Oath of Gold

13

The Duke led the way upstairs, past his study door, to his private apartment at the end of the passage. Paks looked around as she came in. A fire burned in the small fireplace at one end of the chamber; several padded chairs were grouped around it and a small footed table. Tapestries hung on the walls. Behind a low divider at the far end of the room, a great bed loomed, but it had neither mattress nor hangings. A narrow bed, made up with a striped blanket, stood along one wall.

“Sit down,” urged the Duke, as Paks hesitated. The Marshal-General had already chosen a chair, and propped her feet on a stool near the fire. Paks tried to guess which chair was his, and finally took one to the side of the fire. The arm-rests were carved, beyond the padding, into dragons’ heads. The Duke took a seat opposite her, and stretched his legs. “This is how it used to be,” he said softly. “When we built this end of the stronghold, this is where we held council. The office I use now was the scribes’ room. It’s many a night I sat here with Tamar and Marshal Vrelan.” He poured out three mugs of sib from the pot on the table, and offered them.

The Marshal-General glanced at him, her eyes bright in the firelight. “If you don’t mind my asking, my lord, how old are you?”

“About fifty years. Why?”

“I had thought you younger, when you came to Fin Panir, but remembering that you and your wife had children who would have been, so you say, as old as Paksenarrion, I began to wonder.”

The Duke grinned. “I was angry then. Anger makes me younger.”

“Not only that. Most men your age are less vigorous, especially after such a life as yours. I have heard you were orphaned, but you must have come from strong stock.”

“I don’t know.” His voice hardened, and the Marshal-General sighed.

“I did not mean to distress you—”

“It is not you who distresses me, Marshal-General, but the thought of it. I have no family—never knew who I was, really. I know nothing of my breeding, nothing of my heritage of strength or weakness, folly or wisdom. My name could come from anywhere in southern Tsaia or the Westlands: I thought when I met another Kieri, my first year in Aarenis, that I’d found a kinsman, but soon learned that Kir and Kieri are common as cobbles there.”

“Your family name?”

“Phelan? I found one Phelan in Pliuni, in a wineshop; he said his kin were short and dark. Another in Fossnir, a tailor, and a woolsorter in Ambela. That’s all: none like me, and none missing any children. By looks I should be northern; anywhere in the Eight Kingdoms you find tall men with red hair and gray eyes. So take your choice. Unwanted bastard’s the easiest, fostered out somewhere and forgotten.” Paks could hear the pain in his voice. “And then the family I bred was destroyed. Nothing before me—and like to be nothing after me. Who will I leave this to? I swear to you, it was that thought, and that alone, that let me fall to the spell of Venner’s sister. Here I am, in the range of fifty years or so, and I have no heir. I have sworn to go back to building this domain—but for what?”

She nodded. “It is no easy puzzle, my lord. It is hard for any man to work years on such a project, and see nothing ahead—”

“But it falling apart when I die. In what—twenty years perhaps?—I will be too old to lead them, if not before. Indeed, Marshal-General, I wonder that Achrya hurried so. Time alone will do her work here.”

“My lord, no!” Paks found herself speaking before she thought. “That isn’t so. You will find someone to take over here, I know it. And what you have done so far has been worth doing—”

The Duke smiled, a little sadly. “I’m glad you think so, Paks. I hope the High Lord thinks so, as well. But—forgive me—when I look at you, and think of Estil, my daughter—she would have been so like you—”

“My lord, by your leave, I will think on this, and perhaps be able to make some useful suggestion.” The Marshal-General sat forward, hands clasped in her lap. “You have made a settled domain out of wasteland, and the holdings south of you no longer fear invasion every year or so. This in itself is useful, besides the rest. This will not disappear, if the fellowship of Gird can save it.”

“Thank you.” The Duke sighed, and reached a hand for the poker to stir the fire. “Well, now, Paks, we’ve set you at ease, no doubt, with this other talk. Tell us, if you will, what befell you after you left Fin Panir.”

Paks took a deep breath and set her mug on the table. “You remember,” she began slowly, “how it was with me that last week—” They nodded. “I can see now,” she went on, “that it was foolish to leave then, in winter, in that mood. It went as badly, Marshal-General, as you had feared.”

“I had hoped sending word to the granges would help—”

“It might have, if I had been able to use them.” Paks found herself breathing short, and tried to relax. “As it was, I feared the ridicule so that I could not, after the first time.”

“Ridicule? I told them—”

“No, lady, not their fault.” Paks tried again. “They did not mean to hurt me; the Marshal, where I stopped that time, tried to be kind. But my weakness is the very thing—they would have understood a missing leg,” she said hurriedly. “Blindness, something they could see or understand. But Girdsmen are taught that cowardice is shameful, that it comes from within, and cannot be imposed from without.”

