When the orderlies brought around something hot to drink, I drifted to Hlanan’s side, and gloated, “Look at Geric. He’s sulking!”
Hlanan gave his head a slight shake. “He’s listening.”
I scoffed at that, because the conversation was not worth listening to, but next day I got a rude surprise, along with most of the others when the principals met in the clearing between the two camps, scrupulously swept free of snow by the Blues.
Rajanas said to Geric, “I await your decision.”
“What do you offer if you lose?”
Rajanas lifted a hand. “Since I’d be dead, take what you want of mine. If you can hold it!”
A shift and a mutter among the listening Blues made it clear what they thought of that.
Geric smiled. “I accept,” he said. “A fight to the death. But as the challenged, I choose my champion.”
People turned their attention from him to Chief Nath, who stepped forward, hand to his sword. Some eyed the big, burly Gray Wolf at his shoulder.
Geric’s smile widened, then he said, “I choose her.” He pointed to Oflan. “To the death.”
The watchers whispered as next to me Hlanan drew in a hissing breath. I looked from Rajanas, who had stilled, to Oflan, who watched Pandoc. Back and forth, as the import sank in: one of the two would not walk away alive.
Hlanan’s stricken expression, the tense silence—something was missing.
“What is it?” I breathed.
“Ilyan likes her. Geric must have seen—” Hlanan broke off, his expression sickened.
Liked? As in . . . I blinked, unable to wrap my mind around the idea of Rajanas and romance. Or Oflan, for that matter.
Oflan shook off her coat, unloosed her sword, and took her time in passing a cloth over it so that it shone with blue-white light.
Then she paced out into the center of the space and took up a fighting stance.
Rajanas had also shed his coat. I’d never been able to read his expression. He always looked threatening to me, even when he was amused. But I’d never seen him furious. He was furious now.
Neither spoke. He raised his weapon. She raised hers and took a step forward. She whirled her sword up and down so that the tip lay flat against her palm.
And as Rajanas halted his first strike a hair’s breadth from her head, she deliberately knelt down, laid the sword in the snow, and bent her neck to await his blow.
Once again a silence so profound the soft padding of an animal running on the slope above us carried distinctly, and the soughing of the dawn breeze in the evergreens below.
No one moved, neither Blues nor Gray Wolves.
“Get up, you brainless fool.” Geric’s low voice carried on the icy, still air, venomous and strained. “If you don’t get up I’ll kill you myself. Nath, take her place!”
Chief Nath moved as if released from a spell.
With deliberate movements, he stepped up to Geric and stopped within a couple of paces. He bowed, hands together. “Your Grace, I deem you foresworn.”
“What?”
“By threatening your champion, you break oath. As chieftain of the Gray Wolves I accept our defeat, and if the Prince of Alezand will accept it, offer my vow thither.”
“You idiot!” Geric’s voice rose. “That was nothing—mere hyperbole—what about Thann?”
The man looked old for a lengthy pause, then raised his head. “The Thann I swore oath to protect is gone, all but in name. I began to suspect the true intent of the duchess’s orders, and I am now satisfied that my suspicions were true.”
“It is not your place to question those you swore oath to!” Geric turned from one to another, eyes wide. “This is nothing but excuse for the basest treachery—”
His rapier hissed out of its sheath and he lunged at Rajanas, who whirled to meet him. Oflan swiftly rose and got out of the way.
Geric had clearly been well trained in dueling form. He looked like a prince in a tapestry, and he certainly wasn’t lacking in courage, but ignorant as I am, I saw immediately the difference between dueling, which tries to make an art of violence, and fighting.
Not that Rajanas was brutal. He didn’t have to be. It was clear that he had had a whole lot more experience with steel than Geric ever had. He knew what strike was coming next, how to defend against it, and within four clashes and clangs he pinked Geric’s arm.
Geric’s blue eyes widened, and I guess all that boiling rage he’d been holding in like a good courtier exploded, because he went wild and kept madly trying to kill Rajanas.
