Court Duel (28 page)

As we climbed, the air got colder. But when the woods closed
around me at last, I forgot about the discomfort. I was
breathing the scents of home again, the indefinable combination
of loam and moss and wood and fern that I had loved all my
life.

And I sensed presence.

The woods were quiet, except for the tapping of raindrops on
leaves and, once or twice, the sudden crash and scamper of
hidden animals breaking cover and retreating. No birds, no
great beasts. Yet I felt watchers.

And so, tired as I was, I tipped back my head and began to
sing.

At the best of times I don't have the kind of voice anyone
would want to hear mangling their favorite songs. Now my throat
was dry and scratchy, but I did what I could, singing
wordlessly some of the old, strange patterns, not quite
melodies, that I'd heard in my childhood. I sang my loudest,
and at first echoes rang off stones and trees and down into
hollows. After a time my voice dropped to a husky squeak, but
as the light bent west and turned golden, I heard a rustle, and
suddenly I was surrounded by Hill Folk, more of them than I had
ever seen at once before.

They did not speak. Somewhere in the distance I heard the
breathy, slightly sinister cry of a reed pipe.

I began to talk, not knowing if they understood words, such
as "Marquise" and "mercenary," or if they somehow took the
images from my thoughts. I told them about the Merindars, and
Flauvic, and the Renselaeuses, ending with what Azmus had told
me. I described the wagons on the road behind me. I finally
exhorted them to go north and hide, and that we—Shevraeth
and his people and I—would first get rid of the kinthus,
then find a way to keep the Covenant.

When I ran out of words, for a long moment there was that
eerie stillness, so soundless yet full of presence. Then they
moved, their barky hides dappling with shadows, until they
disappeared with a rustling sound like wind through the
trees.

I was alone again, but I felt no sense of danger. My pony
lifted her head and blinked at me. She hadn't reacted at all to
being surrounded by Hill Folk.

"All right," I said to her. "First thing, water. And then we
have some wagons to try to halt. Or I do. I suppose your part
will be to reappear at the inn as mute testimony to the fallen
heroine."

We stopped at a stream. I drank deeply of the sweet, cold
water and splashed my face until it was numb. Then we started
on the long ride down. From time to time quick flutings of reed
pipes echoed from peak to peak, and from very far away, the
rich chordal hum of the distant windharps answered. Somehow
these sounds lifted my spirits.

I remained cheery, too, as if the universe had slipped into
a kind of dream existence. I was by now far beyond mere
tiredness, so that nothing seemed real. In fact, until I topped
a rise and saw the twenty wagons stretched out in a formidable
line directly below me, the worst reaction I had to rain, to
stumbles, to my burning eyes, was a tendency to snicker.

The wagons sobered me.

I stayed where I was, squarely in the center of the muddy
road, and waited for them to ascend my hill. I had plenty of
time to count them, all twenty, as they rumbled slowly toward
me, pulled by teams of draught horses. When I caught the quick
gleam of metal on the hill beyond them—the glint of an
errant ray of sun on helms and shields—my heart started a
rapid tattoo inside my chest.

But I stayed where I was. Twenty wagons. If the unknown
riders were reinforcements to the enemy, I couldn't be in worse
trouble than I already was.
But if they weren't...

"Halt," I said, when the first wagon driver was in
earshot.

He'd already begun to pull up the horses, but I felt it
sounded good to begin on an aggressive note.

"Out of the way," the man sitting next to the driver bawled.
Despite their both being clad in the rough clothing of
wagoneers, their bearing betrayed the fact that they were
warriors.

That and the long swords lying between them on the
bench.

"But your way lies back to the south." I pointed.

The second driver in line, a female, even bigger and tougher
looking than the leader, had dismounted. She stood next to the
first wagon, squinting up at me in a decidedly unfriendly
manner. She and the leader exchanged looks, then she said, "We
have a delivery to make in yon town."

"The road to the town lies that way," I said, pointing
behind me. "You're heading straight for the mountains. There's
nothing up here."

