Anborn steadied himself on the two specially made canes and stared at Gwydion, in mock disgust. “So you came to this tendency on your own? Appalling.”
“I am still studying the crossbow as well, Lord Marshal.”
“Well, then at least you shouldn’t be taken out and fed to the weasels yet.”
Gwydion Navarne laughed. “Perhaps someday you can enlighten me as to why your family is so fascinated with the feeding of incompetents to weasels,” he said, glancing at the squire who was approaching with the general’s chair. “If I recall correctly, your brother, Edwyn Griffyth, declared the same fate should befall Tristan Steward at the Cymrian Council.”
“Being devoured by weasels is far too good a fate for Tristan Steward,” Anborn said contemptuously. “In addition, it would be cruel to the weasels.” He observed the gesture of the rangekeeper. “They are ready for you, lad.”
“So what have you been occupying yourself with, Lord Marshal?” Gwydion Navarne asked as he nocked his arrow. “Rhapsody said you had gone south to the Skeleton Coast of Sorbold.”
“Indeed.” The Lord Marshal allowed Shrike to assist him into the wheeled chair, then laid the crutches across his now-useless legs.
Gwydion Navarne watched the general thoughtfully as he settled himself. He had met the legendary soldier as a child of seven at his mother’s funeral, and had been terrified by the experience. He was too young to have yet heard of the general’s cantankerous reputation, so Anborn’s very appearance was intimidating to him; the broad, menacing musculature of back and shoulders, gleaming azure eyes set within a face dark with terrible memories, black hair streaked with white flowing angrily to his shoulders — everything about the general was sufficient to make him want to hide behind his father, who had understood his fear innately and did not require him to come out and shake hands until the general was ready to leave.
And now, since the council held in the wake of the great battle three years ago, he had come to know and admire the man, to love him much the way his godfather, Gwydion of Manosse, did — respectfully and from a safe distance.
There was something in the general’s eyes that Gwydion Navarne didn’t grasp. He recognized, in the incomplete wisdom of youth, that there were thoughts, emotions, and insights in the head of someone who had lived for as many centuries as Anborn had, seen as many horrors as Anborn had, and contemplated life in ways that Anborn had that he himself could not comprehend now, if ever.
Gwydion Navarne drew back and let fly; the arrow’s arc was slighted a hint to the lee; it struck the hay target at one hundred sixty yards and glanced off.
“Drat!”
The Lord Marshal stared at him as if thunderstruck.
“Drat?” he said disdainfully. “Drat? Dear All-God, what has my useless nephew been teaching you? Is that the best oath you can muster, lad? After you finish here we will go directly into Navarne City and find a suitable tavern, where we will tend immediately to your proper education in the essential things — drinking, wenching, and swearing properly.”
“Oh, I do know how to swear fairly well, Lord Marshal,” Gwydion Navarne said pleasantly. “I just didn’t want to offend your ears, knowing you to be the frail and discreet gentleman that you are.”
Anborn chuckled as Gwydion Navarne drew back again. “Well, I would certainly hope so. My nephew, your namesake, has been schooled by the best — that would be me — in the finest curses ever wrought of the dragon tongue, which is the preeminent language in which to swear. You don’t have the physiology for that, alas — without the serpentine aperture of the throat you could never manage the double glottal stop — but certainly you should have acquired an impressively vulgar vocabulary after living with him for a few years. And your ‘grandmother’—well, a Namer of her power should have access to some utterly splendid oaths.”
“Oh, she does.” Gwydion Navarne let fly, piercing the inner edge of the outer ring, then kicked the ground in annoyance. “Hrekin!”
“Ah, a Bolgish profanity, if an uninspired one. Not bad.” The general’s face twisted in amusement. “Can’t imagine who you caught that one from.”
“Well, when you and I served with Sergeant-Major Grunthor as honor guard at Rhapsody’s coronation in Tyrian, he taught me many useful things, such as nit removal from private skin folds and how to clear the nasal passages of blockage while rendering an assailant momentarily sightless at the same time.”
