Honor's Paradox-ARC

by P. C. Hodgell

  Under the table, Yce cracked a bone.

  “D’you think our pup is the stray?”

  “Not that exactly. If she left her pack, she had good reason.”

  “Maybe she got curious and set out to explore,” suggested Marc. “The way you did from the Holt to King Kruin’s court in Kothifir.”

  “I was older, though, and had an invitation. Anyway, she wasn’t satisfied with my pack. Maybe I wasn’t wolf enough for her.”

  “So she latched onto me? Don’t be silly.”

  “I’m not. I told you: Deep Weald wolvers are attracted primarily to strength. That’s you.”

  Torisen laughed, but Marc only smiled.

  “So, should I send her back to her father?”

  “Only if you want her to be killed. That’s the other reason why she may have run. The rest of her litter were slaughtered, and all the ones before it. The Wood King doesn’t want any rivals. So it’s been ever since he came to power. Before that, he passed for human in Kothifir. I wasn’t the first wolver to accept King Kruin’s invitation.”

  Torisen put down his knife, a cold chill running up his spine. “Grimly, are you talking about Gnasher?”

  “I think so. Until his scouts contacted me, I had no idea that he’d returned to the Weald, much less that he’d become king there. I’m here now in part to warn you, for the pup’s sake. He’s bound, sooner or later, to find out where she is. Whether or not he’ll come after her is another matter.”

  “If I might ask,” said Marc, “who is this Gnasher?”

  Torisen remembered that hulking presence and those cold, blue eyes, a big man with the shadow and teeth of a wolf.

  “When King Kruin was ill, he employed Gnasher as an executioner and an assassin, to thin the herd of his own potential heirs.”

  Grimly snorted. “Thin? He was out to exterminate the lot of them. Kruin seemed to think that if no one was left to inherit, he would live forever.”

  “But Krothen survived,” said Marc.

  “Yes, with some help.”

  Torisen and Grimly looked up at the map, remembering those desperate days. There was the chaotic swirl of glass that represented Kothifir, and below it in more orderly array, the Southern Host’s permanent camp, a small city in its own right.

  Torisen suddenly chuckled. “I just recalled my attempt to scry and that dream of Harn in a pink dress.”

  The wolver and Burr exchanged quick glances. They weren’t used to Torisen speaking casually about even his most trivial dreams, given how he had once half killed himself trying to avoid them.

  “What,” said Grimly cautiously, testing his ground, “like the one you made your sister wear after the Cataracts?”

  “I’d forgotten about that.”

  “If so,” said Grimly dryly, “you’re the only one who has. Not for a moment do I see Harn Grip-hard tarted up like a Hurlen whore—unless I’ve seriously misjudged the man. I wonder, though: is it possible that, bound to you as he is, you accidentally scryed one of his nightmares?”

  Torisen sought to brush this away, even as he remembered dreams stranger yet that he had shared with his sister, not that he was about to share any of those. “Even if I did, why should he dream something so absurd?”

  “Well, when your sister passes Tentir, she’s likely to join his command. For that matter, isn’t the Knorth Lordan usually the commandant of the Southern Host?”

  “Not Jame,” said Torisen firmly. “She doesn’t have the experience.”

  “Neither did Pereden. His was purely a political assignment, to please his father.”

  “And a fine mess he made of it.”

  “True, but think what revenge Harn might unconsciously fear your sister would take for her treatment back then.”

  “Harn had nothing to do with it. She’d be more likely to stuff me in pink flounces.”

  “Now that,” said the wolver, “I’d like to see.”

  Torisen’s laughter died. “You said ‘when she passes Tentir.’ Perhaps that should be ‘if.’ Sheth has warned me that as the Knorth Lordan she will face a final, potentially lethal challenge. I thought we were past that after the High Council meeting, but apparently not. Greshan died during his.”

  “The lass has faced challenges before,” said Marc gently. “No one has gotten the better of her yet.”

