Sasharia En Garde (59 page)

He resisted the impulse to run downstairs to the court—as if
hearing the trackers’ bad news that little measure faster would make much
difference.

Instead he sat, forcing himself to review the pile of
reports he’d thrust into the dispatch bag before riding away from the siege,
until the sound of footsteps caused him to look up.

His trackers dashed in, muddy to the waist. “War Commander,
they were intercepted.”

Fury flared through Randart. He kept his lips tight for one
breath. Two. “Report.”

The older, more experienced tracker said, “We are reasonably
sure we located their trail. Valgan here rode back down it to make certain, and
said it definitely led to the farm where the cadets had tracked the target. We
even found the place they had to have ambushed the target.”

Faint question infused the man’s face and voice on the word
“target”. Randart had not told them who the target was, only that Damedran had
been sent to this specific olive farm belonging to the local duke in order to
arrest a traitor.

“Looked like a pretty good fight,” he added, obviously
hoping to provoke some information. “At least, as far as we could tell, as the
rain was already beginning to obliterate the tracks.”

He paused. When Randart did not respond, he shrugged and
went on. “There was another ambush say half a watch’s ride from here, twice as
many hoof prints. They all rode northwest, cross-country.”

“Where did the ambushers come from, could you tell?”

“Their prints began at the military road,” was the answer.

Military road? Who could possibly have betrayed him? Who
even knew where he was? Not the king. Not even Orthan. Only Damedran—

Randart jammed the reports back into the dispatch bag. “You
two. Ride ahead, find their trail. Get a communication box from your commander,
Valgan, and report the signal to me before you depart. I am going to follow you
with my entire force. So you had better ride at the gallop.”

o0o

Damedran did not know what to think.

Jehan, the sheep who had quite suddenly changed into a wolf,
did not ask for parole, nor did he bind up his prisoners. In fact, he said
nothing at all about who would ride where. He didn’t even take their weapons.

And so Damedran rode next to him, silent at first as they
put in a gallop. His knee throbbed where the princess had kicked him, but he
could ignore that. He could wait. You don’t gallop horses for long unless you
have a lot of posting houses or garrisons with ready mounts. Well, the
garrisons did, but the prince seemed to be avoiding them.

They galloped on the flat, smooth, well-maintained military
road, and once their trail was thus thoroughly obliterated, they took a side
trail over a hard-packed road, one of Jehan’s people being detailed to smooth
their tracks after them. Then they slowed, walking the horses until they’d
cooled, and stopping at a trickling stream to water them.

Jehan squinted at the western sky above the mountaintops.
The sun rimmed a uniformly dense gray bar of cloud that covered the entire
western horizon, the upper edge of which lit with fiery oranges and reds and
yellows, colors that warmed the sky and echoed in the vanguard of cloud patches
overhead. A spectacular sunset, but it meant heavy rain on the way.

Red snickered. “They’ll be up to their armpits in mud at the
siege,” he muttered.

“Wonder who’s got the night run?” Bowsprit whispered back.
“They may’s well take boats.”

The boys’ laughter was subdued, all the clearer because
Prince Jehan’s men—all wearing warrior brown, but not a one known by sight to
Damedran—worked in silence, switching gear to the remounts.

A last ochre ray of sun shone on Jehan’s white hair, making
him easy to pick out from the others. Damedran waited until Jehan was done
talking with one of the men, who promptly rode up the trail and vanished into
the woods.

The last of the sun disappeared. The warm sunset colors
bleached to cold grays and blues as a wind rose, rustling through the grasses
and moaning through the distant trees.

“I don’t understand,” Damedran said, when at last Jehan
turned his way. The words seemed to wring from somewhere inside his chest. “I
thought—I thought—”

“That I was a sheep,” Jehan said with a quick grin.

Damedran’s face burned.

Jehan raised a hand. “Don’t fret. I wanted you to think
that. I needed you to think that. But the time for lies and disguises is over.”

Damedran’s lips parted. He didn’t want to say
I don’t understand
again, though that
was what he was thinking. It sounded, well, too sheep-like.

So what he did say was, “What disguises?”

