Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda Read online

  It was as much a matter of the mechanics of it as it was of common consent that most duels ended with just a scratch, or, at worst, a wound on the sword arm.

  There were safer things than dueling, but deaths were rare, and that was only in part because the local noble authorities — the barons in Bieme, and the governors in Holtun — would occasionally choose to consider that the death was a murder.

  It was one thing for a couple of nobles to occasionally square off over some private offense — whether real, or not — but it would be entirely another thing for the baron, of all people, to fight his half-brother and heir.

  Besides, Miron was almost certainly better with a short dueling rapier than Kethol was.

  Legends to the contrary, few soldiers had time for extensive sword practice, and that would be with sabers, not little noble-stickers. Pirojil and Kethol had more training than most, but put all their hours together — and double the sum — and they still probably hadn’t spent a tenth of the time with a sword in hand that Miron, a scion of nobility, had.

  Besides, while Forinel and Miron each wore a nobleman’s short rapier, Kethol had always carried a saber. It probably wouldn’t even occur to Kethol until it was too late that as a dueling weapon a rapier was by far better than the saber that Kethol had always carried, just as the longer, heavier saber was far more useful in a battle than a skinny little poking rod could be.

  Yes, Kethol was a fine swordsman, and every bit as good with staff and knife and fists and elbows if need be — but a duelist? Hardly. When you fought for real, and not just sport, the only purpose of a strike to the hand, or leg, or foot — as common as those were — was to set up for a death blow, or, as Pirojil himself had done more times than he cared to count, to disable or at least slow one enemy while you had to turn to deal with another.

  Now, if Pirojil was going to take on Miron, the fight would start with a kick to the balls or knee, or an elbow to the too-full mouth or noble neck — or, preferably, a bow shot or rifle shot at great distance — and not a swordmaster’s “Make yourselves ready.”

  Sport was a noble’s ideal, and Pirojil was very much not a noble.

  Miron had let Treseen’s words — and Forinel’s stupid words, which they were in reply to — linger in the air long enough.

  “Really.” Miron made no move to rise; he rested one elbow on the arm of his chair, and his chin on the tips of his fingers, as though studying something unusual and vaguely distasteful. “Perhaps it’s been too long since you’ve been home, brother. It’s long been a custom — in Holtun and in less civilized countries — that the ruler, be it a lowly noble landholder, or a baron, or the Emperor himself, is not properly subject to challenge by anybody below his station.” His smile was deeply offensive without being obviously offensive. “Which is why, perhaps, rulers’ ladies so often are so … charmingly outspoken.”

  Forinel/Kethol didn’t have a quick response to that. Which was probably just as well.

  Miron went on: “And fond as I am of you, Forinel — and, my brother and baron, please do forgive me for the presumption — I wouldn’t want you to think that I’ve lost any skills in the last years. Even after your departure, my mother saw to it that we always had a good swordmaster on staff. In fact, I think that you might find that I’m better with a sword than I used to be, and I used to be somewhat better than you, much to your embarrassment, as you may recall.”

  “I think —” Kethol started.

  “Excuse me.” Treseen cleared his throat. “I think this has gone quite far enough,” he said. “I will remind you — both of you — that I am the governor of Keranahan, and I absolutely forbid either of you — either of you — to engage in any sort of duel with each other.” His eyes went from Forinel to Miron, and then back. “Since I feel the need to be very specific: I mean there are to be no duels whatsoever between the two of you — either in your own person, or by proxy — and Captain Pirojil, I’m talking to you.

  “It’s no secret that there’s bad blood between the two of you, and I don’t believe for a moment that either one of you would be satisfied with a little scratch on the other’s sword arm.

  “If some duel should happen — no matter how it happens — I can promise that it will not go well for the survivor. Neither the Emperor nor Parliament would consider awarding the title to you, Miron, if you killed your brother. And as for you, Baron, if I were you, I would worry a great deal about explaining to the Emperor and the rest of Parliament how a fratricide should properly remain the baron of Keranahan. Understood?”

  Miron nodded easily, lightly, and after a moment, Forinel nodded, as well.

  Treseen grunted. “As for me, I’d find it more than slightly embarrassing if I were to be obliged to report that the baron had killed his half-brother and heir, and more embarrassing than that were I obligated to report to the proctor or the Emperor himself that the baron, just confirmed in his estate by the Emperor and Parliament, had been killed by his half-brother and heir.” He looked from Miron to Forinel, and then to Pirojil. “Have I been utterly clear?”

  For once, Treseen didn’t come across as the buffoon that Pirojil had always thought of him as.

  He looked over toward where Tarnell was eyeing him and nodding, as though to say, You watch over your baron, man, and I’ll watch over my captain.

  Pirojil nodded back, and quietly decided that if he ever had to kill Treseen, he’d be sure to cut Tarnell down first. Not out of anger, but in self-preservation.

  Treseen was still staring at both Forinel and Miron. “I know that neither of you has served as a military officer, but it’s customary when one gets an order to acknowledge it.” He turned to Kethol. “Baron?”

  “I understand,” Kethol said.

  Treseen nodded, accepting that, then turned to Miron, who immediately raised and spread his hands.

