The iron gates of the fortress resounded with the blows of the battering ram, but no one looked out from the narrow windows above or shouted defiance at them.
“Are you all dead in there?” King Kardan yelled up at the empty windows.
“Just cautious,” said Hadros, sharpening his knife. “They know we want Roric and the princess back again and are hoping we will pay well for them, so they hope to frighten us with this silence.”
The night before, after the terrible day in which they had not found Karin, lost Roric, lost one man to the dragon, and for a while thought they had lost a great many more of their warriors until the final one staggered into camp by moonlight, they had at last buried the dead. They had raised a great mound of earth, sand, and stones above the tide line and sung the funeral songs; the best songs were for Gizor One-hand.
“I should never have told Gizor I wished I was rid of Roric,” Hadros had said regretfully as the two kings rolled up in their blankets on the pebbled beach by the salt river. “I am getting too old to do things like that without thinking through the consequences.”
Kardan had not been sure whether to be more horrified at hearing Hadros say he had intended to kill his foster-son or at the black-bearded king expressing regret over anything.
Today they had started systematically hunting for the raiders, keeping careful watch for the dragon though it had not reemerged from its lair. “The old tales say dragons only have to eat once a week,” commented Hadros. Now, after a long day’s searching of the stony lower slopes of the mountains they had found the raiders’ fortress, but if anyone was home they were not answering the pounding on their front door.
“Nothing here to build ladders,” said Hadros, “but the stone is rough enough that some men should be able to climb up to those windows if no one’s defending them. Want to send a few of your lads, Kardan?”
But defenders appeared at last as two of Kardan’s men scaled the sides of the gate. They shot at the men from the narrow windows above, missing but sending them scrambling hastily down again, and bringing a flurry of answering arrows from the attackers.
“I could threaten to fire their fields,” said Hadros with a sudden grin. “That brought you out quick enough, Kardan, as I recall! But I haven’t seen any fields except those scorched ones across the river. They must live by raiding ever since their castle burned. A good life for a young man, but no life for someone who used to be one of the Fifty Kings.”
Kardan was not interested in how this renegade king might live. Karin must be inside the castle, and he would set her free if he had to rip it down with his bare hands. “Again!” he shouted at the men with the battering ram, and again the ram smacked into the wood and iron of the gate.
The defenders had disappeared from the windows again. Late afternoon shadows lay across the fortress before them. “They should be shooting at us,” said Hadros with a frown.
Kardan glared at him, wondering how the black-bearded king could be so calm about it all, could even joke when his oldest son had been snatched away to unreachable realms, and when the princess he had raised like a daughter was held captive by an outlaw.
But then he noticed that Hadros was still sharpening his knife. He had brought the blade to a fineness that could split a hair yet was continuing to stroke away with the whetstone, now removing half an inch of edge.
“Are they trying to make us uneasy by their silence,” said Hadros, “or are they really as confused in there as it seems?” But then he laughed grimly, and the blade snapped in his hands. “Maybe Roric and the princess are leading them a merry chase already! Gizor told us she has a handiness with a knife I’d never appreciated, and you told me Roric is good enough to defeat my weapons-master in a fair fight. I’ll back those two against any renegade king.”
“Again!” yelled Kardan, paying no attention. The frame around the castle gate was beginning to split. The men all shouted as the ram struck again and again. Nails burst out of the hinges. A narrow gap between the two halves of the gate appeared and grew wider with every blow. A final rush with the battering ram, and the gate burst open. The two kings’ men rushed through, swords upraised, shouting their war-cries.
Here at last they met resistance as wild-eyed armed warriors sprang in front of them. But the kings’ men outnumbered the defending warriors, who seemed strangely disoriented considering they were fighting for their own fortress, and they only had to kill two before capturing the rest with no loss of life themselves.
“I think it’s a trap,” said Hadros, looking around the dim and echoing hall. “Where are all the raiders who attacked us by the river? This was a defense with no heart in it and no mind behind it.”
