Beneath Ceaseless Skies #19 Page 4

  More commonly he would stop to help some peasant gathering wood, or repairing a roof, and our band would pitch in to see the task done. He’d listen enthralled to a child’s tale or a granny’s ramblings, and ask questions. Though he was a foreigner who had been on the front little more than two years, the insular valley folk considered him one of their own.

  Everywhere he went, he asked for things. Children gathered fungi and flowers at his request, or reported wasp-nests to a beekeeper who collected them in tightly woven baskets made by farm wives. Huntsmen trapped polecats, cowherds gathered flux-weed and nettles, and lasses of every age bedecked gate trees with courting ribbons for him. But of this last, he was oblivious.

  Havoc reported, every few days, to D’Strigides. Even that was at irregular intervals and never, as far as I could tell, at prearranged sites. We ranged at will, slept a few hours at whatever time of day or night we found a spot with suitable cover, and carried only those possessions which wouldn’t burden the stocky hill-bred ponies we rode.

  And then some night we’d cross the river. Cumberan soldiers would discover that someone had insinuated flux-weed into their pottage greens, and in the dark end up with handfuls of nettles with which to wipe. Nosegays of dreamflower, hung in trees north of an encampment, would dry through the long summer days so the breeze inland, up the river in the early night, shook loose the pollen and spread it over the camp. Baskets, lobbed into a bivouac as supper was served, broke apart, freeing swarms of hornets. Spores of certain fungi, introduced into casks of wine, sent soldiers shrieking and stumbling in panic through the woods. And the polecats....

  The gods spoke to me once, long ago. “Only your silence can preserve whom you most wish to apotheosize,” they told me. In the brashness of youth, I discounted the geas. Then The General fell, and for five years I sang only of the dead.

  Now, at last, I forgot my haunting guilt and my soul took flight once more. I had three new songs within the first fortnight, and two more by the moon’s waxing. The price offered for Havoc’s head was fifty crowns when I crossed the river from Cumbera to join Havoc’s band. It went up to seventy-five, and then one hundred. Still we ranged the valley at will, and the peasants in Cumberan Mirze-side were as free with their well water as were their cousins in Roen.

  Roenish soldiers and peasants alike sang my Havoc songs, rollicking pieces that pulled tired men out of their seats and made a matron’s heavy feet light as a lass’s. Cumberan guards, on watch in the night, could be heard to sing them under their breath when no officers were about.

  “Your songs will be my death,” Havoc said to me, once. His bounty went up: one-twenty-five, one-fifty, and I wondered if he was right.

  Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far for alternate inspiration.

  * * *

  We swung through Rose Hill town about mid-day and stopped in the market, making camp shortly thereafter within easy sight of the north gate. Since we usually picked secluded areas to sleep, I deduced two things: we wouldn’t be staying longer than for a leisurely meal, and we could expect company.

  We rubbed fresh fish with herbs, coated them with clay from a convenient bank, and buried them among the coals, drowsing by the fire as we waited for them to cook. Sure enough, by the time the hardened mud was the only thing preventing the fish from falling apart, the lean form of Travan D’Strigides appeared. He and Havoc spoke together a time, then he joined us for an early evening meal.

  “Is it true what we hear about the Duchess Questre?” asked Vinaldi, a master swordsman from Alcora who was known to speak bitterly of a certain Alcoran prince. “That she’s managed to shame the Royal Council into more troop levies, and rides at the head of her own?”

  “It is,” D’Strigides replied, dryly. “Thanks to her, we’ll be seeing more of the nobility leading their troops. Means we’ll be getting better supplies. The drawback is that the idiots will try to run the war. Between that, and Dirk Alzarin apparently missing the bloodshed of the Mydicean Campaign, we’re in for one hot summer here in Mirze Vale.”

  “I wouldn’t worry much,” said Vinaldi, casting his shield-brother Zahn a grin. “The Duchess will keep them in line.”

  The commander only raised his brows. I smelled a story.

  “We’ve met her. Haven’t we, Zahn?”

  Zahn, a squat Tonoman with the dark hair and eyes of the native population and a once badly broken nose, squirmed uncomfortably.

