Stronghold Page 7

  Walvis knew he ought not smile at Isulki superstitions. He had witnessed Sunrunners and sorcerers do too many incredible things to joke at other beliefs. Still, he had always heard these portents of the Desert tribes with a certain degree of amusement. Kazander’s dark solemnity was something new in his experience.

  “And to your wisest ones, all this means . . . ?” he asked.

  “The goat—that terrible things await, and will last three seasons or three years, depending on who one consults. The cloud is interpreted as disaster descending upon the Desert in the form of fire.” He paused, and a hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Although I remember that ten springs ago, Sunrunner’s Fire very nearly incinerated us all!”

  Walvis smiled back, remembering how Pol had ignited the very sands in his battle against Ianthe’s son Ruval. The young prince had been teased ever since about a tendency toward arson. In fact, it had been this inconceivable occurrence that had brought Kazander and his father to Remagev to find out just what in Hells had caused it.

  Kazander went on, “The great wind tells us that the danger and death will come from Dorval.”

  “Impossible, Kazander.”

  “The noble Prince Chadric can have no possible quarrel with us here. Unless the mighty athri, husband to the legendary Princess Tobin, has been cheating him on the silk revenues again.” They both smiled at the old joke, but Walvis saw that Kazander was only going through the expected motions. “The final sign, that of blood-visions, I have seen myself. I am not ashamed to admit that while any one of these might be dismissed, taken all together they frighten me.”

  “Only a fool ignores the warnings of the Goddess. Is it your wish that I inform the High Prince?”

  The korrus nodded. “Yes. There is one other thing. A star was seen rising—not falling, mind you, rising—into the constellation of the Father of Dragons. This can mean only one thing.”

  “Pol.”

  “None other.”

  “So despite these horrors to come, Pol will prevail.”

  Kazander hesitated, then shrugged. “I would be serving him and you badly if I did not repeat the caution our wisest ones gave me. Whereas most are agreed that this star means ascendency, there are some who warn that it may mean the opposite. That Prince Pol will indeed ascend—but on Desert winds, his ashes to join with those of his azhrei ancestors.”

  Walvis took a long swallow of wine. “This is not an interpretation I favor, Kazander. And I don’t believe the High Prince will like it much, either.”

  • • •

  There was no banquet that night. One had been planned for the following evening to celebrate the conclusion of the annual little war, and Feylin declined to upset her household by destroying their careful arrangements. The Isulk’im ate in the mess, their korrus with Walvis, Feylin, and Chayla. Kazander was as flamboyant in his praise and as outrageous in his suggestions to Feylin as ever, but hardly addressed a word to Chayla. He did, however, look. Constantly.

  After he left to check on his men and horses, Chayla asked Walvis, “What in the world is his problem?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have my teeth turned green? Doesn’t he like me? He wouldn’t talk to me at all—just stared!”

  Feylin covered laughter with a fit of coughing. Her preemption of that ploy—it would have seemed odd if they’d both choked on wine simultaneously—left the time-honored “I dropped something on the floor” for Walvis. He searched the carpet beneath his chair until he could control his features, then sat up again and smiled, the deliberately jettisoned spoon in his hand.

  “Believe it or not, Kazander is rather shy around young ladies.”

  This brought another spasm from Feylin. Chayla turned to her. “Are you all right, my lady?”

  “Swallowed—the wrong way—” she gasped, covering her mouth with a napkin while tears streamed from her eyes.

  “I don’t know much about the Isulk’im,” Chayla went on. “We never see them at Whitecliff. The korrus seems nice enough, if a little . . . .”

  “Overly eloquent?” Walvis suggested. “Something you have to understand about them is that while other men’s wives and girls under twelve or so are fair game for their flattery, an unmarried woman is left strictly alone until one has approached her father for permission to speak to her. You’re not a child, and your father isn’t here, so—” He finished with a shrug.

