when she got away with it, nobody could say.

  “Seems better if she thinks she thought of it.” Han wound her hand in a circle, including Lnand and the smalls. “If I’d told her to, you think she’d be crawling around with them right now, being foals? No, because she’d still be arguing. Just like you.”

  “Maybe. If the sevens and eights were watching,” Gdir said, though she felt unmoored, as if the discussion had drifted like a little boat in a pool. Gdir frowned, trying to find her way back to the point.

  Start from Lnand, who just always had to be the center of attention. Her father’s the same way, Gdir’s mother had said once, when Gdir complained about her. Why he’s never kept a mate longer than two years, in spite of him being as good a baker as any at the royal palace.

  Gdir knew what that meant. When she was exactly Tlennen’s age, and they’d just arrived to live at Castle Andahi, she’d immediately gone exploring. She’d been curled up in what would become her favorite spot, a tiny jutting ledge where one of the towers joined the wall, where somebody small who didn’t look down could sit and look at the mountains folding away toward the sea. She’d heard voices coming—the Jarlan and Ndand.

  Ndand had said, “. . . and Star Indran wants to go back to Tlen-Sindan-An on the next caravan. She’s parting with Cousin Dodger.” And then—her exact words—“Star says she might not be a ranker’s daughter, but she can take a hint when she’s become just another duty to dodge.”

  The Jarlan had laughed, and her words started to fade away as the two passed along the sentry walk. “Second woman this season, and we’re already short-handed. But who can blame them for not wanting to come up here? We’ll have to reorganize the watch slates again, and . . .”

  Duty, that was the point. You couldn’t get promoted if you didn’t do your duty, and apparently you couldn’t even have a mate if you didn’t do your duty. Duty was the purpose of life! Duty and everything clean and in order, it was so important, and Han wasn’t seeing it.

  Gdir sucked in her breath to tell Han exactly how stupid she was, when Hal knocked Han with his elbow. “Told ya.”

  As the three watched, tall men with horned helms emerged from the tunnel, their silvery armor glinting in the sunlight just topping the mountains behind the children’s cave.

  “Those are Venn,” Hal whispered.

  “Shut it,” Gdir and Han both said.

  The first ones were on horseback. As the children watched, the one with white wings instead of horns on his helm made a motion with a gloved hand toward another who carried a long oddly shaped brass tube. Like a trumpet, but not straight. This man put his lips to it, and his face turned crimson as he blew out a long, weird note, like the lowing of cattle when thunder is near, followed by a couple of loud owl-hoots and then a low bra-a-a-p.

  “Sounds like a mountain farting,” Hal whispered, snickering.

  Han didn’t hear. She held her arms tight against her, rocking back and forth, her mouth pulled awry, lower lip trembling.

  Gdir stared at her, about to accuse her of cowardice when the enemy couldn’t even see them, way up here. But then she realized what it meant, why Han looked like someone had slapped her.

  If the Venn were here, it meant the castle had fallen into enemy hands.

  Inda wished even more strongly for Tdor—or Tau—when he finally got Evred alone just after dawn. Inda had risen early, bolting down breakfast over a last talk with Hawkeye and Noddy in the officers’ mess they shared with the other Sier Danas. When the two left to mount up, Inda discovered Evred up in the map room, reading the day’s logistical reports gathered by the captain of the watch.

  They were alone, everyone else either gone or busy, so Inda told Evred Signi’s good news. He’d expected to see his own elation mirrored back, but instead Evred had reacted like someone struck blind and deaf. Half a riding of men old enough to know better were coming back from liberty drunk. They wove their way, singing loudly, directly under the open window, but Evred did not move.

  Inda ducked out and snapped his fingers at Kened, who was on Runner duty. After making motions of grabbing the idiots by the hair and dunking them head first into the horse troughs (to prevent a far worse punishment; Evred was strict about drunkenness and sloth), he jerked a thumb toward the courtyard. Kened comprehended at once, and leaped down the stairs five at a time.

