The subject ended as the jug of spice wine emptied, and everyone parted for the night, Floss muttering privately to Tanrid, “You stepped in it there.”
“How was I supposed to know?” Tanrid muttered back. “Poor Noddy.”
Bun confided to Lineas as they walked down the hall, “I didn’t think Noddy even noticed girls. Has to be that Vnat who snubbed him. One of these days she’s going to run out of boys to make fun of.”
Before the single clang of the pre-dawn bell, Lineas was dressed and ready for knife and contact fighting drill at the royal runners’ own salle.
The blizzard, to everyone’s relief, blew out overnight, leaving perfect weather for travel, the fresh snow squeaky powder. Those with the longest roads to travel readied in haste.
Feravayir, of course, was one of the longest, so the southern party was first to depart. Twice Danet steeled herself to duty and attempted to get some sense of when Lavais-Jarlan expected Bun to travel to Feravayir to marry Demeos Nyidri. Danet loathed the thought of saying farewell to her daughter, a prospect not made any easier by the jarlan, whose manners were perfect, but whose manner was as slick as ice, and about as warm.
Both times Lavais-Jarlan skillfully kept the conversation general, and once Danet was certain that the jarlan was not in any hurry to take in her prospective replacement in order to instruct her in the ways of Feravayir, Danet let the subject lapse with profound relief.
Bun was not given to much reflection, but she was far from stupid, and observant enough in her own way. As she joined her mother in walking to the stable to say farewell to the southern party, Bun muttered to Lineas, “I’m so glad the Jarlan of Feravayir didn’t say anything about me having to go south with her. She reminds me of a horse about to bite. Ears like this.” Bun cupped her palms slightly, and put them up by her head, signaling a horse a heartbeat away from a kick.
Everything proper was said, and the Jayad Hesea, Feravayir, and Telyer Hesea parties rode out, trumpets blaring in the clear, bracing air—Feravayir of course leading the way.
As she rode out the gates into a fresh world of white under an azure sky, Lavais of Feravayir agreed out loud to the inanities the Cassad and Jayad Hesea jarlans uttered, and silently agreed with none of it.
Danet and Anred Olavayir were war leaders, their castle a fortress. They didn’t seem to have heard of the concept of gardens, much less fashion, art, or music. But they were very powerful. She could respect the power they wielded while despising the persons.
Take that bonehead idea of Danet’s. Put women in the army to stop men from making war? She suppressed the urge to caw out a laugh of disbelief. As if that could happen! When men got their pricks up for blood, no mere woman was going to stop them. Only when they had shot their bolt into the bloody wreckage of other men would they come home to their women for their rewards.
She could wait. Those young princes were bound to be trouble within the next few years, as Marlovan princes always were unless sent off to get themselves killed first. The bucktoothed one might be too much of a dolt to start it, and it was difficult to say about the northern Olavayir boy, but that black-haired piece of art with those gorgeous, watchful blue eyes was trouble on the hoof. As soon as he got bored with breaking hearts he was going to be breaking heads, anyone with half a brain could see that at a glance.
As for that rabbit-faced girl they all called Bunny, if the gunvaer forced Lavais to take her, it would be easy enough to arrange an accident well before Demeos found his Sartoran princess.
She laughed silently to herself as the Cassad woman blathered on about the famous Inda tapestry, and how the fashion for tapestries might come back.
Fashion. These boors had no idea what the word meant.
TWENTY-TWO
Winter sped by, full of activity.
The only time the boys felt the drag of time was when Arrow insisted that they sit in on his meetings with guild chiefs. The round-and-round discussions of where and how to allocate fealty funds was maddeningly tedious, inevitably coming around to the sore topic of the Nob. The boys didn’t mind sessions with various garrison staff, but they were heartily sick of hearing about the Nob.
Noddy sat stolidly without catching much meaning, enduring it as he endured extremely hot weather or cold, confident that the discomfort must end. Connar’s emotions twisted like the banners in the winds. Kingship would be tedium like this, he told himself. But he knew that kings could and did delegate. Which meant that Noddy, if—no, when—he became king, might expect Connar to sit through these boring gab fests....