They both grinned. "That's a matter for us and not for you.
Be about your business, citizen, or we'll have to send you on
your way."

"And you won't like the way we do the sending," the woman
added.

They both laughed nastily.

I crossed my arms. "You can drop the paving stones here if
you wish, but you'll have to take the kinthus back to
Denlieff."

Their smiles disappeared.

I glanced up—to see that the road behind the last
wagon was empty. The mysterious helmed riders had disappeared.
What did that mean?

No time to find out.

"Now, how did you know about that?" the man said, and this
time there was no mistaking the threat in his voice. He laid
his hand significantly on his sword hilt.

"It's my business, as you said." I tried my best to sound
assured, waving my sodden arm airily in my best Court mode.

The woman bowed with exaggerated politeness. "And who might
you be, Your Royal Highness?" she asked loudly.

The leader, and the third and fourth drivers who had just
joined the merry group, guffawed.

"I am Meliara Astiar, Countess of Tlanth," I said.

Again the smiles diminished, but not all the way. The leader
eyed me speculatively for a long breath. "Well, then, you seem
to have had mighty good luck in the past, if half the stories
be true, but even if they are, what good's your luck against
forty of us?"

"How do you know I don't have eighty-one armed soldiers
waiting behind that rise over there?" I waved my other hand
vaguely mountainward.

They thought that was richly funny.

"Because if you did," the female said, "they'd be out here
and we wouldn't be jawin'. Come on, Kess, we've wasted enough
time here. Let's shift her majesty off our road and be on our
way."

The man picked up his sword and vaulted down from his wagon.
I yanked my short sword free and climbed down from my pony.
When I reached the ground, the world swayed, and I staggered
back against the animal, then righted myself with an
effort.

The man and woman stood before me, both with long swords
gripped in big hands. They eyed me with an odd mixture of
threat and puzzlement that made that weird, almost hysterical
laughter bubble up inside my shaky innards. But I kept my lips
shut and hefted my sword.

"Well?" the woman said to her leader.

They both looked at me again. I barely came up to the middle
of the shortest one's chest, and my blade was about half the
length and heft of theirs.

The man took a slow swing at me, which I easily parried. His
brows went up slightly; he swung again, faster, and when I
parried that he feinted toward my shoulder. Desperately, my
heart now pounding in my ears, I blocked the next strike and
the next, but just barely. His blade whirled faster, harder,
and that block shook me right down to my heels. The man dropped
his point and said,
"You're
the one that whupped
Galdran Merindar?"

Unbidden, Shevraeth's voice spoke inside my head: "You have
never lied to me..." I thought desperately,
Better late
than never!
And for a brief moment I envisioned myself
snarling
Yes, ha ha! And I minced fifty more like him, so
you'd better run!
Except it wasn't going to stop them; I
could see it in their eyes and in the way the woman gripped her
sword.

"No," I said. "He knocked me off my horse. But I'd taken an
oath, so I had to do my best." I drew in a shaky breath. "I
know I can't fight forty of you, but I'm going to stand here
and block you until you either go away or my arms fall off,
because this, too, is an oath I took."

The woman muttered something in their home language. Her
stance, her tone, made it almost clear it was "I don't like
this."

And he said something in a hard voice, his eyes narrowed. It
had to mean "We have no choice. Better her than us." And he
took up a guard position again, his muscles tightening.

My sweaty hand gripped my sword, and I raised it, gritting
my teeth—

And there came the beat of hooves on the ground. All three
of us went still. Either this was reinforcements for them, in
which case I was about to become a prisoner—or a
ghost—or...

Blue and black and white tunicked riders thundered down
through the trees toward the wagons. On the other side of the
road, another group rounded the rise, and within the space
often heartbeats, the wagons were surrounded by nine ridings of
warriors, a full wing, all with lances pointed and swords at
the ready.

One of them flashed a grin my way—Nessaren! Then my
attention was claimed when the wing commander trotted up,
stopped, and bowed low over his horse's withers. "Your orders,
my lady?"

