Darkover: First Contact (59 page)

“I have never hated Bard before,” she said, trembling, holding herself tight to him. “Now, because of you, I have learned how to hate him, and I shall never cease to be grateful to you.”

“But I want more than gratitude,” be heard himself say, to his own surprise. “I want your love, Melisendra.”

She said in the dark, with a frightening intensity, “I am not sure I know how to love. But I think if I could learn to love anyone, I would love you, Paul.”

He said no more, drawing her fiercely against his mouth. But even in the midst of his wonder and delight, a troubling thought nagged at him.

A tenday later, Paul Harrell rode to war for the first time beside Bard di Asturien.

“The men of Serrais have broken their oaths,” Bard told him as they made their preparations. “We may not have to fight. But we do have to remind them of what they have sworn, and the best way to do that is with a show of force and a sight of our armies. You had better be ready to ride within the hour.”

Paul’s first thought was triumph,
so, there will be a chance to strike for power!
His second, displacing even that, was one of dismay;
Melisendra!
He did not want to be parted from her so swiftly. He had just begun to suspect, and for the first time in his life, that he did not want to be parted from her at all. Yet a moment’s sober reflection told him that this parting was the best thing that could possibly have happened.

Sooner or later, he knew it soberly, he would quarrel with Bard over Melisendra. He wanted her, still, as he had never wanted any other woman. Ordinarily, a tenday’s possession would have satiated him and he would be more than ready for anything that removed him from any woman’s hold. But he still wanted Melisendra. He dreaded this parting, he wanted her—and he couldn’t explain it—in a new way. He wanted her for all time, and with her own consent; he was dismayed to realize that her happiness had become more important to him than his own.

He had always thought that women were there for the taking, and that was that. Why, he wondered, should he feel differently about Melisendra?

I always swore I’d never let any woman lead me around by the balls. . . . I
knew
it in my heart that women wanted to be mastered, to have a real man they couldn’t dominate.... Why is this one so different?

He knew he still wanted Melisendra; and he wanted her, undisputed, for the rest of their lives. But he also knew that Bard, produced by a less sophisticated society, regarded Melisendra as his property, his prize, his possession. He might pass her on to Paul for a time, to humiliate her, but he was not likely to give her up entirely. She was, after all, the mother of his only son.

And at the moment there was nothing he could do about any of it. A time would come when they would quarrel over Melisendra, and when that happened, Paul knew he must be prepared.

For when that time comes,
he thought grimly,
either he will kill me or I will have to kill him. And I don’t intend to be killed.

So he gathered his pack for riding, and told Bard, “I would like to say farewell to Melisendra.”

“Why, as to that, there is no need,” said Bard, “for she rides with the army.”

Paul nodded, at first without much thought; he was accustomed to women soldiers, even to women generals. Then the shock hit him. Yes, in warfare which was a matter of button-pushing and guns, women would be as competent in combat as men—but in this world, where war meant close-order fighting with swords and knives?

“Oh, we have those too,” said Bard, reading his mind. “The women of the Order of Renunciates, the Sisterhood of the Sword, ride into battle with men, and they fight like berserkers. But Melisendra is a real woman, not one of those; she is a
leronis,
a spell-caster who rides with the armies to fight off sorcery.”

Paul thought perhaps that might be more dangerous still, but he did not say so. As they rode out an hour later, Bard said that this was just as well.

“There are those who would recognize my style of fighting,” he said, “and while we are on this campaign—since you are supposed to be a
nedestro
kinsman of mine—it will not strike anyone as significant if I have you given lessons from my own arms-master.”

Paul, riding unregarded with a small group of Bard’s aides, noted for himself how the armies greeted their general: cries of “The Kilghard Wolf! The Wolf!” cheers and shouts of acclaim. His very presence seemed to encourage and inspire them with courage and enthusiasm for this war against the Serrais.