Kardan was ready to rush wildly down the passages in search of Karin, but Hadros insisted they go slowly. Stepping quietly, looking around every corner before turning it, the kings and their men explored the fortress. The rooms were dug into the rock as much as built on it, and everywhere was comfortless, dank, and bone-chillingly cold. They pushed open the doors cautiously, sent one person ahead alone through every narrow opening with the rest tense and waiting for ambush, and jerked open every chest and every storage bin.
And at the end of the hour they had found a beautifully-made lyre, wrapped in rags, at the bottom of a chest; four women; two wounded men; and no one else in the fortress beside the warriors they had already captured.
“Where can they have gone?” said Kardan in despair, a question none of the people here seemed to want to answer. “Where can they have taken Karin?”
“They might be down at the river trying to fire our ship,” commented Hadros. “Queen Arane said she could direct the defense quite well by herself-should we go see how successful she’s been?”
Kardan shook his head. “Why allow us to take their mountain fortress just for the chance to destroy our ship? Unless they wanted to steal it and go somewhere!”
“It’s your daughter who steals ships,” said Hadros, but his eyes narrowed. “This renegade king-Eirik, wasn’t that his name? — may have decided to get out of here and start over again somewhere further from a dragon. In which case they really might have taken my ship.” He yelled to his warriors. “Come on, everybody, back down the mountain! Yes, we’re taking all the prisoners!”
It was twilight when they emerged from the fortress and full night by the time they found their way, dragging the prisoners and carrying the food and blankets-all the booty the fortress afforded beyond the lyre-down the twisting, narrow tracks to the river. All the way Kardan’s heart was pounding hard, as he imagined Karin being taken south in chains by a renegade who would certainly find her more attractive than the slovenly women they had found in the castle. But the watch fires were burning by Hadros’s ship when they finally reached the salt river, and Queen Arane’s elegantly dressed warriors challenged them with very sharp weapons held ready.
The queen came to greet them once her warriors recognized the kings. “No, I have seen no one all day,” she said, looking from one to the other in the torchlight. Night hid both mountains and river, and there was a steady lapping of waves against the pebble beach. “Might they have gone higher up into the mountains, or hidden from you in caves down by the sea?”
“And left just a few men on guard, a guard they hoped would be sufficient and was not?” said Hadros thoughtfully. “That would only make sense if they were terrified of us, or if they were hoping the dragon would corner us in their fortress. But they did not seem terrified when they attacked the first time, and I doubt the dragon does anyone’s bidding!”
“Some of these men must know where they took the princess,” said Kardan grimly. “Torture should make them talk.”
“Too bad Gizor’s dead,” said Hadros. “He was my best torturer. Let’s try the women first.”
The first woman they tried needed no more persuasion than being dragged before the two kings and a torch held close to her hair before agreeing to tell them what she knew. “But this is only what Wigla told me,” she said darkly, looking up at them from shadowed eyes.
“Wigla?” said Kardan.
“She is his woman but she hates him too. She tried to leave last year; that is when Eirik had her lover killed.”
This was all very well, thought Kardan, but it had nothing to do with Karin. “But where are Eirik and the princess now?” he demanded.
“I only know what I was told,” said the woman sulkily, “and I don’t know about that fancy girl Eirik found. But Wigla told us to stay and wait for them. She and the king and a lot of the men were going, she said, to raid the Wanderers. I’m only telling you what she said!” she added as Kardan leaned toward her threateningly.
“One cannot ‘raid’ the Wanderers,” said Hadros sternly. “Was this a code term for some sort of attack?”
“If so, no one ever explained it to me,” said the woman, sulky again. “And I must say I was surprised to hear her mention the Wanderers. The king, he doesn’t like to hear talk about the lords of voima. He says the only lords he serves are those in Hel.”
