by Judith Tarr
“It’s nothing.” She pulled the broken laces free, angrily. “Damn! Now everyone in the world will be able to see—”
Gently but firmly he set her hands aside and eased back coat and shirt. She did not resist him, at first for defiance, and after because there was nothing shameful in either his look or his touch.
The wounds were red, inflamed, a steady pain which she schooled herself to ignore. Yet where his hand passed, even where she was most tender and most cruelly tom, the pain lessened, faded and shrank and was gone; the scarlet weals paled to scars and vanished.
His hand rose to her cheek. She caught it. “No,” she said. He blinked, caught between power and its refusal. “Let me have my own pain.”
“It will scar,” he said.
“I’ve earned it with my foolishness.”
For yet a moment he was still. Then he bowed his head. “Here,” he said in the most ordinary of tones, holding out a bit of leather from his belt, “see if this will hold.”
It would, admirably. With her shirt well and tightly laced and her coat belted against the world, she strode with Mirain into the clamor of the camp.
SEVEN
Mirain’s lords gathered around his tent, and their clamor sounded for all the world like the lowing of cattle. When he plunged into the midst of them with Elian at his heels, their silence was abrupt and absolute.
Elian admired it; even Prince Orsan had not mastered that art as Mirain had. He stood in the center of them under the Sun-standard and settled his arm easily, lightly, over Elian’s shoulders. “See,” he said, with no more greeting than that. “I have a new squire. Galan, my lords and captains.”
Later she would match the faces to the names out of Mirain’s legend. Now they were a blur: curiosity, hostility, haughty indifference. One or two were envious. One or two, perhaps, wished her well.
One gave her nothing at all. He stood a little aloof, glittering in his finery, meeting her gaze as he had in the winestall.
“Ho, Vadin!” Mirain called out in pure and hateful exuberance, “I’ve found us a new recruit; or your brother has, with a little help from his scouts. What do you think of him?”
The Lord of Geitan made his way through the clustered captains. Elian, looking up and up, knew that he would hate her.
He looked down and down. He was cool, proud, running those splendid eyes over her disheveled and travelworn figure. Pausing. Raising a brow the merest suggestion of a degree.
Her probe met a wall. It was high, it was broad, and it was impenetrable.
His face betrayed nothing but consummate northern arrogance. His voice was neither warm nor cold, although she knew he had a temper, a hot one; it was in all the tales. He could be as cruel as any mountain bandit, as gentle as any sheltered maiden.
“So this is a red Gileni,” he said. “Red indeed! I’ve seen fire that was paler.”
“So this,” said Elian, “is a Ianyn of the old breed. I’ve seen eagles who were humbler.”
Vadin startled her speechless: he grinned, wide and white and irrepressible. He looked exactly like Cuthan his brother, no older and not a whit wiser. “By the gods, you’ve got a tongue on you. A temper too. What do you do for sport? Trade insults with dragons?”
“Only if they insult me first.”
He laughed, undismayed. “I wasn’t insulting, I was admiring. We love copper, we savages. What a wonder to grow one’s own.”
“Pretty, no?” Mirain’s eyes glinted on them both, and flicked round the circle of faces. “My lords, I am at your disposal.” As they bowed, he returned to the two who still faced one another and said, “Vadin, for charity, take my squire in hand. He’s had good training, but he’s a stranger here; there’s much that you can teach him.”
The Ianyn bowed his high head. Mirain smiled his swift splendid smile and left them, striding swiftly, with his lords in a gaggle behind.
Elian watched him go, and considered hating him. He had abandoned her. She was alone, a stranger to all that was here, where everyone had his duties and his place. She had nothing but the clothes she stood in and the throbbing weals on her cheek.
Slowly she turned to face her guide. Vadin was expressionless again, and no doubt seething. He was the right hand of An-Sh’Endor, chief of the lords and generals; for a certainty he had duties far higher and more pressing than the nursemaiding of one young foreigner.