“Ah.” Anborn cleared his throat as Shrike looked askance at the young duke-to-be. “Well, one can never have too many weapons in one’s arsenal, though that one was unknown to me until just now.”
Gwydion Navarne unstrung the weapon, allowing the bowstring to relax. “So are you going to share with me where you have been? Or am I committing a social misstep inquiring?”
“Both.” The ancient warrior looked him up and down, but with a different expression in his eyes than before; there was a sharper intensity in his glance that was tempered with another, deeper emotion, one that the boy did not see this time as he turned back to his bow. “I was looking for a Kinsman on the Skeleton Coast.”
Gwydion Navarne did not look up as he strung the bow again. “Oh?” He gave the bowstring a perfunctory pluck and, satisfied with the draw, glanced up finally. The serious expressions on both men’s faces made him blink. “Was this a kinsmen on your father Gwylliam’s line, or from your mother Anwyn’s family?”
Anborn exhaled deeply and looked out over the meadow, his eyes unfocused, as if seeing into another time.
“Neither. I don’t mean a kinsman who is merely a blood relation. I am speaking rather of an ancient society of men, a fraternity forged in the old world, from another time; brothers. Warriors. Dedicated soldiers who mastered the craft of fighting over a lifetime’s devotion to it, at the expense of self. Kinsmen were sworn to the wind and Seren, the star which shone over the Island of Serendair, resting now below the waves on the other side of the world. And to each other. Always to each other.”
Gwydion Navarne brought his hands to rest atop the bow respectfully, waiting to hear the rest of what the Lord Marshal, usually a man of few words, was saying.
He felt Shrike’s eyes on him, but he didn’t turn to meet the glance of Anborn’s man-at-arms. The intensity he felt in their stare told him that what the general was sharing was something he was imparting carefully, with great import. He resolved to be worthy of the telling.
Anborn looked out over the rolling hills to the high wall that surrounded the fields beyond Haguefort; atop the rampart guardsmen walked, patrolling the battlement, their shadows long and spindly in the afternoon sun.
“To some extent, all soldiers are brothers of a kind, relying on one another for their very lives. This kind of life forges bonds that can’t be formed any other way, not by birth, nor by the mere desire to do so — it is a commitment of the soul that transcends any other; the willingness to die to save a comrade, the participation in a cause greater than oneself.
“After a lifetime of such soldiering, two kinds of men remain — those that are grateful to have survived the experience, and those that are grateful that the experience survives.
“The first kind gathers his belongings and whatever pieces are left of himself at the end of his service and goes home to farm and family, knowing that no matter what befalls him thereafter in life, he was part of something that will never leave him, tying him to others he may never see again, but who remain a part of him until death takes him.”
He cleared his throat and looked back at Gwydion Navarne, studying him for a moment. “The latter kind never goes home, because to him, home is the wind. The wind is never in the same place for more than a moment, but is always there, around him, wherever he is; it is both ephemeral and stalwart; he learns to be the same way. And the more like the wind one becomes, the more one loses a sense of self. Of course, any soldier who serves, any man-at-arms who puts his life at risk daily for not only his comrades and his leader but for those he never sees, h
as little sense of self anyway.
“Kinsmen were the elite of men who lived this way. They were accepted into the brotherhood for two things: incredible skill forged over a lifetime of soldiering, or a selfless act of service to others, protecting an innocent at threat of one’s own life.”
He took the bow from the young man’s hand and turned it over, making adjustments to the grip and examining the string. “Your nocking point is too high,” he said. He made a motion with his hand toward Shrike, who wordlessly plucked a white longflight from Gwydion Navarne’s standing quiver and handed it to him. The general flexed the wood of the shaft, then raised his eyebrows.
“Good spine,” he said with grudging admiration. He nocked the arrow, then handed the bow back to the young man.
Gwydion nodded silently.
“When one has achieved the right to become a Kinsman, it is the wind itself that selects him,” Anborn continued, watching him closely. “Air, like fire, earth, water, and ether, is a primordial element, one of the five that make up the world, but it is often overlooked. Its strength is always underestimated, rarely seen, but formidable. In its purest form, air has life, and it knows its own: Kinsmen, who were also called Brothers of the Wind. Serendair was a highly magical place; the wind blew freely there, and strong. Alas, the birthplace of the element, Northland, is on the other side of the world from here, so wind is not as strong in this land as it was there.