  There it was again, the subtle reminder that the big Kendar knew more about his sister’s past than he did. He could ask Marc now, or wait until they were alone. No. They were Jame’s secrets, to tell or not. He would ask her if she passed her challenge, if he allowed her to face it at all.

  Torisen looked up at the map of the Riverland, at the piece marked with the glow of his own blood in the cast that represented Tentir.

  And if you interfere at this late date, will she ever forgive you? Will the randon? Yet alive is better than dead . . . isn’t it?

  So Torisen’s thoughts revolved, twisting this way and that. When the others fell silent, watching him, he didn’t notice.

  CHAPTER XIV

  In Sodden Fields

  Spring 45–47

  1

  The next morning brought another letter from Holly, Lord Danior, almost illegible in his agitation.

  “Either his fields are overrun with frogs wearing light armor,” said Torisen to Burr, scanning the note by the slanting rays of a rising sun, “or the Randir have invaded. He’s begging for the Highlord’s immediate intercession. This is going to be messy. Tell Rowan to assemble a war-guard and provision it for a week at least.”

  While the garrison scrambled to obey, Torisen knocked politely on the door to the Women’s Halls to request an interview with the Jaran Matriarch. To his amusement, the guards insisted on blindfolding him, as if he didn’t know the way by heart, although usually his path led over the rooftops.

  Trishien, greeting him and Yce in her airy study, also laughed. “At least this time you came through the door, not the window.” She swept him a deep bow, the lenses in her mask flashing. “To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

  He told her about Holly’s summons. She frowned behind her mask.

  “I don’t know much about the rules governing borders in the Riverland, except that the Silver usually establishes them. Then again, the river has shifted several times in recent memory, if never before directly between keeps. Consequently, there should be some established precedence.”

  “So I had hoped. Would you please write to your grandniece to ask if any scrollsman at the college is an expert in such matters? If so, I would like to meet him or her between the Danior and Randir keeps two days from now.”

  Trishien tapped her pen with long, ink-stained fingers, mildly amused. “So. You deign to resort to our Shanir skills.”

  Torisen fidgeted. “I would send a post rider, but that might be too slow, and this is important.”

  “Not just a woman’s trifle, you mean.”

  “Lady, I didn’t mean to belittle your skills. They just . . . make me uncomfortable.”

  “You may be grateful for them yet.”

  He regarded her curiously. “Has something happened? What have you heard from Kirien?”

  “News that you should rather hear from your sister or cousin as it concerns your house. My own involvement was a breach of faith with my sisters.”

  Torisen saw that she was deeply embarrassed, which confused him even more. How could women’s secrets involve him?

  “You do know, I suppose, that this dispute will be seen as a test of your leadership.”

  If she wished to change the subject, so be it, although he found this new topic no more comfortable.

  “I do seem to rule by fits and starts,” he admitted wryly. “In this case, I really do need expert advice, hence my request to you.”

  “Which will of course be honored.”

  “But not my curiosity satisfied.”

  “I repeat: ask Jameth or Kindrie.”

  With that he had to be content.

  By early
that afternoon Torisen set off with a hastily assembled war-guard, Yce and Grimly trotting on either side of him. It was some fifty miles to the disputed territory, a two-day ride over the broken River Road. When the pup tired, she crouched and sprang up onto Storm’s flanks behind the saddle, nearly causing the stallion to bolt. Torisen found a pair of stubby hands gripping his waist. Sharp nails bit into him until Storm settled down with a snort and a toss of his head, as if in disparagement of the company whom his master chose to keep.

  Near Falkirr they passed another party traveling south across the Silver on the New Road.

  “Who’s that on the white horse being chased by a pink canopy?” asked the wolver, craning to look. “At that pace, she’ll be lucky not to break her neck.”

  “I think it’s Adric’s daughter, Lady Distan, probably come from visiting her son Timmon at Tentir. Why the haste, I have no idea.”

  They camped off the road for a short night and arrived between Wilden and Shadow Rock by noon the next day.

  Of the scrollsman expert, there was as yet no sign.

  Holly, on the other hand, was overjoyed at their arrival.

