A Stranger to Command

  The day he cut inland, he rode steadily through the morning until hunger forced him into making an afternoon stop. Enticing smells emanated from the small inn at a crossroads village. He left the horse to be cared for by a pair of stableboys and stepped under the low roof into a small common room, where the local accent was enough like Rensare to wash Vidanric in as intense a wave of homesickness as anything he felt on first arriving at Marloven Hess’s academy three and a half years ago.

  From the little village the mountains appeared larger, a solid wall that would soon swallow the afternoon sun. Vidanric ordered bread and soup (the cheapest offering of the three choices) and listened wistfully to the innkeeping family chattering with a room full of locals, the size of the crowd proof that the local brewery was especially good. Since he was effectively invisible, Vidanric concentrated on trying to identify the local dialect. It’s really all Sartoran way, way down underneath, he thought. But enough regional differences for his patriotic ancestors to claim a name for their own dialect, raising it thus to the distinction of Language.

  When one eats alone, there’s no reason to linger. He mounted up and rode on, pacing the horse a trifle faster than he had before.

  So far on the inland road he’d met very few people, and all those had been locals, most driving carts and wagons, and once a dust-covered carriage. Its windows were firmly curtained, behind which emerged a brief drift of laughter.

  The sun had dropped behind the mountains, plunging the land abruptly into shadow, when he spied another horseman on the road ahead.

  The rider was Russav, Duke of Savona, who spotted Vidanric at roughly the same time. Neither of them saw anything more than the shadowy outline of a male form on horseback, which did not raise much interest.

  Savona had raced for days from post to post over the mountains, and then—after agonizing briefly—decided to take a shortcut, though everyone warned him of brigands infesting the lonely inland road. So far, the only danger seemed to be that his backside would be permanently bruised. Savona had not ridden so hard since he was a small boy, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d travelled all alone, without a gaggle of servants and spies surrounding him.

  The first dozen times he’d spotted a rider coming from the direction of the harbor he’d stood in the stirrups, peering down the road. But it was always another local.

  This time he scarcely gave the rider a second glance. It had to be another local, this one in some sort of uniform. Though he rode like a—

  Savona jibed at the bridle, sending his tired post horse skittering closer. The fading light didn’t give much more detail, but that face—

  That familiar face—

  “Danric?”

  The dark gray horse laid its ears flat as its rider drew in a sharp breath, his complexion going pale and then flooding with color.

  Vidanric stared as the tall, broad-shouldered fellow in rich clothing and long flowing dark hair under a dashing, low-brimmed hat resolved into—

  “Russav!”

  Laughing, exclaiming—neither hearing the other—they flung themselves off their mounts. Savona gripped Vidanric by the back of the neck with one hand and pounded him with the other, his laughter sounding like sharp barks of joy.

  Vidanric fended him off with one hand and took hold of his wrist with the other. Then they hugged, one massive squeeze that made their joints crackle and pop, and sprang apart as they both began shooting questions at the other. Realized neither could hear, and stopped.

  Savona kept hold of Danric’s shoulders as he held him off, staring into his face. “Life! How you have changed, Danric.”

  Vidanric grimaced. “Hair grows out quick enough.”

  Not just that, Savona was thinking, but he shook his head. “Look, night comes fast in the mountains—in case you’ve forgotten. There is nothing behind me for half a day’s ride, unfortunately. I was cursing myself for taking this road, where there aren’t any decent post horses to be had.”

  “Speaking of which, you’d better claim yours before he vanishes over the hills.”

  Indeed the post horse was walking downhill toward a stream below a clump of maple, the reins dragging. Savona bolted after, calling and waving his arms. The animal flicked its ears and trotted away.

  Vidanric whistled. His gray pranced up, head lifting. He vaulted into the saddle and trotted after the skittish post horse, as Savona watched in amazement. It wasn’t his seat, it was how he held his hands—like there was a single easy line from his elbows to the horse’s mouth. And the way he’d mounted, with a quick step and a leap—

  Vidanric brought the escapee, and handed down the reins. “There’s a small inn a ways back, where I had a decent meal. But I’ve run out of money, so I was going to sleep outside,” he admitted.