Kardan had never before known, first-hand, of someone who served the lords of death rather than of voima. A chill went through him right down to the pit of his belly. There were hints of such things in the old stories, but to have his daughter held by such a man!
Hadros sent the woman off, still bound. “What do you make of her story, Kardan?”
“Maybe there is a door into the Wanderers’ realm here,” Kardan suggested slowly, “as Roric said there was. But the lords of voima would never allow someone to rampage through such a door in search of booty!”
“Let’s see if we get any more sense out of one of the men,” said Hadros.
But the warriors whom King Eirik had left behind seemed to have even less information. Brought bound before the kings with knives at their throats they proved quite willing to talk, but all they could say was that Eirik had taken more than half his men, leaving the rest with instructions to open the gates to no one until he returned.
“We’ll find them in the morning,” said Hadros, yawning widely. “They can’t have gone north because the mountains are too steep, and they can’t have gone south or Arane would have seen them, and they can’t have gone anywhere out to sea without a ship. They’re in a cave down by the shore or hiding in the rocks somewhere. They’ll be hungry and come back-unless instead of the Wanderers they were trying to raid the dragon’s lair, and discovered that this one likes to eat more often than they hoped! When they return to their fortress and find it standing open and empty, they’ll be down soon enough to talk terms.”
Kardan felt exhausted and beaten, and yet he kept a core stubborn streak that would not let him believe Karin was already dead. As they rolled up in their blankets, again preparing to sleep by the ship, trying to work indentations into the pebbles for shoulders and hips, he suddenly said, “This all started, Hadros, when you refused to let Karin marry Roric.”
“Of course I wouldn’t let her,” said the other king sleepily. “I had to keep my side of our agreement and send her back to you as the unfettered maid you had sent to me.”
“Well, if we find them alive,” said Kardan determinedly, “I want them to marry at once. I know, I know, you told me that she had spent the night with Valmar during the All-Gemot when I thought she was with you. And I know a marriage between our heirs would keep peace between our kingdoms. But she prefers Roric, and he must be with her or we would have found him again.”
“It was you who was supposed to stay with him yesterday,” said Hadros grumpily.
“I do not even care,” Kardan pushed on, “that he is a man without a family, No-man’s son. If she had married him, fatherless man that he is, she would now be home safe.”
King Hadros suddenly rolled over and sat up. “Do you see the queen?” he asked in a low voice.
“No,” said Kardan, surprised. “Arane’s tent is over on the far side of camp; she must be asleep by now.”
“Well, she never wanted to talk about this,” said Hadros quietly, “and would never let me ask questions. But I am nearly certain who Roric’s mother was. If you’re thinking of having your daughter marry him you ought to know. And I also have a very good guess for his father.”
Kardan thrashed out of his blankets, bit back a shout, then said, “Why did you never tell me this before?” between his teeth.
“It was no concern of yours that I could see,” said Hadros mildly.
“But the man my daughter loves! Tell me at least who his mother is!”
“Well, I cannot be completely certain. But Arane and I have been friends for a long time. There was a time some years ago, when I had been married a while but the lords of voima had not yet granted sons to my queen and me, when I had to visit Arane’s kingdom. It must have been on business of the Fifty Kings.”
“Probably plotting a war against someone,” muttered Kardan, realizing that it could not have been too many years later that Hadros had found an excuse to attack him.
“As I recall,” said Hadros, as though rather surprised at the memory, “I had been going to invade her kingdom. She invited me for a parley, and she talked me out of it. Hard to say how… Well, I stayed in her castle for a week that winter,” he continued after a brief pause, “and she thought I might be lonely and cold, so she sent her maid each night to make sure my bed was warm. Thoughtful of her-and a very sweet maid.”
“And then?” Kardan demanded when Hadros seemed to slip away into pleasant reminiscences.
“Well, it was close to a year later when I was again back that way.” Hadros was only a dark shape, lit from behind by the watch fires. “I did not see the maid this visit; I was only there the one night. But Arane took me aside and asked me a favor.”
