Darkover: First Contact (40 page)

He felt his throat tighten. He would not have harmed Geremy. Damn it, why hadn’t Geremy kept out of it, why had they insisted on interfering in what was between Bard and his promised wife?

King Ardrin said, “Well, Bard mac Fianna, what have you to say for yourself?” The name of a bastard—the name of his unknown mother, not the
di Asturien
he was called in courtesy, boded ill.

Bard bent the knee before his foster father. He said, “Only this, kinsman; the fight was not of my seeking, but they forced it upon me. And that I have served you for five years, and I think I have served you well. With your own hand you commended me at Snow Glens and gave me a red cord, and I captured clingfire for your armies. I love my foster brother well and I would never have harmed him willingly; I did not know the dagger was poisoned, I swear it.”

“He lies,” Beltrau said passionlessly, “for we made jokes about his having become
bredin
to a Dry-towner, and he had heard mistress Melora, the
leronis,
say that her father’s wound was poisoned.”

“I had forgotten it was not my own dagger,” Bard protested angrily. “I admit it, kinsman, I should not have drawn my steel at Festival. I am so far guilty; but Geremy forced the fight upon me! Did Prince Beltran tell you that he was only jealous?”

King Ardrin said, “Was it Geremy who drew his dagger first?”

“No, kinsman,” Bard said, dropping his head, “but I swear I did not know the dagger was poisoned; I had forgotten. And I was drunk; if they are just, they will tell you that, too, and that they forced the quarrel by laying rough hands on me. I drew my dagger in self-defense. I did not want to be beaten by them like a lackey, and there were two of them!”

“Geremy,” asked the king, “did you and Beltran lay hands on Bard first? I will have the truth of this matter, all the truth.”

“We did, Uncle,” Geremy said, “but he had laid hands on Carlina in a way she did not like, and Beltran and I would not have her mauled, or even raped.”

“Is this true, Bard?” The king looked at him with surprise and displeasure. He said, “They had spared to tell me this! Did you so far forget yourself as to mishandle Carlina when you were drunk?”

“As to that,” Bard said, feeling caution desert him with the remembered rage, “Carlina is my pledged wife and they had no right to interfere! Beltran has made a great thing of this because he is jealous, he wants to give Carlina to his
bredu
there, to bind them closer still! He is jealous because I have showed myself his better at swordplay and in war, and with women too—not that he would know what to do with a woman when he is alone with her! Where was Beltran when I defended you at Snow Glens, Uncle?”

He knew that he had struck inside the king’s guard there; for Ardrin of Asturias flinched, and looked angrily at his son, then from one to the other of his foster sons.

“Father,” Beltran said, “is it not clear to you that he has plotted to seize the kingdom from your hands, to take Carlina whether she will or no, to win your armies’ allegiance behind your back? If he were still your loyal and obedient subject, would he have drawn steel at midwinter festival?”

King Ardrin said, “Whether or no, it is clear that I have reared a wolf cub to bite my hand. Was it not enough to you, Bard, that Carlina was pledged to you and should have been yours at the proper time?”

“By all the laws of this kingdom, Carlina is mine,” Bard protested, but the king stopped him with an upraised hand.

“Enough. You presume too much. A handfasting is not a marriage, and not even the king’s foster son can lay a hand undesired upon the king’s daughter. You have broken too many of the laws of this court, Bard; you are a troublemaker. I will have no lawbreaker and kin-maimer within this household. Get you gone from here. I give you horse and sword and hunting bow and armor, and purse of four hundred silver royals; and thus do I reward your past services to me. But I name you outlaw within Asturias. I give you three days to leave this realm; and after that, if you are seen within the borders of Asturias for seven years from midwinter, no law shall protect you. Any man may slay you like an animal, without blood-guilt, or blood-feud begun, or blood-money paid to your kinsmen for wounding or death.”

Bard stood blinking in outrage at the severity of the punishment. He had expected to lose his place at court—the king could have done no less. He could have accepted, with equanimity, the usual sentence of a year’s outlawry; had even steeled himself, if the king was in a mood to be severe, to the knowledge that he might have to go into exile for three years. He had also been sure that when next King Ardrin had gone to war and had need of him, he would have been forgiven and recalled to court. But
seven years’ exile!

