“Roric has never taken my advice on anything yet,” said King Hadros. He paused for a long pull of ale, ruffled the ears of the hound that lay at his feet, then glowered at Kardan from under his eyebrows. “But it is the only lead we have. We know at any rate that he went north.”
“The Hot-River Mountains,” said Kardan slowly. “That is where the king we outlawed at the All-Gemot has his kingdom.” Hadros was back sitting drinking at the head of his own hall, with Kardan seated in the place of honor on the bench facing him. Both kings’ warriors crowded together on the rest of the benches. Firelight flickered across their faces.
Queen Arane sat beside Hadros, looking completely out of place yet also completely at ease, wearing a blue silk dress and sipping delicately from her ale horn. Hadros’s warriors and housecarls kept shooting the pair of them surreptitious glances and whispering whenever the king’s eye did not fall on them.
“The Princess Karin’s welfare must come before any concern for outlawed kings and their kingdoms,” she said in a friendly tone, patting Hadros on the arm. Her own warriors were drinking too, but they stayed constantly on the alert. “Even kings need to think about the relations of men and women sometimes as well as about battle and glory.”
Before eating, Hadros had ridden away from the castle, saying he would ask the Weaver where Roric had gone, “And I hope for once to get a straight answer!” He returned in half an hour glowering but in a fierce good humor, and with nothing to say about the Weaver. Kardan, who had learned already that the other king used humor to face situations he could not control, wondered what answer he had really gotten.
Kardan had drawn his sword casually as they sat down on the benches and had had it across his knees all evening. When the warriors were not speculating about Hadros and the queen, they appeared to be watching him. The only person there who seemed oblivious was Gizor One-hand, who had been using his bandaged arm to raise his ale horn unsteadily but continuously. No one sat within ten feet on either side of the old warrior.
Hadros looked across at King Kardan as though noticing his sword for the first time. “After what we’ve learned this evening,” he said conversationally, “I hope you realize that Roric did not carry your daughter away by force.”
Kardan drummed his fingers lightly on the steel. “And I hope you realize that he must have a powerful hold over her, for her to flee both her own father and the court here where she was raised.”
Hadros looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, then worked the golden armband off his arm, drew his own sword to slip its tip through the band, and reached it across the firepit.
But King Kardan carefully pushed the proffered armband away. It was made of solid gold and was heavily worked and decorated, with tiny bearded faces peeking out through intertwined vines and bunches of grapes-not a product of the northern kingdoms, this, but surely something won by looting in the south. It was probably worth as much as a small manor. “Like you, Hadros,” Kardan said quietly, “I do not take compensation for the life of my child. If she is dead, her killers will pay for their blood-guilt in their own blood.”
Hadros pulled down his eyebrows. “Do you suggest that I would consider this sufficient compensation for someone’s life, even a woman’s?” His tone was brusque, but to Kardan he seemed to be mocking him. He retrieved the armband and slid it back on. “I was merely making you a guest-gift. When I pay compensation, I pay it royally.”
His eyes narrowed further, and his next words came out measured and cold. “But while we are speaking of compensation, think of this: The only reason Roric and Karin would flee together, slaying good men in the process, is if they shared a guilty secret, such as having killed Valmar.”
The hall went completely silent except for the hissing of the fire. Kardan’s hand tightened on his hilt. The queen’s warriors stood up, as though casually, and moved toward the head of the hall. King Hadros’s two younger sons looked up sharply, their hands on their own swords, but their faces were anguished rather than angry. Good boys, Kardan had thought when introduced, reminding him of his own dead son when a few years younger.
Queen Arane laughed into the silence, a light, almost musical laugh. “Are the two of you then more interested in blaming each other than in finding Roric and Karin?” There was a brief pause when no one answered her, and the two kings kept their eyes locked on each other. Her warriors, Kardan realized, would tip the balance if it came to a fight. “Would you rather see each other dead,” she added as though the question was an amusing one, “or have your heirs back again?” The kings turned slowly to look at her.
“I realize Valmar is not here,” Arane said, “but from what you have told me there must be something to this story of his having left with the Wanderers. And you, Hadros, should know well there is a much better explanation for why Karin and Roric have fled. You yourself sent the message to capture them when they reached here-they are fleeing for their lives, probably thinking you have gone berserk, killed Valmar yourself, and are planning on finishing them off next.”
The suggestion was so outrageous that Kardan’s reply died on his lips, and he saw Hadros too struggling to find something to say.
