King's Shield

by Sherwood Smith

  “He’s getting rid of us,” said Goatkick.

  No one argued, but they all fumed, thinking variations on, What’d we do? . . . He couldn’t be holding a grudge about that little sting . . . He must’ve found out about me catching a nap behind the oats that night on midnight watch . . .

  The cook wagon driver, a man with two children back in Yvana-Vayir, said with unsubtle irony, “Don’t you boys have duty? Or are you all promoted to commander? Move only when in the mood?”

  Accused thus of the worst possible thing besides cowardice—frost—the boys flushed, hunched up defensively, and muttered among themselves.

  “All this way, and we’re not going to get within a sniff of battle,” the first one stated in disgust, shoving his journey bread down into his pack, and twitching his reins.

  The last of them appeared soon after, and on hearing that the others were already riding down the pass he snatched his travel loaf and took off, not even stopping to curse.

  Ride on, boys, the driver thought, his armpits prickling. Ride on and stay alive. Maybe someday you’ll look down at your newborn sons and hope, if they get sent young off to battle, they’ll be under a Noddy-Turtle Toraca. Because maybe then they’ll live to complain about it.

  After supper Inda packed everything he’d need and set it below his hammock. He’d shared a hastily converted weapons storage closet off the officers’ mess with Rat and Noddy: they’d put a bunk bed in for the two, and swung a hammock in the tiny remaining space. Even though Noddy and Rat were gone, Inda had found it unexpectedly comforting to sleep in a hammock again.

  He picked up his gold case and ran up to the command tower. He found Evred in the office, his pen scratching swiftly and evenly over the page. Inda marveled at the speed with which Evred wrote. Another reminder of his own ignorance. He plopped down at the side desk, where ordinarily a Runner sat to copy or take down dictated orders.

  Evred glanced up briefly. “Do you wish me to add any message for Hadand?”

  Inda twisted around, and noticed the two closely-written sheets lying at Evred’s left hand. “I’ll write to her myself. But how are you going to get all that into the case? Cut it into pieces and number ’em?”

  Evred made a negating move with the quill. “Runner.”

  Inda opened his mouth, but Evred smiled bleakly and forestalled him. “No, this has nothing to do with my distrust of magic. Don’t you see? If I do not survive, there has to be a record, carried the way everyone expects.” His brows slanted derisively, as usual bringing Fox to mind. “If she doesn’t carry a child—and I would have heard by now if she does—this is probably a waste of time, and there will be a civil war. I can name who will start it, and probably who will win. Yet I must go through the forms and set out my wishes for the kingdom’s future in case she’s able to hold the kingdom long enough to see them through.”

  Inda was back a step, uneasily contemplating the alien idea of his sister getting pregnant. “Hadand is chewing gerda?”

  “She drinks it, actually. Says the taste is less abominable.” Evred grimaced slightly, remembering the first day she tried it, how she choked and gagged. He’d tried it too, choked, and they’d laughed together. Laughing helped, she said afterward. “For a year now.”

  “Oh.” Shift again. “If anyone can hold the kingdom, it’s Hadand.”

  “I think so, too. And so will most. But inevitably not all. Not if there isn’t any heir.” Evred flicked the quill, indicating the barracks-side of the castle. “Also, the only way I can think to keep Nightingale nailed down instead of having him try to drag himself after us is to appoint him the Armband.”

  Inda vaguely remembered his old history lessons. How, at the bloodthirsty age of nine, he’d thought the notion of acting as King’s Armband exciting. When you carry a dead Jarl’s or king’s last wishes, you have all their power until you deliver it to the heir or the heir’s mother, if the heir was underage. Nightingale’s duty now was to stay out of battle, for he must live and protect those papers. Inda perceived the benevolence in that. Otherwise, Nightingale would surely force himself to follow them up the mountain.

  Inda turned to his own task. He pulled out one of his knives and sliced one of the waiting papers into strips, then picked up the Runners’ quill, kept sharp and ready, and opened the ink bottle, always kept full.

  His first was easiest:Fox: We found the Venn. They found us. In a couple of days it will begin.

