King Javan’s Year

  “Get Oriel,” he said to Charlan, fumbling at the letter to unfold it and learn the rest of its grim news.

  As Charlan dashed from the hall, and Lord Jerowen quickly hurried across from where he had been presiding, Albertus and Rhun drifted to the edge of their window alcove to see what was amiss, apparently not having heard the messenger. Javan skimmed the letter with growing alarm. The messenger’s garbled words had only just made sense, but the words on the page leaped out at him in uncompromising confirmation of disaster. The hand was that of Sir Tomais, who had ridden out with Rhys Michael and Jason barely six weeks before.

  Grecotha, the Feast of All Saints

  Unto Javan, King of Gwynedd, from Sir Tomais d’Edergoll, with Lord Ainslie’s commission in Grecotha.

  I regret to confirm what the messenger will have told your Highness in brief already. The Prince your brother has been taken captive by persons unknown. His present whereabouts or condition is likewise unknown as I write this. Several witnesses believe he may have been slightly wounded in the skirmish. Sir Jason died bravely, in defense of his prince, and Lord Ainslie was sorely wounded. Four other men died, and several more sustained wounds. Whether Ainslie will live or not is in the hands of God. He is lying now at Grecotha, in the palace of Bishop Edward MacInnis.

  The incident took place yesterday at about midafternoon. I have spent the remainder of that day and all of today combing that area with all the men at my disposal, assisted by a sizable troop of Bishop Edward’s men, but thus far have been unable to find any clue regarding the prince’s fate. It is Lord Ainslie’s impression and that of most others present that the attackers definitely intended to capture the prince rather than kill him.

  I do not recommend that your Highness should join me at this time, for I do not know the extent of the plot and cannot guarantee your Highness’ safety. Also, if the prince has been abducted for ransom, as many here believe, the demand surely will come to you in Rhemuth. However, I would welcome additional troops to assist in our search, for each day increases the distance his abductors may have carried him. I regret that I cannot send your Highness more positive information. I remain your obedient but miserable servant, Tomais d’Edergoll, Knight.

  Stunned, Javan handed off the letter to Albertus, who had come down from the window alcove with Rhun and Udaut, bidding the latter clear the hall. Guiscard was coaxing wine down the throat of the fallen courier, urging him to drink, but the man clearly was exhausted. Udaut had succeeded in clearing the hall by the time Charlan returned with Oriel, he and Jerowen now exclaiming anew over the letter Albertus and Rhun had already read.

  “My brother’s been abducted,” Javan said as Oriel and Charlan approached. “Find out whether this man was present and whether he knows anything besides what he’s already told us.”

  The others congregated around the king stirred uneasily at the command, but Oriel did not bat an eye as he sank to his knees beside the now-snoring man and lightly laid both hands on the man’s forehead. He closed his eyes and was silent for several seconds, then looked up at the king, his expression grave and troubled.

  “Neither he nor Sir Tomais was present on the actual hunt, Sire, but he heard Tomais question Lord Ainslie afterward. The attackers were well armed and well disciplined. There can be no doubt that their objective was to capture the prince. Bowmen struck from ambush first, but they carefully shot wide of him. That was when Sir Jason fell—a single arrow in the back. Lord Ainslie took an arrow in the thigh and another in the arm, but actually fell to a sword thrust. The surgeons were working on him even as Tomais questioned him and had given him drugs to ease the pain, so his account grew increasingly less lucid.”

  “What of my brother?” Javan said impatiently.

  “Lord Ainslie saw the prince giving good account of himself, sword in hand, but he himself fell at about that time, so he did not actually see them take him captive. Another man reportedly saw the prince overwhelmed and thought he had not been injured to that point, but he, too, was sorely wounded and could do nothing to stop the abduction.”

  The same morning that the news of Rhys Michael’s abduction reached his brother’s Court, Rhys Michael himself was making a princely though largely ineffectual effort to remain alert—though after several days of captivity, he had learned little more about his captors than he knew when they first took him. From the outset, there had never been any chance of escape, or any doubt that he was their target.

