Authors: Nancy Springer
Hal and Alan learned much from Blain, and listened more than they spoke. The keen edge of his intelligence, and its almost fanatical force, commanded their respect. His men, none of whom could read or write, almost worshiped their leader, as if he were a seer. But the visitors sometimes felt an indefinable lack in Blain, like an ingredient missing in a complicated dish. It was difficult to know how he felt toward them. Though he could not seem to restrain himself from showing strong feelings about all matters of the mind, concerning matters of the heart he revealed little. Still, he offered his allegiance readily and with conviction. He seemed to like Alan, for he spoke most often to him. This was all to the good, since he would be fighting beside Alan at Laueroc. Hal sat back contentedly, saying little.
When they left Blain, their ways once again parted. Alan and Cory traveled south toward Laueroc, while Hal and Robin headed back across Isle toward the Forest and Craig the Grim. Relentless winter was at its height, and their journey was a slow one. It was a weary month and a half before Hal and Robin came to shelter. They settled into outlaw caves gratefully, waiting out the stormy skies.
Once every fortnight or so, as for many months past, Tod, the King's master of hounds, took his charges out for a few days on the open weald. Each time, he chanced to meet a fellow of indeterminate occupation, going bird-shooting with quail-feathered arrows. And as planned, Trigg would return to the Forest and report news of the King to Craig. When Alan and Cory rode in from Laueroc, after Hal and Robin had already been with Craig three weeks, the report was still the same: no change in the King's health. But on a night when a hint of spring stirred in the breeze, on a night when Hal paced restlessly in his den and thought of sleeping outside, Trigg burst into camp on a lathered horse with the news that King Iscovar had taken to his chamber at last.
The four comrades were off before sunrise the next morning, and three nights later they made their camp in the same copse that had provided shelter the night of the Tower raid. The next morning, while Robin and Cory stayed in its concealment, Hal and Alan boldly galloped the main road into the place that Hal had once hatefully known as home.
They won their way into the castle by main force of arrogance. In shining helms and glittering mail, with shields at the ready, they pounded the gate with the hilts of their naked swords. When the gatekeeper asked their business, Hal shot him such a glance as froze his tongue to the roof of his mouth. Fiery golden flecks filled Alfie's eyes as they rode through the courtyard, and the proud steed arched his neck and struck out his hooves as fiercely as an eagle striking at his kill. Arundel's eyes glowed darkly dangerous; he moved with his own peculiar ghostlike grace. Hal and Alan held the horses to the slow trot past groups of kingsmen who gaped in floundering amazement. The news had spread quickly, and the groom who joyfully ran to take their horses was one who had known Arundel before.
Hal and Alan strode swiftly through the cold stone corridors of the keep. Servants, guards, even noble scions flattened themselves against the walls to make way for the two warriors. The lines and scars of four years of hardship were on their faces, and the memory of those years in their eyes. Their consummation was now at hand.
Only the guard at the King's chamber door attempted to stop them, for his was the ultimate responsibility, and his life the forfeit. Hal scarcely looked at him, but struck the sword from his hand in one blow, knocked him to the floor with the hilt and threw open the door without a backward glance. Alan followed him, though distaste for Iscovar repulsed him like an odor in the room. He stationed himself just inside the door. But Hal strode to the foot of the great canopied bed and looked down at the wasted form of the man he knew as his sire.
King Iscovar had been a grossly corpulent man when Hal had seen him last. Now his overlarge skin lay in puckered folds around him, toadlike, yellow and wrinkled. His body, once vigorous and overbearing, lay limp. But the passions which had dominated his life still glared from his eyes: cruelty, greed, pervasive ill will. His face was as expressionless as a mask, staring blankly at his heir. But he could not mask the malignancy of his soul; it lurked in his eyes.
He and Hal observed each other silently for some moments. The King seemed detached, but hot hatred smoldered in his gaze. Hal's face was hard and flat with his dislike. “I have come for my inheritance,” he said at last, “little though I desire it from you. Will you help me or hinder me?"
