The Deed of Paksenarrion (156 page)

The Marshal shook her head. “Not a demon horse—by the High Lord, Paks, you’ve surprised us again.”

“Marshal?” Paks swung down, keeping her hand on the horse’s neck.

“I had wondered how you would get your mount—or if you would. You’re different enough that I had no idea—But I never thought one would appear here, in midwinter.”

“Then you think it is—”

“Your paladin’s mount, of course. Of course it is.” The Marshal held a hand out to the red horse, who touched it lightly with his nose, then turned to nuzzle Paks. “I only wonder why he didn’t come at once.”

The horse snorted and stamped. The Marshal looked surprised, then shook her head again. “Paks, paladins’ mounts have powers of their own—I don’t know if Amberion told you—”

“I’ve heard somewhat—”

“Good. Not all are the same. I wouldn’t venture to say what this one can do—but don’t be too surprised.” The Marshal nodded briskly to both Paks and the horse, and strode off.

Paks looked around. No one else ventured to say anything, but she caught many intent looks. “I suppose,” she said finally, “I’d better find you a place in the stable.”

Somewhat to her surprise, the red horse went into a box stall willingly, and began munching hay like any ordinary horse. Paks hurried back to the Duke’s Court to tell him about it.

“I suspect,” said the Duke, “that it means you haven’t much longer to stay here. Your mail is almost finished—”

“Do you feel anything, any call?” asked Dorrin.

“No.” Paks looked around the room. “Not yet. But you’re probably right, my lord. There’s nothing here I’d need a horse like that for.”

“Well, you’re spending Midwinter here, at least, unless your gods lack sense,” said the Duke. “We’ve planned a feast to remember, this year, and I won’t have you miss it.”

Paks thought of her last Midwinter, cold and afraid, in hiding from her past and future both, and smiled against that dark memory. “We will celebrate together,” she said, and included the captains with a quick glance, “the victory of light over darkness, and courage over fear.” The Duke started to speak, but nodded instead.

And when the recruits, freed for the festival days from their usual strict discipline, had the audacity to pelt officers, Marshal, and paladin with sticky fruit pastries, she laughed along with the others. They had been solemn enough when the fires were quenched, and the entire Company stood watch the whole night of Midwinter. On the second day, Paks rode out with the Duke to both villages for the ceremonial exchange of vows. She had not intended to ride the red horse for this, but found him waiting, saddled and bridled, in the forecourt when she came down. The Duke shook his head, then grinned.

“Your gods are pressing you, Paks—best be aware of them.”

“I didn’t plan to—”

“You keep telling me that paladins don’t plan—the gods plan for them. If someone gifted me with a horse like that, I’d never walk.”

“Yes, well—” Paks reached out to stroke the red horse’s neck; it was as slick as if it had just been groomed. “I’d like to know who saddled him.”

“We can ask, but my guess is no one.”

“But horses can’t saddle themselves—” The red horse snorted, stamped, and bumped Paks hard with the side of its head. “Sorry,” said Paks. “I only meant—” The horse snorted again, and the Duke chuckled.

“Come on, Paks; mount the beast before you say something unforgivable.”

Paks swung into the saddle. It felt as if it had been made for her, and the stirrups were exactly the right length. Neither then nor later would anyone admit to having made the saddle (though she suspected the Duke, at first, of having supplied one), or having put it on the horse. Paks followed the Duke out the gate, puzzled but delighted. When they returned that evening, the horse permitted her to remove saddle and bridle, but despite a day’s riding no mark marred that satiny coat. Paks hung saddle and bridle on a rack and went back to the Duke’s Court, still slightly confused.

She felt that she had always run away before: from home, from the Company in Aarenis, from Fin Panir. Each time she had tried to escape something, and each time the thing she had refused to face confronted her again. This time, she was not running away—she was sent. She was less embarrassed than she’d expected by the troops in formation to see her off. It might be the last time she’d see them, the old friends who had made her what she was. That fanfare the Duke commanded, ringing through cold sunny air from the gate tower, honored the gods she served. And the Duke—his eyes alight as she had never seen them—they had said all they had to say. She wore Tamarrion’s sword at her side, and he had nothing of hers but her prayers. And his life.