His lips twitched. “I’ve done it before,” he said, driving her behind her strongest shields. “Come, youngling. We’ll make you one of us.”
oOo
At the beginning of their progress Vadin acquired a servant, a great hulk of a man who bore with ease the weight of clothing and weapons and the odd necessity.
“No kilt for you, I think,” Vadin said as she contemplated one in utter dismay. “My lord likes to see his people in their own proper dress. Even,” he added with a curl of his lip, “in trousers.”
She kept her temper in hand. It was not easy. “Don’t you sometimes find a kilt rather uncomfortable? In the saddle, for example? In the dead of winter?”
“In winter we lace our boots high and pin our cloaks tightly and laugh at the wind. In the saddle,” said Vadin, and now he was certainly laughing, “which is where all of us are born, we’re perfectly comfortable.”
“I’ll wager you cheat and wear breeches underneath.”
“Would you like me to show you?” He laid a hand on his belt; his eyes danced, utterly wicked.
Elian closed her mouth and set it tight. Yes, she hated Mirain. Of all the men in all his horde, why had he thrown her on the mercy of this one?
“Southern kit,” Vadin said to the quartermaster, blissfully ignorant of her fury, “in the king’s colors. Dress and campaign issue both, and be quick. My lord will be waiting for it.”
The quartermaster all but licked the Ianyn’s feet. Likewise the armorer, who measured Elian with much commentary on her fine boyish figure, and how much growing room was the lad likely to need?
“Not overmuch,” replied her insufferable guide. “We’ll take a knife now, and a sword. The three longswords you forged for my lord before he found one that satisfied him—bring them out.”
“But, lord, they—”
Vadin’s voice did not rise, but the man stopped as if struck. “The king’s body squire must be armed as well as the king himself. Bring out the blades.”
They were plain, yet perfect in their plainness: pure, unadorned, deadly beauty, forged not of bronze but of priceless steel. In the Hundred Realms, few even of princes had such weapons. Prince Orsan had two; they were the greatest treasures of his armory. Neither was as fine as these.
She tested each with the reverence it deserved. Each fit well into her hand. But one, lifted, settled as if it had grown there. “This—this one,” she said unsteadily, tearing her eyes from that wondrous, shimmering edge.
oOo
When she left the armorer’s tent, the sword hung scabbarded from her belt, and she walked a little the straighter for it. Even Vadin’s presence seemed less of a burden; as he led her toward the cavalry lines, it slipped from her mind altogether.
The north was famous for its seneldi, and Ianon above all; and these were the cream therefrom. Even the draybeasts were fine strong creatures; the war-seneldi, horned battle stallions and tall fierce mares, were magnificent. Elian walked down the long lines, among the penned wagonbeasts and the remounts, pausing here and there to return a whickered greeting.
Alone of them all, one son of the night wind was free to run where he would. He was as black as polished obsidian, without mark or blemish; his horns were as long as swords, his eyes as red as heart’s blood. He trotted through his domain with such splendid, royal arrogance that even the stallions made no move to challenge him.
“There goes a creature worth a kingdom,” Elian said.
“If any king could master him,” said Vadin. “No one but Mirain has ever sat on the Mad One’s back.”
The senel came closer. Grooms
and idlers were quick to clear his path. Even Vadin stepped aside, without fear but with considerable respect.
Elian stood her ground. She was no less royal than the stallion; while she had no hope of becoming his master, she was certainly his equal.
She was full in his path. On either side stretched a long line of tethered mounts. He snorted and flattened his ears. “Courteously, sir,” she said.
His teeth bared. He pawed the ground.
“If you harm me, my lord may not be pleased.”
He seemed to ponder that, lean ears flicking forward, back. As if in sudden decision, they pricked. He stepped forward. With utmost delicacy he lowered his head and blew sweet breath in her palm.
She ran a hand over his ears, along the splendid arch of his neck. “Indeed, lord king, now you may pass. But if it would please you, is there one of your herd who would consent to carry me?”
He himself would, and gladly, but he had but one lord. Yet there were some . . .