  Shooting from ambush, the attackers had taken out fully a third of his escort with archers, including the loyal Sir Jason. Then lightly armored horsemen had swept in, more than a score of them, half a dozen heading right for him while the rest fought off those who would have died—and many did—to defend him. He drew his sword and tried to fight back, and thought he had given at least a few of his attackers wounds to remember him by, but they overwhelmed him by sheer numbers, one of them grabbing his horse’s reins, another cracking him in the temple with a sword pommel, while yet another one threw a great voluminous cloak over his head to blind him and entangle his sword.

  Even sightless and half stunned, flailing dazedly under the weight and bulk of the cloak, he tried to throw himself off his horse, figuring that his own men had a better chance of rescuing him from the ground than if the attackers got him away. Unfortunately, before he could kick free of his stirrups, someone grabbed him in a bear hug over the cloak while someone else nearly broke his fingers wrenching away his sword.

  He kept trying to fight, but others wound a rope several times around his shoulders and waist to pinion his elbows at his sides, also binding his wrists. Still kicking and squirming, he was then thrown back into a saddle ahead of someone much larger, who reached powerful leather-clad arms around him and kicked the horse into a gallop.

  All he could do, trussed like a pig for market, was to duck his head and hang on to the horse’s mane for dear life as it leaped forward, raked by his captor’s spurs. He kept trying to scream, to call his men, for they had not managed to gag him before engulfing him in the cloak, but a sharp cuff to the side of his head connected hard enough to make him see stars inside the smothering darkness and make his nose bleed.

  For the next little while, half fainting with pain and fear, he made himself concentrate on clinging numbly to the horse’s neck and not falling off, because they were going far too fast down a rugged slope that made the horse lurch and stumble, and he feared he might break his neck if he went off blind and without being fully able to break his fall.

  After what seemed like an eternity of mad scrambles punctuated by short stretches of hard galloping, his captors drew rein long enough for someone to dismount and lash his feet under the horse’s belly, after which they bound his wrists in front of him with leather straps and exchanged the smothering cloak for a proper blindfold and gag. At no time was he permitted a glimpse of his abductors. Within minutes they were riding out again, and he still had not a clue who his captors might be or what they wanted of him.

  His situation got more frightening as the afternoon passed into evening and then into night. More than once, during those first interminable hours, his captors pulled up to wait in silence while troops of other horsemen passed nearby. The first of those times, the minder riding behind him slid a leather-clad arm around his throat from behind and caught the pressure points in the angle of his elbow, murmuring “Not one move or sound, Haldane, or you’re out.”

  His jaws ached from the gag so that he could hardly breathe, much less cry out. Any attempt at defiance was pointless under the circumstances. In token of his submission, he tried to make himself relax against his captor’s chest. Even so, the pressure did not relent. As the hoofbeats drew nearer, the blackness swam behind his blindfold so that he reeled and nearly did pass out. Dull nausea stayed with him for some time when they eventually set out again.

  He thought it must have been well after midnight by the time they finally stopped to rest and water the horses, still without giving him any indication
of what they wanted other than to see him unrescued. When asked if he would give his oath to keep silent if they removed his gag, he shakily agreed, for further discomfort served no purpose. Mere shouting was not going to get him free.

  They removed the gag, but he was not surprised that the blindfold remained in place. His throat was dry and parched, as much from fear as from real thirst; and when they had sat him down on a smooth rock, he timidly asked if he might have something to drink.

  To his relieved surprise, a flask was set to his lips. It was only water, but it tasted like nectar after the day he’d had. A few minutes later they put food in his hands as well—heavy journey bread and pungent cheese. Eating was awkward with his hands bound, and it did not help that his fear made swallowing difficult, but his stomach welcomed even this humble fare. They even gave him wine at the end, which he gulped down gratefully.

  Soon afterward, to the sounds of horses being led to water, his keeper took him by the elbow and led him a few paces off from the rest.