The queen laughed again, squeezed Hadros’s hand affectionately, then sprang up to come around the fire pit with a swish of her skirts and do the same to Kardan. Gizor roused himself as though about to speak but did not.
How did she do that? Kardan wondered. He found himself sliding his sword back into its sheath. The two kings’ warriors, who had been reaching for their weapons a moment earlier, now had their ale horns in their hands again.
“So let us follow them north,” said the queen, returning to her seat with a smile and a quick hand-motion to her own men. “Then we can question them as to what really happened. My ship will take us more swiftly up the coast than they can ride overland. We should be in those mountains before they are.”
“That troll-horse of Roric’s is fast, ” Dag piped up in objection.
But Hadros paid no attention to his son. “We’ll take my ship, now that I have it back again,” he said thoughtfully. “Yours got us across the channel, Arane, but mine has more oars.” He had stopped making accusations, real or mocking, and seemed now interested only in planning for tomorrow. “We may catch them even before the mountains-there is that one spot where the peninsula narrows to almost nothing…”
“You have to take me with you, Father,” interrupted Dag again in a high, clear voice. The king cocked his head toward him. “If Valmar- If I am now your heir, then I- That is, I think that Roric might talk to me even if he wouldn’t answer questions from you.”
Gizor One-hand spoke at last, lurching to his feet and spilling his ale. “Do not let this woman muddy your thinking,” he said to King Hadros, his voice thick but not at all confused. “Roric killed your warriors, attacked me, and through us attacked you. We may ‘question’ the princess, but for him there can be only one fate. There is but one way a foresworn man may pay the blood-guilt against his lord, and that is with his own life.”
King Hadros’s warship came around the headland and straight into the teeth of a north wind. The two kings and Queen Arane stood out of the way while the sailors lowered the sail, its red canvas snapping furiously as though alive and fighting back. The helmsman shouted as oars splashed into the water, and the sailors bent their backs to pull.
Kardan wondered again about the “troll-horse” of Roric’s. He realized he knew very little about this man, other than that Hadros had raised him from a foundling as his foster-son and had made him one of warriors. He did not like to think of him with Karin, but the image kept coming unbidden: a rough, unmannered man, the get of some slut on one of the smaller manors, whose hard hands might even at this moment be peeling Karin’s clothes from her body to satisfy his base lusts.
He should never have let Hadros take her as a hostage, he told himself, even if it meant all their immediate deaths. He had tried to deny it, but all the evidence suggested that she loved this man who might be half-troll himself. If she had never come to Hadros’s court, she would never have been brought up to think a man like Roric was better than the alternatives, would not now be galloping on a horse of voima far faster than this ship could possibly take them, far away into the northern mountains.
“Worried how far they’re ahead of us?” asked King Hadros good-humoredly. “My seamen are strong rowers, and the wind can’t stay against us for long. Riding double, they’ll be much slower than we are. And they’ll have to hunt-not many people live in the center of the peninsula, and they will have trouble finding food. We’ll catch them, all right.”
They were starting north along the west shore of the peninsula on which all the northern kingdoms were located. The coast on their right was dark and rocky, and to the left stretched unmeasured miles of open ocean, flashing green and silver in the sun.
“I can barely remember the last ten years, now that we’re underway at last,” said Hadros, grinning into the wind. “How could I have spent so long at peace? This is the real life for a man-feeling the waves, hearing the creak of the mast, chasing down an enemy in a fast ship with good warriors on board and good seamen at the oars.”
Kardan looked away, pretending he had not heard. He had no intention of becoming nostalgic for a war he had lost, and he would not let the other king goad him into a reply.
At the same time ten years ago that Kardan had sworn on steel and rowan to pay the tribute, Hadros had sworn to treat Karin as his own daughter-as long as the tribute was paid. He had been happy then to accept the black-bearded king’s word.
But should he have done so? Had Hadros already enjoyed the princess’s embraces many times, perhaps beginning when she was still a little girl? Had she then been passed to Valmar to teach him the ways of manhood, and had young Dag recently begun to take his turn as well?
Kardan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He reminded himself that when Karin returned home she had not seemed coarsened or abased. Hadros’s offer for her to marry his heir suggested that he still considered her a woman worthy of a king’s son, a maid who could command a fine bride-price rather than a discarded concubine. But she had never seemed completely happy to be home again, and especially in the few days before she disappeared her moods had been wild. She had denied any feeling for Valmar, although Hadros had said she had spent the night with him at least once, and she had kept it from her father when Roric arrived. He had to conclude bitterly that he just did not know his daughter-and if they did not find her he never would.