One day, when the boys thought the state lessons safely over until the next winter, a thaw brought the usual cluster of runners who had been holed up somewhere.
As they did most days, the family gathered for breakfast in the king’s rooms, which were the warmest. Bun tore through her food and took off to find out where Quill was, and to figure out if there was a way to get him to stop seeing her as Hadand-Edli. The boys lingered, as neither wanted to go out into the bitter sleet roaring on the rooftops and rattling the windows.
Noddy was reaching for his third biscuit when his father sighed, and tossed a letter over to Danet. “You’d better find a way to manage this.”
She took up the letter, the lines between her brows increasing as she read. “The Senelaecs need seed grain again?”
“You remember Wolf, his boy, and all their Riders went east all last spring and summer, right?”
“I know that, but we’re not getting begging letters from Sindan-An,” Danet muttered. “Or Tlennen. I wish Calamity and Wolf would....” She became aware of extra pairs of ears and eyes, and sighed instead. “What is it about the east anyway? Are you certain these constant excursions aren’t just playtime for those Riders?”
Arrow got up, and with a flare of coat skirts and his long yellow horsetail, vanished into the far room where he kept his maps and correspondence. Danet sat back on her heels, aware of a pulse of laughter at how Arrow, even with thinning hair and the lined face of a man in his early forties, still walked with the swinging, almost swaggering bounce that had characterized him when they first met.
He returned with a rolled map, glanced at the table full of dishes, then squatted down and snapped the map open on the fresh-swept stone floor. “Look here. I’ve chalked in every raid. Where, what was lost, and how many. You tell me if that’s playtime.”
Danet crouched on the other side of the map, her chin on her knees as her gaze roamed the map.
Noddy buttered his roll, got to his feet, and walked out of yet another boring map session. Connar waited, curious; he found himself hoping the Senelaecs, who had sent that annoying boy-girl, would get into trouble, so maybe Da would send him back. No one would want some seventeen-year-old scrub coming into lancers without earning the right to be there, like everyone else had!
Danet glanced up, her eyes narrow. “You’re sure about these dates? Is this all rumor from the Eastern Alliance, via half a dozen mouths?”
“These ones with the ‘R’ are royal runner reports.”
“Those can be trusted,” Danet said. “They only give eyewitness reports. Hmph.”
“What do you see?” Arrow asked with a skeptical glance.
Danet said, “I see two patterns. One, early spring dates, the raids are all through here.” She swept her hand down south. “My guess is, someone is trying to get in ahead of the jarls’ horse studs when they ride out in spring to reclaim their animals sent to winter pasture. When I was young, it was always spring when the horse thieves struck, trying to grab our trained horses. The wild ones being too smart for them.”
Arrow turned up his hand. Everyone knew that.
“But the later ones...look. The land below the mountains on this side, according to the maps I had to make as a girl, is barren. These attacks...branching from here and here, well into the dry season...where are they getting their water? Their food? What appears to me is that there’s a supply line running through the southern pass.” She
tapped the straight line bisecting the conical mountains drawn between Sindan-An and Anaeran-Adrani, the map made by someone who had scant knowledge of the geography of mountains.
Arrow squinted down. “I don’t see how you’re getting that.”
Danet sighed. “Because you were trained to defend from Nevree. I’ve had to learn about supply lines while dealing with the jarls’ arguments about the logistics of supporting the Nob, and—oh, never mind. The thing is, you, none of you, think about the work in setting up and defending supply lines. The cost. You think about purely military necessity, how many to send, how to place them, for defense or attack.”
“The cost is what you do,” Arrow said. “Better than those scribes of Evred’s ever did.”
“That’s because Mathren kept them blind while he built…. Never mind that.” Danet snapped her hand through the air. “Arrow, my point is, if I’m right, these are the kind of supply lines that kings provide.”
