“Now, to business,” said Luthan. “You were awfully secretive when you left, Noreth, but I guessed what you were up to. You’re riding the King’s Road, aren’t you? Well, the whole North knows you are. What made you think I wouldn’t follow you?”
Maewen found herself thinking, Flaming Ammet! She seemed to have caught that from Mitt. Here was the army she had been trying to avoid having. “It—it’s going to be very dangerous,” she said lamely.
Luthan swept that aside. “Danger—nothing! I court it! I intend to follow my true Queen!” He meant it. Maewen squirmed. “But I won’t keep you guessing about how I knew. They sent word down by sea from Kredindale. They told the whole coast. All the coastal dales are ready to come to you as soon as you give the word, and of course, I got ready at once. You’ll need my help. There’s worrying news, too.” Luthan’s curved brows set in a serious line. “My agent in Hannart sent a carrier pigeon. Earl Keril has set out for Kernsburgh, and it looks as if he wants to stop you. I was going to invite you down to the mansion, but in view of that news, I think we’d better break camp and be on our way.”
“You mean you’re coming, too?” Maewen said. Oh flaming Ammet, oh bother!
Luthan smiled meltingly. “My Queen, what do you think I’ve been telling you? I am coming, and all my hearthpeople with me.”
Navis coughed. “When did the Earl of Hannart set out, and how long will it take him to reach Kernsburgh?”
Luthan blinked his beautiful eyelashes. “Er. Um. Yesterday. He’d be there tomorrow evening if he rode hard.”
“Yesterday.” Maewen could see Navis thinking that it was not Earl Keril’s band that had been after them, then. “And Dropwater is on the other point of a triangle, am I right?” Luthan nodded, in another flutter of eyelashes, and turned back to Maewen. “Then,” said Navis, forcefully, “if you would be good enough to strike camp at once, my lord, I think we must ride through the night.”
Luthan all but sprang to attention. “Oh. Yes. At once, sir.” He ran away, waving his arms and shouting orders. Moril snorted. He butted his head into Mitt, and both of them bent over, howling with laughter.
“It’s not funny!” said Maewen.
“Only some of it,” said Navis. “But allies are allies.” He watched the Dropwater people running about for a while, and he sighed. “These children have no idea they are about to fight a war. And,” he added, “no idea how to hurry either. Mitt, stop giggling and come with me. I’ll need a serious aide.” He shook his mare into motion and rode into the confusion. Mitt popped his eyes at Maewen and legged after him.
It was like magic. The confusion stopped as soon as Navis took over. He seemed to know just which gaggle of people to speak to and which to leave alone. And if two or more inefficiencies happened at once, Navis had only to nod to Mitt, and Mitt was at one of them, sorting it out as quickly as Navis. Maewen was impressed. Barely half an hour later they were ready to go. There was even a spare horse for Moril. Navis came riding up with it himself. “Because I take it you are ready to leave us now,” he remarked unlovingly to Hestefan.
Hestefan’s beard jutted at him. “If you recall,” he said, “sir—Navis Haddsson from Holand—I told you a long way back on the road that where great events are toward, a Singer must needs be there. But by all means remove my apprentice. I’ll follow at my own pace.”
“As you please,” said Navis, and he murmured as he wheeled away, “Crawl behind, if you like. I don’t know what it is,” he remarked to Mitt as soon as they were well away from the green cart, “but I can’t abide that fellow. He sets my teeth on edge—rather the way my brother Harchad always used to.”
Mitt shuddered. “That’s a bit steep, isn’t it? Your brother Harchad only killed a few hundred folk each year and terrified the rest. Hestefan’s a Singer, Navis. Maybe it’s the beard reminds you.”
They rode. The cart was soon only a green smudge behind. They rode under Navis’s direction as fast as they could without exhausting their horses. They stopped to breathe them and rode again, on over the green undulations of the Shield, rising now, toward the high plateau that held Kernsburgh. Before nightfall the more distant mountains had wheeled into the blue jagged shapes Maewen remembered seeing from Dad’s apartment. The peaks of the North Dales, Dad had told her. They set off again into the sunset to ride some more.
