There were always rumors in Hasty; it went with being the king's town. King's towns get more than their share of travelers, and the tales told and heard tend to be more interesting. Recently, more than one rumor from Soggo had dealt with supposed activities of the duke, the bishop, and a Higuchian master. Also a great invasion was soon to be launched by the Dkota chief, Mazeppa, who'd tricked the king into a false peace treaty. And not only the Dkota, but half a dozen other buffalo tribes, sworn to kill all the Sotans they could lay hands on—after raping the women and girls—and drive the rest out of the kingdom.
Before Jarvi left with his army, everyone in Hasty had heard the stories, variously embellished. Meanwhile the Higuchians had abandoned their school and farm. (They'd said they'd return, but who could know for sure?) The neighbors speculated among themselves, and inevitably, on visits to town, dropped a few comments to friends.
A few days later, a rumor whirled through that Jarvi was preparing to leave with his army, to stop the invasion if he could. By that time it was generally known that Captain Horn had galloped off up the Misasip toward Cloud, at the head of a company. (A platoon wasn't interesting enough.)
Later, part of Horn's so-called company, a "remnant," rode into town and disappeared into the palace grounds. From this grew four rumors: one, they'd brought Higuchian prisoners; two, they'd brought dead Higuchians; three, they'd come back bringing their own wounded; and four, only a handful of the "company" was left.
Meanwhile some of the more affluent and prudent burgers bundled up valuables and carted them into the countryside by night, to bury them, and by dawn's light make a map of the site. Others at least boxed or bagged theirs, and perhaps rode out to find a good location. Still others, even more covertly, picked someone to spy on. People on one or another such errands even disappeared, though their bones might eventually turn up.
The process accelerated when travelers from Kato reported hundreds of militia out felling abatises in an effort to protect Hasty from the invaders. At this, some of the less affluent townsmen began not showing up for work. Employers checking on them discovered their lodgings abandoned, stripped of anything they could hike away with. "Off to Skonsin" was the guess.
The last to hear of these things, of course, was the king. When finally he did hear, he sent out criers, with trumpeters and guards, to announce there was nothing to it, and forbidding anyone to leave town without a pass signed by a royal warden. This slowed the exodus, and encouraged those with suitable penmanship to try their hand at forgery.
Carlos, when he arrived, heard much of it himself, and passed it on to the others during their evening conferences.
At Duke Nonchebe's residence in Soggo, they'd heard nothing new and reliable about the developing situation. Then, one morning, a courier rode up to the duke's residence on a lathered horse, bringing a packet from Peng, who'd recorded and copied a message from Luis to Nonchebe, signing it "signed for Luis." With it, at Luis's request, he'd cut and sent two pages from his own mapbook. All to be given to Stephen Nez.
Nonchebe looked it over. The key information was that Mazeppa had launched his two invasion armies, one toward Kato, the other toward Cloud, with Hasty as their ultimate target.
He at once sent off a courier to Big Pines. Without the dispatch or maps; he wouldn't risk their loss. Within an hour the courier was back. He'd run into a platoon of Dinneh on the road, with Stephen in command, in Higuchian uniform.
The duke stepped out on his wide veranda and met the young Dinneh as he rode up. "I have a message for you from Master Luis," the duke said, and led Stephen to his office. "It arrived an hour and a half ago. If I'd had any doubt before about why he is called 'master,' this dispels it." He handed Stephen a rolled sheet of paper. "I've read it," he added, "in case anything happened to it." Then he handed Stephen the map sheets, which had begun as selected high altitude recon photos of the northern Royal Domains and adjacent Soggo, and been enhanced by a photo interpretation program in the courier's shipsmind. Inked on one of them was a small rectangle through which ran a segment of the Misasip. The rectangle had been enlarged on a page of its own. Luis's message, in small neat script, told what was needed and wanted, with an addendum signed "Peng."
Stephen looked, studied, and considered. As a novice, he'd been introduced to contour maps. Finishing, he whistled faintly.
"It will take much doing," the duke said. "I can let you have some militia. Otherwise I'll send them to Cloud."
The young Dinneh shook his head slowly, eyes thoughtful, attention on this new task. "No," he answered, "I have nearly forty men of my own. What you can give me is written authority to recruit laborers."
Without hesitating, Nonchebe lay a piece of paper on his desk, sat down, dipped his pen and began to write.
Actually, the job as Stephen saw it was greater than Luis had envisioned, and with greater potential benefits.
