[Hurog 01] - Dragon Bones Read online

  It wasn’t his fault that when I looked at him I saw the cheerful hellion he’d been as a toddler while he saw a stranger who looked like our father.

  I spoke again. “Father would have done it. Would have killed you for standing in his way.”

  “As he tried to kill you.” Tosten’s voice was soft, non-judgmental. “Some Oranstonians stopped at the tavern today. They were cursing a ship that had already sailed. The older one, the dangerous one, said he’d send a man to Newtonburn, but the likelihood was that you—he used your name—were gone. He said Ciernack would have to accept money to replace his slave. It would cost more than they could afford, and the money would come out of the younger man’s inheritance. Does that sound right?”

  I nodded, glad to turn to less painful subjects. “What did you do, spy upon them?”

  “No, I played for them. Likely that everyone heard them for a block—at least the younger man. He was vociferous about his objections to spending the rest of the year in Buril—wherever that is.”

  “Buril is Garranon’s estate in Oranstone. Landislaw, his younger brother, is court-raised though. He’ll view it as the far side of nowhere.” I’d intended on avoiding Buril, but it was good to know for certain. I outlined the events that led to my escape in as few a words as I could.

  “So what do you intend to do now?” Tosten asked, the firelight shifting over his face so I could not read his expression.

  “I’m going to fight a war with Vorsag in Oranstone.”

  Tosten, like Axiel, merely nodded, leading me to question his sanity, too. “It might work. War heroes are hard to dispose of neatly.” There was no doubt in his voice that I’d be a hero.

  “So I thought,” I agreed.

  Tosten tucked his head down, hair falling over his face. “I would like to go with you.”

  It was guilt. He’d hurt my feelings and wanted to make up for it.

  “Go learn from the minstrels in Estian,” I said. “I have enough fighters.”

  “I’m good, Ward. You know that.”

  He was. Oh, not like Father and me. His technique was speed and agility not strength, but that made him no less deadly, no matter what Father had said. Tosten would strengthen our party. Five fighters and a sorceress, with only Ciarra to guard.

  “If you want to help me, I could use you in Estian,” I said. “I need somewhere safe for the Brat.”

  His face came up, and I saw the same stubborn look that Ciarra had. “I’ll not go to Estian. You don’t have to let me travel with you, but I’ll follow. Don’t forget I have plenty of money to travel.”

  I closed my eyes. There were many reasons to welcome him and only one to send him away. I didn’t want to put my brother in danger. I’d take a look at the situation in Oranstone. If it looked too bad, I’d send him away with Ciarra. He’d go if it was to protect the Brat.

  “Get your bedroll,” I said. “You might as well camp with us now.”

  I helped him put the fire out and gather his things.

  WHEN DAWN CAME , I called everyone together. Ciarra sat near Tosten, occasionally patting his face as if to reassure herself he was really there. Tosten kept sliding unobtrusive glances at Oreg.

  “From now on,” I said, “we are a team. We work together, helping each other if we can. Every morning, we’ll train. For today, Axiel will teach Oreg, Bastilla, Ciarra, and Tosten.”

  “Axiel,” I continued, “I don’t know how much Oreg and Bastilla know. Ciarra is a beginner, and Tosten, you remember, is very good at knives and hand-to-hand. Penrod and I will work out together. In the evening, I’ll work out with Axiel and Penrod with Tosten. As we improve, we’ll change things, but training means survival, so we’re going to train as hard as we can and still travel.”

  THE PACE I SET, both in training and travel, was brutal. We all lost weight, even the horses. A week of hard traveling saw us roughly three days outside of Estian.

  “Elbow in, Bastilla.” I called, watching her fight with my sister.

  She’d known quite a bit about fighting, proving the reputation of the Cholytes was not undeserved, but she hadn’t had my aunt as a teacher. Bastilla’s footwork in particular was still rudimentary, partially because her feet were still tender. Ciarra, smaller and younger, was a much better swordswoman.

  My sister hardly looked like the delicate child she’d seemed in Hurog. Hard muscle shaped her arms and shoulders as she countered one of Bastilla’s swings.

