The King's Peace (47 page)

Emlin looked out of the window at the darkness. "He's your brother."

"Oh speak plainly and never mind that, the important thing is the ala."

He looked back at me, reassured. "Well, Galba trained him well. But he's not fought in war, and he's never really been one of us. He's always been at home and not living in barracks. He's very quiet, and he is the Lord of Derwen, not an armiger the way you and Galba and ap Mardol are. Then again, he's touchy because of that, and if anyone else was in charge of the ala down here he would be a decurio under them, and that would be very uncomfortable for everyone. I certainly wouldn't want to do that, and I don't want to be a praefecto anyway. And unless you stay here there's nobody else."

"I really don't have much choice," I said, and stood up, sighing. "You get on and find out about volunteers for me. I'll ask him." A dance was just finishing, and Veniva raised her hand to signal dinner. "No, wait and do that after you've eaten," I said. "We can discuss the volunteers after breakfast tomorrow."

People began to divide themselves among the alcoves, and the servants brought in plates of food. Daldaf came up and showed me where I should sit, with Veniva, Morien, Kerys, Lew, and Emer. Conal Fishface was not there, fortunately, and I realized that of course he could not eat with Emer. I could not say anything to Morien with the others there. I ate and listened to the others talking and wished I was asleep. Emer and Veniva steered the conversation clear of the shoals, and Lew spoke to Morien much as a steady old sequifer speaks to a young decurio.

As soon as we had finished eating Morien strode out into the center of the room and took the big harp from where the musicians had left it. I had not heard him play since he was a child.

Darien and Aurien and I had learned the least amount of music Veniva had considered acceptable and then stopped; none of us had ever come near the big harp.

Morien had more of an ear for it. I remembered my mother telling Darien that it was a great thing for a lord to be good enough to give the first tune after a feast, but Darien had laughed and run off with me. Morien, it seemed, was that good.

Then he started to play, and I saw that he was as good as any musicians I had heard at Caer Tanaga. He played an old Tanagan lullaby I remembered my nurse playing, about a girl so beautiful that flowers grew where she walked. I saw Emer smiling to hear it, and wondered if she, too, was thinking about her sister. Then Kerys got up and took the little drum and they sang and played together, ap Erbin's brother's song about the red-cloaks.

When they had finished, they smiled at each other, for the rhythm is difficult to hold.

Emer came forward and murmured to them, and Morien played while she sang an Isarnagan song about a warrior who spent seven days hunting the giant boar and went home to find seven hundred years had passed and all his kin perished.

Afterwards I drummed my feet as loudly as everyone else, and congratulated Morien heartily. Having seen him do something well made it much easier for me to find words to ask him to command the ala, and we did not flare up at each other again as I had thought we might. I went to bed and slept soundly until Daldaf woke me, as I had asked, at first light.

—28—

On they rushed, that great tide of barbarians, coming ahead as if the border and the legion before them meant nothing, crying aloud in their own wild tongue as they ran towards the waiting spearpoints. Afterwards I asked one of the prisoners what the words meant, and he
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told me that as near as he could put it in Vincan it meant "Death, Death, drink bright blood, whoever shall fall shall be counted fortunate!" I asked him why they had not stayed on their own side of the border, and he said they wanted to come in to the Empire. I asked him if he hadn t known he must inevitably lose against the might of the legion, but he just looked at me with his bright eyes and said that victory always lay in the hand of Fortune. Yet this was an intelligent man who spoke Vincan, a noble among his people. He afterwards served me well and rose to the rank of decurion.

—Marcia Antonilla, The Third Malmish War

The rain had stopped for the time being. The grass was heavy with cold wet beads of dew, soaking into my boots as I walked away from the town. A chill wind was blowing out of the west and I wrapped my cloak closer. Dusk lingered under the trees. The boles of the birches glimmered pale. The waking birds were calling out to each other and took little notice of me as I walked below them. Once the mattock I had borrowed chinked against the swords in my bag, and there was silence for a moment before the birds began chirping again louder than ever.

I expected to have some trouble finding the place, but my feet knew the way. Before long I was surprised to find myself on a new path through the trees. I wondered who came this way often enough to make a track.

When I came to the place where I had burned my brother I saw a neat little grave maker. There was a blackened place nearby where someone had been burning offerings. I bent to look. The stone was local goldenstone and well shaped, but the letters were not very even. "Darien, son of Gwien, of Derwen," it read. "I lived dear to my family. I gave up my life when I was sixteen years old in defense of my home. Here lie my ashes, part of the Earth and all that is holy. I beg you who pass this place to bear in mind my name and think kindly of me."

I bit my lip. In defense of his home, yes, and in defense of me most particularly. I wondered why Veniva, whose letters regularly informed me as to the precise quantities of linen sold that month and how the oil extracted from the flaxseed helped to preserve wood, had never mentioned raising this stone. Reading it I could picture her disputing with Gwien what words would be best to set on it. I felt tears burning in my eyes, but they did not fall. I took out Ulf s swords, wrapped in cloth. I remembered Darien every day, my brother, my best friend.

There was always something to make me think of him as he had been. Here I could only remember how he looked when I put him on the pyre, without even his armor, which I had been wearing. His sword still hung at my side. It had seen me through countless battles. I wanted to say something to him, but he was not there. He had gone on.

I raised up my arms to the gods, and called their names. I wished I knew a hymn or a proper form of words to use. Everyone learns the Hymn of Returning, for death is everywhere and nobody knows when it will fall to their turn to send back someone whose name they know. I now regretted that I had never learned any of the other hymns of the Lord of Death. When I was young I had learned what my mother considered essential, and then I had gone on to learn more hymns of healing as I had found people to teach them to me. I had always meant to learn more hymns and praise songs both, but since I had left home there had been so little time for learning things outside my craft. In the alae I often thought myself well taught in such things, for many there had grown up with little chance to learn much about the gods. It was among them, of course, that the priests of the White God made so many of their converts. Now I stood with my arms open in a waiting silence and knew myself ignorant and untaught.

