Warrior of the Altaii Read online

  “So?”

  “My lord, it’s our custom to allow ransom of—”

  “Your custom, not mine. Lantan custom, not Altaii. And with what will they pay this ransom? What is there in this city of value that doesn’t belong to the Altaii?”

  “But, my lord—”

  “And then there’s the matter of oaths.” I said it quietly enough, but I might as well have shouted for the effect on the nobles. Dreams of power were replaced with pale, pasty faces. At last they knew fear. Sweat was running down Ara’s face. “Oaths were sworn, while I rested in a cell beneath this palace, that I wasn’t in the city. The daughters of the Council of Nobles were pledged to that. Those daughters are now forfeit.”

  “But we didn’t mean that,” cried one of the nobles.

  I nodded, and Mayra produced a bag. From it she took a sky-stone, and set it in front of the throne. Carved with a Terg by a Sister of Wisdom. Blessed by three times three Sisters of Wisdom. Ara moved back from it as if it was a live stingwing.

  “Come up here. Put your hands on this,” I said, my voice becoming more like a growl with every word, “and repeat that you didn’t mean your oaths. Put your hands on it and say anything you like. Come up here, Lantan.”

  Instead the noble tried to push himself through the back of his chair. He was shaking, and tears rolled down over his chins. The stink of fear was on him.

  Suddenly Orne hurried into the hall. He walked quickly as he could without running, and leaned over to whisper in my ear.

  “My lord, we’ve taken some prisoners who demand to see you. One, at least, I think you ought to see.” He shut his mouth with a snap, as if he’d started to say something and changed his mind.

  “If you think I should,” I said, and he waved to a man at the doors.

  Once more they swung slowly open, and Eilinn walked in. I knew at once that it was her. How, I couldn’t say, but I knew. Her silver-blond hair was piled high on her head, fastened with pins covered in firestones. A heavy necklet and wide bracelets seemed to be solid emerald, and her robe was heavily brocaded and covered in firestones and pale snowstones.

  She moved toward me as regally as if she still ruled there, and the rest of us were merely visitors. Six paces in front of me she stopped. Those green eyes were cool and decisive.

  “When was she taken, Orne?” I asked.

  She answered before he could. “I wasn’t taken. I came on my own.”

  I looked at Orne, and he nodded. “Why? You might have escaped.”

  She calmly began taking the pins from her hair, throwing them on the floor. “There wasn’t much chance of that, was there? And even if I’d managed to get out of the city, I’d have been alone, without money or supporters, and with no way to join my sister.” Her hair tumbled down to her waist. “If I was caught, on the other hand, I ran the risk of being killed by the first warrior who recognized me.” The emerald necklet and bracelets joined the pins. “I decided there was only one way to ensure my life.” She knelt. “I pledge myself to you.”

  If anything I’d done had startled them, this sent the nobles into shock. Eilinn was the queen. They gave lip service, at least, to her being a living goddess. She and her sister were the embodiment of Lantan supremacy. They couldn’t believe she’d meekly surrender, and I didn’t believe it either.

  “This is just a trick to preserve your life,” I said. “You think this will keep your head on your shoulders?”

  “I do think it. It’ll keep me alive until my army can rescue me, of that much I’m certain.”

  It was my turn to be surprised. She said it as calmly as if announcing that the wind was from the south. “And now that I know your reason, why shouldn’t I have you killed?” Mayra put a hand on my shoulder as if to stop me, but I shrugged it off.

  “Because you don’t think you’ll lose.” The corners of her mouth curled in amusement. “And anyway, if you do, you’ll deprive yourself of having the Queen of Lanta, for however short a time, and you won’t do that.”

  I was beginning to feel she meant it, but there was something else there, something she wasn’t telling, and I meant to have it. “It’s not enough. There’s more to it, or you’d not come trusting that I won’t kill you or put you in the cell over the pit, the one your sister kept me in.”

  That struck home. The icy mask slipped a touch. “It is. And I wasn’t the one who put you there. Remember that.”

