The King's Name (22 page)

"Negotiations should go more smoothly without him," Raul agreed.

"Let us hope they have learned a lesson from this battle, and are prepared to beg forgiveness and make peace," Cadraith said.

"I don't know what they might have learned from this battle," I said. "They broke, but really, nobody won. As for begging forgiveness, it's too late for Cinvar, anyway; they fought Urdo himself, there's no possible excuse."

Atha jerked up her chin in emphatic agreement. "We want vengeance," she said.

"Aurien is dead," Urdo said, very firmly. "She is the only person who has wronged you directly.

We very much appreciate your help, and when peace is restored we will make you and your army fine gifts, discussing at that time what will please you. But I will not make my kingdom a desert for vengeance for your herald."

"Very well," said Atha, and tossed her head. The spikes of her limed hair did not move at all. I
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wondered if it was actually stiff enough to hurt someone.

"I will go to them again in the morning," Raul said. "And I will speak to them about sending someone through to Caer Tanaga."

"Double sentries tonight, and a wide sentry-ring," Urdo said. "There is a stream here, so we have water. Let us all rest as best we can; tomorrow is likely to be another busy day."

—12—

"We will keep to our old ways and the traditions of our ancestors, and you cannot make us change. Such is the law on this island, old man!' said Sulien Glynsdottar, putting down her cup, and glaring fiercely about her."

—From The Life of St. Cinwil

We made camp on the hillside, with the stream inside our inner sentry-ring and a strong outer sentry-ring set all around. Govien managed to get our ala sorted out smoothly. All the same he rolled his eyes when I came up to him by his tent. "I wish Emlin were here," he said. "Ernlin would have known all the answers to Dalmer's questions without needing to ask Nodol."

"No he wouldn't," I said, as reassuringly as I could. I also missed Emlin's cheerful competence.

"You're doing very well, Govien. We're finished before Cadraith's ala." I started to swing my arms to stretch the weariness of battle out of my shoulders.

"But not before Urdo's," he pointed out, truthfully. "I don't think I'm suited to be a tribuno,"

he said, putting down a wax tablet. "I find it so hard to keep track of everything."

"Everyone does," I said.

"Not thinking of running out on ap Gwien, are you?" asked Masarn, coming up behind us and stepping carefully around my turning arms. "Can't do that, you know. It's an emergency?"

I laughed, and bent to touch my toes.

"I wasn't thinking of running out," Govien said quickly. "I'm just not so good at doing Emlin's job. He's really the tribuno. I'd rather be just looking after my own pennon."

"Well, I'm not really a praefecto," Masarn said, twitching his white cloak into place. "But, fortunately, I only have to do the tribuno's work because Urdo's his own praefecto. And whatever Gormant may think, he has been ever since you left us, Sulien."

"And I'd much rather never have left you," I said, straightening up and rolling my shoulders. I could feel muscles loosening all the way down my back. "I can't say I'm not really a king, though."

"Indeed you can't," Masarn said. "If you were only a prae-fecto, the way I am, you could get out of having dinner with Atha on the grounds that you were exhausted from the battle, or because your ala needed you.

As it is—"

"Masarn, if I have to eat with her then you do too!" I said.

"I wouldn't miss it for anything," he assured me.

I looked at him suspiciously.

"That's where the best food will be," he said. "And if we get to talking about the next battle I won't have to suggest strategies. I can leave that to you and just agree with everything you say."

I laughed. "If I see you doing any such thing I will take your plate away."

Masarn made the face he made at his children when they were misbehaving, the one that made them stop and laugh at the same time.

"I can manage here," Govien said. He even managed to smile at Masarn, but he looked worn and weary.

What he needed, what the whole ala needed, was a good rest.

"We're none of us young anymore," Masarn said as we walked together through the camp.

"None of us who fought through the War," I replied. "There are plenty of young armigers still."

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As if to prove my point, a young groom ran past, laughing, holding a blanket, one of Hiveth's pennon chasing after.

"It's easier for the young," Masarn said, watching them giggling and tussling.

"But don't you miss it?" I asked.

