The Prince cast
his war mask aside and raised Bonesteel to his feet. “Most loyal are you,
strong right hand of my father, and rather would I have you with me than all
the assembled knights of Coramonde. When Strongblade is thrown down and Yardiff
Bey cast forth, there will be monuments in plenty to your allegiance.”
“Thank you,
Your Grace. I have held council with the Princess Katya—a shrewd lady—and those
others whom she tells me are your adherents. We have discussed tactics and I
agree with your plan to work on Strongblade from within. None dared molest me
when I broke for the Keel of Heaven in a surprise move, but rumor has Novanwyn
in charge of marshaling and executing the invasion of Freegate. He collects his
strength slowly, for there are threats of rebellion in the eastern provinces,
especially by Bulf Hightower, brother-by-bond to my widowed sister.
“Strongblade
draws many men from the northwest, leaving border marches badly undermanned
against the wildmen, but they only raid and harry and would not invade without
the let of Yardiff Bey. Yet I conjecture that if he had to, he would send them
at us. Still, all in all, we shall have to fight a delaying action while the
loyalist organization takes root, recruits and tries to bring the impetuous Hightower
into line. And those incredible notes left by that MacDonald chap! I would give
much to chat with that one; his doctrine will serve us well. But we still want
badly for manpower. Hmm, yet there is still much that we may do with a little
ingenuity.”
Springbuck
clapped the bookish Legion-Marshal on the back. “We’ve just returned from a
mission designed to appease that need. Thanks to Reacher here, the
Horse-blooded ride with us.”
Bonesteel
blinked in surprise. “The King? This is His Highness?” He faced Reacher,
blushing with embarrassment. “Your Majesty, your pardon please, but I took you
for some huntsman or warrior. One seldom sees a King in the trappings of the
Howlebeau. Oh, but this news of the Horseblooded is glorious! Why, with light
cavalry like them, we have many new avenues open to us.”
“Let us repair
to my home and discuss them,” said the Wolf-Brother.
But Bonesteel
answered, “I shall rework the plans I’ve formulated to take this new factor
into account, and have them to you tomorrow when bodies are rested and minds
eager.” It was agreed to, and the two departed with spirits encouraged.
Reacher went to
find his sister when they returned to the palace, but Springbuck, lacking the
phenomenal staying power of the monarch of Freegate, wanted only to wash the
stench of travel from himself and sleep. He rejected the servants’ offer to
shave him, having begun a beard, and dozed while they drew his bath, then
dismissed them and half-slept as he drifted in the warm, sudsy pool. But
seeking his bed, anticipating only a night’s sleep, he found it occupied.
Gabrielle
waited, lounging on silken sheets, fur covers thrown aside.
“It’s
thoughtful of you so to come unclothed,” said the Prince. “I am thus ensured
you are unarmed.”
“There is that
variety of woman best armed when least attired,” she pointed out.
He went to her,
noticing a silken sash fastened at the bedstead over her head. It puzzled him,
but he didn’t take the time to question its portent.
There was no
subtlety, no restraint on either part that first time. With the need of a drive
long denied, they satisfied themselves in each other with mutual passion, equal
abandon. Neither mentioned love, neither had gentle words after their prolonged
wait. They tacitly avoided pretense.
Ardor spent,
they lay for a time as a cool breeze wafted perspiration from them. She wound
her fingers idly in his hair and he looked upward to the silken cord overhead.
He jutted his chin toward it. “What thing is that?”
“No ordinary
pallet is this. Ensorceled, it’s prepared for your return. Observe.”
She sat up and
began to knot the sash again. Springbuck studied her flawless body, perfect
skin, the arresting profile and the mounds of crimson tresses tumbling down the
creamy back, and was stirred by new desire. The pleasant drowsiness stealing
over him in the wake of their lovemaking retreated. Gabrielle, finishing her
complex knotting, blew on the twisted cloth. He found he’d become aroused as
fully as he’d been a short time before. He drew her down and once more they
entangled, in fervor as intense as the first time.
