Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (65 page)

From that moment, things moved rapidly. The gnomish Warmaster appeared at the prince’s call, bringing maps. The gnomes’ information on the situation in southern Fintha was more recent than Arcolin’s. They knew a force from Fin Panir had come south … they had assumed it was to attack the Gnarrinfulk.

“I believe they are after the mage-hunters,” Arcolin said. “Do you know of a force of them?”

The Warmaster knew of other gatherings of humans but had not distinguished among them. “Only that some chase some.”

The Gnarrinfulk prince, in rapid gnomish, explained to the Warmaster what Arcolin had explained to him. Then he turned back to Arcolin. “It is that Lord Prince Arcolin prevented Gnarrinfulk error of Law. It is Gnarrinfulk say Law is those hunt magefolk
kteknik
. Gnarrinfulk for Law and contract with true Girdfulk. Warmaster go with you. Law is Law.” He stood and bowed.

“Law is Law,” Arcolin said, bowing in return.

The Aldonfulk gnomes did not reappear; Gnarrinfulk gnomes took Arcolin and his horse “by the stone,” as they put it. He emerged in morning sunlight from the side of a hill that closed behind him, and there below, on the South Trade Road, was his cohort and the Royal Guard troop.

“Well?” Cracolnya asked.

“Allies,” Arcolin said. “They are mustering in support of the Marshal-General; the gnome prince has decided that only the mage-hunters,
not those fleeing them, have breached the old contract between Gird and gnomes.”

The Royal Guard captain stared. “How did you convince a gnome? We tried; gnomes don’t listen. Just said law, law, law all the time.”

Arcolin looked around. He could not see any gnomes. That did not mean no gnomes were there, listening. Whatever he said must work for both peoples. “Gnomes live by Law. They value Law. They value contracts, which are the word of Law and set the equality, the balance, between parties to the contract. Trespass breached Gird’s contract, the basis of peace between gnomes and humans.”

“Yes, but—”

Arcolin held up his hand. “In Law, few things—many fewer than for us—allow one party to a contract to break its terms without freeing the other completely. In this case, breaking a contract of peace would have meant war. The prince did not know that one of the very few conditions that alter contracts existed.”

“And what is that? Some gnomish silliness?” The captain was clearly still annoyed, and worse than that, loud, and worse than both, showing contempt.

Arcolin could not ignore that, not with the feeling that hundreds of beady black eyes were watching him from behind every rock on the slope. He glared at the man until the captain wilted a little. “I am telling you, as the Constable of this kingdom, Duke of the North Marches, member of the Royal Council, and the king’s representative in this place, that this is no way to speak of our allies. Since Gird’s day, Gnarrinfulk has honored Gird’s contract. No human has come to harm from them; they have never taken so much as a rabbit from the other side of their boundary. Moreover, they have shown mercy to those who broke it without intent, such as shepherds whose sheep strayed. Yet you speak of them as if they were fools. These are the gnomes who taught Gird warfare and the reason you and I are both Girdish. Show respect for Elders.”

The captain reddened and looked down. “Sorry, my lord,” he said.

“Remember it,” Arcolin said. “We are honored and very fortunate
to have gnomes offer to help our king and the Marshal-General. Now, you asked what condition made it possible, in Law, for the prince to regard the situation differently. It was children: the children the mage-hunters have killed and tried to kill. Under Law, attacking innocents for what they are, rather than what they have done, is against Law.”

“They changed their minds for
children
?” At least that was in a low voice.

“Wouldn’t you?” Arcolin said. Without waiting an answer, he signaled Cracolnya, and the cohort started forward.

“That was an impressive list of titles,” Cracolnya said, keeping his voice low. “But I notice you did not say ‘Commander of Fox Company.’ ”

“I didn’t think it would have the right effect,” Arcolin said. “Besides, here and now Fox Company outnumbers his. He got the point.”

“Just want to be sure you still consider us important,” Cracolnya said.

Arcolin turned to look at him. “Important? Of course the Company’s important. None of the rest would exist without the Company.”

“Good. I’m too old to be finding another place if you had changed your mind.”

The closer they came to the Finthan border, the more signs of struggle appeared on the road. Carrion eaters lifting from the ground revealed bodies … first one, then another, then three together. The road itself was empty; with word of unrest, many traders had chosen not to go to Fintha this year.

At the border itself, they saw no one at first.

“Do we go on?” Cracolnya asked.

“I’m not sure—” Arcolin looked around, hoping to spot a gnome. Instead, he saw a group of people north of the road, already on the Tsaian side of the border. Perhaps three or four hands of them, adults and children both, hurried along the brushy side of what might be a
creek. That low ground led toward the road; his troop had crossed a dry wash only a short time ago. Farther away, still in Fintha, he saw another, larger group, on horseback, riders on either side of the brush cover as it broadened farther down the slope. They moved steadily up the slope a little faster than the fugitives as they searched clumps of brush. “There’s trouble,” he said. “Mage-hunters after those—” He pointed to each group in turn.

“What do we do?” the Royal Guard captain said.

“Save the children,” Arcolin said. “And their parents, of course.”

Cracolnya needed no direction; he led the cohort off the road and down the slope, aiming to cut between the pursued and their pursuers. The pursuers, instead of turning back at the sight of a military unit marching toward them, kicked their horses into a gallop and yelled something Arcolin could not distinguish. The pursued stopped short, staring, then tried to run straight up the slope to the road.

“Captain—charge them!” Arcolin looked at the Royal Guard captain and pointed his sword at the pursuers.

“But they’re still in Fintha!”

