Time of Daughters I

by Sherwood Smith

  He watched Connar’s expressive brows lift, and the tension in his face ease to a reflective expression.

  Connar was thinking: a captain, right. Everyone could see Rat Noth was born for the crazy skirmishers in the cavalry, being lean and light in build, but strong, as the saying went, as if made entirely of snapvine and steel.

  Rat Noth would never surpass Connar in the chain of command. He had to remember that. None of them would. Besides, there were still the class against class wargames to look forward to, and everyone knew that when Noddy commanded those, he invariably let the riding captains do what they wanted, which often ended up in a loss.

  As the season wore on, Connar had to get new boots twice, but he was so preoccupied with the competition of academy life that he was scarcely aware of shooting up: all he knew was, he always looked up into Noddy’s face, but at least he caught up with Ghost Fath and Stick Tyavayir, the class leaders.

  He was chosen to command wargames three times, between their barracks house and another. Only the senior class got to command the all-school and overnight games.

  After his first command, Connar left early for his meeting with Hauth, half-expecting the master not to be there anymore. After all, lance drill was now a part of classes, and Connar had lost the wargame he’d commanded the day before. Sick with certainty that Hauth would give up on him in disgust, he raced out into a cold morning, his breath steaming. But he found Hauth waiting.

  Hauth saw him coming, and breathed with relief. Connar’s loss the previous day both annoyed and reassured him—there was clearly much that Connar still needed to learn. The annoyance was a mix of disappointed expectations. By now Hauth had forgotten that Lanrid had only won when he ran at the front, using brute force to bowl over his opponents. Lanrid had never been a planner, but in Hauth’s memory (in those early days, wine-soaked), Lanrid was forever the bright, shining son of the great Mathren, strong, skilled, and a natural commander. A natural future king, and it was Retren Hauth’s purpose, his vow, to see that Connar became the king his father should have been.

  Clearly he had to train that Iascan woman’s bad blood out of him.

  He greeted Connar with a terse, “You lost yesterday. Do you know why?”

  Connar launched into a disjointed explanation, with plenty of self-exculpatory sidetracks, until Hauth cut in with, “I can see you’re ready to blame everything and everyone else. Some of that even might be true. Let me ask instead, what did you learn?”

  Connar stared at Hauth, loathing that sense that the mystery of successful command slipped away exactly like the mirages on the plains during the height of summer. “I....” Seeing Hauth’s scowl deepen, he said quickly, “I couldn’t see, from the middle of everything. Everything started all right, but then it all fell apart, and I couldn’t see. I think I have to get where I can see everyone.” He remembered a stray fact, and his tone changed. “In the very first story, the very first wargame. Inda got outside, somehow, and sent Mouse Marthdavan for the flags.... He saw things.”

  “All right,” Hauth said. “Next time, make sure you do the same.” Frustration sharpened his tone. He’d really expected Connar to come out a winner, after studying those hoarded papers that no one else even knew about; one of the prospects keeping him awake at night was that Connar would arrive at their meetings full of resentment for Hauth’s bad teaching.

  Hauth knew he wasn’t a leader. Mathren had valued him as a lance captain. His proudest moment, which he’d had to keep secret all these years, was his promotion to Nighthawk Company Captain of First Lancers. On Connar’s behalf he’d sought the key to command ever since, and had truly believed that the secret lay in those carefully hoarded old stories about Inda-Harskialdna, which, joined with dolphin-clan blood, would catapult Connar to leadership.

  They parted, Connar with a plan, and Hauth with self-doubt, because surely the fault was his.

  After Connar’s second command, “I didn’t really win,” he said truculently. “We did get the flag, and we did the drum dance, but it was really all Ghost being fast, and doing what he wanted.”

  “Why did he do what he wanted? Did he ignore your orders?” Hauth asked, his pale brows a line over his deep-set single eye and the black patch.

  Connar struggled against the burn of envy, so familiar. But learning command was too important, and envy wouldn’t get him anywhere. “Yes. No...well, everyone told me my plan sounded great, but once we started, there was too much of it to remember. I did have a lot of contingencies. I thought they were all good. Cab—some ignored me, or got bored and didn’t listen.” The instinct not to snitch was still strong.

