Octobers Baby (21 page)

The refugees knew little. Vodicka had been camped west of the Siege, doing nothing, for a long time. He was waiting. For what?

Ragnarson kept pushing. The rain and sleet kept falling. One thing about the weather, he thought. It would keep the mobs small.

He reached the suburbs unannounced, unexpected, and laughed aloud at the panic he inspired at the guardpost. While his Wesson sergeants answered theirchallenge, he swept on toward the city wall.

At the gate he again surprised soldiers, men hiding from the weather while the gate stood open. Sloppy, he thought, driving through. In a time so tense, why were they not alert?

Morale problems, he imagined. Despair caused by Tarlson’s injury. A growing suspicion that it no longer mattered what they did.

That would change.

The alarm gongs didn’t sound till he had reached the parklands around Castle Krief. As the panicky carillon ran through the city, he ordered, “Break the banners.”

The men bearing the old, tattered standards dropped back. Others removed sheaths from fresh banners representing the peoples forming Ragnarson’s command, as well as standards he had captured in his battles. He made sure Sedlmayr’s banner was up near his own. The Royal standard he took in his own hand.

The castle’s defenders reached the ramparts in time to observe this bit of drama. After a puzzled minute they broke into ragged cheers.

His eyes met hers the instant he entered the vast courtyard. She stood on a tower balcony. She was a tall woman, fairy slim, small-boned, with long golden hair stringing in the downpour. Her eyes were of a blue deeper than a summer sky at zenith. She wore simple, unadorned white that the rain had pasted to her slight curves...

He learned a lot about her in that moment, before turning to survey the mud-spattered, weary, ragged cutthroats behind him. What would she think?

He dipped his banner in salute. The others did the same.

His eyes locked with hers again. She acknowledged the salute with a nod and smile that almost made the ride worthwhile. He turned to shout orders to keep traffic moving. When he looked back, she was gone.

The political picture could be judged by the fewness ofthe servants who helped with the animals. Nowhere did hesee a dusky Siluro face. Among the soldiery, Nordmenwere scarce. Virtually all were flaxen-haired Wessons.

One, a youth trying to keep his head dry with hisshirttail, came running. “Gods, Colonel, you made good time.”

“Ah, Gjerdrum.” He smiled weakly. “You said to hurry.”

“1 only got back last night myself. Come. Father wants to see you.”

“Like this?” He had had time to become awed. This was a Royal palace. In the field, at war, a King was just another man to him. In their own dens, though, the mighty made him feel the disreputable brigand he currently appeared to be.

“No formalities around here anymore, sir. The Queen... She’s a lady who’ll understand. If you see what I mean. The war, you know.”

“Lead on, then.” He left billeting, mess, and stabling to his sergeants and the Queen’s.

Tarlson was dying. Propped up in a huge bed, he looked like a man in the final stage of consumption. Like a man who should have died long ago, but who was too stubborn to go. He was too heavily bandaged to move.

She was there too, in her rain-soaked garments, but she stayed in a shadowed corner. Ragnarson nodded, went to Tarlson’s side. He tried to avoid dripping and dropping mud on the carpeting.

“I’d heard you’d picked up another scar,” he said.

Eanred smiled thinly, replied, “I think this one had my name. Sit. You look exhausted.”

Ragnarson shuffled.

From behind him, “Sit down, Colonel. No need preserving furniture for Vodicka’s plunderers.” She had a melodious voice even when bitter.

“So you finally came,” said Tarlson.

“I was summoned.”

“Frequently.” Tarlson smiled. “But you were right. We couldn’t’ve won defending one city. If I hadn’t been rash, you might still be chastising barons.”

“I think they’ve had enough-though I’m out of touch. About the west and south you know. And the east has surrendered.”

“Ah? Gjerdrum suggested as much, but wasn’t clear.”

“He didn’t waste any time asking questions.”

“He’s got a lot to learn. You came swiftly. Alone?” “With a thousand. The rest are afoot, with prisoners. As I’ve said before, I believe in movement.”

“Yes, per Haroun bin Yousif. I want to talk about him. When the pressure is off. Maybe your arrival will help.” Ragnarson frowned.

“We intercepted messages from Vodicka to the Siluro community. They’re supposed to revolt this week. I hope they’ll reconsider now.”

