Two to Conquer (19 page)

washed his clothes and trimmed his hair when it wanted cutting, and her cooking was better than he got in the guard room. He thought now with distaste of Melisendra. Whimpering, whining baggage! That encounter had left a bad taste in his mouth. It was the last time he had used his gift to lay compulsion on any woman to come to his bed. Well, she had been a maiden, right enough, and it was likely that the foolish girl had known no better than to tell her mistress all that had happened. Lady Jerana’s knife had been sharp for him ever since he was a boy, and his brother Alaric had preferred him to any other companion. Now Jerana would have one more evil deed, or so she would certainly say, to hold over his head.

Melisendra’s presence would be a good reason to avoid Asturias. And yet, it was not entirely

unpleasant, to think he might have a son by a girl of good family, a son gently reared as a nobleman’s
nedestro
son. The boy would be six or so. Old enough for some training in the manly arts; and no doubt Melisendra would try her best to make him into a milksop out of her grudge against his father. He wanted no son of
his
reared by that whimpering whey-faced wench, nor by her sour mistress. So if Lady Jerana thought she was warning him off, with the news that his mishandling of Melisendra was common knowledge, well, she had better think again.

“Say to my father,” he said to the messenger, “that I will ride for Asturias within three days’ time. My work here is done.”

Before he left, he went down among the camp followers to find the woman Lilla, and gave her most of the money he had earned at Scaravel.

“You should, perhaps, buy yourself a little farm somewhere in these hills,” he said, “and perhaps a husband to help you to care for it, and to rear your son.”

“By that,” Lilla said, “I take it that you will not be coming back when your business in your homeland is done?”

Bard shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

He saw her swallow hard, and flinched in anticipation of a scene; but Lilla was too sensible a woman for that. She stood on tiptoe and gave him a hearty kiss and hug.

“Then Godspeed you, Wolf, and may you fare well in the Kilghards.”

He returned the kiss, grinning at her. “That’s a soldier’s woman! I’d like to say good-bye to the boy,”

he said, and she called the chubby boy, who came and stared up at Bard in his shining helmet, ready for the road southward. Bard picked him up and chucked him under the chin.

“I can’t acknowledge him, Lilla,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll have a home to take him to; and in any case there were enough men before me and after me.”

“I don’t expect it, Wolf. Any husband I marry can rear my son as his own, or find some other woman.”

“Just the same,” Bard went on, smiling at the boy’s bright eyes, “if he should show any talent for arms, in twelve years or so, and you have other children, so that you don’t need his work on the farm to support you in your old age, send him to me at Asturias, and I’ll put him in the way to earn his bread with the sword, or do better than that for him if I can.”

“That’s generous,” Lilla said, and he laughed.

“It’s easy to be generous with what may never come to pass; all this is supposing I’m still alive in twelve years or so, and that’s the one thing no soldier can ever tell. If you hear that I’m dead—well, then, girl, your son must make his way in the world as his father did, with his wits and his strong arm, and may all the devils be kinder to him than they’ve been to me.”

Lilla said, “That’s a strange blessing you give to your son, Wolf.”

“A wolf’s blessing?” Bard laughed again and said, “It may be that he is not my son at all; and a kinsman’s blessing would do him no good, just as my curse would do him no harm. I hold no faith in such things, Lilla. Curses and blessings are all one. I wish him well, and you too.” He gave the boy a rough smack on the cheek and set him down, and gave Lilla another kiss. Then he got on his horse and rode away, and if Lilla wept, she had sense enough not to do it until Bard was well out of sight.

Bard, however, was elated as he rode southward. He had freed himself of the one tie he had made in all those years, and he had done it at no more cost than by lightening himself of money he did not need.

Probably the boy was not his son, for all small fair-haired children looked very much alike anyhow, without need of kin ties, and would grow up with his feet firmly rooted in the dung of his mother’s dairy, and he would never need to take any thought for either of them again.

