The Free Kingdoms (Book 2) (7 page)

“It is over,” Daniel said. “All over.” And refused to elaborate further.

#

Whelan woke that night to screams and the sound of clashing swords. No guards stood inside the tent, and Roderick already strapped on his sword while Ethan crawled groggily from his bedding. Daniel sat next to a smoky lantern by the tent door, fully dressed, with his sword across his lap and his eyes closed as if meditating. Whelan pulled on his boots and strapped his sword on, then hurried toward the door.

Daniel opened his eyes. Shadows danced across his face from the lamp. “No. Stay in here.”

Whelan said, “What is going on? How did the eorl get past our guards?”

Daniel spoke louder. “You will stay inside tonight, brothers. What passes is none of your business.” Outside, the battle raged. A horse screamed and the smell of smoke filled the air.

Roderick hesitated, then unstrapped his sword and tossed it to his bedding. He sat back down to wait.

Whelan looked from one brother to the other in disbelief. “What is going on here? Men are dying outside. Listen!”

He pushed past Daniel to go outside. Daniel put his hand out to stop him, but there was no force there, only pleading in his touch. Outside, his eyes adjusted to the moonlight and sight of burning tents. The night was so cold it made him gasp.

For a moment he couldn’t move, but stood in place, stunned. The horsemen wore the finest Eriscoban leather covered in steel leaves, and carried two-handed swords that looked too massive for an ordinary man to hold. Even the horses were unusually large and covered in armor, and they trampled any who dared stand in their way. One of the mounted men blew a silver trumpet, and other trumpets answered from the woods around them.

Knights Temperate.
They’d promised to fight at Castle Brach, and so they did.

They cut through the Arvadan army like dogs amongst sheep, even though there were five of Father’s men for every knight, and hundreds more pressing in from the sides. But these newcomers blanched when several dozen knights poured in from the south edge of the camp to join the battle. The king’s guard stood stronger against this attack, but even they were no match for the Knights Temperate.

The battle centered around a small knot of men in front of Father’s tent, which lay trampled and collapsed. Father himself fought in the light of a nearby campfire. He drove back one dismounted knight, before two others pressed in to attack. The king’s guard drove them back, but only for a moment.

Whelan pushed his way into the crowd and found himself under immediate attack by a knight who staggered from his dying horse, a spear through its neck. He stood no taller than Whelan, but was built like an oak tree and fully armored. He held a massive two-handed sword in hand and danced lightly on his feet, swinging the sword in front of him.

“Out of my way, boy,” the man said. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Traitor!”

Whelan threw himself at the man, swinging his sword as hard as he could. Steel clanged against steel, but the stronger, older man turned aside his blows with ease and knocked him backwards. Whelan brought his sword up to block a ferocious blow and the blade shattered at the impact.

Whelan lunged forward with the broken hilt. Rage swept aside all wisdom. The man lifted his sword overhead and Whelan closed his eyes, feeling the bite of steel before it came.

“What?” the man grunted suddenly, staggering backwards.

The man’s sword lay at Whelan’s feet. He cast aside his own broken blade and reached to pick it up, but before he could, it leapt into Whelan’s hands of its own volition. It trembled beneath his hands and felt so warm that he wondered if it had been in a fire just moments earlier. He held the sword uncertainly in his hands. It was a huge thing, but its weight was much lighter than he’d expected. Another knight spotted the plight of Whelan’s unarmed opponent and tossed him a sword and the man pressed the attack again.

I am Soultrup,
the sword whispered in Whelan’s ear.
Now fight!
 

Suddenly, every muscle in Whelan’s body stood at the ready. He danced to one side, parrying the man’s blow and delivering his own attack that drove the man backwards. He knocked the man’s sword from his hands and cut into his shoulder along the leather armor. A horse trampled in Whelan’s path, pushing him back and he didn’t know if he’d killed the man or not.

He stood a few feet from his father, in a shrinking knot of men. Father eyed him with approval. “Where are those fool brothers of yours?” He parried a blow. Sweat poured down his face and rose steaming into the frigid air.

Whelan shook his head, unwilling and unable to answer that question. Did they still wait in the tent for the battle to resolve itself?

