The Horse Lord (2 page)

“I will excuse you until you’ve rested,” said Gemmel considerately.

“And bathed,” the Alban put in. “I stink.”

Gemmel grinned slightly. “Well, since you mention it…” he conceded. “But tell me something, if you would. Who are you?”

Suspicion welled up in the boy’s grey-green eyes, turning them cold and flinty. “Who wants to know?” Something in the demand—it was no less—made Gemmel very glad he had thought to set any weapons out of reach.

“I do. The man who took a broken arrow from your back.”

“Oh… I beg pardon—my rudeness was—”

“Understandable in the circumstances.”

Despite the way it obviously hurt him, the boy insisted on making an awkward bow. Gemmel took note, wondering what he was going to hear. It wasn’t anything he might have expected.

“Talvalin,” the youngster said “
kailin-eir
Aldric.” Even though he didn’t look the part, Gemmel was convinced. Little things indicated a high rank: the excellent quality of shortsword and dirk; a tunic where heavy embroidery glinted gold wherever mud had dried sufficiently to flake away; something which might be a crest-collar showing now and then as its wearer moved. Only the hair was wrong, hacked crudely short instead of tied in a queue.

“So… Aldric-eir, you are safe in this house, and my guest. Though I cannot offer food after that drug, there’s hot water in the bath-house and a spare bed. Feel free with both.”

Aldric’s face was puzzled under its mud. “Why are you doing this?” he asked finally.

“I have a kind heart.” The wizard grinned toothily. “Go to bed, boy. You’ll have more questions in the morning, and by then I shall feel more like answering them.” Opening a jar, he mixed its contents with hot water and held up the potion. “This should help you sleep—and ensure some pleasant dreams.”

It occurred to Aldric as he clumsily undressed that he had not asked his benefactor’s name. Then he dismissed the matter and had as relaxing a bath as possible under the circumstances. Despite the drugs it hurt to move his arm, but actually to be clean again, to wash away the dirt and the sweat and the smell, was worth a few aches. When at last he crept under a thick down quilt, he fell asleep almost at once. Not so the wizard.

Glancing once towards the silent guest room, Gemmel put more logs on the fire and settled back into his cushioned chair. Mixed with the sleeping-draught was a generous pinch of
ymeth
, freezing Aldric’s mind for probing by any wizard with the necessary skill. It was simple, fast, proof against lies—and gave both parties a splitting headache.

That was something Gemmel felt he could tolerate. He began to breathe evenly, and after a time his eyes went cold and dead, green crystals reflecting not even the dance of flames. Though the logs burned slowly, they had died under a film of ash before life returned to the old man’s face.

By then he had learned all that he wanted to know.

There was an art to the use of
ymeth
, requiring great delicacy not to probe deeply and too slowly, yet not so shallowly and fast that facts were lost in the blurred recollections of another’s brain. Gemmel was a master of that art.

At first there was only the beat of two hearts in a dark warmth. Then came light and cold and a kaleidoscopic whirl of colours. Faces focused and faded, voices swam together in a confusing babble, there were names meaning nothing and yet significant. Now and then the images of important memories grew clear, like an awareness of reality…

Swords glittered in sunlight. A voice issued crisp instructions. Steel grated, its shrillness deadened by the hot, heavy air. Blades met with harsh percussive music, again and again. These were fencing lessons.

Watched with sleepy amusement by his eldest brother Joren, Aldric went through the exercises of
taiken-ulleth
, the art of longsword fighting. It had once been an art in which blade and body, hand and heart and mind and eye all worked as one; but the last true master was more than two centuries in his funeral urn and
taikenin
were now just ordinary swords. Insofar as
taikenin
were ever merely ordinary.”

The boy was fourteen now, and in Joren’s opinion very good—though he had not bothered to tell Aldric so, even after ten years’ tuition. Praise was something hard-earned and not freely given. Nonetheless…

“That’s enough for now.” Joren waved away the soldier who had partnered Aldric’s exercises, acknowledging the man’s salute and his brother’s bow with the same nod. Then he frowned as Aldric stuck his practice foil into the ground, and kept his stern expression until the blade had been withdrawn and sheathed with proper respect. Custom demanded the honourable treatment of honourable weapons, especially in practice where no true harm was meant.

