The Icemark Chronicles: The Cry of the Icemark (5 page)

The stitching of the wound wasn’t easy. It was deep, and even cleaning it with salt and red wine made the stable hand shout and struggle. By the time Oskan had tied the last knot, they were all exhausted with the effort of holding the man down. But at last the wound was neatly dressed and bandaged.

“Leave him now. Healing Nature will do the rest,” Oskan said. “Look, he’s already falling asleep. He’ll soon forget the pain.”

Thirrin stared at him as though he were crazy. “Well, I’m glad for him. Personally, I think it’s going to be a very long time before I forget that nasty little wrestling match.”

Back in the main cave, Thirrin sat apart from the others, staring into the fire as the rich scents of wet earth and greenery blew in from the forest. The men were quiet, tired after the day’s traumas. She’d sent one of them to Frostmarris to tell the King what had happened, and now she was quite content to wait for the storm to pass before riding back to the city herself. The thunder and lightning seemed to have traveled farther out over the plains, but the rain still lashed down with a steady hissing as it forced its way through the dense canopy of the trees.

After a while Oskan appeared from the passage that led to the inner cavern. Thirrin watched as he washed his hands and turned to the fire, where he stirred a large cauldron that had been bubbling quietly to itself. The scents that rose from the pot made Thirrin’s stomach rumble, and the men looked interested, too.

“You’ll find some bowls on the trestle by the entrance,” Oskan said to the cave in general. There was a scrambling as they were fetched, and Oskan ladled out a thick stew.

Remembering their manners and duty, one of the men served Thirrin first, placing the stew, a rough wooden spoon, and a hunk of bread awkwardly on the hearthstone beside her. When Thirrin was in her best “Princess mode,” the men knew better than to take liberties. She was obviously trying to impress the young healer, so for the time being, etiquette and
proper procedure would need to be followed to the letter. They all knew she’d be her old self at the next weapons practice.

Thirrin sighed. These men were soldiers and stable hands; she couldn’t expect the polished skills of Palace Chamberlains. She nodded imperiously, and the man withdrew to the other side of the fire where the others were eating noisily. She gingerly tasted the stew. It was surprisingly rich, being seasoned with herbs and spices Thirrin couldn’t identify, and the bread was as good as anything produced by the palace kitchens. After a while she looked up to see Oskan walking over to join her. She was surprised and annoyed. As the Crown Princess, she’d expected to be left in dignified solitude by this stranger while she ate. Not only that, but now she’d have to make conversation, and she wasn’t sure she could do so without blushing. Put her in any situation that was even vaguely new and personal and she was lost; her pale, almost translucent, skin and auburn hair seemed to signal everything she was feeling. She might raise her chin in proud disdain and even curl her lip in an emergency, but nobody was likely to be fooled if she glowed the color of a midsummer sunset.

Oskan sat down on the low stool next to hers without even pretending to wait for permission. “Is the stew all right?” he asked, as if he were talking to one of the soldiers.

“Adequate,” Thirrin answered with cold dignity.

He nodded as though not surprised by her answer. “I suppose the palace kitchens must produce a feast every day.”

Thirrin decided he was too much of a yokel to realize he was being familiar and said, “Not every day. But they certainly produce the best food in the Icemark.”

He nodded again. “Naturally.”

She looked at him sharply, wondering if he was being sarcastic, but she saw only accepting innocence. “The men said
you’re the son of White Annis, the witch. Where is she? Even women with the Power should show respect to the Heir of the Icemark.”

He glanced at her oddly before answering. “That’s true, but not even Princess Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield can command the presence of the dead. They tend to be deaf to demands for respect.”

“Oh!” she said, blushing to a deeper level of crimson than she’d ever managed before. “I didn’t know.”

Oskan chewed and swallowed before answering. “That’s all right. I know you didn’t mean to be rude.”

Thirrin was incensed.
Rude!
She thought it was probably impossible for royalty to be rude. They said what they felt and the rest of society had to accept it. But secretly she was angry with herself; deep down she didn’t want to offend this strange boy who’d given them shelter from the storm, treated her injured stable hand, and now fed them from his own pot. As her father was always telling her, royalty had a duty to those of society who were lesser than they. It should be beneath her dignity to show anger to a peasant, and it certainly should be beneath her to feel embarrassment.

“When did she die?” she asked, determinedly ignoring her flaming face and showing a proper aloof interest in the troubles of someone who would one day be her subject.

“Two years ago.”

“And you’ve lived alone all that time?”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t difficult. My mother knew she was dying and taught me all I needed to know before the end.”

“What sort of healer couldn’t heal herself?” The words were out before she knew she was going to say them, and her toes curled.

Oskan looked at her in a long silence that almost had her
squirming, but then at last he said, “Only the Goddess can cure all disease.”

Thirrin felt that she’d been slapped down, but his voice and tone had remained level, and even now he only quietly mopped his bowl with bread and showed no sign of anger.

After that, Thirrin gave up trying to behave like a princess and just sat in what she hoped was dignified silence while the men ate a second bowl of stew and the rain continued to slice through the canopy of the forest outside like liquid blades. Afterward Oskan gathered up the bowls and stacked them neatly on a table.

“It’ll soon be dark,” he said. “You may have to stay the night.”

“Not possible!” Thirrin almost shouted, for some reason horrified at the thought of having to stay with the strange boy overnight. “We’ve no bedding.”

“There are plenty of blankets in the back cave. Perhaps one of your men can fetch them?”

“The King will expect me back tonight,” she said firmly, and almost laughed in relief when she heard the sound of approaching horses. She strode to the cave mouth and watched as an escort of ten cavalry were led along the path by the soldier she’d sent off earlier. Obviously she’d been right. Redrought really did expect her home tonight.

