Hammer Of God (8 page)

“Let me.” The wool-and-feather mattress sagged as he sat beside her. “I think Zandakar thinks to make of you a colander.”

She winced at the ointment's burn. “No. If I'm cut the fault is mine, for not being fast enough.” She gasped a little as his fingers found the deepest wound.

“It's painful?”

“Not at all,” she said, frowning. “A delightful tickle. I'm struggling not to laugh.”

Turning her hand over, Alasdair kissed its palm. “Sorry.”

Love for him came in a wave so strong, so overwhelming, for a moment she could neither see nor breathe. This quiet intimacy, this small precious heartbeat of time snatched from the chaos that was their lives since Linfoi…it stung tears to her eyes. So much had changed since Ranald and Simon were brought home, fever-struck, that often she felt a stranger in her own skin. Brothers dead. Father dead. Marlan seeking to control her, destroy her. Miracles and madness. Her world ripped apart and remade before her eyes. So often it seemed she would never catch her breath. So often it seemed she'd never recognise herself again.

Quiet moments like this helped keep hysterics at bay.

Alasdair glanced up. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said, and had to clear her throat. “You never mentioned you thought I should make an audience of the ambassadors.”

“Edward and Rudi only broached the subject with me yesterday. I wanted to think about it. I wanted to see if you'd mention it first.”

“And I didn't. In truth…”

“In truth, it never occurred to you?” he said, and shook his head. “It should have.”

She pulled her arm free of him. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. With her hurts not all tended he put the jar aside, slid off the bed and moved to the chamber window. Dusk was falling. The chamber's lanterns seemed to burn a little brighter as the light beyond the panes of glass slowly faded.

Staring at his broad shoulders, his straight spine, at his rich blue velvet doublet, she pulled a face. “You're right. It should have. Papa would scold me if he was here.”

Alasdair turned. “You can't think of everything. It's a wonder you can think of anything, beyond trying to stay alive.”

He was afraid for her. So afraid. I'm afraid for myself. She reached for the ointment and continued physicking herself. “Edward might he wrong. The dukes might yet surrender without combat, Alasdair.”

“You know they won't,” he said, his expression bleak. “They've come too far now to turn back.”

And so had she. Her only way was forward, through rivers of ducal blood. “If I invite outsiders I turn law into spectacle.”

“And if you don't, you lose an important chance to impress on the ambassadors your fitness to rule,” Alasdair countered gently. “Adric's right. What is it to Harbisland or Arbenia that Ethrea's God declared you should lead them to war? They worship in their own way. Our way means naught to them. But they do respect a wielded sword.”

Regrettably it was true. Nor was it something a ruler of unwarlike Ethrea had been forced to consider for hundreds of years. So protected, we've been. Swaddled in peace like an infant, untouched by the squabbles elsewhere in the world. And now it seems our protection was mere gossamer. Almost illusion. We are vulnerable in ways we never imagined.

“I'll have to invite them, won't I?” she said, and sighed. “Arbenia. Harbisland. The rest of them.”

“And Han.”

She jammed the cork stopper back in Ursa's jar of ointment. “Yes. He'll have to come.”

Alasdair leaned against the embrasure. “You don't like him.”

“He frightens me.” She shivered. “It all frightens me, Alasdair. I can admit it to you, in here, while we're alone.”

He returned to her, and gathered her into his arms. “With me, in here, while we're alone, you don't have to be brave. What else am I for, if not to give you strength when you feel weak?”

She buried her face in his velvet-covered chest. “Well…you're very good at pulling off my boots.”

He laughed, and she laughed with him, and for a moment, so briefly, fear retreated.

“Come,” he said, and kissed her hair. “Let's eat and retire early. The world can mind itself for one night.”

Ludo arrived just before noon the next day, while she and the privy council were hammering out the final details of the judicial combat and its staging in the castle grounds. He was shown to the council chamber and admitted at once.

“Ludo!” said Rhian, greeting him with a sisterly kiss on each cheek. “Welcome back to Kingseat. Not so long since we saw you last, at the coronation, and still it feels an age. Your journey was uneventful?”

He bowed, and kissed her hand. “Tolerably so, Majesty. Travel on water refuses to agree with my vitals. And…there were some dark looks from the riverbanks as the barge passed between Hartshorn and Meercheq.”