  “Gannan,” Hauth said, lip curling. “He wasn’t the only one running wild.”

  Connar sighed. “It doesn’t say in the papers how much Inda said to his company. I thought maybe he explained everything, all contingencies.”

  “He may or may not have, but that doesn’t prevent you from doing it.”

  The third time, everything started out perfectly—as perfect as drill. Then all of a sudden, it fell apart and they lost.

  Connar was in a vicious mood, all the worse for having to hide it. Everyone despised a commander who couldn’t lose well.

  “It started right,” he said resentfully. “A perfect three wedge attack on both flanks and to break the middle.”

  Hauth opened his hand. From his vantage on the hill Connar’s company was supposed to be defending, he’d seen it—and also seen Manther Yvanavayir’s flag shoot a whirtler arrow signaling a wheel and oblique attack, after which the skirmishers cut up the flank attacks and converged on the mass in the middle, which promptly turned to chaos, everyone trying to take everyone else prisoner.

  Hauth said, “Yvanavayir saw it coming. That’s a common attack.”

  “I picked it because it was simple,” Connar muttered. “Since nobody listened to me on the defense along the river. I couldn’t see anything, because I led the point.” The way Rat Noth does. He couldn’t make himself say it, as Rat was in the class behind them. That made his skill somehow more insulting.

  “You have next year,” Hauth said quickly, seeing the mutiny tightening Connar’s features.

  “I should be winning this year,” Connar retorted.

  “You’re up against your own future captains,” Hauth reminded him. “And we kept Yvanavayir an extra season to get him better trained in captaining foot as well as mounted.”

  Manther Yvanavayir was a mere side issue to Connar. “Yes, and because I’ll have to be the future commander in chief, I don’t see why I shouldn’t get to see the problem first,” he burst out, knowing very well that he was suggesting in a roundabout way that the master brief him on the game details ahead of the others.

  Hauth’s eye widened, and Connar stepped back. “I didn’t mean it like cheating,” he started.

  Hauth knew exactly what he meant, and a brief pulse of memory brought Lanrid’s voice expressing a similar sentiment in the same roundabout way, his voice breaking on the word “cheating” with eerie precision in exactly the same way. He had actually forgotten that until now.

  To smother the disloyal memory, he said all the more forcefully, “I’m relieved you’re not asking me to cheat on your behalf.” He let out his breath, aware that he had all Connar’s attention now. “There’s a reason the headmaster is careful not to bring out the chalk board until everyone’s ready to ride. It’s as close as we can come to what happens in the field, when the scouts report what they find of the enemy. A commander is not going to be able to send a runner to his enemy asking for him to wait a day or two so he can come up with a plan. Cheating might net a win, but it won’t teach you anything....”

  And Hauth relieved himself of a long lecture about how a natural commander didn’t need to cheat, only followers cheated. Connar’s focus shifted inward within the first words of the familiar hectoring tone.

  So Hauth wouldn’t let him scout ahead. It wasn’t really cheating. After all, spies got extra information. That
was the entire purpose of spies! For that matter, Cama One-Eye’s Inda papers were really extra information. Of course, they were descriptions of past battles, and anyone who wanted to read about past battles could do it if he found them. Maybe Rat Noth and Ghost Fath had similar stuff at home!

  Anyway. Scouts finding maps or plans or orders of a future battle was different, but really, a commander didn’t send them back, saying, Nope, unfair advantage here. Can’t listen to you unless you share it with my enemies at the same time. There were all kinds of ifs, if you thought about it.

  War wasn’t launched by two commanders seeing a setup and a goal chalked out on a board, and given exactly the same briefing.

  When Hauth finally finished, Connar walked away, having not heard a word past it won’t teach you anything.

