Time of Daughters I Page 14

  No use in self-questioning now. They had blundered, and now he had better do what he could to repair the situation.

  That meant going himself.

  There was no one else to send; only three other royal runners had the magical knowledge to transfer. One had been sent south; his co-chief of the royal runner training, Mnar Milnari, was somewhere on the road; and the third was overseeing all the royal runner training, which could not be interrupted without notice....

  Camerend walked out of the instructors’ private room when he was certain he presented a calm front. He assigned his older students a research project, and took care of a few other pressing duties as he waited for the watch bell. At the last he drew on a heavy cloak against the bitter winds of the Pass.

  When the bell rang, and he still had not received an answer from his mother, he closed his eyes, breathing deeply as he concentrated on Vanda. Using another person as a Destination was always dangerous, but they’d trained for such eventualities.

  He transferred.

  Magic transfer never was easy. The distance between the royal city and wherever Vanda was wrenched him badly, bone and muscle. He staggered, black spots swimming before his eyes, his teeth aching.

  Breathe in, breathe out...the reaction vanished, never rapidly enough, and he became aware of Vanda’s hands on his shoulders to steady him.

  “I hoped you’d come.” Vandareth wiped back sweaty pale hair. He’d cut it short, to his shoulders, Idegan style. Instead of the dark blue robe of the royal runners, he wore an Idegan short jacket and leggings. His dirty face was bruising down one side, and the clothes had the imprint of dirt, as if Vanda had recently fallen.

  “Who did it? You know?” It took all Camerend’s strength to cough out those few words.

  “Assassinated the jarl, you mean?” Vanda asked. And on Camerend’s lift of a palm, “No one knows. But he had enemies, that’s for certain—though most everyone up here wants independence from the south, they do not agree about how to get it. The jarlan led the faction to gain it legally, over time.”

  Camerend knew that much. She’d spoken often about the hopes she’d placed in her bright, beautiful daughter. He’d assumed the entire family had agreed.

  “Hal’s been a lot more honest since we arrived to the news about his father. And we still don’t know if his mother is alive,” Vanda added. “You always knew the jarl was hardest on Hadand, right? We didn’t know how much. Hal said one reason his mother traveled as much as she did was because she couldn’t stand seeing him beat Hadand bloody—and then set her at the head of the table to practice being a queen. She loved presiding,” Vanda added. “Even at the cost of the beatings. I saw it. Everyone saw it. She truly believed she had to be the best of the best. But nobody understood the real plan, how Hadand was going to be a queen down south, and the jarl would be king up here. But Hadand had begun to believe that to truly be as great as the Hadand she was named for, she must rule both north and south.”

  “That’s what she and her father were fighting about?” Camerend asked.

  “Yes—so says Ndiran. He wanted to attack now, while there is no king, she said that if anyone is to attack, it’s to be her—but this is all hearsay,” Vandareth added impatiently. “Irrelevant. We just caught up with her. She wouldn’t even listen to Hal when he tried to get her to go back to the old plan. Or to me—as soon as I spoke she sicced three of her runners on me, holding me down while she held a knife at my neck. She threatened to kill me if Hal didn’t acknowledge her as queen of the new kingdom of Lorgi Idego.”

  He yanked aside his hair, revealing an angry red line at his neck, blood crusted down into Vanda’s collar. “The bloodlust is on them, Cama. Hal said yes, to save my life, but she didn’t believe him, and had her personal runners tie Hal up and gag him. They know me as a runner, so they let me go. I offered to water the animals after our long ride, and brought them here to think out what to do.”

  Vandareth indicated the horses on a rope behind him, nibbling grass and and sniffing the wind above a chuckling stream. Great walls of sheer rock rose on either side of the deep canyon beyond the scree they stood alongside. Camerend knew those sheer walls had to be Andahi Pass: he recognized the distinctive slant of the layers of rock, and estimated their position was a few days above Andahi.

  Camerend grabbed Vandareth by the shoulders. “Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  Vanda winced, and Cama freed him. “Sorry.”

