“You will treat my children with respect,” Thal said raggedly, his throat raw from coughing. “You will thank my daughter for her pretty compliment.”
Jura stared straight ahead and said nothing. It was difficult to concentrate on the world around her with this man standing so close.
When Thal started to rise again, Lora soothed him. “Please, Father, do not vex yourself. I’m sure Jura is used to such compliments. Rowan, your squire and your captive look as if they might kill each other. Perhaps you should attend to them.”
Jura didn’t look at him but she felt his hesitation. He moved only when the clash of steel on steel rang out. In spite of herself, Jura turned to watch him move toward the two tall boys who were attempting to kill one another. Jura recognized one as the young man who had told her she was wanted in the stables. He was as dark as a Lanconian and she had not realized he was English. Since he had delivered his message in Lanconian, she wondered if he had memorized the message and repeated it by rote.
She watched Rowan stalk across the field toward the boys. He showed no fear or hesitation as he moved into the middle of the fighting young men with their swords flashing in rage. Rowan merely slammed his open palm into the chest of each boy and sent him flying. The boys landed on their seats in a cloud of dust.
“My men do not fight each other,” Rowan said in a low voice that carried more threat than a shout.
“I am not your man,” Keon yelled up at Rowan. “My father is Brocain and—”
“I am your master,” Rowan said, cutting him off. “You are not Zerna, you are Lanconian and I am your king. Now, both of you go and polish my mail.”
Montgomery, lifting himself from the dust, groaned. To be cleaned, chain mail had to be put in a big leather bag with oil and then tossed from one person to another. It was like tossing a rock back and forth.
Thal chuckled with pleasure at his son’s settling of the dispute.
Jura whirled to face him. “Whatever he does pleases you,” she spat at the old man. “He claims kingship that is not his to claim. He brags that he is king of all Lanconians, but to be that, he would have to declare war on the other tribes. Is he to kill Brocain and Brita? What of Marek and Yaine? We have peace now but will we if this man kills merely to feed his vanity so that he can say he is king of more than the Irial? I beg of you, do not leave us with this braggart for king. We need no more war between the tribes. Each tribe patrols its own borders. If a tribe is destroyed we will be attacked and we will exist no more. Please, I beg you, we all beg you, give us a king who understands what must be.”
Thal glared at her, his face turning purple with a suppressed rage that was making his need to cough so strong that he could not contain it.
“Go!” Lora yelled, coming to her feet and hovering over Thal like a protective she-bear. “You have upset him enough.”
Jura turned on her heel, looking neither left nor right, and left the training field.
Rowan walked back to his father but his eyes were on Jura’s back.
“You are a fool,” Thal croaked up at his son. “She will make your life miserable.”
Rowan smiled. “I do not have a choice in the matter. As I am to be king, she is to be mine.”
“Yours?” Lora asked. “What is going on? Rowan, tell me you aren’t planning a…a union with that woman. She is rude, thoughtless, uncaring of anyone but herself, and she has no respect for your right to be king. She is altogether unsuitable to even live in our house much less in a position of honor.”
“Mmm,” was all Rowan said, and turned back toward the archery range.
Jura trained harder than anyone would have thought possible over the next few days. She attended no banquets of welcome for the arriving contestants nor did she leave the fields to greet them. She was up before dawn, running for miles on the long, winding trails outside the city walls. She jumped across wide streams, walked across four-inch-wide logs, practiced throwing her spear and shooting her arrows. She stopped only long enough to wolf down vast meals and at night fall into bed into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Jura,” Cilean said on the fourth day, “slow down. You will be too tired to compete.”
“I must be ready. I must win.”
“You want to win?” Cilean asked softly.
“Winning to me is making sure that you win. He must have someone of wisdom on the throne beside him. His vanity and stupidity are overwhelming. Without you beside him, I fear he will destroy Lanconia.”
Cilean frowned. “Jura, I’m not so sure you’re right. He doesn’t seem vain at all. He trains almost as much as you do and he oversees the men all day. He is very fair and impartial in settling disputes and he is very kind to the women who are arriving for the Honorium.” She stopped and laughed. “Do you remember three years ago when we came upon that hunting party of Zerna? You and I were alone and they stopped to water their horses.”
“Yes, we hid in the bushes and waited for them to leave.”
“Remember the leader? That big woman with the scarred face?”
“We heard her speak and thought she was a man.”
“Yes,” Cilean said, “that’s the one. Her name is Mealla and she has come to try for Rowan’s hand in marriage.”
Jura smiled wickedly. “He deserves such as her.” Her face changed. “But we Irial do not. Cilean, you must win.”
Cilean looked at her friend sharply. “Why is it that you hate him so much? Since he opened the gate, most of us are willing to give him a chance to prove himself.”
“Yes,” Jura snapped, “all of you are willing to forget how he does not belong here, how he is taking Geralt’s rightful place. You look at his pretty form and do not see the treachery inside his soul.”
“I did not know you knew him so well.”
“I do not know him at all,” Jura answered, and knew she was giving herself away. The man haunted her every waking moment, and in the morning before she fully woke, she reached for him in her bed. “I do not want to know him. Are we going to talk all day or train?”