  Savona laughed. “You should have heard the warnings your father dinned into my ears about staying off these roads after dark, once I made it clear I was not going to lurk about hiding in your fortress over the falls. But there hasn’t been the slightest whiff of the smallest bandit.” Then, thinking of his haste, the innkeepers he’d cursed for their slowness (and would soon be seeing again) he amended somewhat sheepishly, “Though if you want to return by the coast, that’s all right by me.”

  “Why, when it’s so far out of the way?” Vidanric jerked his thumb back the way he’d come. “We’ll go to the inn for the night. It’s too hilly to ride blind. Not safe for the animals. Tomorrow we can retrace your steps if the inland route really is faster.”

  Savona gave up, mentally reassigning his cache of coins for heavy bribery to innkeepers he’d harassed. “Is yon inn a byre?” Savona asked. “Of course it’s a byre. They don’t seem to have heard of posting inns hereabouts, or normal human comfort.”

  When they arrived at the small inn, all the locals fell silent as Savona strode in, looking as out of place in those plain, rough-hewn surroundings as, well, a duke in a countryside inn. As everyone watched, mugs here and there suspended midway between lips and table, he cast his hat and gloves onto the broad window sill, glanced around with cheerful dismay, and began pleasantly handing out orders that sent the entire innkeeping family scurrying. Vidanric heard the youngest child run out into the poultry yard piping, “Papa! The warrior is back, and he’s got a lord with him!”

  The regulars picked up their mugs and filed into the kitchen, some casting glances of disbelief over their shoulders.

  Vidanric sat down at a newly abandoned table. “We needn’t rouse the entire village.”

  Savona laughed. “Why not? I’ve got plenty of money. May’s well be comfortable.” He kicked a rough-hewn table out of the way and dragged a chair close to the fire someone had built. “Chairs! I feel like a world traveler already.”

  And with a casual, even breezy assurance that sounded to Vidanric like arrogance after three and a half years of rigidly non-aristocratic life, Savona took over the inn, first re-arranging the small common room to his satisfaction and then issuing a stream of orders about the dinner and the beds.

  Vidanric would have demurred, but Savona finished off his long list of commands by slapping down a handful of six-sided gold coins onto the inn-keeper’s serving table, waving lazily when they attempted to enumerate their charges. “Keep it! Keep it! Just hop to it. We’re both tired and hungry.”

  The easy largesse brought smiles to the innkeepers’ faces.

  “Now we shall be comfortable,” Savona declared. “And undisturbed.” The voices rose in the kitchen as the locals wondered aloud what could have brought a lord to the village; by the next day, Savona’s prestige would have expanded to include a coach-and-six, two trumpeters, and a dozen outriders in livery, their hair tied in big ribbons.

  Savona leaned forward. “Last I heard from you, you were there, busy with lances and all the rest of it. Why are you here? What happened?”

  Vidanric launched into his story, stopping and back-tracking frequently. It felt so good to talk again! Savona listened with admirable patience to
the disjointed account, even when Vidanric interrupted himself with “No, wait, I have to tell you this first.”

  While the recitation was going on, they had time to assess the other by the glow of lamps. Savona was so astonished at his oldest friend’s changes he had to begin with Vidanric’s few familiar features: his gray eyes, his hair sunbleached to a paler shade than he remembered. But the familiar gray eyes had narrowed in a way utterly unfamiliar, and the hair was worn short in a military cut. More, Vidanric had grown from a spindly weed with graceful hands to a height eye to eye with Savona. He was as lean as a knife, his manner a kind of leashed tension that was totally unfamiliar. How are we going to hide three and a half years of this kind of life from Galdran? he thought, when Vidanric paused to drink, muscles straining against his sleeves when he lifted his arm.

