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

  The art of using ymeth required great delicacy. Probing a mind too deeply was a vile intrusion, but too shallowly lost useful facts in the blur of idle daily thought. Gemmel was a scholar, a historian, and of necessity a master of the art. His breathing slowed and his eyes went cold and dead, green crystals reflecting not even the dance of flames. The logs sank to crawling embers, and were a crumbling pile of ash before life returned to his face.

  By then he had learned all he needed to know.

  *

  At first there was only the beat of two hearts in dark warmth. Then came light and cold and a kaleidoscopic whirl of colours. Faces drifted like images projected on fog, voices swam together in a confusing babble, there were names meaning nothing and yet significant. But every now and then, like an echo of reality, the sounds and images of important memories grew clear.

  Swords glittered in sunlight. A voice issued crisp instructions. Steel grated, its shrillness deadened by hot, heavy air as blades met and scraped and slithered with harsh percussive music again and again.

  Watched by his eldest brother Joren, Aldric Talvalin went through the exercises of longsword fighting. Once taiken-ulleth had been a martial skill where blade and body, hand and heart and mind and eye all worked as one, and many taiken longswords were as famous as the warriors who bore them. Now, with the last true master over two centuries in his funeral urn, taikenin were just ordinary swords – if blades which had their own name and fame were ever ‘ordinary’.

  Aldric was fourteen now and in Joren’s opinion growing very skilled, although he hadn’t said so aloud even after almost five years’ tuition. Praise from Joren Talvalin was hard-earned and not freely given.

  “Enough for now.” He waved away the guard who partnered Aldric’s exercises, acknowledging the man’s salute and his brother’s bow with the same quick wave. Then he frowned as Aldric stuck his practice sword into the ground, and kept his stern expression until the blade was withdrawn, cleaned and sheathed. Custom required the honourable treatment of honourable weapons, even imitation ones.

  “Joren,” the word came out in a gasp as Aldric slumped cross-legged onto the grass, “it’s too hot for this. I’d rather swim.”

  “Swimming later. Sword-work now.” Joren glanced at the sky, then at a big sandglass on the ground by his feet. “You’ve another half-hour to go. And sit up straighter. Look neat.”

  Aldric flopped backwards, untidily comfortable, grinning as he raked his fingers through sweat-darkened brown hair, cut to boy’s length as it would remain for six more years. “When I’m kailin-eir like you I’ll be proper and correct, I promise. But I can relax now, so I will.”

  Joren eyed him with mild disapproval, touched his own warrior’s queue and high-clan side braids, then shrugged. He’d come of age and become kailin just that spring, and in all fairness his insistence on propriety sometimes bordered on the obsessive. Yet he had his position as eldest son and heir to ranks and titles to think of. Aldric was third son, and heir to very little.

  “All right. No arguments. But if you can’t look like a gentleman,” Joren raised one hand to summon the guard again, “let’s see if you can fight like one.”

  “Him? Do something like a gentleman?” The new voice was urbane, sarcastic and malicious. “Light of Heaven, brother mine, what challenges you like to set yourself.”

  Baiart Talvalin stepped out of shadow into the flattering full wash of sunlight, tall, blue-eyed and blond like his twin brother. Aldric was the only one to carry their Elthanek mother’s dark hair and grey-green eyes, as if she had given those up at his birth along with her life. Baiart’s love for her had always been intense, almost too intense for comfort, and he detested the child who caused her death. He had little love for Joren either. In any pair of twins one had to come first, so Baiart, junior by five minutes, was cheated of lordship, rank and title by no more than a midwife’s choice and a twist of fate. It had twisted him somewhat, ever since he became old enough to understand it.

  “Let be,” said Joren. “You should be done with bullying by now.”

  “Dear elder brother,” Baiart’s perfect bow was so low it made his contempt plain, “I thought our dear baby brother could speak for himself. Or will your next task be training a cat to play the gurdy?”

