'May Dharkaron's Five Horses have trampled me first, that I should be confronting the prospect!' Vhandon exploded in anguish. Touched off by the older officer's shame, Talvish's salvo came next. 'If you needed a woman as badly as this, why under the score of Daelion's judgement did you have to meddle with that one? You say, don't draw steel! You foreign-born fool! You claim a masterbard's knowledge of law. Don't you realize how you've offended? '
'For rape of a clan woman, she keeps the child,' mocked Arithon with scathing impatience. Shoved off from the tree, unflinching as ice, he trampled the last shred of decency. 'Except, angry man, things did not go so far. The bitch used her claws like a wildcat.'
'Not use steel?' Vhandon echoed. Beneath tan and scars, his hard-bitten face had drained white. 'Not defend?' Incredulous, he rushed on, 'This is a caithdein's handfasted kin you have violated! Fires of undying Sithaer, your Grace! I should call you to draw for that insult first, to spare myself from the slur of demeaning an oath of crown service.'
Swiftly as Arithon could rise in retort, Talvish's reflex was faster. His viper's grasp caught the older campaigner's taut wrist and locked sliding steel in the scabbard. 'Stop this! Now. Can't you see? When his Grace hurts, how he strikes to provoke? Don't do as he wants! He would turn us off. Has tried to, and with wretched persistence, since the hour he left us for Jaelot.'
Wrenched back to reason, Vhandon stood down. 'If that was your purpose, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn, there are limits! Should I listen to orders from a schemer whose wiles don't cavil at playing a young girl's flesh as a game-piece?'
'He's right,' Talvish added, eyes stony. 'If you wished us gone, that was a low ploy. Nor can we go, now. Leave your side, we'd be branded for slinking desertion and cowardice, since son and father will be honour bound to hack you in shreds for this infamy. Your assault on clan lineage enacts charter law, not to mention your flagrant abuse of this realm's good faith hospitality.'
'Even so,' stated Arithon. 'I will stay alive. But not if you don't let me handle them!'
'Oh Ath, get this over with,' Vhandon snapped, sick. Grudging, his crisp step made way for his unarmed liege to accept the defended position.
Placed at right and left hand, the paired men-at-arms escorted their prince from the greenwood. Their brisk pace and stark censure rammed against searing silence as they approached the rock caves that concealed the chieftain's main encampment. Their liege awarded their staunch duty no graceful apology. Their oath-given support was as a branding wound, and their guilt, that their wry choice to allow Glendien past as an afternoon's sport, played in trust against Arithon's character, had brought such an ill-starred betrayal against them.
Crown prince and reluctant escort were met at the head of the vale. Against lush, southern greenery, and west-slanting sunlight, the distanced glint of dyed finery flashed through the trees like an intrusive shout of alarm. 'Oh, this is not good,' Talvish said in fierce dismay. Caithdein of the realm, Erlien s'Taleyn awaited, a gold fillet bound over his white clan braid. Mantled for high office in the absence of a sanctioned sovereign, he bore arms. The great sword once drawn to fight Arithon to a standstill was slung over the rich weight of the tabard, loomed with the purple-and-gold chevrons that for five millennia had denoted the adjunct territories comprising the Kingdom of Shand.
He was not alone.
His youngest son, Kyrialt, stood arrow straight beside his sire's vested authority. Sword, paired daggers, and lacquered recurve bow, and with his ice chip eyes unsmiling, he bore the more ancient device of a crescent moon and black falcon upon the spiked targe strapped to his wrist.
Vhandon met the sight of state panoply with a locked jaw and steel resignation.
'What did you expect?' Talvish snapped, just as clipped. 'A vaunted public ceremony? At least the charge will be formal and quick. We'll finish the inquest without risk of a mobbing, though by Ath, this affray sticks in my retching craw, sideways.'
'We aren't leaving Shand,' cracked Arithon in rebuttal. No matter what unpleasantness happens, my plan for these people goes forward.'
Thrown a censuring glare from his liegemen, the Master of Shadow insisted, 'This rising whipped up by misled town fanatics will destroy the breathing heart of Athera's sacrosanct mysteries. You both know this!'
Silence, marred through by leashed breath and checked temper.
'You might have thought of that, liege,' Talvish said. 'It's a steep price to pay, there's no question.'
No longer impervious, his marked features drained white, Arithon remained adamant, refusing their plea for retreat. 'If these forest clansmen hope to stay free to preserve their ancient tradition, they'll have to deal. Charges or not, they have no choice. They need my support to survive.'