“Years ago I thought the raiders might be Adranis. You remember, I asked Camerend to send a couple of experienced runners up there to listen for Adrani speech. See if they wore Adrani colors. They came back reporting different languages in the caravan guards. Different fighting styles. There’s no law up there in those mountains, so it’s natural brigands would roost, but the conditions drive ‘em on again, especially when trade caravans are well guarded.”
Danet turned a palm up. “The military is your end. What I see....” She smacked the map with the backs of her fingers. “Are numbers too regular to be occasional bands of brigands. Either someone with power and wealth is backing these raids, or else there’s a federation of horse thieves the size of an army, because only they could supply raids reaching this far.”
Arrow scowled. “If it really is the Adranis coming over the mountains...shit. They must think I’m a bonehead.” He glared at the map, mumbling, “This would never have happened in Evred and Inda’s day.”
They’d merely had to face the Venn, Danet thought. But she decided against saying it. She’d heard enough from Arrow about the bygone days of heroes. Heroes. Anytime that word was spoken it threw her back to that stormy day in Tenthen Castle, firelight reflecting in the Iofre’s eyes as she described the wreck Inda had been after his heroism.
So she said, “It wouldn’t have, because Joret Dei would have put a stop to it.”
“True.” Arrow’s brows lifted. “But. I’m going to send the army up the Pass and clean ‘em out clear to the other side.”
Danet sat back on her heels. “And have the Adranis declaring war?”
Arrow cursed as he bent over the map. “It’s not already war if these are really the Adranis?”
She smacked the map again. “Those plains all along here below the mountains aren’t our territory. Or theirs. They can’t claim it any more than we can, right? It’s open space, by ancient treaty.”
Arrow shrugged. “Right now it seems to be open road for horse thieves. Well, if the Adranis can hire, or pretend to be, horse thieves, then I can send a pack of army-trained horse traders up that way, looking for yearlings. Heh. It’s time to try the army—damnation, what now?”
Because Danet scowled at the map, her palm turned down. “First, from the evidence of these dates, it might be too late: so far, my understanding is that every spring they come raiding, then vanish by the end of summer when all the little rivers dry up—”
She paused at a single tap on the door: Arrow’s first runner.
“What?” he barked.
“Royal runner chief says, he just received a report you should hear.”
“Just what I need, more shit to wand,” Arrow muttered. Then, louder, “Send it in.” He got to his feet, followed by Danet.
Connar also rose. If it was going to be a lot of reports and talking back and forth, he might as well take off now, and share the juicy news with Noddy. Or what might be juicy news. It would be too stinking unfair if the army thundered east, banners flying, while he and Noddy were stuck playing with wooden sticks on the academy game field another year. By the time they’d finally get out of the academy, the fun would be over.
He slipped out and vanished one way as Camerend entered from the other, bringing in a mud-splashed, sodden royal runner from whose gaunt face dark-circled eyes stared out, obviously a man near the end of his strength. Danet and Arrow barely recognized in that frizz-haired, grimy scarecrow Ivandred, one of the best of what they called the long riders, those who traveled great distances—to the Nob, to Parayid Harbor way down south, and even over the Andahi Pass.
Camerend saluted, a gesture belatedly and vaguely echoed by Ivandred. Then Camerend said, “He’s just returned from Ku Halir, a hard run.”
Arrow and Danet looked at each other, then down at the map. “Ku Halir?” Arrow said. “Something wrong at the new garrison?”
Ivandred said hoarsely, “No. I was sent to Wened Lakeside to run a message....” He bent, coughing.
Danet stepped toward him. “Want some water? Or I can order something hot to drink.”
Ivandred fluttered the fingers of his free hand. “Thank you, gunvaer. Got a sip in the stable,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Report right away.”
Arrow glanced down at the map. Ku Halir, his new garrison, had been an Iascan trade town on the ancient route from the southern pass. Traders usually stopped first at Wened Lakeside, which was a small trade outpost at the eastern end of the lake, considered the outer boundary of the Sindan-An jarlate.