  “You see how it is.”

  He gestured to the contested ground. Formerly, it had been a large, flat region surrounded by a meander-loop of the Silver. Enfolding it on either side were a pair of pincerlike bluffs claimed by the Randir, studded with rotting stumps. However, the tip of the northern bluff had given way in a landslide into the river, diverting it across the loop’s hundred-foot-wide neck. The Danior held the western bank of the new cut while the Randir hovered across the old riverbed, now fed only by runoff from Wilden’s moat and bidding fair to become an oxbow lake. Between the old course and the new, lay a deep meadow currently overwhelmed with silt, but already showing green shoots of lush grass.

  “The field is too muddy for fighting,” Holly added, “or we would have been at each other’s throats by now.”

  “Grimly, go take a look upriver,” Torisen told the wolver. “Yce, you can let go now. Holly, can you spare me enough planks to build a platform for a tent?”

  Thus the Highlord set up his camp between the two forces in the middle of the muddy field, precariously, on quaking, oozing ground reached by plank pathways.

  “No sign of a shwupp infestation, at least,” he remarked to Rowan. “I suppose the grass roots are too tough for them to chew through.”

  “Perhaps. These are creatures that can gnaw through solid bone, though. Just stay off the marsh.”

  Lord Danior and a representative from Lord Kenan met in the tent’s reception chamber at dusk, but not hospitably over dinner as Torisen had hoped. He was also disappointed that Lord Randir himself didn’t attend. His spokesman was a sleek Highborn named Wither with a gold ring in one ear and the filed eyeteeth that signaled his joint allegiance to Lady Rawneth. Torisen had heard that politics among the Randir were complicated and unconventional, but also that mother and son usually spoke as one. He wondered again about the Knorth oath-breakers like Sargent Corvine who had taken shelter in Wilden after Ganth’s fall. To whom among the Randir did they owe their allegiance?

  Wither sipped his wine. “A fine vintage, my lord. From your own vineyards?”

  “Hardly, since I have none. This comes from the Southern Lands.”

  “Ah. We had heard that Brandan funds have allowed you to improve your cellar.”

  Torisen’s smile tightened. Trust the Randir to rub his nose in his debt to the Brandan—or rather in theirs to him.

  “Personally,” he said, “I prefer cider.”

  “As does Lord Brandan. Shall we proceed? The issue seems simple enough to us. The Silver has always served as the border between keeps, so the border changes with the river. As you see.” He indicated the rushing cut with a wave of his hand. “Your objection, my lord?”

  Holly put down his cup. “This bottomland has been ours for generations. We developed it into the rich source of hay that it is now.”

  “Yet the flood has washed away your dikes.”

  “As it has many times before. We always rebuild.”

  “Has the river shifted this much before?” asked Torisen.

  “Never. The northern bluff has always diverted it and then the swoop of the land has carried it eastward, as you see from the old bed, until it bends back westward around the southern bluff. If the Randir hadn’t logged those hillocks bare, they wouldn’t be crumbling now.”

  Wither examined his nails. “Do you blame us, then?”

  Holly only glared. Although he had dealt with the Randir all of his life, he couldn’t match them in polish or wiles.

  Soon after, Wither left, with the understanding that they would wait for the expert’s opinion.

  Holly stared out over the moonlit ground, gleaming silver under a sheen of water. “We get most of our hay from that field,” he said bleakly. “I don’t know if we can survive the winter without it. You think it’s hopeless, don’t you?”

  “I don’t immediately see what I can do,” said Torisen. “The Randir have a good argument. They want it ratified, though, and respected by the rest of the High Council. Maybe Trishien’s scholar can give us an edge.”

  “If not, it won’t look good for you either, will it? I’m your bone cousin. You should be able to defend my interests.”

  “I will if I can.” Torisen sighed. “Perhaps a lord like Caldane can ride roughshod over his neighbors—in truth, he doesn’t seem to know how to ride any other way—but in a Highlord it would be seen as a sign of weakness.”