  “Well?” I demanded. I could fairly taste a story on the air.

  “Zahn tried to steal her horse.”

  “You helped,” grunted Zahn, not looking up.

  “We had horses. I suggested we lift coin to get us to Kingsport where we’d be able to find employment. You went for the horse.”

  ”You didn’t see that horse!” Zahn glared at me, eyes flashing with passion and nostrils flared like one of his beloved steeds.

  Zahn losing his head over a horse was something I could easily conceive of. He lived and breathed horses, and could ride anything with hair. It was Zahn who taught our steeds to leap off the lower cliffs into the river and swim across to a more sloping shore. This was the secret to our free movement back and forth across the flooded riverbed.

  But I knew that story.

  “You didn’t succeed?”

  “Wasn’t but a handful in the party, all told. I held a crossbow on them and Zahn went for their purses. Except that he got distracted by that horse, Mist take him.” Vinaldi grinned again at his friend, but Zahn just ducked low over his braiding.

  “He grabbed the near rein and told the rider to get down. ‘You’re not man enough for a horse like this,’ says he. Didn’t realize it was a woman. Who’d expect to see a noblewoman riding astride in surcote and breeches? Wasn’t ‘til she spoke we knew our mistake. ‘You’re not man enough to take him from me,’ says she, and kicks poor Zahn in the face!”

  “You laughed,” growled Zahn, “and let them ride off!”

  “And a good thing, too.” D’Strigides let slip a wry grin. “She is a Justice of Roen, in the process of rewriting our laws. You might have gotten away with taking her money, but she’d have hunted you down and hanged you if you’d taken her horse!”

  “We didn’t even get the money!” laughed Vinaldi. “But goddess of Glory and Horses, what a woman!”

  “I’ll tell her you said so,” D’Strigides offered.

  “You know her?” Vinaldi demanded. Zahn watched, tense, as if waiting for a serpent to strike.

  “Strigides lands border Questre’s. Her Grace was engaged to my eldest brother before he was killed in the last conflict with Cumbera. Our families are close.”

  “If I’m right, she was once engaged to Dirk Alzarin as well,” I said.

  D’Strigides’ thoughtful frown was all I needed to confirm my suspicions.

  “Was she?” Vinaldi demanded. Clearly the unconventional duchess had won at least one unworthy mercenary’s admiration.

  The commander nodded slowly, his gaze never leaving me. “She was. But how you heard, I couldn’t guess. Not from Alzarin, surely.”

  “From then-Prince Daphed, but at the prompting of Dirk Alzarin. Perhaps he felt the story of a woman who came of age outplaying her king at politics would inspire General Hanbel’s little daughter. Or it may have been some subtle jab at Daphed. I don’t claim to be privy to any private thoughts but my own.”

  “And few enough of those,” muttered Zahn, to generalized laughter. I took a bow, acknowledging the point.

  * * *

  But the tales took root in the fertile soil of my brain. I presented my first paean in Her Grace’s praise several nights later. Within a fortnight, a squad of Dirk Alzarin’s finest was taken attempting to abduct the duchess from her tent in the watch before dawn. It was said she returned their leader naked, tied backward on a bony mule.

  When I managed to converse with one of Questre’s officers, I found him and his men ready to rhapsodize without even a bottle of wine to loosen their tongues. She li
ved among them, they said, in a tent differentiated only by the Questre standard. She ate what they ate, and rode on patrol. What’s more, she did not pretend to know more of warfare than her veteran commanders, but listened in council and asked intelligent questions and, in most cases, only confirmed the strategies that were presented.

  I admit it: I was minded strongly of The General.

  Can you believe, for a moment I felt homesick for Mydicea? For the Adamantine Campaign, and the sand and the toil and even the assassins? But what I missed were the living legends I had immortalized and spent half my life in the company of, most of whom were now five years dead.

