Sasharia En Garde (49 page)

“But—a princess? I don’t understand. I want to stay here
with the war game—we planned this all summer—”

Randart said softly, “Are you by any chance arguing with an
order?”

That voice, terrifying since early childhood, chilled the
back of Damedran’s neck. He was too old to be beaten, he knew that. So the
punishment would only be worse. “No, War Commander.”

“You aren’t cavorting with that Valleg girl, are you? I
thought you’d gotten past that foolishness.”

Damedran suppressed a surge of anger. “No.”

“The Vallegs are a good service family. Always have been.
For generations. I envisioned that girl holding one of the castles in Jora,
once we retake it. But if,” Randart said in that voice again, soft with threat,
“I thought she was suborning you from your duty, I’ll have her given a
dishonorable dismissal.”

Damedran thought wildly. “Oh, it’s only that we had a wager.
About who’d get their patrol flag to the castle wall first. I hate losing. You
know how the seniors gloat. We do that a lot, Ban and Wolfie and the rest of
us. Wagers, I mean.” That much was true. But Damedran knew he was babbling, as
if to cover over his lie. He’d never dared to lie to his uncle before.

Randart’s forehead cleared. “Well. I made such wagers, too,
when I was a boy, but you know, it is time to grow up. Face your adult
responsibilities . . .”

Damedran had guessed right. His uncle, launched down that
familiar path, could be safely ignored for a breathing space.

He had to think. These new orders were a disaster! He
remembered vividly the lie he’d carelessly tossed off about that stupid
princess. And how Ban Kender had reacted. Maybe he’d forgotten, but no, Ban
never forgot anything. Damedran scowled. If only Wolfie’s leg was healed. Ban
was definitely second strongest after Wolfie, and far smarter. Well, as for the
lie, he’d say he’d been told it. Yes, that should work. Damn lies anyway, they
were too much trouble.

“. . . so I want you and your six mounted and
ready to ride by the watch change,” Uncle Dannath said, his tone sharp with
finality. “You’ll have to begin at this Three Falls Inn, where she is
apparently taking a letter, to discover her trail. If you find nothing there,
you’ll ride the road all the way back to Ellir until someone responds to her
description. But you will not halt for more than a single watch until you have
her in hand. Got that?”

Damedran gave a stiff nod.

“You’ll have the king’s sigil, which will get you horses
wherever you need them, and supplies. Once you find her, you will bind her
against her performing magic. You will contact me, and I will tell you where to
meet me. Because she is to be brought directly to me.
Only
to me. I will be giving you a magical case and the code to use
to report, in case those damned mages are intercepting our messages. You are to
reveal her identity to no one.”

Damedran saluted. “It shall be done, War Commander.”

“Questions?”

Damedran did not dare, not when the word was barked in that
tone, but Orthan said, “I take it this is the king’s personal errand?”

Randart hesitated. “I deemed it better, after a night of
rest, not to tell the king. It will be far better in a number of ways if I have
her first. Once I know what manner of person we are dealing with, she can be
surrendered to the king.”

No one spoke. But Orthan pursed his lips when his brother
turned to survey the camp, and sent a glance at his son.

He’s used to being
king.

Whammo! Now back to me.

When I left off, I was gloating over the ease with which I
had gotten away from the military people, who had not only housed and fed me
for free, but who had checked the shoes on my mare as well as curried her.
They’d even cleaned and oiled my sword.

My gloat lasted, oh, about two hours, as I recall. Long
enough for the next rainstorm to move in.

The civilian roads were soon quagmires at every dip. Once
again the horse slogged up to her knees in muck, but this time at least I’d
found a wagon to follow, and follow we did, until the wagon got stuck in the
mud. I helped, the horse helped, but the big, strong workhorses pulling could
not get those wheels out of the mud.

The owners, a pair of sisters, offered me space under the
wagon. I took it while my mare joined the two big workhorses, all three animals
apparently too wet to bicker. There was as much mud under the wagon as there
was outside, but we were out of the rain.

