Read Storm breaking Online

Authors: Mercedes Lackey

Tags: #Science fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic, #General, #Science Fiction - General, #Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy fiction, #Valdemar (Imaginary place), #English Science Fiction And Fantasy

Storm breaking (10 page)

BOOK: Storm breaking
2.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Elspeth kept her feelings of skepticism to herself. After all she'd seen, there was no telling whether Hob was right about this "earth-taking" of his or not. "Well, you can believe that Valdemar has no interest in taking the rule of Hardorn away from the people; what
you
do about it is your business," Elspeth said carefully. "Our business is to see if what we've been told is true, and to advise the Alliance if it is not."

He nodded, and did not add the obvious question of how she expected to get herself and her party out in one piece if Tremane turned out to be playing his own game. That wasn't his problem, and she couldn't blame him for not volunteering to help if things got difficult. The people of Hardorn had all they could do to survive, and they had nothing to spare for foreigners out of Valdemar.

Comforting aromas of cooking food emerged from the kitchen, and Hob took that gratefully as his escape from the conversation. "Looks like your people have your food ready; we'll go leave you in peace with it. You can leave in the morning when you choose—and—ah—" he flushed a little "you'll have better welcome farther along. Signal-towers are still up, and there's still a few as know the old signals. We'll be passing along that you're all right, that you're going on up to Tremane. Nobody'll hinder you; there're enough places with four sound walls and a roof that you'll get shelter at night."

As he stood up, Elspeth remained seated, but raised a hand toward Hob. "And does the Grand Duke know that the towers are still working?" she asked.

He laughed, which was all the answer she needed. So Tremane was
not
aware of this rapid means of passing news along. That could be useful, if it turned out he was playing a deeper game than they thought.

Hob and the rest of his people filed out, leaving the Valdemarans alone, and Elspeth turned first to Vallen as the kitchen crew put bowls of stewed dried meat and preserved fruit, and plates of travel biscuits onto the table. "Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"

He sat down across from her in Hob's place and picked up a biscuit and a bowl before answering. "This matches what we'd heard and didn't really believe," he said slowly, dipping his bread into his gravy and eating the biscuit with small, neat bites. "Tremane sounds too good to be true. Altogether an admirable and unselfish leader." There was a faint echo of mockery in his voice.

"So does Selenay, if you look at things objectively." Darkwind reminded him. "And yes, I know, Tremane has no Companion to keep him honorable, but I'm not sure one would be needed in this case. At least for now, he's in a precarious situation. With the way things have fallen out, his position and his level of personal danger aren't that much different from the average craftsman in Shonar. He needs them as much as they need a leader; if they fall, it won't be long before he does, too. If they rebel, he has no population base to support his troops. This summer, they were fighting against him, and it wouldn't take much mistreatment to make them turn on him."

Elspeth nodded, agreeing with him, although Vallen appeared a bit more dubious. "He has armed troops, loyal only to him," Vallen pointed out.

"He'll have a hard time feeding those troops without farmers," Elspeth replied. "And he can have all the silver he needs to pay them, but if they haven't anywhere to spend it, their loyalty will start to erode. You can't keep an army under siege, starving, and far from home without losing it."

Vallen speared a bit of meat and blew on it to cool it. "All I can say is this," the Guard-Captain said, after he'd eaten the bite. "It's not all that difficult for a charismatic leader to sway the people immediately around him with words instead of deeds. It's a lot more difficult to do that with people out of the reach of his personality. They're inclined to look for something to corroborate what they've heard, and if there's nothing there, they forget him."

"But you're surprised at what you're hearing from Hob," Elspeth stated.

Vallen nodded. "Very. And not the least because a few months ago, these people would have fought with everything they had left to get rid of the man.
Now
they're considering accepting him as a leader. Doesn't it sound as if they've heard and learned something very compelling over the past few months? I just hope that what they've heard has more substance than twice-told tales."