He turned, stepping softly. She laced her fingers in his mane.
As the Mad One permitted no man but Mirain on his back, likewise he suffered no other beast to do that service. Even so, Ianon’s king traveled with his own stable: the nine royal mounts decreed by custom, and the mounts and remounts of his household. These held to their own guarded lines, watched over by grooms in scarlet kilts.
The Mad One paid no heed to the lesser beasts, the least of them as fine as Elian’s poor lost mare. He passed them in cool disdain, seeking out the center of the line and the King’s Nine tethered there. Two were stallions, a black and a grey, sleek with light work and good feeding. The rest were mares, one of each color: brown, bay, roan, grey, striped dun, and gold.
The ninth, a mare likewise, grazed apart. She had been tethered; Elian saw a halter empty on the ground.
The Mad One loosed a high, imperious cry. The mare raised her head, and Elian caught her breath.
Line for line, the young senel was the Mad One’s image. Save only in color: that was the precise, fiery red-gold of Elian’s hair.
The stallion arched his neck. His daughter, this was: Ilhari, Firemane. She was young; she was very foolish; she had never yet been ridden. But she would carry the lady, if the lady wished it.
Ilhari flattened her ears. And what right had he to say what she would or would not do?
The same right, he responded with a toss of his head, that the Sunborn had to bring a useless filly to war. One who, moreover, could not even keep her place in the line, but would slip free at every opportunity and run wild on the grass.
Precisely like her sire.
Elian laughed, approaching the mare slowly. Indeed Ilhari was the Mad One’s daughter. She had the same wild ruby eye, the same wicked temper. Yet she also had his deep and well-concealed core of perfect sanity. She watched, but she did not threaten, merely lifted a hind foot in warning.
“Princess,” asked Elian, “would you consent to carry me?”
Ilhari’s back quivered as if to cast off a fly. It would certainly please yon great black bully. For herself . . .
Elian touched the quivering muzzle. The mare was finer than her sire, smaller, more delicate. Elian stroked aside the long silken forelock and smoothed the star on her forehead. “I would not bridle you nor tether you. A saddle I would need, for battle if for naught else.”
No one had ever sat on Ilhari’s back. The Sunborn had not allowed it. She was the free one, the king’s ninth mount, the Mad One’s daughter.
“I am royal. The Sunborn calls me his kin. The Mad One has consented to accept me.”
Ilhari snorted. Ah, the Mad One! He did as he pleased.
“And might not we? Come, stand, so. Yes. Yes!” Lightly Elian swung onto her back.
For a long moment Ilhari stood rigid. Cautiously she essayed a step. She felt strange, unbalanced.
“That passes,” said Elian.
She reared. Elian’s knees tightened; her body shifted forward; her fingers knotted in the long mane.
Ilhari bucked and twisted. Elian only clung the tighter. The mare reared again, wheeling as she came down, flinging herself forward, plowing to a halt.
Elian laughed.
Ilhari snorted. Rider, nothing. This was a leech.
Elian stroked the sleek neck. “You’re not angry with me. You only pretend to be.”
Ilhari extended a forefoot to rub an itch from her cheek. It was not so very unpleasant. Perhaps. Once she learned the way of it.
“Well,” said Elian, “shall we begin?”
oOo
Caught up in the beginnings of subtle and intricate art, with the Mad One both mocking and teaching beside them, neither noticed until very late that they had gathered an audience. Elian had her first hint of it when, glancing sidewise, she met Mirain’s white smile. He had come up unseen, smooth as a partner in a dance, and found his way onto the stallion’s back.
She tensed. Ilhari had halted, immobile as a carven senel. “My lord, she’s yours, I know it, but—”
“Mine,” he said, “she never has been. If her sire sees fit to bring you two together, should I interfere?”
“But—”
“She has made her own choice.” He saluted them both with a flourish. “The singers will have a new song tonight.”
“Singers? Song?”
Elian looked beyond him. She had completely forgotten Vadin. He stood near the lines, foremost of a mob of watchers. Even at that distance she could see his smile and the hand he raised in salute. All about him, a cheer went up, high and exuberant.
