Darkover: First Contact (43 page)

“Traitor! Damned traitor,” he shouted, tore himself from Geremy’s arms and whirled, his sword flashing out. Two strokes beat down Beltran’s sword, and even as he heard Geremy cry out in horror and dismay, he ran Beltran through the heart, felt the other man crumple on his sword and fall.

Geremy had fallen, striking his lame leg hard, and lay moaning on the ground. Bard stood looking down at him, bitterly.

“The
cristoforos
tell a tale of their Bearer of Burdens,” he said, “that he too was betrayed by his foster brother while he stood in kinsman’s embrace. I did not know you were a
cristoforo
, Geremy, or that you would play such a treacherous game on me. I believed you.” He felt his mouth twist in a weeping grimace, but he bit his tongue hard and betrayed nothing.

Geremy set his teeth and struggled to rise. He said, “I did not betray you, Bard. I swear it. Help me up, foster brother.”

Bard shook his head. “Not twice,” he said bitterly. “Did you plot with Beltran to have your revenge?”

“No,” said Geremy. Clutching at the stirrup, he managed to struggle to his feet. “Believe it or not, Bard, I came to try to make peace.” He was crying. “Is Beltran dead?”

Bard said, “I don’t know,” and bent to feel his heart. There was no sign of life; and he looked at Beltran in despair, and at Geremy. “I had no choice.”

“I know,” said Geremy, and his voice broke. “He would have killed you. Merciful Avarra, how did we come to this?”

Bard set his teeth, nerving himself to wrench the sword out of Beltran’s body. He wiped the blade on a handful of grass, and sheathed it. Geremy stood weeping, no longer making any attempt to conceal his tears. At last he said, “I know not what I shall say to King Ardrin. He was in my care. He was always so much the youngest of us—” He couldn’t go on.

Bard said, “I know. Long after we were men, he was still a boy. I should have known—” and fell silent.

Geremy said at last, “Each man must ride the road of his own fate. Bard, I hate to ask this of you; but I cannot walk alone. Will you set Beltran’s body on his horse, that I may lead it back to the castle? If I had paxman or serving man with me—”

“But,” said Bard. “you wanted no witness to treachery.”

“Do you still believe that?” Geremy shook his head. “No, to weakness, for I was ready to plead with Beltran to make his peace with you. I am not your enemy, Bard. There has been enough death. Do you want my life too?”

Bard knew he could have it easily enough. Geremy, as befitted a
laranzu,
was unarmed. He shook his head, and went to catch Beltran’s horse and lead it to where be could lift the prince’s lifeless form and tie it across the saddle.

“Do you need help to mount, Geremy?”

Geremy bent his head, unwilling to meet Bard’s eyes. He accepted, reluctantly, Bard’s hand to help him into his saddle, and sat there, swaying, shaking from head to foot. Their eyes met, and they both knew there was nothing more that they could say. Even a formal farewell would be too much. Geremy pulled at the reins, taking the reins of the horse which bore Beltran’s lifeless body, and slowly turned on the trail and rode away toward Asturias. Bard watched him go, his face set and drawn, until he was out of sight; then he sighed, saddled his own horse, and rode away without looking back, out of the kingdom of Asturias and into exile.

Half a year before the seven years of his outlawry had passed, Bard mac Fianna, called the Wolf, had news of the death of King Ardrin, and knew that he was free to return to Asturias.

He was far away in the Hellers then, in the little kingdom of Scaravel, helping to hold Sain Scarp against the assault of bandits from beyond Alardyn; a little time after the siege was lifted, Dom Rafael sent word to his son with news of the kingdom.

Three years after the death of Prince Beltran, Queen Ariel had borne the king another son. When Ardrin died, and the infant Prince Valentine succeeded to his father’s throne, the queen had prudently fled to her kinsmen on the Plains of Valeron, leaving Asturias to whatever hands could take and hold it. The principal claim was being made by Geremy Hastur, whose mother was a cousin of King Ardrin, and who claimed that in times past all these lands had lain under the dominion of the old Hasturs and should still be under their wardship.

