“Thal,” Jura answered. “When he was in his cups, he talked about the English woman he so stupidly married. He did it once in front of my mother, and my father took her from the room.” Jura’s mouth tightened into a grimace, although the expression did not take away from her beauty. Both of her parents had died when she was five and Thal had taken her in and raised her—raised her in that big stone fortress-house of his without the companionship of women. When a washerwoman had stopped Jura from playing with a sharp, long-handled ax for fear she would cut her toes off, Thal had dismissed the woman.
“Thal told us more than we wanted to know about his time in England,” Jura continued. Cilean knew the “we” referred to Geralt, Jura’s half-brother, and Daire, who had been raised with them.
“Jura,” Cilean said sharply, “are you going to eat that fish or not? If so, hurry up so you can help me decide what to take on the journey. Do you think Thal’s son’s sister will be wearing silks? Will she be utterly divinely beautiful? Will she look down her nose at us Lanconian women as those Frankish women did two years ago?”
Jura’s eyes gleamed. “Then we shall do to her what we did to those women,” she said, mouth full of fish.
“You are wicked,” Cilean said, laughing. “We cannot do that to a woman who will be my sister-in-law.”
“I have no such compunction. We ought to make plans for what to do to protect ourselves from their English snobbery. Of course all we have to do is lead this Rowan into a single battle and that will be the end of him. Or do you think he sits on velvet-cushioned chairs and drinks ale while watching the battle from afar?” Jura stood and kicked dirt over the fire then pulled on her trousers and laced her boots. “And Daire is to go with you?”
“Yes,” Cilean said, smiling. “You can bear to be without him for a few days. We ride out to meet this Englishman and escort him back. I think Thal may be afraid of the Zernas.” The Zernas were the fiercest tribe of Lanconia. The Zernas were as devoted to battle as the Poilens were to books. The Zernas attacked anyone at any time and what they did to captives was what gave grown warriors nightmares.
“No Irial is afraid of a Zerna,” Jura said angrily, coming to her feet.
“Yes, but this prince is English and the English king believes himself to be king of all Lanconia.”
Jura smiled in a nasty way. “Someone should let him walk up to Brocain, the king of the Zernas, and announce his kingship. That would be the end of our worries. At least Thal’s English son would be buried on Lanconian soil, and, I swear, we would bury every piece Brocain hacked from him.”
Cilean laughed. “Come on, help me choose what to take. We will leave in another hour and you must say goodbye to Daire.”
“That will take much longer than an hour,” Jura said seductively, making Cilean laugh again.
“Perhaps I can borrow Daire’s virility some lonely night after I am married to this limp Englishman.”
“That will be the night you die,” Jura said calmly, then smiled. “Let us pray Thal lives long enough to see this English softling of his and sees the error of his ways and corrects it. Geralt will be our king, as he should be. Come on, I’ll race you to the walls.”
Chapter Two
ROWAN WAS STRETCHED out on the western bank of the Ciar River, his arm behind his head and sleepily looking up into the trees. His chest was bare, sunlight and shadow playing on the muscles in his stomach and chest, glinting on the thick mat of dark gold hair. He wore only his short, baggy breeches and hose that stretched over heavy, muscular legs.
Outwardly, he looked to be calm but then he had had years of training in keeping his emotions hidden. His old Lanconian tutor had never missed an opportunity to tell Rowan he was only half Lanconian and that the weak, crying English half had to be cut out, burned out, or removed in some other fashion. According to Feilan, Lanconians were stronger than steel, more immovable than mountains, and Rowan was only half a Lanconian.
Absently, he felt the scar on the back of his thigh twitch, as it always did when he thought of Feilan, but he did not scratch it. Lanconians did not show fear; Lanconians thought of their country first; Lanconians allowed no emotion to govern their thoughts and Lanconians did not cry. His tutor had pounded that into his head well enough. When, as a child, Rowan’s favorite dog, an animal that had comforted him many a lonely night, had died, Rowan had cried, and the old tutor had been enraged. He had laid a red-hot poker across the back of Rowan’s thigh and warned the child that if he cried or so much as flinched, he’d receive a second branding.