  “It was your sister,” I hammered. “And you were the one who sent an assassin after me. A fine lad died that night, just because I jested about making you a slave. You ask me to believe after that you’ll come in here and swear yourself to my service? I’ll send for your own executioner.”

  “I wasn’t about to die then.” She caught her lip between her teeth and fought to regain her composure. “I had to balance being your slave for a short time, a short time only,” she said as if trying to convince herself. “I don’t want to die. I want to live. Whatever the circumstances, I want to live.”

  Mayra bent down in front of her. “There’s a way.” Eilinn stared at her like a child looking at candy she couldn’t believe was being given. “If you can convince him, he’ll let you live.”

  She scooped up the sky-stone and thrust it at Eilinn. The other woman clutched it before she realized what it was. Her face paled, and she swayed as if she was going to fall.

  “Catch hold of yourself, child,” Mayra said insistently. “You had the intelligence to see your one real chance where most women would’ve been blinded by panic. You had the courage to take that chance when most women would’ve seen it as suicide. Gather your intelligence and your courage now, and do what you must do!”

  Eilinn held the sky-stone cradled as a woman might hold a bunch of flowers. She stared at it as if her eyes were frozen on it. “I—I—”

  “The truth, girl. The words must be the truth, and you must know them for the truth.”

  Sweat beaded on the kneeling woman’s brow. “I, I renounce my rights before the law and my rights above the law. I renounce my property and possessions. I renounce my f-freedom. I s-surrender my life and my will to the o-one who will own m-me.” Her skin glistened, now, in the sunlight from the windows, and the sky-stone was wet.

  “Now swear,” said Mayra, “swear by the most terrible oath you know.”

  “I, I s-swear by m-my flesh and blood and b-bone and spirit.”

  With the last word she collapsed, the sky-stone falling to the floor. Mayra caught her and smoothed damp hair back from her face.

  “What about the other prisoners you mentioned, Orne? Are they as interesting?”

  “I don’t know, my lord.” He motioned to the door. “I’ve never seen them before.”

  The man who entered wore a noble’s robes instead of armor, but a bandage on his head and another on his arm showed he’d been in some fighting. There was gray in his hair. That surprised me, for I knew him by name, although I’d never seen him before. I’d seen the woman with him. Her name was Leah.

  “Did these also come in to surrender?” I asked.

  Toran, for him it must be, bristled. “We did not. If a pair of your warriors hadn’t managed to get behind me, I’d have had us out of the city by now.”

  Leah put her fingers across his mouth to quiet him. She took a deep breath and came closer. For the first time I realized she was with child.

  “May I speak for us, my lord?” she asked softly.

  “If you’ll tell me what claim you two have to ask to be brought to me instead of being chained in coffle.”

  “None, my lord. You might say we presume, or rather, I presume, on the claim of another.”

  I studied her and counted back the months to the night of my capture. Then I counted a second time to be sure. Mayra was looking at me oddly, but I ignored her.

  “That man of yours over there. You love him? Will he make a good father to your child?”

  “As good a father as any man could be, my lord. As any man. And I do love him.”
r />   “How?” I asked simply, but she understood.

  “When reason returns, my lord, even a simple woman can add three ones to make a triplet, and Elana wasn’t able to keep all of her secrets.”

  I nodded and continued to ignore Mayra’s scrutiny. A tall, imperious noblewoman caught my eye. Her more-than-generous bosom heaved with indignation as she stared at Leah with eyes that could have flayed at ten paces.

  “You have something to say, woman?” I asked her. “You know something of this?”

  “I know all there is to know,” she spat viciously. “He was no sooner out of the city than she managed to get herself in that disgusting condition, and by a slave it’s said. Abhorrent as it is to think of her allowing herself to get that way, it’s even more detestable to think it was with a slave.” She shuddered to show how detestable it was, and her lip curled in contempt. “Then he returned, and though she was already far gone, he claimed the child was his. They’re loathsome, both of them.”