Ivandred coughed out more dust. “Bad weather, so I stopped at Four Points Inn, to get a night and a meal. I was visiting my brother, so I was riding civ,” he added, gesturing down his lanky body, though at this moment he was dressed in the heavy dark blue coat that royal runners wore on the road. “Heard Sartoran. Adrani accent.”
“Go on,” Arrow said.
“No one up there speaks Sartoran—almost any language but. Adrani, sure, as traders come from there. Shalgan, East Iascan, even Ashka, you’ll hear, but not Sartoran,” he went on. “I ordered a drink, so I could listen. Two men, one young, one old. The young one said, But captain, our orders. The old one said, I carry the tally. Right then the innkeeper sent his boy over to serve their food. They broke off, and when the boy scouted off again, the captain just said, You have your orders. Eat, and ride.”
Ivandred paused, blinking rapidly, his domed forehead wrinkled. Then, “I didn’t know which to follow, so I stuck to the older one. Higher rank, has a tally. He stayed there two days, then it was Restday, with people whooping it up all over. He vanished among them. I rode back to Ku Halir to report. Sent down to carry it to you.”
Arrow said slowly, “What’s a tally, besides a chalk mark counting things?”
Camerend said, “According to some histories, tallies are tokens, usually gold, silver, or certain kinds of carved and polished stone, used in kingdoms with complex chains of command. Even if one has inherited some sort of military title or rank, no one below royal rank can give orders to a military body without a tally. So, for example, a king might give his tally to a subordinate to move a regiment, say, from here to there. Think of it as the physical manifestation of the King’s Voice.”
Arrow’s brows shot up. “So what you’re saying is, there’s some army coming over one of the passes?”
Danet glared into space. “Everybody knows the northern pass is blocked up by snow for eight months out of the year, and the rest of the time, it’s barely a trail alongside a river. I don’t know much about military movement, but it’s plain that any army up there would only be able to go as fast as the traders’ ox-carts, and two by two at that.”
“Not true of the south,” Arrow said. “We know there’s at least one outpost in the pass.”
Camerend said, “There’s a walled inn built just below the start of the steep ascent in the southern pass, where traders hire oxen or mountain ponies for going up the pass. We runners sent to the Adrani side always stay there.” Camerend tapped a spot on the map.
A
rrow turned to Danet. “What if the company was part of your supply lines?”
Danet scowled at the map. “You think the Adranis have taken over that outpost and put warriors there?”
Arrow turned to Camerend, who stood there with his customary mild expression, waiting for orders. Yes, waiting for orders. Arrow considered rapidly. He wanted someone he could trust doing the investigating, someone who knew what to look for. And there was this to say about royal runners—if you gave them specific orders, they carried them out exactly.
The comfort he found in this thought reached too deeply for him to examine it—or even want to examine it. “Camerend, do you have someone you can send east to who would know how to recognize evidence of an army up in either of those passes?”
Camerend gazed out the window as if considering. He’d seen the wariness in Arrow’s eyes. He suspected that Arrow, even after a coming up on two decades of rule, still half-expected a knife in the dark.
Camerend had been considering various plans on the walk up the stairs, and how to suggest them. He said slowly, “Lnand could go up the southern pass. If she went as a traveling bard, she might even get into places snowed in all winter. Everyone talks in front of bards. Ivandred here could take the northern pass. Maybe not ride up it. We know what it’s like. He might take a position and watch who comes down at our end. He speaks all the dialects up there.”
Arrow clapped his hands and rubbed them. “Do it.”
Danet tapped the painted mountains with the toe of her boot. “We need this better drawn, showing the folds in the mountains, at least the southern pass, as the northern one follows the river. On this map, these mountains are painted to be pretty, but surely mountains don’t all look exactly alike.” She remembered those jagged shapes in the distance when she was a girl in Farendavan. “Do they?”
“They do not,” Camerend said. “Mapping can be part of Lnand’s orders, if you so desire. She’s trained.”
Time of Daughters I Page 54