Ragnarson remembered the laxity of the Queen’s troops. “My men won’t be much help if it breaks tonight. And yours don’t look good for anything.” “What do you suggest?” Tarlson asked. His wounds had taken the vinegar out of him, Ragnarson thought. “Lock the gates. Use the palace guard to flood the Siluro quarter. Post a curfew. Enforce it. They can’t do anything if you grab them as they leave their houses.”

“And leave the palace undefended?” “In my hands, you mean? Yes. Eanred, you’ve got your suspicions. I’m not sure why. Let’s just say our goals are similar.”

Tarlson didn’t apologize. “Ravelin makes one suspi-cious. No matter. Be your intentions good or evil, we’re in your hands. There’s no one else to stop Vodicka.”

Ragnarson didn’t like it. He was becoming too much a principal in Ravelin’s affairs.

“I know my contract,” he said stiffly. “I’ll try to keep it. But the loyalties of my men lie differently.” “Meaning?”

“They’ve been in Kavelin for months, fighting, and dying, for a cause not their own. They’re full of spirit. They haven’t let loose for a long time. What happens when they go for a drink and realize they haven’t been paid a farthing?...”

“Ah.” Tarlson glanced past Ragnarson. “Sums have been held in the Treasury, Colonel,” said the Queen. “Though you should be rich with the booty you’ve taken.”

Ragnarson shrugged.

“And what’s happened to your fat friend?” Tarlsonasked. “As I recall, he disappeared at the Scarlotti ferries.”

“That’s a ghost that’s haunted me since. I don’t know. I sent him to Damhorst. All I’ve heard is that he might be in Breitbarth’s hands.”

“He may be with Vodicka now,” said Tarlson. “I saw a chain of prisoners during the attack...”

“Was he all right?”

“Not sure it was him. I just caught a glimpse of a fat man hopping around screaming. Then I got spear bit.”

“That’s him. I wonder what Vodicka’s doing with him?”

“What’re your plans?”

“Don’t have any. I was called to defend Vorgreberg. I didn’t extend my imagination beyond getting here.”

“There’re two considerations. The Siluro. Vodicka. The Siluro we can handle now. If we can send Vodicka packing before spring, we might have an edge on the barons next summer.”

“Next summer you’ll have real problems.”

“Eh?”

“The Captal of Savernake.”

“What about him?” Tarlson’s face darkened. He stole a glance past Ragnarson.

“He’s got his own army and Pretender up there. A child about six. I tried to get him, but...” He stopped because of the emotions parading across Tarlson’s face.

“But what?”

“His allies. It was pure luck that we got out. Those people... The grimmest soldiers in the world.”

“There were suspicions... The King told me... Who? El Murid?”

“Shinsan.”

His sibilant whisper fostered a dreadful silence broken only by a gasp from behind him. Tarlson’s face became so pale and immobile that Ragnarson feared he had suffered a stroke.

“Shinsan? You’re sure?”

“Blackfang’s bringing the proof. Armor from their dead. And the child... He’s training with Mist herself. She was at Maisak.”

“The child... Did she seem well?” The Queen’s voice held such excited interest that Ragnarson half-turned. Then it added up. The child was hers... Then, stunningly, the “She” reached his consciousness.

“Shinsan!” Tarlson gasped.

Ragnarson turned back. Despite his condition, Eanred was trying to rise.

He almost made it. Then he collapsed, fighting for breath. Bloody foam rose to his lips. l” Maighen!” the Queen shouted. “Find Doctor Wach-tel! Gjerdrum! Come help your father.”

As the boy rushed in, Ragnarson went to the Queen. She seemed ready to faint. He helped her retain her feet.

“Eanred, don’t die,” she begged softly. “Not now. What’ll I do without you?”

When aloofness and dignity abandoned her, Ragnar-son caught a glimpse of the frightened woman behind the facade. So young, so defenseless.

Ignoring his filth, she clung to him, head over his heart. “Help me!” she begged.

What else could he do?

V) Hour of reprisal

Mocker thought the crash and clash and screaming meant that the Queen’s Own had come back for a sudden rematch. He was so sick that he didn’t look up. Why bother?

