Some of King Kardan’s warriors half-carried, half-dragged him back to the ship. “It’s no use, sire,” they told him, their voices unsteady. The dogs had raced off ahead of them, but come back-those that had come back-without even a mouthful of enemy tunic. “We’ll never catch them in the dark, and it’s not safe trying to climb around those rocks any longer.”
“Karin!” He meant it to be a cry she would hear wherever they had taken her, a shout such as Roric had given just before Gizor One-hand knocked him unconscious. It came out more a sob.
“We’ll find the princess tomorrow, sire,” said one of the warriors in completely unconvincing tones of reassurance. “They’ll know better than to hurt her.” It was one of the older warriors, who had known Karin well when she was a little girl, before she had first gone away.
The sailors had gotten out the rollers and worked the ship up onto the shore, away from the tides of the river. The warriors laid out the dead and injured: four dead, including one man crushed by a boulder while chasing Karin’s abductors, and a number of men with greater or lesser wounds. Only one of the wounded looked likely to die.
Roric had regained consciousness and sat leaning against the barnacled side of the ship, one hand across the bruised forehead and black eye where Gizor had struck him. Both his ankles and waist were secured by heavy ropes. His boots and jerkin were badly chafed as though he had struggled against the bindings, but he now sat quietly.
Kardan sat down beside him. Roric glanced at him without interest, then looked away. But Kardan studied by the light of the fire this man with whom his daughter had run away, trying to find some clue in his unkempt appearance and bitter expression why she had left home for him. He had assumed all the way up here that he would have Roric declared an outlaw, but now he scarcely cared if he had abducted her as long as he could help rescue her from her new abductors.
“First light, we’re after them,” said King Hadros, “even before we sing the songs for the dead and bury them.” Queen Arane was with him. She looked at Roric with interest but drew no closer. “Those warriors may know their secret mountain paths in the darkness, but they cannot hide from us by daylight. But tonight we keep the fires burning and guard the ship. Only half the unwounded men sleep at a time.”
“Also tonight,” growled Gizor, “we execute the traitor who turned against his sworn king and has a blood-guilt on him that can never be repaid.”
He held the other end of the ropes that secured Roric, though he had also taken the precaution of running them through rings on the ship. Queen Arane said something quickly to Hadros, who walked over to Gizor. He stood there with legs apart, contemplating his oldest and his youngest warriors.
“I’ll need the judgment of the royal Gemot to execute him, Gizor,” he said at last. “Which means we would need to get him home first. Do you plan to lead him around like a trapped bear while we rescue the princess, then hold him like that on the ship all the way back?”
“I can kill him for you if you’re too delicate!” retorted Gizor.
Hadros slowly pulled out his knife and struck him across the mouth with the hilt. He glared at Gizor while deliberately returning the knife to his belt. “Be quiet, and don’t you decide to attack your sworn lord,” he said in a low, icy voice.
Gizor put his hand up to staunch the blood and said nothing. Roric gave him a quick, grim look, but he too was silent.
“King Kardan told me,” said Hadros to Roric, still in an icy voice, “that Valmar left his kingdom well before you arrived there. That had better be true.” When Roric did not answer, he continued, “We’ll ask the princess about this when we find her, but you’d better start preparing yourself for a judicial duel if there remains any doubt.”
Hadros turned then back to Gizor. “Roric challenged you to single combat. All his blood-guilt- if Valmar is still alive-fell on him in a fight in which you were also involved. We may be able to settle your quarrel even without the Gemot if the two of you want to fight it out on one of these islands in the morning.”
“But we have to rescue Karin first!” Kardan cried out.
Roric spoke then for the first time. “Your daughter has the power of voima in her, sire,” he said in a surprisingly gentle voice. “She will still be alive when we find her.”
Kardan startled himself by almost believing him, even though he was not sure Roric believed it himself.
Kardan took the first watch. He and a number of his men sat in stony silence, listening to the sounds of the night, occasionally rising to circle their encampment. But there was no sign or sound of their attackers. The loudest noises were the groans from the wounded.
He felt almost numb. He had seen Karin again but only for the briefest moment. While sailing up the coast he had promised the lords of voima in his heart to burn a great offering if he could only know she was safe so far, but he knew now that was not enough. She had been safe that whole time but, as he should have known well, there could be no end of worrying about one’s children as long as they were alive.