  My second hymn was one of praise for Questre’s wisdom, patriotism, and courage in the face of personal danger. I drew on local mythology, painting an analogy with a goddess of dawn who symbolized Hope in rising above the grey mists that so often shrouded the Mirze dale and mountains of a morning. Mists were symbolic of the grey-eyed god of the Dead who ever pursued the elusive goddess, and occasionally overcame her...but never for long.

  I’d have to find another direction to continue my travels when my time here ended. Grey eyes were far from unknown in the royal house of Cumbera, and Dirk Alzarin himself fit the Mirze folks’ description of Severan, god of the Dead, so well I felt confident that history played a significant part in the formation of this theology.

  Dirk Alzarin’s response was prompt and in force. Once more the duchess managed to escape the attempted kidnapping, this time by dint of having the faster horse. Too, her horse had the lighter burden by far, but I didn’t realize that ‘til later.

  * * *

  Commander D’Strigides appeared one evening when the sun hung in a baleful glare over the west hills. We were downriver, almost to the lake where the Mirze found its exit on the valley’s north end, heading seaward. The biting flies were fierce. He’d never sought us in so isolated an area. Thus I knew his visit an urgent matter.

  My eye went to the lad accompanying him, a slender youth in surcote and breeches with a deliberate stride. White-gold swans’ down hair looked as if it had been cut short to be worn under a helm but allowed to grow out. The firelight picked out features too fair and fey for a lad of any age, and I empathized with the grim expression that sat so poorly on that delicate countenance.

  The figure’s left hand rested on the hilt of a light and business-like dueling rapier. That hand had been injured and was wrapped in cloth the same shade as the russet surcote. Only the quality of the cloth, and of the tailored riding boots, spoke of wealth...those, and the black diamonds glinting on the hilt of the dagger at her right hip.

  By that dagger, I knew her. Only three existed. One was lost in the destruction of Datura’s temple. One, Dirk Alzarin kept for himself. The third he’d bestowed upon a loyal liegeman who’d served him since birth. That was when I realized Sergeant Henders had been the one assigned to capture the duchess that first failed attempt.

  The Duchess Questre had to be near forty. She didn’t look it. The only signs of her age were crow’s-feet at the corners of her lilac eyes, and that happened young on pale-eyed foreigners in sun-bright Mydicea.

  Vinaldi was the next to recognize her. It was his gasp of awe and dread that got the attention of the others. Zahn leapt up to flee, but Havoc caught his arm. Zahn and Vinaldi both stayed, obedient to Havoc’s silent command, despite Questre’s narrow-eyed recognition. She said nothing to them, but addressed me instead.

  “So, you’re the bard, Marcoen.” Her voice held the music of the harp’s plucked strings. She was a soprano, and I’d wager my gittern she could sing to make the birds cry in envy. Tonight, though, she spoke in a key suitable for a threnody.

  “We share many of the same heroes,” she said. Her glance sparked on Havoc, bringing a blush to his cheeks as his gaze skittered away. I’d never seen him nonplused before.

  Envy thrust a knife at my heart. I parried it and nursed the wound.

  For the sake of my art. I’ve done so many times, and the greater the emotion the more triumphant the ballad. But the pain never fades.

  “Do you take requests?” she asked of me.

  A song? I’d played for royalty before. None had discomposed me as much as she, but I nodded, knowing I’d find my voice when my fingers touched the strings.

  “I request that you not compose anything about my nephew, King Daphed,” she said. “While he is worthy of such an honor, I greatly fear the consequences would not be to your liking or mine. For myself, I appreciate your work, dear Bard. But I could wish that I had never become the subject of your verse.”

  I glanced at Havoc, who once more gazed at me steadily. He was still holding Zahn by the arm.

  I remembered his words, and his ever-rising bounty.

  I glanced back at the diminutive duchess, at hair rough-shorn too short for another’s grip, at the scarred throat and the wrapped hand that rested like a crippled bird on the hilt of her rapier. They say she levered away the knife at her throat with her own hand. I wondered for the first time at the damage done, and at how much blame I bore for having provoked that attack.

  “I can make no promise, Your Grace. But I will give the matter sober consideration.”

  She gave a short, sharp nod, accepting my concession. Then she turned her regard to Vinaldi and Zahn, before setting her focus on Havoc, himself.

