Homage and Honour

HOMAGE AND
HONOUR

Candy Rae

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SMASHWORDS
EDITION

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Homage and
Honour

Copyright ©
2013 Candy Rae

Artwork
Copyright © 2010 Jennifer Johnson

Proofreading
and Editing by - Colt Proofreading Services, Auchterarder

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All characters
in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of the author.

Smashwords
Edition, License Notes

This electronic
book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and is sold
subject to the condition that it shall not by any way of trade or
otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated
without the author’s prior consent in any form other than that
which it is published and without a similar condition including
this condition being imposed on the subsequent publisher.

* * * * *

Homage and
Honour is dedicated to my friends from our fan-fiction writing club
who taught me how to write.

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PLANET WOLF

Planet Wolf is
a world where the grass is not green.

It's a planet
where alien trees and spiky foliage move strangely in the
breeze.

It's a world of
gigantic mountains and deep valleys, of huge rivers and primaeval
forests, of vast plains and arid deserts, of restless seas and
great continents.

On Planet Wolf,
the native creatures act and sound like nothing mankind has seen
before.

* * * * *

The Planet Wolf
Series

Wolves and War
- Conflict and Courage - Homage and Honour - Dragons and Destiny -
Valour and Victory - Paws and Planets - Tales and Tales - Ambition
and Alavidha

The T’Quel
Magic - A Trilogy

(Forthcoming -
Publish Date 2013)

Ephemeral
Boundary - Enduring Barrier - Eternal Bulwark

The New Planet
Wolf Series

(Forthcoming -
Publish Date 2014)

Journey and
Jeopardy - Gossamer and Grass - Flames and Freedom

* * * * *

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Vadrhed (Second Month of
Summer) - AL156

Lokrhed (Third Month of
Summer) - AL156

Sanrhed (Fourth Month of
Summer) - AL156

Rakrhed (Fifth Month of
Summer) - AL 156

Dunthed (First Month of
Winter ) - AL156

Vadthed (Second Month of
Winter - AL156

Lokthed (Third Month of
Winter) - AL156

Santhed (Fourth Month of
Winter ) - AL156

Rakthed (Fifth Month of
Winter) - AL156

Dunrhed (First Month of
Summer) - AL157

Vadrhed (Second Month of
Summer) - AL157

Lokrhed (Third Month of
Summer) - AL157

Sanrhed (Fourth Month of
Summer) - AL157

Rakrhed (Fifth Month of
Summer) - AL157

Dunthed (First Month of
Winter ) - AL157

Interregnum

Lokrhed (Third Month of
Summer) - AL166

Sanrhed (Fourth Month of
Summer) - AL166

Vadthed (Second Month of
Winter - AL166

Lokthed (Third Month of
Winter) - AL166

Santhed (Fourth Month of
Winter ) - AL166

Rakthed (Fifth Month of
Winter) - AL166

Vadrhed (Second Month of
Summer) - AL167

The Southern Continent -
AL234

Characters and
Glossary

Appendices

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Vadrhed (Second Month of Summer) –
AL156

Convergence
(1)

In the decades
to come glorious tales will be told and songs will be sung about
the exploits of ‘The Quartet’ but in the summer of the year of
landing one hundred and fifty-six, they are but four anxious young
people travelling north, east, west and south.

The first to
set out on the journey hadn’t even heard of the Vada until a few
tendays prior to when this story opens, the second had known for a
number of years that joining the Vada would be her future, the
third had always wanted to join the Vada and the fourth had never
in a million years thought she would get the chance.

* * * * *

Nemesis (1)

The creature
bursting out of the egg was three millimetres long.

Thirty years
before, in the summer of Anno Landing126 it had been hot and arid
enough to dry out the marshes and allow the creature’s mother to
mate and breed. Since then the egg had lain hidden under the
marsh-mud, waiting for a dry summer like the one of its
conception.

Anno Landing
156 was such a summer.

The shell had
begun to harden and the cells within the egg sac had coalesced to
form the creature. Safe within, the tiny infant had eaten the
remaining nutrients and hungry, began to tap at the shell.

It would have
died if pure chance had not intervened. The creature needed rain to
soften the shell the drought had hardened and, in the summer of
AL156, no rain fell. The season would go down in history as the
hottest and driest since mankind had arrived on the planet.

Chance, fate,
atropos, clothos, lachesis, call it what you will, unfortunately,
the dry mud in which the tiny egg was embedded was lifted out of
the ground as the man dug his shovel in and hefted the clod upwards
and out into the daylight. Life might have ended there but the man
decided at that point to spit out the mucus he was swilling around
in his mouth, which landed on the spot where the egg sat.

It was enough,
the liquid began to soften the shell’s hard outer layer and when
the shovelful was dropped into the waiting barrow the creature was
well on its way to the next stage of its existence. It emerged from
the shell and into the daylight.

The thin and
ragged boy who manhandled the barrow over the rough ground had no
way of knowing that its contents consisted of more than simple mud
and dried out plant-matter.