Elspeth sighed and nodded, as she and everyone else applied themselves to their food. This was the first warm meal they'd had all day, and their supper last night had been hastily prepared over a smoky fire in the remains of a half-ruined house, not cooked in a proper kitchen. As the gnawing hunger in the pit of her stomach eased, and the warmth from their dinner filled her, she became aware just how tired she was. When she glanced around the table, there wasn't anyone except Darkwind who wasn't leaning his head on his hand as he ate. She felt the same way; worn down by the cold, and quite ready to go to bed as soon as she finished the last bite. Darkwind seemed in his element, and she would not have hesitated a moment in trusting the entire expedition to him.

Some of the others looked quite ready to fall asleep over their plates. "It's the cold," Darkwind said quietly. "Don't worry this is normal. It's being in the cold from dawn until dusk, without a chance to warm up, then going to bed in cold beds and unheated rooms. Tonight will make a difference, with a good hot meal and warm beds; tomorrow everyone will end the day without being quite so exhausted. If we can get shelter like this for the rest of the trip, our people will revive in no time at all."

He ought to know, and
she
should have remembered. Then again, perhaps she was not at fault for forgetting; when she'd worked beside him as a scout and border-guard at k'Sheyna Vale, they'd lived
in
the Vale. They'd return from their shifts on patrol to an
ekele
in the midst of a garden spot, as warm as a midsummer day. Before that, he'd refused to live inside the Vale, and there might well have been times when he'd returned home to a chilled
ekele
, or might even have remained overnight camping in the wilderness. Just because she had never personally experienced such hardship, that didn't mean he hadn't.

"Let's go to bed," Vallen said abruptly, after jerking his head up suddenly for the third time as he nodded off in spite of valiant efforts to stay awake. "I can't keep my eyes open anymore."

"I'll clean up; I'm good for that," Elspeth volunteered, and smiled at the look of surprise from Vallen. What, did he think she considered herself above such chores? Or had he forgotten that at the last several stops, she'd taken her turn at gathering fodder from the ruined barns, putting together makeshift stalls for the horses and chirras, and gathering clean snow for water? "I was a Herald-trainee once, or don't you recall? I've scrubbed my share of pots in my time, and I think I can manage without breaking anything."

Darkwind picked up empty bowls, knives, and spoons without comment other than a wink. Sometimes they both forgot the way other people saw them. She caught Vallen staring after Darkwind with an even greater look of surprise than he'd shown when she volunteered to clean up.

Does he think Hawkbrothers magic their plates clean? Oh, well, he probably does, and it doesn't occur to him that it would be harder work to clean a pot by magic than to do it by hand.

She gathered up what Darkwind couldn't carry, and both of them went into the kitchen.

This had been a particularly fine inn once, with a pump supplying water to the kitchen; the cooking crew had left water heating on the hearth. Both the regular Guards and Kerowyn's mercenaries were used to every aspect of this kind of mission; when it came to cooking, they were nothing if not efficient. It didn't take long to clean the bowls and cutlery and the two pots they had used for heating the food.

"I keep having second thoughts about this trip," Elspeth said quietly.

Darkwind nodded. "I can understand why you would feel that way, but I believe we are doing one of many things that could be the right path," he replied, carefully wiping out a pot and putting it away. It was a typically Tayledras response. "We must remain in contact with Tremane; that much I am certain of.
How
we do that—well, this is one way. There would have been others, but this is the way we chose, and I do not think we have chosen amiss."

"At least in this case, we'll have our own eyes and ears in Shonar, she sighed.

He smiled. "And tongues as well! We can also advise, if Tremane chooses to listen to us."

The pots, bowls, and utensils had all come with them, and she repacked them in the bags with the supplies. "Given the way things have been going so far," she observed, "it's only too likely, I suppose, for something entirely unexpected to happen out here. And in that case, the Alliance had better have people in place to observe and reassure..."

Darkwind slipped his arm around her shoulders, turning his hug into a way to turn her toward the door to the common room. "And to fix, transform, leverage, and otherwise turn things for the better. Tremane, according to Kerowyn, comes from a culture in which treachery is a commonplace," he reminded her. "If anything unexpected
were
to occur, that would be the first explanation that would come to him."