Iscovar's eyes glittered as he moistened his lips to answer. But before he spoke, the guard entered, staggering, sword raised. Hal ignored him, but Alan blocked his path. “Hold!” he commanded. “Do you not know your Prince?"
King Iscovar's glance shot to the figure by the door, and his face paled beneath the yellow of his skin. “Laueroc!” he hissed in the voice of a cornered serpent. He struggled to lift himself, words tumbling from him in a panic of guilty hatred. “Out! Get away from my presence!"
Alan stared with frank repugnance at the man who had sent his father to the torturers. In his disgust, he was quite willing to leave, but Hal stopped him with a glance. “He will stay with me,” he told the King curtly. “What assurance do I have that you will not order him thrown into that loathsome Tower of yours?"
The King's face flared sickly purplish red. “Guards!” he shouted in a paroxysm of passion. “Guards!” Hal drew his sword as running footsteps sounded outside. But when the guards entered with a clatter of weapons, Iscovar summoned them impatiently to his bedside. “Command Chamberlain Waverly to come to me,” he ordered them. “Also Kepp the Steward, and Derek, Captain of Guards, and Guy Gaptooth. At once!"
In a few moments the puzzled minions of the King hurried in, cheerful as ghouls at the thought of a crisis: jaundiced old Waverly, master intriguer and sorcerer; Kepp the Steward, a small, round man with a perpetually frightened look; Derek, lean and leering, harshest master of torture; and Guy Gaptooth, burly warrior, one-eyed, scarred and pitted with the marks of a thousand combats.
“Nay, I am not dead yet,” sneered the King as the gleam faded from their eyes. “Nevertheless, you are to have a new master. This is your Prince, whom you may remember. From this moment, I give my authority over to him. Obey him in all things. Now,” he continued, turning to Hal, “get that Laueroc out of here!"
Hal looked his officers over with cold gray eyes. Each in turn cowered and shrank, thinking there might be a price to pay for past deeds. Derek in particular felt the cold finger of fear, for he had known Hal under different circumstances, and he was certain that Hal had not forgotten those days in the Tower.
“This is Alan, Lord of Laueroc,” Hal told them at last. “Think of him as my second self, and obey him in all things. Now go. He will give you your orders until I can come."
Hal glanced at Alan as he turned to leave, but the new lord of Laueroc would not meet his eyes. Sighing, Hal turned his attention to the prostrate monarch. Drawing a chair to Iscovar's bedside, he settled himself to hear whatever information his sire might care to impart.
Within just a few days, many changes took place inside the castle walls at Nemeton. On the evening of the first day, Laueroc and the Prince ordered the gates thrown open wide, and under their watchful eyes tall, grim-faced men came marching in by the hundreds, each carrying a fearsome bow as tall as himself and razor-tipped four-foot shafts. These men did not lodge in the King's stinking barracks, but settled in the open air of the courtyard, where they surveyed with hard eyes all who passed. Yet they did no dishonor to maid or man, and the castle folk soon learned to respect they new guards, captained by hatchet-faced Craig the Grim. Toward Laueroc and the Prince they scarcely knew how to name what they felt. There was something in their eyes which caused great fear, which made people think it would be death to displease them. Yet they showed none of the harshness that was usual in Nemeton; indeed, they showed unwonted generosity. All prisoners were released from the Tower, healed, fed, clothed and sent home. And orders were given that servitors and soldiers were to be better fed, and not to be beaten! Half suspicious and half unbelieving, the common folk who were the pulse of the castle watched and waited.
Chamberlain Waverly, head of the Nemeton sorcerers, was no longer to be reckoned with. Either braver or more craven than his fellow officials of the castle, he had left the King's chamber, walked through the gates and kept going. He had taken ship toward foreign ports, word had it, hoping to find a suitable patron for his sinister talents. In the absence of his leadership, his coven-mates had discreetly scattered, and the rites of the Sacred Son had come to an abrupt halt.
