The Horse Lord (The Book of Years Series 1) Read online

  Duergar spent the next ten months in frantic, furtive searching through every document in a fortress all too well supplied with scribbled scraps of information. He hadn’t known what he was looking for, only that he would recognise it when he saw it. And he did. The coppersmith’s bill, folded out of sight and mind in a heap of ledgers for five hundred years, confirmed his worst fears.

  “… from a kailin of Ut Ergan citadel, retainer to Kalarr-arluth, two markes of silver for ensetting of a jewel (this blue and most fair) under bronze on his swordes clasp against losing of ye same, it being a luck-token ygiven of his lord…”

  One of the Echainon spellstones had vanished from all knowledge just before the last Clan Wars, and to Duergar what he read had only one possible meaning. If he could get his hands on the wrist-band with its stone still ‘ensetten under bronze’, Kalarr cu Ruruc would smirk on the other side of his haughty face. But if Kalarr found them first…

  He quailed at the prospect. This discovery answered many suspicions about cu Ruruc, and he was sure his so-called ally was also hunting for Aldric Talvalin. If Kalarr couldn’t bring the kailin back to search and question, then to keep the stone from someone else’s hands he would obliterate Aldric and everything he wore, carried or was near.

  Duergar had to reach both it and Aldric first.

  With the strength of terror he dragged his laden desk aside and began to draw a symbol of great power across the wooden floor.

  *

  In the four days’ riding since he left Gemmel, Aldric encountered less than twenty people, but it was enough to prove that an eijo received far more respect than a kailin of the same age. Their bows of greeting were invariably performed with an unease he found shocking until he remembered why. An eijo, whether with hair unbound to indicate a lordless state or cropped to mark oath-taken purpose, stood beyond the law without protection from House or Clan. Such a man could trust and rely on only himself. It made eijin menacing individuals, for lonely travellers to beware of.

  He got the same reaction every time. First a curious glance towards the sound of hoofs, followed by a narrow-eyed survey of black clothes, horse and harness, close-cropped hair, covered shield and crestless tsepan, then finally a shocked stare at the face untouched by sunlight for years. That pallor went away as his skin took on some colour, but it only made the white scar down his cheek more visible.

  Aldric felt comfortable in the presence of yeomen and peasants, regardless of whether they were comfortable with him, but when encounters with kailinin on the road were unavoidable he matched their bows exactly, neither giving nor expecting additional respect. If they were low-clan and inferior, as most were, that galled him more than he was willing to admit.

  In another week the huge forest of Guelerd began to darken the horizon ahead of him. Despite the efforts of King Rynert’s father it had a well-deserved reputation for ruffians and bandits, and what few steadings Aldric passed were large and well-fortified. Rumour claimed only fools and foreigners rode through Guelerd unescorted, though he saw nothing hostile from dawn through to dusk. But then a fully armed eijo on a warhorse was hardly the most inviting victim.

  At least for thieves who worked in the open.

  By the time he passed under the eaves of the forest, afternoon had already tilted towards evening. He was grateful for the cool of the slanting shadows and almost wished it would rain a little, enough to settle the dust of the road and wash the dry heat from the air. A pair of rooks hopped out of his path, then returned to whatever they had been squabbling over. A solitary fox eyed him from behind a tree before ambling off about its own affairs. There was a crow cawing lazily somewhere. Aldric reined in for a few minutes each time, especially when he heard the crow, but saw no unusual interest. These were real birds and beasts, nothing more.

  He yawned and tried to remember what the last yeoman had told him of the forest inns. They locked their doors at sunset and didn’t admit guests after dark, that much he knew already, though a glance at the sky showed he still had a couple of hours yet before daylight failed. Long enough to find both roof and bed.

  *

  Aldric soon learned why no brigands stalked the road: if prices at The Shady Oak were like the rest, they’d all opened taverns.

  It catered for wealthy merchants who travelled towards Erdhaven port, and it charged accordingly, so that even a clan-lord’s son might think twice. Yet thanks to Gemmel’s generosity, a landless wizard’s fosterling could demand a room, not the best but good enough, and expect to get it.