Rowan had not cried again.
Behind him he heard someone hurrying toward him. Instantly, he was alert and grabbed his sword, which lay by his hand.
“It’s me,” he heard Lora say, and there was anger in her voice.
He reached for his tunic. In the distance he could hear the Lanconian warriors moving about, no doubt looking for him, afraid he might see a gnat and be frightened of it. He wiped the grimace from his face and looked up at his sister.
“No,” Lora said, “don’t bother to dress. I’ve seen unclothed men before.” She sat on the ground not far from him and was silent for a moment, her knees bent, her arms wrapped around them, her slim young body rigid with what could only be anger. She was heedless of the dampness of the earth seeping into her brocade gown. When she spoke, it was more of an eruption. “They are awful men!” she said furiously, her eyes fixed straight ahead. Her jaw set in rage. “They treat me as if I am stupid, as if I am some spoiled, lazy child who must be patronized at all times. They will not let me walk two steps without aid. As if I were an invalid! And that Xante is the worst. One more of his looks of contempt directed toward me and I’ll set him on his ear.” She stopped when she heard Rowan’s soft chuckle and turned blazing blue eyes on him. She was quite pretty, with delicate features and a tall, slender body, and her anger gave added color to her face.
“How dare you laugh,” she said through clenched teeth. “The way they treat us is your fault. Every time one of them offers you a pillow, you sigh and smile. And yesterday, holding my yarn! You have never done that before, you were always too busy sharpening a sword or knife, but now you delight in pretending to be weak and soft. Why don’t you cuff a few of them, especially that Xante?”
Rowan’s smile softened his square jaw. He was classically handsome with his dark blond hair and deep blue eyes, and next to the Lanconians he looked to be of another species of human. Where their eyes blazed, his twinkled. Where their jaws were gaunt and weathered, Rowan’s cheeks were pale and smooth. Lora was accustomed to seeing men smile at Rowan, thinking they were about to joust with a beardless boy whose tall, big body was no doubt all fat. Lora often laughed with glee when Rowan unseated the smirking knight so easily. The men found out that Rowan’s face changed from softness to blond English oak within seconds—and that big body of his was about two hundred pounds of solid muscle.
“And why don’t you speak their language to them?” Lora continued, her anger in no way abated by Rowan’s seeming unconcern. “Why do you have them translate for you? And who are these Zernas they fear so much? I thought Zernas were Lanconians. Rowan! Stop laughing. They are insolent, arrogant men.”
“Especially Xante?” he asked in his deep voice, smiling at her.
She looked away from him, her jaw working in anger. “You may laugh about them, but your men and your squire do not. Young Montgomery was sporting some nasty bruises this morning and I think he got them defending your name. You ought to—”
“I should what?” Rowan asked softly, looking up at the trees overhead. He would not let Lora see what he felt at the Lanconians’ treatment of him. These Lanconians were his own people, but they treated him with great contempt and made it clear that he was not wanted. He could not let Lora see that he was just as angry as she because Lora needed her fire dampened, not inflamed. “I should fight one of them?” he said teasingly. “Kill or maim one of my own men? Xante is the captain of the King’s Guard. What g
ood would it do me to harm him?”
“You seem awfully sure you are capable of winning a fight with that strutting monster.”
Rowan wasn’t sure he could win a fight at all. These Lanconians were all like Feilan, so sure he was weak and useless that at times he almost believed they were right.
“Would you want me to win over your Xante?” Rowan asked seriously.
“My?” she gasped, then grabbed a handful of grass and tossed it at him. “All right, maybe you shouldn’t fight your own man but you must stop the way they are treating you. It is not respectful.”
“I’m beginning to like a soft pillow offered whenever I sit down.” Rowan smiled toward the trees then turned serious. He knew he could confide in her. “I am listening to them,” he said after a moment. “I sit quietly on the edge of a circle of men and listen to them.”