Jura beat everyone at every contest during training. The Honorium was to be three long, hard days of games, and the contestants were awarded points for how they placed in the contests. At the end of the first day, one third of the entrants with the lowest scores were eliminated, another third at the end of the second day. On the third day, all the games were replayed but only with pairs of contestants. The loser of each match was eliminated. By the end of the day there would only be two women left and the winner of the final match, a hand-to-hand battle with wooden poles, won the prize—which happened to be the queenship of Lanconia. Twice Jura received messages that she was urgently needed in some dark, secluded spot but both times she refused to appear. He thought she was a lightskirt, someone who was easy prey for his lusts, and twice she had fallen under his spell, but she wouldn’t be such a fool again. She wondered how many other women he was secretly seducing. Every time she saw one of the trainees return from Escalon, her face flushed, her voice hushed, her eyes alight, she wondered if she had been with Rowan.
“And who has he chosen for his bed?” she blurted once to Cilean. She was drenched in sweat and her muscles ached but she wouldn’t stop training.
“He? Who?”
“Thal’s son, of course,” Jura said tightly. “Who else does everyone speak of? Who else is Lanconia obsessed with?”
“You seem to be also,” Cilean said thoughtfully.
“Me? I hate him.” She threw her javelin with ferocity and hit the target exactly in the red center.
“How can you hate someone you’ve met only once? You should come with me tonight and speak with him.”
Jura retrieved her javelin. “Is that all you do? Speak with him? No doubt he is as celibate as a saint and he does not bed a different woman each night.”
“I have not heard a whispered word of what he does in bed at night. If he has a woman, he is very discreet about it. Somehow, I do not believe he does. I think he sleeps alo
ne or everyone in the city would know about it. The chosen women would no doubt brag.”
“Brag about what? That some soft English—”
“Soft?” Cilean laughed. “Rowan may be called many things but soft isn’t one of them. You should come with me and watch him train. When he removes his tunic and—”
“I have no desire to see his nakedness,” Jura said shrilly. “Shouldn’t you be practicing your jumping? You are weak on that.”
Cilean looked at her friend for a long moment. “Jura, be careful that you do not protest too much or you will make people think the opposite is true.”
Jura started to reply, but she closed her mouth and threw her javelin with renewed vigor.
Jura had been training so hard for so many days that she was unaware of the preparations that had been made for the Honorium. Wooden seats had been built outside the city walls, sections of them canopied for Thal’s family and for any tribal leaders who might attend the games. Vast quantities of food, whole cows and boars, vats of vegetables, bins of loaves of bread, and barrels of ale had been prepared. Anyone who came to the games would be fed at Thal’s expense for three full days.
At dawn on the first day was to be a parade of the contestants, to walk through the watching, cheering, leering crowd and to pause before the stands and Prince Rowan.
The women gathered on the Irial training field before dawn and Jura had her first good look at her competition. There were two women from the Ulten tribe and Jura knew they had come only for the excitement and the chance to steal what they could. They were small women but she knew them to be quick and agile. How they rolled their big, liquid eyes from one person to another and smiled in their secret, infuriating way, she thought. There were a half dozen Vatells, each woman wearing about her upper arm one of the beautiful bracelets the Vatells made. These women could be fierce fighters.
There were eight Fearens, and Jura dismissed these women. On horses the people of this tribe were formidable, but they were like fish on dry land when out of the saddle.
No Poilen women came, nor did anyone expect them to. If the contest had been for the memorization of epic poems, the Poilen would have won, but they were people who did not battle unless forced to—and then they were unbeatable.
The fifty women left were Zernas and Irials. All the Women’s Guard of the Irials were participating, even the trainees, in hopes that they would win Rowan’s hand in marriage. The Zerna women were a sight to behold: big, muscular, many of them scarred from brawls with each other. Jura knew they would be the only competition, for although the Irials would win the contests of speed and agility, few could overcome the sheer muscle of the Zernas.
Cilean nudged Jura and nodded toward Mealla. She was the largest, the oldest, the most frightening of the Zernas.
The trumpets sounded and the parade began.
The women stood in a long line before the canopied stands, and Rowan, resplendent in a green silk tunic of Lanconian design, came down the steps to walk before them, murmuring good luck to each woman. He paused for a long time before Mealla, looking her in the eye. The tip of her nose had been cut off in some previous battle. Cilean smiled when he offered Mealla good luck also, but Jura did not.
When Rowan stopped in front of Jura, she did not look at him, but gazed fixedly somewhere to the right of his head.
“May God be with you,” he whispered.
Minutes later a shout went up and the games began.
This first day was easy and Jura held herself back, reserving her strength for the days to come. All she needed to do was place high in the winners of each event to be able to compete the next day. She was always in the top four of each race and each contest, but never the winner. Besides, she did not want to show everyone her skill this first day. Mealla won every event she entered, even the foot race, although she elbowed aside an Irial trainee at the last moment.
Jura had no idea how the Zerna woman’s place in the events was affecting Rowan. Each time Mealla was declared a winner, he died a little inside, until by the end of the day he looked more tired than the contestants.