“I was thinking about Dag,” said Hadros beside him.
Kardan opened his eyes, startled as though the other king had read some of his thoughts.
“If Roric doubles back, I hope Dag will be able to direct the castle’s defenses himself. I even have doubts he’ll be able to manage the breaking of the yearling colts. It should have been Valmar left in charge. Well, I have thought a few times that my sons might use the toughening of war! And the boy may be right; it is possible that Roric would talk to him when he wouldn’t to anyone else.”
Hadros glanced toward the bow of the ship where Gizor One-hand reclined in front of the mast. “When he insisted on accompanying us,” he added in a lower tone, “I had no one else but Dag to put in authority. Roric knows all too well exactly how many warriors I have, and just what to do to spread them to maximum thinness.”
Queen Arane stood a few feet away, easily balancing herself against the ship’s motion with a hand on the rail, following their conversation with a faintly ironic smile on her lips.
Hadros turned to look again at Kardan. “You look terrible,” he said with another grin. “Not a good sailor, is that it? Is that why your own ship had not been made ready?”
Kardan shook his head hard. He did feel queasy, but this ship’s rising and falling through the waves had only a little to do with it. Besides thinking about Karin, he kept being reminded of his oldest son, dead so short a time, whose ship had risen and fallen through waves like these until it had smashed against the rocks and all had drowned.
He had thought then that he had nothing left to live for, having neither wife nor child, and a kingdom his only at Hadros’s whim. Karin, restored to him, had abruptly given his life purpose again, but she had also given him a whole new array of events to fear.
“Worried about the lass?” Hadros added, this time without the grin. “I am too. Did she tell you she took over the direction of my household when my queen died? As soon as I returned from the All-Gemot without her, I knew the castle would never be the same. I just wish she had the sense to stay with Valmar! Women,” he added in a mutter.
Kardan turned from him and tried watching the waves, rising higher than the ship before they fell, their tips edged in white, then decided it would be even better not to watch them.
But Hadros was not done. “Roric won’t hurt her, but neither of them can have any idea what they will find in the northern mountains. There are creatures of voima there that are worse than even those in the tales told late at night when the youngsters are asleep. I’ve been in those mountains-I know.”
Kardan seized him by the arm. He immediately tried to make it seem that he was just trying to keep his balance, but there was more to it. Without knowing Karin’s mind now that she was a grown woman, without being able to see her fate, he desperately needed an ally. As much as he considered Hadros his enemy the other king kept appearing the only ally he had.
“When I encouraged Roric to go north,” added Hadros almost apologetically, “I had no idea he would take her with him. He’ll find plenty there-men and creatures of voima both! — for his restless spirit. I do hope he survives the adventure, however. For one thing, I personally want to wring his neck.”
They put in that evening at a cove King Hadros said he knew of old. He took the helm himself to guide them in between rocky islets, thick with brush, to a sheltered harbor as smooth as a pond. “We should be safe here,” he told Kardan. “We’re still too far south for any of the dangerous creatures of voima, and there never used to be any human settlements nearby.”
He sent several warriors ashore anyway to check for danger and to refill the water barrels. Gizor insisted on leading the party even though he had to be helped into the skiff. Queen Arane went with them, saying she wanted to stretch her legs after the day’s journey. The two kings stayed on board as the sailors rigged the awnings, then ate some of the smoked meat they had brought along while waiting for the shore party to return.
“Why do you think the queen insisted on coming along with two widowers looking for their heirs?” Kardan asked. “It seemed like more than a woman’s whim.” The sun had dipped low in the sky, its light glowing on the dark pines on the shore. For a brief half hour the two kings were alone, the only sounds the quiet conversation of sailors and warriors at the other end of the ship and the steady ripple of tiny waves against the hull.
Hadros, sitting with his stiff leg stretched out in front of him, shot Kardan a sharp glance but answered casually. “You were the one who seemed to think she had become friendly with Karin.”
“But why, since Karin had not fled to her court after all, should the queen have any further interest in our affairs?”
“Arane and I have been friends for years,” the black-bearded king said with a shrug. “I expect she just wanted a change from that court of hers-I certainly couldn’t stand it there for more than a week.”