  Vidanric’s thoughts were far more tangled. Savona looked, well, not soft, exactly—there was no fat whatsoever to that flat stomach—but he looked, oh, call it untrained. He looked like a civ. Like a lord, in fact—taking precedence as his right. And nobody seemed to mind.

  During a brief silence after the food was brought (all cooked to Savona’s exact specifications) Vidanric entertained himself with what would happen at the academy if someone—not Savona, no, but some unnamed fellow with long black hair, wearing velvet and lace to ride in—strode into the academy handing out orders right and left. You’d learn all the shades of meaning of scrag, he admitted to himself. No, that’s unfair, too. What’s more, this is the kind of life I’m supposed to be leading.

  “I’m going to need new clothes, I guess,” he said.

  Savona laughed. “So I would think! But I’ll take those riding boots, if you don’t want ’em.”

  “Those stay. Got used to ’em.” Vidanric stretched out one leg, regarding the scuffed, worn toes of his boot. “But I’m going to have to find a cobbler who can make them.”

  “Order me a pair.”

  They talked a while longer—clothes, fashions, food—nothing about home. By mutual agreement that would wait until they were alone on the road.

  The candles had guttered low and Vidanric had lost track of what he was saying when they decided to retire. Savona followed him upstairs thinking that a couple glasses of wine had done a lot to make Danric, well, more human.

  He grumpily changed his mind the next morning when noise outside his open window caused him to roll out of bed, pull on his trousers, and look out. He discovered Danric down in the court, fully dressed, the horses ready. Danric was in the act of shoving that long, curve-tipped sword into the saddle sheath after what apparently had been a long drill.

  “What did you do, get up before dawn?” Russav asked crossly.

  Danric looked up, and grinned. “Yes.”

  “What? Life! Danric, you have gotten into some very bad habits.”

  “Think of it this way. Sooner we depart, the sooner we get home.”

  “Very well, very well.”

  And so they were soon on the road, as low clouds drifted overhead. Savona began the talk, complaining with long pent-up frustration about the king and all the court. Vidanric listened while they rode gradually upward, the ground rising in tree and shrub-dotted folds. He commented less and less, his attention shifting outward as he continually looked around.

  Savona’s diatribe against Galdran and court began to abate. He shifted to anecdotes, trying to dredge up the funniest ones he could remember. If he’d become a bore, he wished Vidanric would have said so, but he could take a hint.

  Vidanric was unaware that he’d stopped listening. Signs of humanity were fewer as they progressed up the narrowing road. This was prime territory for ambush.

  In the middle of one of Savona’s more inspired descriptions of a typical card party presided over by the king, Vidanric checked his sword to make certain it was loose in its saddle-sling.

  Savona broke off mid-sentence and forced a laugh. “Hoping to fend off boredom? If you’ve had your fill of my natter, say the word.”

  “I don’t like this terrain,” Vidanric returned, unsmiling. “In fact—”

  He let the pause stretch into silence. Savona, uneasy now, was going to crack a joke when Vidanric flicked up a hand in a short, commanding gesture. Savona found himself reining in, his exclamation bit back. His horse’s ears were twitching back and forth.

  The bushes on either side of the road rustled wildly, and three armed men rushed out from either side, weapons raised.

  Savona shouted—the men shouted—Savona groped for his sword—where was it?

  His horse circle-danced in rising panic as Savona kneed one of his saddle bags to get at his rapier, which had slid under the pack. Shouts, clopping hooves, a nasty thunking noise and the clash and whirr of steel made his heart thunder.

  He finally got the rapier out by yanking with both hands. He slewed around. Vidanric’s arm was a blur of circles that ended in two sickening, blood-spraying chops. He stabbed one man, blocked a swinging stroke from the other side, then whirled his sword into the attacker’s throat. Blood sprayed darkly and the man choked, groaned, and crashed to the ground.

  Savona gaped in mind-flown shock at six men lying lifeless in the road.

  Six. Two with knives in their chests, one with the knife in his throat, three of them sword-hacked. Danric mopped with a shaking hand at the sweat running into his eyes, then he flicked a glance at the blood-smeared sword gripped in his right hand. He slipped out of the saddle, his haggard face going distinctly green, and dropped down to the ground with his head between his knees.

