Redoubt (15 page)

What? And then it struck him—the memory of what Nikolas had said a fortnight or so
ago.
:Where’re Bear and Lena?:
he asked Dallen.

:Waiting at the gate. He won’t be let inside, not after that last display of temper,
and especially not given what he has with him. And Bear and Lena have some reinforcement—Nikolas
didn’t warn them, but he did warn someone else.:

By now some of the other Trainees were getting wind of the fact that
something
was up and had begun whispering to each other. A couple of the Herald Trainees must
have caught the edges of leaking Mindspeech and were sitting up and staring toward
the main gate. Finally the teacher stopped lecturing, looking straight at Mags.

“Trainee Mags. You’re the most likely to know—”

“Healer Trainee Bear’s Pa is comin’ up th’ hill, an’ I hear he ain’t alone, sir,”
Mags said instantly. “There’s reckoning to be trouble.” After all, this was a teacher
demanding information.

The teacher looked over the class. “I know you have a vested interest in this, Mags,
since Bear and Lena are your very good friends. How many of the rest of you do?”

About half the class shot up their hands. The teacher sighed. “There’s no point in
even continuing then. Fine, I want a three-page paper from each of you on some aspect
of the King’s reign by tomorrow. I want you to confer with each other
and me
so there are
no
duplicates. Remember, those of you who confer with me first will obviously be able
to pick out the easiest and most obvious subjects for your papers. Class dismissed.”

The ones who had indicated they didn’t really care what happened began a huddled conference.
The rest got up and headed for the main gate. Mags was the only one who ran.

Bear and Lena were waiting just outside the gate, and from behind, Mags couldn’t read
anything other than tension in their postures. He wondered what on earth Bear’s father
thought he could actually
do
about the marriage. He also wondered just who the man had brought with him . . .

Surely not Bear’s ma . . .
So far as he was aware, Healer Tyrall did not regard his wife as much of anything
other than the vehicle by which he produced Healer-Gifted offspring. An odd attitude
for a Healer, but, then, the marriage had been an arranged one, and according to the
little Bear had said, he was never actually unkind to her, merely indifferent. Since
she was not Gifted at all . . . and also according to Bear, sweet natured but not
very bright . . .

Hmm. Healer married to a gal with nothin’ . . . maybe. . . .
Thinking about it, he could almost, for just a moment, feel a trickle of sympathy
for Healer Tyrall.
Could feel like a racehorse harnessed to a plow horse.
And maybe that was why he had so little sympathy for Bear. After all,
he
had done his duty to his family by marrying the bride they had chosen for him and
producing the next generation of Gifted Healers, and by his own stern code, Bear should
be doing the same.

Dammit, I
hate
being able to see the other side of things!
For, of course, his imagination was already painting the rest of that picture. It
wasn’t—it couldn’t be—all of the story, that Healer Tyrall was overly proud of his
rank and position and was a tyrant over his family. He wouldn’t be a good Healer if
that were all he was—and he wouldn’t be holding that position if he weren’t a good
Healer. Healers, as much as Heralds, were not their own masters. Healers served a
greater good. Healers put their own interests second and the needs of those who needed
them first. Well, they were supposed to, anyway . . . and he imagined that Healer
Tyrall was telling himself that this was exactly what he was doing. And if you came
of stock that bred Gifted Healers consistently, well, it was your duty to go and make
more little Healers with whatever wife you were given. By that estimation, Bear was
betraying his very calling as a Healer.

Well, he was if you took a very, very narrow view of what his duty to his calling
and his family was, anyway. It wasn’t too hard for Mags to imagine what Bear’s father
was
thinking,
as opposed to what things looked like from outside his personal point of view.

Even as Mags thought that, the sound of laboring horses grew nearer, and up over the
crest of the hill came Healer Tyrall.

And the mercenary company he had hired, about a dozen men, all armed.

Hoo boy.