Three deliberate pinks he got in return, but Geric was too enraged to notice. Then Rajanas’s own intent changed, and in a fast flurry he drove his sword deep into Geric’s right shoulder. Geric staggered when he yanked it free, and when he yelled something incoherent and snatched the blade with his left hand from his useless right, Rajanas didn’t wait, but flashed his point down and jabbed it hard into Geric’s knee.
Geric gasped, then crumpled to his good knee, then fainted, face down in the snow.
Rajanas said, “Take him off to his tent. He’ll live.”
Hlanan’s breath whooshed out as Chief Nath turned to his Gray Wolves. “We have been used as mercenaries and murderers, all in the name of protecting Thann. I no longer know what truth is, but for me, I must turn away from everything I once knew, or become what I cannot respect. My oath to the Duke of Thann I deem dissolved. I release you all from your oaths to me to do as you will.”
He stepped up to Oflan. “Come, daughter. You have been granted mercy. You are free to choose your path.” His other hand sketched signs in the air as he spoke.
Oflan turned to Rajanas, signing: You-no-kill? Have-I-no-honor?
Rajanas paused in the act of cleaning his blade, and faced her. “It was not that at all. I don’t waste good people on someone else’s whim. Tell her,” he said to Pandoc. “I don’t want to get that wrong.”
Then Rajanas sheathed his sword and lifted his voice, turning in a slow circle. “Those who stay with us, we have an army to unroot from the Idaron Pass. Anyone who wants to choose another path, you’ve a day to get beyond my border.”
NINE
“He’ll live,” Rajanas had said, but for the next day and a half it wasn’t all that clear.
Geric’s own fast reflexive twist had caused Rajanas’s sword to cut more deeply into his right shoulder on its way out. And the stab in his knee rendered him unable to stand on that leg.
The strangest thing of all? None of the Gray Wolves would go near him, after they approached Rajanas and—overseen by their captain—each made new oaths.
While that was going on, Rajanas repeating the same words over and over as the long line of Gray Wolves approached him and formally laid their weapons at his feet, Hlanan and Kuraf’s healer muscled Geric to his tent.
They bound up his wounds and wrestled him into another of his fine tunics that wasn’t particolored with his blood. By the time this had been done, and he’d roused from his faint and drunk some steeped listerblossom leaves, the last few Gray Wolves finished, picked up their weapons again, and proceeded in a brooding silence to break their months-long campsite.
It didn’t take them long to pack. Soon everybody was ready to ride.
“We’re taking him with us?” I asked, pointing to ashen-faced Geric being eased up into the saddle of a horse.
I’d asked Hlanan, but Rajanas heard, and half-turned. “You’d have us leave him lying in the snow?”
“Yes,” I said promptly. “Which he’d do to me if he hadn’t wanted to make me Dhes-Andis’s prisoner. Only he wouldn’t have left me alive.”
Rajanas laughed. “For a thief and a liar, you are probably the most forthright of our merry band. No, he comes along.”
I sniffed. “At least he gets a turn to find out what riding with a hole in your shoulder feels like.” I rubbed my own shoulder, which twinged faintly. I had to admit that his wounds were spectacularly worse than mine, but then everything was his fa
ult.
A quick glance at Hlanan revealed how little he liked the entire conversation. But he didn’t say anything to either of us as Rajanas turned away to issue a command about how the Wolves and the Blues were to ride, and then beckoned to Chief Nath and Oflan.
The Gray Wolves had plenty to report about their months in the mountain above the Pass, apparently. Through that long day, half of which we were snowed on, different ones were beckoned forward to share their experiences as Rajanas and Kuraf listened.
I didn’t hear any of it. This was not my battle. My own thoughts were entirely taken up with Hlanan’s lack of expression. It surprised me how important it was to see his smile.
Weakness or strength? I was so unused to caring what anyone thought of me! Two seasons ago, I had been proud of the excellent stench that I had carefully cultivated, which kept the world well beyond arm’s reach.
Geric rode directly in front of me, his head lolling to the side occasionally, before he’d make an effort that I could almost feel and lift it again. He didn’t say a word, either on that long, tedious journey or afterward when we camped, and patrols went out in pairs—half Blues, half Gray Wolves.