But he'd overlooked the main obstacle entirely. And he didn't see auras.
If he'd learned nothing else from all this, thought Halldor Halvorsen, he'd learned not to trust love.
In fact, Elvi had never been "in love" with Halldor. She'd been looking for some young noble who'd do her bidding, someone suitably good looking, and he'd met her criteria. As for him, he'd dreamt of marrying into the royal family—Princess Mary, actually—but she'd gone off to a nunnery, which left Elvi.
Then, one breezy afternoon while sparring, Elvi had decided to find out what sex was like. With unremarkable ease, she'd enticed him into her room, and discovered she enjoyed it greatly. Coupling was one thing Halldor was well suited to. At age fourteen, in his father's manse, he'd been seduced by a serving wench, an experienced woman of seventeen. (Not all noble seductions were of the help; it could work both ways.) Actually his skill was limited—he was too self-centered—but he had a large capacity for it.
Elvi had coupled with him in the palace a number of times. On her initiative—she was the princess, after all—and they'd never been caught. (As a child she'd been a clever, sometimes daring explorer, and knew most of the palace's concealed nooks and passages.) And along the road, they'd coupled in every inn and hayshed they'd stayed at, along with a couple of shady nooks in forests. If that wasn't love, what was?
But in Zandria, in protective custody, she wouldn't even talk to him, except to upbraid him for "letting me be humiliated by that arrogant bully on the road." And for Elvi, sex was less compelling than what she thought of as principle, which was whatever aberration currently gripped her. In this case she couldn't have defined it.
Actually, defining was something she seldom did, even to justify her wishes, because justifying was another thing she seldom did. She didn't need to. She was her father's daughter.
At any rate, she'd dropped Halldor like a hot stone.
So he felt sorry for himself. He had no horse, and his father's barony—one of the Royal Domains—was a very long way to walk. Especially with a Dkota army on its way. He'd never disbelieved in a "Dkota" invasion, but it had never seemed very real to him either. Now it was beginning to. And while he'd like to revenge himself on Elvi for cutting him off (he'd fantasized several versions), his overwhelming desire was to escape before "thousands of screaming tribesman" came to destroy Zandria and the stockade, and kill everyone there.
Thus one night he dressed for the road, tossed a heavy brass candleholder out his second-story window, then let himself over the sill, from which he hung by his fingers as long as he could before dropping. It took him a long uncomfortable minute to find the candleholder, then he walked quietly to the stable.
He knew the layout; he'd visited it earlier that day to "admire the horses." In the process he'd seen where the tack was kept, and the empty stall that served as the stableboy's bedroom.
The stable door had been open during the day. Now it was closed. Carefully and almost soundlessly he raised the latch. The hinges were less than soundless, but he heard no response from the stableboy.
Unexpectedly, the oil lamp inside was lit. Was the boy awake? Apparently not. Hmh! He deserved to be sacked, but meanwhile his failure simplified matters. Halldor closed the door, slunk to the boy's stall and peered in. He smelled whiskey; that explained the unsnuffed lamp. But still—how deeply was he sleeping?
Halldor hefted the candle holder. Very little light found its way into the stall, and he could barely make out the lad's form. By daylight he'd looked pretty well grown—a husky sixteen-year-old, he'd guessed. He got the lamp, brought it to the open end of the stall and set it on the floor.
One chance. He knelt beside the boy's straw-sack bed and raised the heavy candleholder, telling himself silently, do not close your eyes. Then he swung, hard, felt the impact—and realized his eyes were shut. They popped open. The boy's head was a mess, the candleholder a mess. Halldor fought down the contents of his stomach.
Fear helped, for he had no doubt that now, if he was caught, he'd be hanged. Shuddering, he wiped his bloody right hand on the boy's trousers. Thoroughly.
Surely the horses would smell the blood and ooze of brains—or were they war horses? Hunters maybe. At any rate he needed to hurry, saddle the horse he'd selected earlier, lead it outside and silently ride away. But first he needed to cover his crime, and overhead was a loft half full of hay.
When his mount was bridled and saddled, he took it to the end of the barn that faced away from the house, opened the door and led the animal to the hitching rail there, looping the reins around it. Then he went back to its stall and carried a armful of hay from the manger to the stableboy's room, piling it on the foot of the straw-sack bed, next to the wall. Almost frenzied, he added another armful, and more. The other horses were awake and restless now, nervous hooves hammering the floor.
