Authors: R. A. MacAvoy
My message widened his eyes so that even by firelight I could tell they were green. Then he gave a small snort and said, “Well, then, Nazhuret of Sordaling School, I certainly won’t stand here like a fool any longer. I will have some lamps lit and we can discuss this inside.”
I realized what my tongue had done, and stuttering apologies, followed the king into his tent. The field marshal came behind us.
The king listened to me with his chin resting on his fist, a blanket over his shoulders. He did not bother to comb his brilliant hair back. Occasionally he stopped me, to ask how I had gotten past the nomads’ sentries, and, for that matter, past his own, and what I was doing playing a peasant when I was at least gentry by birth, as my study and the Royal School proved, and equal to the finest hand-to-hand fighter in the nation.
My ears burned to have the king so compliment me when I had previously (in some sense) called him a fool. I explained that knowledge of my birth was lost and that I had no reason to expect it was much, that I had been as much a servant as a student, and that now I had left that all behind me to become an optician. King Rudof roared with laughter until his eyes watered and he began to yawn. I was made to prove myself through my pack, and the king was very interested in my collapsible spyglass. Arlin, whom the king at least recognized, was brought in to corroborate my story. He named me the finest fighter at Sordaling, and that made me smile behind my hand, because that seemed now like such faint praise, and his description of my character and reliability brought the blood to my face again. It was a grand repayment for letting the man get away with cheating at cards.
“When did the Sordaling directors begin admitting Rezhmian boys into their military training?” This was the first time the field marshal had spoken since following me into the king’s tent. The field marshal stood behind me and his hand was on his sword hilt, waiting for me to make a hostile move over the table at the king.
King Rudof’s gaze sank to the table. I think he was embarrassed. “You have no reason to keep calling the man Rezhmian, Marshal.”
I told him I could not very well deny that I was of mixed blood, but that I was neither a traitor nor dishonest. I begged again that he prepare for the morning.
The king stood and threw aside his blanket. A lad in royal colors hurried forward with doeskin breeches over his arm and assisted King Rudof to dress.
“Easily done, my talented optician. I will have the poor devils outside awakened, and they will be told. We will travel today but we will not be unprepared, will we, Leoue?”
The field marshal stepped into the light for the first time and I saw he was as dark as he was burly. He stood beside the king and looked down at me with unmitigated suspicion. “Sire, that is what the fellow wants of us.”
King Rudof was putting his jacket over his shoulders. It was very closely fitted. Civilian clothes. “Not ‘sire.’ I am not my father, to find such a term pleasing, and the only one with a right to call me ‘sire’ is an infant too young to talk. Of course preparedness is what the lad wants, after running all night to warn us. It’s what I want, too. There can be no harm in preparing. Or do you mean us to sit tight until scouts can locate these pony-riding assassins for us? You are too careful of me, old friend.”
The field marshal did not look away from me, nor did his eyes seek mine. It was as though he were looking at a beast or a book. “At least let me take this one in charge for you, then.”
Rudof stood across the table from him, fully dressed and with that red hair half tamed. “That’s all I want to hear out of you, Leoue. I believe the lad is honest.
“You tell me, Nazhuret,” said the king, leaning to me over the table. “Do you want to go with the field marshal here? I don’t mean as a prisoner but as a soldier with us? Or should we leave you here to wend your simple, glass-grinding way?”
I had been thinking myself. My legs were beginning to cramp from the run, but I was otherwise strong enough. “Have you a wig, sir?”
King Rudof guffawed. “If I wore a wig, lad, it would not be this color, nor this unruly.”
“I mean, sir, if you could find a wig like your hair, I could dress in your clothes today and ride where they expect to find you. The ponymen have been told to locate you by your hair.”
The king stood still and stiff as though he had been slapped. “In my place! As bait? No, Nazhuret of Sordaling, I thank you, but no. I will take reasonable care of myself, but I will not let you ride in my place.”
“Thank the triune God for that, at least,” said the field marshal.
While the rest of the camp rose, I had an hour or so to lie still, which I did where I was left, beside the map table in the king’s tent. When one is as muscle-tired as I was, it makes no difference whether rest is conscious or sleeping; it is enough not to move. When I could bear to stand again, I begged the chamberlain for a pot in which to warm water for washing, and got instead a tin tub, an attendant, and a change of clothes. First the fellow brought me the breeches and tunic of the 3rd Royal Light Cavalry, and though it was only part of a uniform and only a loan, it brought with it one of the largest temptations in my life.
If I put this on I probably would be expected to ride with that illustrious company, and in the impending attack, if I were to acquit myself creditably, or at least without embarrassment, I might be offered a chance to gain the rest of the uniform, or
one equally glorious. I had, after all, as good a training as any man in Velonya or the territories, and my wrestling had impressed the young king.
In doing so I would be reclaiming the Nazhuret of three and a half years ago and turning my back on everything Powl had taught me. But the Nazhuret of three and a half years ago had died, and his ghost was not very restless. Besides, it was Powl’s Nazhuret who had wrestled and snapped rapiers for the king’s amusement, not the boy of Sordaling School, and Powl’s Nazhuret could not take the easy option of obedience to rule.
I put the pretty tunic back in the basket and said I could not wear it because of a religious limitation.
And then it was too big for me.
The valet was gone a few minutes and returned with a spare suit of the cook’s boy, which fit my humor (and my frame) much better.
King Rudof ducked into his tent, fresh and energetic as though he had slept ten hours without a dream. My appearance struck his humor as well, and his laughter had a great charm to it, but in a moment he was serious again. “You have taken a vow, I’m told. It sounds like nonsense, after last night’s games. Are you a priest or a pilgrim, then, Nazhuret, or did you kill someone in anger, to make such a stupid… ? Is all your battle skill to go for nothing? I had hoped the nation would have the use of what you showed last night.” King Rudof had donned the blue and white of a simple horseman of his own company, which suited him very well.