I will pass quickly over that long, miserable night,
everyone gritty and shivering, sharing soggy bits of food, while one of the
women worried almost constantly about their baskets of fruit—until her sister
begged her, eyes closed, to
please
stop asking what they were going to do.

We all finally fell asleep in a kind of exhausted dogpile,
waking stiff, creaking, in vile tempers. I rode on, promising to send anyone I
saw to help; they perforce had to stay until the mud hardened enough to roll
out.

That week there was a series of rainstorms coming through,
nothing ever as spectacular as the first, but definitely enough to keep the
road soggy and impossible to travel in, unless you’re a frog. I got lost not
once, not twice, but several times, ending up in fields, in a forest, and once
in a bog. Then I’d have to laboriously retrace my steps, always watching for
signs of a road. I looked for the muddiest, most puddle-washed stretches and
was usually right.

I tried to keep my temper. I did not look skyward and demand
What can be worse than this?
because
my mother had trained me well. Ask the universe that, and it will happily show
you just how many ways things can get a whole lot worse.

I said once, “What about asking ‘What can be better than
this?’”

She smiled and patted my knee. “That you have to do on your
own.”

As a philosophy it probably left much to be desired, but as
a rule to go by, it worked. I hunkered over my horse and endured, glad when at
last I reached a village with an inn.

They had a map on the wall as decoration, with all the
nobles’ castles and flags drawn in. Ignoring those, I did some mental math and
discovered my slogging had probably advanced me all of a couple hundred miles.
The key word there, you notice, is
advanced
.
I’d probably covered three times that in false trails and backtracking.

But I finally reached Zhavlir, and asking around got me to
the Three Falls Inn, the sight of which cheered me immediately. Barliman
Butterbur couldn’t have run a cozier-looking place, opened in a V, at one side
a stable, at the other a garden, big windows, the entire bottom floor
golden-lit, the sign a big painting of three waterfalls.

The owners, a tall beanpole of a man and a tiny woman with wispy
hair, were delighted to receive the letter, waterlogged as it was. I explained
that I’d done my best—carrying it next to my skin, along with the remains of my
journey food—but they hardly stayed to listen, the man was so anxious to read
his letter, and the woman to get me to a bath, to hot food and to bed. I
cooperated fully.

Trying to recall the lies I’d told at the first inn, I
deflected their friendly questions as best I could. I departed the next day,
armed with a carefully hand-drawn map with all kinds of landmarks on it to help
me get across the mountains and through the dangers of Locan Jora to Tser
Mearsies. Lovingly made—and quite useless. I did try, ever so casually, to ask
about landmarks leading to the Bar Larsca Valley, inventing a shipmate from
there, but no one seemed to know much beyond the fact that the lands south of
the Northsca River were reputed to be wild.

Great.

I tried to remind myself that the worst of the journey,
distance-wise, was over. I had to cross a river, pass the city of Barlir to the
southwest, and there I’d be.

Well, the day’s ride out of the city to the great bridge
over the Northsca was about as pleasant as I’d had yet. Cool, clear, the autumn
colors stippling the hills to the west with glorious reds, russets and about
ten shades of gold. Even the neon orange leaves were beautiful, like little
tongues of flame, highlighting the autumn shades with brilliant color. In the
distance jutted up purple dragon-toothed mountains—the border dividing
Khanerenth from Locan Jora. I was riding into my favorite kind of scenery,
mountain forest, and my spirits soared.

The road was crowded the last half of the day, as it
narrowed toward a massive bridge. I found myself near a small group of early
high-school-aged kids training to be minstrels. I kept hearing their voices
rising and falling over the sounds of talk and laughter and the snufflings,
whinnies, and brays of animals. The voices were high and sweet, the songs
complicated rounds and interlocked rhythms that I could have listened to for
days without ever getting tired.

I crossed the bridge sedately behind the singers, looking at
the rushing river below, and the sturdy, magic-protected bridge around me.
Bridge structure wasn’t much different from Earth, only the materials varied.
But those mighty braided chains, the iron-banded timber supports, were all
reinforced by magic spells, the wood hardened into something that almost looked
like stone, the chains glowing with a dull metallic gleam and no speck of rust.