  Everyone in Dunrath knew Aldric wanted the kourgath forest cat as his crest when he was old enough to wear one, and Baiart had led merciless teasing about choosing such an unimpressive creature when there were wolves, eagles, great hunting cats and mythic beasts aplenty. Nobody except Joren and his father had ever thought to ask Aldric why.

  “Everyone—” they knew well enough who ‘everyone’ was, “—says kourgathen are useless, lazy, cowardly vermin. They’re not useless! They hunt vermin! Ask our farmers! They’re not lazy, they just don’t hunt unless they have to. They’re not cowardly, they just don’t attack unless they have to. But when they’re pushed to it they’re as brave as creatures twice their size.”

  It was an impressive speech for a twelve-year-old boy, even with the sound of having been prepared and practiced in advance, and its reasoning was sound. Lord Haranil made his feelings known, and the teasing stopped. Mostly…

  The soft Elthan accent of Baiart’s homeland was buried now by the affected style preferred at court, and his supercilious drawl and choice of words curdled Aldric’s good humour like vinegar in milk. If they were meant to provoke an undignified outburst like the old days, he was disappointed. He spent most of his time in Cerdor, returning only at Feast-days or, as now, when his allowance ran out. Absence and simple disinterest meant losing track of how much this ‘baby brother’ had grown up, or how well he could handle a sword. Aldric knew all about that ignorance, and cherished hope that Baiart would one day sneer his way beyond the bounds of propriety.

  Now he had, far enough at least to justify a response.

  “Dear elder brother, of a certainty I can speak for myself.” Aldric was so polite it was an insult. “Shall we have a conversation, you and I?” He got up, dusted grass-clippings from his clothes, then pulled two swords from among the practice weapons and held one out hilt-first. “With these.”

  In the Clan Wars five hundred years before, almost three-quarters of the ancient aristocracy had destroyed one another. Since then it was illegal for kailinin to fight to the death, except in war and raid or with permission from their lord. Though they still bore the Three Blades, they were forbidden to use them on each other, so a strictly-regulated Alban duel was far removed from real combat. They used light swords ending in spines which did no more than draw blood, and the prescribed movements for that use were more like dancing.

  The weapons in Aldric’s hands were very different. They were taiken longswords, as close in size and weight to real killing blades as their blunt edges allowed, and Baiart’s smug expression changed to unease. He glanced from side to side as if looking for some way out, but saw only Joren’s lazy amusement and Aldric’s leashed-in rage.

  The fight that day under the shadow of Dunrath-hold’s great citadel was no measured, rule-bound ritual. Small, agile and swift, Aldric scored two quick points before Baiart grew wise and used his longer reach to keep the angry boy at a distance. Then his own blade flicked out in a brutal cut to stop the fight at once.

  Aldric jerked his head aside just in time, feeling the sting as skin peeled off his forehead. He retreated, shaken, knowing Baiart’s attack went far beyond the usual verbal jabs and insults. It could have split his face from brow to chin, and all that saved him was a movement as instinctive as flinching from fire. It was a sensation he’d never felt before, without it he might have been blinded or disfigured, and knowing that made his already-bad mood turn ugly.

  Baiart broke ground as he saw something in his little brother’s eyes that he didn’t like. With fresh blood bright across his face and shirt, Aldric shifted one hand to blade for half-sword close work and came after him. Joren opened his mouth to shout, then shut it again. Any interruption now, any break
in concentration, could prove deadly. He had seen what Baiart had tried to do, and the change of position that told him Aldric had turned serious. All he could trust now was the control born of long training.

  Baiart jabbed again, this time little more than a frantic distraction, but the other blade met his own with a slither of steel, and a swift twist of leverage wrenched its hilt clean out of his hand with an ease that bordered on contempt.

  Aldric’s own taiken went home an instant later, but not the way Joren had feared. Even a blunted blade thrust with full body-weight behind it could cause fearsome damage. Instead, still braced in both hands, it came back up from the disarm in a silver blur which jerked to stillness at Baiart’s throat, less than a finger’s breadth from where blood-vessels pulsed under his ear and breath rasped in his windpipe. The last eight inches of blade extended from Aldric’s left fist like a dagger, with point to pierce and edge to slice, in a killing stroke that no-one, not even Joren and least of all Baiart, could have done anything to prevent.