  “No matter. I feel the same.” With trembling fingers, Vanda lightly fingered the eye that had swollen shut in the moments they’d been standing there. “Lanrid Olavayir is coming up the pass with a couple of ridings. She rode to challenge them with Riders she recruited from Arvandais, and the harbor garrison. She’s got a wing at least.”

  “Challenge?” Camerend protested. “Lanrid Olavayir has been bragging all over Olavayir about how he wants to marry her!”

  “She thinks, or is telling them, that they’re up here to...I don’t even know what she said. She’s got her followers, all the young ones, on fire to attack Olavayir, and not stop until she’s retaken Cama One-Eye’s lands.”

  “But Cama One-Eye never lost any lands! He was a second son, awarded the northern jarlate after the Venn War!”

  “You know that. I know that. Camerend.” Vandareth wiped dirty fingers at the trickle of blood on his neck, smearing it. “Hadand is throwing off Marlovan rule, and it’s not just the northern shore she wants—”

  Uniting all the kingdom. Camerend remembered those words, now sick with chill. This was exactly how wars began—

  Trumpets blared.

  Vandareth recoiled as if struck, then sent Camerend an anguished glance. “I’ve got to save Hal, at least. There’s a trail up there—do something!” He gave Camerend a shove toward a goat trail winding around a spire to the left, then ran back down the trail to the plunging horses, who heard, or smelled, the tension of their herd on the other side of a jagged sheer of rock.

  By the time Camerend had charged up the narrow goat trail to the spire Vandareth had pointed out, he could hear the echoes of many horse hooves, and above that rumble, human voices. Soaring over those, the urgent blare of trumpets.

  Camerend reached the spire and paused long enough to mutter the emergency spell that would alert his mother far away in Darchelde: if there was any possibility that magic could save the situation, she knew far more than he did.

  Then he stepped out onto a narrow ledge, to find himself at tower height, looking down into the Pass at two companies drawn within a hundred paces of one another, one with scarcely thirty including runners laden with baggage, and the other three times as large and fully armed.

  Hard Ride’s force blocked the top of the rise, their horses still, bare lances upright, shields on left arms.

  Magic shimmered in the air next to Camerend, and Shendan appeared in a surge of air that brought the smells of home briefly, before dissipating on the wind. She leaned against a rock, looking old and gray.

  Camerend backed up a step to let her recover, then knelt behind a rock so that he could see but not be seen from below.

  Shendan blinked away the transfer nausea as her heart beat against her ribs: transfer hurt worse every year that passed, but when her son summoned her, she came. It was the least she could do, a parent’s never-ending guilt for surrendering her only child as a hostage, leaving Camerend to grow up under the hard eye of the former king.

  Below Lanrid’s followers muttered questions to each other, here and there uttering short barks of laughter. Some in the front row made cracks about how they ought to have had some warning so they could put on their House tunics and look good. Few of Lanrid’s riders had brought shields for what they had believed to be a romantic lark, and they carried only four lances, each with Olavayir leaping dolphin banners attached. They were in hilarious spirits, suiting a bride raid on the most beautiful Marlovan who surely, surely, would rather be married to their favorite Commander Lanrid in preference to
that whining pup Evred in the royal city.

  That had to be her, climbing onto a big boulder some twenty paces up a narrow path in the cliff above her lines of Riders. She was certainly beautiful in that coat somewhat like what men wore, except with elaborate shoulder spaulders in extra layers, the whole dyed a bright red. It was tight at the waist with chain mail over it, reaching down to her boot tops.

  “I waited until you could see and hear me,” Hard Ride Hadand called down as she tried to pick out which one was Lanrid.

  Oh, that had to be him, the big one in the center, staring up at her with open mouth. She raised her voice, yelling the words she’d rehearsed while coming up the Pass.

  “So I could have the pleasure of proclaiming the independence of Lorgi Idego,” she shouted louder, watching as they stopped talking and turned their faces up to her. She paused to revel in her position above them, and grinned, burning with triumph. “This is the last time I will ever use your barbaric tongue—and this will be the last word you ever hear!”

