The Dark Glory War (16 page)

Our band of twenty-one people had been cut in half, with our only advantage now that we had plenty of provisions and more than enough horses to carry us to Yslin. Resolute elected to travel with us, bringing his string of three horses along. He opted for riding at the rear of our formation to watch for signs of the Aurolani stragglers.

It took us just shy a week—eight days, to be precise—to reach Yslin. Traffic picked up along the border road heading southwest, but we kept to ourselves as much as possible. We did not find it very difficult to do that since, as bedraggled as we were, there were groups who probably figured us for bandits and so kept their distance. This suited us, of course, since any recounting of our experiences would have started rumors that could have resulted in a panic.

We had a discussion about that one night. I asked Lord Norrington if we shouldn’t inform the Peacewards in the various villages about the potential for attacks by Aurolani forces. After all, my father was working in Valsina to guard against such things. Without a warning, various villages could have been overwhelmed by the kinds of bands we’d faced.

Lord Norrington ran a hand over his unshaven jaw. “Giving them warning might well save lives, but only if they put that knowledge to good use. To do that they need leadership, and since the leaders of Oriosa have yet to be told what is happening, there is no way to provide such leadership.”

“But Peacewards in each town should be those leaders, shouldn’t they?”

“Yes, Tarrant, they should.” He gave me a gentle smile. “Your father, for example, is capable of being such a leader. He’s the reason I’m confident that Valsina will be safe. Your father is a warrior, so he knows what to do in the case of an attack. What would he do if he heard that Beljoz were being raided?”

“That village isn’t far from Valsina, so I suspect he’d raise a company of men and ride out to help.”

“Exactly.” Lord Norrington took a long pull on a water-skin. “Your father knows that stopping the Aurolani raiders there is better than stopping them at Valsina, but again, he’s a warrior. The same is not true of most village Peacewards. They might gather a handful of men to defend their own village, but they’d not dare head out to save others. On the other hand, if the queen issues an edict that requires each county to raise a militia, house it in a central village, and dispatch it to any trouble spots, well, then, the sort of thing that has to happen to deal with this problemwill happen.”

Resolute snapped a stick in half and pitched the smaller piece into the fire. “You advocate the good of the many over the good of the few.”

“In this case, yes.”

“Yet it is the same idea which has left my homeland under Aurolani control.”

Lord Norrington scratched at his cheek. “I disagree with how certain individuals have defined the good of the many in the case of Vorquellyn or the Ghost Marches or even the Black Marches. Too many see the presence of Fortress Draconis as a deterrent to an invasion, despite the fact that a century ago it did not stop Kree’chuc. A single Aurolani outpost south of the Boreal Mountains is an invitation to campaign over the rest of the world.”

Reflection of golden flames danced in Resolute’s eyes. “Have you influence over your leaders?”

“Can I get them to mount an expedition to liberate Vorquellyn?” Lord Norrington slowly shook his head. “My past attempts have been futile, but never before have I come armed with the evidence I have now of Aurolani probing. That they could slip so far south without an alarm being raised is chilling.J “Peace is an illusion.” Resolute opened his arms to take the entire company in. “We know the war is coming. We have fought the first battle. Yet our evidence will be denied.”

“No, I won’t let that happen.” Norrington held up a hand. “I pledge to you that I will do all I can to get an expedition mounted to free Vorquellyn.”

Resolute slowly shook his head. “The sincere pursuit of an impossible task does not guarantee victory.”

“Yet he’ll do it. We’ll do it.” I likewise raised a hand. “I give you my oath, Resolute, on my honor and life, and before all the gods in creation. I’ll see Vorquellyn liberated in my lifetime.”

The elf threw back his head and laughed. My cheeks burned with shame at what I took to be ridicule. As the elf looked at me again he must have read the pain on my face, because he cut his laughter off abruptly.

He glanced at Lord Norrington. “These youths you have with you, they are a valiant lot. They’re also naive.”

“I know what I said, Resolute, and I stand by it.”