  Now his family. Inda’s nerves tingled. Hadand first.

  When you were training me, you kept stopping yourself. Saying you couldn’t talk about things. Well, now you can. Evred made me his Harskialdna. Barend and I gave the men a smashing good duel beforehand. Well, it’s time to prove myself. If I come back, I’ll tell you all about it.

  For the first time he signed himself Indevan-Harskialdna, knowing how much she’d enjoy that. But it felt very strange to write it.

  Tdor’s letter seemed impossible to start, a problem he’d been wrestling with all along.

  Tdor: I’m at Ala Larkadhe. By dawn I’ll be somewhere else far away. Evred doesn’t want us saying where, just in case the Dag gets this somehow. But it won’t be for long. The Venn are a few days away at most.

  That didn’t feel like enough. He rocked back and forth, hunched over his little paper.

  Once—not long after they’d left the royal city—Inda had thought about writing to Tdor. But when he’d had paper and pen to hand, he had had no idea where to begin. Everything he wanted to say had a “But wait!” behind it, and another behind that, and another behind that, going all the way back to the last time they’d seen one another at eleven and thirteen.

  Signi, always near, had said gently, “Inda? What is amiss?”

  “I was going to write a letter to Tdor. How do I start?”

  Signi’s profile lifted toward the west as the sun dropped beyond the city of tents. “If she were here and you had the space of a hundred beats of your heart to say anything to her, but then she’d be gone, what would you say?”

  Someone had come to the tent, interrupting him, and he’d put it away for later . . . a later that had stretched out until now. Seemed reasonable at the time.

  Inda shifted uncomfortably, forcing himself to the truth: he didn’t know how to write a letter, not to Tdor. Strange. What to do had always come easy. Not what was. She’d always been the one to tell him what was.

  Tell the truth, fool! So what’s the truth? I miss her. I miss Tenthen. I want to be home. All three of those sound so obvious they’re stupid.

  Inda whooshed his breath out again. Stupid, but maybe a place to begin? Yes. And if he didn’t live, it wouldn’t matter about being Harskialdna, and maybe living in the royal city, and all that.

  Inda ducked his head down, and printed neatly:I love you, and everyone at home. I want to be home. I want to dance at our wedding. I hope this is the last battle in my life, and that it doesn’t end my life. But the battle’s going to start.

  Then he signed it just Inda, and stuffed it into the golden box, hating how tight his throat felt. The tap, the words, and it was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  GRADUALLY, dawn’s blue lightened to the peachy clarity of a rain-fresh summer day. The molten gold of the new sun limned the reedy edges of grass tufting the sand dunes. It glinted off the minerals in the heavy rocks lugged to the shore all through the night when the tide was lowest. There they squatted as sea water hissed and foamed all about them, edges pointed seaward, ready to tear apart boats trying to land.

  Sunfire glinted in the loose pale hair drifting below the cold, muted gleam of helms, along the cruel edge of drawn weapons, the tips of fish skewers, and in the grain of newly sharpened bits of wood planted all along the shore south of Lindeth. The same sunlight glinted in similar pale hair under similar helms out in the boats waiting for the signal.

  A tangle of sea wrack pulled up during the recent storm had been artfully draped over holes dug in the wet sand, all evidence of a very b
usy night as Buck’s, Barend’s, and Rat’s combined forces labored to make that shore as lethal a landing place as possible.

  The last of the ebb tide hissed and flowed out, and then the surges gained strength as tidal flood began. The inrush ing sea brought boats filled with warriors, all with shields angled upward, complicated arrow-fouling nets draped from the single masts to the boats’ blunted prows.

  A weird, moaning note from a horn and sails jerked up those single masts. The boats launched together, a hundred across. Then another hundred, fifty boat lengths behind them. The snap of the single sails as the air filled them, the lift of prows, caused hands to tighten on weapons, fingers to check the tension on snapvine bowstrings, whispered exchanges and shiftings of crouched positions.

