The Icemark Chronicles: The Cry of the Icemark

  Thirrin was incensed. Rude! She thought it was probably impossible for royalty to be rude. They said what they felt and the rest of society had to accept it. But secretly she was angry with herself; deep down she didn’t want to offend this strange boy who’d given them shelter from the storm, treated her injured stable hand, and now fed them from his own pot. As her father was always telling her, royalty had a duty to those of society who were lesser than they. It should be beneath her dignity to show anger to a peasant, and it certainly should be beneath her to feel embarrassment.

  “When did she die?” she asked, determinedly ignoring her flaming face and showing a proper aloof interest in the troubles of someone who would one day be her subject.

  “Two years ago.”

  “And you’ve lived alone all that time?”

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult. My mother knew she was dying and taught me all I needed to know before the end.”

  “What sort of healer couldn’t heal herself?” The words were out before she knew she was going to say them, and her toes curled.

  Oskan looked at her in a long silence that almost had her squirming, but then at last he said, “Only the Goddess can cure all disease.”

  Thirrin felt that she’d been slapped down, but his voice and tone had remained level, and even now he only quietly mopped his bowl with bread and showed no sign of anger.

  After that, Thirrin gave up trying to behave like a princess and just sat in what she hoped was dignified silence while the men ate a second bowl of stew and the rain continued to slice through the canopy of the forest outside like liquid blades. Afterward Oskan gathered up the bowls and stacked them neatly on a table.

  “It’ll soon be dark,” he said. “You may have to stay the night.”

  “Not possible!” Thirrin almost shouted, for some reason horrified at the thought of having to stay with the strange boy overnight. “We’ve no bedding.”

  “There are plenty of blankets in the back cave. Perhaps one of your men can fetch them?”

  “The King will expect me back tonight,” she said firmly, and almost laughed in relief when she heard the sound of approaching horses. She strode to the cave mouth and watched as an escort of ten cavalry were led along the path by the soldier she’d sent off earlier. Obviously she’d been right. Redrought really did expect her home tonight.

  “Gather your things and saddle the horses,” she ordered the men, suddenly in full command of herself again. Then to Oskan she said, “We’ll leave the injured one with you and send a surgeon for him later.”

  4

  Thirrin had a full day of studying to get through. Math, geography, the natural world, and what Maggiore Totus called “alchemical science.” She wished her father hadn’t decided to educate her and had just allowed her to rely on scribes and others of the “clever ones,” as Redrought called them. After all, he couldn’t even write his own name, and yet he’d managed to rule his kingdom with intelligence and cunning for more than twenty years. So why did she need to know how to write and reckon and do all of those other bright things that got in the way of her being herself?

  “Because the times are changing and I want a daughter who knows her place in the world and how to keep it!” Her father’s booming voice sounded in her memory.

  Well, perhaps the world was changing, but did it really help her to know the main exports of the Southern Continent? Or how to calculate the area of a cylinder, or how to brew a sovereign remedy against dropsy? She didn’t think so, but her father was determined, and so she must learn to be like one of the educated clever ones of the commonality.

  “Well, Your Highness, am I to presume that you’ve completed your mathematics assignment?” Maggiore Totus asked.

  Thirrin handed him a sheaf of paper in cold silence, hating the way the little man managed to make her feel guilty even when she had done her homework. She knew she could kill him in a variety of gory ways in less time than it took him to adjust the strange spectoculums that rested on the very end of his nose, but even this distraction didn’t seem to help!

  Her tutor tutted quietly to himself as he read through the messy sheets of paper. “Well, the answer is correct, but how you arrived at your conclusion remains a complete mystery.”

  “If the sum’s right, what does it matter?” Thirrin asked irritably.

  “It matters because it would prove to me that you didn’t just guess at the answer.”