“Is that the
office of the knots?” he asked later, as his fingers traced her spine and her
lips rested in the hollow of his neck.
“Yes. Too many
repetitions might be injurious, but we’re healthy enough to abide some, are we
not?” And she would have reached to tie another knot, but he stopped her.
“Stay,” he said,
“and let us try another mysticism, old and locked into the bodies of men and
women at the origins of time.” They united again, this time without the rite of
knots, and that older magic of which he’d spoken, waiting in all mankind,
verified itself.
They both slept
late the next day.
But in the
weeks which followed he had scant time to spend with her outside councils of
war, though he tried to be with her as much as possible. He learned that he
must handle himself carefully with her. When he displeased her, carpets had a
way of sliding away under him, crockery flew of its own accord and the
bathwater was wont to become suddenly and agonizingly cold. The magic with
which he was bound to her was stronger than any knotted wisp of silk.
Plans were
being considered, altered, revised and often disposed. Agents were enlisted to
begin underground activities in Coramonde, several of them from the group of
Erubites. Reacher’s own espionage corps trained them in skills which would be
required of them to build their own units.
A sparsely
populated series of dales some way east of the city was cleared and given over
to the encampment of the Horseblooded when they began to pour in off the High
Ranges. Public announcements quelled the apprehensions of the people of
Freegate at the foreign army, the second within their country’s borders. Some
talk of foreign involvement was heard, but the population in general accepted
it that a war of survival was about to be joined.
“We must hold,”
Reacher advised his people via proclamation, “until the people of Coramonde
overthrow the false ruler who misleads them into aggression.”
Springbuck
became a figure constantly seen at planning sessions and on practice fields.
Even the most skeptical troop commanders and governmental leaders allied with
him were convinced that this was no layabout Pretender or figurehead. He’d
confer deep into the night with Bonesteel, Su-Suru and the others, then rise as
early as any soldier for the day’s training. He drove himself harder than any
of the men he commanded, and usually excelled them unless it was at some
martial skill where his shortness of vision interfered. He often went among
them, both speaking and listening, the latter even more important than the
former. Dressed in Alebowrenian war gear, which had become something of a
trademark of his and which he decided to retain, he was easily recognized by
the men of the ad hoc army.
Tales sprang up
about him, of fairness and open-handedness to his men, of harshness with
miscreants and a quick temper like a tropical storm. On one occasion an officer
of Bonesteel’s Legion, convicted of raping a young woman of Freegate, denounced
the Prince and his justice, saying he was no true son of Coramonde to betray
one of his own to foreigners. In a rage, the son of Surehand called for the
officer to be armed and, with Bar in hand, invited him to impose his own
justice and do what he might. They fought, and the officer was as good a
swordsman as he’d been accounted, but Springbuck slew him and had his body hung
on a hook above the barbican as a caution to all. He gave the girl a generous
sum for her dowry by way of compensation in part, the money coming from
Bonesteel’s laden war chests, and the tale was known to everyone before the
evening meal. No such breaches occurred again.
Bonesteel and
his most capable under officers instructed the Prince in the handling of
steadily larger groups of men, both mounted and afoot, and he took readily to
this, and to the set-piece battles they fought on scaled map boards.
The warriors of
Freegate and the Horseblooded he concerned himself with little, since the
discipline and training of these must be left in the main to their own leaders.
His confidence
in his troops and himself grew. He even attempted to become proficient—at close
range, at any rate—with the deadly bow of the Horseblooded. This was a
composite weapon with a core of flat wooden staving, a layer of split horn
glued to one side, a backing of tough, resilient animal sinew glued lengthwise
and the whole bound with wrappings of sinew and strung with a cord of twisted
hemp with spiral bindings of linen twine. It was a curved bow of remarkable
power and, being only four feet long, the best bow a mounted man could want.
But no man
complained that he lacked a skill to command, or didn’t train as rigorously as
they. On the whole, there were surprisingly few incidents of friction between
men of such widely varied backgrounds, and part of this may have been due to
his strong leadership.