“This is hard,
vai dom,
” he protested, kneeling before the king. “I have served you faithfully and well, and I am not yet even full grown. How do I deserve such hard treatment?”

King Ardrin’s face was like stone. “If you are old enough to behave like a man, and a vicious one,” he said, “you are old enough to suffer the penalty I would lay on such a man. Some of my councillors have thought me over-lenient that I do not order you killed. I have taken a pet dog to my heart and I find a wolf biting my heels! I name you wolf and outlaw, and I bid you begone from this court before sunset and from this realm within three days, before I take second thought and decide I want no such man living within my kingdom. I love your father well, and I would prefer not to have the blood of his son on my hands; but don’t presume on this, Bard, because if I see your face within the borders of Asturias within seven years, I shall certainly strike you down like the wolf you are!”

“Not in seven years, not in seven times seven, tyrant,” Bard cried, leaping to his feet, and flung down at the king’s feet the red cord the king had given him in battle. “All the gods grant that we meet in battle when you are guarded only by your son there and his trustworthy catamite! You speak of lawbreaking? What law is stronger than that which binds a man to his wife, and you, sir, are flouting that!” He turned away from the king and strode toward where Carlina stood among the women.

“What do you say, my wife? Will you, at least, show justice within the law, and follow me into exile as a wife should do?”

She raised her eyes to him, cold and tearless.

“No, Bard, I will not. An outlaw has no claim, and no protection in law. I would have done my father’s will and married you; but I begged him once to spare me this marriage, and now I rejoice that he has changed his mind; and you know why.”

“There was a time when you said you could love—”

“No,” she interrupted him. “I call Avarra to witness; I thought, perhaps, when I had grown older and you, perhaps, wiser, if the Goddess was merciful to us, we might one day come to love each other as it was suitable for married people. It would have been even more truthful to say that I hoped for it, not that I believed it would come to pass. There was a time when I loved you well as foster brother and friend. But you have forfeited that.”

His face twisted in a gesture of contempt. “So you are like all the other women, bitch! And I thought you something different and above them!”

Carlina said, “No, Bard, I—” but King Ardrin gestured her to silence.

“No more, girl. You need hold no more parley with him. Henceforth he is nothing to you. Bard mac Fianna,” he said, “I give you three days to quit my realm. After that time I lay on you the doom of an outlaw; no man, woman or child in this realm may give you roof or shelter, food or drink, fire or fuel, aid or counsel. And for the space of seven years, if you are found within the borders of this realm, you shall be slain like a wolf at any man’s hand, and your body given to wild beasts without public mourning or burial. Now go.”

Custom demanded that the outlaw should bend the knee to his king in token that he accepted his doom. Perhaps, if King Ardrin had given him the customary sentence, Bard would have done so; but he was young and proud, and raging with frustration.

“I will go, since you leave me no remedy,” he snarled. “You have named me wolf; wolf I shall be from this day forth! I leave you to the mercy of those two you have chosen over me; and I shall return when you cannot forbid me. And as for you, Carlina—” his eyes sought her out, and the girl cringed. “I swear that I will have you, one day, whether you will or no; and that I vow to you, I, Bard mac Fianna, I, the wolf!”

He spun on his heel and went forth from the great hall, and the doors swung shut behind him.

“But where will you go?” Dom Rafael of Asturias asked his son. “What are your plans, Bard? You are over-young to set forth outside the realms of your own kingdom, alone and outlawed!” Bard’s father all but wrung his hands. “Lord of Light, what folly and what misfortune!”

Bard shook his head impatiently. “What’s done is done, Father,” he said, “and bewailing will not better it. 1 was ill-done-by; the king your brother showed me small justice and no mercy, for a quarrel I never wanted. All I can do is to set my back to the court of Asturias and seek better fortune elsewhere.”

They were standing in the room that had been Bard’s own since his father had brought him to his own house, to rear with his own legitimate son; out of kindness or sentiment, Dom Rafael had kept the room ready for Bard, though he had not set foot in it since he was twelve years old. It was a boy’s room, not a man’s, and there was not much in it that Bard cared to take with him into exile.