The clangor moved closer. For a long time he did nothing more ambitious than blow his nose on his sleeve. He was sorry immediately. The stench of the corpse five places to his right reached him despite the downpour. The fellow had died four days earlier. No one had bothered to remove him. As the Siluro uprising continued to be delayed, the Volstokiners became increasingly lax, increasingly defeatist. Vodicka and the shaghun had had bitter arguments about it. Vodicka himself had become dull-witted and unconcerned.

Mocker’s stomach turned. The little he had had to eat had been moldy, spoiled. Staggering to his feet, he dragged his nearer chainmates along in his rush to the cathole latrine five paces away.

While he squatted with the skirts of his robe around his waist, a spent arrow plopped into the mud nearby. He reached, slipped, fell, came up cursing. The other prisoners cursed him back. A quarter of their number had died already, and disease soon would have them all-and Vodicka’s army as well. Dysentery was endemic. In the chain, now, there were no friends, just animals who growled at one another.

The arrow was Itaskian. No native weapon would have used one so long.

He wanted to shout for joy, but didn’t have the energy.

He had long despaired of having this opportunity, yet he had prepared. It had taken slow, careful work. He had wanted no one, especially his favor-seeking companions, to discover what he was doing.

First there had been the chains. Each man’s right hand was linked to the left ankle of the man on his right. He had, for days, been grinding away at a link with bits of sandstone. That done to his satisfaction, he had gone on to provide himself with weapons.

When the shaghun and his gaudy smokes appeared at the pavilion entrance, Mocker broke the weakened link and took the best of his weapons from within his robe.

Making the sling had been more difficult than cutting the chain. Everyone was always toying with the latter...

He had three stones, though he expected to get but one shot before being brought down himself. And it had been years...

The sling, twisted of fabric strips from his robe, hummed as he wound up. A few apathetic eyes turned his way.

He let fly.

“Woe!” he moaned. He shook his left fist at the sky, got a faceful of rain. He had missed by such a wide margin that the shaghun hadn’t noticed that he was being attacked.

But no one gave Mocker away. No dusky guards cameto pound him back to the mud. The attack was ferocious. Must be some bad fighters out there, he thought.

He turned, glared through the downpour, almost immediately spied Reskird Kildragon. His hopes surged. The best fighters in this end of the world.

His second stone scored. Not with the eye-smashing accuracy he had had as a boy, but close enough to shatter the shaghun’s jaw. The soldier-wizard staggered from his smokes, one hand reaching as if for help. He came toward the prisoners.

Mocker checked the haggard Nordmen. Some were beginning to show interest.

Wobbling on legs weak with sickness, he went to the shaghun. He swung his length of chain, beat the man to the mud.

Still no interference. But dusky faces were beginning to glance back from the fighting. He used the shaghun’s dagger to finish it quickly.

“Vodicka now,” he said, rising with the bloody blade. But through the uproar he heard Kildragon bellowing for his men to close up and withdraw.

And there was no way he could reach them.

“Am doomed,” he muttered. “Will roast slow on spit, no skald to sing last brave feat.” His hands, deft as those of the pickpocket he had been when Haroun had picked him up early in the wars, ran through the shaghun’s garments, snatched everything loose. He then scooted round the pavilion’s rear, hoping to vanish before anyone noticed what had happened.

The Nordmen watched with eyes now jealous and angry. From within the pavilion came Vodicka’s queru-lous voice. He sounded drunk or ill.

Then came shouts as the murder was discovered.

ELEVEN: Closing Tighter

I) Dying

Death just did not belong in the day. It had dawned bright, warm, and almost cloudless. By noon the streetshad dried.

“It isn’t right,” Gjerdrum said, staring out a window near his father’s bed. “In stories it always comes during a stormy night, or on a morning heavy with mist.”

The Queen sat beside the bed, holding Tarlson’s hand. He had been in a coma since the previous afternoon. “My father calls Death the ultimate democrat,” she said. Deep shadows lurked beneath her eyes. “Also the indisputable autocrat and the great leveler. She’s not impressed by anything or anyone. Nor by what’s fitting and proper.”

“Mother wouldn’t come. She’s locked herself in their bedroom... Says she won’t come out till he comes home. Because he always did. He’d take wounds that’d kill a bear, but he always came home. But she knows he won’t make it this time. She’s trying to bring him back with hermemories.”

“Gjerdrum, if there was anything... You know I’d...” “I was conceived in that room. When he was justanother Wesson footman. The night before the Queen’s