  This time Holly sighed. “Yes, of course I know that. You do realize, I hope, that your overthrow or death would plunge the entire Kencyrath into chaos.”

  Torisen paused to consider that. He supposed it was true, given that the only other pure-bred Knorth in the Kencyrath was his sister Jame. If he fell, would anyone propose her as Highlady? It seemed unlikely, unless the randon stood behind her. A quiver of jealousy ran through him. They might . . . as they had supported him? Not quite. She was nearly one of them now, as he had never been.

  His warning given, Holly retreated to Shadow Rock.

  Torisen stood for some time regarding the sparkling lights of the two keeps on either side of him, each up its own slot valley, then went to bed.

  II

  Something woke him in the small hours of the night: a splash, a muffled cry. Under the cot, the wolver growled and Yce sat up at its foot, ears pricked.

  Torisen rose, knife in hand. At the outer flap he found Burr, Rowan, and most of his escort, the rest presumably guarding the tent’s far side.

  “What?” he breathed in Rowan’s ear.

  The Kendar shook her head, still listening intently. The moon had either set or been overwhelmed with clouds, for it was very dark. Neither Wilden nor Shadow Rock showed more than a star-dusting of dim lights, barely enough to distinguish the bulk of each fortress from its enclosing valley. A faint breeze stirred the tent’s canvas.

  . . . bloop . . . bloop, bloop . . .

  The listeners stirred. More plopping sounds came from every part of the meadow.

  “It seems that I spoke too soon about the lack of shwupp,” said Torisen.

  “But what are they after?” asked a young guard nervously.

  “We’ll find out in the morning,” said Rowan, “or not. Shwupp don’t leave much. In the meantime no one is to leave the platform. My lord, you should go back to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

  Torisen acquiesced, but didn’t sleep. He could hear the guards speaking softly to each other all around the perimeter of the tent and their feet shuffling on the wood. From beyond them, out in the sodden meadow, came a stealthy sound as if of some great pot boiling.

  . . . bloop, bloop, bloop . . .

  Near dawn it at last fell silent.

  Torisen emerged to find Holly already on the platform, bearing panniers of breakfast. Together they stared out over a field now blotched in half a dozen places with spreading circles of blood.

  �
�It’s pretty clear to me what happened,” said Holly. “The Randir sent assassins after you last night. Some of them stumbled into shwupp pits. The rest fled. I wasn’t fooling yesterday when I said what your death would mean to the Kencyrath. Here in particular, the Randir are only waiting to gobble us up. How we few Danior have lasted so long against them is beyond me, but this is sure: you aren’t safe out here. Come back to Shadow Rock with me and conduct your negotiations from there.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but you must see that I can’t. It would be taken as a sign of weakness and of favoritism. Besides, I seem to be well guarded as long as we take up the plank walks at night.”

  “Yes, and as long as nothing claws its way up through your floor.”

  “I doubt that they’ll try with Grimly under the bed and Yce on top of it.”

  Holly grinned. “Have you finally gotten the pup to cuddle with you?”

  “Hardly. Every time I stretch out my legs, she snaps at my toes.”

  Yce, at his feet, wrinkled a black lip as if in amusement.

  Grimly emerged from the tent, sniffing the fragrance of new-baked muffins and hot, honeyed ham.

  “What did you see upriver?” Torisen asked him.

  “About what you expected.” Grimly flipped open a basket and scrounged down through the contents to the meat pies. “You were right, Lord Hollens. Without roots to hold earth and rock, that northern bluff is rotten, even worse on the far side to the east than here where it’s already slid.”

  Torisen was about to pursue this when movement caught his eye. A company of riders was passing rapidly northward along the New Road, one an elderly, white-haired man on a foam-flecked gray mare.

  “That’s Lord Ardeth, isn’t it?” said Holly, staring. “He must have met his daughter on the road. What’s going on at Tentir, that people should be rushing back and forth from it?”

  “Assuming that he’s Tentir-bound,” said Torisen, although in his mind he had no doubt.