Someone punched Inda. “Where’ll we find ’em?”
Inda jabbed his thumb back over his shoulder. “Down lakeside.” He sighed inwardly, wishing he’d thought up a good plan, but he hadn’t believed it wouldn’t rain yet again by the time morning chores were finished. “Let’s go,” he said aloud in Marlovan, unaware of his shift from Iascan to the language of his ancestors, the language of war.
No,
he thought,
make the plan when I see the girls. More like a real fight anyway.
The echo of the midmorning bells bounced off stone walls as the boys raced out of the stable yard, through the massive side gates that were now standing open, and down a trail toward the finger of the lake that was one of their favorite battlegrounds, well away from the thick growth of cattails and the sharp, waxy leddas. As soon as they passed the budding hemlock and the great ferns all covered with shiny, pale green leaves, they saw the girls at the lake edge ranged behind a waist-high fort. From this distance, the girls’ voices sounded like gulls as they jumped up and down screeching taunts and threats in a mixture of Iascan and Marlovan. A couple of generations ago only Marlovans had spoken in the language of war, but time, peace, and intermarriage with the Iascans they’d conquered and now lived with made it more practical for everyone to understand one another. Nobody thought about it: Marlovan was for war drill, and Iascan for regular life.
That is, simple for the castle folk. When dealing with outsiders, the language used could change the intent of words, if not the meaning. This was why the princess—Fareas-Iofre—had decreed they always use Iascan with outsiders.
“Let’s get ’em!” Cousin Branid yelled, looking back for followers.
“Parley first,” Inda countered, and the boys slowed.
Branid snorted. “You didn’t lay down the rules this morning?
I
would have. M’ grandmother says, you
always
lay down the rules first to your men, or—”
“Didn’t have time,” Inda said, once again cutting into Branid’s half-boast, half-whine, familiar since early childhood. “Set ’em now. See what they reveal.”
The boys slowed to a stop, eying the girls, who continued to yell insults, waving their arms and capering about, some slapping their butts, others holding up the backs of their hands and wiggling the fingers. Insults meant to entice the boys to attack now. Inda scanned them until he found Tdor, his betrothed, right in the middle, brown braids flapping against her skinny back as she hopped.
“They’ve got to have a whole mess o’ mudballs behind there,” a Rider captain’s son observed. “All ready to throw.”
“And they want us to charge now,” Inda agreed. “So let’s go easy. Spread out, start picking up your weapons.”
The boys studied the enemy’s stronghold as they sauntered forward, bare toes digging down in the pungent mud. The girls’ fort was built in a semicircle, stones in front, then mud and brush, the edges curving back to the lake shallows. Water was as effective a barrier as rock, as they’d learned from generations of plains-riding forebears.
There were a lot more girls down there than boys, now that the older boys had gone either riding on spring border patrol with Inda’s father, or to the royal city as part of Tanrid’s Honor Guard. A lot more girls, but Inda wasn’t sure they were all there. It was hard to count, the way they jumped around.
The boys picked up clumps of turf and mud and piled their weaponry into their smocks. They stopped within hailing distance.
“Take the fort or capture commanders?” Inda called.
“Commander only,” Tdor yelled back, as Inda had expected.
Whoever captured the other’s commander won. Shorter game.
“Prisoners?”
“No,” Tdor yelled. “Honor system: death blow you’re dead, otherwise you can fight.”
Good. Taking prisoners meant having to guard them, and Inda needed every one of his boys.
The rules of war having been established, the stable master’s son asked, “Charge in a line?”
“No. Three prong,” Inda said, putting his evolving strategy into the form of an order. “You lead left, Vrad. You right, Cousin Branid. I got the middle.” Tanrid, Inda’s older brother, had told him over the winter to try to break superior numbers into smaller groups, and Inda had used much of his free time scouring through old records, trying to find accounts of battles wherein the strategies Tanrid mentioned had worked—or hadn’t. “Divide ’em. On my whistle, all swoop on Tdor.”
Inda looked about, saw comprehension, jerked his chin up, and the boys charged, yelling wildly, pausing only to throw mudballs. Branid, trying both to run fastest and throw the hardest, was the first to slip on the slimy mud and fall, the girls’ mudballs pelting him with pitiless accuracy. He looked around in despair and was relieved when he saw two of the other boys go down face forward, each under his own slurpy brown hailstorm.
