Noble Beginnings (19 page)

In addition to this, to Dorran's surprise and
vague worry, Nora had decided to put some of the oldest children in
charge. As she explained to him briefly when they crossed paths in
a hallway, she needed the extra time to help Adhara coordinate
meetings with refugees who wished to help the effort against the
King from their new farms out in the countryside. Many of these
were unready or unwilling to fight with the futures of their
families so uncertain, but Nora was patient, willing to come up
with unorthodox ways they could serve the war effort. Already she
had gathered surprising amounts of oil, butter, cream, and other
fat sources from the homes of hundreds of families; with it, she
intended to render fat and other flammable liquids to be boiled and
held at the top of the capital's walls to deter any of the king's
soldiers planning to climb up it.

Dorran, thinking of how many soldiers in the
King's army were likely in a similar place to the one his own
soldiers would have been in had Thea not crowned herself Queen,
queasily admitted to Nora that he hoped she would not have to use
it. Nora admitted the same, though she thought to add that they
also didn't have enough oil to pull the trick off too many times
and might end up having to resort to boiling water. Dorran avoided
such topics around her after that.

Adhara herself was little to be seen around
the castle; in preparation for the King's retaliation, she was
traveling all over Farlan, far and near, announcing herself as the
crown princess and asking for whatever support people could give.
Many men were already prepared to leave their homes behind due to
the muster, and several times in those few weeks she returned home
with a small army in tow, ready to be put to work building up the
capital's fortifications.

Myriel, almost fully back on her feet, was
quietly expanding her range of direct influence from the castle to
include nearly the entire capital. She seemed to have a hand in
every aspect of preparation for the siege except for the fighting
itself. She had her hands in everything from release of food stores
to building up the defensive architecture to keeping track of armor
availability for soldiers, including the new female fighters that
Edith had quickly commandeered and were currently undergoing basic
preliminary training with the rest of Farlan's fledgling fighting
force.

The effects of the coming battle were far
from confined to the barracks. More and more, the servants that
Dorran passed in the castle halls began to look like soldiers. He
had seen the same look begin to grow in young people beginning
military training, and it appeared that preparing for a siege had
the same effects. Girls that had once tittered and giggled at him
now looked him squarely in the face and nodded when he passed, or
ignored him entirely as they rushed to give or receive orders. He
saw, for the first time, the sort of naked honesty in their eyes
that he saw on a daily basis in Edith, Marcus, and any of the other
people he had trained with. The castle had been filled with rustle
and bustle and chatter, but now it echoed with the harsh
reverberations of a large number of people rushing from place to
place and ignoring each other unless there was something to be
done.

It seemed the very air in the capital had
stilled and quieted. Dorran, in the few minutes of leisure that
would occasionally crop up between barracks and castle, wondered
privately whether he didn't prefer the castle that way, but quickly
concluded that was irrelevant. The important thing was ensuring
that the castle would be strong enough to withstand the king's
forces, whatever they might be and whenever they might arrive.

And in truth, he had little time to think
about any of it. He had preparations of his own to make, after all.
Dorran took a deep breath and pushed the doors to the training hall
open.

He met the eyes of the fighters first the men
and women he had known for years, as well as the new recruits from
the capital who had been added in preparation for the muster. Many
of these looked as uncomfortable as he felt, but he saw a great
deal of determination in their faces as well. Most stood already
dressed in their training gear, with wooden swords at their hips or
resting in their hands, tips against the ground. They were unused
to all standing and listening at once, least of all to him, but
they still managed to display a basic level of discipline.

Then there were the others almost five
hundred of them, outnumbering the fighters three or four to one.
Some of these were wholly unfamiliar to him, but the majority were
servants he had seen around the castle. Most of the Queen's guards
were there, too, but he ignored them for the most part; they were
already fairly experienced in fighting and well used to taking
orders from a Farlane.

They were all staring, waiting for him to
start speaking.

I can't do this, Dorran thought, for one
desperate moment. They're expecting a leader. How can I lead if
they're just as inexperienced as I am?

Then he pushed the feeling down. He was
perfectly capable of this. They didn't need a perfect leader or a
brilliant military strategist; all he had to do was explain to them
what was going on. In fact, it would likely be in everyone's best
interest to cut straight to the point. With that thought in mind,
he began.

"I'd like to thank everyone for being here,"
he said, making his voice as clear and loud as he could and
beginning to pace, hoping that the echo in the training hall would
allow his voice to carry. "Even if you're still uncertain of your
desire to fight alongside us, you have been coming. That tells me
that you're at least considering fighting for Farlan. If you do
decide to fight for us, you will either help to defend the castle
or, more likely, be involved in halting groups of invaders before
they can make it that far.

"Now, this is to be no king's muster," he
continued. "My mother has made that perfectly clear, and I'm glad
she has done so. Fighting is a challenge enough without doing so
with reluctant soldiers. So before we begin the process of forming
and training units, I'd like to say this now. Anyone who does not
wish to fight does not have to. There are plenty of other roles in
the castle which can be fulfilled. If you would rather be away from
the danger, you can leave preferably now, but you’re free to go
anytime, if you do not wish to be censured by your friends and
companions."

The uneasy silence of his audience was broken
by some angry murmurs.

"Queen Thea has elected for a difficult
fight," Dorran said, raising his voice slightly.

The grumbles reluctantly died down, and
Dorran found himself smiling faintly.

"We need to build up as strong a fighting
force as possible in a short period of time," he said next,
scanning the room. "We will be receiving backup from other areas,
but not as much or as soon as we will need. In the meantime, we are
going to need every fighter we can get. First, though, there is an
important order of business that I'd like to attend to." He looked
around the room. "Gentlemen, ladies, separate yourselves into two
groups."