  Feylin had recovered. “You should have heard Kazander’s father when Sionell was little. He swore up canyons and down dunes that when she was old enough, he’d carry her off on his saddle to become his sixth wife—or was it the seventh?”

  “Seven wives?” Chayla’s blue eyes widened. “I don’t like that much!”

  “Neither did Sionell.” Feylin was at last able to indulge herself freely in laughter. “I can still see her, planting both feet in the sand with her fists on her hips, telling him that while she was very honored to be considered, no woman but herself would rule in her home—be it castle, cottage, or tent!”

  After Chayla bid them good night, they conducted a little business with their steward in the cool of the evening, then went for a stroll around the upper walls of the castle to watch for dragons. The creatures seldom ventured this far into the Long Sand, which Walvis regretted but which was just fine with his wife. She loved them—but at a safe distance. This was the time of year for it, though, if they were to see dragons at all. After the triennial mating in the Desert, after the caves had been walled up with eggs inside to bake through the summer, after the hatchlings had flown, dragons lingered for a while before flying south to the Catha Hills and their wintering grounds. They sometimes ranged east to Remagev and west to the city of Waes. Every summer except mating years, they were a common sight from Syr to Fessenden, with their main precincts in the Veresch. Now that they were no longer hunted as adults or butchered as hatchlings, and the caves at Rivenrock Canyon were in use once more, the dragon population had increased to a number Feylin considered safe. This year more than eight hundred dragons—sires, mature females, three-year-olds and new hatchlings—had been seen in flight.

  The Lord and Lady of Remagev watched the skies until night was full upon them, but they saw no dragons. “Perhaps we should have asked Chayla if there are any in our area tonight,” Feylin mused.

  “I don’t think she’s picked up the knack of it yet. Pol came to it late, though, so I suppose she might, too.”

  Chayla had not yet shown signs of having inherited the odd family trick of sensing dragons before they could be seen. Rohan had it, and Tobin, and Pol and Maarken and Andry. It was said of old Prince Zehava that he could tell merely by glancing at the clouds when the dragons would appear on the wind. Walvis hoped the trait would not be lost; it was always amusing to watch outsiders blanch and stare when Zehava’s descendants turned their faces as one toward the sky. It was almost as much fun as observing the reactions of those who had never before seen a Sunrunner at work.

  “Busy day tomorrow,” Feylin said at length. “Will you explain Kazander’s part to him in the morning?”

  “Yes—to give him as little time as possible to work out his own variations on it. You know how he is.”

  “Scamp,” she grumbled fondly. “Speaking of which, you didn’t have to make me laugh so hard! I nearly choked to death when you told Chayla that Kazander is shy!”

  “Except, you know, I think he really was shy around her.” He slipped one arm around her waist and they started back to the inner stairs. Torches in iron holders along the parapets lit their way. Walvis occasionally came home from a hunt after dark, and the sight of Remagev with its glowing crown of light was always an impressive one. He nodded to the sentry on duty and continued to his wife, “He hasn’t met any highborn young ladies now that he’s of an age to appreciate them. Ell was always just that bit too much older than he.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly! Chayla’s barely fifteen!” She laughed and ducked around the door he held open for her. “Can’t yo
u just see her living out on the Long Sand in a tent?”

  “Now that you mention it, no. But I’ll keep an eye on him just the same. He’s still young enough to be dealt quite a wallop by a pretty girl.”

  Feylin gave him one of her patient looks. “The man is thrice a husband and five times a father. Really, Walvis, you can be absurd at times.”

  • • •

  “Attack,” Kazander had been bidden. “Attack—but don’t damage my younglings unnecessarily. They may get irritated and forget to check their own blows. Goddess forfend that any of your great warriors go home to their mothers with so much as a bloody nose.”

  He almost wished this could be a real battle. The Lady Chayla—to whom, in the way of his people, he had already given a secret name to be whispered only when her body graced his sleeping silks in the marriage tent—was watching from the crest of a dune nearby. He wished he could show her all his prowess, all his strength and cunning. Failing that, he could almost hope to take some small wound of valor, so that he might know the touch of her hands healing him.