:I am finding it hard to believe my own eyes. I have never before seen someone as
supposedly intelligent as Bear’s father so thoroughly deposit a pile of excrement
in his
own
bed, then proceed to trample it thoroughly into all the bedclothes . . . :
Dallen was clearly in awe at the epic stupidity he was witnessing. Mags tried to
talk to Nikolas, but all he got was a sensation of choking. Whether it was Nikolas
who was choking with disbelief, or he wanted to choke
the Healer,
Mags couldn’t quite tell.

The Guard alerted at the sight of armed men, and in no uncertain terms. Before Mags
could even blink, they had sounded the alarm, shoved Lena and Bear behind the gate,
and dropped the iron portcullis.

Well. So much for doin’ things peaceful-like. Fine way to make yer point, Healer,
declare war on the King!

Things got a bit chaotic there for a bit. A fully armed Guard company came racing
in formation to the gate. Healer Tyrall reined in his horse, which was all too happy
to stop, and stared, dumbfounded, at the unfriendly reception.

What? Did he actually
not
think about what was gonna happen if he did this?
Mags was thunderstruck. How could the man be so unbelievably
stupid?

Or maybe he was just so used to being the one in charge that it never occurred to
him that he might have had a bad idea here.

Or maybe the heat baked his head so much it drove him crazy, or he’s got no brain
left.
That would be the most charitable guess, though of all of them, it was the least
likely.

“In the name of the King, throw your weapons to the ground!” the officer in charge
barked, as the Guard trained bows on them all. The mercenaries, being considerably
less stupid than the man who had hired them, immediately complied. They were helmed,
so you couldn’t see their expressions, but Mags wondered what
they
were thinking. He supposed that when Tyrall told them they were to go racing up to
the Collegium fully armed, they thought it was perfectly all right. It was possible
they had believed him. After all, several of the highborn were permitted to have their
own armed escorts at the Palace—though in practice, most didn’t bother. Well, if they
hadn’t known better before, they certainly did now.

From behind the downed portcullis, the officer continued. “What in the name of all
the gods is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “How
dare
you bring armed men to the King’s gate? I should arrest you for treason and insurrection
on the spot!”

Healer Tyrall blinked at the officer for a moment, as if he didn’t understand what
had been said to him. Then, as if it had never even occurred to him that the Palace
stood here, he shot a dumbfounded glance at it, and for a moment, blanched.

:By the gods . . . I think he completely forgot that the King lives here!:
Dallen exclaimed.
:All he ever thought was that this is where the Collegia are!:

Mags could scarcely believe it . . . and yet, the man had proven himself completely
blind to reality in the past.

:He was so focused on taking Bear away that he completely forgot
where
the Collegia are . . . :
Dallen sounded stunned.
:And he thought, if he just rode up with a double handful of armed men, he could snatch
Bear up and take him away and no one would stop him.:

But if he had made so monumental a mistake, he was not about to admit it now. He pointed
at Bear. “I have come to bring home what is mine,” he thundered. “The boy is clearly
demented. That scheming little daughter of a traitor probably used her Gift on him
to seduce him, just as her father used his to seduce and whore his way into a high
position and honors that were not his—”

“Enough!”
barked the officer, as Bear went rigid with rage and Lena did, too.

“No,” Bear said, putting one hand on the officer’s shoulder, and sounding
far
steadier and more adult than his own father. “Let him speak. Let him vent all the
poison he has in him. I want to hear all of it, and I want you all as witnesses.”

And speak Healer Tyrall did. He quickly devolved into spittle-spraying, livid rage,
and Mags instinctively shielded the people nearest him from any empathic surges that
might come from the man. He went on at great length about Lena, and by the time he
ran out of words, if anyone had actually believed him, they would have thought her
to be a very demoness in disguise, whose only goal was to turn Bear into her sexual
slave. Then he went on about Bear, and no one who knew the Trainee would have ever
recognized the doltish lout who was supposedly drooling at Lena’s feet. But according
to Tyrall, he was something less than a halfwit who happened to have a halfwit’s savant
talent with herbs, and it was his father’s duty to rescue him and save his would-be
patients
from
him before he killed one of them. From the amount of froth-spewing about Bear’s “reckless
experimentation” an uninformed listener would have been excused for thinking that
Bear was a mass poisoner by this time, inclined to doctor the drinks of the unsuspecting
just to see what was going to happen.