Roric had fallen asleep, or at least his eyes were closed, as he sat leaning against the ship’s hull with his head at an unnatural angle. How could he have thought such bitter thoughts about this young man? Kardan was still not sure why Karin loved him, but he had to be better than whatever brigand had carried her away.
His men were right. They could not try to pursue her captors before daylight. And by then Karin would be violated at the least, he thought, perhaps killed as well-and maybe quick death would be best after all. If he had not had to keep alert watch, Kardan would have put his face in his hands and sobbed.
The watch changed in the middle of the night. “You can’t find her if you’re too exhausted,” said Hadros brusquely. He himself had slept during the first watch. “You’re not a young man to stay awake for three days and ride and fight on the fourth.” Kardan wrapped up in his cloak and put his face in the crook of his arm. Across the fire, Hadros talked quietly to Queen Arane, who seemed to be finding the whole series of events an exciting adventure. Kardan himself slid into uneasy dreams, but when he awoke and rolled over the waking was even worse.
The darkness of midnight had given way to a dim sea fog in which it was possible to see faintly, but all shapes were distorted. Sunrise, he guessed, was still an hour off.
Hadros and the queen were no longer near him, but he thought he could see them twenty yards away, walking slowly as though starting off on a circuit of the camp site. He lay without moving, feeling the stiffness in all his joints, trying to decide how many men and dogs they should take in pursuit of Karin and how many would be needed to guard the ship and the wounded.
There was the scrape of a boot in the gravel by his head. “Come with me,” came a hoarse whisper. For a startled second he thought someone was addressing him. “Fate has brought us together this night. You want your combat, you’ll have your combat.”
The voice was Gizor’s. He was loosening both the ropes that bound Roric to the rings and the ropes around his feet, though not the bonds that kept his arms pinned to his sides.
Kardan feigned sleep, watching from behind his lashes.
“Untie me,” said Roric in a whisper of his own. “Are you afraid I’ll attack you while your back is turned?”
“I’m afraid you’ll run away again!”
“I had my chance to kill you, Gizor,” said Roric in a hiss. “I let you live. You should be thanking all the lords of voima for your deliverance, not trying to kill me!”
Gizor jerked Roric to his feet by the ropes. Kardan could see that he had not one but two swords hanging from his belt. “You killed my best friends and let a woman attack me from behind.”
“And you, ” hissed Roric, “kept me from protecting the princess. The blood-guilt from her death will all fall on you.”
“You have insulted my honor for the last time, No-man’s son. I shall release the ropes when we reach the island.”
They went soundlessly along the ship, past sleeping warriors. Kardan waited until they were thirty yards ahead and then rose to follow as quietly as he could.
Gizor and Roric stopped while two of Hadros’s warriors went by, then slipped in silence out of the camp site and along the river bank through coils of fog. Kardan, behind them, kept just far enough back that he hoped they would not notice his presence.
He was not quite sure why he followed them. On the one hand, he could not interfere in a judicial single combat. On the other hand, he felt that Roric was the only man who could save his daughter. “And if they are both badly-even fatally-wounded,” he added to himself, “there will have to be a witness to determine the blood-guilt.”
A half mile downstream from the camp, an island rose from the river, a great boulder thirty feet high. The fog hid the fires of the camp. “This will do,” said Gizor. He jerked the ropes, though Roric showed no sign of trying to escape, and the two waded out into the water. The tide was out and the river low. Kardan waited until they had reached the island’s edge and were scrambling up the rough stone before following them. Neither one looked back.
Off to the east above the fog, the sky was lightening rapidly. Kardan climbed slowly, finding finger and toe holds in the uneven surface of the stone, trying not to knock loose pebbles. The strain pulled at his stiff muscles, and his fingers felt clumsy. Karin, he remembered, had always enjoyed climbing as a young girl.
By the time he pushed his head cautiously up to the top, Gizor had freed Roric from the ropes and given him a sword. The young man stretched his arms out fully, then grinned at the man who meant to kill him. He was muscled and lean, almost the same age, Kardan thought, as his own dead son.
The top of the island was twenty feet across and fairly level, bare rock scattered with loose gravel, tufts of grass growing in a few cracks. Kardan tried to find a secure perch from which he could see without being seen. The two warriors stood facing each other in the dawn light, without armor or shield, hefting naked steel.
“Tell me one thing before I kill you, Gizor,” said Roric. “Are you my father?”