"Miss what?" He looked at me. "I'm here, aren't I?" He hesitated for a moment. "Did you ever know a veteran who left an ala and settled near it who didn't come to practice sometimes? That's why I'm still fit to fight, and all the other veterans in the ranks. The thing is, you hear the trumpet for practice at dawn and you roll over and thank merciful God you're not out there in the rain.

Then a sunny day comes and you hear it blowing.

Then you think, why not, it would be a change and you can see your friends. Maybe that's missing it. Maybe.

But the important thing is when you hear the trumpet blowing the alarm.

"Then you know where you belong. I could have stayed home. I could always have stayed home.

Nobody ever made me join the ala, it was my own choice. But if the trumpet's blowing the alarm, well, how could I? How could anyone who knew how to ride and use weapons?"

"Why did you join in the beginning?" I asked, curious. It was a question we never asked. Once you had sworn to ride as Urdo's armiger then that was enough.

"Why do you think?" he asked.

"Well, I always thought everyone joined for the excitement, or to win a glorious name for themselves."

Masarn laughed. "And how old were you when you realized not everybody was just like you?"

I squirmed a little. "So you were fighting for the Peace all along?"

"No." Masarn looked serious for a moment. "Now, yes, but not when I joined; I didn't have any more idea what

Peace was then than anyone else. I thought I was lucky to have a wife who had a trade, and that's as far as I

thought about anything past my own nose. I was in the city guard at Caer Tanaga, before Urdo took the crown. He asked us if any of us would like to become armigers. Garwen thought I was mad, but I did it. She kept saying that fighting wasn't any trade for a man who likes his food the way I do, and she was right. But it was the only chance I was likely to have to be near the horses." His face relaxed as he thought of them.

"Marchel taught all of us recruits to ride. When Urdo gave me White-foot it was as if the world had found harmony and the White God had set me in my right place already."

"I have always loved horses," I said.

"They're easier to love than people," Masarn said, and before I could think of anything to say to that, we had arrived at Urdo's big tent.

All our banners were flying outside it and it all looked very splendid. This big tent was made of very fine Black

Isarna-gan leather. Instead of being put up with whatever wood could be found around, like a normal tent, it had special support poles. It was carefully made of sewn leather, and almost entirely weatherproof. It even had a curtain that could be set up inside to make it into two rooms. It could hold twelve people, at a push.

Glividen had designed it during the war. It needed a packhorse to itself, but it was worth the trouble. Most tents had barely room for two people to sit and talk, but with Urdo's big tent there was room for a council with maps spread out, even in the rain.

I followed Masarn inside. Urdo was sitting with Cadraith, an old man with unbound hair and the long shawl of an oracle-priest, and a middle-aged woman with a shawl over her head in the Demedian manner. Darien was standing to pour wine. Everyone rose as we came in, and bowed.

"Sulien, you know Atha ap Gren," Urdo said, presenting the woman. I blinked. I had not known her. She had dressed and washed her face, and with her hair covered she looked just like anyone else.

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"I am honored to meet you," I said, and bowed. Darien handed me a cup of wine. I smiled at him.

"And this is Inis ap Fathag," Urdo said, introducing the old man.

I bowed, but the old man shook his head. "I shall go no more by the name of my honored father, although I

have carried it all my life. I shall be known henceforward as Inis, Grandfather of Heroes." He turned to Atha.

"Do you hear that, girl? Have that worthless poet my daughter married put that into the praise song he makes over my ashes this autumn."

Atha laughed, sounding unamused. "Will you set me impossible tasks even beyond the grave, Grandfather?"

"Ah, so you count yourself a hero?" he asked. Atha looked furious, as well she might. She had as good a claim to be considered a hero as anyone I had ever met. "Amagien will be delighted to do it. He is pulling mourning around him like a cloak. Nothing poor Conal did for him alive was good enough, but he will use his death to build the son he imagines he should have liked to have." Inis turned back to me, and bowed in formal greeting. "I owe you a great debt, Sulien ap Gwien."