  When Inda got back into the map room, Evred still stood motionless, one hand on the map, the other holding the papers. Through the open window the drunks’ caroling abruptly ended. That was followed by some thuds, a muffled “Ow!” and the rackety-clack of heels on the stones: the sounds of a hasty withdrawal as Kened and the door guards muscled the delinquents away.

  Evred didn’t hear that either.

  He faced, alone, a terrible struggle. Should he not be accustomed to bitter choices by now? At first, his anger had burned ineffectively round the image of Signi, but he knew she was only the messenger. The Morvende had made the real choice explicitly clear on his very first visit. They had permitted him access to the archive because he’d come to make peace. He was here to defend his kingdom now. Perhaps they knew, perhaps they did not; they lived deep in the mountains somewhere in the great range.

  One thing was for certain, though: if he opened the archive to its platform and moved warriors through, the Morvende would know right away, and they would see it as an act of war.

  But Inda said they needed to do it.

  Inda watched Evred’s blind gaze, his tense profile. What to do now?

  Unexpected relief arrived with the guard Runner sent to let them know that Hawkeye and Noddy were ready to ride out.

  Evred blinked. He recovered the room, Inda waiting, the Runner in the doorway. This was the deceptive relief of postponement, not a release from choice.

  But he would accept what little he was given. “We must see them off.”

  The entire city agreed.

  The night before, once Hawkeye had flung the damn magic token down the deepest steam vent at the back of the baths, he had been afire to depart despite darkness and rain, so determined was he to reach the top of the pass before Cama. But Noddy had said with his usual stolidity, “Inda’s gonna send the main body after us at the gallop, like as not. Let’s be the ones to remember remounts. Grain for the animals. Supplies. They won’t.”

  Hawkeye flicked an interrogative look his way, and Noddy said, “Inda’s learned about ten years worth of academ
y gaming in a couple of months, but he still thinks horses are ships.”

  Noddy was right. Hawkeye bit back his impatience and they went to the stable to issue the orders to have everything ready for dawn. The reward was an evening of relative quiet, which Hawkeye spent with Fala, his beloved. His wife, Dannor, had only stayed a couple of months in Ala Larkadhe. She’d made enemies so rapidly Hawkeye had had to constantly stop his work to negotiate, remonstrate, reestablish peace. Then came Evred’s wish that their generation begin the next generation, and Dannor had been enraged that the king would interfere in their private lives. She had no intention of being burdened with supervising squalling brats ten years before she should reasonably be expected to do so.

  Hawkeye had pointed out that if she were at Yvana-Vayir, she could hardly be expected to have his heir. She’d thought that over. Hawkeye’s parents were dead, his brothers in their last year of the academy, those bratty girls they were going to marry in their first year of the queen’s training. Dull as Yvana-Vayir was, at least there would be no one to get tiresome about what they considered to be her duty.

  So Dannor moved out of Hawkeye’s rooms to go back to Yvana-Vayir, and Fala moved in. Fala was a potter. She’d opened a local business so that she could be close to Hawkeye. She made familiar dishes for the Marlovans; the Idayagans and Olarans preferred the tulip goblets and flat plates of the east.

  Fala had also volunteered to serve with the new Randviar’s women on castle defense duty. So she was there this morning, standing next to the Randviar on the sentry walk adjacent to the white tower as thunder rumbled warningly in the northwest.

  Below, Hawkeye and Noddy rode at the head of their six wings plus attendant Runners and stable hands, leading an impressive train of riderless horses and tarped wagons carrying supplies for a much larger force: horse armoring, bags of grain, and freshly scythed summer hay. They also carried a single wagon full of rusty old helms from the castle, leftovers bought as surplus by the Idayagan king the generation before. Many riders had none; most hated helms, especially these full-head ones with their narrow vi sored view, but Evred had insisted they take them. And wear them.