Dom Rafael had written:
I will never again bow the knee to the Hastur kindred, and my claim is better than Geremy’s; Alaric is my rightful heir, and the heir to Ardrin, after Valentine. Come, my son, and help me take Alaric from Geremy’s warding, and hold this kingdom for your brother.

Bard pondered the message, standing half armored in the guard room of Scaravel, where it had reached him. In seven years he had served as mercenary, and later as captain of mercenaries, in as many little kingdoms; and he had no doubt at all that the fame of the Kilghard Wolf had spread beyond the Hellers and into the lowlands, even to Valeron. In those years he had seen plenty of fighting, and he read into the message the subtler news that there would be more fighting ahead; but at the end of
that
fighting there would be peace and honor, and a place near the throne of Asturias. He looked, frowning, at the messenger.

“And my father gave you no more message than this, no private intelligence for my ears alone?”

“No,
vai dom
.”

No news, Bard wondered, of my wife? Has Geremy had the effrontery to marry Carlina? What else could give him the effrontery to claim Ardrin’s throne, if not that he is wedded to Ardrin’s daughter? All that talk of old Hastur kin is so much stable sweepings, and Geremy must know it as well as I do!

“But I bear you a message from the Lady Jerana,” the messenger offered. “She bade me say to you that Domna Melisendra sends you greetings, and the greetings of your son Erlend.”

Bard scowled, and the messenger flinched at the angry gesture.

He had all but forgotten Melisendra. There had been women enough in the time between, and it was likely that he had a son or two, scattered about the kingdoms. In fact, he gave one camp follower money, when he had it, because her son was so much like he had been as a child, and because she washed his clothes and trimmed his hair when it wanted cutting, and her cooking was better than he got in the guard room. He thought now with distaste of Melisendra. Whimpering, whining baggage! That encounter had left a bad taste in his mouth. It was the last time he had used his gift to lay compulsion on any woman to come to his bed. Well, she had been a maiden, right enough, and it was likely that the foolish girl had known no better than to tell her mistress all that had happened. Lady Jerana’s knife had been sharp for him ever since he was a boy, and his brother Alaric had preferred him to any other companion. Now Jerana would have one more evil deed, or so she would certainly say, to hold over his head.

Melisendra’s presence would be a good reason to avoid Asturias. And yet, it was not entirely unpleasant, to think he might have a son by a girl of good family, a son gently reared as a nobleman’s
nedestro
son. The boy would be six or so. Old enough for some training in the manly arts; and no doubt Melisendra would try her best to make him into a milksop out of her grudge against his father. He wanted no son of
his
reared by that whimpering whey-faced wench, nor by her sour mistress. So if Lady Jerana thought she was warning him off, with the news that his mishandling of Melisendra was common knowledge, well, she had better think again.

“Say to my father,” he said to the messenger, “that I will ride for Asturias within three days’ time. My work here is done.”

Before he left, he went down among the camp followers to find the woman Lilla, and gave her most of the money he had earned at Scaravel.

“You should, perhaps, buy yourself a little farm somewhere in these hills,” he said, “and perhaps a husband to help you to care for it, and to rear your son.”

“By that,” Lilla said, “I take it that you will not be coming back when your business in your homeland is done?”

Bard shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

He saw her swallow hard, and flinched in anticipation of a scene; but Lilla was too sensible a woman for that. She stood on tiptoe and gave him a hearty kiss and hug.

“Then Godspeed you, Wolf, and may you fare well in the Kilghards.”

He returned the kiss, grinning at her. “That’s a soldier’s woman! I’d like to say good-bye to the boy,” he said, and she called the chubby boy, who came and stared up at Bard in his shining helmet, ready for the road southward. Bard picked him up and chucked him under the chin.

“I can’t acknowledge him, Lilla,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll have a home to take him to; and in any case there were enough men before me and after me.”

“I don’t expect it, Wolf. Any husband I marry can rear my son as his own, or find some other woman.”

“Just the same,” Bard went on, smiling at the boy’s bright eyes, “if he should show any talent for arms, in twelve years or so, and you have other children, so that you don’t need his work on the farm to support you in your old age, send him to me at Asturias, and I’ll put him in the way to earn his bread with the sword, or do better than that for him if I can.”