When I understood that Rajanas didn’t like the fact that they had yet to encounter a party of Dhes-Andis’s mercenary army, I thought: he really wants a fight that much?
The next day, as clouds rolled in for another snow storm, the answer became clear when we rode into what had obviously been a long-time outpost.
Rajanas walked all around, looking at everything.
“They’ve retreated,” Hlanan said finally and turned to Kuraf. “Your plan worked.”
“It’s too easy,” Rajanas said. He pointed. “Those huts don’t look recently abandoned.”
“How can you tell?” Hlanan said. “The lack of footprints is to be expected with recent snowfall.”
Rajanas ran his thumb along the line of his mustache, frowning. “The weather has been inside and out of those huts. And there’s no sign of an armory.”
“They brought their weapons up, then took them away again.”
Rajanas shook his head. “Kuraf, you know what I’m looking for, don’t you? Why don’t you send out some fast scouts? Armed—in case—but I’m beginning to wonder if they’ll find anything. We’ll set up right here, early as it is in the day. Snow is on the way. These huts will suffice.”
Kuraf sighed. “I’ll send my best scouts, but Your Highness, this is dangerous weather. Could take them weeks. And they might be mired. . . .”
As soon as the word to camp had been spoken, the two forest rangers in charge of Geric had helped him down from his horse and took him into one of the huts. Rude as these were, at least they’d keep off the impending weather.
The huts were completely empty inside, cold and wet. Rajanas was right. The only smell was of mildewing wood, no lingering wood smoke, food, or people smells.
Geric was soon stretched out on a camp bed, his hairline sweaty in spite of the cold. He said nothing when the equerries piled an old blanket on him.
He didn’t speak until Rajanas entered the hut, bending his head to get through the narrow door. “What do you know about this?” he addressed Geric.
The angry prince twisted his cracked lips, then said in a whisper, “The plan was to take Alezand. I’d hold it. Command the supply line from behind. Dhes-Andis ventures north into Namas Ilan. And eventually he’d take that fool, Liacz, to the north, and use his resources to move against Charas al Kherval.”
“Leaving you an independent king here in Alezand?” Rajanas asked wryly.
Landless Prince Geric didn’t answer.
Rajanas sat on a camp stool, hands on his knees. “If we ration the supplies we can hold out up here a few weeks. We’ll wait for the scouts’ report.” And then, “Geric, you and I have never had any meeting of minds. But you have to see that it is likely you’ve been a dupe?”
Geric turned his face away, his sweat-tangled hair falling to hide it.
Rajanas sighed and got up. “This is bad,” he said in a low voice to Kuraf, hand tapping and twisting in hand sign for Oflan, who stood next to her father in the door of the hut. “But we have to know. . . .”
“Have to know what?” I asked Hlanan, as soon as I’d slipped past them, Hlanan having moved outside to make room for the others. “Why do we stay here?”
He said, “We have to know where that army is, if it isn’t here.”
I sighed. “That is important for the empress?”
“Yes.”
“Even though we’re practically on the other side of the continent?”
Hlanan’s brown gaze searched my own face. The Heir Look kept me from descrying his emotions, except the obvious: this situation, dire as it was, kept him here because it was important to him.
“Come, Lhind,” he said, and we walked a ways away from the churned up mud to a place where the snow lay smooth.
He knelt down, and with his gloved finger sketched out a shape. “Here’s the continent. The Anadhan Mountains all down the east here protect Charas, the central kingdom of the empire.”
“Charas al Kherval,” I said. “I know that. ‘Kherval’ is a fancy, old fashioned word for a group. Now it means empire.”
“The empire protects the polities in the Kherval with magic and if necessary militarily.” His voice dropped out of long habit, though we were alone. “My older brother Justeon believes that military might is the greatest protection.”
“I remember that,” I said. “You’re drawing a map, and I even know pretty much what is on it, thanks to being chased around in summer.” And some of my own chases when young, but I didn’t mention them. “The big kingdom of Liacz here in the north, not part of the empire. Somewhere south, the two parts of what once was Ilan.”