But he gave a sudden fierce smile then. “Maybe she wants to keep the peace between us. You notice she’s already made it clear, my friend, that her warriors will spell the difference if you and I start fighting, so she may hope that as long as we aren’t sure which side she’d support we won’t start fighting at all. Or maybe she thinks she can keep me from killing Roric once we find him! Not that I really would, or at least not in cold blood,” he added thoughtfully. “It takes a while to raise up young men, even if we do run out of time before we run out of fury and wounded pride. But do not let Arane’s sweet demeanor fool you. Underneath she is as tough as any old warrior.”
“Is there any reason you know why she should be concerned about Roric?” asked Kardan. Here at last might be some clue to this mysterious man whom his daughter apparently loved. “I would have thought she had never even met him. Could her concern for Karin and thus for the man Karin apparently loves be enough to bring her on a dangerous journey with two old widowers?”
“Well,” said Hadros slowly, “and well. She keeps her own counsel, Arane does. Your daughter will not be a bad queen if she takes her for a model.” He sat for a moment with his hands on his knees and frowning, as though trying to decide whether or not to say something, then leaned back again. “Arane had a sweet maid once, years ago,” he added irrelevantly and with a smile.
The rippling against the hull had become louder. Kardan stared at the dark water. Something dark was swimming just below the surface, something like a very large fish.
It was behind Hadros as he sat leaning against the rail, and he did not seem to hear it. “I did the queen a favor once, over twenty years ago,” he continued.
But Kardan was no longer listening. As he watched, the fish broke the surface right next to the ship. But it was not a fish. It was a woman.
As Kardan watched in astonishment, a head of curly black hair emerged from the waves. Eyes bright as mirrors, she reached for the railing and pulled herself up. The water streamed from her naked body.
Hadros heard her then and turned his head abruptly. Kardan could see now that it was not a woman after all. From her waist down she was not human but fish, scales glittering as bright in the evening light as her eyes.
Hadros started to speak, but the siren did not give him a chance. She flashed Kardan a grin that showed a line of sharp little white teeth, then threw her arms around Hadros’s neck from behind. He gave a startled cry, half-choking, as he tried to jump to his feet.
She bent his head slowly backwards while his hand grasped for the sword he had unbuckled and laid at his feet. But it was too late. As his fingers found his knife instead, the siren gave a hard jerk. Hadros’s back slammed against the rail, and his kicking legs rose into the air. The knife flew from his hand, but it reached the waves only a second before he did. With a splash, the siren and the king were gone.
Kardan leaped up, kicking off his boots and tossing away his cloak. The sailors had realized at last that something was happening, but he was closest. His sword in his hand, he took a deep breath and sprang over the railing, going fast before he could change his mind.
The water was even colder than he expected. He almost gasped with the shock but managed to keep his mouth closed. He clung desperately to his sword, kicking his way downwards after a thin stream of bubbles. Tiny startled fish swam before him.
The salt stung his eyes as he swam, his clothes dragging at him. But he could see the siren now on the rocky bottom, her long sinuous tail wrapped around Hadros’s motionless form. She grinned again and held up a hand as though to warn him off.
Kardan thrust at her with his sword, the motion seeming unbearably slow and reaching nowhere near her. But the siren frowned and loosened her tail from around Hadros. His body slumped, the head tilted sideways.
Kardan thrust again, the sword still not reaching its goal. Bubbles escaped from his lips, rising past his eyes, and his chest felt tighter and tighter as the impulse to take a breath grew almost unbearable. The siren darted backwards with a wiggle of her tail.
He kicked forward, but she stayed just out of reach of his sword. The air in his lungs was nearly gone. But he was now within a few feet of Hadros. Air still dribbled from the king’s mouth, but his eyes were closed.
Kardan waved his sword at the siren a final time, grabbed the other king by the collar, and planted his feet on the stony bottom. The sharp stones bit with a pain that broke even through the cold-induced numbness.
But he kicked off with all his strength, tugging Hadros upwards. The surface before his straining eyes was a wavering green ceiling, seeming impossibly far. With his sword still in one hand and the other wrapped around Hadros’s collar, he could not use his arms to swim. Inert and waterlogged, the king could have weighed a thousand pounds.
He gave a great gasp as his head broke through the surface at last, the air on salty lips tasting sweeter than he had ever known it. The sailors reached over the railing, grabbing both kings. They were heaved back into the ship, the water pouring from them, as the shore party emerged from the trees.
