The man who stood there was Ethir, the one who had caught her in the stables; the first one who had… He lifted her easily, setting her on her feet.
“You’re going to regret running, Princess,” he said in that soft voice of his. “We’ll make sure you’re going to regret it.”
“Please,” Lenore begged, but it made no difference. Ethir dragged her back toward the waiting horses, and the trip south, and every moment of horror that awaited her beyond the bridges leading out of the kingdom.
CHAPTER TWO
King Godwin II of the Northern Realm sat on his throne in front of a sea of his courtiers and struggled to keep his temper. After all that had happened, after his daughter Nerra had been forced to leave, he hated that he still had to sit here, pretending that all was well. He wanted to rise up from this throne and go after her, yet he knew he couldn’t.
Instead, he had to sit here, in a great hall that even now had the remnants of the feasting before not quite cleared away, holding court. The great hall was huge and stone built, with banners on the wall with the bridges that marked the North. Squares of carpet had been set out, each one restricted to a different rank of the nobility, or to particular noble families.
He had to stand there before them, and he had to do it alone, because Aethe wouldn’t step out in front of courtiers who had helped send Nerra away. Right then, Godwin would have preferred to be almost anywhere else: Ravin’s kingdom, the third continent of Sarrass, anywhere.
How could he pretend when Nerra was banished, and his youngest daughter, Erin, seemed to have run off to be a knight? Godwin knew he looked disheveled, his graying beard less than perfect, his robes of office stained, but that was because he had barely slept in days. He could see Duke Viris and his cronies looking over with obvious amusement at that. If the man’s son weren’t due to marry his daughter…
Thoughts of Lenore calmed him. She was off about the wedding harvest, accompanied by Vars. She would be back soon, and all would be well. In the meantime, though, there were serious matters that needed to be attended to; rumors that had swirled through the court and promised danger for all of them.
“Bring forward my son!” Godwin said, the words ringing around the room. “Rodry, step out here and be seen!”
His eldest son stepped out through the crowd of those watching, looking like the knight that he was, and like the man Godwin had been when he was younger. He was tall and muscled with years of sword practice, his blond hair cut short so as not to get in the way. He was every inch the warrior, and it was clear that people watched him with love as he strode through them. Now, if only he could think, as well.
“Is all well, Father?” he asked, offering a bow.
“No, all is not well,” Godwin shot back. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out about the ambassador?”
Say this for his eldest son; at least he had a solid streak of honesty in him. He could no more hide behind a lie than behind a slender tree. Vars would probably have dissembled out of cowardice, and Greave would have wrapped everything up in pretty quotes from those books of his, but Rodry just stood there, solid as a stone. With about the brains of one, too, given what he said next.
“I couldn’t just stand there after he’d insulted our entire family, our whole kingdom,” Rodry said.
“That’s exactly what you should have done,” Godwin shot back. “Instead, you shaved his head, killed two of his guards… If you weren’t my son and heir, you’d hang for something like that. As it is, those friends of yours…”
“They took no part in the fight,” Rodry said, standing tall, taking all of this onto himself. If he weren’t so angry at the stupidity of it all, Godwin might almost be proud.
“Well, they’ll be stuck taking part in one soon enough,” he said. “Do you think a man like King Ravin won’t strike back? I sent his ambassador on his way because he couldn’t do anything to us. Now you’ve given him a reason to try harder.”
“And we’ll be there ready to stop him when he does,” Rodry said. Of course he was unrepentant. He might be a man grown, and a knight, but he had never known true war. Oh, he’d fought with bandits and creatures, as any Knight of the Spur would, but he hadn’t faced a full army on the battlefield the way Godwin had in his youth, hadn’t seen the chaos, and the death, and the…
“Enough,” Godwin said. “You were a fool to do this, Rodry. You must learn better if you’re ever to be worthy to be king.”
“I—” Rodry began, clearly ready to argue.
“Be quiet,” Godwin said. “You want to argue because your temper won’t let you do anything else. Well, I’m still king, and I don’t want to hear it.”
For a moment, he thought that his son might argue anyway, and then Godwin would have to find a punishment that would actually stick when it came to the heir to his throne. Thankfully, Rodry held his tongue.
“If you ever do something as stupid as this again, I’ll have your status as a knight taken from you as a disgrace,” Godwin said. It was the worst thing he could think of when it came to Rodry, and the message of it certainly seemed to hit home. “For now, step back out of my sight, before I lose my temper the way you always seem to.”