“Zathdar the pirate being one. Besides the Fool your uncle
really wanted me to be.”

“Zathdar?” Damedran squeaked. He’d thought he’d had enough
shocks lately. Not true, obviously. “You? But—” His mind flitted from memory to
memory, then formed a question in the way that best fit his experience. “I can
see how you can ride like that. Leaping horses. They do that in the west, at
their academy, don’t they?”

“By the time you’re twelve. With your hands tied, by the
time you’re fifteen.”

Damedran whistled soundlessly. “But they don’t teach
anything about the sea. I know they don’t. Do they?”

“You’re right,” Jehan said gravely.

“Yet you have to have learned something about the sea. I
mean, all the stories about Zathdar. You know ships. How did that happen?”

“Not by design. Imagine me, sent away as a small boy to
Marloven Hess’s military academy. Mathias thinks we need new ideas. Really, he
wants to get me away from the corruption in our own academy, which, to attest
to your uncle’s credit, was largely gone within ten years. My father wanted me
to go for different reasons. So I went west, leaving behind everyone at home
who I believed were living happy lives. The letters slowed down. Then came the
bad news, like my mother and father parting. My mother invited me to move to
Sartor with her, but I liked my life, so I stayed.”

Damedran nodded. He would have stayed too.

“Life there was good at first, but then it turned dangerous,
when a good king was assassinated, and a very bad regent took his place. More
news came. My father had married Princess Ananda. Not that that was bad, it
just made my life seem unmoored. The old king died, and my father became king,
and then the real bad news started coming.”

Damedran looked subdued, but he was listening.

“The morvende have access to certain kinds of magic that
delays aging for a time. I used that while I tried to reassemble the pieces of
my life, but the news just got worse. Princess Atanial vanished, along with the
child I never met. So I took ship for a few years to consider what to do, and
ended up as a privateer on the other side of the world. When my father summoned
me home, I found myself constantly surrounded by your uncle’s men for my
protection, but they wouldn’t let me go anywhere without permission. I put
together Zathdar’s fleet to break your uncle’s increasing hold over the
kingdom, since I knew I wouldn’t be able to do anything as Prince Jehan.”

Damedran frowned in perplexity.

Jehan wondered if he should let the boy have time to think,
but it felt so good to tell the truth. “When you’re away and come back, you see
differences not apparent to people at home who experienced the changes more
gradually. Khanerenth is full of restrictive laws. Rumors. Strife. Killings. I
dedicate my life to restoring things to the way I knew Prince Math would have
wanted.”

Damedran flushed again. “So
I’m
the sheep. That’s what you mean. But you’re not saying it. I
take orders and don’t think. It’s why Lesi Valleg hates me,” he added, looking
like the miserable boy he really was.

“We both had to take orders and not think. Or not appear to
think.” Jehan gestured, now exhilarated. Whatever happened next, he had told
the truth. “The crisis came this summer when I discovered the rumors of
invasion were a little too detailed to seem just rumor.”

Damedran’s chin jerked up. “You know about that?”

“I have suspected ever since my pirates intercepted a
weapons shipment. Think, Damedran. Past the promise of glory, rank, and land.
That invasion would break the treaty. People on both sides of the mountains
will get killed. Those plains clans of Locan Jora are not going to let their
land be overrun without a vicious fight. But I don’t think anyone can stand up
to the king and Randart except Prince Mathias.”

“
Prince Mathias?
How? I don’t understand.”

“I have reason to believe that Sasharia knows where her
father is, and is on her way to free him. We’re going as backup.”

“But you let her escape! Did she tell you all that?”

Jehan smiled. “No. She’s doing her valiant best to protect
her father the only way she knows how. But you forget,” he said gently,
indicating they mount up, “who my mother is. Though I did not move to Sartor’s
morvende geliath with her, I never lost contact.”

Valiant best.

That’s what he said, but I sure did not feel valiant.

Does anyone ever feel valiant—bold—intrepid—
I am courageous, ha ha!
Well, not Yours
T, anyway. I felt sulky, depressed, angry and worried by turns. Not to mention
hungry and tired, for though I had earned plenty of money, and had my jewels
besides, there was nowhere to spend any of it.