  “If you need to take a piss, now’s your chance,” the man said bluntly. “We’re going to be in the saddle for a lot of hours, once we mount up again.”

  The man’s grip on his arm released, but that was all. With a sinking feeling, Rhys Michael realized that he now was expected to perform. He could not remember when he had felt so vulnerable or humiliated, but his bladder was not going to get any less full unless he did something about it. When he had finished, his minder wordlessly took his elbow again and led him back to their horse.

  He seemed to stumble a lot along the way. When he was hoisted up into the saddle again, unaccustomed vertigo made him cling to the pommel to make the world stop spinning behind his blindfold. By the time they were moving out again, the vertigo had become waves of drowsiness threatening to engulf him every time they stopped or even slowed to a walk. Gradually it dawned on him that they had drugged him, probably in the wine, but the dawning also brought a dull awareness that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

  He did not remember them stopping to sleep that night. He knew he had dozed in the saddle, but he had no idea how long. The next time they stopped to eat, he attempted to decline the wine, but his keeper made it clear that this was not an option. He decided he would rather drink it than have it forced down his throat.

  He was never even aware of being put back on a horse that time. At some point they took his signet ring and earring. Kept in darkness behind his blindfold, all time slid together anyway, and the drugs kept him perpetually disoriented and drowsy, even when he was conscious.

  Several times he thought he overheard the name Ansel mentioned, and eventually it occurred to him to wonder whether they meant the outlawed Ansel MacRorie. It frightened him that his captors might be Deryni like Ansel, but there was nothing he could do about it. Mostly they simply packed him onto his horse and continued on, with him drifting in and out of disturbing dreams in the leather-clad arms of his keeper.

  He was not certain how long this pattern continued before the rescue. He thought it might have been several days. They had just stopped to feed and water horses and men when a cry of alarm precipitated sudden activity. He could hear the sounds of heavy hoofbeats approaching fast, low-muttered oaths from his captors, swords being drawn, the jingle of harness and weapons—and then fighting broke out all around him.

  He stiffened as his keeper crushed him against his chest with his left arm, instinctively ducking his head and starting to squirm as the man’s other arm stretched back for the poniard he wore in the back of his belt, out of Rhys Michael’s reach. All around him were the clash of weapons, the squeals of horses, the cries of men being wounded.

  His own horse was plunging under him, his keeper fighting to control it, and he clung to the pommel to keep from being thrown to his death—though death was riding right behind him as well.

  “Don’t fight me, Haldane!” his keeper commanded.

  He felt the man’s knife arm whipping forward, flinched from the flat-bladed caress of steel against the side of his neck. With a strangled cry he lurched to the other side and doubled up, trying to claw at his blindfold so he could at least see death approaching. He heard voices shouting his name, even closer, but he did not know if they would reach him in time. At the same time, his keeper was trying to wrench him upright, fighting both him and the snorting, plunging horse. He tried to fend off the man’s leather-clad wrist with his bound hands, cringing from the blade he knew the man held.

  “To the prince!” someone shouted. “They’ll try to kill him!”

  He hardly needed anyone to tell him that. He was squirming for his life, trying desperately to guess where his keeper’s hand was, with its deadly blade, until a sharp rap at the base of his skull ended all further resistance.

  Afterward, when he finally came around, they told him he had been unconscious for the better part of two days, though the black-clad battle surgeon changing a bandage above his left knee assured him that part of his grogginess had been caused by sedation they gave him so they could move him more comfortably.

  “You were very lucky,” the man said, finishing a neat knot on the bandage. “This just required a little suturing, but the man who had you in the saddle with him came this close to sending you to meet your Maker.”

  He indicated a short span between thumb and forefinger, then touched the right side of his patient’s neck, just short of the carotid artery. The spot was sore, and Rhys Michael winced. His head ached, and when he flexed his neck experimentally, a tenderness at the back made him gasp.

  “Where am I?” he whispered.