  The demand became less amusing when the innkeeper made a demand of his own, something he would never have dared with a lord’s son. He wanted payment in advance. It should have been simple enough, except that all his money was still in the same two wallets Gemmel had given him, the better to keep it under his eye. There had been no urgent reason to divide it into smaller bags and hiding-places, and now there was reason, there was no time.

  Forced to delve into his saddlebags at an all-too-lively counter, Aldric did his best to keep both wallets out of sight, because the cheerful jingle of coins that had once sounded so attractive now sounded far too loud. By sheer luck the one he opened held only silver, and before presenting the requested fifty marks – not ten, not twenty, but fifty! – he mimicked hunting coins as if they were few and hard to find; many more taverns with charges like this, and they would be.

  Apart from the innkeeper, drumming impatient fingers on the lid of his cashbox, nobody seemed to notice or care. A tavern closer to any town might have the usual scattering of sharp-eyed predators, but this establishment accommodated people who often arrived with partners not their own. The Oak was busy with other affairs than his.

  The innkeeper also insisted he surrender his bow and telekin with Tewal’s old reason, ‘Peace in the House’, though he wasn’t stubborn enough for anything else even when the Three Blades made other customers uneasy. One man’s money was as good as the next, but patrons who brought longswords to table weren’t the guests this place preferred. The wealthy merchants and their ladies, ‘wives’ wasn’t the word, didn’t carry weapons themselves. They employed hard men to do it for them, and they disliked sharing dinnertime with another hard man no matter how well-mannered.

  At least most of them disliked it. One woman, perhaps the only genuine merchant’s wife in the building, seemed to find Aldric’s youth attractive and his appearance dashing. She was certainly pretty enough, in the well-upholstered current fashion, and it was her misfortune that those sidelong glances and roguish winks only reminded him of Ilen. It made poor seasoning for a fine honey-roast duck sauced with quince and preserved cherries, and finally he set his lips in a thin smile then fixed an unwinking stare on the would-be-romantic, toying with his long meat-knife all the while. By the time he had to blink, she had hustled her baffled husband out towards the safety of the taproom. Aldric’s smile widened to a brief grin. There were advantages to being eijo after all.

  The heat, the wine and pleasant fullness after food gave the world a rosy glow, and soon it was time for sleep. He stretched, stifled a yawn, hefted the saddlebags which had been his footstool all evening and went upstairs. His room had been prepared for the night with two dimmed lamps at the headboard of the bed, a stove with dampers closed and window-shutters already latched. Normally he did that himself, locking them with a steel girth-buckle and stringing a cord of bridle-bells across the opening, but tonight he was warm, drowsy and a little drunk. It was enough to transform caution into routine, and routine was seldom as insistent.

  Aldric laid his swords on the wall-rack, threw his jerkin across a chair and sat down on the bed to kick off his boots. His grin at the luxurious soft mattress and quilted sheets became another yawn, this one enormous and not stifled at all.

  Five minutes to relax, then finish undressing, have a wash, secure the room and sleep. He swung his legs off the floor and lay back. Five minutes, no more, then see to the locks and shutters.

  His eyelids drooped.
>
  Just five minutes.

  His eyelids closed…

  *

  Merchants lodging at inns like The Shady Oak paid too much for their comfort to accept nocturnal noises other than the ones they made themselves, so the floors were thickly carpeted, the locks and hinges oiled and silent. That meant when his shutter-latches were teased open and the window itself swung back Aldric heard none of it. He slept on while thin moonlight brightened the room, and even when a dark silhouette slipped silent as fog across the sill.

  Once he muttered in his sleep and rolled over, and the intruder froze where he stood until the breathing from the bed was slow and deep once more. Then he went about his furtive business. The same small, fine-bladed knife used to force the latches now sliced saddlebag straps, and gloved fingers withdrew the wallets whose existence Aldric had tried so hard to hide. The thief checked their contents by moonlight without clinking a single coin, then transferred them to his own belt-pouch and vanished into the night.