  Spring came late to Senelaec, but even so, once again planting was even later because Wolf had taken every rider over the age of eighteen to reinforce their family connections in Sindan-An, where, not long after the first warm spell of spring, five horse studs were attacked at the same time. It was entirely by chance that a patrol rounding up yearlings on the plain caught sight of the dust of a mighty party coming from the direction of the east, and raced belly flat to the ground for home to warn everyone.

  Wolf—now the jarl—took his eldest son Cub for his first foray. Calamity remained behind in command of Senelaec, which was protected by teens and oldsters who alternately patrolled and helped with the planting. Near the end of summer the outriders spotted the dust on the horizon, galloped to a high point, spotted the Senelaec pennons, and raced home with the news that the jarl was back at last.

  Wolf, Cub, and their Riders trotted into the homestead, tired and dusty, to general cheering, and general questions about the success of the foray (lots of chasing, a few scraps, nothing definitive—as usual). Calamity was glad to see Wolf, but they knew each other well. Nothing was said as they both went about the day, but as soon as they were alone, he turned his back to the door, crossed his arms, and said, “What?”

  Calamity sighed. “The girls want to go to the royal city to compete in the Victory Day games.”

  His tone completely changed when he exclaimed again, “What!”

  “It seems every letter that comes in goes on and on about how much fun it is, the most fun ever, hoola loo. And Vole Patrol encountered some Marlovayirs on the border—”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Wolf reached for a sword that, for the first time in three months, wasn’t at his side.

  “No, no, it was all talk. Stand down, Wolf, you know the girls take care of themselves. And it was Marlovayir scouts, mostly girls. Young Tdor said they were bragging about their wins, and dropping hints as delicate as horse apples about how some people didn’t dare ride to the royal city to compete because they knew they’d lose.”

  Wolf smacked his hands over his face, then sighed loudly. “So of course they want to go.”

  “And I don’t know that we should stop them.”

  Wolf turned and kicked the toe of his boot against the door. “You and I have to ride to the royal city come this winter. Do you think it’s a good idea to send them before we’ve scouted the terrain?”

  They both recollected receiving that astonishing notice, inviting the jarlans to the royal city for the next Convocation. For the first time in history. Calamity glanced toward her desk, where the letter still sat in the wooden casket where she kept important mail. She didn’t need to take it out to remember the fine scribal hand, and the fact that Danet hadn’t signed it.

  Even so....

  Calamity said, “Nothing bad has happened since Arrow and Danet took the throne. All the gossip goes the other way, mostly, about the academy, and how everyone loves going.”

  Wolf said slowly, “So you think...?”

  Calamity said, “I think we might pick out the best of the girls from the three patrols, and let them go.”

  “Not Ran,” Wolf said quickly. “And Kit’s too young.”

  “Kit’s definitely too young. And, of course, not Ran,” Calamity said, just as quickly, as with the same heartfelt conviction. “In fact, this might be a good idea to let Cousin Ranet go along. Since she’s taking Ran’s place, she ought to get a chance to meet Connar. Scout the territory.”

  Wolf grimaced. When that notice had come about jarlans to attend the next Convocation, his mother had said, “I told you years ago your Ran-ruse would throw you ass over horse’s head. You deal with it,” before riding off to support her sister in Sindan-An, who had taken a bad fall that had permanently disabled her.

  So they’d had plenty of time to consider what to do. In family councils that had started secret and widened, as usual, to include everyone from old, toothless Cama Miller to the youngest barn brats, they had agreed that Fuss’s daughter, also named Ranet, was the best choice to take the false Ranet’s place when the time came. She was smart. She even had the right name.

  The Keriams (long allied with the Sindan-Ans and the Senelaecs) had said she could decide, whereupon she nearly bounced through the roof at the very idea of marrying a prince. The only drawback was her age: she was almost three years younger than Ran.

  “Do you think she can pass for older?” Wolf asked doubtfully. “She’s a good filly, but on the small side.”

  “Both riding captains say she’s held herself well on her first border patrols. In fact, she was there at that Marlovayir encounter, and Pandet says she comported herself well. And remember, the younger prince isn’t going to be pushing for marriage. He’s only a year or two, three at most older than our Ran. At that age, the last thing they’re thinking about is marriage. By the time he’s ready for marriage, she’ll be as well.”