The Marshal-General nodded slowly. “We ourselves caused you trouble.”

Paks shook her head. “I don’t blame you. It’s the common thought anywhere, not only among Girdsmen. So I thought myself, even knowing how it had happened. I blamed myself for that weakness—”

“Paksenarrion, we told you it was not your weakness, no more than one chooses to lose an arm to a sword.”

“So you said, but I could not believe it.” Even now, the memory of that misery made the breath catch in her throat. She stared at her right hand, gripping the armrest of the chair. “I—had a difficult winter,” They said nothing, and waited. “What Venner’s sister said, my lord, about my running away many times—that was true. I did.” As quickly and baldly as she could, she told them about it: being run off by the shepherds, being abandoned by the trader when she could not fight against bandits. Her fear of everything, everyone, that reduced her to a shivering wreck.

“How long did this last?” The Duke’s voice was gentle.

Paks closed her mouth on the rest of that story. “Until early spring, my lord.” She decided to say nothing of the incident in the inn, or the nights she spent shivering in ditches. She glanced at the Duke, and it seemed as if he knew that without her telling; his eyes were bright with tears. “I came back to Brewersbridge,” she said flatly, and stopped again. They waited. Finally she went on with the tale. Clearly the Marshal-General wished she had gone to the grange instead of the Kuakgan’s grove, but she listened without interruption as Paks told about the initial healing, and the days of quiet talk that had restored some of her spirit. Paks was surprised to see her nodding agreement when she heard the Kuakgan’s comments on the nature of courage. Both the Duke and the Marshal-General were fascinated when she told about her service with the rangers in Lyonya. They seemed to know much that Paks had learned only that summer, asking questions about the relations of elves and humans and other matters Paks knew little about. When she told them of the daskdraudigs, and of the rangers’ questions afterwards, the Marshal-General choked on her sib and sat bolt upright.

Paks nodded. “That’s when I first realized that I had some of those powers given to paladins. They were surprised that I could sense the location of the daskdraudigs. And they asked me to try healing one of them—”

“Gird’s grace! I wouldn’t have thought—”

“And—it worked. I was as surprised, my lady, as if I’d sprouted wings.”

“Mmm.” The Marshal-General stared at her. “No wonder.”

“Then, toward the end of summer, I began to feel a—a sense of something wrong here, that the Duke needed me. I came back through Brewersbridge.” She went on to tell of that last night with the Kuakgan. Both the Duke and the Marshal-General were open-mouthed.

“Gird, certainly,” murmured the Marshal-General. “A silver cup—the horse, the flowers—child, you could not have come closer to the gods and still been on this earth.”

“And then what?” asked the Duke.

“And then, when I was aware of myself again, I found that all the old joy had returned, my lord.”

“And you feel no bitterness, Paksenarrion, for that half-year or more of loss?”

Paks shook her head. “No, Marshal-General. The Kuakgan was right. Now I know what Gird himself knew—how those who cannot fight feel when in danger. And I know that the delight in battle, what we soldiers think of as courage, is not essential, even to a soldier. I need not call up anger any more—and the anger I called, in Kolobia, opened the way for Achrya’s evil. I know that I can, if I but ask the gods, know what is right, and do it.”

The Marshal-General held her gaze for some moments in silence. “Well,” she said finally. “You told Amberion you were still sworn to Gird—but I can tell, Paksenarrion, that you are no longer my blade to wield. You have gone beyond that. Gird and the High Lord know what they would have you do; I cannot direct you.”

Paks smiled. “Yet I respect your wisdom and experience—”

“Don’t fence with me, child. I believe you are truly a paladin, called in the old way by the gods directly. And not by one of them, but by several. If you can use any of my experience, you are welcome to it—but I expect you’ll use it in ways I cannot foresee.”

“If that is so,” said the Duke, “then her mission here must have been at their bidding.”

The Marshal-General shot him a quick glance. “Certainly. Can you doubt it?”

“But why? What—”

“To maintain the protection you built here. That’s one thing. I don’t know what else. I don’t know if her mission here is finished. Do you, Paksenarrion?”

“I feel no call to go, at this time.”

“Then you will stay—if you will.”

Paks grinned. “I will stay.”

“You have still a horse and armor in Fin Panir. They will be waiting for you when you come. Or ask, and we will send them where you will.” The Marshal-General sat back with a sigh. “Duke Phelan, I cannot recall a more surprising few days, and that includes my first half-year as a yeoman-marshal.”