He rode south alone, toward the Kadarin. He made his way through a countryside ravaged by small

wars, for the Aldarans who had, in his father’s time, kept peace through all this country had fallen out, and now there were four small kingdoms, and the forests lay waste where the four brothers, all greedy and land hungry, had fought through them with clingfire and sorcery. Bard had taken service one year with one of them; and when they fell out—Dom Anndra of Scathfell had taken for himself a girl Bard wanted, a wisp of a thing fourteen years old, with long dark hair and eyes that reminded Bard of Carlina—he had left and taken service with the man’s brother and led Dom Lerrys right into the

stronghold by a secret way he had learned when he served Scathfell. But then the two brothers had made up their quarrel, and banded together, swearing many oaths, against a third brother, and the girl had warned Bard that one price of their compact was Bard’s head, for they both felt he would betray either or both of them; and so she let him out by the same secret door, and he fled to Scaravel, vowing he would never become involved again in kin strife!

And now he was riding homeward, to do just that. But at least these were his own kin!

He crossed the Kadarin and rode through the Kilghard Hills, seeing in the countryside the signs of war.

When he crossed the borders of Asturias, he noted the tokens of fighting in the countryside, and wondered if he should hasten to the king’s household? But no; Geremy claimed the throne, and sat in King Ardrin’s stronghold, and if Dom Rafael had already laid seige to that place, his message would have sent for Bard to join him there; and so he rode toward his old family home.

He had not realized how much the countryside would change in seven years; nor, paradoxically, how much it would remain the same. It was early spring; a heavy snow had fallen during the night, and the featherpod trees had put on their snow pods. When he and Carlina were children they had played under a featherpod tree in the courtyard. He was already well beyond children’s games, but he had climbed the tree to bring down pods for Carlina, so that she could make beds for her dolls with the feathery pods and the wool inside them. Once they found a really huge pod, and Carlina had put a kitten to bed inside the pod, cuddled in the feathery stuff, and sung it lullabyes; but the kitten had tired of the game and torn its way out of the pod. He remembered Carlina, her hair hanging in untidy ripples to her waist, standing with the torn pod in her hands, sucking on a finger where the kitten had scratched her, her eyes filling with tears. He had caught the kitten and threatened to wring its neck, but Carlina had grabbed it and sheltered it against her breast, warding him away with her small fingers.

Carlina. He was coming back to Carlina, who was his wife under the old law, and he would demand

that his father enforce it. If they had given Carlina to another man, first he would kill the other man, and then he would marry Carlina. And if the other man was Geremy, he would cut off Geremy’s

cuyones
and roast them before his face!

By the time he saw from afar the towers of Dom Rafael’s Great Hall, he had worked himself into a fine frenzy against Geremy, and against Carlina; if she had stayed with him, even Ardrin could not have parted them lawfully!

The sun had set, but it was a clear night, and three moons were in the sky. He thought of that as a lucky omen, but when he rode up to the gates of the Great Hall the gates were barred against him, and when he dismounted and beat on them, the voice of his father’s old
coridom
, Gwynn, came gruffly though:

“Be off with you! Who rides here when honest folk be abed? If you ha’ business with Dom Rafael,

come back by daylight when the rogues run back to their dens!”

“Open this gate, Gwynn,” Bard shouted, laughing, “for it is the Kilghard Wolf, and if you do not I shall leap the wall, and make you pay blood money if the rogues get my horse! What, would you bar me

from my father’s hearthside?”

“Young Master Bard! Is it really you? Brynat, Haldran, come here and unbar these gates! We heard you were on your way, young sir, but who’d think that you’d come at this hour?” The gate swung wide.

Bard dismounted and led his horse in, and old Gwynn came and fumbled one-handed to embrace him.

He was ancient, gray and stooped; he walked lamely, and one arm had been taken off at the elbow

when he had held the towers of the Great Hall single-handed before Bard was born, and hidden the lady, Dom Rafael’s first wife, in the lofts. For that service, Dom Rafael had sworn that none but old Gwynn should ever be
coridom
while he lived, and while the old man was long past his office, he jealously held on to it, refusing to let any younger man take over for him. He had shown Bard his first moves at swordplay when Bard was not seven years old. Now he hugged and kissed him, saying,

“Foster father, why are the gates barred in this peaceful countryside?”