Finally he tossed the oil lamp onto the hay he'd piled up. Flame flashed, and he fled. Outside, his hands shook so, he had trouble freeing the reins. The other horses were snorting and stamping, and swinging into the saddle, he rode away. But somehow not at a gallop, not yet. A trot. And not into town nor past the stockade, but across a pasture where the armsmen's horses, some distance off, raised their heads to watch.
Burn! he thought urgently, backward toward the stable. Burn! Now he speeded his mount. In the stable, the horses would be frantic by now, whinnying, kicking the walls of their stalls, and wakening the duke's palace, where they'd be wondering if the Dkota had already arrived. Then they'd see the light from the fire. First one, then another, would run out to free the horses and lead them from the stable. Would they discover the dead stable boy? Get all the horses out and discover one was missing? Or would the fire grow too quickly? Had he remembered to close the door he'd left by? If he hadn't, they'd surely know, know someone had left by it, know what had happened.
In the excitement, would someone think to check his room? Or would they not miss him till morning? Fool! he thought. What made you so sure the Dkota would come? You'll have the duke's men on your trail. They'll beat you up and drag you back behind a horse. And then, if you're still alive, they'll hang you. If you're lucky.
Looking back over a shoulder, he could already see flames.
Gradually, riding calmed Halldor, and he slowed his mount to a canter. He'd intended to flee to Hasty by way of Cloud. Should he take lesser roads instead, south, then east? Which would they expect, back in Zandria, when they decided what had happened? And he couldn't drive this animal at a canter all night. Fool, fool! echoed in his head.
An idea struck him then—stop at the post station in Chita, tell them he carried an urgent message from the duke to Cloud. Snatch a bite to eat, a drink of water, get a fresh horse. Did he dare?
At Zandria, practically everyone under fifty years of age came to watch the fire. Andre and Jason had entered the burning barn and managed to rescue a single horse each. The animals were terrified and dangerous, almost impossible to control. The fire, Andre reported, seemed to have started in Pierre's room. It was an inferno, and they'd seen no sign of the lad.
Nor would they, the duke thought. He might have run away, of course, but he doubted it. When the hayloft floor had burned through, the whole mow of hay had fallen onto the level below. Such a mass of it would smolder all the next day, too hot to approach. Pierre was almost surely under it.
He should have sacked the boy when he'd been caught drunk on duty. But mostly he'd been a good lad, and his widowed mother worked in the kitchen, so the duke had heeded his pleas and promise, and kept him on. As for how the fire had started—he'd probably taken the lamp into his room.
Not till young Halvorsen failed to show for breakfast was another explanation offered, and it was Princess Elvi who offered it. "It is," she said, "the sort of thing he'd do."
Perhaps, the duke thought, but if so, the young man had a ten-hour head start, and there was no way of knowing what road he was on by now. Meanwhile he himself had things to deal with that outweighed even the crime young Halvorsen stood accused of.
The northern invasion route ran through the center of the Zandrian barony of Grande Prairie, where an extension of the Cloud-Zandria Road petered out a little west of the village of Ellbogen. From there it continued as the Grande Prairie Trail, much-used for driving cattle. But it seldom knew a wheel, or even a travois.
With the treaty of Kato, cairns had been raised to mark the border at major crossings, and the Grande Prairie Trail was one of them. The cairns had been raised on order of King Eldred II; Mazeppa had agreed to their locations. The chief considered them a sham, a sop to the Sotan king. So did Duke Marcel.
Ellbogen was not the seat of the barony, but being on its western fringe, and subject to past raids, for forty years it had had its own small stockade. A nearby chain of lakes was bordered largely by tamarack swamp, whose straight durable conifers provided excellent poles for the walls.
Recently—and earlier on occasion—scouts had patrolled the boundary, small wiry young daredevils mounted bareback on the fastest horses in the barony. They'd grown up herding cattle, and as riders were near enough to Dkota quality that the difference would be of no consequence in a race.
And they didn't need to carry the news. Also along the boundary was a series of pyres, like chest-high tipis roofed with birchbark. The scouts were never far from one. The pyres were of tamarack or jack pine—pitchy wood easily ignited—replaced every other August. A costly task, because except for tamarack in places, it was brought from scores of miles away. Here the scattered upland woods were of aspen, or burr oak, and along the streams, cottonwood, silver maple, ash and boxelder . . . that didn't smoke as abundantly and darkly. And elm, which hardly burned at all.