'Brazen harlot!' Vhandon flushed to the roots of his iron grey hair. 'I don't know how you summon the dung-licking nerve! Don't expect us to stomach the slur on your character. Survive the day, and our oath is discharged. Be sure Duke Bransian will hear from my lips what low sort of ally he's brought to lean on the strength of his family name!'
'Vhan!' cautioned Talvish. For in fact, their advance had brought them within earshot.
Yet in shattering departure from his stern form, Vhandon refused to be placated. 'If Shand covers this up under law by a decree of forced marriage, Teir's'Ffalenn, I'll break your randy, insolent neck with naught else but my own two hands.'
Arithon wrenched to a stop and let fly with a venom rare even for his savage tongue. 'I suffer the penalty for one stolen kiss! You are disgraced, and dead by my hand, if you ever dare imply past that.'
Talvish's lightning shove to disarm the combatants was struck short: a surge of rage burst through Arithon's presence, palpable as a pressed wave. Such power, forced in check, might have stopped time, or scorched the free-falling rain into cinders.
'I will answer the charges,' Prince Arithon said. He side-stepped, and resumed his resolute course. The two liegemen recovered their stride and moved with him, stunned to an uneasy quiet. Three abreast, they broke through the last stand of trees, into sunlight that stabbed down like a blade.
Lit without mercy, they halted. Unabashed, the sanctioned Crown Prince of Rathain presented his welted face to Lord Erlien, High Earl of Alland, and the son, whose handfasted woman had used nails and teeth beyond all excuse to beg pardon.
Only Arithon had the courage to meet Kyrialt's eyes, grey as pressed ice, upon him. He held his ground, wordless. Before his straight stance, the spiked targe and the sword: beside him, two liegemen stamped rigid with shame, oathsworn to shed blood to protect him.
The moment ached, for its motionless dread.
The Shandian clan heir was taller, and broader, a muscled lion poised over prey. 'By Ath,' he remarked through the pregnant pause, 'she's marked you up and down like a scratching post. Poor wee man. What did you do to receive the scourge of my lady's disfavour?'
Light wind through the glen riffled Arithon's hair. Black strands, glued with blood, stuck to the scabbed gashes furrowed at his left temple and full length down his opposite cheek. Hands clasped at his back, he never quailed. His adamant stillness stretched, then extended, and his silence admitted to nothing.
His oathsworn liegemen held out with stopped breath. Vhandon's bearing stayed rigid. In wary form, Talvish kept his trained eyes on the clansmen, who, by affronted insult, now must be adversaries.
Yet no spoken reproof or overt hostility shattered their anxious suspension. No accusation was issued. Erlien s'Taleyn, High Earl of Alland stood at his full height, gaze frosty as midwinter sky. Then he reached over, drew his son's sword, and knelt in the tough stand of grass. He drove the bared steel upright in the earth. With his wrists crossed in salute at his chest, he bent his proud head in submission. 'Your Grace, for the life of my son, what will happen next has my sanction.'
Taken aback, Talvish gasped out, incensed, 'My lord, you will not kneel to this man! For such as he's done, he'll be stripped of crown title. Once formal word reaches the Teiren's'Vale
rient in Halwythwood, his Fellowship sanction will be revoked by the terms of Rathain's royal charter!'
Yet Shand's caithdein failed to arise.
When Vhandon shoved forward, the hard thrust of Kyrialt's shield arm checked the move to haul his father back onto his feet. 'His Grace has told you he tried to force Glendien?' Still down on one knee, Lord Erlien broke in with the bite of a ruler's authority. 'Liegeman! Take care how you answer! The credibility of my daughter-in-law's word will come to rest on your testimony, not to mention the character of Rathain's oath-bound crown prince.'
'What character?' Vhandon spat in contempt. His flustered glance sidewards smoked with disgust. 'I've got eyes, more's the pity. I've seen such evidence as I shall take to my pyre with cringing embarrassment! Will you look, there? Yon gutsy savage has got a dog's nerve, to breathe the clean air in our presence!'
Throughout, reviled as though he was deaf, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn stood detached. With Glendien's handling stark on his face, and the bruise on his neck livid purple, his stillness itself framed a damning refrain to his liegeman's ruthless refutement. Talvish broke custom and averted his glance before suffering the humiliation.