She shook her head, and let him draw her toward the door. If she hadn't been too tired to think properly, she might have been able to make some kind of rational discussion out of this. As it was—

"You know, I almost feel sorry for Tremane," she admitted reluctantly as they mounted the stairs to their room. Rank did have privileges, and she had laid claim to one of the rooms with a real bed and a fireplace; it had probably been one of the expensive chambers when this had still been an inn. She was looking forward to sleeping in a bed, warmed by a hot brick at its foot.

Well, maybe not sleeping, at least not for a little while. I do have Darkwind here...

"I do feel sorry for him," Darkwind said unexpectedly, "And I believe I know why young Karal forgave him. just because he has been forced to deal with daily treachery does not make him a treacherous individual. We do not know what he is really like, except that we may guess somewhat through his actions."

This speech had taken them up the stairs and to the space just outside the door to their room. Elspeth opened the door, drew him inside, and stopped the rest of the speech with her lips on his.

"I have had quite enough of Tremane to last me until morning," she said firmly, as he responded as she had hoped he would, by pulling her closer and simultaneously closing the door to their room. "I think we can afford not to think of him, for a little while, at least."

"Oh, at least," he agreed, and then said nothing more with words for quite some time.

 

Hob was as good as his word. From that time on, they began to see and interact with the people of Hardorn—those that remained, at least—and were given the limited hospitality that this sad land could afford. Elspeth continued to be surprised at the suspicion with which the Valdemarans were met. It didn't make any sense to her that the natives should persist in considering them the harbingers of another invasion. If they had been a real invading force, they would have had a small army at least. If they had been the advance scouts of an invasion, they wouldn't have come so openly.

She gradually decided that the reason had nothing to do with logic. Ancar had already poisoned his people's minds about the Valdemarans, and some of that poison still lingered. At the very beginning of his war with Valdemar, when his people had not yet been aware of the kind of man he really was, he had told them that his war was justified, that the Valdemarans were responsible for the murder of his father and most of the High Council, and that the Queen of Valdemar intended to annex Hardorn as a subject state of her own land. Later, of course, Ancar proved even to the most naive of his countrymen that he was never to be trusted, but some of his lies still remained in the back of peoples' memories. Perhaps they no longer even recalled it was Ancar who had spread those lies in the first place.

And to folk who themselves were never warlike to begin with, and who were now suffering privations worse in their way than even their life under Ancar, an armed force like hers—obviously well-trained, well-fed, well-armed, and in top condition—must look very much like an army. These folks hadn't yet seen the Imperial Army; they'd only heard rumors of it, how large it was, how incredibly
professional
. Away from the conflicts at the border, they had never seen anything larger than the garrisons Ancar bivouacked in their villages to insure their cooperation and to collect taxes. Perhaps their imaginations couldn't encompass the idea of an army, how large one had to be. Yet here was her force, quite large enough to take over every town in its path, and they didn't have to
imagine
what it was like, for it was real, and right in front of them.

The natives usually came around after a short meeting, such as she and her troop had had with Hob. At that point, the Valdemarans were treated like travelers instead of conquerors. Villagers would recall the old, hospitable customs, and would usually open the inn, the temple, or a Guildhall to them. Then there were warm beds, warm rooms, and once in a while, a bit of fresh meat to add to their own rations. There was no trouble with finding firewood this winter—not with half (or more) of the buildings in any given community standing empty, and falling down. Sensibly, the survivors had moved into the best homes and kept them in repair, and were using the rest for materials and firewood. They might be on short rations, but they were going to spend the rest of the winter in warmth.

BOOK: Storm breaking
2.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Simple Genius by David Baldacci
Spellcrash by Kelly Mccullough
Falling by Jolene Perry
Ella, The Slayer by A. W. Exley
Accidental Evil by Ike Hamill
Wayward Son by Pollack, Tom
Jack by Daudet, Alphonse
Bully by Penelope Douglas