“When a man becomes a Kinsman, whether he has earned the title through a lifetime of service or a moment of selfless sacrifice, he hears the wind in his ear, whispering to his heart, telling him its secrets. He can use those secrets to hide within it, to travel by means of it, to call for help on it. The Kinsman call is the most compelling summoning a man can ever hear; it ensnares the soul, reaches deeply into the heart, demanding to be answered. It is used only in the direst of circumstance, when the Kinsman uttering it feels he is on the threshold of death, when his death will have impact beyond itself. And any Kinsman hearing it would never think of ignoring such a summons; to do so would leave him haunted unto insanity for the rest of his days.”
“And you heard the Kinsman call from the Skeleton Coast.” Gwydion Navarne tried to keep his voice low and respectful, but the excitement in it boiled over, breaking the solemn mood in the meadow.
Shrike stared sharply at him, but Anborn merely nodded.
“Did you find him? This Kinsman, was he there?”
Anborn exhaled, remembering the sound of the waves crashing against the black sand, the steaming mist from the sea swirling around the wreckage of ships from the old world, broken fourteen centuries in the timeless sand. The wind had fought for dominance with the sound of the sea, had faltered and drowned in its roar.
“No,” he said.
Gwydion Navarne lapsed into silence again. He turned away from the Cymrian soldiers and drew back, then loosed his arrow at the popinjay suspended from a pole at one hundred and fifty yards. The straw bird snapped back at the force of the impact, then swung wildly, eliciting subtle sounds of approval from the two men.
Feeling somewhat vindicated, the young duke-to-be turned back to them.
“Perhaps he was answered by another Kinsman,” he suggested.
“Doubtful,” Anborn growled. “Kinsmen were rare in the old land; in this world they are all but imaginary. I have met but two in the last seven hundred years. One was Oelendra, the Lirin Champion, who led the First Fleet of refugees from the Island itself, and passed from this life after the royal wedding. The other —” His words broke off and he smiled slightly to himself.
“Who, Lord Marshal?” Gwydion Navarne could not contain his curiosity. “Who was the other?”
The two soldiers exchanged a glance, and Anborn’s smile broadened.
“Perhaps you should ask your ‘grandmother’ the answer to that question,” he said.
“Rhapsody?” Gwydion Navarne’s brows drew together above an incredulous expression. “Rhapsody is a Kinsman?”
“Perhaps I neglected to mention that Kinsmen come in all shapes and sizes, lad,” he said, echoing the words she had once used on him in the same incredulous state. “They come in all walks of life — some of them even are Singers, Namers.”
“Women can be Kinsmen?”
“Both the Kinsmen I have just mentioned were women. You think only men are willing to sacrifice for a greater cause?”
“I’d like to have one sacrifice a few hours, a few scrapes on her knees, and a sour taste tomorrow morning for the greater cause of my satisfaction,” muttered Shrike. “Are you finished here, Anborn?”
Gwydion Navarne ran a hand through his mahogany-colored hair. “This has been a curious day,” he murmured. He looked up at Anborn’s man-at-arms. “Are you a Kinsman, Shrike?”
The elderly Cymrian snorted. “When you are one yourself, then you may ask me that,” he snapped. “Not until.”
“Sorry,” Gwydion said, but already Anborn was nodding in the direction of the black stallion. Shrike, obviously relieved to be quitting the conversation, wheeled the chair quickly over to the horse and took Anborn’s canes, strapping them quickly to the saddle again.
“You really should reconsider the longbow, lad,” Anborn said as Shrike prepared him to mount. “A crossbow or stonebow penetrates better and is more flexible in war.”
“Yes, but we are at peace, and have been since the lord and lady ascended the throne,” Gwydion replied, looking at the ground as the man-at-arms lifted the ancient general with his shoulder from the wheeled chair and boosted him like a child into the saddle. “I don’t expect to see war anytime soon, Lord Marshal. For now as an archer I only need to be proficient enough to penetrate a haybutt.”