“Joren,” the word came out in a gasp as Aldric sank crosslegged on to the grass, “I would much rather swim. It’s too hot for this.”

“Later. You’ve another half-hour to go yet.” Joren’s toe nudged lazily at his little brother. “And sit up straighter. Look neat.”

In response Aldric flopped back and grinned, untidily comfortable, raking his fingers through the hair which, though short and boy’s length as it would remain for six years, still fell into his eyes whenever possible. “When I’m a
kailin-eir
like you I’ll be proper and correct, I promise. But while I can relax, I will.”

Staring at him doubtfully, Joren touched his own warrior’s queue and high-clan earbraids, then shrugged slightly. He had come of age and been made
kailin
only that spring, and in all fairness to the boy there were times when his insistence on propriety bordered on the obsessive. But he had his position to think of, as eldest son and heir to ranks and titles, while Aldric was merely third son and heir to very little.

“All right. No arguments then. But if you cannot look like a gentleman, let’s at least see if you can fight like one.”

“Difficult, I’d say,” cut in a suave voice and Aldric’s smile died. There had never been much affection between him and his other brother Baiart, Joren’s twin. There was little love between the twins either. Twin, and yet second son—by all of five minutes. That twist of fate had twisted Baiart somewhat, ever since he became old enough to understand it.

“Manners!” reproved Joren in a soft voice which bore the merest hint of menace. Baiart stepped out of shadow into the full wash of sunlight. He was tall, blond and blue-eyed like his twin and four sisters, and though the light flattered his hair it did nothing for his expression. Aldric was the only one of seven children to carry his Elthanek mother’s dark hair and grey-green eyes, as if she had given up those as well as her life when he was born. Baiart had always suspected there might be another reason, though he dared not say so. And he hated the child who had usurped Lady Linnoth’s place in the family after killing her. His love for his mother had always been more intense than that of the others. Almost too intense for comfort, his or hers. But that also was never spoken of.

“Dear elder brother,” he said with a mocking bow,

“I’m sure our little brother can speak for himself.” If he had hoped to needle anyone into an unseemly outburst Baiart was disappointed. Then Aldric rose to his feet with feline grace.

“If you want to prove something, dear brother, I suggest you try it now. Here. With these.” He extended the foils.

Baiart had spent most of his time at court in Cerdor, returning only at feast-days and when his allowance ran out, as now. Though aware, that Aldric had learned
taiken-play
, he still had no idea how skilled the boy had become. Aldric knew of his ignorance; it was one of the reasons he had “allowed” the duel to apparently arrange itself in the first place. Baiart needed a lesson.

A formal Alban duel was totally unlike combat. Since the Clan Wars five hundred years before, when three-quarters of the ancient aristocracy had destroyed one another, it was illegal for
kailinin
to fight to the death except in war and raid—or with permission from their lord. Duelling foils were light, thrusting weapons, tipped with sharp spurs which did nothing worse than draw blood, and the movements were more of dance than duel.

What was fought that day under the shadow of Dunrath-hold’s great citadel was no such cautious ritual. Saving only that the blades were blunt, it was the same whirl of cut-and-thrust which had characterised the fierce warrior clans for almost two millennia. Agile and swift, Aldric was able to score two quick points before Baiart grew wise and used his longer arm to keep the boy at a distance. Then he saw an opening for a thrust.

But instead Baiart cut with such force that, blunt sword or not, it would have ripped his brother’s face apart had it been successful. Aldric felt the sting of skin peeling off his cheek even as he jerked his head aside. He retreated, shaken not by the insignificant wound but by Baiart’s clear intention. And by something he had never met before—the feeling which had made him dodge. He hadn’t ducked so fast because of training but because of the unsummoned warning inside his head, without which he would surely have been blinded. Knowledge of that made his temper foul; and Baiart’s grin made it fouler yet.