Derek of the Guards had made for the gates as well, but Alan had stopped him. Now, for the first time, he worked side by side with his men. Since there were no prisoners to guard and torture, they spent their days digging long trenches on a sunny hilltop outside of town. It was backbreaking work, but they scarcely raised their eyes from the earth they turned, so great was their awe of the gray-eyed Prince. Derek's leer had left him, and like his men he was half mad with wondering why he was yet alive. When would the order be given, as he was sure it would be, that would make them target meat for the grim-faced archers? For all they knew, they dug their own graves. But Derek clung tenaciously to life under any conditions, and did not complain.
Derek knew by now that there would be no more guarding of the Tower. Even Derek himself, when he had tried to bolt that first day, had not been put there. Even the kingsmen had not been put there, though Alan favored the idea. But Hal would have no one lodged in that Tower. “Not even the foulest fiend,” he said grimly. So there was a problem of what to do with the kingsmen, the mounted elite of Iscovar's warriors. Many of them were out on patrol and never came back. Those in Nemeton gave their oath of allegiance to Hal, but they gave it glibly, obeyed him churlishly and disobeyed him when they could. One by one, he found it necessary to strip them of their gear and turn them out of the city. Their black cloaks went flapping into the Tower dungeons; Hal seemed to think the place fitting for such cloth. Their gaudy helmets went to the smithy, to be melted down and made into more comely things. Their horses Hal kept.
He would need mounted warriors to fight the southern lords. To find men to fill his empty saddles, he appealed to the troops. “I need riders,” he told them bluntly. “Anyone may try.” Once he had picked his candidates, he and Alan worked them mercilessly hard. They had only a few months at the most, and to send them against trained warriors as raw fighters would be slaughter. Yet Hal's discipline was not the brutal durance that these men had known before, but a kind of concentrated freedom. Without knowing quite how or why, the men thrived on it. Like the rest of the household, they began to experience obedience that casts off fear.
Guy Gaptooth continued training the foot soldiers under the Prince's watchful eye. A hateful tension grew in him, for he was no longer allowed to vent his spleen on the hapless youths under his command. He had not kept Hal's strange new order quite a week when he broke. During drills one morning he suddenly went berserk, rushing at a recruit in blind rage and attacking him with his sword. Hal interceded as the youth was laid low, and Alan dragged him out of the way. Then the gaping recruits witnessed an exhibition of swordfighting worth remembering. Guy was a behemoth of a man, a head taller and five stone heavier than Hal; he fought with the crushing force of a charging bull. But Hal led him in circles like a baited bear, reaching effortlessly through his frenzied strokes to prick him to greater fury, so that while Hal remained cool and untouched his opponent ran wet with sweat and blood, steaming like a pot on the fire.
From where he knelt by the injured youth, Alan called in disgust, “Have done, Hal!"
“When he is worn out,” Hal called back, “we can tie him up."
“To what purpose!” Alan shouted. “Death is in his eyes! Be merciful and kill him, before he is forced to slay himself!"
Hal hesitated, regarding his opponent carefully as he continued to play his circling game. The man indeed showed only the look of a maddened beast in his eyes.
“Torment him no longer,” grated Alan. “Kill him, or I will do it myself!"
With one swift thrust Hal buried his blade in Guy's heart, and almost in the same movement gave him the mercy stroke to the throat. Then he walked toward Alan, bemused, absently holding his dripping sword at his side.
“Now what sort of thing was that to say, in front of all who watched?” he asked, more puzzled than vexed.
“It got results, did it not?” Alan retorted coldly. “You, of all people, to be squeamish! If you are to win your throne, you cannot afford to be so chary of shedding blood."
“Ay, blood will be shed,” muttered Hal, “in plenty. But I hope and pray I will never grow careless of it. This is not like you, Alan."
“Was I right,” Alan shot back, “or not?"
“You were right,” Hal assented wearily.
“Well, then.” Alan's eyes were hard and dark as jewels, blank of all feeling. Hal could find no love in them, no understanding. He sighed and shifted his glance to the dazed, white-faced youth who sat at his feet.
“How is he?"
“Flesh wounds,” Alan answered, his voice gentler. “He will be fine in a few days."
By the recruit knelt another, as pale as the first. “Your brother?” Hal asked. Gulping, the youth nodded.
“Well, get him to his bunk, and you stay with him."