Lora was beginning to calm down. She should have known Rowan had a reason for playing the fool. But oh, how she had hated it since they had left England. She and Rowan, her son, three of Rowan’s knights, and his squire, Montgomery de Warbrooke, had ridden away with the silent, black-eyed Lanconians. That first day she had felt marvelous, as if her destiny had come at last. But the Lanconians had made it clear that she and Rowan were English, not Lanconian, and they believed that the English were soft, useless people. They missed no opportunity to show their contempt for their English burdens. The first night Neile, one of Rowan’s three knights, had been about to draw his sword on a Lanconian warrior when Rowan stopped him.
Xante, the tall, fierce-looking captain of the guard, asked Rowan if he had ever held a sword before. Young Montgomery had nearly attacked the man, and considering that Montgomery, at sixteen, was nearly as tall as Xante, Lora was sorry when Rowan stopped the fight. Montgomery walked away in disgust when Rowan asked Xante to please show him his sword, as Rowan had always wanted to see one at close view.
Until now, Lora had hated Rowan’s act so much that she had not considered he had a reason for what he was doing—except that there were a hundred of the dark, watching Lanconians and only six Englishmen and a child. She should not have doubted her brother.
“What have you heard?” she asked softly.
“Feilan told me of the tribes of Lanconia, but he did not tell me or perhaps I assumed that they were more or less united.” Rowan was quiet for a moment. “It seems that I am to be king of the Irials only.”
“Our father, Thal, is Irial, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And the Irials are the ruling class, so, therefore, you are king of all Lanconians, whatever they call themselves.”
Rowan chuckled and wished life could be as simple as Lora sometimes saw it. If she decided she loved a man, she married him. She did not worry about what would happen in the future if she were called to Lanconia and she was bound to an English husband. But for Rowan, destiny and duty were everything. “That is the way the Irials see it, but I fear the other tribes do not agree. Right now we are only miles from land the Zernas claim as their own and the Irials are concerned and watchful. The Zernas are reputed to be very fierce.”
“You mean these Lanconians are afraid of them?” Lora asked breathlessly.
“Zernas are also Lanconians, and these men with us, these Irials, are more cautious than afraid.”
“But if the Irials fear them…”
Rowan understood her meaning and smiled. These tall, scowling, scarred, humorless Irials did not seem to fear anything on this earth. No doubt the devil did not risk tempting a Lanconian. “I have yet to see these Lanconians do anything but swagger and talk of war. I’ve not seen one in battle.”
“Yes, but Uncle William said they fought like demons, like no Englishman ever had.”
“William is a soft, lazy man. No! Don’t protest, I love him too, but love doesn’t keep me from seeing him clearly. His men are fat and spend their time fighting among themselves.”
“Not to mention his sons,” Lora said under her breath.
“Would you rather be with William’s four buffoons or here in this beautiful land of ours?”
She looked at the wide, deep, rapidly flowing river. “I like the country but without these men. This morning a Lanconian told me to turn away while he skinned a rabbit because he said he feared for my health at the sight. Grrrh! Remember the boar I shot last year? Who does he think I am?”
“A soft English lady. What do you suppose their women are like?” Rowan asked.
“These men are the sort who lock their women away in a cellar and bring them out twice a year, once to impregnate them, once to take the child.”
“Doesn’t sound like a bad idea to me.”
“What?” Lora gasped.
“If the women look like the men, they should be locked away.”
“But the men aren’t bad looking,” Lora protested, “merely bad tempered.”
“Oh?” Rowan looked at her, one eyebrow arched.
Lora blushed. “I do want to be fair. They are all rather wonderfully tall and not at all fat and their eyes are—” She stopped talking when Rowan’s smile grew into a knowing smirk.
“That is why we are here. I assume our mother felt the same way about the Lanconians as you do.”