  Penrod tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to Tosten and Oreg’s bout. Frowning, I walked across the camp and observed them.

  Like Ciarra, Oreg had thrived on our journey. His horsemanship had improved until he could ride most of the horses we had with us. His fighting was indeed somewhere between mine and Ciarra’s, but much closer to mine. Watching him fight with Tosten was like seeing two flitting shadows, one gold, one dark. Their hands moved so fast it was hard to follow the action, which was why Penrod had called me over.

  My brother’s fighting had been rusty at first, but he’d quickly improved. It was his attitude that remained a problem. Like everyone else, he’d accepted that Oreg was a bastard relative, but it only seemed to increase his resentment. In truth, Tosten seemed so unhappy, I wondered why he’d chosen to come with us. He barely spoke to anyone except Ciarra. Oreg, he despised. Had Oreg been a normal boy, I’d have been worried for him. Instead, I worried about Tosten.

  Oreg was having to work at keeping Tosten’s sharp blade away from his body.

  “Remember, this is practice, Tosten, not an all-out,” I called and watched grimly until the fervor of his strokes diminished.

  Axiel looked up at me from where he was fixing our breakfast and nodded his agreement to my words.

  “Axiel,” I said, keeping a wary eye on Tosten and Oreg. “Tell me about the siege at Farnish Keep.”

  “Not Farnish Keep again,” gasped Oreg, ducking my brother’s sword. “Please, anything but that.”

  Axiel was a better fighter than even Stala, and under his tutelage, I was fast improving. Better yet, he had a firm understanding of army tactics. Penrod was quick and clever. He quite often beat me in training bouts. At every opportunity I picked their memories for campaign stories about Oranstone, about fighting battles, and about strategies for winning. They teased me about it, but they talked until they were hoarse because I asked it of them.

  Axiel began with the mistakes the defenders made. I listened and learned.

  After breakfast and stories, we rode through grasslands all day. The travel was easier on the horses than the rough coastal roads had been, but it was disheartening for the riders. One mile looked much like the last and the next. It was difficult to believe we’d ever see Oranstone.

  After practice and dinner, I stole the last hour before dusk to ride out alone on Pansy as always. Sometimes I used the time for hunting; sometimes I just worked with the stallion, teaching him the kinds of things a warhorse should know and a few others besides. It kept me fresh and gave me time to be myself—whoever that was. With the others, I was Seleg, my legendary hero, borrowing his calmness and leadership abilities, which only Oreg noticed with quiet sarcasm. And, as we approached Estian, I could see them responding to Seleg’s calm confidence with confidence of their own—even Oreg. Only Pansy heard my doubts.

  “SO, A XIEL ,” I PANTED, lying on the ground belly first and watching Oreg run Ciarra through her paces. “What do you think of us as a mercenary band? Are we big enough, or does someone need to travel to Estian and recruit?”

  “Someone trained him as an assassin,” he replied with a nod in Oreg’s direction. Axiel wasn’t nearly as worn out as I, but I gained some satisfaction from his sweat-dampened clothes.

  “Oreg, an assassin?” I watched the fight more attentively.

  “I wasn’t speaking of Ciarra.” His tone was dry. “He’s modified them, but they’re assassin’s moves, all the same. Where did you find him? There can’t be many assassin-trained mages scattered about.”

 
; “He found me,” I replied truthfully. “He’s a Hurog—a bastard, but still a Hurog. I don’t know a lot about his background, but I’ll be damned if I’ll treat him the way my father did.”

  “Ah,” said Axiel. After a moment he said, “I don’t think we need any more men. Hit and run, midnight raids—that’s the best work. More skill and less chance.”

  “Less glory,” I said. “But I suppose I don’t have the belly for close-fought battles won against the odds. Stala has seen to that.”

  “Never was a good general who won a close-fought battle,” agreed Axiel, somehow managing to imitate my aunt’s voice with his bass.

  I finished the quote. “A good general never gets in a close-fought battle. Hit them where they are weak.”

  “Avoid them when they are strong,” added Tosten, coming from the fire to sit cross-legged next to me. “Hit their supply trains and their payroll.”