“Come, Father,” be said, almost affectionately, laying his hand on the older man’s shoulder, “it’s not worth grieving. Even if the king had showed me leniency, and had only sent me from court for that damnable midwinter folly, I could hardly have stayed here; Lady Jerana loves me as little as ever. And now she can hardly conceal her rejoicing that I am well out of her way, for good and all.” His grin was fierce. “I wonder if she thinks I would try to seize Alaric’s heritage, as the king came to think I coveted Beltran’s? After all, in days past, the elder son was often shown preference over the legitimate son. Come, Father, has it never crossed your mind, that perhaps I would not be content to see Alaric preferred before me, and try to take what is lawfully his?”

Dom Rafael di Asturien looked up at his tall son seriously. He was a man a little past the prime of age, broad-shouldered, with the look of a muscular and active man who has let himself go soft in retirement. He said, “Would you so, Bard?”

Bard said, “No,” and turned over in his fingers a hawk hood he had made when he was eight years old. “No, Father, do you think me wholly without honor, because of this quarrel I have had with my foster brothers? That was folly, drunken folly and something akin to madness, and if I could mend it—but not even the Lord of Light can turn back time, or undo what has been done. And as for Alaric and his heritage—Father, there are many bastard sons who grow up as outcasts, with no name but the name of a dishonored mother, and no man’s hand to guide them, and no more fortune than they can wrest from the world by the toil of their hands, or by banditry. But you reared me in your own house, and from childhood I had good companions, and was well taught, and was fostered in the king’s house when it was time for me to learn the skills of manhood.” With a shyness surprising in the arrogant young warrior, he reached out and embraced his father. “You could have had peace in your bed and at your fireside, had you been willing to send me away to be prentice to a smith or a farmer or some tradesman. Instead I had horses and hawks and was raised as a nobleman’s son, and you endured strife with your lawfully wedded lady for this. Do you think I can forget that, or try to have more than this generous portion, from the brother who has always called me brother, and never
bastard?
Alaric is my brother, and I love him; I would be worse than ingrate, I would be wholly without honor, if I laid a hand on what is rightfully his. And if I have any regret for my quarrel with that damnable sandal-wearer Beltran, it is that I might somehow have harmed you or Alaric.”

“You have not harmed me, my son,” Dom Rafael said, “though I shall find it hard to forgive Ardrin for what he has done to you. When he cast a slight upon your loyalty, he cast a slight upon mine, causing me to question what I have never questioned before, that he was rightfully king of this land. And as for harming Alaric—” he broke off, laughed and said, “you may ask him that for yourself. I think he is glad enough to see you home that he would welcome whatever sent you here.”

As he spoke the door opened, and a very small boy, about eight years old, came into the room. Bard turned away from the saddlebags he was packing. “Well, Alaric, you were only a little boy when I went away to the king’s court, and now you are nearly old enough for your own spurs and honor!” He hugged the child and swung him up in his arms.

“Let me go with you into exile, my brother,” the child said fiercely. “Father wants me to go and be fostered in the house of that old king! I don’t want to serve a king who would exile my brother!” He saw Bard laugh and shake his head, and he insisted, “I can ride; I can serve as your page, even your squire, take care of your horse and carry your arms—”

“No, now, my lad,” Bard said, setting the boy on his feet, “I shall have no need for page or squire on the roads I must ride now; you must stay and be a good son to our father while I am in outlawry, and that means learning to be a good man. As for the king, if you are quiet and reasonable and speak low, he will like that better than being brave and speaking your mind; he is a fool, but he is the king and he must be obeyed, were he as stupid as Durraman’s donkey.”

“But where will you go, Bard?” the child insisted. “I heard the men crying the doom of outlawry on you at the crossroads, and they said that no one could give you food or fire or help—”

Bard laughed. “I shall carry food for three days,” he said, “and before that time is over I shall be well out of Asturias, into lands where no one gives heed to King Ardrin’s dooms and justices. I have money with me and a good horse.”