The bigger man saw something in his brother’s dark eyes that he did not like, and broke ground hastily. With blood bright across his face and shirt, Aldric shifted
taiken
to both hands and came after him. Joren saw the change of position and realised his pupil was no longer playing. He opened his mouth to shout, then realised that an interruption now could prove deadly—for someone.

When Baiart jabbed, a warning move to keep Aldric away, the other blade beat against his own so viciously that the weapon was almost knocked from his grasp. Aldric grinned the grin of a cat whose mouse is secure under one paw, just before the claws come out. Then he stamped and shouted both at once. This surprised Baiart enough for the boy to advance in a precise, gliding pass, reach out his left hand and wrench his brother’s sword away.

His own blade thrust home with unnecessary force on Baiart’s chest an instant later. With a painful grunt he held up both empty hands, signalling surrender. Aldric stared at him through slitted, feral eyes. “That, dear brother,” he said very softly, “was to win.” Touching fingertips to his face, he scowled at the blood on them, then suddenly swung his sword.

The horizontal cut was invisibly fast, savage and perfect. It hit Baiart across the waist, doubling him up; the same blow with a live blade would have sliced him to the spine and everyone present knew it. Except for the ugly sound of retching it was very quiet in the fortress gardens. Joren remembered that Aldric’s name was seven centuries old in his mother’s line, Elthanek rather than Alban. Every man who had borne it had been a warrior of the old style: a renowned and ruthless slayer.

Aldric slowly regained his breath and eyed Baiart with more sardonic mirth than any fourteen-year-old should have possessed. “But that,” he smiled coldly, “was purely personal.”

Haranil Talvalin was Clan-Lord, master of Dunrath and responsible for the king’s peace in the north. Unlike many of his ancestors, who had often to cope with full-scale war, Haranil’s foremost worry was cattle-reaving along the Elthanek border, and even that was more an over-rowdy sport than a conflict. There was occasionally much more trouble under his own roof.

Against all the odds, Aldric was growing up. His father’s first step was to forbid the boy, on his honour, to fight needlessly. With such a charge laid on him, Aldric obeyed, keeping out of most duels—but not, of course, all. He fought often enough with hot-headed comrades for his skill to become notorious; at last it became difficult for him to find anyone willing to chance even the friendliest contest. Though he never lost his temper or his control, there hung about him an air of restrained violence that was disturbing.

There was one memorable episode in a seedy tavern of Radmur’s old town, when somebody had suggested that, since young Aldric had not yet found himself a woman, he probably bedded with his broadsword. Aldric had not drunk enough to find the comment funny, and the escalating argument had broken two heads, several limbs, an uncounted number of ale barrels and had ended with the whole unsavoury den catching fire and toppling sideways into the canal.

He had been seventeen then, at five feet eight inches not very tall for a Talvalin though average for most Albans. Approaching his twentieth birthday, he was broader in chest and narrower in waist—but only an inch taller. That was not good, for the five remaining clans of the old nobility each had their hereditary distinguishing feature, strong enough at least in the male line to survive interclan marriages. Talvalins were invariably tall, blond and blue-eyed—except for Aldric. By the time he neared legal maturity any remarks on this had ceased, though not through fear of Talvalin displeasure even though the clan was notorious for its implacable avenging of insulted honour. Aldric’s skill with a blade was reason enough.

He spent the early part of that year with one arm in a sling after falling from a galloping horse in full armour. Even before the arm had knitted he was back in the saddle.
Kailinin
relied on mobility, not brute force, and the subtleties of horsemanship were of paramount importance. Learning to control a mount with knees alone was difficult enough with hands clasped on head. Over jumps it became painful as well.

With work so intense, it was only reasonable that recreation should also take extreme forms. One such was the hunting of wild boar, using a spear from horseback. It was lively, often dangerous and therefore popular with the highborn youngsters; also with those old enough to know better…

Two riders picked their way carefully down an overgrown bridle-path, arguing as they went. The silence of autumnal woodland was disturbed only by their voices and by the distant belling tones of boar-hounds.

“I tell you he’s escaped,” drawled Aldric lazily. Joren slapped his saddlebow irritably with one hand and waved the other in a huge sweep which took in most of the forest and came very close to taking off the end of his brother’s nose.