  Leah had flinched at every word, and Toran appeared ready to start fighting again, against anyone.

  “Warriors,” I shouted, “have you heard? Do we want two such as these among us?”

  “No,” they shouted back, sensing sport.

  “Then this is my judgment. Take the two of them, along with a cart and a horse, to where my share of the loot is kept. Let her watch while he loads the cart with sacks of coin, gold bars, anything that catches the fancy of those who guard him. Don’t let him shirk.” The imperious-faced woman was smiling cruelly. “When the cart is half filled, have him finish filling it with furs. Then lay the woman on the furs, put him on the cart seat, and turn them out of the city. After all, we don’t want such as they among us, do we?”

  “No,” shouted the warriors, and they roared with laughter. The cruel smile was replaced on the noblewoman’s face with rage. Leah was sobbing, but with gratitude.

  I pointed to Toran. “You, man, do you truly want this child?”

  He gestured toward the imperious noblewoman. “Despite what Alimia says, a child is the child of those who raise it. I want this child.”

  I smiled. “It’ll be interesting, Lantan, to see which blood wins out.” I took off my armband, graven with my name and a record of the portents at my birth and the rune-bones cast on my nameday. Leah caught it in surprise. “Give it to the child. The price of your freedom is an oath that the child will be given the band.”

  She looked at Toran, then nodded. “I swear that the child I bear within my body will be given this band on its nameday. I swear by my life force and the bones of my mother and my mother’s mother and my mother’s mother’s mother, by the spirit of every child I hope to bear, except the one I now bear, by the temple stones of the gods I worship, by—”

  “Enough,” I said, with a grin. “That’s oath enough to hold you if the ground opens as it stands.”

  She bowed low, as a Lantan noblewoman would to her ruler, and returned to Toran.

  “See that they have an escort of ten lances until they’re well on their way,” I told Orne.

  “Why did you turn them loose?” Mayra asked.

  I was saved from answering by the arrival of a warrior who handed Orne a scrap of paper. Orne read it and passed it to me. I read it twice and crumpled it in my hand. I moved to the front of the throne dais.

  “You of the Council of Nobles also made some oaths. Our talk of them was interrupted, but not forgotten. You swore by the nails of your temple doors. At this instant those who were once citizens of your city are pulling those nails, and tearing down the temples until no stone rests on top of another and the images of your gods are ground into dust. You swore by the bones of your fathers, and if I could find them, I’d grind them into dust, too, and empty them into the cesspools of the city. But I can’t find their bones, so you’ll have to do. Take them.” And I headed for the door.

  In an instant the room was like lisir among the topa hens. The nobles were knocked unconscious by blows from lance butts. My mind was already far from the great hall, though. The Most High had come.

  XXVI

  A THICK TANGLE

  Outside I quickly found the man who’d brought the message to the palace. He was a squat, heavyset warrior, with a cropped ear and the cheek tattoo that said he’d fought six years in the arenas of Caselle.

  “What happened?” I asked. “This says only that the Most High came and then left without landing.”

  “It was like this, my lord. I was part of the guard on the Inner Wall, where the catapults are, and all of a sudden one of the Most High’s flying carts appeared, coming in toward the palace. Well, we all knew they favored the Lantans. Some say that all the Lantans have been doing, the Most High put them up to. Anyway, we thought they were coming to try to change things back, to give the city back to the Lantans, and, well, the flying cart was right in front of us, so we took a shot at it with the catapult.”

  Mayra started muttering under her breath.

  “And?” I said.

  “We hit it, my lord.” He grinned suddenly. “Didn’t really think we’d do it, but we did. Knocked it three or four hundred paces sideways. Then the rock fell away, and for all it’d been the size of a horse, the cart flew away. But it was fluttering, my lord, fluttering and jerking like a wounded stingwing. Headed east, getting lower all the time.”

  “Towards the forest?” I asked.

  “Yes, my lord, though it’s no forest compared to what I saw—Well, it doesn’t matter.” He paused. “Do you think they’ll be back, my lord?”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it.”