“Do you?” The elf stared at me with argent eyes. “When you make such an oath it not only binds you, but binds all you’ve sworn by. You have set great forces into motion, forces that will batter you, abuse you, and torture you. They will hate you for what you have done. They will do everything they can to crush you. And if they do, you fail.”

I sat up straight. “Resolute, you lost your homeland back in the days of my great-grandfather, but you’ve not stopped fighting. Now the Aurolani threaten my home, threaten me with losing everything. Nothing in the oath I have given you could be worse than that. The only way we defeat them is to drive them back north of the mountains, and that I will do.”

“I shall hope you are right, Tarrant Hawkins.” The elf nodded to me solemnly. “But less for my sake than for your own.”

T’tiding as we did past isolated crofts and through tiny vil-|| lages, 1 began to feel a bit sad for the people doomed to live 1’t in those places. After all, I came from the city of Valsina, and on this journey alone I’d seen more of the world than they ever would. I’d had all the cultural advantages of growing up in a city where theatre and art were available, and where the rise and setting of the sun did not dictate my schedule.

In short, as I saw their grubby faces—and that was thewhole of their faces, since scant few of them had the right to take a mask—I thought myself sophisticated.

Then I saw the Alcidese capital, Yslin.

The first thing I noticed as we rode in from the northeast was that it wasbig. Three or four Valsinas could have fit inside the outer walls, and the city sprawled well beyond them. The whole festival had occupied a meadow to the south of the city, extending its boundaries even further. From miles out I could easily recognize three fortresses in the city that were the equivalent of Valsina’s Old Town, and multiple temple districts as well as markets.

Huge mansions dotted the hillsides that gracefully sloped down to the sea. Each one of the mansions was large enough to make Lord Norrington’s estate seem a carriage house. In the center of the city I saw buildings that rose three and four stories, and they weren’t just temples and forts, but buildings owned by people, with shops on the ground floor and dwellings up above. And they even housed people who didn’t work in the attached shops, but who worked elsewhere.

Yslin also had a seaport, which I’d not seen before, and the ocean was impressive as well. The day we arrived was somewhat overcast, with a breeze coming down from the north, so the surf was pounding the beach. The water looked all grey and angry, with hints of green and blue. In the distance I could see islands, but unlike the lakes near Valsina, I couldn’t see the farther shore.

A lot of ships, large and small, bobbed in the bay. Long wharves allowed them to load and unload their cargoes into the warehouses located right on the shorefront. In that same area I could see miles of fishing nets hung up to dry, and a fish market that appeared to be very busy.

A hundred other curiosities caught my attention, but none as quickly as the beautifully colored spheres drifting above the city. They were captured in a net attached to a basket, and a line tethered the whole thing to the ground—Resolute claimed to have seen one of the contraptions before and called it aballoon. A couple of these balloons flew over the festival grounds. The regularity with which they rose and fell suggested someone was collecting money to provide rides.

Another fascination was the baskets hanging from cables strung between the fortresses and other towering buildings. The baskets, which appeared to carry people, moved along the cable from one point to another. They must have been on some sort of a loop because a basket heading one way would pass another at the same sedate rate of travel. The view from there had to be that of a bird on the wing, and traveling that way undoubtedly beat sloshing through the mud and manure in the streets below.

Lord Norrington led us around the city to the south. He and Leigh left us at the edge of the festival area and rode in to make inquiries at several pavilions flying the white-hawk-on-green-field flag of Oriosa. Within an hour they returned. Lord Norrington gave Cooper directions concerning where our horses would be stabled, then led the rest of us into the city, to an inn called the One-legged Frog. We took our accommodations there, with Lord Norrington, Heslin, and Shales getting rooms; Leigh, Nay, and I shared a smaller one that did not have an overlarge bed.

Resolute left us then, despite Lord Norrington having offered to get him a room as well. Promising he would see us again, he headed deeper into the city. The inn’s proprietor, Quint Severus, said Resolute would find a place with his own people in the Downs, which I took be a portion of the city catering to elves. I didn’t ask if that assumption was true, though, not wanting to reveal my ignorance.