The Countess-horse had had enough by then. It stopped with all four feet planted and tried to bite Mitt’s leg while Mitt cursed and bounced and shook the reins. Navis looked. He beckoned with a trim, gloved hand. One of the Dropwater hearthwomen instantly rode up with Earl Luthan’s spare horse for Mitt. Nobody seemed to object that after that Mitt rode on a mare that was almost as good as Navis’s own. When Maewen next saw the Countess-horse, it was in the rear carrying someone’s baggage. She was impressed all over again. This was the kind of thing, quite certainly, that was going to get Navis made Duke of Kernsburgh during the next year or so.
Otherwise she did not enjoy the ride. At least the actual riding was a pleasure. It was good not to have to keep to the pace of Wend or the cart. It was Luthan she did not enjoy. He was beside her far too often, and he would keep reminding her, with significant smiles, of all the things he and Noreth had done together. “Do you remember the Harvest when we threw plums?” he said, and Maewen had to pretend to remember. Or, “You know that time with the lawbooks? Ham the Markinder still hasn’t got over that.” This was bad enough. But Luthan’s smiles grew more and more melting. Finally he sighed and said, “Noreth, it seemed an age, an endless age, after you had gone. Dropwater was empty. Empty and void.”
This is dire! Maewen thought. Moril, jogging on the other side of her, thought so, too. “But,” he said, “Dropwater isn’t empty. It’s full of plum trees and people.”
Luthan was not at all embarrassed. He smiled meltingly again. “You know what I mean. Lovers are allowed to say these things.”
Maewen gave up trying not to hurt Luthan’s feelings and lost her temper. “Stop being so silly! I am not your lover!” Then she bit her tongue. For all she knew, Noreth was very fond of Luthan—though if she was, Maewen was beginning to wonder why.
Luthan sighed, and laughed a little. “Oh dear. Have I overstepped again? I never know where to have you, Noreth. I think I’ve won your heart, and then you bite my head off.”
So that was all right. But it did not stop Luthan. When Mitt was relieved of the Countess-horse, he rode Luthan’s spare mare firmly up between Luthan and Maewen. Whenever Luthan said anything sighing or melting, Mitt grinned, grinned like a death’s-head. It was soon too much for Luthan. He gave up and rode on ahead. But then, as far as Maewen was concerned, it was almost worse. Moril and Mitt could not seem to stop teasing her about it.
“Your handsome lordly lover got it bad for you!” Mitt said.
“Every lady’s dream!” Moril sighed. “An earl in red silk!”
“With eyelashes,” said Mitt. “Don’t forget the eyelashes. All bat and flutter, this dream lover!”
Moril giggled. “Now he’s gone off to write a poem about you.”
“No, he hasn’t. Even he’s not that much of a wimp,” Maewen said.
“He is writing a poem, you know,” Moril said. “He’s dictating it to his scribe. The poor man’s got real trouble, trying to write it down on horseback.”
Maewen refused to look, so she had no idea whether this was true or just Moril’s idea of a joke. Besides, it grew dark then, too dark for poems—or so she hoped. They stopped again, and ate and drank, and then went on. After that Mitt and Moril were too tired to tease her. They just rode.
Eventually, far into the night, Navis consulted Luthan and the Dropwater armsmaster and decided they could afford a longer stop. Everyone saw to horses, ate food they did not feel like, and fell down and slept for three hours. Then Navis had them all up and on their way again.
“Flaming Ammet!” Mitt groaned. “Is this necessary?”
“Yes,” said Navis. “We have to be in a goo
d defensive position before the Earl of Hannart arrives.”
“Because of Ynen?” Mitt yawned.
“Not entirely,” said Navis. “You and I have necks we need to save, too.”
Mitt puzzled about this as he yawningly mounted Luthan’s mare among all the blue-brown shadows of other people mounting, too. It seemed tremendous cheek for him and Navis to use the Earl of Dropwater’s hearth-people just to save their necks. Noreth was the excuse, of course. But somehow he did not think this quite accounted for Navis’s urgency. Navis had something else in mind which Mitt was too sleepy to work out.
Dawn came as their small army set off again, whiteness pouring down the sky and blueness rising from the ground to meet it. Then the blueness was ripped open to the left by a dazzling bar of orange. In seconds, the grass was green again and the riders turned from brown shadows to solid, colored shapes.