“Not in another twenty strides,” Arcolin said. “Go! Now!”

“I can’t cross the border without the king—”

“Shall I tell the king you disobeyed me? GO!” He smacked the captain’s horse on the rump with the flat of his sword; it bolted after Cracolnya and the cohort, and the troop followed. Arcolin put spurs to his own mount and caught up.

The pursuing party split, trying to swing wide around both the cohort and the cavalry troop. Arcolin grinned. Cracolnya would be happy about that … The crossbowmen of the mixed cohort turned smoothly and shot into the flanks of the pursuers, dropping almost half of them.

The rest, seeing this, peeled off and galloped away full speed as another flight of bolts took three of the hindmost. Arcolin pulled up. The Royal Guard captain wrestled his horse to a stop and turned back to Arcolin, yanking his sword out of its scabbard.

“How dare you!”

“You disobeyed an order. Would you rather I’d killed you?”

“You—”

“Sir!” That was one of his troopers. “Sir—no—!”

“Problem, my lord?” Cracolnya’s voice was smooth as butter, but he held a crossbow steady, the bolt aimed at the captain’s back.

“No,” Arcolin said. “The captain has misunderstood the situation.” He looked at the troopers loosely clustered nearby. “See if you can collect the loose horses those brigands were riding. We’ll need them later.” They hesitated but finally turned and rode off. Then to the captain, “Put that sword away and think about why you didn’t manage to draw it in the face of the enemy but only when confronting your commander.”

“You—!”

“Yes. As Constable and as Duke Arcolin, I am your commander in this place. I told you that before. Put up your sword.”

Red-faced, beginning to shake—was it anger or reaction, realization of what he had done?—the captain finally got his sword back in the scabbard after a couple of tries. Arcolin sheathed his own in one practiced motion and nudged his mount closer to the captain’s. Cracolnya’s cohort was now between him and the rest of the Royal Guard contingent, alert and ready for anything.

Arcolin went on. “If you cannot, or will not, follow my orders, I will send you away. As you are, you are a danger to my people and yours. Do you understand?”

“I—I—you can’t do that.”

“I can. I will. One more time: Will you do what I tell you, at once and without question, or will you go back to Fiveway on foot, unarmed, and try to explain yourself to your senior in the Royal Guard and the king?”

“On
foot
?
Unarmed?
”

“Of course. Why would I leave someone like you on a valuable charger? With a sword? Either you accept me here and now as your commander and give me the loyalty owed, or you go home in disgrace.
If
you make it that far.” Arcolin made his tone conversational. “Now: give me your answer.”

The shoulders drooped. “I—I accept you …”

“Good. I am pleased to hear it. Go back to the wagons and tell the
drivers to start setting up camp. The people running from the mage-hunters will need care.”

The captain opened his mouth, shut it, finally bit off a “Sir,” and turned his horse back up the slope.

“He wouldn’t have lasted long in Aarenis,” Cracolnya said after he’d ridden off. He took the bolt from his crossbow and eased the string.

“Young, inexperienced,” Arcolin said.

“Dead,” Cracolnya said.

“True enough. Let’s go meet our travelers.”

Cracolnya said “Camp” to his sergeants and followed Arcolin to the group now huddled in the dry wash near the road.

They were, as Arcolin had thought, Girdish families from a vill near the Finthan border.

“We hear Tsaia doesn’t kill mages,” one said.

“Or them as aren’t mages but someone says they is to steal their cows,” another said.

“The king said no killing mages,” Arcolin said. “You are safe for now. What about your supplies?”

The first one—he gave his name as Dorthan—shook his head. “They almost caught us in camp two nights ago—we had to run, leave everything.”

“We have water and food up on the road,” Arcolin said.

Soon the cohort had laid out a proper camp, and the fugitives, now under canvas, had eaten and drunk their fill. Of the nineteen, five confessed to being mages, four of them children who could do no more than make light with a finger. The fifth, a woman, had a parrion of healing. “Had it all my life,” she said. “So I thought this was just somethin’ else I’d picked up. Only they said it was magery.” All the rest were relatives of the mages or those afraid of being killed even if they weren’t.

“No better’n brigands,” Dorthan said. “They got our sheep, our goats, our cows, our houses … It’s not right, but we’re not enough to fight ’em.”

“What about the grange?” Arcolin asked.

Dorthan hooked his forefingers together. “Tight as that with the
mage-hunters, Marshal is. Him and his snuck around the bartons, takin’ weapons. Not that we had much.”

“Took my fightin’ staff that I made myself,” said another, who’d given his name as Tamis. “Walked two days there and back to get wood for that, I did. Had it up dryin’ all one winter.”

“How many of you being hunted by the mage-haters are in this area?”

This provoked a lively argument and much counting on fingers. While that continued, the Royal Guard troop came back to camp with eighteen horses, all with saddles, and three captives, all injured. The others, they said, were dead where they lay.

That night, mage-hunters tried to sneak into the camp. Two were caught, and one killed.

“We can’t deal with this from here,” Arcolin said. “We’re going to have to go into Fintha and link up with the Marshal-General’s people … For one thing, that’s who the gnomes want to work with.”

“Gnomes!”

Arcolin looked at the Royal Guard captain, and he subsided. “We didn’t need them yesterday. We outnumbered the mage-hunters, and as you noticed, we outnumber them more now. But we need to clear a defensible area where the fugitives—these and any others we find—can live in some safety. Ideally, we’d start with vills that border Tsaia—as a buffer—and then work toward the west. And we don’t have an idea how many of the people are in which camp, for that matter. I wonder if the Marshal-General does.”