Inda watched them all, sensing that something was not quite right. His offensive charge progressed steadily despite the formidable barrage of defensive mudballs. He ducked as a big, squishy one whizzed overhead and straightened up—just in time to catch one square on his temple. He scrubbed his sleeve over his eyes, squinted against the sting, and glimpsed Vrad and another boy reaching the fort. They began climbing over, Vrad glancing back toward Inda.
“In! In!” he yelled, motioning them to close on Tdor.
He expected the girls to form around her, but she leaned up on the fort and whistled once.
New shrieks caused all the boys to turn their heads toward a clump of trees. At that moment what had looked like scrubby brush broke apart. Dead branches and old grass arced into the air as a flying wedge of girls raced round to flank them.
“Awww,” Inda moaned, and the boys lost what little order they’d had. All that screeching and jumping had been a decoy!
Tdor grinned in triumph at Inda from the fort wall. He grinned back. A good ruse, but he hadn’t lost yet.
He kept throwing his mudballs, looking around to assess his forces as best he could through smeared vision until a tackle from behind splatted him face-first into the mud.
“Pin his joints,” came a brisk female voice.
Feet thumped onto each elbow, sending pangs up his arms. He pulled his knees under and stuck his butt in the air in a desperate attempt to fight free and the feet lifted away. He scrambled up, ready to defend himself, but no one attacked.
Tdor saw him rubbing mud from his eyes. “Runner!” she said in a low voice; they were no longer enemy commanders.
Boys and girls all stopped fighting, watching the tall, sturdy young woman in Runner blue who trotted down the path. It was Chelis, Fareas-Iofre’s youngest personal Runner.
Chelis scanned the group, now fairly equally coated in mud. In the center of the boys she spotted a short figure with light brown curls escaping from a mud-draggled braid, his brown eyes just visible in an equally mud-smeared face.
“Indevan-Dal.” Chelis brushed her fingers over her heart.
Indevan-Dal.
Inda’s name with the courtesy title and Chelis’ salute caused silence. Just like that rank had been reestablished; Inda was no longer another mud-covered boy, he was now second son of the Prince and Princess of Choraed Elgaer.
“You’re wanted by Fareas-Iofre right away,” Chelis said, using the Marlovan word for the princess’ rank, Iofre, though the rest of her words were in peacetime Iascan.
Inda frowned. Summoned before his mother? Midmorning? He began a hasty mental appraisal. Had someone found out about the spiders in Liet’s bed? But she wouldn’t blab, and anyway she’d gotten her revenge. Then was it the mudshoes? But the older boys (who’d been strutting far too much, in the younger boys’ view, about the prospect of their ride to the royal city) were gone, and anyway his brother Tanrid had already thrashed him for that.
Chelis recognized both the consternation and the blank eyes of rapid internal review. “Messenger from the royal city,” she murmured, exactly as ordered. She added in a low voice, “I suggest, if I might, you stop by the baths.”
Inda nodded once, then loped up the trail toward the castle. The massive high walls, built of honey-colored stone, reflected warmly in the bright morning sun. Above the walls, long rows of windows set into deep arches in the main building—the glass casements framed by thick iron-reinforced shutters for defense—reflected gleams of light from the lake. Each corner tower also reflected shards of morning light, rendering the castle as mellow in appearance as a castle ever can be; it was home, as familiar and as comfortable as the brackish-smelling breeze coming off the marshy expanse north of the lake, where a line of servants, dressed in brown-dyed cotton-wool, walked a stone-flagged trail, carrying baskets that would at day’s end be full of leddas to be boiled and dried and woven into shoes and belts, singing as they went.
Their world intersected with the children’s only rarely, despite proximity; the leddas harvest song, weirdly minor-key and ancient—from long before Norsunder had nearly swept humankind from the world three millennia ago—went unremarked as birdsong as the children began talking.
Almost all. Tdor waited patiently, for she’d seen Chelis glance her way, her brows lifted just a little.
The boys followed Inda toward the castle. Over their talk rose Branid’s whine, “
I
knew those girls were there, but I thought Inda knew, too. Now, if you’d just followed
my
command—”
Three or four of the girls rolled their eyes.