“There’s no peace anywhere these days, Master Bard,” the old man said soberly. “Not with the Hasturs swearing all this land round here is theirs from away back, land that’s been held all these years by the di Asturiens—why, the very name
Asturias
means
land of di Asturiens;
how come all these damned Hasturs try to claim it? And now folk at Hali swearing to make all this one land under their tyrants, and trying to take weapons away from honest folk so we’ll all be at the mercy of cutthroats and bandits!

Oh, Master Bard, it’s evil days in this land since you went away!”

“I heard King Ardrin was dead,” Bard said.

“True, sir, and young Prince Beltran murdered by assassins, about that same time you left us, sir, though between you and me I’ve never been sure that Hastur who’s trying to claim the throne now

didn’t have some hand in it. He and the young prince rode out together, so they said, and only one of them came back, and of course it was the Hastur, and him a dirty
laranzu
and sandal wearer. So with Beltran dead, and Queen Ariel fled out of the country—Dom Rafael said it, when the old king died,

‘
That land fares ill where the king’s but a babe
,’ and sure enough, they’re fighting all up and down the land, and honest folk can’t get their crops in for the bandits in the fields, if it’s not the soldiers! And now, I hear, if the Hasturs win this war they’ll take away all our weapons, even bows for hunting, leave us with no more than daggers and pitchforks, and if they have their way, I dare say a shepherd won’t be allowed to carry a club to keep off the wolves!”

He added, taking the reigns of Bard’s horse with his good arm, “But come away in, sir, Dom Rafael’s going to be glad to hear you’ve come!” He shouted for a couple of grooms to come and unsaddle him, to carry his packs inside the Great Hall, and to bring lights and servants; in a little while, there were people running everywhere in the courtyard, dogs barking, noise and confusion.

Bard said, “I wonder, has my father gone to bed?”

“No, sir,” said the childish voice almost under his feet, “for I told him you would come tonight; I saw it in my starstone. And so grandsire waited for you in the Hall.”

Old Gwynn started back in dismay.

“Young Master Erlend!” he said crossly. “Ye’ve been forbidden the stables, ye uncanny wee man, you might have been trampled under all the horses! Yeur mammy will be angry with me!”

“The horses know me, and my voice,” said the child, coming out into the light. “They won’t step on me.” He looked to be about six years old, small for his age, and with a great mop of curly red hair, like freshly minted copper in the torchlight. Bard knew who he must be, even before the boy bent his knee in an odd, old-fashioned bow, and said, “Welcome home to you, sir my father, I wanted to be the first to see you. Gwynn, you must not be afraid, I shall tell Grandsire not to be angry with you.”

Bard scowled down at the boy. He said, “So you are Erlend.” Strange that he had not thought of that; Melisendra had had the red hair of the old kindreds, bred into them generations ago, the blood of the Hastur kin, of Hastur and Cassilda; but he had not thought that the boy might be
laran
gifted. “And you know who I am, then?” How, he wondered, had Melisendra spoken of him?

“Yes,” he said, “I have seen you in my mother’s mind and memory, though more when I was smaller

than now; now she is too busy, she says, bringing up a great boy like me, to have time for remembering the past days. And I have seen you in my starstone, and Grandsire has told me that you are a great warrior, and that you are called Wolf. I think perhaps I would like to be a great warrior too, though my lady mother said that more likely I will be a
laranzu
, a wielder of magic like
her
father. May I look at your sword, Father?”

“Yes, certainly.” Bard smiled at the small, serious boy, and knelt beside him, drawing his sword from the sheath. Erlend laid a small, respectful hand on the hilt. Bard started to warn him not to touch the blade, then realized that the boy already knew better. He sheathed the blade and swung the boy to his shoulder.

“So my son is the first to welcome me home after all these years of exile, and that is very fitting,” he said. “Come with me when I greet my father.”

The Great Hall seemed smaller than when he had last seen it, and shabbier. A long, low room, stone-floored, with the shields and banners of generations of di Asturien men hanging on the walls, and weapons too old for use displayed there too: pikes, and the old spears which were too clumsy for the close in fighting of the day, and tapestries woven hundreds of years ago, showing old gods and