So Bard would someday trust him with that power—and believe that he would tamely render it back again when the time was past? Not likely. There was, Paul knew with a chill of certainty along the spine, only one explanation. Bard would use him on his climb to conquest—and then, rather than rewarding him and sending him away as he had pledged, it would be back to the stasis box, by the same sorcery that had brought him here. Or perhaps, more simply still, a knife in the ribs on some dark night, and a corpse to the
kyorebni
wheeling around the cliffs. Paul kept his face impassive, joining in with the men who cried out in Bard’s acclaim. It would not be easy. For now, Bard had other things to think of than the duplicate being trained to be his double and his dupe; but at other times they could read one another’s thoughts, and he had had no training in blocking them. Perhaps Melisendra could help him, if she was truly a sorceress; but Melisendra would not be all that eager, either, to kill the father of her son. She might say that she hated Bard, but Paul wasn’t entirely sure of the depths of that hate.

Still, confronted with an accomplished fact, he could probably trust her to be silent about the substitution.

For now there was only one thing to do; and that was just what Bard wanted him to do—to ready himself, not only to impersonate, but to
become
Bard di Asturien, the Kilghard Wolf, general of all the armies of Asturias. And perhaps, one day, more.

To his own surprise—for he knew nothing of the Darkovan style of swordplay and war and had never held a sword—he took to it as if he had been born to it. A little thought told him why. He had been born with the identical reflexes and superb physical organization that made Bard an incomparable swordsman; and he had trained that physical mechanism to the utmost with martial arts and the skills of unarmed combat during the rebellion. Now it was just a case of adding another set of skills to the trained muscles and brain, as a trained dancer can learn variation of steps.

He found he enjoyed the campaign, riding lookout with the aides, making camp each night and sleeping beneath the four moons that waxed and waned again. He thought often that if he had been brought up to this life he would have been happier. Here there were few expectations of conformity, and those there were came naturally to him; there was plenty of outlet for aggression. In his first close-quarters battle he found that he had no fear and that he could kill, if he must, without fear and without malice, and, better, without squeamishness. A corpse hacked by spears and swords was neither more nor less dead than one riddled with bullets or blasted with fire.

Bard kept him close at hand and talked to him a good deal. Paul knew this was not out of good will; the Wolf simply had to know whether Paul had his gift for strategy as well. It seemed that he did; a talent for handling men, a sense for the strategy of battle or attack, as city after city fell, almost undefended, to the armies of Asturias, and the men of Serrais fled, or went down before them, to the very borders of the Serrais lands. In forty days they had conquered half as many towns, and the road lay open before them to the old lands of the Serrais people. And Paul discovered that he knew instinctively what was the best strategy to take each city, to strike down each fighting force spread against them.

“My father said once,” Bard told him, “that with two like me we could conquer the Hundred Kingdoms. And damn it, he was right! I know now it’s not only likeness skin deep; you and I are the same man, and when we can lead two armies at once, the whole of this land will lie open to us like a whore on the city wall!” He laughed and clapped Paul’s shoulder. “We’ll have to—one kingdom would never hold us both, but with a hundred, there ought to be room enough for us both!”

Paul wondered if Bard really thought he was as naïve as all that. Bard would certainly try to kill him. But not yet awhile, maybe not for years, because he would need him until all of the Hundred Kingdoms, or as many of them as he wanted, were in subjection.

And meanwhile, paradoxically, he enjoyed Bard’s company. It was a new experience for Paul to have someone to talk to who could follow what he said and understand it intelligently. And he felt that Bard enjoyed his, too.

It would all have been quite perfect if he could have had Melisendra actually
with
him on this campaign; but Melisendra rode with the other
leroni
, men and women in gray robes sternly chaperoned by a gray-haired elderly man with a lame leg, so severely lame that he rode with a special device attached to his saddle to prop it up before him, and another to unfold and help him in dismounting. In all the first three tendays of the campaign he had no opportunity to exchange more than half a dozen words with Melisendra, and those were such as could be spoken in front of half the army.

The walls of Serrais were actually within sight when Paul, riding with Bard’s aides, saw that Bard had dropped back from his usual leading place to ride with the
leroni
. After a moment, seeing that Paul was watching them, he beckoned and Paul rode back toward the cluster of gray-robed men and women. Melisendra raised her eyes in greeting, with a secret smile beneath her gray hood, somehow as intimate as a kiss.