As it happened, no one standing here was that uninformed, not even—or especially—the
members of the Guard. They knew about Tyrall, and his toady Cuburn, who had actually
been sent to the Guard in order to spy on (and potentially disgrace) Bear—and who
had been the informant to the foreign assassins who had ultimately kidnapped Amily
and put her in deadly danger. They also had been some of the first to adopt Bear’s
herbal kits, because the Guard was often in dangerous situations without a Healer.

But it was when Tyrall started in on the “licentious fraud of a priest” who apparently
had been paid vast sums of money to wed the two, that Bear and Lena’s unexpected ally
burst out of the portcullis-tower door, roaring with rage.

Before anyone could move, Father Poul had used the shepherd’s crook of his order to
drag Healer Tyrall out of the saddle. No sooner was the man on the ground, than Father
Poul was on him, beating him mercilessly.

“Venal
am I?” he howled.
“Licentious,
am I? I’ll show you venal, you vile disgrace to the Green you wear! The gods know
you’ve got a trouncing coming, the gods know it is overdue, and thanks be to the gods
that it’s I that’s got the glory of delivering it to you!”

It was then that Mags remembered that, besides serving the poor . . . Father Poul’s
Temple was of a very martial order indeed. In fact, the priests and acolytes were
instructed in the offensive use of their crooks twice a day, right after prayers.

He also recalled that nowhere in any of the material that Mags had ever heard, on
his visits to the Temple, was there a mention that they should be meek. Or peaceful.
Or suffer insults at all.

The mercenaries remained right where they were. It was very clear they did not see
themselves as being obligated to save their erstwhile master from the fate he had
brought upon himself.

Eventually—but not before Father Poul had reduced the Healer to huddling on the ground
and trying to protect his head and neck with his arms—the officer came out the same
door and got between them. There was some muttering that Mags couldn’t make out, and
Father Poul snorted, then turned on his heel and stalked down the Hill. Presumably
he was heading back to his Temple. Mags hoped that if he had not worked out all of
his rage on Tyrall’s body, the walk back down the Hill in the heat would leach the
rest of it out of him.

Then the officer grabbed Tyrall by the shoulder and hauled him to his feet. “Healer
Tyrall,” he proclaimed loudly. “I’m putting you under arrest.” He looked at the mercenaries.
“You lot are dismissed. You’ll be leaving your weapons. Let that be a lesson to you
not to listen to an idiot who bids you come riding up to the Palace, fully armed.
And you can thank the gods you worship that we are certain your master told you he
had permission to bring you up here in an armed state—and that you didn’t know any
better.”

There were some stiff nods and no relaxation of their tense poses. Without a word,
they turned and rode away, leaving Tyrall to deal with the situation alone.

Mags wondered if they had been paid in advance. He hoped so. He also hoped they would
lodge complaints about Tyrall to the Mercenary Guild, which was responsible for the
conduct of all mercenaries and their companies within the Kingdom of Valdemar. The
Guild had the authority to go to the King over this—and likely would. Not only had
this not ended yet, for Tyrall the punishment had barely begun.

The officer let go of the Healer, who was now ashen-faced where he wasn’t black and
blue. “As it happens, we had warning that you were going to pull this hare-brained
nonsense, and the King already passed down his ruling on what we were to do if you
were stupid enough to carry it out. Intentions count for a great deal in this Kingdom
and we know you didn’t intend treason.”

Tyrall’s shoulders sagged with relief.

“However, you
did
intend forcible kidnapping. So, the King has directed that your victim be the one
to pass judgment on your intentions toward him.” The portcullis rose, and Bear stepped
out to the other side.

Mags held his breath. He still couldn’t see Bear’s face from here, and he wondered
what Bear was going to say.