  Kazander knew how preposterous—not to mention dangerous—such thoughts were when excited by the granddaughter of Chaynal of Radzyn. But the girl enchanted him. It was not that he didn’t cherish his wives. All three of them were strong, beautiful, intelligent women. But Chayla—young as she was, he had found in her the proverbial ricsina, the knife that pierces the heart. He had no hope that time and knowledge of him might allow the same to happen to her.

  Her life would be elsewhere. Sunrunner, physician, wife to some great lord with a castle and a hundred servants, bedecked in silks and jewels, an important force in the princedoms. The Isulk’im had rejected that sort of life many generations ago, when the faradh’im had come and sorcerers had been banished. It was too much to hope that somewhere in Chayla there lingered a few drops of ancestral blood that might cause her to hear the Desert’s call of passion and freedom.

  However futile Kazander knew his desires to be, still he wanted to impress her. So he bade his warriors attack as the athri had commanded—mentioning that any man who disappointed him would be taken back to the Long Sand flung across his saddle like a sack of grain.

  Kazander’s fifty would defend the red flag against Remagev’s eighty and attempt to seize their blue banner. Simple enough, but Kazander knew the mischievous workings of Lady Feylin’s mind and understood that whatever move the blues made was to be countered at once, spontaneously, as in the heat of real battle. That was the lesson she intended him to provide these children.

  Only the blue center charged. Kazander yelled and swung his sword—careful to bruise, not break—and urged his gray stallion deeper into the fray, keeping an eye on the two flanks that waited for some signal to attack. The blues fell back to regroup. Kazander sighed, knowing he was supposed to pursue and let the flanks set upon him from either side—Feylin’s “dragon wings.” He gave the order, but with a variation. The Isulk’im shrieked battle cries like enraged dragons, cloaks streaming behind them, as the west flank of the Remagev forces descended on them. But the blues found a third of their prey taking off at a full gallop across the plain. As he fought, Kazander snatched glances at the merry chase his horsemen led the frustrated blues, and grinned.

  All at once the eastern cavalry began driving the Isulk’im back. The blue center pushed forward, led by a tall youth who bellowed “Eztiel Grib!”—“All victory to Grib.” Kazander shouted a warning at his youngest wife’s brother, who carried the red banner. But it was too late. Sethric of Grib grabbed the pennant and galloped away with it behind the lines.

  The rules said Kazander should give in, for his flag had been seized. He only smiled. Battles were not fought over trophies. He turned in his saddle as a youth challenged him from the right, and casually unhorsed the boy with a thrust of blunted sword against armored chest. A sore backside and a shallow pinprick would be humiliating but not fatal souvenirs.

  Kazander broke free of the battle and called to his galloping warriors. They wheeled their horses with instant obedience and followed the sound of the korrus’ voice. Sixteen riders were not quite enough for this, but they would have to do. In a variation of the maneuver used the previous day, the Isulk’im escaped their pursuers in a blinding whirl of sand and formed a half-circle outside the blue half-circle. Now the Remagev troops had to fight both forward and backward. Kazander hoped Feylin would forgive him for ruining her little demonstration, but the lesson he intended to teach was the more important one. Capturing a banner had nothing to do with winning a battle.

  His smugness evaporated as he heard thunder on the ground behind him. Sethric had come back. Cursing, Kazander assessed the situation once more while chewing on his mustache and fending off a determined young man who seemed to have forgotten that his thrusts should not have lethal intent. Growling, Kazander taught him a painful lesson with the flat of his sword and shouted another order. The Isulki half-circle split in the middle, creating a pathway for their beleaguered comrades. All Kazander’s men were soon free. They regrouped, turned, and waited for the blues to charge them once more.

  Exhilarated by the return of Sethric’s wing, the Remagev forces did not pause to organize themselves but instead rode whooping and cheering toward the Isulk’im at top speed. Kazander exchanged a grin with his brother-by-marriage.