“Nor I. Not since—” he said, then stopped, staring into the fire. But when they looked questioningly at him, he shook his head. “One person’s tale is enough at one time. Long ago I was saved, suddenly and unexpectedly, from great evil, but I will not speak of that now.”

“Do you think many of your soldiers will leave, with the influence of Gird returning?” asked the Marshal-General, in what was obviously an attempt to be tactful.

“I hope not. You and your paladin found none who are truly evil, but some might still find our changes distasteful. Campaigning in the south meant excitement, a chance for riches, the company of other mercenaries—”

Paks herself had sometimes thought that Valdaire, full of mercenaries from a dozen companies or more, was the best place to be. She thought of the times she’d walked in to The White Dragon with Vik and Arñe—and before then, with Saben and Canna, for a pleasant evening. They would miss that, with no city nearer than Vérella.

Even so, Paks was surprised when the first list appeared of those leaving. Barranyi, who had joined the same year that she did, headed the list. She realized now that Barra had not been around, those times old friends gathered to talk; she had wondered only briefly, and thought no more of it. Without saying anything to the Duke, Paks went to talk with her. She found her already packing her things, with Natzlin watching, stony-faced.

“You!” Barra said, as Paks came up. “I’m surprised to see you hanging around common soldiers, Paks. But I suppose you remember that I knew you before you became such a famous hero.”

“Barra—!” Natzlin’s voice shook.

Paks herself was shocked at the venom in Barra’s words. “What are you angry about, Barra? I thought we were friends—”

“Friends! If ever we were, it was long ago. Before you started thinking you were the High Lord’s special messenger. I saw through you a long time ago, Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter. I knew you’d cause trouble in the end, and so you have!”

“Barra, that’s not fair!” Natzlin threw a quick look at Paks, then touched Barra’s arm. “She’s changed, yes, but so have you.”

“We’ve all changed. She’s just—” Barra folded her lips together as she rolled another tunic and stuffed it in her pack. Then she turned to Natzlin. “And you—what’s she done to you, that you’re staying, eh? Do you think there’s room for more than one hero around here? As long as Paks is with the Duke, that’s who’s going to get the notice. You might as well come, Natzlin; you’ll end up a scarred old veteran with nothing to show for it but a few measly apple trees, like Kolya.”

“I like apple trees.” Natzlin turned toward Paks. “I don’t know why she blames you. I know it’s not your fault—”

“Tir’s gut, it’s not!” Barra grabbed Natzlin’s arms and swung her around. “Who was it that let herself be banned when it was that man’s fault? And who was the ‘hero’ of Dwarfwatch? And who talked the Duke out of handling Siniava as he should have? Who have we heard about, night and day, this past year? Who, but poor, brave, wonderful Paks! And I thought Effa was a sugar-tit, with her ‘Gird this, and Gird that’ all the time. And she got killed, and I knew what Gird thought of her. But Paks!” Barra flung her pack across the room, startling the junior privates who had been loafing there, and had not heard any of it. She turned to Paks, her face pale under its tan. “You!” she said again. “You were no better when we started. By Tir, I remember giving you plenty of lumps in practice, if you don’t. You had no special powers—you said it yourself. But you had all the chances. Everything came to you, praise and plenty all the time—” Paks thought of Saben’s death, and Canna’s, and the bitter hours she’d spent in combat with dire and dreadful things—the elfane taig, the kuaknom of Kolobia, the daskdraudigs. Praise and plenty? After last winter’s starvation and contempt? She said nothing, realizing that the facts meant nothing now to Barra, lost in her own bitterness and anger.

“I could have done better,” said Barra harshly, not bothering to lower her voice. “I could have—and I’ll tell you this, Paks—I wouldn’t have gone craven, as you did, to become the laughingstock of half the north—” So those tales had come this far, Paks realized. At the moment, it seemed less important than Barra’s rage. “I’d have died decently,” Barra went on, “if I couldn’t live decently.”

Paks looked at her. Where had the young girl gone, she wondered, who had had the same dreams she had had? Where was the laughing girl, who had snatched the last plum tart from the table one night, and tossed it to Paks across the crowded mess hall? It had disintegrated, Paks remembered, after a dozen or so throws. What had happened, to turn someone who dreamed of being a hero, even a paladin, into this hard and bitter soldier? Had the kernel of evil always been there? An old conversation with Vik trickled out of her memory: “ . . . you think she’s good because you like her,” he had said. “But people aren’t like that. . . .” Perhaps it had been there, even then, and her liking for Barra had blinded her. Certainly it was here now, and visible to her senses. She wondered how the Marshal-General and Amberion had missed it, when they walked among the Company searching for just such danger.