  Wolf said, “True. All right, let ‘em go to the summer games. But bite their ears good about behavior.”

  “Oh, you know I will,” Calamity said grimly. Those girls were going to get the benefit of all her sleepless nights about the consequences of flip decisions.

  They did.

  At length.

  As soon as she was gone, Ran and the girls retreated to their own particular hangout, which was the south harvest barn, conveniently empty. There, they all faced one another.

  “We’re going,” Young Pan shrilled. “We’regoingwe’regoingwe’regoing!”

  “Clip the rat squeak,” Ink, an older girl, ordered.

  Ink had gotten her nickname at age six after a close encounter with a fresh bowl of ink, when she was taken with an urge to express her artistry on the side of a barn; after much scrubbing, they still had not managed to get it out of her flaxen hair, which had turned green, and stayed green, until she took the sheep shears to her hair at age ten. Despite an unpromising start, Ink was likely to become a patrol captain before she turned twenty.

  Ran introduced the subject on all their minds by saying, “I’m going with you.”

  Silence. They all remembered Calamity beginning that long jawing with, “Of course Ran will stay here, but....”

  Ran looked at the uncertain faces, and said, “It wasn’t orders. She just said, of course. And I didn’t say anything. Right? You all heard me.”

  “True,” Ink said slowly.

  They all respected the jarlan very much. But there was, right here before them, the prospect of the ruse of a lifetime.

  “Why not have Ran come?” said a freckled fifteen-year-old they called Trot. She lived for risk and adventure.

  They all scrutinized Ran. They had regarded him as one of the girls for all their short lives, but of late a couple of the older ones had become aware of little things that weren’t girl, and further, that they rather liked...when it wasn’t awkward.

  Ink, three years older, narrowed her eyes as she studied Ran, who stood still under this inspection. It was easy enough to guess what they were thinking. “The Marlovayirs’ve never raised a question, not once,” he said.

  True. Ran was nearly sixteen, and until recently—this spring, really—had been a skinny reed, much the same size and shape a
s Trot, Young Pan, and Fnor there. But since winter he was starting to get shoulders on him, and his arms, when bare, weren’t girl arms. However, nobody would be seeing his arms, covered by his robe.

  “What about the baths?” Trot whispered.

  This was a poser. Calamity had abruptly declared when Ran was twelve that he had to bathe with the boys from now on, which everyone had accepted, unaware of the fact that when the patrollers passed their favorite pools on hot summer days, they’d all stripped down without a second thought. No one had been interested in the single dangle among them—though Ran, just this summer, had found himself noticing in the others what he’d always taken for granted, and sometimes had to consciously make himself not stare, lest they catch him at it and all the easy sisterhood suddenly got weird.

  Yeah, his old life was definitely ending, and the fact that Cousin Ran was now living with them, ready to take his place when the time came to marry the second prince, was the proof. So why not go out with the triumph of the world’s primest ruse? “If we take along one of the buckets will the spell on it, I can make do with that,” he said. “Or. It’s only for, what, a week? I won’t stink in a week—”

  “Yes, you will,” Fnor stated.

  “Says the biggest farter in the kingdom,” Ran retorted.

  Ink snapped her fingers, cutting a promising insult fight short. “Definitely the bucket. Every day,” she added with a frown, and Ran suppressed the urge to sniff his pits. Nobody had complained before; it had yet to occur to him that he was beginning to smell like boy, and that some of the girls had noticed.

  “Here’s what I think,” Young Pan said. “Ran’s the best rider alongside me, you all know it. And he’s the best shot. Even when he doesn’t do that trick with two arrows.”

  They had to acknowledge this: while Ran had trouble seeing details up close, like writing, he had inherited his mother’s distance vision, and could name correctly the type of bird that others barely saw as a speck on the horizon. Coming from two naturally athletic parents, he brought this sharp eye to archery. In that he was as good as Ink, and this last year, especially since winter, he’d begun shooting much farther and faster while riding, the most coveted skills besides accuracy.