  “These are your men?” she demanded.

  “They are,” Havoc replied, this time meeting her gaze.

  “You name yourself responsible for them, and for their actions?”

  “I do.”

  Again, that sharp nod of recognition, and she turned away. D’Strigides gave Havoc a solemn look before following. It was the last we saw of the commander.

  Havoc released Zahn slowly. The horseman sank to the ground, eyes closed, dealing with his close brush with the Mist.

  But Havoc’s eyes were on me, and troubled. “I have only my life to lose, Bard. If you must write songs about one of us, let it be me.”

  I thought of my kidskin journal and the fragments of Havoc songs not yet completed. I thought of one hundred fifty crowns and the life of ease they might purchase. I thought of the duchess’ ragged hair and mangled hand, and again heard that whisper of the gods:

  “Only your silence....”

  * * *

  Perhaps it was that we made our move before midnight, and the threatened rain had the Cumberan guards jumpy. The camp roused and we pulled back prematurely, leaving our tasks undone. We didn’t realize Zahn was taken ‘til he failed to show at the rendezvous.

  Havoc slipped away on foot, and we waited.

  Rain came down in tubs and buckets, and the horses churned the ground to mud despite heavy leaf litter under the trees. Havoc never showed.

  We returned to the Roenish side of the river, concealed by the pre-dawn mists, but kept watch from under the forest’s edge.

  We weren’t disappointed.

  The goddess of Hope set the Cumberan peaks afire and spread diaphanous veils of peach and blush, and a lilac like Questre’s eyes, billowing overhead. Severan’s mist lay like a woolly grey serpent between the riverbanks, rearing its multifarious heads above damp treetops and straining to reach her from the very flanks of the mountain peaks. And failing.

  We heard hoof beats, muted thunder rolling through the dale, growing ever louder. From the mists, coiling over the field across the river, burst a glorious black brute. One figure strained forward over the horse’s muscular neck, face flagellated by the whipping mane. A second, hunched figure, held on tight with bowed head and a black mane of his own flying.

  Zahn never slowed as he took the approach to the river.

  I can only tell myself that, in the fog, the horse didn’t know how far down the water was. He gathered those powerful haunches and leaped from the cliff’s edge...to be swallowed by the swollen serpent of mist, lost but for an equine scream of terror and an enormous splash.

  Victor, the horse, came surging out of the water with Zahn stick
ing so close they might have been wearing the same skin. I recognized Victor immediately. Of Havoc, I saw no sign, nor heard splashing from the river.

  Zahn slid from the steed’s back, his movements stiff, pained. He patted Victor approvingly on the withers, and the stallion lowered its head to shake the water from its mane.

  “Where’s Havoc?” I demanded. It wasn’t unlike Zahn to be distracted by horses while our leader drowned only a rod away.

  “Here,” quothe said leader, swimming silently to shore with only his head breaking the surface of the water, his hair streaming behind like black algae. He pulled himself up onto a rock at the water’s edge and ran his fingers through his hair, squeezing out the water.

  The local populace has a legend of a horse that lives down in the river, one that comes ashore to steal young maids. Some insist that the horse can become a man. I filed away the image for later use, perhaps in a romantic ballad.

  “Where were you?” Vinaldi demanded of Zahn.

  “How’d you get him away?” someone else tossed at Havoc.

  “Of all the horses in Cumbera, did you have to steal Dirk Alzarin’s own?” I asked.

  Vinaldi thumped himself on the forehead with the heel of his hand.

  “Is it?” Havoc sighed, dumping water out of a boot. “I was afraid of that.”

  “How’d you get him?” I inquired.

  “The Cumberans were...enthusiastic,” Havoc said, his eyes straying to the limping Zahn. “We wouldn’t be able to move fast enough on foot. Take note: if you are captured you won’t be held for ransom. Zahn was chained to the courtyard wall of Mirze-March Keep, to be turned over to Duke Cudgel at dawn.”

  My shudder had nothing to do with the night’s rain and morning chill. The Red Duke’s dungeon was notorious.