“And the favor?” asked Kardan, already knowing the answer.
“She said there had been a baby born in her court, a little boy. Bright red face when I first saw him and a shock of black hair, and yelling as loudly as any grown man. He deserved a good home, she told me, said he was of a lineage that should not be brought up with the children of the housecarls. A baby was the last thing I needed at that point. But I took him home.”
“And that was Roric,” supplied Kardan when the other king fell silent.
“He fought me even then,” Hadros said quietly. “Small enough to fit in my two hands, but he kicked and yelled all the way across the channel and home again. Poor little chap didn’t have anything to eat for two days, though we dripped water in his mouth so he wouldn’t be too thirsty-I tried him on ale but he wouldn’t swallow it. As soon as we got to the castle I had him put to the breast of one of the serving-maids who had just borne a babe of her own. And my wife liked him. He would quiet for her when he wouldn’t for anybody. I didn’t want it generally known that I had been weak enough to agree to carry a screaming baby all the way home with me, and it didn’t seem right to have everyone know he was mine when my queen was still barren. So I put out that he had been a foundling, a little baby lying in front of the gates when we came up the hill from the harbor.”
“Your queen must have known the real story.”
“I suppose she did. I suppose a lot of people did. But she accepted what I told her and started taking him into our bed. The old women had told her that sometimes sleeping with a baby will make a woman conceive. Maybe it did work, but it took a while. He slept with us for several years. He never screamed much after I had him home, but he kicked. Once he was asleep he slept hard, nothing would wake him. But let me tell you what I almost told those old women: if you want your wife to conceive, the wrong way to do it is to have her lying every night curled up around a sleeping babe.”
“So Roric is your son,” said Kardan in wonder. “Did Queen Arane send something with you, some token perhaps you had left with her maid, so that you would be sure?”
“No, and that’s the strange thing. There was a little bone charm wrapped up in his blankets, but it was nothing I’d seen before. Arane certainly wanted me to think the baby was mine, and the timing was about right. But if she had her maid entertain all her important visitors, the lass may not have been sure herself.”
“But you do know that Roric was born to the queen’s maid?”
“Well, who else would the mother be? The queen would never have been concerned over an ordinary servant’s brat. And she has asked me over the years, not every time the Fifty Kings met but several times, how he was getting on. But she would never answer my questions about him, and she did not want to see him herself at the All-Gemot. I’m sure her maid was happy to hear he was brought up as my foster-son.”
Kardan lay down and started again trying to make the pebbles a comfortable bed. He had another question, one he was not sure how to ask. At last he said, “If you think Roric is your son, why did you try to have him killed?”
“He wouldn’t listen to me,” said Hadros sleepily. “He has little room for mistakes, but he keeps making them every time he ignores me. Haven’t you ever wanted to kill your own sons? But that’s right, they’re dead already.”
Kardan gritted his teeth but did not answer. He still could not always tell when the other king was making a joke.
“Besides,” Hadros continued, “I did not in fact want him dead, even if I did suggest something of the sort after drinking all evening. Gizor took me a little too literally! But Roric’s always infuriated me. Maybe he picked up a little of my temperament in those years of sleeping with me; I infuriated my father too. But his telling me he wanted to marry Karin pushed me over the edge. Even if he is mine, he’ll never inherit anything from me, so he has to make his fortune on his own. Even aside from wanting to send your daughter back to you a pure maiden, not tied to a man without kin who would acknowledge him, I didn’t want Roric to be slowed down by a woman while he’s still young. Though I must say, these last few weeks suggest that if anything the princess has speeded him up!”
“So you might allow them to marry after all?”
“Her decision rests with you now, Kardan. But young Valmar-if we find him again-does think he’s betrothed to her.”
“If he’ll have her now,” said Kardan slowly. He settled down and soon heard Hadros begin to snore, but his own mind was too active to let him sleep.