“It's to be expected,” she said quietly, with a glance at Alasdair. “Some foolish people model themselves on their disobedient dukes. How is Henrik?”

Ludo, so handsome and stylish and vibrant with life, wilted a little. “Father minds the duchy for me, Majesty. He is well enough, all in all. The tonics your physick Ursa sends help him a great deal, but…”

But Marlan had broken him, and he'd never fully mend.

She squeezed his arm. “He's ever in our thoughts, Ludo. Whatever the crown can do, you've only to ask.”

“I know,” he said, his voice hoarse. “And he sends you his dearest regards.” He turned. “And you, Alasdair. Your Majesty.”

She indicated the table. “Sit. Speak for duchy Linfoi as we discuss matters of state. Since you're yet to nominate a voice for this council…”

“I am thinking on it,” he said, taking the only spare seat, beside Ven'Cedwin. “It's not a decision I'd choose to rush, Your Majesty.”

She nodded. “You and Alasdair can discuss it over dinner. For now let us consider the wider needs of Ethrea.”

When the council meeting ended, she left Alasdair and Ludo to their reunion and returned to the tiltyard with Zandakar for more training. She was definitely getting stronger, faster, more skilled with the shortsword, but she couldn't escape the unpalatable truth. Time was running out. Tassifer's Feast drew closer, and with it the most fateful meeting of her life.

The next day, over Alasdair's objections, she abandoned leadership of the council to him entirely. Until the day of the judicial combat she would do nothing but train with Zandakar, sunup to sundown.

“You'll work yourself to skin and bone!” Alasdair protested that night. “You'll be so exhausted he'll kill you by mistake!”

Thrumming with pain, so weary she could weep, she lowered herself into the oak tub of water prepared for her. “No, he won't,” she said, wincing. “He's going to keep me alive.” And when Alasdair tried to argue further, added, “Please. No more. I have to do this, and you know it. Keep Ludo company. I must be a poor host.”

Helfred returned to Kingseat with the Court Ecclesiastica the following morning. She spared him a scant half hour from her training so he could tell her of the changes he'd wrought in the venerable houses of Meercheq and Hartshorn, and to repeat his assertions that the dukes would come to fight. She thanked him for his services, bade him to rest, then afterwards talk with Alasdair of other arrangements for the combat. He agreed without demur. On her sinewy, warlike appearance he passed no word of comment. Which was wise of him, for she surely would've said something rash.

With Helfred settled, she returned to her hotas.

Under the privy council's guidance, and with the efforts of so many clerks and privy secretaries, the kingdom continued to prosper. No whispers of Mijak had been heard yet around the harbour or in the taverns of Kingseat, a good thing for which she was most grateful. Save for the mutterings in Hartshorn and Meercheq, and reports from their ducal households of frantic sword practice and declarations of defiance, no disturbances were reported in the kingdom. With Helfred's venerables and chaplains preaching peace and the wisdom of obedience, the upheaval caused by Marlan seemed mostly subsided.

Alasdair and Helfred crafted the invitations to the ambassadors and Emperor Han. Rhian signed them, and sealed them, and returned to her hotas. Edward and Rudi drew up plans for the creation of the judicial combat arena. Rhian approved them, and returned to her hotas.

Sunrise by sunrise, Tassifer's Feast approached.

Her last training session in the tiltyard, late in the afternoon, was witnessed by the privy council and Ludo and Ursa and what seemed like a quarter of Commander Idson's garrison and half the castle's courtiers and staff. When it was finished Zandakar pressed his fist to his chest. His eyes were glowing with savage pride.

“You ready, Rhian hushla. You dance hotas like a queen.”

He was bleeding in a dozen places where her shortsword had caught him. She bled as well, but not as much as the first time they trained in this fashion.

Sword sheathed by her side, she returned his salute. “Zandakar—” She bit her lip. “I won't see you again until this is over. Thank you.”

He bowed his head. “Rhian is welcome.”

As she walked from the tiltyard those watching her began to applaud. Hands clapped, feet stamped, a few voices called out.

“God bless Her Majesty! God bless our warrior queen!”

She felt tired, yet triumphant. Afraid, yet strangely at peace. She acknowledged her enthusiastic people with a smile, then beckoned to Ursa.

“See to Zandakar. I hurt him.”

Ursa frowned. “I should see to you—”

“He barely touched me, Ursa. See to Zandakar,” she said again. “How else can I reward him?”