  She spoke so fast that most of those below turned to one another, muttering, “Did you catch that?” and “What is she saying?” as above, Camerend shouted, “Wait!”

  But his voice blended with Hard Ride’s shriek, “SHOOT!”

  Archers rose from behind a tumbled scree on one side, and from behind a sheered granite wall on the other. A single hesitation from some, but when Hadand screeched, “Shoot!” again, a flurry of arrows spanged, then another wave.

  Even if Lanrid had known how to gather his riders into a defensive line in that pass, he was outnumbered by a factor of three, facing an uphill ride, and they wore no armor or helms.

  He was the fourth to fall from his plunging horse.

  To enter the thoughts of another requires discipline and focus. It has been likened to being in the center of a crowd working themselves into a mob while one tries to discern the words of a single individual. Of course one is only dealing with a single person, but trying to make sense of that person’s tumult of image, jumbled words, and physical as well as emotional reactions is comparable to the sensory chaos of the mob.

  Before one gets to the pain of dying.

  If the listener is not skilled, they will share that pain right into oblivion.

  Necessity required I take the risk, and endure the sensory echo.

  The arrow struck Lanrid in the chest, jolting him from shock to pain between one beat and the next, and while his ruined heart stuttered into quiescence his mind reeled from shock to disbelief to the urge to protect his brother. He tried to turn, to look for Sinna through the billowing dark clouds as he fell. The pain resolved into shocking cold except for the fire in the middle of his chest and he longed for home—Da angry—would he find out about Fi’s and his son, because of course he’d have a son, the Olavayirs were like the Noths in that way, always boys….

  That really was his last coherent thought as the cold numbed mercifully to a sense of floating outward into a starless sea.

  He never heard the screams as horses and men panicked, struggling forward, backward, death hissing and thudding around them. A few brave souls ripped their swords free and rode to attack, only to be thrown back by Hadand’s lancers.

  Arrows dropped the four Olavayir lancers struggling to remove the banners, which threatened to get caught under the horses' hooves. Then Hard Ride’s lancers charged among the Olavayirs, the ring and clash of metal reverberating off stone. Riders fell. Horses danced and sidled and reared, trying to avoid stepping on sprawled bodies.

  It was a slaughter, not a battle, but Hard Ride Hadand grinned fiercely, because her plan—her plan—worked. It was happening! This was how you made yourself a queen!

  Only there were so few of them. They were dying too fast, too easy.

  She stared down at Lanrid, who looked so young, and even death did not diminish his beautiful features. She twitched her gaze away and up as her people grimly tried to catch the riderless horses, some of them wounded by arrows, increasing the chaos.

  Up next to the spire, Camerend leaned against the rock, sick with horror and helpless rage. He was too high to be heard, he didn’t even have a weapon as royal runners were forbidden to carry swords. He saw his grief mirrored in Shendan’s profile: her lined face appeared to have aged twenty years.

  Then, out of the mostly still figures below, and the muted noise of hoofbeats and terse commands from riding captains, rose an eerie sound. It was a young male, singing the Andahi Lament.

  For a timeless moment everyone stilled except the animals, as Sindan Olavayir, briefly stunned by a glancing blow, crawled to his hands and knees to his older brother staring sightlessly at the sky, an arrow sticking up from his chest.

  Sinna sat back on his heels, oblivious to the blood running down his face, threw back his head and poured all his grief through his voice, heart-rending and brilliant, as everyone turned his way as if yanked by invisible rope.

  Hadand’s victory exultation dissipated; excitement and victory withered into uncertainty, bewilderment, even sorrow in the faces of her own people as that soaring threnody echoed up the stones to the sky beyond. Some even wept, shocked cold by what they’d done.

  Furious at how everyone seemed frozen by the anguished beauty of Sindan’s voice rising and falling in the kingdom’s most powerful lament, Hadand screamed to drown the sound, “Victory! We are free of the Marlovan yoke! We are Lorgi Idego!”

  Her most loyal followers sent up a cheer, as below, Hard Ride’s brother Haldren scrambled frantically up the path toward her, rope burns bleeding at both wrists, and Sindan’s exquisite voice harrowed every heart.