  Savona said in a voice that sounded like someone else’s in his ringing ears, “They’re dead. You killed them.”

  Vidanric looked up, his face exhausted, his eyes dark with shock. “Didn’t you hear them?” he returned, his voice husky. “They had orders to kill us both.”

  FORTY-NINE

  “What?” Savona exclaimed.

  “You didn’t hear them? They were shouting.” Vidanric’s voice was flat, his body shivering.

  “Heard voices. Not words. Too busy wrestling with this.” Savona flashed up the point of his rapier. “How could you stab three at once?”

  Vidanric mimed knife-throwing. Then surged to his feet and with a sudden, swift strike buried the sword in the loose soil beside the road.

  He pulled it free, then plunged it into the ground again and again, last using the long grass to wipe it until it was clean, then he leaned against his horse, eyes closed, face still wan.

  “That one there.” He pointed with the sword. “Came out of the shrubs. Said Yellow hair—that’s our boy. And that one over there said I want the lordling! He’s gonna—And that one said, Don’t play! Orders are, fast and dead!” He wiped his hair off his brow with trembling fingers, then retrieved one of the knives; Savona looked away as Vidanric cleaned that by stabbing it into the dirt. “So I took him out first. In an ambush, you...”

  There came the sounds of the other two knives being retrieved and cleaned. “. . . In an ambush you take out the leader first. Oh, Russav, I really think I’m going to faint.” He folded abruptly again, head down, his breathing ragged.

  He’s killed six men, Savona thought, dazed. They were going to kill us first, but still. Six people who woke up alive today. Ate. Laughed.

  Planned our deaths.

  “Orders. To kill us.” Vidanric’s voice was muffled. He raised his face, and Savona saw the tear streaks that Vidanric did not try to hide. “Not their idea, then. Think what that means. Someone saw that message I wrote. Reported it to someone else. You were followed until you reached me.”

  “But—” Savona tried to get his brain to work. His thoughts skittered like frightened mice.

  He turned his back on the dead, who were after all no more threat, though their terrible, lifeless sprawl was silent reminder that someone, somewhere, wanted him dead. Then drew in a deep breath. Now he was nauseated, and the edges of his vision flickered. He drew another breath. “But how would they know what you looke
d like?”

  “Yellow hair is what he said.” Vidanric shoved two of the knives into his boot tops, then wiped the last one over and over on grass before he put it in his belt.

  “That would be an easy guess. Who could it be but Galdran?”

  “It would fit the pattern of all those ‘accidents,’ wouldn’t it? The point is, someone clever enough to have a spy either at the Scribe Guild or in our house, or my father would never have let you come after me.”

  Savona thought back, appalled. “You’re right. We should get back—hold. I hear someone coming! Oh, Norsunder take it, where is that horse?” He spun in a circle, and nearly tripped over the forgotten blade in his hand.

  Vidanric stood in the center of the road, sword held across his body in half-guard, his face pale but determined.

  I do not know you, Savona thought bleakly. Do I want to? No, no, that was disloyal—Danric had saved their lives! He’d done the right thing! But—

  Clopping and jingling harnesses preceded what turned out to be a cart piled with barrels, driven by two big, burly men. They saw the lone figure in the road holding a sword and one reined hard as the other groped behind the driving bench for a quarterstaff.

  “Wait—wait,” Savona yelled, running forward and waving his rapier. “We’re not thieves—we were ambushed.” He pointed the rapier at the dead highwaymen. “They attacked us.”

  The men, brothers from their similar look, gazed in astonishment from the blood-splashed assassins to the disheveled young lord to the pale-haired young fellow with the military haircut who stood so silently in the road, sword at guard. The driver said, “You’re the two spent the night in Skyanee last night? Skyanee Inn?”

  The carter with the quarterstaff said, “I saw your horse galloping down the road that way.” He thumbed over his shoulder.