As Ursa withdrew, unhappy, Alasdair joined her. Leaving the chattering, excited crowd behind they walked towards the nearest castle entrance. Off to the right, castle servants put the finishing touches to the raised timber gallery of seats for the guests invited to witness the next day's judicial combat. Hammers banged. Workers shouted. Groundsmen prowled the lawn with heavy rollers, flattening the turf so a combatant might not trip on a tussock and so present his or her throat to a sword by mistake.

“Kyrin, Damwin and their retinues have arrived in Kingseat,” Alasdair told her quietly. “Word came while you were training.”

A mingling of sweat and blood trickled down her face. Zandakar's longsword had nicked her left cheekbone; she could feel the puffy swelling round the cut. “Do they lodge separately or together?”

“Separately. Damwin's in his township residence. Kyrin's with his cousin, Hadin.”

She nodded. “Very well. Can you see a herald is sent to them, with strict instructions for the morrow?”

“Of course.” His fingers brushed her leather-sleeved arm. “You wish to be alone now?”

Desperately. The thought of what she'd soon face was overwhelming. She made herself smile at him. “I'm sorry. I do.”

“Bathe. Rest. We'll share a quiet supper,” he said. “Then an early night.”

She closed her fingers round his wrist and held on tight, just for a moment. “That sounds perfect.”

And it was, in its peaceful way. They dined privily, no servants attending, no other company but their own. Spoke not a word about Mijak, or Zandakar, or the dukes, and how she must defeat them. Instead they spoke of the future, of a royal progress around Ethrea, of sailing to other lands and seeing things wild and new. And then, dinner consumed, they retired to bed and consumed each other. Haunted but not speaking the truth: tonight might be our last.

But afterwards, though Alasdair slept, Rhian stared at the ceiling. Sleep eluded her. Fears crowded in. So she slipped unnoticed from their bed, pulled on a linen shirt and woollen hose, slid her shortsword from its sheath and padded barefoot to the castle's Long Gallery where she could settle her nerves with one last dance. The castle guards bowed when they saw her. Alasdair insisted they patrol the castle corridors, fearing the dukes might attempt to emulate Marlan and send a murdering dagger against her. She wasn't worried, but surrendered to his fears. It was easier than arguing.

Feet and hands thudding on the gallery's parquetry floor, her breathing steady and rhythmical, she danced the hotas in candlelight and silence, through shadows and soft flame. With their forms and discipline now second nature, she found her thoughts drifting towards her dead father.

Papa, can you see me? Could you see me in the tiltyard? It appears I've become a warrior queen…

The thought was enough to make her smile, even though fear gibbered and nibbled around her edges. Warrior queen. Ranald and Simon would laugh themselves blue-faced at the notion.

If I weren't so frightened I might laugh at it myself. By this time tomorrow I could be dead…

She'd already signed her writ of succession, naming Alasdair Ethrea's king without encumbrance. The privy council and Helfred had witnessed her declaration, and her prolate now held it safe in Church keeping.

By this time tomorrow…

Shaking herself free of such unhelpful morbid fancies, she blotted sweat from her face and prepared for another tumbling pass down the gallery. It would have to be the last one. She was exhausted, and the next day would start hideously early with a full Litany in the castle's chapel. She had no hope of evading it. Try, and she'd turn Helfred into a warrior prolate.

Rollin save me. There's a dreadful thought.

Tumble…leap…cartwheel…stab here…slash there…hamstrings – elbows – belly – throat – another leap…and another…with Zandakar's impatient voice ringing in her ears.

Rhian wei defend. Rhian defend, Rhian die. Attack, attack, like striking snake, attack. Speed, Rhian. Wei time duke touch you. Faster. Faster. Cut him. Duke die.

It was the heart of the hotas: no defence. Attacking only, with blinding speed and ruthless disregard for self. As a creed it called to something within her, released some inner wildness, unshackled a part of her that until she met Zandakar she'd only ever glimpsed.

A part of her that Alasdair didn't understand.

Reaching the end of the gallery she plundered the last of her physical reserves and danced all the way back again, punishing herself, pushing herself to her scarlet limit and beyond. There was pain, she ignored it. Lungs and muscles burned, she let them. Blinded by sweat, deafened by the waterfall thunder of blood through her veins, she reached for the dregs of her strength and poured them into the hotas.