'What exactly did his Grace say?' inquired Kyrialt with razor-edged delicacy.
'He won't speak, himself,' Vhandon evaded, distressed. At the crux, his innate distaste ran too deep. He could not, after all, say the requisite words to condemn a man he held liege-sworn.
No less revolted, Talvish just wanted the harrowing inquiry over with. 'Precisely?' His sigh sawed across the strained pause. 'The tongue in his Grace's head was right churlish. He allowed he was guilty of one stolen kiss.'
The bridegroom, who should have exploded with rage, instead fought a choked snort of laughter. 'Not from Glendien, then. She's too brazen to run. No matter how damning the evidence, I've seen her provocative manners when pushed. A man keeps his distance, if she's displeased. As my rakish friends have discovered, that she-wolf stands her ground when she's cornered.'
'You don't believe her?' cracked Vhandon, incensed. And again, his blond comrade's snatched grasp restrained him.
'Stand down!' Lord Erlien arose to his towering height, discomposed, and finally offended. 'You don't see her knife in his ribs, foolish man?' As the prince's paired liegemen looked on, one gaping, and the other stunned into guarded suspicion, the High Earl of Alland completed his statement. 'Then Glendien has told us no less than the truth. The assault that occurred was not caused by your prince.'
Erlien's keen regard fastened back upon Arithon, who had not moved a muscle throughout. 'There's my son's sword, upright at your feet. A woman handfasted to my household has entangled you in a wrongful effort to shelter her bridegroom. Your Grace, here's my lawful settlement. s'Taleyn would have you kneel to swear oath, since Kyrialt would grant you his fealty.'
Arithon shivered. 'I can't take this charge,' he insisted, steadfast. 'Whatever Lady Glendien has told you, no grounds exist for such gratitude. Not to receive grant of a crown obligation from Shand, or to bear a loyalty as deep as this one.'
The High Earl of Alland met and locked with those fathomless eyes, that perceived with the chill of a sorcerer. He did not back down, or shrink, though a fine sweat sprang up and beaded the lines of hard living scored into his features. 'Then, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn, swear by the promise of Dharkaron's vengeance! Claim that my son's handfasted woman has lied. Then draw your steel. For you'll have to fight me to defeat again, if you think to enforce your will over the attested word of a kinswoman.'
Of them all, the fair swordsman correctly interpreted the instant of searing tension. He alone saw the shift as his liege marked the challenge, and for the first time, drew breath to answer his case.
'No!' Talvish cried. 'Hold your weapons! My lord Erlien, can't you see? His Grace will snatch his chance, and all of this country will bleed for it.' His horrified eyes fixed on the Prince of Rathain through a dawning rush of epiphany, he snapped, ' You were sparing that boy, and perhaps us as your liegemen! If so, I am having no part of this!'
Then Kyrialt broke in, sharp and fast in support. 'Deny that statement as truth, Teir's'Ffalenn! Refute Glendien's confession, as well. Swear that for my life's sake, you never offered to shoulder the blame for a crime that our clan tradition holds outside of any forgiveness.' Smiling, the youngest blood son of s'Taleyn bent his knee. He laced his hard fingers over the hilt of the weapon his father's own hand had struck upright. 'Your Grace of Rathain, I will bind myself first. Unless you can give me a single sound reason? Why under Ath's sky should I not serve a prince who counts a stranger's life as more precious than his royal dignity?'
'Debt of blood,' Arithon admitted, his sorrow laid bare. 'Your Glendien lost a parent at Vastmark.'
His glance shifted, raised to bridge the disparity between his slighter stature, and Erlien's winter-clear eyes. 'Her sire was Tanuin? If so, he fell while guarding a notch. The ending was cruel. He held his ground against twenty bowmen while a tribal grandmother and five children were being assisted to safety' Arithon loosed a shuddering breath, as though feeling the stab of barbed steel through his viscera; as, within Kewar's maze, he surely had: the resurgent bite of remembered pain was that desolate. 'My lord, caithdein, keep your son at your side. I was wrong, beyond question. I should never have failed to acknowledge the courage and strength of your clansmen's sacrifice. But I could not thank you for sending those scouts. Too few of them lived to come home to you.'
'Each one fought for Shand,' the High Earl corrected. 'They had a prince under Fellowship sanction on the battle-line at their shoulder. The grace of that presence but honours the soil of the free wilds they died to hold sacred. Now accept my son's blade. Swear your royal oath! Or by Ath's very grace, I will have the act done inside an armed circle of archers.'