  She privately thought that in the case of math, getting the right answer was all that was needed, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Now tell me, what exactly does this jumble of lettering mean here?” the little tutor asked, pointing to a blotchy mess of ink. Thirrin shrugged, and Totus began to calculate just how far he could push her before she exploded and stormed out. He decided she was just short of abandoning the world of learning and spending the rest of the day with her father’s housecarls, so he retreated with decorum. “Very well, we’ll assume that you arrived at your answer by conventional and logical means, shall we?”

  She shrugged again, and the tutor walked back to his desk. He looked out the window on to the garden that had so surprised him when he arrived to teach the Princess. Somehow one didn’t expect to find such a beautiful haven of peace in the middle of the grim fortress of Frostmarris. Magnificent rosebushes blazed rich and dazzling colors onto the air, and neatly clipped hedges and borders barely contained an ordered tumble of bright flowers. But already some of the beautifully kept plants were beginning to look just the slightest bit jaded, and the leaves on some of the more delicate trees and shrubs had already turned crimson. He felt a sudden dread as he realized the bitter winter of the Icemark couldn’t be far away.

  “For the rest of the day we’ll study geography,” he informed her, “concentrating on the Southern Continent.” Thirrin groaned. “And in particular on their navy and its role in the defeat of the Corsairs and Zephyrs in the great Battle of the Middle Sea.”

  His pupil brightened, and Maggiore Totus tried to convince himself that he wasn’t betraying his teaching standards more and more with every passing day. Almost every lesson had to have something about the military in it to hold his pupil’s attention. Still, he comforted himself, she would one day be Queen of the Icemark and would probably have to lead her troops in battle, too. He couldn’t expect a daughter of King Redrought’s to be anything other than warlike and uninterested in the gentle arts of learning. He would feel he’d succeeded if at the end of her schooling she could write an understandable sentence, read a letter without help, and discuss the accounts with her quartermaster. In the meantime he’d aim for the stars, in the hope that he could at least get her to the top of a reasonably sized hill.

  He drew the battle positions of the opposing fleets on the blackboard, and watched as Thirrin happily copied them into her book. But his attention was drawn back to the garden beyond the window and its signs of the coming winter. If only he could leave before the terrible winds and snows came, before the deeply penetrating frosts etched every window with thick patterns of ice-ferns. At his home on the southern coast of the Middle Sea, the winter would bring a little gentle rain and the days would be warm rather than hot. But the wine would be mellow, and the lilting language of his people would sing and lull his mind to a quietness he’d almost forgotten here in the cold north.

  “Mr. Maggiore Totus!” Thirrin’s voice cut into his thoughts. “You’re not daydreaming, are you?” And she smiled so brightly he couldn’t help but smile back.

  Thirrin could be charming when she forgot to be a princess. But just recently that happened only rarely, and Totus was beginning to wonder what was on her mind. He thought that perhaps he knew but couldn’t be sure. And how exactly would one ask the heir apparent if she was afraid that she’d have to rule the country before she was ready, and if she was frightened that her father would die before she’d had time to experience life properly? Redrought was a strong man, a very strong man, but the history of the Icemark was vio
lent, and Maggiore’s studies had shown him that of the previous eight monarchs only two had died in their beds and only one had ruled for more than twenty years — and that one was Redrought himself!

  He could almost feel sorry for Thirrin, even when she was at her most obnoxious. She might be undergoing the best training for her future role as Queen, but the very real possibility that she could be ruling the Icemark before she was sixteen had to be a terrible burden, especially when the country had The-Land-of-the-Ghosts as a neighbor to the north and the formidable Polypontian Empire and General Scipio Bellorum to the south. To rule even a tiny kingdom at such a young age would be pressure enough for anyone, but the Icemark had no one but the most vicious enemies on its land borders and only the pitiless sea, with its pirates and raiders, to the east and the west.

  For the rest of the day he was gentle with his pupil, allowing her a little time to relax before she was called away by the weapons master or horse mistress. Not that she seemed to find those particular lessons difficult. She always ran from his rooms with a most insulting air of happy relief whenever she was off to raise a shield-wall with the housecarls or put some fierce war stallion through its paces. Maggiore Totus sighed. He’d have left for home long ago if he hadn’t thought Thirrin had it in her to be a good scholar. But he knew that her sharp intelligence would never be used to sift through the complex facts and figures that might reveal some exciting new truth, some previously unthought-of theorem.