“Tdor-Edli?” Chelis held her hand out, and when Tdor stepped near, dropped onto Tdor’s muddy palm a heavy metal object. A ring! “Messenger brought this from Hadand-Hlinlaef to you as an early Name Day gift,” Chelis said in Iascan, using Marlovan titles.
Hadand-Hlinlaef:
not just Hadand’s name, but her rank as future wife of the king’s heir. Tdor knew a warning when she heard one. Her fingers closed round the ring. “Thanks.”
Chelis left, her long yellow braids swinging as she ran back up to the castle. The girls crowded around Tdor.
“A ring!”
“Is it pretty?”
“Why did she send it here? Why not to your family?”
“She promised before she went back to the royal city to send me something I could wear home for my Name Day visit,” Tdor lied automatically, holding the ring out, and knowing that the beaten gold object would not garner any admiration.
Sure enough. “It’s ugly,” Noren stated, wrinkling her nose.
“I’ve seen prettier stones in the pickovers on Lastday market.” Liet flung back mud-streaked braids the color of flax.
Speculative glances all around. How quick some were to hope for gossip! “It’s an old heirloom,” Tdor stated, quashing the idea that Hadand had sent the ring as an insult. In her experience, even false gossip sometimes took on life, just because people wanted to believe it. “The Iofre gave it to Hadand-Edli when she turned twelve.”
The Iofre had worn it? And her daughter Hadand, one day to be queen? Oh, well then, that was different.
“I’ll put it in my heirloom box,” Tdor finished. “Against my visit to Marth-Davan.” As she spoke, she brushed her fingers down her grubby tunic, a gesture that only Noren understood.
Noren’s frown cleared. “Huh! I itch,” she declared. “Who’s for a bath? Liet, did you
see
the surprise in Inda’s face when you swooped down?”
The girls followed Noren, talking about their win—and what they would do next time—as they trudged up to the castle.
Tdor fingered the ring, longing for a moment of privacy. However two Algara-Vayir cousins were still watching her. You couldn’t be third in rank behind the princess and then Joret, Tanrid’s betrothed, and not be watched. Tdor had lived nine years here in Tenthen Castle, betrothed to Inda. She had learned how to wait.
While she walked, Inda ran. Sentries in their ceaseless patrols atop the battlements saluted, fingers brushing over hearts, as he passed below. He waved back without slowing.
Fiam, Inda’s young personal servant, met him at the lower door. “Clothes laid out at the baths.”
Inda smiled. “Thanks.”
No more was said as the two boys skimmed downstairs to the baths. Inda breathed in the scent of hot water. He undressed as he ran, flinging off his smock. At the edge of the bath he kicked free of his riding breeches and drawers, then dove in. The water, diverted from an underground stream, was kept warm and clean by the mysterious magic spells renewed by warrior-escorted mages every few years. It felt so good, the cleaning magic flicking over his skin and hair and teeth, and always reminded him of the snap of a fresh ginger root just under his nose. Fiam silently picked up the mud-encrusted clothes. Naked boys splashed into the water all around, and of course they began a water fight. For once Inda did not join them.
Laughter and chatter echoed from the women’s side as the girls began arriving. Branid was last through the men’s side.
“What d’ya think the summons is for?”
“Probably something or other from my father,” Inda called.
Branid shrugged, losing interest. Though great-uncle Jarend was a prince, he was also old and boring. Branid held his nose and dove into the bath.
Inda scrubbed his fingers vigorously through his hair, then stretched out to float on his back. He watched the reflections of the water on the stone wall opposite the high windows, wondering idly if Tanrid had reached the royal city yet. Then he began mentally reviewing the map, trying to figure out where his brother and the Honor Guard might be.
“Inda?” Fiam said in a low voice, glancing upward.
The messenger! Inda popped up, slinging his hair back. It smacked his shoulders with a splat. He grabbed a handful and inspected it: no mud in sight. “How do I look?”
“Clean enough,” Fiam pronounced, after scanning him with a critical eye. Fiam looked at the ugly splotches of bruises in various states of healing that marked Inda, and was glad once again that he was part of the household. Everyone knew that Randaels—Shield Arms—had to be tough, they were to hold the castle when their brothers traveled. But he wondered privately if anyone alive could ever be tough enough to please Tanrid-Laef, Inda’s brother, who would one day rule Choraed Elgaer as prince.