  “The girl is mine, Visian,” he cautioned—and then led his men in a single line through the oncoming blues and up the slope of the dune. Before Walvis or Feylin or Chayla could react with more than disbelief, all three were lifted from their saddles and clutched to the chests of Isulk’im.

  “Put me down!” Feylin raged. “Kazander! How dare you!” But Walvis was laughing uproariously as they were carried away.

  Kazander had plucked the Lady Chayla from her horse with exquisite care. She did not struggle the way that spitfire Feylin was doing, merely settled on his thigh, supported by his arm around her waist. Otherwise he kept his hands to himself. Her coiled golden braids were at his shoulder, within easy reach of his lips; he could smell the fresh scents of herb soap and Desert wind in her hair. Her buttocks were surprisingly well-muscled against his thigh, but he supposed that was to be expected; after all, as the granddaughter of Radzyn’s lord, she would have been in the saddle from early childhood. It was a sweet, firm, supple armful he held, and he wondered if he could persuade Walvis to persuade Lord Maarken not to slay him for daring to touch her.

  He slowed his horse and finally stopped. Chayla was still relaxed against him. He turned to Visian, who was losing his grip on the taller, heavier athri. With a grin Kazander was about to claim victory—for he had stolen the real prizes of this little war.

  All at once the air left his lungs in a painful gasp, propelled out of him by Chayla’s elbow in his stomach. She slid neatly down to the sand, glaring up at this man who had been the first in her life ever to lay hands on her. She said nothing. She didn’t have to. It was all in her eyes. He was incapable of responding in any case; he was too busy remembering how to breathe. But once his lungs had filled and there was only a dull ache in his belly, he could not help grinning down at her. Goddess, what a woman!

  Late that night, after the banquet had been devoured and the battle analyzed a dozen times and the Isulk’im had taught Remagev’s youthful warriors the steps of a traditional victory dance—and enough wine had flowed to make everyone feel very brotherly—Walvis and Kazander took a tour of the walls.

  “You went to a lot of trouble to get your hands on her,” the athri scolded, laughing. “And after you swore not to touch!”

  Kazander, knowing he’d been forgiven and greatly relieved that he would not be facing Lord Maarken across the latter’s sword, gave a deep sigh. “For those sweet moments, I knew all the glories of the world. Although she may never forgive me.”

  “That’s what the High Princess would call an absolutely certain bet—the kind she wagers the whole princedom on.” Walvis chuckled, leaning his elbows on the stone and looking o
ut over the Desert night. “I hear you put yourself in the way of being treated by Chayla, not Feylin, afterward.”

  “A trifling cut that I didn’t even feel until later. Not even a scar will be left—but no gratitude to her for it! I swear to you, she pummeled my bruised and bleeding leg as if I were made of bread dough!”

  “Well, let that be a lesson to behave yourself. Actually, I’m surprised she didn’t pull a knife on you. Like all her family, she takes her cue from the High Prince and carries one in each boot. She knows how to use them, too.”

  He smote his forehead with the flat of his palm. “With her temper, I would sing like a virgin girl for the rest of my life!”

  “Her restraint in the matter may indicate that she likes you—either that or she hesitated to geld a friend of mine.”

  “She-dragon,” Kazander muttered.

  “Unlike her sweet and ladylike mother, but entirely reminiscent of Princess Tobin. I was proud of her—if she’d gotten free while you were still at a gallop, she might have hurt herself in the fall. Why did you pull such a stunt? Aside from getting around your promise not to touch her, I mean.”

  “The red pennant was taken—and these children thought this was all there is to war,” he answered forthrightly. “If prizes are the goal, then one should go for the most essential ones. But prizes are not the goal in battle. They should think about that over the next few days.”

  “That’s so.” Walvis put a hand on his shoulder. “And you’re right to have taught that lesson. But my little wars are just skirmishes, Kazander. I never expect them to fight the real thing. No one does. That’s what Rohan’s being High Prince is all about.”