  A sudden hammering on the door made him yelp with fright, and a huge bearded housecarl marched into the room. “I’ve orders to take the Princess to the parade ground!” he boomed.

  Maggiore glared at him. Why did they always have to shout? And did they really have to carry a shield and spear with them at all times? “I’m not sure that the Princess Thirrin has finished all of her work yet,” he answered, deciding to stand upon his authority as Royal Tutor.

  “Yes, I have … well, at least most of it. I can finish the rest as homework, can’t I?”

  She seemed so desperate to get away that Maggiore sighed resignedly. “Oh, very well. But I expect it to be neater than last time.”

  “It will be,” she answered, and as she rushed for the door she suddenly stopped and kissed him on the top of his bald head. “Thanks, Maggie!” she said, and ran off down the corridor.

  The soldiers had been marching north for more than a month now, and the Polypontian Empire’s superb military roads meant that they’d covered more than seven hundred miles. Their regiment, the White Panthers of the Asterian Province, had been fighting in the south less than six weeks earlier, but after the victorious conclusion to that particular campaign, they’d been given a week’s rest and had then begun their march north.

  None of the soldiers knew exactly where they were going, and neither did most of the officers, though rumors were rife. Some said they were finally going to attack the Icemark, the Empire’s immediate northern neighbor, and most thought it was about time. For some reason General Scipio Bellorum had left the Icemark in peace despite making war on all and sundry around its borders, and exactly why remained a deep mystery. But once again rumor provided some clues. The most popular was that the Icemark was a land of witchcraft, which even the formidable Bellorum found daunting. But others doubted that; the general was afraid of nothing; it was even said he’d live forever because death itself wouldn’t dare take him.

  The troops were approaching the border area now, on their way to join the huge army that was being amassed. The wide, gently undulating plain that nestled beneath the foothills of the Dancing Maidens mountain range was covered with military camps, forges, armories, parade grounds, and cavalry training runs. To the soldiers of the White Panthers regiment, it was all very familiar. Every block of barrack tents and every parade ground was pitched in exactly the same position, so no matter where they were, in the Empire or on campaign, they felt completely at home.

  And now they could see their great leader, Scipio Bellorum himself: part man, part god, ruthless and aloof, riding the lines of troops as they presented arms. They awaited his command.

  Thirrin spent the rest of her day happily taking weapons drill with her father’s elite corps of housecarls. Within a few minutes of hitting a bull’s-eye with her throwing ax, she was happy and relaxed and the dust of the schoolroom had been blown away. The huge soldiers, all of them especially picked for their height and strength, treated her fighting skills with enormous respect. She was not only their future Queen but also their mascot and lucky symbol. They cheered every time she hit the target with her javelin and politely ignored her misses, but over the three years she’d been training with the weapons master, there’d been far more reason to cheer than to remain politely silent.

  By sundown when the training session ended, she was pleasantly tired and began to make her way back to her rooms with happy thoughts of supper. Then, changing her mind, she headed instead for her father’s apartments. There was no official banquet tonight, so the kitchens would be having an easier time before the next round of diplomatic dinners for one or another of Redrought’s barons. And the King would be eating as quietly as he ever could in his rooms. Thirrin had decided to join him, knowing he’d be pleased to spend the evening with his daughter. Besides, she had things on her mind and wanted to talk to him.

  She crossed the shadowy Great Hall, listening to her booted footsteps echo from the smoke-blackened beams high above her head in the gloom of the roof. As she passed by, some of the ancient battle standards waved lazily, as though some ghost of wind from a long-ago battlefield still stroked the faded regimental colors. Ahead she could see her father’s throne on its high dais rising out of the gathering shadows like a mountain made of carved oak. She reached it and quickly skirted around the back, where the door set in the wall behind stood slightly open.