Riding through Duke’s East, the red horse pranced, snatching his hooves off the cobbles as if they were coals. They all came out, men, women, and children—waving at her, shy to call. She knew the names, the faces, grinned at them and at herself. It was living the old dream, to ride through a town this way, and if it wasn’t Three Firs, with her own brothers, sisters, and cousins waving and smiling, it was well enough. She felt the horse’s amusement through her legs: he knew; it was why he pranced so, showing her off. He slowed without reining by Kolya’s gate. Kolya nodded slowly, squinting up at Paks in the bright sunlight.

“So—it’s as I heard. You’re going. We’ll miss you, Paks. The Duke, too—” She stopped, her eyes fixing on Tamarrion’s sword. She looked quickly back at Paks’s face. “That, too?”

“Yes. He gave me that—I argued, but—”

“That alone?” Her meaning carried more by look than the words themselves. Paks thought of the talks she’d had, these past weeks, as she waited for the Duke’s gift of mail to be finished to his satisfaction. He had insisted on helmet and shield as well, befitting a paladin of Gird. His offer had been as oblique, yet as clear, as Kolya’s question.

Paks looked ahead, then back at Kolya. “I am not free, Kolya, to answer all calls. There’s better for him.” Paks hoped she was right to say that. “Even if I were free—and would marry—I’m not Tamarrion. It’s not only age, Kolya.”

Kolya sighed. “No. That’s so. It’s that likeness, though, that keeps the thought in mind. Maybe it’s better that you’re going, for that as well.”

The red horse did not move, but Paks felt his eagerness to be gone, his certainty of which way to go. She glanced around a last time. “Kolya, I must go. I can’t linger—”

“I understand. Can you accept the blessing of an old kuakgannir?”

“Of a friend, always.”

“Then may the First Tree shade your path, and shed fruit for your hunger, and the wisdom of all wild things be yours.”

“And may the High Lord’s grace and Gird’s protection be on you, Kolya, and the Lady of Peace bring plenty to your orchard.” They clasped hands, then Paks straightened, and the red horse moved on. Paks did not look back.

Although Paks had imagined being a paladin, she had never seriously thought what it would be like to travel as one. She had had some vague idea that paladins knew from the beginning exactly where they would go, and what they were to do, that they stayed in granges for the most part. She did not know even yet how other paladins moved around; for her it was different. Besides a feeling that they should go south and east, she had no idea where they were going. The red horse chose his own trails, and these did not lead from grange to grange, or along the roads she knew.

South of Duke’s East, they left the now-familiar road that led to Vérella, and struck south-east across wooded country. Paks had already found that the red horse had more speed and endurance than common horses, and she let him choose his own times to rest. That wasn’t often. They came to the Honnorgat downstream of Vérella in three days of hard riding. Paks was stiff and cold, and sat staring at the broad gray river while the red horse drew breath.

“Now what?” she asked it. “You aren’t planning to swim that, I hope. And the bridges are all upstream, as far as I know.” The horse flicked an ear back at her.

Paks stretched and looked around. They were on low water meadows, now covered with frost-dry grass. Along the river itself, a fringe of trees thickened here and there into a grove. Downstream smoke rose from a clutter of huts. Paks thought of that den of thieves in Aarenis and wrinkled her nose. On a low mound still farther downstream a larger building bulked—a keep of some kind, perhaps. Upstream was yet another group of huts, with a stake fence. When the horse pricked his ears, pointing, she could see a herd of dun-colored cattle grazing.

Sound carried well near the river, and she heard the jingle of harness just as the horse threw up his head. A small band of riders jogged her way from the larger building—she had been seen. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” she said to the red horse. “I hope you haven’t crossed the border to Pargun somewhere in those woods.” But as the band neared her, she was reassured by their colors, the rose and silver of the Tsaian royal house.

“Ho, stranger!” They were just in hail. Paks sat still and let them come. The red horse was alert but unalarmed. She recognized the band’s uniform now—Tsaian Royal Guard—but wondered what they were doing this far from Vérella. The leader wore Gird’s crescent on his chest, and the device of the Order of the Bells. A knight, then, and well-born. Six men-at-arms, trim and fit-looking, rode behind him. When he was within speaking range, he reined in. Paks nodded to him.

“Gird’s grace to you, sir knight.”

His eyebrows rose. “Gird’s grace . . . uh . . .”

“Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter,” said Paks pleasantly.

“You are from—”

“I have just come from Duke Phelan’s stronghold,” she said. “I am a veteran of his Company, but no longer, as you see, one of them.” Her own garb, chainmail under the plain brown cloak she’d bought in Brewersbridge with her Lyonyan coins, gave him no clue.

“Hmm.” He rubbed his chin, obviously confused. “On the Duke’s business, are you?”

“No. On Gird’s business.” That got his attention, and that of the others; they all stared. Paks hoped she hadn’t stated it too baldly, but she felt a push to do so.

“Are you a—a Marshal?” At his question, her horse snorted, shaking its head. That reaction made her grin, and the knight even more uneasy.

“No, sir knight,” she said, trying not to laugh. “I’m no Marshal. Might I ask your name?”

“Oh!” He had clearly forgotten about introducing himself. “I’m Regnal Kostvan, third son of the Kostvan Holding. The Royal Guard has garrisons in all the border keeps right now; that’s why I’m here.”

“Is there trouble along here with Pargun?”

He frowned. “Not to say trouble. Not more than usual. But the way things are going in Lyonya—” He looked hard to see if she knew what that meant. Paks nodded. He went on. “And so we’re to make sure of travelers in this way. Were you planning to cross the river? Because you’d have to have clearance from me to hire a ferry.”

“I have reason to cross, yes.” Paks did not say more. How could she explain that she didn’t know where she was going, or what she was to do when she got there?

“You’d best come back with me to the keep,” he said. Paks felt rather than saw an increased alertness in the men-at-arms. They must have had some trouble, to make them to nervous. “My commander will want to speak with you.”

“I’d be glad to,” she said. “It’s a cold day to talk out here.” As she eased the red horse forward, she saw the men-at-arms tense and relax.

“I’ve heard of one Paksenarrion,” began the knight tentatively. Paks could feel the ears of the others growing longer as he spoke. She laughed, surprised at how easy it was.

“Sir Regnal, it might have been you heard of me, though I claim no particular fame. But I served with Duke Phelan three seasons in Aarenis, and rode to Kolobia with the Girdsmen from Fin Panir—so if that’s what you heard, you heard it of me.”

He glanced at her sideways. His horse was enough shorter that she could tell little of his size. “Yes—I had heard of that. And of some other—” he paused, looking away, then back at her. She nodded.

“You may have heard truth and falsehood both, Sir Regnal. And the truth could be the more unpleasant. I do not speak of it much.”

“I see.” He rode a little way in silence. Then he turned to her again, as they neared a small stone keep whose gate faced the river. “But it is our duty to know what passes here—what manner of man or other being, and with what loyalties. I have heard such things of one Paksenarrion that I would not let that one pass. So these things must be spoken of, and your faiths proved.”

The red horse stopped short at Paks’s thought. She faced the knight squarely. “Sir knight, my faith has been proved already by such trials as I pray you never face.” He reddened, but she went on. “I think you will be convinced, ere I leave, of what ‘manner of man or other being’ rides such a horse in such a way.” She smiled, then, and nudged the horse on. “But it will be quicker to convince you and your commander all in one; let us ride in.” And the long-striding red horse caught up and passed the knight’s, and led the way into the keep courtyard.

Sir Regnal was stiffly correct in presenting Paks to his commander, a heavy-set older man with the intricate corded knots of a cohort-commander on the shoulders of his velvet winter tunic. Ganarrion Verrakai: Paks recalled from the charts in the Duke’s library that this was a second son of the minor branch of that powerful family, second only to Marrakai in influence at court. She bowed, and carefully chose an applicable honorific which recognized his family position as well as his Guards rank.

“Sir nigan-Verrakai.”

His eyebrows didn’t rise, but he did not miss the wording. “Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter. Duke Phelan’s veteran?”

“Yes, my lord. Not presently in his service.”

“Ah, yes. On Gird’s service, you told Sir Regnal?”

“Yes.” She wondered how far they would press.

“Have you any authorization from the granges? From Fin Panir, perhaps?”

“From Gird, my lord,” she said.

This time his eyebrows did rise. Not all the Verrakai, she remembered, were Girdsmen. Some were Falkian, some kuakgannir, and some, it was rumored, followed less honored gods. “But you are not a Marshal, you said?”