  In a red rage, Hard Ride whirled around, yanked the bow from her first runner, and loosed an arrow. Too late, a pair of dolphin-clan Riders struggled to defend Sindan, but both were wounded, one with a shattered knee.

  They were too slow to block the arrow whiffling through the air to thud in the middle of Sinna’s chest, right below his heart.

  His head jerked up, eyes round and shocked. His fingers scrabbled at the arrow as he tried to gulp in breath to finish his song. His fingers came away bloody as he turned his fading gaze upward at those on the rock.

  Then he toppled awkwardly atop his brother, twitching slowly. The two wounded men collapsed, one rising again to catch the reins of a plunging horse that threatened to trample the boys’ bodies. Teeth gritted, Hard Ride sent three more arrows into Sinna, until he stilled. Then two more, until she got a grip on her rage.

  “Here’s how it’s going to be,” she shouted to her people. “You wanted independence. Now you have it. Don’t let sentiment ruin that! It lasts as long as steam. Victory is real.”

  She pointed at the tumbled, blood-soaked Olavayir Riders. “This is victory! We did it once, and we can do it again! If any still live, slit their throats. Gather those loose horses, and form up in column to ride down the Pass. And we’ll write our own songs—ballads of glory that will last a thousand years—”

  A single arrow gleamed briefly in the air before it struck her in the throat.

  She choked, dropping her bow as her fingers clawed at the shaft. Impossible! Impossible! Her lungs labored for breath to protest, then her legs gave out. She spun around and tumbled head first over the edge. She hit a jagged rock head first, a loud crack, then flopped lifeless onto her enemies below.

  Her younger cousins cried out in rage and fear.

  The more experienced among her warriors whirled to gaze in the direction from which the arrow had come. Camerend and Shendan whipped around; from their vantage only they could see the edge of Vanda’s jacket as he vanished into the shadows of a crevasse, leaving those below gazing up at blank rock. On the other side of the Pass, Haldren leaped from rock to rock and scrambled up onto the ledge where Hadand had stood. He sidestepped the spatter of his sister’s blood, then knelt and shouted into the noise, a hand extended.

  Someone below tossed a metallic object up: a speaking trumpet.

  Hal caught it, and blew a lon
g, flat blast.

  Everyone stilled, shocked by Hard Ride’s sudden death. Her closest cousins reached for the weapons, fired into new rage, but most of the older ones’ bloodlust had been snuffed out by the terrible effect of that mourning song still echoing in their minds.

  Eyes turned Haldren’s way, seeking answer, order. Absolution, justification. Sense. Nothing had gone the way Hard Ride had promised—the death was here, all around them, but where was the thrill of glory?

  “What happened here cannot be undone,” Hal cried, his voice breaking. “I am now the senior Arvandais in residence, and my orders are to retreat to Andahi Garrison. But first we shall Disappear the dead properly. All the dead.” He opened his hand, palm up. “And grant mercy to the wounded. There is no hiding what was done today.”

  He turned his head to where Vandareth had reappeared among those below, reins in his hand from several Olavayir horses sidling restlessly. The bow was gone.

  “Vanda, leave the Olavayir wounded some horses,” Hal called in a lower voice.

  First one, then two, and with many sideways looks, others began to follow Hal’s orders as voices rose: Who shot Hard Ride? Was it one of them?

  Was it one of us?

  Camerend was sick with fury, at least half of it at himself for standing there uselessly.

  Shendan eyed him. “If you’d tried anything, you would have been the first one shot.” And when he lifted a hand as if to ward her words, she went on, “They might regret what just happened, but they wouldn’t have followed her if they didn’t agree in principle, if not with this approach. At the least, we’ll lose the north coast entirely.”

  The “we” was an irony too well known to both to need definition. Montredavan-Ans were raised to take the long view, as their legendary forebear Fox had written privately: to never lose sight of their allegiance as Marlovans, in spite of the ten generations of unfair exile imposed on them seven generations ago.