  For answer, the battle surgeon turned to beckon another man closer. Rhys Michael attempted to pull the man’s image into focus, but even trying was almost too much effort.

  “How are you feeling, my prince?” a vaguely familiar voice murmured.

  “My head hurts,” Rhys Michael whispered. “Who—”

  “It’s Manfred MacInnis, son. You’re in Culdi. You’re going to be just fine.”

  Enough of the words registered that Rhys Michael was able to make his eyes focus. After the past few days, a familiar face was more welcome than he could say.

  “Lord Manfred,” he murmured. “But how—”

  “Do you remember being abducted?” Manfred asked gently.

  Rhys Michael nodded weakly, but the movement made his head swim again. “I think they may have been working for Ansel MacRorie,” he whispered. “They kept me drugged most of the time. A lot of it is real fuzzy.”

  Manfred’s face hardened. “I suspect it is. Well, don’t you worry. We took a few of them alive. I’m sure none of them’s MacRorie, but I have no doubt they’ll be telling us all they know by the time my experts have had a chance at them for a day or two. I’m just thankful you weren’t hurt any worse than you were. Patrols have been looking for you for more than a week.”

  “Has it been that long?” Rhys Michael asked.

  “I’m afraid so. And it took the best part of a day to get you back here. That was yesterday. Tomorrow is Martinmas.”

  Closing his eyes briefly, Rhys Michael tried to make himself think. His body seemed numbed to pain, but his head still felt as if it were stuffed with cotton wool.

  “I can’t seem to think straight. Are you keeping me drugged, too?”

  “It’s mainly something for the pain, your Highness,” the battle surgeon replied, “though it does have something of a sedative effect as well. You took a nasty crack to the back of your head. Now that you’re back with us, we can begin easing off on the medication.”

  The explanation seemed entirely plausible. Rhys Michael did remember getting hit, and his head was very tender where it rested on the pillows.

  He yawned and returned his attention to Manfred. “Maybe I’ll feel better after I’ve slept some more,” he said drowsily. “Does Javan know I’m safe?”

  “He does—or will, as soon as the messenger reaches him, probably tonight or early tomorrow. Just don’t you wo
rry, your Highness. Master Stevanus will have you on your feet before you know it. For now, sleep is probably the best thing you could do to speed your recovery.”

  Meanwhile, in Rhemuth, the king and several of his lords of Council were arguing over how to respond to a letter received early that morning. It had been delivered by a peasant messenger who obviously knew nothing of the contents of what he carried, even had he been able to read it. Daily reports from Sir Tomais in the preceding week, while assuring the king that Lord Ainslie now was expected to recover, had been able to offer no revelations concerning the fate of Rhys Michael. Until receipt of this first communication from the prince’s abductors, he might have disappeared into thin air. In part, the letter read:

  To ensure that you meet our demands, we have taken your Highness’ brother to hostage, and will keep him in close confinement until these demands are met. As proof that we do, indeed, hold the prince, I enclose a certain item belonging to him and remind your Highness that I could have enclosed the ear as well.

  The item in question was the earring of twisted gold wire that Rhys Michael always wore, unmistakably his. The price demanded for the prince’s safe release was an immediate repeal of the Ramos Statutes, with restoration of all rights and privileges of Deryni. The demand was signed and sealed by Ansel MacRorie, Earl of Culdi in exile.

  The Council reacted with predictable outrage, clergy and laymen alike. Javan’s outrage was tempered with fear for his brother, underlined by the threat accompanying the earring in his hand. To give serious countenance to a Deryni ransom demand was out of the question—but so was refusal, when the heir’s life was at stake.

  “Couldn’t we at least make some token concessions while we continue trying to find him?” Javan asked, staring at his brother’s earring. “Maybe relax the ruling on land ownership. That’s innocuous enough.”

  “No accommodation to terrorists or Deryni!” Hubert declared, as even the laymen on the Council nodded their emphatic agreement. “We will not be intimidated by traitors!”