I answered in embarrassment that I was more a pilgrim than a priest if I was either one, and that my training had not gone for nothing or I wouldn’t have survived to give the warning of the assassins. He paced, staring down at me, obviously wondering whether to call my statement impudence. An aide brought in breakfast, and I was given the uncomfortable privilege of eating at the table of a king who was not pleased with me. Had there not been biscuits freshly baked, I think I would not have had the temerity to swallow.
The king talked while he ate, sometimes with his mouth full. This had been frowned on at Sordaling. Powl had never permitted it. “Don’t you call that fighting, when you laid my personal guard on the ground in rows—not to mention abusing the field marshal’s own men? Is your vow that you can fight for your own life but no other?”
I had to down my food before replying, not out of manners but to gain time. My throat was painfully dry. “My limitation, sir, is rather that I cannot spill blood on… another’s command.”
What more pointed, more offensive thing could be said aloud to the king of one’s own country? I sat with my hands in my lap and waited.
The king’s green eyes did not move from my face. For some seconds he, too, waited, for explanation or apology. “But you can spill barrels of the stuff at your own whim, is that it? I can’t say I think much of that vow; it’s pure self-indulgence. You are saying you can brawl at any moment it appeals to you, but you cannot fight at the king’s command, which is the need of the nation.” He spoke without heat or bluster, but to get the matter straight between us.
“No, sir, I can’t brawl at whim. Or at least I never do have a whim to brawl. But it is true that I cannot offer obedience in that matter. Not even to you, my king. That is why I can’t wear the uniform of a soldier.”
King Rudof had a face similar in feature to Arlin’s: that is to say, long with a thin, high-bridged nose, a face close to the standard of Velonyan beauty. He was heavier-boned than the sword juggler, and the king had the redhead’s mercurial complexion, which went waxy pale as he sat upright and said, “It is not only the paid soldiers of Velonya who are bound to fight at the command of the king. Every man not an ordained priest is subject to that duty.”
I could think of nothing whatsoever to say.
“I can have you split open and beheaded for refusing me outright.” The youth departed from the king’s face, leaving a mask with eyes of steel. I had never seen the old king, his father, save in pictures, but I felt I was seeing him now. The two sentries at the entrance had turned their attention to this dialogue, and now they stepped through the doorway. “That is the punishment for a traitor.”
“Yes, sir, of course you can. In that I am entirely at your service,” I answered him, and my placating words sounded ludicrous even to myself. They made him blink.
King Rudof sat back and ran one hand through his red hair. Heavily he said, “I think, lad, that you’d best call yourself a priest while you are with this company. Of course, we will be parting ways shortly.” He rose and, lifting his long legs over the low table, went past me and out.
First the scouts set out in pairs, and half an hour later the entire straggling procession creaked forward. Every man jack of them ignored me, and no cook’s boy asked for his shirt and breeches back. I suppose he wouldn’t wear them after they’d been on the man who insulted the king. I stood on the highest point of land nearby and watched for the king himself to pass.
I would have missed him entirely, for there was no red hair to be seen. All the Royal Light Horse were riding in leather headgear, which extended down the back of the neck and into a low visor over the eyes. Nor was he beside the field marshal, where I would have expected to find him, but in the middle of the front row of the lower officers. I finally picked him out by the chestnut horse he rode, which seemed a little grand for the commonality of cavalry and which was a color to appeal to any redheaded rider.
The other companies had their own versions of this helmet, and the three marshals were concealed beneath hats or helmets as well. The foot troops went bareheaded, as was standard, but I noticed as they marched that any men of exceptionally brilliant hair color had been moved to the inside of the row and column.
This was a better maneuver than my own “wig” idea.
Instead of having a false redhead, they had no visible heads of hair whatsoever.
I hefted my pack from which my own clothes, washed and fullered for me while I rested, hung smelling of wet wool. I was feeling a profound disappointment in myself and in my meeting with King Rudof, and I pulled apart our short, unsatisfactory conversation in my mind, wondering how I might have had it come out otherwise without lying to the King of Velonya.
Had I had more time, or had the situation been less immediate, I might have been able to convince him that my peculiar style of combat was a matter of involuntary reflex, or too peculiar and too primitive to have military application. If I could only have made it to seem that he was rejecting me instead of (horrendous thing) the other way around. But I doubted that at my best and most prepared I could have made the truth please him better than it did. As Powl would have said, the only solution is to stay away from the centers of power entirely. But even Powl would not have had me let King Rudof walk into a trap of assassins unaware.
I saw them all go by me, even to the last heavy wagon of pavilion bracings, and then I trotted off in the same direction but aiming slightly right and off the road, so that in a very few minutes I was even with the Royal Light Horse again and then ahead of them. The fact that I could not be an obedient soldier did not mean I was going to stand by and let Velonya’s enemies attack the king.
Behind me I heard hooves splashing mud, and I was mystified as to whom it could be. I was jogging a path that wound amid the hills while the whole troop of the king were down on the flat by the road, except for the sentries, who had gone ahead. There was no hiding in the grass here, for it was sparse and ankle-high, so I stayed where I was, my hedger in my hand. Perhaps the king had decided he could not brook my impudence after all and had sent out soldiers to drag me back, or to kill me where I stood.
When the single rider came into view I felt surprise and an overwashing of inevitability that it should be Arlin again, wearing the one suit he seemed to own and riding his dainty gray. This time, however, he had two horses, the other being a bony chestnut he led without pack or saddle behind him, I waited for him to catch up to me.