  “You’re done.” He lowered the weapon, pressed careful fingertips to where ribbons of blood still tickled their way past his eye, and flinched as they touched raw flesh. Baiart held up both empty hands in surrender and produced a weak smile. It could have meant anything: acceptance of defeat, apology for insult, even attempted reconciliation, but Aldric knew it more likely masked contempt.

  “Joren told you not to bully me,” he said, as if explaining to a child. “So don’t.”

  His right hand and the sword in it slammed out hilt-first in what fight manuals called the ‘Viper’s Strike’. It was a counter to surprise attacks at close quarters, a pommel-punch at face or throat or crotch that usually came straight from the scabbard like a snake from its burrow. This one hit Baiart in the nerve-spot just below his ribs. He doubled up, fighting for breath as a gush of half-digested food spewed all over his elegant court shoes, and slumped forward onto his knees. For just a second Aldric studied the offered neck like a headsman sizing up a client then shrugged – or shivered, it was hard to tell – and dropped the practice sword as if it burned him.

  “And now I’m done,” he said, then walked away.

  Except for the sound of retching it was very quiet in the fortress gardens. Joren picked up the abandoned sword and glanced at Baiart’s huddled, smelly misery, wondering if the man had learned enough caution to avoid some deadlier exchange in the future. What concerned him more was Aldric’s use of the Viper-strike. This fight should have ended with no more than black eyes or split lips, at worst a broken nose or tooth. Yet Aldric had rightly guessed Baiart would be far worse hurt by months of behind-hand laughter at a vomit-spattered loss of dignity caused by the boy he despised. It suggested their little brother had a hidden vicious streak.

  There was a common refrain in Alban folktales: ‘Say the name, summon the named’. Aldric’s name was Elthanek rather than Alban, centuries old in his mother’s line. The men who bore such names were warriors unbound by any kailin-Code, ruthless, vengeful, often cruel, from a time when honour and reputation counted for more than life or death. A day, an hour, even ten minutes before now, Joren would have dismissed that old folk-warning as mere nonsense.

  He wasn’t quite so certain any more.

  *

  Their father Haranil Talvalin was Clan-Lord, master of Dunrath and responsible for King Rynert’s peace in the north. Unlike ancestors who often coped with full-scale war, Haranil’s foremost concern involved cattle-reiving along the provincial border, and that was more an over-rowdy criminal sport than a conflict. It made him a thief-taker and watchman rather than a noble lord. With three quick-tempered brothers living in the fortress, he sometimes had more trouble under his own roof.

  It was why, after the duel in the garden, he put Aldric on his honour to avoid any further needless fights.

  Lord Haranil chose his words with care, for Aldric guessed his father knew there would be needful fights enough. All five remaining clans of the old nobility bore distinguishing features strong enough to survive inter-clan marriages, and the Talvalins had height, blue eyes and fair hair. Aldric had none of those, and comments about his build or colouring threatened his honour more than breaking any promise.

  The response to those comments rode in a scabbard at his side, and without actual disobedience Aldric still fought often enough with hot-headed comrades to make his skill notorious. By the time he neared legal maturity such comments had almost ceased. Even with a clan notorious for its implacable avenging of insults, it wasn’t from fear of Talvalin displeasure. Aldric’s ability with the taiken and his readiness to use it was reason enough, until at last few would cross swords even on the most friendly terms. He never lost composure or control, but a disturbing air of restrained violence hung about him when the blades were out.

  He could be more directly violent without them. There was one memorable episode in a seedy tavern of Radmur’s old town, when somebody suggested that they’d never seen Aldric with a girl because he spent all his time…polishing his sword. It was near the knuckle yet good-humoured enough, and provoked raucous laughter. What the jester didn’t know was that Aldric had just failed yet again to impress a lady of the town, and wasn’t drunk enough, or already too drunk, to find the comment funny. The ensuing argument broke two heads, several limbs, half a dozen kegs of ale and ended with the whole unsavoury den catching fire and toppling sideways into the canal.