The general paused in his ascent and stared down at him. “Only a fool thinks so, lad,” he said shortly. “Peacetime is good for but one thing: practicing skills to be ready for the next war. Your father knew this; you can tell by that wall he built. Woe unto your province if you don’t know it as well.”
When the Lord Marshal had been hoisted back onto his mount, he gestured for Gwydion Navarne to bring him the longbow. The youth complied, fascinated, as the Cymrian general closed his eyes, drew the bow easily back to an anchor point well behind his ear, a draw length Gwydion had never seen on the bow before, and fired.
The arrow whistled past him; the wind on which it sailed tousled the young man’s hair, blowing it into his eyes, but not before he saw the arrow slam into the direct center of the hay target, vibrating rigidly in waves he could feel in his teeth from one hundred sixty yards away.
Anborn opened his eyes.
“Did you hear it?” he demanded.
“The wind? Yes. It whistled like a teakettle.”
The general tossed him the bow impatiently.
“That was the arrow,” he said curtly. “Did you hear the wind?”
Gwydion Navarne considered, then shook his head.
“No.”
Anborn exhaled sharply. “Pity,” he said as he lifted the reins and Shrike mounted his own horse. “Perhaps you are not meant to, then.”
“Why did you tell me this?” Gwydion Navarne called as they turned to leave.
Anborn came alongside the young duke and leaned down as far as his fused vertebrae would allow him, steadying himself against his high-backed saddle.
“Because soon there will be no more Kinsmen,” he said quietly. “The brotherhood all but perished when the Island was swallowed by the sea. MacQuieth, probably the greatest of all Kinsmen, died soon after that; he led the Second Fleet to safety in Manosse, then waded into the sea, standing vigil for the death of the Island. When the cataclysm came, he walked into waves and drowned. What few remained in this place — Oelendra, Talumnan — all have passed from this life now. One day the legendary Kinsmen will be nothing more than that; a legend. I thought you might want to hear the lore while there was still someone qualified to tell you, lad.” He took up the reins. “I am sorry if I was mistaken. And if I was mistaken,
then you, too, are sorry.”
“I am honored that you chose to tell me, Lord Marshal,” Gwydion said hastily as Anborn nodded to Shrike, preparing to depart. “But what about Rhapsody? She is a First Generation Cymrian, and therefore should be unaffected by the passage of time. As long as she lives, won’t there always be Kinsmen?”
Anborn sighed. “Apparently you don’t understand the meaning of the word,” he said, a touch of melancholy in his voice. “One cannot be a Kinsman alone.”
He clicked to his stallion, and cantered off over the glossy fields of highgrass bending in supplication before the late-afternoon sun.
Dressing the Loom
8
HAGUEFORT, NAVARNE
Rhapsody raised her hand to her face to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun. The wind was gusting hot, even now, at dawn, the portent of a scorching day ahead.
The green fields of Navarne were silent beneath the sun, the dawn wind rippling the highgrass in waves beyond the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, the ancient roadway that spanned the length of Roland from Avonderre to the Manteids. The quiet hills looked in all their vast motion like a green-golden sea, ebbing and flowing with the gusts of the wind. They put her in mind of earlier days, other meadows, another world now long gone, and in the midst of the excitement brought on by the upcoming journey a pang of melancholy struck, resonating for a moment in her soul.
Peace reigned across the Cymrian Alliance, and had for three years now; it was both a fragile and a resilient accord, with the occasional flare of tempers and disputes, but by and large harmonious. She could see it in the faces of the people of the continent, from the Lirin of the western forest to the delegates from Bethe Corbair, the last Orlandan province before the Bolglands, a relaxation of a long-held guard. Even Ashe seemed to be relishing the end of hostilities that had gripped the land for decades. This formerly hunted man, who had spent twenty years hiding and alone, now walked the world openly, happily, his face to the sun. That a wyrmkin’s dragon blood, notorious for its paranoia, was allowing him the optimism he was experiencing must surely be a sign that all was right with the world.