Lora despised his smirk and while she was cursing all men everywhere, she suddenly stopped and smiled. “I’ll wager I heard something you didn’t. Our father has chosen a bride for you. Her name is Cilean and she is the captain of something called the Women’s Guard. She is a female knight.” Lora was pleased to see Rowan’s smile vanish; she had his attention now. “From what I can find out, she is as tall as you are and spends her days learning to use a sword. I believe she even has her own armor.” She smiled at Rowan and batted her lashes. “Do you think her bridal veil will be chain mail?”
Rowan’s face had changed from soft, smiling boyishness to one of cold steel. “No,” was the one word he uttered.
“No, what?” Lora asked innocently. “No chain mail?”
“I did not choose to be king, it was given to me before birth, but I have dedicated my life to it. I will marry a Lanconian woman—I had planned that—but I will marry no bull of a woman. There are some sacrifices a man cannot make for his country. I will marry a woman I can love.”
“I imagine the Lanconians would consider that a soft attitude. They marry but I cannot imagine one of them in love. Can you see Xante with his scarred forehead offering a bouquet of flowers to a woman?”
Rowan didn’t answer. He was thinking of all the lovely women in England he could have married but didn’t. No one, not even Lora, knew of the pain, both physical and mental, that Rowan had suffered through Feilan as that old man tried to beat the English half of Rowan out of him. The old man seemed able to read Rowan’s mind. If the boy had a doubt about himself, Feilan sensed it and worked to drive it away. Outwardly, Rowan had learned never to allow anyone to see his fear or see that he sometimes believed he was not the right one to rule Lanconia. But after years of Feilan’s training, Rowan honestly believed he could now laugh in the face of death. What he felt inside would never show to anyone.
But, through all the years with Feilan, he had kept a dream of someday being able to share himself with a woman, someone soft and gentle, someone loving, someone whom he could trust.
Every year Feilan had sent a letter to Rowan’s father Thal, listing Rowan’s every fault and telling Thal he had doubts that the boy would ever be fully Lanconian. Feilan had complained of Rowan being like his English mother, and that he wanted to spend too much time in his sister’s gentle company.
Silently, Rowan had fought old Feilan on this. He trained all day, endured whatever the man could devise in the way of torture, but he also learned to play the lute and sing a few songs. And he found he needed Lora’s softness. Perhaps he never would be wholly Lanconian, for he imagined his home life being like what he shared with Lora. As they were growing up, they had grown close as they clung to each other against Uncle William’s stupid, cruel sons. Rowan
used to hold Lora as she cried after the boys had taunted her with sticks for an hour, scratching her face and tearing her clothes. He calmed her by telling her stories of Lanconia.
As they grew older they learned to stay close to one another for the physical protection of Lora, and Rowan had grown to love Lora’s soft ways. After a day on the training field when Feilan had once again tried to kill him, Rowan would ease his tired, sore body to the floor at Lora’s feet and she would sing to him or tell him a story or just caress his hair. The only time he had allowed his emotions to show since he was a child was when Lora said she planned to marry and leave him. He had been miserably lonely the two years she was away when she was married, but she had returned with Phillip. Sometimes Rowan thought they were a family, and when he imagined a wife, he knew he wanted her to be soft and sweet like Lora, with a woman’s anger over minor jealousies and squabbles. He did not want some female Lanconian warrior.
“There are some privileges a king has, and one is to marry whomever he wants,” he said with finality.
Lora frowned. “Rowan, that’s not at all true. Kings marry to form alliances with other countries.”
He started to rise, quickly pulling on his clothes in a way that let Lora know that was the end of the matter. “I will make an alliance with England if I must. I’ll ask Warbrooke for one of his daughters, but I will not marry some witch who wears armor. Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.”
Lora wished she had never brought the subject up. As much as she felt she knew her brother, there were times when she felt she knew nothing about him. There was a part of him that remained secret. She took his extended arm. “Will you teach me Lanconian?” She hoped to get his mind to a different subject and so bring back his good mood.
“There are three Lanconian languages. Which one do you want to learn?”