  The fight between Oreg and Ciarra degenerated into farce when she broke into giggles at the fierce scowls he was sending her way. The sounds were atonal and odd, but they made me smile. Oreg hoisted her over his shoulder and spun around until he staggered.

  6

  ESTIAN: Erdrick, Beckram, and Garranon

  It was not just my story. Some of it I heard of much later. While we were still approaching Estian, events occurring in the city were to play a major role in what happened later.

  NORMALLY THE TREATISE HE’D borrowed from the king’s library would have been enough to keep his attention, but Erdrick found himself too busy trying to ignore the sounds coming from his brother’s room next door.

  He shifted in his bed to get comfortable and turned the page. “At least they could be quieter about it,” he muttered as a particularly shrill cry came through the walls. “It’s disgusting. The queen’s older than Mother.” But much better looking, he had to admit.

  The sex didn’t bother him; he’d been ignoring his brother’s mating calls since their mother’s maid had first seduced Beckram. It was the thought of his brother’s neck under the headsman’s ax which worried him—and that was probably the very thing that had led Beckram to the affair in the first place. As usual, Beckram played, and Erdrick fussed over the risks his twin took.

  Erdrick snorted in self-disgust. He’d almost jumped out of his skin yesterday when the queen mistook him for Beckram. She should have better sense than to try a little hands-on in public. After all, it wasn’t only Beckram who would die if the truth came out. The queen’s adultery carried the death penalty for both.

  And Erdrick had squirmed under the king’s regard once too often this past week. A man whose most notable accomplishment was the number of farming manuscripts he borrowed from the king’s library should not have attracted so much attention—unless the king thought he was looking at Beckram. Erdrick had no doubt that the king knew. He’d tried to warn Beckram, but his brother had just shrugged. Erdrick consoled himself with the thought that he hadn’t seen anger in the king’s eye, merely speculation.

  GARRANON TURNED FROM THE softness of his pillow to look at his father’s killer and softened his voice. “The word from my estate is that the raiding is getting bad in the west.”

  Jakoven, High King of the Five Kingdoms of Tallvenish Rule, waved a hand indifferently and pushed the embroidered velvet spread to the floor. “The Vorsag won’t stay there. The land has no value to them; they’re raiders, not farmers.”

  “Your majesty, it is your people they are killing. Your people and mine.” Though his words were imperative, Garranon was careful to keep his voice indifferent as he pulled the linen sheets straight where the bedspread had tugged them.

  “My boy,” purred the king with affectionate dismissal, “you worry to much. Go to sleep. You’re keeping me from my rest.”

  Garranon buried his face in his pillow and forced his body to relax. He took his hatred and stuffed it carefully back behind the barriers he’d learned to build years ago, when he’d been dumped in Estian at twelve with his eight-year-old brother to take care of because everyone else was dead, martyrs to the cause of Oranstonian freedom. He’d learned early that lack of caution got you killed. Worse, it got your wife and children raped and killed, too. He wouldn’t be like his father. He planned and nudged, changing things a little at a time. If the cost was more than he could bear, at least his brother was alive and well. Garranon’s efforts wouldn’t harm his family, only his soul.

  And his soul hurt now for what he’d done to poor Ward of Hurog. Garranon had destroyed a harmless boy’s life, and it had accomplished nothing, because the boy had fled with Ciernack’s slave. If it had been possible, Garranon would have told the king he had not delivered the writ; the king had left it to his discretion. But there were spies among his men, and too many of them knew he’d taken Ward with the intention of delivering him to the asylum. So Ward was a fugitive to be caught and caged, and Garranon had used almost every penny he had to buy his brother’s life—if indeed he had: Ciernack wasn’t exactly trustworthy. The gods knew what damage Landislaw would do to Buril, but he wasn’t safe here.

  Tension tightened Garranon’s stomach until it burned. King Jakoven had declared Ward unfit as much to tighten the binding on Garranon as for the gold he’d given the royal treasury. Jakoven didn’t care who ruled Hurog, a keep so poor it sent its taxes in kind rather than gold. With the old Hurogmeten dead, the powerful warrior who’d held everyone in awe, Hurog was of no consequence. But the king would care that Garranon cared.