“Gather your things and saddle the horses,” she ordered the men, suddenly in full command of herself again. Then to Oskan she said, “We’ll leave the injured one with you and send a surgeon for him later.”

T
hirrin had a full day of studying to get through. Math, geography, the natural world, and what Maggiore Totus called “alchemical science.” She wished her father hadn’t decided to educate her and had just allowed her to rely on scribes and others of the “clever ones,” as Redrought called them. After all, he couldn’t even write his own name, and yet he’d managed to rule his kingdom with intelligence and cunning for more than twenty years. So why did she need to know how to write and reckon and do all of those other bright things that got in the way of her being herself?

“Because the times are changing and I want a daughter who knows her place in the world and how to keep it!” Her father’s booming voice sounded in her memory.

Well, perhaps the world was changing, but did it really help her to know the main exports of the Southern Continent? Or how to calculate the area of a cylinder, or how to brew a sovereign remedy against dropsy? She didn’t think so, but her father was determined, and so she must learn to be like one of the educated clever ones of the commonality.

“Well, Your Highness, am I to presume that you’ve completed your mathematics assignment?” Maggiore Totus asked.

Thirrin handed him a sheaf of paper in cold silence, hating the way the little man managed to make her feel guilty even when she had done her homework. She knew she could kill him in a variety of gory ways in less time than it took him to adjust the strange spectoculums that rested on the very end of his nose, but even this distraction didn’t seem to help!

Her tutor tutted quietly to himself as he read through the messy sheets of paper. “Well, the answer is correct, but how you arrived at your conclusion remains a complete mystery.”

“If the sum’s right, what does it matter?” Thirrin asked irritably.

“It matters because it would prove to me that you didn’t just guess at the answer.”

She privately thought that in the case of math, getting the right answer was all that was needed, but she didn’t say anything.

“Now tell me, what exactly does this jumble of lettering mean here?” the little tutor asked, pointing to a blotchy mess of ink. Thirrin shrugged, and Totus began to calculate just how far he could push her before she exploded and stormed out. He decided she was just short of abandoning the world of learning and spending the rest of the day with her father’s housecarls, so he retreated with decorum. “Very well, we’ll assume that you arrived at your answer by conventional and logical means, shall we?”

She shrugged again, and the tutor walked back to his desk. He looked out the window on to the garden that had so surprised him when he arrived to teach the Princess. Somehow one didn’t expect to find such a beautiful haven of peace in the
middle of the grim fortress of Frostmarris. Magnificent rosebushes blazed rich and dazzling colors onto the air, and neatly clipped hedges and borders barely contained an ordered tumble of bright flowers. But already some of the beautifully kept plants were beginning to look just the slightest bit jaded, and the leaves on some of the more delicate trees and shrubs had already turned crimson. He felt a sudden dread as he realized the bitter winter of the Icemark couldn’t be far away.

“For the rest of the day we’ll study geography,” he informed her, “concentrating on the Southern Continent.” Thirrin groaned. “And in particular on their navy and its role in the defeat of the Corsairs and Zephyrs in the great Battle of the Middle Sea.”

His pupil brightened, and Maggiore Totus tried to convince himself that he wasn’t betraying his teaching standards more and more with every passing day. Almost every lesson had to have something about the military in it to hold his pupil’s attention. Still, he comforted himself, she would one day be Queen of the Icemark and would probably have to lead her troops in battle, too. He couldn’t expect a daughter of King Redrought’s to be anything other than warlike and uninterested in the gentle arts of learning. He would feel he’d succeeded if at the end of her schooling she could write an understandable sentence, read a letter without help, and discuss the accounts with her quartermaster. In the meantime he’d aim for the stars, in the hope that he could at least get her to the top of a reasonably sized hill.

He drew the battle positions of the opposing fleets on the blackboard, and watched as Thirrin happily copied them into her book. But his attention was drawn back to the garden beyond the window and its signs of the coming winter. If only
he could leave before the terrible winds and snows came, before the deeply penetrating frosts etched every window with thick patterns of ice-ferns. At his home on the southern coast of the Middle Sea, the winter would bring a little gentle rain and the days would be warm rather than hot. But the wine would be mellow, and the lilting language of his people would sing and lull his mind to a quietness he’d almost forgotten here in the cold north.

“Mr. Maggiore Totus!” Thirrin’s voice cut into his thoughts. “You’re not daydreaming, are you?” And she smiled so brightly he couldn’t help but smile back.

Thirrin could be charming when she forgot to be a princess. But just recently that happened only rarely, and Totus was beginning to wonder what was on her mind. He thought that perhaps he knew but couldn’t be sure. And how exactly would one ask the heir apparent if she was afraid that she’d have to rule the country before she was ready, and if she was frightened that her father would die before she’d had time to experience life properly? Redrought was a strong man, a
very
strong man, but the history of the Icemark was violent, and Maggiore’s studies had shown him that of the previous eight monarchs only two had died in their beds and only one had ruled for more than twenty years — and
that
one was Redrought himself!

He could almost feel sorry for Thirrin, even when she was at her most obnoxious. She might be undergoing the best training for her future role as Queen, but the very real possibility that she could be ruling the Icemark before she was sixteen had to be a terrible burden, especially when the country had The-Land-of-the-Ghosts as a neighbor to the north and the formidable Polypontian Empire and General Scipio Bellorum
to the south. To rule even a tiny kingdom at such a young age would be pressure enough for anyone, but the Icemark had no one but the most vicious enemies on its land borders and only the pitiless sea, with its pirates and raiders, to the east and the west.