  The chief of each boat swept the shoreline through field glasses. The slowly strengthening light pricked the bristling of spikes, skewers, sharpened posts. Huge rocks. Nothing they hadn’t expected. They knew the landing was going to be rough, they knew men crouched behind every boulder and shrub on that desolate stretch of beach where not a single seabird pattered or rooted.

  They were the advance force, the Drenga. They had been honored with the task of making it possible for the Hilda coming in behind them to break through the enemy lines, even if they didn’t. Hearts began to drum, bellies to tighten, mouths to go dry.

  Breakers formed, surged under the boats and rolled beneath them. The breakers crested, rushed up the beach in creaming foam. The boats picked up speed as the rising waves pushed them forward; a command and the sails were loosed, brought down, the masts stowed under the benches.

  On a second command, the men snapped out oars and rammed them into the pintles for the last ride toward the shore.

  A strange sight wound its way up the glistening white stairs of the white tower. Three men per upside-down narrow-hulled canoe went first, followed by others carrying paddles as well as bows, and packs with helms attached to loops. The last of the line of men carried rolls of weapons.

  Evred halted on the landing outside the archive doors, head bent.

  Inda could not see his face, but the stiffness of his shoulders, the audible breathing, brought back the memory of the other morning, when Evred had taken Inda’s good news about the archive like a blow to the heart.

  Inda was distracted by Tau’s face, half lit in the torchlight. “Those marks are bruises. You been fighting?”

  Tau grinned. Vedrid, behind him, smiled. “No, no, everything’s fine.”

  “What?” Inda demanded.

  Evred turned around, his face and voice neutral. “My father was not yet Harvaldar when you left, and so you did not know. The Captain of the King’s Runners protects the king, but there was usually a competition to determine who protects the Harskialdna.” Evred gave a brief, bleak smile. “Do you think my uncle would have tolerated Captain Sindan else, jealous as he was? But no Runner could best Sindan in those days.”

  Inda met Tau’s eyes, got a rueful shrug of one shoulder.

  And here is where Sindan met his death, right where we stand. He believed he was defending me—and I was standing there in Lindeth—

  Evred thrust away the memory. “Shall we go?” He indicated the open doors.

  Inda jerked his thumb toward the shelves, slanted in from the round walls. The men in front shuffled inside, looking around warily at the tall shelves, the ancient books and scrolls. When they got inside they turned around again, the ones carrying canoes wedging in uncomfortably, and doing their best to keep the canoes from whacking the bookcases. This was only possible because of the tower’s high ceiling, enabling them to turn the canoes upright.

  Nobody wanted to touch anything. Nearly ninety people were crammed into that tower room, along with packs and nine canoes, as Inda inspected the wooden carving around the door, with words in some ancient language worked into the images of green and growing things.

  Not knowing what to expect—afraid he might not get any response at all—Inda touched the round figure of a sun with its stylized rays, said the word atan—

  —and jumped violently back when the door to the landing flickered and vanished, leaving them staring not at the landing, but a flagstoned terrace with snowy mountain crags in the distance under a weepy gray sky.

  “Damn!” someone exclaimed behind him.

  Inda smiled. This would be about as far from damnation as one could possibly get.

  He braced for the remembered transfer wrench and plunged through into the shock of almost-frozen thin air that smelled of wet rock and pine. “Hey!” he exclaimed. “It didn’t hurt!”

  The men hustled through, crowding on one another as if that magical door might flicker away again and cut one of them in half.

  Inda backed out of the way and stared at that door, which was even stranger than the way the doorway had looked from within the tower: in the middle of the air a rectangular door-shaped hole existed, beyond which was the archive with its glistening white walls, the light slanting down from the unseen high windows, shelves visible behind the men, seemingly extending into nowhere.

  When the last man was through, Inda spotted weather-blurred carvings in the carefully fitted, rainwashed stone flagging. The carving matched that around the door in the archive. He stepped on the carved sun and the weird door vanished in a blink.

  “I wish you’d waited.” Tau sighed. “I would have loved to go around behind it, and see what it looked like from there.”

  “It’s magic,” one of the men exclaimed. “Like as not your nose would fall off.”