He could see Rodry reddening, and he thought that his son might stay and argue, but he seemed to think better of it. Instead, he turned on his heel and stalked from the hall. Maybe he was capable of learning something after all. He sat back on a throne made of hard, dark, unyielding wood, waiting to see who would come forward next, if anyone would dare, given that he still had anger lingering after rebuking his son.
Finnal, his soon to be son-in-law, filled the void, stepping forward smoothly and giving a bow that was even smoother.
“Your majesty,” he said. “Forgive me, but given how disrupted things have been with the wedding preparations, my family feels that I should make one or two… requests.”
His family, which meant Duke Viris, who still stood there smiling in the background, calm as a heron standing above a river waiting to see what he could grab. He was a man who never seemed to be directly responsible for anything, but always seemed to just be there, slightly out of reach of any blame.
“What requests?” Godwin asked.
Finnal stepped forward to hand him a rolled length of parchment. Even that was well done, because it meant that he would never have to read out the demands within the parchment himself.
They were demands; very subtle ones, but demands nonetheless. Where before, the lands offered as a dowry had run to just short of several villages, now, the revised suggestion was that it should include them. There was more money, of course, because inevitably there would be more money, but the real gains of it were hidden away, spread across an extra fishing vessel here, a tithe from a mill there. None of it looked very much, and if Godwin were openly outraged by it, he would probably look like a miser, but when you added it together, it was a definite increase.
“This is not what our families have already agreed,” he pointed out.
Finnal offered another of those elegant bows. “My father is a big believer that an agreement can always be… renegotiated. Besides, that was before other circumstances came to light, my king.”
“What other circumstances?” Godwin demanded.
“The risk of scale sickness within a family always makes it harder to marry into,” Finnal said. He sounded apologetic about it, but Godwin didn’t believe that tone for a moment. Was this why his father had stood there and had another noble bring Nerra’s sickness into the light? For a renegotiation?
Godwin rose from his throne, his anger propelling him. He wasn’t sure what he would have said then, what he would have done, but he didn’t get any chance to do it, because in that moment the doors to the great hall burst open, letting in a guard who seemed to be all but holding up a serving girl. Godwin normally didn’t pay that much attention to the individual servants, but he felt sure that this was one of the ones who had gone off with Lenore, just days before.
The sight of her there was enough to make Godwin stop short, a hand of cold fear wrapping around his heart where before there had been only the heat of anger.
“Your majesty,” the guard called out. “Your majesty, there has been an attack!”
It took a second before Godwin could even speak, his fear was so great.
“What kind of attack? What happened?” he demanded. He looked over to the young woman there, who looked as though she was barely standing.
“We… we were…” She shook her head as though she could barely even bring herself to say it. “There was an inn… there were people there. King Ravin’s people…”
Now the fear inside Godwin gave way to horror.
“Lenore, where is she? Where is she?” he demanded.
“They took her,” the servant said. “They killed the guards, and they took us, and they…” The pause told Godwin everything he needed to know. “They let some of us go, they wanted us to tell you.”
“And Lenore?” Godwin asked. “What about my daughter?”
“They still have her,” the young woman said. “They said they were going to take her south, over the bridge. They’re going to give her to King Ravin.”
In that moment, nothing else mattered; not his son’s overreactions, not his son-to-be’s demands. All that mattered was the thought that another of his daughters was in danger, and this time, he wasn’t going to fail her, not like he had with Nerra.
“Summon my knights!” he called out. “Send messages to the Knights of the Spur. Summon my guards. I want every man we have gathered together! Why are you standing there? Move!”
Around him, guards and servants broke into motion, some running to send messages, some hurrying to go get weapons. For his part, Godwin stalked from the hall, heading through the castle, not caring how many followed him. He all but ran down a spiral stair, feet rattling off the well-worn stone. He passed along tapestry-lined corridors, along paths that had been worn deep into the tiled floors by generations of feet. He headed down to the armory, where a huge door of solid brass stood between the world and the weapons that the castle held, the finest work that the House of Weapons had. The guards there stepped aside to let him pass.
His armor sat on its stand, breastplate dulled with age, greaves worked with interlocking swirls. Ordinarily, Godwin would have waited for a page to help him, but now he threw it on, fastening buckles, tying stays. He knew he should be making his way to the queen’s chambers, going to tell her that another of her daughters was in danger. Right then, Godwin could have faced a thousand armies, but he couldn’t face doing that.