  “Grimswald! I said I wanted ale, not brown river water!” Redrought’s booming voice lashed the Chamberlain-of-the-Royal-Paraphernalia.

  “Well, I’m sure that it came from the same barrel that His Majesty was happy to drink from yesterday,” a voice of old leather and dust answered.

  “Well, it tastes like river water today! And fish do unspeakable things in rivers, so get me some more!”

  “As His Majesty wishes.”

  Thirrin walked in just as the old chamberlain waved forward one of the servers who stood in the shadows at the back of the cozy room. He handed the man a jug and, with a huge wink, told him to fetch beer from another barrel.

  “Thirrin!” her father shouted when he caught sight of her standing in the doorway. “Come in, come in! Grimswald, set another place; my daughter’s come to eat with her old dad.”

  The little chamberlain bustled around fetching cutlery and placing a chair at the plain wooden table where Redrought ate when there were no dignitaries to entertain.

  “I hear you equaled my best housecarl with the throwing axes today,” he said, smiling proudly at her.

  “Yes. And if the weapons master hadn’t called an end to the session, I’d have beaten him,” Thirrin replied.

  Redrought roared with laughter. He often roared with laughter when other people would have only smiled. “I bet you would have, too! Sigmund’s getting a bit long in the tooth. I’ll have to see about retiring him soon. His people come from the northern provinces. I’m sure he’ll be happy with a bit of land and a pension.”

  “He’s still a better axman than men half his age,” Thirrin said in the old soldier’s defense. “It’d be a pity to lose his experience from the bodyguard.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, he’s still good for another five years or so. I’m just thinking of the future,” Redrought bellowed good-humoredly.

  The servant returned with the jug of beer, and Grimswald poured a measure into Redrought’s tankard. The King took a huge swallow. “That’s better! I can always tell when a barrel’s past its best!”

  “Yes, sir,” the chamberlain said, and smiled to himself like a mischievous little boy.
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  “And don’t forget Primplepuss! Where’s her bowl of milk?”

  “I have it, sir,” the wrinkled little man said, seeming to produce a dish from his sleeve.

  Redrought grinned, and fishing around inside the chest of his tunic he extracted the little cat. “Ah, there you are, my sweeting!” he said more softly, and the little creature meowed in agreement. The King’s huge fingers wrapped themselves gently around the kitten and set her down on the table before her dish of milk. He smiled on her indulgently for a few moments as she lapped, then turned to his daughter. “Well, why have you decided to have supper with me?”

  “Do I need a reason?”

  “No, but there’s usually a favor to ask if you choose to. Otherwise you’re in the mess with the housecarls or in the stables with the hands.”

  Thirrin felt suddenly guilty. Surely she ate with her father for reasons other than asking for favors? “I want nothing at all,” she eventually answered, defensively.

  “Just the pleasure of my company, eh?”

  At that point the food arrived, and she waited for the servants to place everything on plates and withdraw before she continued. “Yes, for the pleasure of your company … and to ask a few questions.”

  “Ha! “ the King shouted, as though his suspicions were confirmed, but then he smiled. “What do you want to know?”

  Thirrin chewed on her chicken drumstick for a while as she ordered her thoughts. Ever since she’d met Oskan in the forest, she’d been wondering about his mother and father. It then occurred to her that nobody ever mentioned his father. She made a mental note to ask the King if anyone knew who he’d been, once she’d satisfied her curiosity on several other points. Finally she asked, “Why weren’t witches banished after the war with The-Land-of-the-Ghosts?”

  “The evil ones were,” the King answered. “But the good ones were — are — too useful.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “They’re healers and midwives, they can drive blight from the harvest, and they’re a brilliant line of defense against any evil that comes from the Vampire King and Queen. Not only that,” the King said, pausing to drain his tankard of beer, “but they’ve been staunchly loyal, always the first to offer help when it’s needed. You’d do well to remember that when you take the throne.”