He was utterly serious, but the impulse to dissolve into
helpless laughter was shaking my already watery insides. "These
gentle people may unload their stones, and pile them neatly for
the locals to collect," I said. "And then the drivers and their
companions are yours. I think local villagers might be hired to
drive the cargo of the wagons to the sea. Brine-soaked kinthus
won't hurt anyone and becomes mere wood. The wagons then might
be offered to said villagers as partial payment."

The wing commander bowed again, turned, and issued orders. I
noted from the salutes that Nessaren had risen in
rank—she now appeared to have three ridings under
her.

Within a very short time, the prisoners were marched off in
one direction and the wagons trundled slowly in another, driven
by warriors whose fellows had taken their horses' reins.

All except for one riding. Nessaren presented herself to me
and said, "My lady, if it pleases you, I have specific
orders."

"And they are?"

"You're to come with us to the nearest inn, where you are to
sleep for at least two candles. And then—"

I didn't even hear the "and then." Suddenly, very suddenly,
it was all I could do to climb back onto my pony. Nessaren saw
this and, with a gesture, got her group to surround me. In
tight formation we rode slowly back down the mountain....

And I dismounted ...

And walked inside the inn ...

I don't even remember falling onto the bed.

The next morning I awoke to find a tray of hot food and
drink awaiting me, and, even better, my wet clothes from my
saddlebag, now dry and fresh.

When I emerged from the room, I found the riding all
waiting, their gear on and horses ready.

I turned to Nessaren. Until that moment I hadn't considered
what it meant to have them with me. Was it possible I was a
prisoner?

She bowed. "We're ready to ride, my lady, whenever you
like."

"Ride?" I repeated.

She grinned—all of them grinned. "We thought you'd
want to get caught up on events as quick as could be." Her eyes
went curiously blank as she added, "If you wish, we can ride to
the city. We're yours to command."

An honor guard, then.

I rubbed my hands together. "And be left out of the
action?"

They laughed, obviously well pleased with my decision. In
very short order we were flying eastward on fast horses,
scarcely slowed by a light rain. The roads down-mountain were
good, and so we made excellent progress. At the end of the
day's ride, we halted on a hill, and Nessaren produced from her
saddlebag a summons-stone. She looked down at it, turning
slowly in a circle until it gleamed a bright blue, and then she
pointed to the north. We rode in that direction until we
reached an inn, and next morning she did the same thing.

That afternoon we rode into an armed camp. I glanced about
at the orderly tents, the soldiers in battle tunics of green
and gold mixing freely with those in the blue with the three
white stars above the black coronet. As we rode into the camp,
sending mud flying everywhere, people stopped what they were
doing to watch. The closest ones bowed. I found this odd, for I
hadn't even been bowed to by our own warriors during our
putative revolt. Attempting a Court curtsy from the back of a
horse while clad in grubby, wet clothes and someone else's
cloak didn't seem right, so I just smiled, and was glad when we
came to a halt before a large tent.

Stablehands ran to the bridles and led the horses to a
picket as Nessaren and I walked into the tent. Inside was a
kind of controlled pandemonium. Scribes and runners were
everywhere that low tables and cushions weren't. Atop the
tables lay maps and piles of papers, plus a number of bags of
coinage. In a corner was stacked a small but deadly arsenal of
very fine swords.

Seated in the midst of the chaos was Shevraeth, dressed in
the green and gold of Remalna, with a commander's plumed and
coroneted helm on the table beside him. He appeared to be
listening to five people, all of whom were talking at once. One
by one they received from him quick orders, and they vanished
in different directions. Then he saw us, and his face relaxed
slightly. Until that moment, I hadn't realized he was
tense.

Meanwhile the rest of his people had taken note of our
arrival, and all were silent as he rose and came around the
table to stand before us.
"Twenty
wagons, Lady
Meliara?" he said, one brow lifting.

I shrugged, fighting against acute embarrassment.

"We've a wager going." His neatly gloved hand indicated the
others in the tent. "How many, do you think, would have been
too many for you to take on single-handed?"