He found his
thoughts turning to the future. What of Gil MacDonald? Would he return? It
would soon be time to launch the lightning cavalry mission which was to meet
the American on his reentry into Coramonde. There were many unknowns involved.
Van Duyn, for
his part, feared that the young Pretender and the diminutive King might not be
able to hold together the hodgepodge of fugitives, nomads and naturally
independent-minded men of Freegate, but the two seemed to doubt their ability
not one whit, and time seemed inclined to prove them right in this. That gave
the scholar comfort.
As he walked
back to the palace with the Snow Leopardess after watching maneuvers, headed
for a casual dinner among the roof arbors—which was by way of becoming a custom
for them—she said, “D’you know, Edward, up until now—until all this usurpation
business—I’d thought to see if someday I couldn’t wed the
Ku-Mor-Mai.
What
an alliance that would have been! But with everything up in the air, I don’t
know if the next ruler will be the Prince, Strongblade, Yardiff Bey, you or
some other party.”
Van Duyn,
nowadays an avowed bachelor, was nonplussed; but studying proud Katya, he found
himself replying, “If that’s to be the prize here, I’ll give it my best try.”
The Princess,
white-gold hair floating around her and flashing in the sun, slipped an arm
through his. “I think I should like that,” she said. “But since you’re not yet
a head of state, mayhap a less formal and more private liaison can be
established.”
Van Duyn felt
that happy misery he’d been warning himself against so often in past weeks,
harbinger of a new enmeshment.
Somehow, he
didn’t mind.
On Home Ground
Let the
soldier yield to the civilian.
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
THE silver jet, huge and sleek
minister of the technology that had spawned it and the life to which Gil was
returning, skimmed off the runway at Tan Son Nhut, rendering the Delta calm and
peaceful under its departure pattern, a sky-reflective webwork. The plane made
one stop at Yakota Air Force Base in Japan, where Gil stretched his legs and
stood lost in thought, gazing absently into the darkened distance.
The soldier
sitting next to him, a big, moody redhead named O’Riordan, was disinclined to
talk, and Gil didn’t much mind. The trip was filled with musings, snatches of
memory from past months thrown up in turbulence to the surface of recall. At
last he put them aside and fell asleep in the wonderful coolness of the
pressurized cabin, high in the chilly air. He awoke periodically to watch as he
flew through an accelerated day and night, jetting eastward as the sun
westered.
His delay at
Oakland was gratifyingly brief. Landing at night, he had been outprocessed for
separation and was stepping out of a cab at the airport within six hours. Men
of his type were common enough there, but he drew glances nevertheless. Lean
and drawn in newly issued, ribboned dress uniform, necktie chafing, Gil
MacDonald went to the standby counter, uncomfortably aware of an unusual sensation,
the stares of his own countrymen.
Adolescents,
women, children, the elderly—he’d been apart from them for twelve months and
found himself nervous now that he was plunged back into their midst in the
space of a day.
Midst? No, not
exactly. He still wore his uniform, and the bearing that set him at a distance.
A young denimed couple clung to one another and showed him hipply outfront
distaste. He turned his stare on them like some weapon, ferocity restrained,
and an uncommonly intimidating something there made them look quickly away.
Waiting for his flight while drinking an unbelievably cold beer, he mulled
Edward Van Duyn’s words.
“You’ll see
that soldiers’ skills have no market in peace—which is as it should be. Your
vocation has you marching to the drum, Gil; you’ll find it hard to stroll to
the lyre.”
He made a stop
in Ohio to offer personal condolences to Olivier’s widow. A small, pale girl
with moist eyes, she resembled her dead husband, the bespectacled machinegunner
who’d been torn to shreds by a claymore mine on dismounted scout six weeks
before. The visit was awkward for both. He could hear the unspoken question,
one she knew was unfair but couldn’t repress.
Why are
you here and not my husband? Why did you live and not Paul?