Suddenly father staggered forward, eyes blinking with surprise. Two unhorsed knights stood behind him, swords dripping with blood. The king fell to the ground, one hand landing in the campfire. He rolled away from the flames and onto his back where he lifted his sword to defend himself. Other knights poured into the circle, pushing aside the last of the king’s guard. Whelan rushed to help his father but was swept out of the way.

The first knight knocked away the king’s sword. The second lifted his blade over his head and swung it at Richard’s head. The blow was so hard that it cut through muscle, bone, and sinew, separating the king’s head from his body. The body twitched and the eyes blinked twice, as if surprised by this strange turn of events. A trumpet sounded to Whelan’s right and the fighting stopped immediately. Men on both sides threw down their weapons.

Whelan stood panting and blinking his eyes, unable to tear his gaze away from his father’s dead body. A numb feeling spread from his gut. A handful of tents burned like funeral pyres not twenty feet away and nobody moved to quench their flames.

Chantmer the Tall strode through the crowd, his face barely visible from his dark hood. “Throw down your sword, my prince. There is no sense fighting any longer.”

Whelan threw down his sword. “You are a traitor.”

“No,” Daniel said behind him. Several men stood at his side, a mixture of king’s guard and Knights Temperate. He stood taller than Whelan remembered and the look on his face was much older than his twenty years. “Father was the traitor. He took vows of peace, and promised to follow the crooked path.”

Whelan staggered back. “You!”

Daniel said, “The Brotherhood and the Order held a council. This was not my choice. But neither did I try to stop it. Now, brother, in the morning we return to the Citadel to mend the damage caused by Father and his minister.”

Three men dragged this “minister” into the light. Nathaliey Liltige and Narud followed behind, chanting spells that kept the wizard bound.

“Bring him here,” Chantmer commanded.

“What is the meaning of this?” Cragyn demanded, face paling even as he surveyed the wizards arrayed against him. “The Order will hear about this. I will call a full assembly and you will—”

“We
are
the Order,” Chantmer the Tall snapped. “And we have learned all about your dark arts and the poisonous advice you gave the king.”

He reached out his hands and seized Cragyn’s robe. He tore free the amulet around his neck, throwing it to the ground, then ripped open the robe from Cragyn’s neck to his breast. Cragyn fell to the ground with a cry.

“Cragyn, I hereby rename you Cragyn the Fallen. By the Thorne and the Wounded Hand, we rebuke you and cast you from the Order. You are hereby banished from Eriscoba! Be gone!”

It was a powerful spell and stripped Cragyn of much of his power. His face drained of color, then he rose to his feet and pulled away from the hands that held him.

“This is not the end,” Cragyn promised, looking over his shoulder as he strode from the light of the fire. “No, you fools, it is only the beginning.”

#

“The Eorl doesn’t want war,” Chantmer the Tall had advised Daniel as the young king and his brother Whelan hunted in the hilly fields just west of Arvada. “He only wants the respect of the king, and the assurance that his lands remain free.”

Daniel swung a lure around his head to attract his falcon, which had missed its quarry and now sat perched in a tree, confused. “So what do you suggest? Should I bring him to Arvada and make him my adviser?”

Whelan shook his head. “Thirty heads rotted on poles outside Brach castle when Father’s army approached the gates. It’s rumored that as a child, the eorl pushed his sister into the swamp and drowned her. The man doesn’t belong anywhere near the Citadel. Any more than Father did,” he added.

The wizard followed the two young men as they searched along the hedge for the missing rabbit. “I don’t mean to bring the eorl himself, just his daughter.”

“A hostage, you mean?” Daniel asked. “I don’t like it.”

Whelan laughed. Daniel could be so obtuse sometimes. Chantmer’s beard twitched and Whelan saw that the old wizard was trying hard not to smile. “Not a hostage,” the wizard said. “Unless you mean to keep your wife in the dungeon.”

Daniel frowned. “My wife? You want me to marry her?”

Chantmer said, “It would turn the eorl from an enemy into an ally. He would like nothing more than to see his grandson rule the Citadel some day. Indeed, I must confess that this idea only occurred to me because the eorl himself hinted broadly of such an alliance at your father’s burial.”

“It sounds like foolishness to me,” Whelan said. “You should have nothing to do with the eorl or his daughter. Let him stay free if he wishes. He is no concern of ours.”