She acknowledged them without conscious thought, a bow and a smile they could see, and words they could not hear. “Sun and stars! How long have they been there?”
“A good hour, I should think.”
Elian dismounted hastily and ran her hands over Ilhari’s flanks. The mare was sweating lightly but otherwise unharmed, and scarcely weary.
She danced a little, nuzzling Elian’s hair. That had been delightful. When could they do it again?
“Tomorrow,” Elian promised her.
oOo
The king’s council was less an affair of state than a gathering of friends. Splendid as the evening was, warm and clear, with a sunset like a storm of fire, they sat as they pleased before his tent, eating and drinking and conversing at first of small things.
Elian did squire’s duty for the king until the wine went round, when he drew her down beside him. One or two kilted chieftains looked askance. The others, Geitan’s lord conspicuous among them, took no notice.
She settled herself as comfortably as she might in her stiff new livery, and toyed with a cup of wine, resting its coolness against her torn cheek. The flow of speech had shifted. Hawks and hounds and women, fine mounts and old battles, passed and were forgotten.
“We have a choice,” said a man who had once called himself a king. He decked himself still with a circlet of gold, although he was lavish in his homage to his conqueror. “We can strike south into the Hundred Realms. Or we can turn west. There’s a wide land between here and Asanion, full of tribes ripe, and rich, for conquest.”
“West, say I.” The accent was Ianyn, and proud with it. “Then south, with whole force of the north behind us.”
Another man of Ianon spoke from across the fire. “Why not head south now? We’re in Ashan already, or as close as makes no matter. There’s easy pickings here by all accounts, and easier the farther you go: fat rich southerners gone lazy with peace.”
“Not that lazy,” said one with the twang of Ebros and the garb of a mercenary captain. “They can fight when they’re roused. They drove back all the armies of the Nine Cities not so long ago, and kept them back.”
“Talked them back, I hear,” a northerner drawled. “Southerners and westerners, they talk. We fight.”
oOo
Someone came up around the edge of the council. With a small start, Elian recognized Cuthan. He flashed her a glance that took in her place and her livery, and saluted her w
ith a smile, even as he bent to murmur in Mirain’s ear. She opened mind and ears to overhear.
“Nothing, sire,” Cuthan was saying. “We found evidence of a fair-sized camp, and not an old one either, but it was completely deserted, with nothing to show where the reivers had gone.”
“Might they have scattered?” Mirain asked.
“Maybe. If so, they went to all the dozen winds, and covered their tracks behind them.”
“How many might there have been?”
“Hard to tell, my lord. Say, half a hundred. Maybe less, not likely more, or they’d have left some traces.”
Mirain bowed his head. “You’ve done well. Go out again for me, and search further. If you find even the smallest thing, see that I hear of it.”
“Aye, my lord. The god keep you.”
Cuthan grinned at his brother, and again at Elian. With a scout’s skill, he merged himself with the twilight and was gone.
Mirain reclined as before, propped up on his elbow, eyes hooded as the council continued about him. Elian knew better than to think that he had missed a word of it.
Voices raised, cutting across one another. “And I say the north is enough! What do we want with a pack of barbarians, southern, western, whatever they may be?”
“What do we want? Damn you, we want to rule them! What else are barbarians good for?”
“Yes.” Mirain spoke softly, but he won sudden silence. “What are we good for? For I was born in the south.”
“Your mother was heir of Ianon,” said the man who had spoken last, with a touch of belligerence.
“Her mother was a princess of Asanion.” Mirain rose. He could use his height exactly as he chose, to tower over the seated captains, yet to make clear to them that he lacked much of the stature of Ianon. “My lords, you speak of choices. South or west; east no one seems to think of, but that’s only wild lands and the sea. Well then. West are our kinsmen, tribes who serve the god as we serve him, and past these the marches of the Golden Empire. South lie the Hundred Realms. Another empire, one might say, though none of the people there would choose to call it that.”