  He didn’t even shut the window.

  *

  Aldric drifted out of deep sleep half an hour later, unsettled at last when the warmth of the stove was finally overwhelmed by cold air flowing in through that open window. A small noise made by another person climbing through it shocked him wide awake as effectively as a dash of icy water in the face. His first instinct was for weapons, but his swords were on their rack and the telekin were wherever the innkeeper had stowed them. Silently cursing his own stupidity, he made sounds of restless sleep and gathered his legs under him while one hand eased up to free his punch-dagger from its collar loop. If the shadowy masked figure leaned over the bed it would get that dagger under its chin, as prickling threat or killing stab depending on how it moved.

  Instead it bent over the saddlebags and a second later got slammed down against them when Aldric flung himself from the bed onto the intruder’s back. It was a confusing fight because his uninvited guest refused to attack, barely defended, and did hardly anything except try to escape. That kept him from using the dagger, and when it glinted briefly in the moonlight the threat stopped the thief’s thrashing long enough to wrench the mask away.

  And discover he was she.

  A woman, yes; frail and helpless, no. Both her knees slammed up into his side and almost threw him over her head. If they had hit his crotch as intended, he would have been in no state to prevent her getaway. Aldric returned the favour by slamming his weight against her stomach and her breath came out in a gasp as she flopped backwards. Before she could recover, his dagger’s point was against her throat.

  “Enough!”

  Resistance finally ceased and gave him the chance to see what he had caught. She was well worth looking at, with tanned skin, straw-fair hair escaping from under a dark hood and eyes whose brilliant blue reminded him of the Echainon spellstone. She was beautiful, and very angry.

  “Get off!” Even in only two words Aldric detected an accent. “Alban, take the knife away and get off!”

  “You’re in no position to make demands. I am. What did you steal?” The woman spat inaccurately at him. “Listen, you,” he waved the dagger and her eyes tracked it, “I’m asking nicely. The Watchmaster in Erdhaven won’t. So what did you steal?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? Why don’t I believe—”

  “There’s no money in your saddlebags.”

  “So you say. What would I find if I searched you?” The answer was not much. Her tunic, breeches and boots were all close-fitting for stealth and easy movement, and those oh-so-well-filled moneybags would be clearly visible. They weren’t.

  “Your shutters were already open, Alban. I’d hoped to be your first visitor tonight. It seems not.” Aldric cursed elaborately and didn’t feel any better. “You shouldn’t have taken such a good room,” she said, not helping. “Or made such a performance of hiding your money.”

  He considered and rejected half a dozen answers, all no more than excuses, and finally settled for a weak smile. “I shouldn’t have done a lot of things, and should have done a lot of others. More fool me. What about you?”

  “Alban, if we’re going to talk, sit elsewhere. And until we know each other better, move your hand.” He blushed and whipped his knife hand back from where it had been resting almost between her breasts. The woman closed her shirt and secured its buttons, then gave him another disdainful glance. “The first part too. You’re no lightweight. Find a chair.”

  “Don’t try escaping. I wouldn’t want to…” Aldric considered various things and settled for the least offensive. “To miss hearing what you’re about to tell me.” He got up, turned quickly and slammed the shutters, but the woman did no more than rise to a cross-legged seat on the floor. She put her head on one side and batted her lashes mockingly at him.

  “Convinced of my good intentions, Alban?”

  Aldric nodded. All the same he took Widowmaker from the wall-rack before opening a bedside lamp. “You aren’t Alban.” It wasn’t a question, her accent made one unnecessary. She untied her hood and let her braided hair fall free before answering him.

  “I am Kyrin, Tehal Kyrin, Harek’s daughter, of Tervasdal in Valhol.” She spoke as though she expected recognition, but got only surprise.

  “What under Heaven’s Light is a Valhollan doing here?”

  “Trying to gather enough money for passage home again. I was merchant-venturing with Seorth when his ship wrecked on your coastal rocks.”