  “Or your nob,” one of the younger men cracked, and though some laughed, many made a surreptitious check to make sure they still had all their parts.

  The change in air had clogged everyone’s ears and noses. For a few moments they sneezed, sniffed, shook heads and stuck fingers in their ears in order to get them to pop. It was cold enough that their breath puffed brief clouds of vapor in the chilly drizzle.

  Inda said, “The path seems to begin right here.” He pointed to a broad, flagged path cut in switchbacks down the rocky incline. The path was edged with small stones.

  As the men filed past, Inda said, “Sp—Evred. I meant to remember, and I’d better do it now.”

  Evred half turned. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just, if we get separated. These rings. I, ah, got ’em in Ymar. They find one another. All you do is touch it, turn around, go in the direction the ring, ah, buzzes at you. I don’t know what else to call it. Feels like a bee caught in your skin. No sting.”

  “More magical surprises?” Evred asked, with a slight smile.

  “Just rings,” Inda said, sliding one onto his little finger; his other knuckles were too large for the plain golden band to fit comfortably over. “Don’t do anything else. But now I don’t have to worry about losing track of you in case something happens.”

  Evred took his in silence. Vedrid started ahead; Tau was the only one who observed the slow deliberation that was almost ritualistic as Evred slid his onto his left forefinger.

  “Let’s go.” Inda plunged down the path.

  Evred followed. Tau fell in last.

  On board the flagship, Commander Durasnir finished his morning drill ritual, stepped from his inner cabin to the outer cabin. He drank a spice milk while he read the night’s dispatches. Then he walked his accustomed morning tour of the ship, finding everything efficient and orderly as always under the watchful eye of Battle Group Captain Gairad.

  He proceeded at an unhurried pace down one deck to the cabins for the leaders. Erkric was gone. The wardroom assigned to the mages was empty except for a young mage attending the communication device that eventually furnished the dispatches up in the cabin, and except for Dag Ulaffa, who was eating some berries and drinking a spice milk.

  Ulaffa regarded Durasnir for a few moments, then said, “Alfrac, please bring me another spice milk. Would you like one, Commander?”

  Durasnir made a brief sign, the dag whisked himself out, and D
urasnir said, “Can you transfer me to some vantage so that I may see the battle in progress?”

  Ulaffa’s gaze went diffuse. His old hands gently caressed the sides of his glass, then he said, “I will see what I can do.”

  Durasnir put his hands together in peace mode and departed.

  Inda and Evred followed the bobbing canoes down the slanting switchbacks. Stones clattered over the edge and down into an abyss as Inda’s toes kicked them up. He scarcely noticed, he was too busy peering down into the enormous canyons to the east as the rising sun slowly lowered the shadows. He hoped they’d be able to spot the pass—or rather anyone in the pass—from these heights.

  Evred’s attention was drawn in the opposite direction. He rounded a wind-twisted pine and gazed upward, until at last the bends in the path led to a place where—however briefly—the cliffs and the ancient firs all parted. The drizzle had lifted in the west, promising respite later; the clouds were underlit like silver streamers, an arrowhead of ocean sparkled in the distance to the south. Green hills, fields, flower-dotted meadows all demonstrated the healing power of rain after the previous month’s drought.

  It was beautiful, and deceptively peaceful.

  Aware of the irony, he rounded another cliff, which gave out onto an open vista, rank on rank of climbing crags. His eye was caught midway up by a rocky structure never made by nature. Ah, there they were at last! Tall stones curved, dimpled with wind- and weather-smoothed carving made by hands an unimaginably long time ago.

  “What?” Inda asked over his shoulder, alarmed at Evred’s intent stare upward. “Venn?”

  “Wind harps.” Evred’s face was cold-reddened like everyone else’s but his voiced burred with deep pleasure.

  “What?” Inda asked, curious at that rare note of elation.

  “The Morvende archivist told me about them,” Evred said. “I did not explain them already? No, though I started half a dozen times. But we were always interrupted. Anyway, the harps were apparently meant to evoke the resonance of some old Sartoran stone called disirad. Supposedly, the tower is made of it, though all the magical virtue has long gone out.”