There were more solid shapes advancing down the green road to meet them. The orange dawn flashed on gold braid and threw turning glints from steel and leather. It was a smaller group than theirs, but everyone in it was orderly and very well armed.
“It looks as if Earl Keril got here first,” Maewen said.
“No,” Mitt said, squinting up his eyes to look. “That’s not Hannart colors, it’s—Flaming Ammet! It’s Alk! What’s he doing here?”
19
Alk was riding an enormous horse. Mitt knew it well. It was about the only one in Aberath which was up to Alk’s weight. By the horse and the hugeness Alk was unmistakable, as he gestured to the rest of his party to halt and rode out ahead of them alone. Though Mitt knew Alk would be wearing his own special armor under his pale leather clothes, he still thought this was very brave—or very foolish—of Alk. Luthan’s people had guns and crossbows. They might be tired, but after the way Navis had worked them, they were jumpy as cats.
“Nobody fire!” Navis called sharply. Fifty weapons were up.
Luthan came awake with a jump. “That’s right, Navis. Hold fire, everyone. We’ve no quarrel with Aberath.”
Speak for yourself! Mitt thought nervously as Alk came to a ponderous halt halfway between the two bands.
“Good morning,” Alk called. “I need to speak to some of you. Here’s my list: Navis Haddsson, Alhammitt Alhammittsson, Hestefan the Singer, Tanamoril Clennensson, and a lady known as Noreth Onesdaughter, if she’s with you. I’d be grateful if they all came out here and the rest of you went back a bit. I need to talk to them in private.”
They exchanged mystified looks. Mitt and Moril had been yawning. Maewen’s eyes had been nearly shut. But they were all suddenly wide awake. “I suppose we should see what he wants,” Navis said. “We are four to one.”
“That doesn’t count with Alk,” Mitt said. “I’ve seen him throw a horse.”
Navis bowed politely to Luthan. “We’ll try not to keep you waiting long,” he said. Luthan gave him a polite, bewildered nod. Navis edged his mare out of the throng, and the other three followed him.
Alk looked them over as they approached. Mitt had never seen him look so glum and grim. “Where’s Hestefan the Singer?”
“Following behind,” said Navis. “His mule couldn’t keep up. Are you likely to detain us long, my lord?”
“My lord.” Alk rubbed his chin. It rasped. Behind him Mitt could see a cluster of faces he knew well from Aberath. All of them had a weary, fed-up look, and none of them greeted him. “My lord?” Alk repeated. “Now, I reckon you’re at least as much of a lord as I am, Navis Haddsson. My reading is that when you call people that, you don’t mean any respect at all. So don’t call me that. As for how long we’ll be, this’ll take as long as it takes. You all gave me the slip once, when I’d nearly caught you up at Dropthwaite, and forced me to get ahead of you. I’ve been hanging around for you, up and down the green roads, for a day and a half now, so now you can just wait for me, Navis Haddsson. That reminds me—” Alk’s glum manner vanished. He turned to Mitt. “This is something you’ll appreciate, Mitt. I’d been in Aberath such years that I’d forgotten what these green roads were like. Lovely level runs, you get on them—bends beautifully cambered, not a sharp curve among them—and never a steep gradient anywhere! It would only take a little tinkering and filling in, and I could lay tracks and run my steam engines all over the North!”
Maewen had been watching Navis look as put down as she had ever seen him, but this snatched her attention back. So that was why there were no green roads in her day! They were all railways! “So that’s—” she began, and stopped herself.
But the small noise caught this huge man’s attention. “And who are you, young lady?” Alk asked her.
“Noreth Onesdaughter,” she said. “You asked to see me.”
“With respect, young lady,” said Alk, “I don’t think you can be.”
He was terrifyingly grim about it. Mitt and Moril gave her looks that were plain frightened. As for Navis, he looked at her, narrowed his eyes, and looked again, in a way that made Maewen feel as if she were dropping fast through the earth, leaving sun and grass and friendliness behind. “Wh-what makes you say that?” she managed to ask Alk.
“The reason I came after you all.” Alk settled himself stonily upright on his huge horse. “Four days,” he said. “Four days after Mitt set out for Adenmouth, Lady Eltruda of Adenmouth arrives in Aberath. Came herself. Asking for justice. On a charge of murder. She brought the murdered corpse with her, because the victim was her niece. Noreth of Kredindale. The girl’s throat had been cut.”