“I’m sorry, Barra, that you think this,” said Paks quietly. “I expect you might have done better—many might have. But I was the one there.”

Barra laughed harshly. “Yes—you were. You always got the chance. Do you remember the night you came into the camp in Rotengre? I wondered, after, why you were the only one to make it through. Did the gods help you, Paks, or was it something you did?”

Her meaning was unmistakable. Natzlin gasped a protest, and Paks was suddenly breathless with rage. Without thought, she was alight, casting a white radiance that dimmed the winter daylight through the windows. Barra shrank, eyes squinted nearly shut. Paks fought the rage down, and damped her light. She merely looked at Barra, and Barra looked back. Natzlin, tears running down her face, turned her back on Barra and walked out of the room.

“You’ll find, someday,” Paks found herself saying, “that your own tongue cuts you worse than any blade. I cannot even offer you the satisfaction of a fight, for you could not stand against me—and you know it. Go make your peace with Natzlin before you leave her—she’s been a true friend to you all these years.”

“A lover isn’t always a friend,” said Barra, still clenched in her rage.

“Not always. But she is, and you know it. Leave here angry with me, if you will, or with the Duke. But do not leave Natzlin to bear the burden of it.” And Paks held her gaze until Barra’s rigidity eased, and she looked down.

“Tir’s gut,” she said crossly, but without the intensity she’d had. “You’d think she was your lover, the way you care about her feelings.”

“Good luck, Barra, wherever you go.”

“Just don’t follow me, Paks!” The intensity was back, the dark eyes snapping with anger. “Just get out of my way, give me a chance.”

Outside the door, Paks met Dorrin, who shook her head with a wry smile. They headed across the courtyard to the mess hall. “You won’t stop that one,” Dorrin said on the way.

“I had to try—”

“You were recruits together, I remember. But she wasn’t your friend, was she?”

“I thought so.”

Dorrin shook her head again. “Paks, Barra’s had as few friends as anyone in the Company. Only Natzlin—”

“Well, she was always prickly—”

“She was always ready to take offense at anything, and she’d hold a grudge until it died of old age. She’s a skilled fighter, and honest, and works hard—all good. But I’ve heard more harsh things about her, from my sergeants, than about the rest of your recruit year put together. She wasn’t bad—not the way I could complain of—but she hadn’t a generous bone in her, and she’d a way of talking that kept everyone miserable. She didn’t just love women—that’s no problem—but she hated men, as well. And she has the most dangerous of beliefs: that things are unfair for her. The High Lord knows things are unfair. But they’re unfair for us all. That’s the way the world is.” She sighed, and leaned on the mess hall door. “It’s Natzlin that will suffer, as usual. I don’t know how many times Natz has apologized to others, and smoothed things over. I’m glad she’s staying, but I don’t know how she’ll do.”

“I didn’t know others had had trouble—”

“No. You haven’t been here, or in my cohort.”

Paks did not see Barranyi again before she left. Within a week, it seemed the Company had settled into its new routine. The Girdsmen volunteered to work on the grange on their time off. Others joined them, from time to time. Wideflung patrols, riding out on the frosty hills, had not found any concentrations of orcs, and the orc raids on farms had ceased. The last of the damage had been repaired in Duke’s East, and the millstones were back in place. The Marshal-General held the first services for Girdsmen, and then declared she had to leave.

“If I don’t go now,” she said, looking at the sky, “I might end up wintering here. That won’t do; I’ve work in Fin Panir. Thank you, my lord Duke, for your invitation and courtesy, and our prayers will be with you.”

“I thank you,” he said.

“Paksenarrion,” she said, turning to Paks, “you know you are welcome in Fin Panir. You have friends who would be glad to see you. But I know you are under other orders than mine—so if I do not see you again this side of the High Lord’s table, you have my prayers and my goodwill.”

Paks bowed, and thanked her. It had taken but an hour for the Marshal-General’s party to be ready for travel, and now they walked across the Duke’s Court before a whipping north wind. Once in the main courtyard, the Marshal-General took a last look around the stronghold.

“Duke Phelan, “she said, “a man who can bring this order out of the chaos that was the north borders need not fear his work will waste. I cannot say what will come, for I have no prophecy, but I feel that your power is only now beginning to come into its strength. Gird’s grace, and the High Lord’s favor, on all you do.” She mounted quickly, and turned her horse to the gate. Again the trumpets rang out. This time, the soldiers in the courtyard raised a cheer, and the Marshal-General and her party rode out onto the windy plain.