I do not know how long I stood there like that, tears on my face, unable to find words, not knowing what to do next nor how to go on. At last I lowered my arms and drew Ulf s swords out from their wrappings. The rising sun should have shone onto them, but the trees were in the way. "I have brought them as I promised," I said to my absent brother.

"Your killer's weapons."

There was a sound from behind me, a rustle and a gasp. I spun round, readying the sword.

Veniva was standing there, alone. Her hair was held up by her gold comb. The hem of her overdress was soaked by dew. She was staring at me. "Oh Sulien!" she said.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

I lowered the sword slowly and straightened. Even now I couldn't tell her about Ulf and what had happened, either in that clearing or on top of Foreth. We had never talked about it. I might had told Gwien, if he had lived, but even with him my lips might not have obeyed me. "I don't know," I said, at last. "Why didn't you tell me—" I gestured to the stone and the offering place.

She shook her head sorrowfully. "Let us try to do better in future," was all she said.

She took the swords from me and looked at them, turning them over in her hands. Then she took a breath and sang a hymn to the Dark Lady, a hymn of grave goods brought late to the pyre and revenge completed. Then together we buried the swords and burned over them the incense and sweet wood Veniva had brought. It was full daylight when we walked back together.

"I shall tell Morien that Darien is avenged," Veniva said when we parted inside the gates. "He should know that, but that will be enough to content him." I embraced her, and she went off into the house with the mattock in her hand, smiling a little. I went to the barracks to find Emlin.

I set off midmorning for Caer Gloran. I took with me two pennons' worth of volunteers.

I could have had more if I had wanted to take them. Many of them I had come to know in the ride down, and quite a few of them I remembered from when Galba and I had brought two pennons down to Derwen after Caer Lind. I breakfasted in the barracks with Emlin while we talked over their skills. Then we set off over the hills, the way I had gone so long ago when I first left Derwen. There was a visible track to follow now, very muddy after all the rain. We stopped for the night at the new little settlement by the mines. They called it Nant Gefalion, the blacksmith's stream, because there were so many forges there. There was even a rough wall around it and a wooden watchtower, making it a safe place for an ala to stop for the night. As we rode toward the stables, Marchel's husband, ap Wyn the Smith, came out of one of them and greeted me, asking news of his wife and his brother.

"When I last saw ap Thurrig she was well and in Caer Gloran," I said, leaning down. He was sweating and covered in black dust; even his face had black streaks where he had wiped his hair back. Even though it was twilight, he still had his forge fire burning hot inside.

Half a dozen of his helpers were looking on from inside the forge door. "She did very well in the battle at Foreth," I added, in case he had not heard.

"I am proud of her," he said. "I will go back to Caer Gloran to see her soon if she is staying there. And how is my brother?"

"I do not think I know him," I said.

"I thought you had come from Derwen? He is steward there."

It took me longer than it should have. "Daldaf ap Wyn? Of course. You do not look at all alike,"

I said. That explained why Daldaf seemed to think himself one of the family, if his brother was married to Marchel whose brother had been married to Kerys's sister. It was neither the first time nor the last time I considered how much more complicated kinship ties made the world. "He is very well and took no hurt in the siege."

I declined invitations to drink with ap Wyn when he had finished his forging. I went straight to my tent and slept well that night. When Nant Gefalion was out of sight we were out of Derwen land and into the northern corner of Magor. Although there was nothing to mark the boundary, I could tell when we crossed it. Beauty's hooves seemed to fall differently on the mud.

Our messenger had caught Marchel on her way, and she waited for us where the track joined the
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road, where I had first joined the ala in battle. The highroad stretched out in both directions.

Across it I could see the silver glimmer of the River Havren. It had been raining a little, and now in late afternoon the sun had pushed its way through the clouds, and everything was steaming gently. The horses called greetings and challenges to each other as we came up. Marchel came forward to greet us.

"We may as well camp here tonight and decide what we're doing," she said. "If we go back to Caer Gloran the armigers will make themselves comfortable at home and be hard to start on time, or start out more tired. They've said good-bye; I think it's better not to do it again. And your troops look as if they need the rest."

"We've been doing some hard riding," I agreed, though I would have liked to go the few hours farther to Caer Gloran to have a bath and see Amala. I passed on her husband's greetings and then gave the order to my pennons to camp and rest with the others.

Marchel and I went on to her tent. "Have you heard from Urdo?" I asked as soon as we were inside. She shook her head. We sat down on her blankets.

"It's just too far," she said, picking up a leather cup and pulling it into shape. "That's the worst of it. I wish we knew what he was doing. Even with the highroad going all the way from the gates of Caer Gloran and assuming the messenger changes horses and rides flat out it's a good three days, and another three back of course. I sent as soon as your messenger reached me and again today. I can't expect to hear back from the first message for another two or three days. And even by now it will be completely out-of-date and useless." She sighed.

"I sent when I sent to you, from Magor. He'll have that first message yesterday or today, I think. Then I sent again when they were settled, which message he should have tomorrow or the day after." She poured ale from a full skm into the leather cup and handed it to me. I turned it in my hand as she filled her own cup. "We probably shouldn't wait to hear," I added.

"Of course not." She raised her cup to me, then drained it. I did the same. "Look, are you sure the Isarnagans down there are going to stay peaceful?"

"No," I admitted. "If I really felt sure I'd have brought Galba's ala. As it is I left it with my brother Morien. I don't think they'll break their oaths, and they'll be busy, but I didn't want to leave the town undefended and leave them the temptation."