As Arithon rallied his shocked nerves to protest, Talvish cleared his own weapon. 'I'll stand sword's honour for the formal oathtaking,' he volunteered with expedient grace. 'Arithon, kneel! You've earned the award of this man's redress. Such heart as you've shown must accept defeat kindly. Or Vhandon will just have to break your damned legs. Don't think he won't. He's my senior officer by more than ten years.
One day soon, he wants to retire.'
'A stand-down?' said Arithon, taken aback.
'On your knees, prince,' Alland's High Earl insisted. 'I swear by my pride as a father, you will bend your miserable, stiff neck here and now, else I'll run you out of the kingdom!'
Returned to the clan encampment on the heels of the unplanned oathswearing, Arithon Teir's'Ffalenn appeared more than harried. Inflamed scabs and raw swelling did not fully explain the haunted look in his eyes. Against the whipped-dog contrition of his two liegemen, his sombre quiet posed a striking contrast to young Kyrialt's euphoric enthusiasm.
No bristled word of dismissal sufficed. A flagrant, trim figure in his trappings of state, the young man determined that Glendien's outrageous behaviour deserved abject care. The insistent choice followed, to escort Rathain's abused crown prince back to the comfort of guest quarters in person. Arrived at the shaded entry to the grottoes carved out by the flood of the Hanhaffin, the royal party ran headlong into Dakar's blistering censure.
'The fool tangles you spin!' the Mad Prophet accosted, as the miscreant prince darkened the cranny appointed to shelter Rathain's delegation. 'You could have lost everything for the sake of one life! Not to mention the fact that the Teir's'Taleyn could have finished off his past effort to butcher you!'
'Worry instead that I might gut the High Earl,' snapped Arithon in brittle annoyance. 'More's the pity, I can't let go and try. Or break his arrogant head on a rock. I need his scouts, and he needs my help. Which sterling fact is the only weak thread holding a stay on the peace.'
'Dakar. Don't press him,' Vhandon urged, breathless. 'Not if you don't want your skin peeled.'
'Would I so!' the furious spellbinder cried. 'And how much of every-one's skin should be risked because our prince can't contain his bleedin
g-heart gift of compassion? Was one woman's tears worth what he just staked? Is any man's life price enough to endanger the stability of the realm?'
Spun on his heel to stalk off, the Mad Prophet found himself nose to chest with Kyrialt's virile bulk, the spiked targe with the ancient device of Shand a gleam of cold steel at his breast. 'One party agreed that the action had merit.' Vivid and brown, the young man amended, 'It's my life you're tossing like straws on your tongue. I've sworn my feal oath. Does the act not demonstrate my proper gratitude, or the sincerity of my family's honour?'
'You admire the order his Grace keeps with sharp words?' Dakar raised pudgy fists and yanked at his hair in a fit of hobbled frustration. 'Well, I doubt that sits well when you're the next target. Don't think that won't happen. Arithon's nerveless. The more so whenever the rest of us fail to keep pace with his fiendish conniving. Look at Vhandon's face! Or Talvish. Ath's living tears! Both of them were blindsided today, and they've served Rathain's crown prince for years. Ask them, if you don't believe me.'
Kyrialt shrugged, compressed to acid pride. I'd be a sight less comfortable on my knees in white silk, swilling the spout of lying divinity. Give me Sithaer with its nine levels of hell, before I go blind and seek paradise under s'Ilessid.'
'Arithon could have lost you the free wilds of Shand!' the stalwart spellbinder exploded.
Kyrialt showed teeth like the grin on a snake. 'Could, is it?' He seized Dakar's collar, and muscled the recalcitrant prophet like a fat puppy to the rim of the ledge. There, above the sweep of the hollow that led to the river's edge, he snagged his targe against the hide flap strung across the open-air entry. 'See what's happened. Perhaps you're actually jealous?' His gesture tore off the curtain.
A gathering met them. Bearing sheathed steel, and strung bows, and the badges of house lineage, the clan chieftains of Alland were packed outside to pledge their support without the formality of a hearing. Kyrialt spoke over their raucous acclaim. 'My father still talks of your prince's skill with a sword. Here's twice we've had to acknowledge his mettle.' He brandished his fist, while the boisterous cheers rocked against the steep face of the cliff. 'Lysaer's new troops had best tremble. For your Teir's'Ffalenn will now be the voice directing our raiding war-bands.'