  He drew his blade and kissed it. “Maybe their spells won’t work on cold iron, either. Eh, my lord?”

  As soon as he walked away Mayra started cursing. At last she seemed to run down. “You’ll have to go after it, Wulfgar. Those idiots on the wall may have caused more trouble than they dream.”

  “I intend to go. But they’re not idiots, Mayra. There aren’t many men who’d be brave enough to attack the Most High.”

  “There aren’t many men with enough brains to—” She took a deep breath and got hold of herself. “When you find them, try to smooth things. Don’t hurt any of them, can you avoid it. If you must, then kill all of them, cover it as best you can, and return to me as fast as you can ride. I’ll try to cover it further.”

  “Mayra, how do you kill a Most High? Can you kill a Most High?”

  “I don’t know,” she sighed. “No Sister of Wisdom has ever been able to penetrate their screens and wards. You’ll just have to do the best you can, but only as an absolute last resort.” She tapped the bag she’d given me, hanging beneath my tunic. “This will protect you, but I haven’t time to prepare anything for whoever else you take. Keep them well away from the Most High. At close range they can do strange things to men’s minds.”

  Remembering being frozen in a corridor of that very palace, I agreed. I’d keep the warriors back. I wanted none of my friends suddenly attacking me.

  In minutes Orne had gathered a hundred lances, and we were riding out of the city. Part of that time had been spent in telling other warriors that they couldn’t go with us. They felt that as long as the Most High were already against us, and we’d already struck the first blow, it might be well to strike the second as well, before the Most High could strike.

  Finding our direction wasn’t hard. A pillar of smoke rose to the sky, higher than the smoke from the fires in the Towers of Kaal. It led us east, along the road to Caselle, then to the south, away from the highway. Soon we could see that the smoke rose from a forest, or such as we would call a forest. There was a thick tangle of brush and vines, and trees twice the height of a man, some even three times. I’ve read of places where there are trees to dwarf those, but I’ve not seen one, and that was forest enough for me.

  We dismounted at the edge of the trees. Immediately all of them wanted to go in with me.

  “Only I have Mayra’s protection,” I explained. “If you follow me in, the Most H
igh may be able to twist your minds so you’d attack me.”

  “But, my lord,” Orne protested, “protections are all very good, but a sword is no weapon at all against the Most High.”

  “You’re right. It isn’t.” I pulled the unstrung hunting bow I’d begun carrying from beneath my stirrup. Bracing it on my instep and behind my thigh, I strung it. “If a Most High can stop one of these shafts from inside fifty paces, it can have me.”

  Orne laughed halfheartedly. I didn’t think it was such a grand jest, myself. Perhaps a Most High could stop the arrow in flight. There was only one way to find out.

  As I entered the wood I nocked an arrow, but I didn’t draw it. No man can hold a longbow at full draw for long. I moved from bush to bush, tree to tree, as carefully as if I stalked a fanghorn among the firz. The quarry I hunted could certainly be more dangerous than any fanghorn. Ahead I saw the source of the smoke. If it’d ever been a flying cart of the Most High, it was one no longer. Whatever it was, it burned so intensely I couldn’t look directly at it. Even from the corners of my eyes it brought spots and pain. As I moved around it, I saw the Most High.

  It sat watching the burning thing, its Staff of Power on the ground beside it. I say it watched, though there were no eyeholes in the hood it wore. Almost in the same instant that I saw it, it became aware of me. A three-fingered hand darted for the Staff, and my arrow took it from its very grasp.

  I think that it was as surprised as I was when the pierced Staff began to hiss and crackle. Sparks jumped from it. Fingers of blue flame rose, and an acrid odor.

  I was the first to recover, though. When it turned back to me, I had a shaft drawn to my cheek. Its hand moved slowly, as if groping for something else.

  “Stop it,” I said. “Stop it, or I’ll see if those robes can stop this shaft.” It stopped. “Now remove the hood.”

  “Don’t you know, human,” it trilled, “that it’s death to see the face of the Most High?”