“I don’t believe this!” Navis burst out. His face had drained to a blue-white, except for his eyes, which were rimmed with red. “Does Eltruda—the Lady of Adenmouth—suspect that I—”
“You’re on her list,” said Alk, “though I can’t say she likes the idea.”
Navis sagged. There were big, deep lines on his face that had not been there a minute before. He’s really fond of her! Mitt thought wonderingly. That little, loud lady. Who’d have thought it?
“It seems,” Alk continued, “they didn’t find the girl’s body right away because whoever did her in killed her in the stables. Then shoved her in an empty stall and piled straw over her. It was only luck they found her. I reckon the killer hoped it would be longer than that before they did.”
His eyes wandered over all four of them, bleak as stones. Mitt shivered. He had never seen Alk like this. This was Alk the lawman. Seeing it, Mitt had an inkling at least of why the Countess had married Alk. Like this, he must have frightened even the Countess.
“Lady Eltruda,” said Alk, “ought to have been a lawwoman. She did a fine job. Everyone in Adenmouth she’s accounted for, and had them all prove where they were and what they were doing. She has it narrowed down to everyone who went off on Midsummer morning. You’d better believe this. I do. I suspect you all, plus”—his eyes traveled to Maewen—“you. I’ve seen the body. You could be her twin sister, but you’re not her. She looked older.” His eyes traveled to Moril and on to Navis. “You told Fenna you’d sworn to follow Noreth, and you promised Lady Eltruda you’d look after her. But when you both went off, she was already dead.” His eyes went to Mitt and, if possible, were bleaker still. “And you came and made promises to me in Aberath, so you could get that ring for someone who wasn’t Noreth. Did you know she was dead then?”
“I didn’t—I didn’t know. I swear—” Mitt stammered.
“Nor did I,” Moril whispered. “I was with Hestefan all—”
“All the time?” said Alk. “You went and talked to Fenna, up in her bedroom, and after that you were running around, no one knows where, looking for your cwidder.”
Moril wilted. Navis said nothing. Maewen put her hands to her face. The poor girl. And here was I cheerfully thinking she’d just been kidnapped. Maewen knew, too well, what Noreth’s last moments had felt like. Grabbed round the throat. The knife coming round. Or maybe Noreth had been glad to see the killer and turned round smiling—oh, are you coming, too?—and then she saw the knife. Tear
s came rolling down her face. Poor Noreth.
“This gets us nowhere,” Alk said. “I came for justice, not playacting. And I made inquiries as I came. When Karet came back up from Gardale with the news that the Adon’s cup had gone from the Lawschool, I thought, Can you believe anything that Mitt says? You stole it, didn’t you?”
“No,” Navis said. “I did.”
Alk stared at him in genuine surprise. After blinking a bit, he said, “Then where is it?”
Navis answered by fetching the cup from his pocket, still wrapped in the handkerchief. Alk stared at it for a moment. He considered. Then he nodded at Maewen. “Give it to her. And you,” he said to Maewen, “take hold of it without that wrapping and tell me your name is Noreth of Kredindale. Go on.”
Maewen wretchedly took the cup and just stopped herself from wiping the tears off her face with the handkerchief. “My name is Noreth of Kredindale,” she said, “Why—”
“Quiet,” said Alk.
Maewen obediently shut her mouth. The man had a personality as huge as his body, she thought, wiping her face with her sleeve. You did what he said.
“Now say your real name,” said Alk.
“I’m Mayelbridwen Singer,” Maewen said sadly.
She was still thinking of Noreth. She saw everyone staring at the cup before it occurred to her to look at it herself. It was shining blue all over its lopsided shape. Even in the gold haze of dawn it was bright. And at the end of her long shadow, stretching away on top of her horse’s longer shadow, right out across the grass and bracken, there was a blue haze where the shadow of the cup should have been. She saw Alk’s followers turning to look at it.
“Marvelous!” said Alk. “Clever work! When I was a boy at the Lawschool, I heard they used it for truth telling in evidence.” For a moment, in spite of their anxiety, all four of them had an irresistible vision of Alk at grittling. His side must have won every time. Even Navis nearly smiled. “But I never saw it at work before this,” Alk said. “Now tell me another lie, young Mayelbridwen.”