My trail was the straightest line to Ivory Mountain, which
is not an area boasting a lot of population. I saw why when I reached the hills
below the mountain: narrow trails slanting steeply upward, past waterfalls and
rushing whitewater streams hidden but recognizable from their roar.

Thick forest surrounded me, layers of complicated, deep
green, leafy shrubs and trees. Sunlight penetrated in dapples and shafts of
hazy gold. When the sunlight was strongest, sparkles of light danced on the
water and gleamed in the pearl drops of moisture hanging from the edges of the
leaves.

When the sun vanished, I found myself abruptly closed in
uniformly greenish blue shadow, guided mostly by sounds rather than by vision:
unseen birds, quick thrashings of animals dashing through the underbrush, and
always the trickle, drip, roar, chuckle and hiss of water. I was soon hungry,
but never did I go thirsty. The water tasted sweet and cold, and even my mare
(who did have her feedbag, and I mentally thanked Jehan several times a day for
that) seemed to perk up despite my rotten mood.

So it was a long, tiring slog, though beautiful. But I was
in no mood for beauty, because the density of the forest meant I would not see
any enemies until they were on me. Shelter was also difficult to find. I spent
a couple of miserable nights with all my clothes on and my firebird tapestry
banner round me as I crouched under mossy rock outcroppings never quite large
enough to be a sheltering cave.

I was on the watch for the sign my father had told me about
so many years ago—three bluebells in a row, carved into stone. I’d always
thought this symbol would be clear, like some kind of natural road map. As I
climbed ever higher, examining every rocky scree, cliff, palisade and what have
you, I began to wonder if weather and age would have defaced the carvings. That
is, if they weren’t overgrown by shrubs, trees or even moss.

But I kept going.

We all kept going, everyone converging on the mountain at
pretty much the same time, though from different angles. Canardan’s force found
the tracks of the women—mistook them for warriors—and sped up their pace.

Jehan knew a wood scavenger who knew where the lower cavern passages
were. He and his riders made sure they left no signs behind.

Randart’s scouts, under threat of punishment, scarcely ate
or slept until they discovered my tracks. Remember I said few live there?
Randart didn’t know magic, but he was far from ignorant about history. Didn’t
take long for him to figure that Ivory Mountain had to be my destination.

I was unaware of him on my trail until the last morning,
when I woke from a miserable sleep to a misty-blue dawn so cold I could see my
breath. Time to do my martial arts stretches and warm up a bit. But I forgot my
morning routine when sounds echoed up the narrow valley below me.

I scrambled up, inched out onto a promontory and peered over
a tumble of moss-covered stones. Down below on the trail snaked a long trail of
armed men, blurred by a long grayish drift of mist, but the brown uniforms were
frighteningly visible.

At their head, his dark hair and stony profile clear between
dissipating wreaths of fog, was War Commander Randart.

Hunger, everything fled my mind. As Mom would say,
It’s time to beat feet.

o0o

The Duke and Duchess of Frazhan rode out with Lord and
Lady Kender to meet the women.

They met on a high bridge built over a cascading fall down
the side of a mountain. The road had brought them within sight of Ivory
Mountain, on the other side of the river valley. It was a beautiful sight with
its white crown of snow even in summer, the highest peak shrouded in cloud.

Journey’s end.

Atanial straightened up as the ducal pair rode toward them.
The duke and duchess were both quite old, white-haired, hard to read as
aristocrats typically were. Lord Kender was a tall, lean, handsome man, but
Atanial’s attention focused solely on his wife, a short, round woman with an
intelligent dark gaze framed by wispy silver hair.

Like the ducal pair, Lady Starveas and her husband wore
Colendi-style linen over robes, paneled up the sides, with ornamental long
sleeves dagged back at an angle. Hers was pale mauve over violet; the duchess
and her duke wore white over gray. Lord Kender was the most brightly dressed,
his over-robe a rich green with stylized golden rye beards along the hem.

The duke’s voice was thin and reedy as he introduced them
all.