But Daniel nodded slowly. “If we leave him be, he will cause trouble on the Marches for years. I haven’t yet earned enough trust from the other Free Kingdoms that they will join me to force a peace. Yes, if it will bring peace, a marriage alliance.”

“Markal was right,” Chantmer said, a grudging admiration in his voice. The two wizards didn’t care for each other. “You are already wiser than your father. Now, the only question is, which daughter?”

“Tell me what you know of the girls,” Daniel said.

Disgusted, Whelan forged ahead along the hedge, leaving the wizard and Daniel to hammer out the details of the marriage alliance to the Brachs. A flash of brown fur burst from the hedge ahead of him, racing down the hill. Everything forgotten for the moment, Whelan pulled the hood from his falcon and threw it into the air. The bird spotted the fleeing rabbit immediately and set off in pursuit. The rabbit screamed as the falcon sank its claws into the creature’s back.

Whelan whistled and waved his lure to recall the bird. It stayed on the rabbit for a moment, looked uncertainly at the dead animal, then lifted in the air and returned to Whelan’s fist. He fed it a scrap of dried meat, hooded the falcon and went to retrieve the rabbit.

Thank the Brothers that Whelan wasn’t the king. He would never marry for political reasons. He imagined the eorl’s daughter. A shrewd, foul-tempered woman, her temperament exactly like her father’s. And ugly, like the eorl’s son Lanchman, with perpetually bloodshot eyes and a nose the shape and color of a fat radish.

He picked the rabbit up by his legs and waved it to Daniel. His brother left Chantmer’s side, striding ahead to see. Chantmer remained on the hillside, hands clasped together and covered by his sleeves. Scheming, no doubt.

Whelan shook his head.
Wizards.
 

#

Whelan had been wrong about Serena na Brach. So very wrong.

She arrived at the Citadel during the fall harvest, a few weeks after Chantmer first suggested the idea. She came with a handful of armed men, two serving girls, and strangely, Whelan thought, a harp. The weather still held and so Daniel kept court in the yard between Sanctuary Tower and the Golden Tower. As the setting sun cast the Golden Tower in a reddish gold hue, Serena played the harp with deft fingers and sang.

Her voice was as clear as the icicles that already hung from the trees in her northern home. Her face was as achingly beautiful as her voice, Whelan thought, both delicate and full of life at the same time. But neither of these things made him love her. He’d seen beautiful singers before. No, it was the vulnerable look in her eyes, the aching in her voice, and finally, the
loneliness.
 

Yes, loneliness. Whelan was sure of it. This girl, who couldn’t be more than sixteen years old, was completely alone in the world with no friend or confidant. He envied his brother for the first time.

She would make a perfect match for Daniel. Whelan’s kind and gentle brother would treat her so differently from what the girl knew of King Richard and would no doubt expect of his son. But when Whelan looked to his brother, he was shifting uncomfortably in his seat. A look of dismay passed through the young man’s eyes, as if he understood at last that he would be married to a woman he didn’t know. His brother felt nothing for this girl, Whelan noted with surprise.

Serena finished. The last note hung on the air, replaced only by the shrill cries from hundreds of birds lifting from nests on the towers to hunt insects at twilight. And then Whelan began a great shout and applause that rippled through the gathered lords, knights, and wizards.

When the applause died and Serena began anew, a soft voice said over Whelan’s shoulder, “A good match, don’t you think, young prince?” Whelan turned, startled, to see Markal Talebearer watching him with a shrewd look on his face.

“She has a beautiful voice,” Whelan said with a shrug, unwilling to commit his opinions further. He knew little of the man, but guessed there was a reason some called him the Meddler. Still, he admired the man for no other reason than his well-known disagreements with Chantmer the Tall, a man Whelan found impossible to trust.

“It must be difficult as the younger brother of the king, to watch him grow into his power, instead of the boy and brother you remember.”

“I don’t envy Daniel. The burdens of a king are too great for my shoulders.”

“Yes, I imagine you might think so. For now. But there are those who will whisper treason in the ear of a bored prince.”

Whelan frowned, wondering whether Markal hoped to trick him into some sort of confession of crimes. “And if they do, I will kill them like the dogs they are.”