  If Garranon spoke up for Ward now, there was a good possibility that Jakoven would have the boy killed. The king was jealous of Garranon’s affections, be it for a person or a cause.

  The sleeping king’s arm fell away from him as Garranon wondered if the way he’d chosen was worth anything at all. He certainly hadn’t been able to help Oranstone.

  Whatever he said in public or to Garranon, the king knew that Kariarn wanted all of Oranstone. Jakoven was waiting for Oranstone to fall so the Vorsag would be forced to attack Tallven and Seaford from the mountain passes, giving the strategic ground to the armies of the Kingdoms.

  It had only been fifteen years since the Oranstone Rebellion had been put down. Too many would remember fighting against her to be outraged at a “little” raiding. It wouldn’t be a popular war until Oranstone was swallowed up entire by the greedy Vorsagian army. Then the Kingdoms’ nobles would be angry and outraged. The strength of righteous indignation would make all the nobles of the four remaining kingdoms support Jakoven completely.

  It was a good strategy, if no one worried about Oranstone. When Garranon sent Landislaw home, he’d given him instructions to begin training men to protect Buril—and to evacuate the estate if necessary.

  If killing the king would have saved Oranstone, Garranon would have killed him long since. But even as a boy, Garranon had known that murdering the king would accomplish nothing but Garranon’s own death. It was better to use the king than to die as a murderer, though he was aware his father would not have thought so. But if he had wanted his father’s approval, he’d have killed himself like his mother had. If his father could see him playing the king’s whore, he would slit his eldest surviving son’s throat.

  Garranon stared at the thick rug on the floor of the royal bedchamber while the king slept.

  “NEWS, E RDRICK ,” SAID BECKRAM as soon as Erdrick opened the connecting door.

  The morning light streamed in and hit the parchment Beckram held in his hand. His voice had been so sober, Erdrick expected the royal guards to be waiting at the doorway.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Beckram tossed the letter toward Erdrick. “You read it.”

  As soon as he saw the script on the pages he picked up off the floor, Erdrick knew it was from his father. He read it twice.

  Ward condemned to the asylum? Poor, poor, Ward. Erdrick knew what Hurog meant to his cousin, idiot or not. You couldn’t be a Hurog and not know how strong the ties of the keep bound all who lived there. The Hurogmeten had
reached up past the grave to hurt his son one last time. The image made him shudder; the late Hurogmeten had always scared him.

  “What I want to know is how Father knew that I was sleeping with the queen,” said Beckram aggressively.

  You don’t sleep with her, was on the tip of Erdrick’s tongue. But his brother didn’t deal well with other people’s humor, so he said, “He doesn’t say anything about it,” instead.

  “He says he wants me to use my influence on the royal household to get the king to reinstate Ward.”

  Time to admit it. “Hmm, yes. Well, I thought that Father ought to know you were committing the family to treason. So he’d be prepared.”

  Beckram made a hissing sound. “The king doesn’t care about that; she has not born him, nor anyone else, an heir. He has Garranon and whoever else he can lure to his bed.”

  “Is that what she told you?”

  Beckram gave one of his rare, real smiles. The ones that reminded Erdrick why he loved his twin. “No, it’s what the king told me when he gave me permission to have her.” He leaned back. “Although permission is the wrong word; it was more in the nature of an order.”

  Erdrick didn’t know whether to be relieved or more worried. The king played deep games. “You’d best be careful.”

  Beckram nodded dismissively. “What I don’t understand is why Father’s so worried about Ward. Everyone knows that Ward is stupid—too stupid to run an estate like Hurog. Even for the Hurogmeten, miser though he was, it was difficult to survive from year to year. Still . . .” He hesitated. “I don’t like Ward—”

  Because, stupid as he is, he reminds you how you should act, instead of how you want to act, thought Erdrick.

  “But I wouldn’t want to see him confined to a room in the royal asylum. Could you see it? I think he’d kill someone out of sheer frustration. But surely some compromise can be reached. Father would take him in. Poor Tosten has probably been feeding the fishes for some time, courtesy of our dead uncle, which would leave Hurog to Father.”