  “Not my coastal rocks. And he shouldn’t have been so close to shore in the first place. Unless he had reason to be there.” Aldric didn’t need to say more. The Valhollans were traders, and good ones, even though everyone who dealt with them suspected the vague term ‘venturing’ involved more than just looking for new markets. Steel worked as effectively as silver when acquiring goods; a bit of robbery here, a bit of resale there, a bit of smuggling in some other place. And a bit of running onto the rocks when sailing in uncharted waters, as he could do in this conversation if he wasn’t careful.

  “Where are Seorth and the other crew?”

  “Still in Alba, halfway home, perhaps alive, maybe dead.” That could have been I don’t know or equally I’m not telling you. “It was dark, there was a sea running, we got separated and I was thinking of myself.”

  You still are, thought Aldric, and sank a pin in her self-assurance. “Bad luck on not getting to my saddlebags,” he said with a small, malicious smile. “Never mind paying your passage, you could have bought a ship. I had the best part of a thousand marks in them…”

  Kyrin cursed in several languages for almost a minute, and glared at him as if the loss was all his fault. “Then we’re both in the same boat.”

  “So it’s we already? All right, need breeds strange friendships – but we have neither boat nor ship, so what do we do about that?”

  “Rob someone else.”

  “No. It would be dishonourable.”

  “Why do Albans think honour’s their exclusive privilege? I made my own honourable choice: thief not beggar, robber not whore.” She waited for approval and got none. “Seorth would have agreed with me. I was to wed him at Spring-Return.”

  “You two were betrothed? Yet you were venturing with him?” That apparent censure, another proof that the Alban way was the only way, added more irritation to a night already irritating enough.

  “Don’t strain yourself trying to understand, Alban, but foreign people do follow foreign customs.” Yet she wanted him to understand, to know there was more than just his proscribed little world. “It’s an alliance. Our families are rivals, and… And it might turn bloody. It would have been my honour to prevent it. So if I don’t return before the Feast and he does, he’ll wed my sister. There’ll still be peace.”

  “Very pragmatic.” It wasn’t a compliment. “So why the thieving? Why the need to get back so fast?”

  “For honour, Alban, for what you admire so much. To be the one who brings that peace. And because I want to go home…”
An odd expression flicked across his face, but Kyrin ignored it. “Of course Albans never wed for anything except romance.”

  He didn’t rise to that one, and his faraway look made her wonder if he’d even been listening. Then he clicked his fingers. “Spring-Return! My— A friend told me I could try the Erdhaven Spring Festival if I needed extra funds. I can earn some money there.”

  “Earn money at a religious Feast? And you disapprove of our ways?”

  “It’s a holiday, Tehal Kyrin. A festival, a celebration and a contest, with weapon matches, archery, telek-shooting, horsemanship, and prizes in minted silver.”

  “What about swordplay?” She indicated the taiken at his waist with a jerk of her chin. The Alban shook his head.

  “Too public. Too obvious.” Kyrin put her head quizzically on one side and now it was his turn to shrug. “People are looking for me.”

  “The people who originally owned that money you lost?”

  Again he didn’t react to the jibe. “No, the money was all my own. Believe it or not, but believe this: if they catch me and you’re nearby, you’ll wish yourself far, far away.”

  “I see,” said Kyrin, glad she didn’t. Her father was right, Albans were crazy, and this one was crazier than most. Better to avoid him, yet travel in his company might be useful. Accidental or otherwise, when he’d refused to turn thief he hadn’t demanded any such promises from her. And his confidence about the Spring Festival was infectious. Like marsh fever. “Why do you need the money?”

  “Like you, I’m taking a sea voyage. For the good of my health. Want to come?”

  “Why not? It might be interesting.” Kyrin wondered why he laughed out loud, honest amusement without sneer or sarcasm.

  “Yes, yes it might indeed…”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Aldric was too polite to ask where Tehal Kyrin’s handsome grey mare had come from, and she most likely wouldn’t have answered. Nothing about her invited questions, although her daytime wear invited admiration from a safe distance.