Paul asked, “Who is Master Gareth?”

“He is the chief among the
laranzu’in
of Asturias; also, he is my father,” Melisendra said. “I wish that I might tell him—” she broke off, but Paul knew what she meant.

He said in a whisper, “I miss you,” and she smiled again.

Bard beckoned imperatively to him and said, “Master Gareth MacAran, captain Paolo Harryl.”

The gray-haired sorcerer gave Paul a formal bow.

“Master Gareth was lamed in my first campaign,” Bard said, “but he seems to bear me no ill will, for all that.”

The old wizard said genially, “You were not to blame, Master Bard—or must I call you Lord General now as the young guardsmen do? No one could better have led such a campaign. That I caught a poisoned dagger in the leg muscle was ill fortune, the fortunes of war, no more. Those of us who ride to war must accept such things.”

“It seems long since that campaign,” said Bard, and Paul, who was as always catching some spillage from his mind and feelings, realized that the tone was the bitterness of regret.

And in truth Bard was feeling the sharp sting of regret, a longing for days long past, of which the presence of Master Gareth was a sharp reminder, and the copper sheen of Melisendra’s hair beneath the gray sorcerer’s cloak more poignant still. Beltran had been at his side then, and still was his friend. And Melora. He found be could not resist the temptation to ask, “And your elder daughter, sir, how does she; where has she gone?”

“She is in Neskaya,” Master Gareth said. “In the circle of Varzil, Keeper there.”

Bard frowned, displeased, and said, “She serves, then, the enemies of Asturias?” And yet he felt it might be better to think of Melora as an enemy, since she had gone beyond his reach. She was the only woman alive who had ever come near to understanding him, yet he had never laid a hand upon her.

“Why, no,” Master Gareth said. “The
leroni
at Neskaya have pledged to work with starstones and live only for the good of all mankind, and to give allegiance to no king or ruler whatsoever, but only to the gods, and to help or heal. So they are not the enemy, my lord Wolf.”

“Do you really believe that?” Bard’s voice was contemptuous.

“Sir, I know it; Melora does not lie, nor would she have reason to lie to me, nor can one
laranzu
lie to another. Dom Varzil is exactly what he says he is, sworn to the Compact, to use no weapons, make no weapons, allow no weapons by
laran
. He is an honorable man and I admire his courage. It cannot be an easy thing to renounce your weapons knowing that others still carry them, and that others may refuse to believe you disarmed.”

“If you admire him so much, then,” Bard said peevishly, “must I look for you too to desert my armies and rally to the standard of this wondrous great man Varzil? He is a Ridenow of Serrais.”

“Born so, sooth,” Gareth said, “but now he is Varzil of Neskaya, with no loyalties other than that. And your question, Master Bard, is needless. I have sworn to King Ardrin an oath lifelong and I will not forsake it for Varzil or for any other. I would have held to the standard of Ardrin’s son, had Lady Ariel not fled the country with him. I follow your father’s banner because I believe truly that this is best for Asturias. But I am not the keeper of Melora’s conscience. And indeed she left Ardrin’s court in that same night that you were exiled, sir, long before there was cause to choose between Valentine’s cause and Alaric’s—in fact, Valentine was yet unborn. And she left with the king’s leave.”

“Still,” said Bard, “if she has chosen not to fight against the enemies of Asturias, should I not rank her among them?”

“That’s as you see it, sir. But you might also say that she has chosen not to fight alongside the enemies of Asturias, either. She could have done that easily enough; all of Varzil’s circle did not swear the Compact, but left him and went to the Hastur supporters among that army. She stayed in Neskaya at Varzil’s side, and that meant she’s chosen to stay neutral, sir. And my granddaughter Mirella went to Hali Tower, which has also sworn to stay neutral alongside Neskaya. I’m an old man, and I’m loyal to my king while he needs me, but I pray the young people may find some way to end these damnable wars year after year while our countryside is laid waste!”