Hadros flopped motionless on the deck. Kardan bent over him, pushing rhythmically and desperately on the shoulder blades, willing him still to be alive.
About two gallons of salt water came up all at once and ran across the deck. Kardan pushed again, and another gallon followed. Hadros gave a grunt and lifted his head.
The sailors bent to help him turn over and sit up. Kardan stepped back, shivering uncontrollably as a sailor handed him a dry cloak. Gizor and his party seemed to realize something had happened, for he shouted at the warriors as they scrambled into the skiff. Their voices seemed very distant, and Kardan’s attention all focused on the black-bearded figure before him.
Hadros passed a hand unsteadily across his face, wiping away the wet. Kardan, watching him, found himself wondering why he had saved his life. This would have been the perfect opportunity to get revenge for ten years of humiliation. He would not even have had to do anything himself to harm him-all he had to do was come back to the surface alone.
But he had certainly saved him. He knelt beside Hadros again, helping the sailors strip off the king’s dripping clothing. “Are you all right?” he heard himself asking concernedly.
Hadros wavered a little but managed a smile as he tried to squeeze some of the water from his beard. “While you’re at it, Kardan,” he said with almost a chuckle, “I expect my knife is at the bottom of the cove. Would you mind going back for it?”
Then he passed out.
King Hadros insisted on continuing north the next day, waving away Kardan’s concern irritably, though he sat rather than stood by the rail and kept massaging his knee. He stationed three warriors with harpoons before the mast, close above the white water foaming around the throat of the dragon prow, watching for sirens and for other creatures from deep under the sea.
“Is it always so, well, exciting to go on a war expedition?” Queen Arane asked with an ironic expression. “My kingdom has been free of wars since my father’s time, and this is my first experience of such a thing.”
“This isn’t a war expedition,” said Hadros with a wolfish smile. “This is just a little trip.”
Kardan also watched for sea creatures, but his attention was caught instead by a flock of geese, very high up, flying south fast. “That may be a portent of trouble before us,” he commented. “Geese should not be flying for another two months or more.”
“There have been strange rumors from the north all this year,” replied Hadros. “Yet I still had not thought to see a siren so far south.” But as they rowed onward against a steady wind, they saw no more creatures of voima. “The wind shouldn’t be blowing from the north like this in the middle of summer,” he muttered. “Does Roric have powers he’s never told me about?”
“All of us have powers within us,” said Queen Arane pleasantly, seating herself beside him. “The difficulty is to recognize and use them.”
“Strength of mind, strength of arm-that’s one thing, Arane,” said the king slowly. “But there is something going on in this world that I don’t like. Kardan’s Mirror-seer is gone, and, though I didn’t tell you this before, so is the Weaver. He’d been right there in his cave-or her cave, some would say-since I was a boy, and the stories say many generations longer than that, but when I went up to ask him where Roric had gone, it was as empty as though no one had ever lived there.”
Kardan lifted his head sharply from watching the waves. If wild creatures of voima were growing bolder and stalking this world, and if those who interpreted the powers of voima to mortals were retreating, then they might find not just danger ahead but the lords of voima themselves. He had already this trip seen a number of things he would not before have believed.
When they pulled into a cove that evening, Hadros said grimly, “Tonight I spend on land.”
“Are you not concerned for the rare forest sirens?” asked the queen with a small smile, but Hadros ignored her. He stepped fairly agilely into the skiff and allowed himself to be rowed to shore with a handful of warriors. Another trip brought Kardan and the queen, along with the awnings from the ship to rig as tents. The sun had set and the moon was low in the sky as they finished their bread and ale and lit a small fire.
Kardan slept only uneasily, although the other king fell asleep at once and filled the night air with loud snores. Kardan had spent just long enough on the ship that he missed its motion, and the solid earth beneath him seemed to keep slowly rising and falling, jerking him from his dreams. When he turned over, trying unsuccessfully to find a way to lie such that the pebbles did not bite into his rib cage or the cold sea breezes find the nape of his neck, the sounds of wind in the trees and waves on the shore could have been the hungry mumbling of some great creature, and even the coals of their fire looked back at him like living eyes.
The eastern sky, above the rocky ridge that followed this part of the coast, had just started to lighten with summer’s early dawn when he rolled over for the hundredth time, started to close his eyes again, and abruptly lifted himself on an elbow instead. That sounded different from the sounds he had been hearing all night.