“That’s generous,” Lilla said, and he laughed.

“It’s easy to be generous with what may never come to pass; all this is supposing I’m still alive in twelve years or so, and that’s the one thing no soldier can ever tell. If you hear that I’m dead—well, then, girl, your son must make his way in the world as his father did, with his wits and his strong arm, and may all the devils be kinder to him than they’ve been to me.”

Lilla said, “That’s a strange blessing you give to your son, Wolf.”

“A wolf’s blessing?” Bard laughed again and said, “It may be that he is not my son at all; and a kinsman’s blessing would do him no good, just as my curse would do him no harm. I hold no faith in such things, Lilla. Curses and blessings are all one. I wish him well, and you too.” He gave the boy a rough smack on the cheek and set him down, and gave Lilla another kiss. Then he got on his horse and rode away, and if Lilla wept, she had sense enough not to do it until Bard was well out of sight.

Bard, however, was elated as he rode southward. He had freed himself of the one tie he had made in all those years, and he had done it at no more cost than by lightening himself of money he did not need. Probably the boy was not his son, for all small fair-haired children looked very much alike anyhow, without need of kin ties, and would grow up with his feet firmly rooted in the dung of his mother’s dairy, and he would never need to take any thought for either of them again.

He rode south alone, toward the Kadarin. He made his way through a countryside ravaged by small wars, for the Aldarans who had, in his father’s time, kept peace through all this country had fallen out, and now there were four small kingdoms, and the forests lay waste where the four brothers, all greedy and land hungry, had fought through them with clingfire and sorcery. Bard had taken service one year with one of them; and when they fell out—Dom Anndra of Scathfell had taken for himself a girl Bard wanted, a wisp of a thing fourteen years old, with long dark hair and eyes that reminded Bard of Carlina—he had left and taken service with the man’s brother and led Dom Lerrys right into the stronghold by a secret way he had learned when he served Scathfell. But then the two brothers had made up their quarrel, and banded together, swearing many oaths, against a third brother, and the girl had warned Bard that one price of their compact was Bard’s head, for they both felt he would betray either or both of them; and so she let him out by the same secret door, and he fled to Scaravel, vowing he would never become involved again in kin strife!

And now he was riding homeward, to do just that. But at least these were his own kin!

He crossed the Kadarin and rode through the Kilghard Hills, seeing in the countryside the signs of war. When he crossed the borders of Asturias, he noted the tokens of fighting in the countryside, and wondered if he should hasten to the king’s household? But no; Geremy claimed the throne, and sat in King Ardrin’s stronghold, and if Dom Rafael had already laid seige to that place, his message would have sent for Bard to join him there; and so he rode toward his old family home.

He had not realized how much the countryside would change in seven years; nor, paradoxically, how much it would remain the same. It was early spring; a heavy snow had fallen during the night, and the featherpod trees had put on their snow pods. When he and Carlina were children they bad played under a featherpod tree in the courtyard. He was already well beyond children’s games, but he had climbed the tree to bring down pods for Carlina, so that she could make beds for her dolls with the feathery pods and the wool inside them. Once they found a really huge pod, and Carlina had put a kitten to bed inside the pod, cuddled in the feathery stuff, and sung it lullabyes; but the kitten had tired of the game and torn its way out of the pod. He remembered Carlina, her hair hanging in untidy ripples to her waist, standing with the torn pod in her hands, sucking on a finger where the kitten had scratched her, her eyes filling with tears. He had caught the kitten and threatened to wring its neck, but Carlina had grabbed it and sheltered it against her breast, warding him away with her small fingers.

Carlina. He was coming back to Carlina, who was his wife under the old law, and he would demand that his father enforce it. If they had given Carlina to another man, first he would kill the other man, and then he would marry Carlina. And if the other man was Geremy, he would cut off Geremy’s
cuyones
and roast them before his face!

By the time he saw from afar the towers of Dom Rafael’s Great Hall, he had worked himself into a fine frenzy against Geremy, and against Carlina; if she had stayed with him, even Ardrin could not have parted them lawfully!