  He had been seventeen then, and as his twentieth birthday approached he was broader in chest and shoulders, but only an inch taller. That was good average height for most Albans but still short and dark for a Talvalin and he was sensitive about it. The early part of that year also left him sensitive about other things, with one arm in a sling after falling in full armour from a galloping horse. He was in the saddle again long before the splints and dressings came off. Kailinin relied on mobility, not brute force, with the subtleties of horsemanship a paramount importance. Learning to control a mount with knees alone was difficult enough. Over jumps or with a broken bone it was often painful.

  With work so intense, it was only fair that recreations were equally extreme. One of them was the hunting of wild boar with a spear from horseback. It culled wild pigs which could ruin a field of growing crops in a single night, it provided meat for Dunrath’s pantries, and it was exciting, often dangerous, so highly popular both with reckless young men and those old enough to know better.

  *

  Two riders picked their way down an overgrown bridle-path, arguing as they went. Only their voices and the distant deep barking of boar-hounds disturbed the quiet autumnal woodland.

  “I tell you he’s escaped.” Aldric spoke with the lazy assurance of someone with their mind made up, but Joren slapped his saddlebow with one hand, waving the other in a huge sweep across most of the forest and almost his brother’s nose.

  “Listen to the hounds! They’ve got him at bay somewhere!”

  “Those yapping puppies would bark at their own shadows.”

  “At my age I should know when hounds are giving tongue and when they’re not!”

  “Joren, at your age you should know when to admit you’re wrong.”

  Their wrangle was over the boar which had evaded Joren’s best thrust, and it was injured pride rather than lack of roast pork that made the big man peevish. Aldric didn’t care either way, but he enjoyed teasing his brother because Joren always responded so well. All at once the yelping died away and he shot an ‘I-told-you-so’ glance from the corner of one eye before lifting a horn from his belt.

  “It’s too late to start again,” he said. “I’m calling the others in. Time to go home.”

  Joren expressed his opinion in several crude syllables and began turning his big horse around in the confined space of the path. Then a cry went up away to the left and with it the renewed baying of hounds. Joren laughed aloud at the expression on Aldric’s face and jabbed heels to his steed’s flanks, crashing off through the undergrowth and whooping as he went. Al
dric rolled despairing eyes heavenward, shrugged, put the horn away and followed with more caution.

  The scene was familiar enough. Dogs raved in a semicircle round the base of a tree, while horsemen fussed and fidgeted behind them. Their quarry hunched huge and black between a fork of roots, a drool of froth hanging from its champing tusks. The boar, secure in that defensive redoubt, waited for its antagonists to make the first move, and the first mistake. It didn’t wait long.

  When shouts of encouragement didn’t shift the hounds, one hunter used his spiked spear-butt. One snarled, and as it turned to snap at the iron-shod ashwood the boar charged though the opening like a bristled thunderbolt. It ripped the distracted hound with a sweep of tusks, sidestepped a clumsy jab and shot away with the hunt hard after it. As the bracken gave way to open woodland the speed of the chase increased even though occasional low branches scraped unlucky riders from their saddles.

  The forest ended above a smooth valley carpeted with unseasonal poppies, and the setting sun glaring across it made everyone blink and slow down. All except the boar. It fled along the valley rim, trying to double back, but though it met stragglers emerging all along the escape route it still tried to avoid running in the obvious direction. A thrown spear changed its mind. Faced with immediate death or entering the valley, it finally galloped over the ridge and down the slope.

  The hounds’ baying stopped in mid-cry while their masters shouts redoubled as horses reared, wild-eyed and whinnying. Neither soft words nor hard blows could induce them to follow the boar, and the hounds, usually brave and persistent, backed off with tails curled to their bellies and hackles bristling. The boar only added to the hunters’ rage when it slowed to an insolent amble and stopped with a piggy sneer on its tusked chops.