He was bent with age, but he had been a tall man. I had often thought, looking at Lew, that Conal must have got his looks from his mother's family. Inis was very old but he was still a handsome man, even with his hair disordered and the front of it shaved in the fashion of oracle-priests. I thought that I was seeing not only where

Conal got his pretty face but also where he learned his way of talking.

I bowed again. "If one of your heroic grandchildren was Conal the Victor, then it is I who owe you a debt, for

Conal saved my life."

"You saved him from many other, more foolish, deaths," Inis said. "And you sent the memory of his honorable death home, for which I honor you, as Conal's wretched father Amagien bade me honor you. He stayed in Oriel writing the poem to make his son's memory immortal."

"Is he a very bad poet?" I asked.

Cadraith looked horrified, but Inis laughed. "I almost wish he were, for if so it would be very easy to dismiss him altogether as someone who needs no consideration. But in fact he is a good poet, when he is honest, which is seldom enough. He was a very bad father, and so poor Conal grew up thinking he could never be good enough. Conal was a very good warrior; it was his great misfortune that his cousin Darag was a better one."

Of course, I realized, this old man was Darag's grandfather as well. That was why Atha, Darag's widow, addressed him so. I looked at Atha. She was frowning. "I never met Darag, but he must have shone very brightly to outshine Conal," I said.

"He did," Atha said flatly.

"And he is dead, and Conal is dead," Inis interrupted. "Dead, and here we are to avenge him, for what good everyone imagines it will do."

"If you keep on like this I shall send you back to Thansethan," Atha said between her teeth.

Urdo closed his eyes for a moment. "Have you been to Thansethan?" he asked Inis politely.

"I have just come back from a visit to the hospitable monks," Inis said. Darien set down the wine jug. You would have had to know him to see that he was doing it with extra care. All the same Inis shot him a shrewd glance. "You need not fear, young hawk, they will do nothing for or against anyone until all is decided. Well, they will take in the queen whenever she gets so far, which is sometimes before that, but that is scarcely action to shake our path. I spoke to them about the gods of Tir Isarnagiri and about the way the worlds will go. Father Gerthmol was
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terrified." He giggled, very high-pitched, almost like a woman. "I told them what a thread we are all hanging by. I think they are praying I am mad."

"You are mad, of course," Atha said, as if it were an accepted thing. They both laughed. The rest of us looked at them awkwardly. Masarn rubbed the sides of his head as if they hurt. "Be careful, Grandfather, you are getting near where you will lose the thread of words."

"I have seen eighty-nine summers, forty-two of them across all the worlds. I will be dead before midwinter,"

Inis said. "Of course I am mad."

"You said the queen will escape to Thansethan?" Urdo asked, leaning forward.

"Most of the time," Inis said. "After you are dead, of course. It's where she wants to be, after all.

They'd be fools not to take her." He shook his head a little as if to clear it. "But every world is different," he said, rocking

on his heels a little. "You have changed so much here that it is only the great patterns and events that are certain. It is possible she will choose to die instead."

"Is she well now?" Urdo asked.

Atha raised a hand. "The more you press him the less precise he gets," she warned. "He really is mad, you know, and the more he thinks about this sort of question the further he gets from being able to talk sensibly."

Inis cackled again. "She's right, she's absolutely right. What I see is not what is or what will be.

Often enough you married Mardol's daughter, and she was not so proud. She bore you two sons, but the monks took her in at the end just the same."

Cadraith gasped. Urdo looked as distressed as I had ever seen him.

"Hush now, grandfather," Atha said. "You're getting confused."

He looked at her. "You always die old," he said. Atha looked as if he had slapped her.

Masarn cleared his throat. "I think the food is here," he said. Sure enough, Talog was hesitating in the tent entrance with a large steaming bowl. It was porridge, of course. We sat down to eat.

Inis was mercifully quiet, rocking to and fro, though the rest of us exchanged a little chatter about the weather and the camp. When we had finished the porridge, Talog brought in two chickens, jointed and fried over the fire. I wondered where they had come from, and hoped they were bought at the roadside rather than stolen. I knew there could not have been enough for everyone. That didn't stop me from enjoying my share. After we had finished and wiped our hands Urdo drew out a map of the southeastern part of Tir Tanagiri from the heap on his box.