What he was about to face was bad enough. Lenore was in danger, had probably faced horrors that were almost beyond imagining. Even with all his armies, Godwin didn’t know if they would be in time to retrieve her, or what foes they would face in the attempt. All he knew was that he couldn’t face losing another daughter, not now.
“I will get her back,” he said aloud. “Whatever it takes, I will get my daughter back.”
CHAPTER THREE
Rodry was furious, his anger bubbling up in him the way lava might have bubbled in one of the volcanoes of the far north, hinting at worse to come. Servants rushed past him, and Rodry had to move himself carefully out of their path; he wasn’t like his brother Vars, wasn’t the kind of man who would take his frustrations out on another.
Frustrations? That wasn’t the right word when his father had just humiliated him for doing something that he should have done in the first place.
A group of his friends were approaching now, and Rodry waited for them. None of them were yet the knights they wanted to be, but at least he could depend on them to support him.
“Your father seems angry,” one of his friends, Kay, said. He sounded nervous about the whole thing.
“You’re just nervous because you’re the one who escorted the ambassador down to the border,” Mautlice said. He was the son of an earl, always good to have on a hunt, and strong with it.
“I won’t let him do anything to hurt all of you,” Rodry said. “I’ve already told him that it was down to me alone.”
“There was no need,” Seris said. He was plump and dressed in layers of velvet, always quick with a quip, but just as quick to back Rodry up.
“I appreciate that,” Rodry said. “I have two brothers who will happily dance around what they really want to say. I value people who say what they feel.”
“You seem pretty angry about all this,” Kay said.
That wasn’t a big enough word for what Rodry was feeling now. Humiliated, maybe. Frustrated that he couldn’t seem to do the right thing. Frustrated with his father, who had already sent Nerra away, who seemed to be angry with him even though he’d done the only honorable thing when it came to the ambassador, and who seemed to be determined to pander to Finnal and his family, in spite of the rumors about him.
There were days when Rodry was convinced that he would never understand politics. Why should he have to, though? A man should do the right thing, the honorable thing, and trust that those around him would do the same. He should be strong enough to protect his friends and strike down evil. Everything else was… was just playing games.
He headed in the direction of his rooms, through the maze of corridors that filled the castle, the others following in his wake. They headed up along a gallery of stained windows, each twisting the light in a different way, then through a broad receiving room filled with deep oak furniture. Rodry shoved a table aside and kept moving.
Around him, the castle was abuzz, but Rodry was angry enough to ignore that. It was probably just something to do with the wedding. Ever since his father had sent the wedding harvest off early, the castle had been scrambling to keep up.
Rodry made it to his rooms. They were more starkly functional than those of his brothers, with trunks and chests along one wall. His armor stood on a stand, spotlessly clean, cared for with all the precision he’d learned among the Knights of the Spur.
Thoughts of the order brought with it thoughts of Erin, since Commander Harr had sent messages to let the court know where she was. Rodry should have guessed that his little sister would head out to the Spur eventually, but he hadn’t, simply because it wasn’t the kind of thing that girls did.
Perhaps he should be the one to go out there and fetch her back. As a Knight of the Spur, he had the right to enter their fortress home. As Erin’s half-brother, he might be able to talk her around, or at least drag her back. At the same time though, Rodry was glad that at least one member of his family could do as they wished.
“We’ll go to the House of Weapons,” he said to the others. “Spend some time in the training rings there.”
“Again?” Kay said. “I’d rather be hunting.”
“You all say that you want to be knights someday,” Rodry said. “Well, for that, you need to be able to fight better. Maybe enough lessons with Swordmaster Wendros and you’ll even beat me.”
That would take a lot of lessons, but there was no reason not to give them some hope.
“Come on,” he said. “It will impress that maid of my sister’s you seem to be so sweet on.”
“Do you think so?” Kay asked.
“Well, he needs something to impress her,” Seris said, and the others laughed.
The group of them felt as though it was about to fall into all the familiar joking and camaraderie, not quite that of the real knights Rodry spent time with, but close enough for now, and almost enough to keep his anger in check.
Then a servant came running in.
“Your highness,” the man said. “I’ve been sent to find you. It’s about Princess Lenore.”
Instantly, Rodry spun toward the man. “What about her? What’s wrong?”
Just the servant’s tone said that something was, and whatever it was, it was bad.