“North-central, and south,” Hlanan said, drawing some smaller mountains, then adding T. I. for Teranir Ilan and south of that, N. I. for Namas Ilan. Below that, Alezand to the southwest, and below that, Keprima, which I knew from my own experience had as many problems as Namas Ilan had had. “And over here to Keprima’s east, the duchy of Thann, one of this cluster of small duchies and principalities—Tolsk, Finn, Berel and so forth. Thann being the wealthiest of them, because of its mines.”
I had crouched down to watch. I ground my chin on my knees, waiting for his point.
“Shifting west again, the Kertean mountain range we stand in right now, forming the western border for Alezand, Namas Ilan, and abutting into Liacz, which stretches east and west of the mountains. Then, on the other side of the Kerteans, south of western Liacz—”
“I know, the coastal countries. Like Forfar, run by a bunch of pirate lovers. I know you and Rajanas were sold into galley slavery out of Fara Bay, and that you can do anything there if you are rich enough, and even then, there’s treachery. I’ve heard terrible things about Forfar since I was little. So?”
“So Dhes-Andis brought an army through there, mercenaries probably hired from the Faran government—whichever corrupt lord is manipulating the old king now—or they came in from somewhere else and the Farans were paid to look the other way. The important point is that the army was brought up to the Idaron Pass—where we stand—in order to come through this pass to take Alezand. If they succeed in killing Ilyan Rajanas, Kuraf, and all these people, because you know they would defend their land to the last, then they slaughter their way eastward across the continent to attack Charas, the heart of the empire. Probably while a huge fleet of Djuran ships attack from the water.”
“Is that for certain? That’s terrible,” I said, thinking of Thianra peacefully making music in Erev-li-Erval. She was trained to defend herself, but she hated warfare.
Hlanan sighed, watching his breath freeze and fall. “The imperial navy guards the entire coast very closely.”
“Don’t you have another brother in the navy?”
“Yes, though Bracan is a captain, not a fleet commander.” Hlanan’s brief smile was the one that lit his face when he m
entioned Thianra. Then he was serious again. “The important thing for me to find out is the location of this army, do you see? If they aren’t here after all, or anymore, where are they? Armies don’t melt into the ground.”
“Magic, of course,” I said. “They could be anywhere! Dhes-Andis is a powerful mage, that much we all know. Maybe he gave them all transfer tokens, or something.”
Hlanan shook his head. “Magic transfer . . . oh, think of it as burning the air when one transfers from one place to another. It isn’t like that, but it’s easier to think of magic with metaphors.”
We use metaphors to begin with, the teacher had said to me, during one of those hated lessons. Impatience pulsed through me, and deeper, the uneasy stirrings of guilt.
To avoid thinking about that, I said, “All right, so transfer magic is like fire. Only it doesn’t feel like you’re on fire. It feels like you’ve been pulled apart and squashed back together by a giant hand. It hurts.”
“It does,” he said. “But for our purpose, think of fire. Two people transferring burn the air that much more, sparking magical fire between the two transport points. Any more than four, and the next person who goes through . . . burns up.”
“Ugh.”
“This is why mages at Destinations have to be careful. It’s why you pay more if it is not a scheduled transfer. And it’s not a matter of letting it cool down, like a pan of corn cakes taken out of the oven. Too many transfers can ruin a Destination for months, years, even centuries. So no, powerful as Dhes-Andis is, even he cannot waft armies hither and yon by magic. Not unless they go sedately one at a time, and you can be certain that the Destination mages keep track of patterns of transfer from a distance.”
“In short, if it was that easy he would have done it ages ago,” I finished. “I see.”
Hlanan sat back on his heels, tipping his head as he looked down at the map. “Several possibilities, and all mean different things—” He lifted his head. “Was that Geric?”
“I didn’t hear anything,” I lied, though a muffled noise, maybe a groan had come from somewhere behind us. “Hlanan, why are you taking care of him? Rajanas will make his equerries do that, since I guess he doesn’t want to. . . .” I wiggled my forefinger in the air, too squeamish to say kill him off.