The toughest thing to get used to in Yslin, and all of Alcida for that matter, was that the folks didn’t wear masks. Of course not everyone in Oriosa wore masks, but they were all latecomers and mostly peasants. They would defer to anyone in a mask, and we’d grown up knowing how to deal with the unmasked. Here in Yslin, however, a Count or Baron or Duke who outranked Lord Norrington would be as barefaced as a thief, so figuring how to deal with them was tough. On top of that, we were seen as curiosities, with folks pointing and murmuring behind their hands.

It might have seemed that dealing with Resolute’s being maskless would have made the transition easier, but it didn’t. While the elf didn’t wear a mask, the tattoos on his body seemed to serve many of the same functions. Resolute himself seemed to be a mask dropped over an elf’s outline, and while we did spend a lot of time with him, I never did feel I’d gotten anything close to a glimpse of who he really was.

Once in our room, in keeping with Lord Norrington’s instructions, we ordered up a tub and enough hot water to bathe. The three of us drew lots and I was lucky enough to win the right to use the bath first. I scrubbed myself good and hard, leaving my skin all red and tingling. Getting out of the bath, I wrapped a towel around myself and brought one end of it up to form a hood that hid my bare face from the other two.

Carrying my moonmask in my right hand, I retreated to the far corner of the room and sat with my back to Leigh and Nay. Using a small bowl, a little water, some saddle soap and a brush, I cleaned up my moonmask. I couldn’t get all the blood off it, so a faint dappling remained. It kind of reminded me of the spots mottling a gibberer’s pelt, so I didn’t mind it too much. The temeryx feather shed the blood on it very easily and retained its raven-black color.

I tied the mask back on, being sure to catch a strand or two of hair in the knot. I dressed hurriedly in the least soiled of the road clothes I had, then went down to the inn’s tavern. I ordered a tankard of a local ale that, I discovered, had a sharp, woody bite yet was sweet enough to avoid being bitter. I also got some bread, cheese, and a big bowl of chicken soup which made up for in vegetables what it lacked in actual bird flesh.

Nay and Leigh came down one after another. Nay had half-finished his meal when Leigh arrived, but before Leigh could order food, his father returned to the inn trailed by two masked servants wearing red-and-blue jerkins, marking them as being in service to the royal house. The two of them bore overstuffed sacks which they took up to our room. Lord Norrington bid us follow them and he brought up the rear. The servants deposited their burdens then departed, leaving the four of us alone in the room.

“I’ve been to see the queen.” Lord Norrington turned from the door he’d just shut. “I wasn’t able to speak with her, but I did have a conversation with her chamberlain, Duke Reed Larner. I told him our reasons for being here and he said he had heard rumors of similar sightings from other festival delegations. He believes that for the first time in a long time the festival meetings will have something important to discuss. Until that time comes, however, we are to say nothing of what we have seen or experienced.”

I fingered my temeryx feather. “What if someone asks why we are wearing these feathers?”

“The ‘War of the Ravens’ tale worked well on the road. Give it life for a bit longer, boys.” Lord Norrington’s brown eyes hardened for a moment. “You know I’d not make that sort of request if it were not important. What we have done so far has been simple because we were facing an enemy who wanted to kill us, and we had to prevent that. It is my hope that the leaders of the world’s nations will see that is what the Aurolani forces want to do to us. As I result I hope they will unite to fight them, but between where we are now and that goal is a slippery battlefield where politics is more valuable than swordsmanship. Until our queen can decide how and where to exert pressure to get others to go along with her plans—plans that will safeguard Oriosa while destroying the threat—she needs our information to be withheld.”

“Well, that ruins my plans.” Leigh snorted with exaggerated disgust. “Here I had decided to spend the evening earning drink and coin by reciting my opus, ‘How to Vex a Temeryx.’ ”

His father laughed. “Well, I would hardly wish to spoil your fun, but just on the off chance that your poetry would cause the common folk here to riot, I have to inform you that you will not be free this evening. It turns out that we have arrived on the day that Oriosa hosts a feast. Protocol demands we attend.”

Leigh’s head came up and his eyes brightened. “If we must, I suppose we must.”

Nay jerked his head toward me. “Hawkins and me, we’ll wander about then and size up your competition among poets.”