There was a moment as they absorbed his
words, and then the mass in front of him started to shift. Within a
minute, there were two fairly distinct groups, all looking at him
apprehensively.

He nodded. "Good. Ladies who have fought with
me in the past, step forward."

Almost two dozen women moved to stand in the
front of the large, nervous-looking group.

"Split the female fighters up among
yourselves," he told them. "I expect the most experienced among you
to help the less experienced to come up with training
regiments."

They saluted, sloppily but it was done with
vigor.

Then he turned to the men. "How many of you
are trained in fighting? Just raise an arm if you are. I'm not
asking for much expertise just if you think you could best a
stranger in a dark alley." Some two-thirds of the men in the group
raised their hands. Dorran looked them over intently before
continuing. "All right now, those of you that believe you're
skilled enough to instruct others, come forward."

In the end, there were enough men willing to
teach that Dorran ended up re-assigning many of the women to male
leaders.

"There we have it," he said and the new
teachers and students eyed each other speculatively. "Those of you
who wish to fight, go to your commanders with questions. If you
think you can better serve out of the line of action, talk to
Myriel, she's at the site of the outdoor hospital. And if you wish
to leave now and avoid danger, I would recommend doing so sooner
rather than later. You may have to travel a long way indeed to
avoid battle."

"The men are wondering about your
motivations," Myriel said one evening as she straightened his room,
more for an excuse to talk to him than anything. He had been
spending so little time in it that it was virtually spotless, and
they both knew that.

"What do you mean?" Dorran asked.

"You've declared yourself to be behind the
Queen since the first moment she declared her intentions, but in
doing so, you seem to have given up your chance to rule Farlan
without a second thought.

"Yes," Dorran said, nonplussed. That had been
exactly what he did. Why was it confusing?

Myriel turned from the spotless vase on the
mantelpiece to give him a long look. "You're still thinking with
the mindset of a soldier," she told him.

"What? How?"

"Assume for a moment, my lord, that we win,
that the king goes away and leaves us our independence, that no
great catastrophe strikes you and your family. What will become of
you after that?"

Dorran actually froze as he thought about it.
He hadn't neglected the idea of the future, of course, but Myriel
was right, he was considered as something amorphous, to be dealt
with only after the immediate question of Farlan's independence was
resolved. "Well..."

Myriel shrugged and returned her gaze to the
mantelpiece. "It's wise enough not to trust to an uncertain future,
my lord, but many of those who follow you may expect that you have
a plan, for best and worst cases, and everything in between."

"That's true," Dorran said, taking the
chastisement for what it was. "What do you think I should do,
Myriel?"

She shrugged. "I don't know any more than the
others, what is it you want. I suppose you could say that to us,
your motivations seem rather...mysterious?"

Dorran blinked. "They don't think I'm
planning to take over by force someday, do they?"

He saw Myriel purse her lips in profile as
she turned her attention to the second vase. "Some of them
might."

"Do you?" he asked before he could stop
himself.

Myriel answered neither too quickly nor too
slowly, thinking her answer over carefully before speaking. "It
doesn't seem in line with what I've seen of your personality, my
lord," she answered candidly. "However, since I, too, have been
unable to understand the reason for your behavior...the possibility
of such a thing happening in the future has crossed my mind."

"I..." Dorran was thunderstruck. "That's why
Nora and Adhara and Mother keep asking me strange questions, isn't
it?" he asked, gaping. "They think I'm going to want to take the
throne someday."

"That hadn't occurred to you?" Myriel asked
skeptically. "Your mother brought it up to you herself, did she
not?"

"Well, yes, but...I never wanted..." Dorran
trailed off, feeling lost. Suddenly certain events and
conversations from last few months made a great deal more
sense.

"People expect it because they put themselves
in your shoes," Myriel said conversationally, as though stating the
obvious for the sake of her own convenience. Dorran got the faint
impression that she would use such a tone to explain the rules of
etiquette to a small child, but Myriel's flashes of candidness were
so rare that he couldn't bring himself to be entirely offended.
"They think, 'If I were the formal male heir of the former Duchess,
what would I think of this?' Most people would expect you to be
angry. You had the closest anyone can get to the right to a throne
taken away from you just as you were coming of age."

"Well..." Dorran allowed. "I can't argue with
any of that; it's true." He flexed his hands in his lap, watching
them clench and unclench. "But that's not really the light in which
I've seen any of this."

She cocked her head to one side, watching him
carefully. All pretenses of her cleaning were gone, and he found
himself slightly pleased to have caught Myriel's interest. "How do
you see it, then?"

Dorran looked at his hands again. "Maybe it's
because so many of the people in the castle are women," he said,
clenching his fists. "They forget something very important."

"What's that?" Myriel asked, subdued, as
though she had already guessed the answer.

"Ever since I was very young," Dorran said
simply, "I've known I was going to grow up to be a man. I've known
that so long as I was healthy, I was going to be expected to fight,
and that I would probably die. And that my best chance of not dying
was doing the best I could to be a good soldier, though that method
obviously wasn't a surefire road to survival. I mean, my father, my
grandfather..." He shrugged, looking at the calluses and creases he
had built up after years of training, now ever so slightly softer
than they had once been but beginning to harden once more with his
resumed daily training. "I grew up hearing about what great men
they were, and how they died. And I knew that if I was going to be
like them, then I had to grow up great and strong, but no matter
how strong I got, I was probably going to die just as they
did."

He wanted to be surprised by how flat the
words sounded when he said them, but he wasn't, not really. They
had been truths that he'd first told himself at six years old,
alone in the dark, in an attempt to make the nightmares go away.
After that, they'd just been something he'd continued to repeat to
himself. It seemed an important thing to remember, that you were
probably going to die.