Reaching the
spoil heap that was his destination and with a pair of mud-caked
hands the boy lifted the first clod out of the barrow and on to the
pile.

He did not feel
the creature bite. He continued with the task in hand, for that was
his job, to cart the mud away from the irrigation ditches his Lord
and Master had decreed must be dug.

The ricca
fields were drying out. If they did not get water soon many would
go hungry this coming winter. Starvation was a very real threat and
as a slave, the boy was right at the bottom of the food chain, even
the animals would be fed before him. Slaves could be replaced at
need. His master’s prize cattle herds could not.

At least, the
boy was thinking as he bent down to pick up another sticky clod of
the mud, his eyes flicking right and left in case the overseer with
his whip was hovering nearby, the ditches would be finished soon
and he would be able to return to his more usual occupation of
tending the ripening crops in the ricca fields, his fears about
impending starvation at bay, just so long as the river kept at its
present level.

* * * * *

The state of
the river was the subject under discussion by the Duke of van
Buren, Lord Raoul and two of his companions. The fourth member of
the party was not talking; he had not wished to accompany his
cousins and his father on the tour of inspection of this, one of
the more productive areas within the Duchy of van Buren.

The three
discussing the state of the river were dressed in workmanlike garb
of soft linen surcoats and leather breeches of superfine quality,
but plain. The fourth was dressed in a far more fanciful, some
might say foppish, style and he looked as if he wished to be
anywhere other than where he was.

It was not one
of the younger Raoul’s favourite occupations, watching as a hundred
or so sweaty slaves toiled at the ditches under the eagle eyes of
the overseers. Raoul van Buren the Younger had far more interesting
matters to think about. His marriage to Contessa Celine Brentwood
was scheduled for a tenday hence and dreaming about the imminent
delights of the marriage bed was a far more agreeable
occupation.

It was to be a
double celebration. His sister Eloise was to be married the same
day, a good match, to the nephew of the King no less, Prince
Brandon of Murdoch.

He, the heir of
van Buren would have liked to marry a Princess of the Bloodline
himself but his father’s choice of Celine Brentwood had its
compensations. All the Brentwood girls were pretty but Celine’s
prettiness was considered out of the ordinary even by that
good-looking family and although Prince Brandon’s sister was as yet
un-betrothed, she was only fourteen years old and Raoul was not
emotionally suited to waiting to get what he desired.

Not long before
this Raoul had overheard his uncle describing him as an ‘arrogant
young pup’ who needed his corners rubbed away before he would be
fit to take his father’s place.

The two boys,
Raoul’s cousins, who were riding alongside his father were the
Duke’s nephews, Wolfram and Brandon, the latter a jolly and
muscular boy of fifteen, a year younger than his brother and three
years younger than Raoul himself.

The
fifteen-year-old Margrave Brandon van Buren would not be attending
the double wedding celebrations as he was to leave next day for the
Duchy of Graham, there to marry the Daughter Heir of its Duke. With
him would go his elder brother Wolfram and his father the Count
Wolfram, Duke Raoul’s younger brother.

Raoul couldn’t
be bothered wondering what political shenanigans had occurred to
arrange that betrothal. As women could not hold land, his cousin
would, on the death of the present duke, become Duke of Graham with
a seat on King’s Conclave, as would Raoul himself when his father
died and he came into his inheritance.

The one whose
nose was out of joint, reflected Raoul, was his older cousin
Wolfram. He was the future Lord William, Count van Buren, in rank a
full strata lower than the future ranks of his younger brother and
older cousin.

Wolfram was
betrothed to one Thanessa Sheila Ross; a relation of the newly
appointed Lord Marshall, Philip Ross and a Thanessa was the female
equivalent of the lowest strata of nobility. For the nobility,
especially those not at the top, rank and prospects were of
paramount importance.

It was a good
marriage for Sheila, at present a very junior lady-in-waiting to
the Princess Jennifer but Wolfram must be wondering why his father
and uncle had arranged the match and why his brother had been
selected by Lord Jeremy Graham as heir and not him.

Raoul thought
he knew why. His father, Duke of van Buren was an ambitious
man.

For years now
the Dukes of Gardiner and Brentwood had been the two with the most
influence in Conclave and Raoul’s father had decided that it was
time the van Buren family had a turn. A marriage alliance with the
Lord Marshall would help.

His horse
stumbled and Raoul came back to himself with a start. They had
arrived at the site of the new irrigation ditches.

He looked
around with unconcealed disdain. Wolfram and Brandon, however,
kneed their mounts forward and dismounted, the better to see how
the job was progressing.

One of the
smaller slave urchins, Raoul noticed, was being sent off towards
the water butts. Bucket in hand; his skinny legs were moving very
fast and sending mud-dust up behind his running feet. The senior
overseer was deep in conversation with his father who had also
dismounted and, to Raoul’s horror, looked as if he might be
actually intending to go to the ditches to inspect the progress
close up. He hoped his father wouldn’t demand that he accompany
him. Raoul disliked the smells that emanated from the lower
classes, especially the lowest caste, the slaves.