Those pyres were Zandria's early-warning system—the pyres and the expensive fire starters the scouts carried. Fortunately the massive storm, that had dropped nearly seven inches of moisture on Kato, had passed a hundred miles south. These pyres hadn't known rain for more than two weeks, in what normally was the wettest season of the year.
The Grande Prairie Trail was the invader's point of entry. Twelve minutes before they reached the border, a scout, Dieter Dietrich, had spotted them and lit a pyre. Seeing the smoke column, the braves speeded their mounts, and entered Sota at a gallop. The invasion was no longer theoretical.
It was afternoon when word of the attack on Ellbogen reached Duke Marcel at Zandria, carried by Dieter Dietrich himself on his third horse. His last look back at Ellbogen, Dietrich said, had shown him a large column of smoke; the invaders had succeeded in setting fire to the palisade.
Marcel sent a fresh courier on a fresh horse eastward toward Cloud, and others to his barons—all but Baron Thibeau at Grande Prairie, where Dietrich, while changing horses, had already raised the alarm. That done, Marcel ordered the remaining townsfolk and his own household, Elvi included, into the stockade. It was then the duke thought again of her lover—he had no doubt that's what he'd been. The scoundrel had abandoned her. As for himself, the princess was not a person he could like, but still, how must she feel, abandoned and with her father's philosophy utterly discredited?
And while occasionally she said something remarkably odd, even stupid, this changed when she asked about the management of duchies. Then she could sound knowledgeable, even astute.
He would, he decided, watch for something she could do, something worthwhile with which to busy herself.
Meanwhile the northern army, having so easily destroyed the Ellbogen stockade and the people inside, had dashed on to the baronial seat at Grande Prairie. The baronial fortress was unique, built of sun-baked bricks and well defended, so the invaders paused only long enough to set fire to the village before storming off again. The next village, Lago Preto, had been abandoned; again the invaders set fires before swirling off once more toward Zandria.
It lost the race to a squall line that, booming and flashing, thrashing and gusting, drenched the grass, aspen and oak savanna. Cattle stampeded, then surrendered, backs hunched, water streaming from their flanks.
The braves arrived at Zandria lashed and soaked by icy rain, shivering, teeth chattering—and took shelter in the abandoned town. They never thought of attacking the stockade. The only fires their numb, barely functional fingers made were in fireplaces, and those with difficulty. Then, glum and thoughtful, they huddled there till morning, which dawned chill through broken clouds and fitful showers.
Because the day before had been long, they made the new one a day of rest and recreation, butchering and feasting on cattle, sheep and swine, not much disturbed by occasional spatters of rain. Not till nearly evening did they feel out the stockade's defenders, finding them alert and able. The attackers backed off, serious assault dismissed.
At dawn of the second morning, the Ulster and Yellow Bear braves torched most of the town's buildings on the inside. Then they mounted and left, trotting eastward without enthusiasm. It was still cold, and raining again, not hard, but as if to continue all day.
On the stockade's defensive walkway, Duke Marcel and his bishop stood in woolens and slickers, the wet stink of smoldering wood and thatch ugly in their nostrils, watching and listening as the invaders rode away. As if in truce, without a farewell flight of arrows from either side.
The two noblemen watched them out of sight. Then Bishop Loudun lowered himself onto aging knees, pressed his palms together, raised his eyes to heaven, and recited a prayer of thanks to God, in French. Duke Marcel turned his eyes to the courtyard and called to his marshall. "Charles!" he shouted, "organize crews and lead them into town to put out the fires, while the rain is still with us. God willing, the devils will not return this way."
Two days later, Elvi, wearing new traveling clothes, went to the fort's stable carrying two sheets of paper. One was folded, sealed, marked with the ducal signet, and featured the word "SECRET." The other—the most important from her point of view—was a brief order signed by the duke.
Or so it seemed. She'd acted as his scribe on several instances. And because most of the duchy was not French-speaking, the duke had followed the usual procedure for government business: he'd dictated them in Merkan. So she'd gotten a sense of how he worded things, and by now her handwriting was familiar to the fort's dispatcher.
Also she'd salvaged a message he'd signed, then changed his mind about and thrown away. And by lamplight had practiced his signature in her tiny room, first tracing, then free-handing.
The upshot of all this was, she rode out of the stockade claiming to be on a ducal errand: to personally deliver a sealed message to Duke Edward Maltby.
That the "message" was blank seemed unimportant; she had no intention of opening it for anyone. She'd even taken advantage of another opportunity, when the duke had gone to the latrine, leaving his signet on his desk.