The bridge was maybe twenty feet wide, ten feet for traffic
in each direction. No one rode over. Everyone walked their horses. Bored
warriors in brown waited at either end, on the one side with wheat stalks sewn
onto their tunics, and at the far end roses: ducal sigils.

When I neared the last of the bridge, I followed the motions
of people ahead of me, thinking
I’m
nearly there
.

That lasted, oh, thirty seconds?

A woman my age and height in brown with a rose waved me over
to one side.

Surprised, I went. I was not about to call attention to
myself, not without good cause. I joined the group of people waiting for
questioning. Behind me, people showed papers to the woman and passed. Those
were all people with wagons or people dressed as runners.

My crowd moved briskly; the young singers barely spoke to
the guards. They waved, laughed, said something or other I couldn’t catch, and
ran down the hill to join the crowd of people at the foot of a well-kept road,
most climbing into a long wagon waiting there.

It was my turn. “Business?” asked an older fellow, stout,
with a ducal coronet stitched over his rose.

“Travel,” I said.

“Join,” the man replied, pointing.

“Join what?”

His eyes narrowed from boredom to mild interest.

I said, quickly, “I’m a sailor. This is my first journey
inland.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “The Duke of Larsca’s law states that
anyone on the road during harvest time not on king’s business or delivering
goods puts in a week of harvest duty for ducal lands.”

A week! Annoyance flushed through me, and I gauged the
situation with a quick glance. Maybe ten of them in various jobs all over the
bridge foot. Then I turned back to the man, who was now regarding me with more
wariness than curiosity.

“Oh.” I swallowed, my throat tight. “What do I do next?”

His expression cleared. “Go down there. Wagon will take you
to wherever they need. You get housing and food during the week, and extra over
quota gets pay. Your horse gets stabled free of charge.”

I bobbed the way I’d seen people salute the warriors and
followed the young singers, who had jumped into a wagon and commenced a
splendid round. A brown-liveried stable hand took charge of the mare, leading
her to a string of animals.

I climbed into the wagon thinking sternly:
Lie low, go along. Let’s not get search
parties and arrests and descriptions going out, shall we? If you need to, you
can always run off.
People clambered in behind me, their ages roughly from
about fourteen or fifteen, like the minstrels, to maybe early thirties or so.
When the wagon was full, someone up front yelled, “Here we go!” and the team of
six big plough horses started moving—an empty wagon almost immediately being
guided into our place.

When a rainstorm boiled up over those hills to the northwest
and bore down on us, everyone in the wagon helped put up a canopy, laughing and
joking, and we rode dry while rain drummed the canvas overhead, cascading in
silvery fringes all around. The minstrels sang rain songs, many joined in, and
I sat there safe and smiling.

o0o

There’s no use in going into the daily details of my career
as a farm worker. I decided by the end of the first day to dutifully put in my
week without drawing attention to myself. The place was comfortable, the food
was plain and plentiful, the work easy. Here was my chance to hear gossip that
would be useful. Or at least learn how people were feeling about the
government, so I could tell Dad when I saw him again.

Human nature being what it is, mild fun—though we live for
such moments—is really boring to read about.

The ducal farm was a series of long, low buildings, sturdily
built. The crop we’d been chosen for was olive picking. I was surprised there
were olives growing here at all. The single thing I knew about them was that a
Mediterranean climate was needed. But these olives had adapted over the
countless centuries since being brought over. The hot northern sun during the
summer ripened the olives, the way the hills were sheltered by the mountain
ridge looming to the west apparently kept off the worst ice storms in winter,
and so these gnarled, rough-barked trees had been steadily producing olives for
centuries, while all around Khanerenth’s crazy history raveled and unraveled
itself.

I learned about olives’ growing cycle and that the right
time to pick them is an exact science. I also learned that for maximum value
they have to be pressed within a day or so, depending on the outside temps.