He nudged Hadros, whose snores stopped in mid-breath, and closed his hand around his sword’s hilt. He could see them now: furtive, hunched shapes just beyond the ring of their tents. As he squinted in the faint light, he saw one cautiously lift a flap of awning and reach inside.
His first thought was for Arane, but the queen’s tent was on the opposite side from these creatures. He scrambled to his feet with a shout, Hadros only a second slower.
He could see now they were men, men almost naked, their hair thick and matted around their faces. “Do not attack us!” cried one as Kardan leaped toward him. His voice was low-pitched and rough, and he held up a pink palm. Yellow teeth showed in an ingratiating smile. “We just- We just want some food.”
The warriors had the little group of hairy men surrounded now. Kardan’s warriors especially seemed to be enjoying this. The hairy men certainly looked harmless, smaller than any members of the war-party, unarmed, eyes glinting in the dimness from out of their tangled hair. Gizor One-hand put the point of his sword under one’s chin.
“Thieves,” growled Hadros. “We ought to kill you on the spot as a lesson to all thieves.” But he slid his sword back into its sheath as he spoke and gestured to Gizor to do the same. After a moment he grunted and complied, and the rest of the warriors did as well. Kardan, however, kept his hilt clenched in a sweaty hand. “Do we have some stale bread or rancid butter we can give them?” Hadros asked over his shoulder.
That is when they attacked. With a cry that was more bark than shout, the one closest to Hadros threw himself on him. Sharp teeth glinted in a long snout, and the claws at the end of the fingers ripped at the king’s jerkin. Knocked off balance, Hadros staggered backwards, and teeth snapped at his throat as he went down.
The warriors, yelling, all scrambled for their weapons. Kardan, the only one with a sword in his hand, sprang forward, all his weight behind his thrust. His blade dragged on fur, caught on a rib, then slid into the heart of the creature about to bite the king’s neck.
It collapsed with a howl, falling backwards as Hadros scrambled free. He had his sword out now and leaped wildly at the next hairy creature, but it melted away before him. The warriors were all shouting and swinging their swords, just avoiding decapitating each other.
Kardan planted a foot against the dying creature before him and jerked his blade free. A touch came on his shoulder. He spun around ready to thrust again and found himself looking from a foot away into Hadros’s eyes.
“Back to back!” shouted the king, apparently unconcerned about nearly being run through by the man who had saved him only a few seconds earlier. But as Kardan whirled around, feeling the other’s muscular back against his, Hadros commented mildly, “Unless, of course, you planned to measure swords with me this morning.”
Their enemies were gone. They raced away on all fours, howling, and disappeared into the black and rocky woods before the slowly lightening sky could ever show them clearly. Gizor and the warriors, slower on two legs, pursued them.
But the one that Kardan had killed was still there. Hadros turned it over with his foot. The eyes were open, staring glassily, and a long tongue lolled from its sharp-toothed snout. It looked almost-but not quite-like a wolf.
Queen Arane, well wrapped in a cloak and with a knife in her hand, came out of her tent with her warriors on either side. She had for once nothing to say. Kardan eyed her suspiciously, wondering what powers of voima she might have that had, so far, protected her. The kings’ warriors returned from a brief and unsuccessful chase to stare at the creature Kardan had killed. “What is it?” one warrior asked in horror. Several turned charms over in their fingers.
“Shape-changer,” Hadros said. “I should have known better than to think these were the thieves and beggars they wanted to seem. But I haven’t seen a shape-changer in twenty-five years. Is it merely fate that we should meet both a siren and these shape-changers, in lands where I have never seen such creatures before, or did someone very powerful send them against us?
“If we keep on being attacked by creatures of voima,” he added when no one dared answer, “we’re going to have trouble catching Roric. At this rate, I’ll have to take a stint at the oars myself.” He kicked the creature, rolling it back on its face, exposing again the bloody hole where the sword had gone in.
King Hadros said nothing more for a moment but grunted and pulled off his jerkin, now black with the shape-changer’s blood. He ran a thumb thoughtfully beneath his jaw while looking at it. “You know, Kardan,” he commented, “you’ve now saved my life twice in two days. I should have given you better terms on that tribute, ten years ago.”
Kardan had started to reach for grass or leaves to wipe the blood from his sword, but found himself sitting on the ground. He fought the impulse to collapse further. He looked up at Hadros instead and for a second found himself grinning. “You should warn a man before inviting him along on one of your little trips,” he answered. “You certainly provide all the excitement a young man could ask for, but I may be getting too old for this game.”