Jura left the field pleased with the day’s events and went back to the women’s barracks to bathe and rest.
By the end of the second day there were only sixteen women left to compete with each other for the final day’s events.
“Jura,” Cilean said, “whoever draws Mealla for the wrestling will lose against her.”
“Perhaps not,” Jura said, but she was lying. Early tomorrow morning lots would be drawn to see who competed with whom in which event. Most anyone could beat Mealla in the contests of speed but the wrestling event would eliminate someone. “Perhaps another woman will draw her, and she will be the one to lose.”
“I just worry that one of us will be pitted against her.”
“Me,” Jura said quickly. “She might beat me but at least you will only have the poles to use against her. And she will be tired after a battle with me. I can assure you of that.”
Cilean did not smile. “Come with me, I want to go into the city.”
“Why?” Jura asked sharply. “There is nothing in the city for us and we need rest.”
“I am meeting Prince Rowan,” Cilean said quietly.
In spite of herself, Jura felt angry. “Oh? He asks for a taste of what is to be his? Is he bedding the other contestants as well? Mealla perhaps?”
“Stop this!” Cilean commanded. “You have changed since he came. No, I am not planning to spend the night with him. If you must know, Daire is arranging the meeting.”
“Daire?” Jura asked, aghast.
“You have been so busy training you have not had time to see your intended, but I am not so. Rowan is my intended, at least I think of him as such, and I want to see him so he can privately wish me luck. I thought perhaps you might like to go with me and see Daire.”
“Yes,” Jura muttered, “of course.” She hadn’t thought of Daire in days. “I would very much like to see him.”
The land immediately outside the city walls and all the area inside the walls was as light as day, with hundreds of torches lighting scenes of drunken people dancing and cavorting in celebration. So many people slapped Jura and Cilean on the back that Jura went to draw her knife, but met only with an empty scabbard.
Rowan was waiting for them in a shadow of Thal’s stone castle. He had been waiting for quite some time and the stones were hurting his back, but he would wait for days if it meant a moment alone with Jura. She had been better at pretending they did not know one another than he had. He was almost glad, at the start of the games, that she had not looked at him because he might otherwise have forgotten himself.
As the games had progressed and she came in second, third, even fourth, he began to doubt if she would eventually win. He had nervously asked Daire to reassure him of Jura’s skill as a guard. At the end of the second day, he knew he could no longer be cautious and that he had to risk a private meeting with Jura and had asked Daire to arrange it.
Now, he stood waiting for her.
Jura sensed his presence before she saw him. “There,” she said to Cilean, her voice choked. Jura watched as Cilean stepped toward the shadow and Rowan’s big arm came out and grabbed her. Jura’s hands made fists at her side. So it was true, she was just one of many. This randy old satyr grabbed and pawed at all women. Did he tell Cilean of his love for her? Everyone said he trained so hard, but if he spent so much time hiding in stables and kissing women, how much time did he have for training?
“You’re Cilean,” she heard Rowan say, and the two of them came into the light while Jura stepped back out of sight.
“Didn’t Daire tell you to meet me?” Cilean asked.
“He said I was to meet the one—Yes, yes, of course, he did. Are you alone?”
Jura saw him searching the darkness.
“Jura is with me. We came for private good wishes.”
His eyes searched the darkness then stopped at Jura, even though she knew he could n
ot see her. “Jura,” he said, and held out his hand toward her.
Jura did not move.
“Rowan,” Cilean said as he moved toward Jura.
Rowan walked toward Jura, his hand outstretched. “May I give you a kiss of luck?” he asked softly.
She recovered herself. “You have kissed enough for tonight,” she spat at him.
It infuriated her that he chuckled. “I have something of yours,” he said, and held out her knife. She snatched it from him, careful not to touch his fingertips. “Do I get no thanks for its return?”
Jura was suddenly aware of Cilean standing a little behind Rowan and listening intently to this exchange. “I must go,” she said. “Stay and wish Cilean luck.” She turned away and fled from the two of them.
She was blind from her anger and did not see or hear Daire until he caught her. Thinking he was Rowan, she struggled fiercely until she realized Daire was holding her.
“Who has harmed you?” he asked, fury in his voice. “What are you running from?”
She clung to him. No one paid them the least attention as many couples were embracing drunkenly and the noise of their singing and brawling was deafening.
“Come,” Daire said, and led her away to a farrier’s lean-to. It was quieter with only a horse for company. “What has happened?”
She put her arms around his neck. “Nothing. Nothing at all, just hold me, kiss me.” He kissed her but it didn’t rid Rowan from her mind. “Tomorrow Cilean will win and be married to the Englishman. Could we be married tomorrow also?”
Daire was frowning at her. “Why this sudden interest in me and my kisses? Why do you want to act like a woman?”
She pushed him away. “But I am a woman. Because I do not dress as Thal’s English daughter doesn’t mean I am less of a woman.”
“I know you, Jura. I have known you since you were a child. Your emotions do not rule your head.”
“They haven’t until now!” she yelled at him, then pushed away from him and began running back to the barracks.