  “Of course, Governor; you’ve been most clear. I hope that all will pardon my testiness, and just attribute it to a minor case of indigestion.” He patted himself on his flat belly.

  “Well,” Treseen said, sitting back in his chair, “now that we’re done with that little bit of unpleasantness, I imagine that you are eager to return to the Residence, and settle yourselves in. A more formal greeting can wait for, perhaps, Fredensday? I’m sure that I can get invitations out today —” He looked over at Tarnell.

  “I can find a scribe who knows one end of a pen from another,” Tarnell said. “We supposedly have a pair of them down the hall, although I’d never have believed that such thumb-fingered dolts would call themselves scribes.” He bit on a heavily bitten thumbnail in thought. “Fredensday is something of a rush, though … perhaps Karlsday, or even Tenthday would be better —”

  “Fredensday will do nicely.” Treseen nodded in agreement with himself. “The sooner the better, if only for my own sake. While I’m sure that I’ll enjoy the company, as always, it will also be a particularly pleasant change to have complaints about the occupation be directed at other ears than mine. The local lords will be more than eager to greet the … long-lost baron, I’m sure.”

  “I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t,” Miron said. “Perhaps I should remain here, and help in the preparations — much as it pains me to delay my own homecoming.”

  Sure. That was a great idea. Let Miron and Treseen have more time to plan and plot in private.

  Then again, the truth was that there would be no real way to prevent that from happening, and it was pointless to try. Neutralizing Miron’s threat was something that required either a lot more subtlety or a lot less.

  “No.” Forinel rose. “I wouldn’t want you to feel that you weren’t welcome at home, brother,” he said. “You’d best come with us.”

  Miron shrugged lightly, and easily rose to his feet. “I’m grateful, of course, brother — and I am at your service, my baron.”

  Pirojil couldn’t figure out who had been doing the manipulating, but he had a suspicion, and he didn’t like it very much.

  Tre
seen nodded. “Then I’ll see you on Fredensday, and I think that concludes our business for today. Tarnell — horses for the baron’s party, if you please.”

  Rising, Treseen extended a hand to Forinel. “Again, Baron Keranahan: welcome home.”

  3

  HOMECOMING II

  You can trust a married man on this: home is where she is. And if that sounds maudlin — and I guess it does — it’s maudlin that’s been honestly come by, although it did take a second marriage to come by it.

  — Walter Slovotsky

  KETHOL PULLED HIS horse to a prancing halt on the crest of the hill, looking down at what the locals had been calling the Residence ever since the start of the occupation.

  Back when the Holtish barons ruled Holtun, it had been the Keranahan barons’ country home, a respite from the sights and sounds and most particularly the smells of Dereneyl, just an easy hour’s ride to the north and west down an old bricked-stone road that was even easier on a horse’s shod hooves than it would have been on a carriage’s axles.

  Kethol had some sympathy for their desire for that respite. Cities smelled of smoke and stale grease, of rotting timbers and rotting refuse — and most particularly every city always smelled of the shit and piss of every man, woman, and beast that had ever set foot in it.

  The Residence itself looked pleasant enough, despite the new looking wooden walls that had turned it into a compound of sorts: a central stone building that rose an impressive three stories, flanked on either side by a long two-story wing, each wing fronted by a full-length portico.

  In contrast to the new walls, the old structure was overgrown with ancient ivy, and twittering birds fluttered in and out of nests hidden in the green tangle. Not a place to hole up in time of war, no, but a nicer place to spend a warm summer than the city.

  At the far end of the compound, the stable and the barracks stood side by side, as though to suggest that the builders didn’t see much of a difference between horses and soldiers, and the near end of the compound was devoted to a fine garden, filled with flowers. He wasn’t sure what kind of flowers they were. Probably some were roses, and Kethol thought he recognized some as roses, and others as snapdragons and lilies, but all were starting to go wild and untamed.

  But beyond the castle were the woods.

  Thick stands of tall pines stood guard over the game trails that broke on the cleared land. The stream that ran through the floor of the valley and under the Residence walls wound its way across the farmed land to disappear into the lush greenery.

  He would have expected the woods to be less thick, at least around the edge. Back in Barony Cullinane, all of the woods had been thoroughly harvested around the edges and well into them, as part of the ongoing rebuilding of the crofts and villages put to the torch during the war, and if harvesting of trees bigger than a man could clasp his hands around wasn’t strictly controlled by the village wardens and landholders, the woods there would have quickly turned these into the poor excuses for forests that kept huge tracts of Nyphien looking more like the Waste of Elrood than anything else.

  Oh, well — it was just another difference, he supposed.

  Were the woods protected here? Or was it just that the lands around the Residence were the baron’s, farmed by crofters? As legend had it, all crofters were too lazy to so much as rehang a door for themselves, if the village warden wouldn’t pay them for doing it, and would spend two days haggling over the price of a job that would have taken a quick hour.

  Ketho ldidn’t know much about crofters, but Kethol liked the woods. Every woods was different, from the thin, scrubby forests of Enkiar to the vast, deep Great Woods that rimmed Osgrad in the north.

  But every wood, every forest was wonderful in its own way. Just as living trees would shelter you from a storm and from the heat of day, dead ones would provide wood to cook your food. Even the wettest wood could be quickly made to burn if you started with flint and steel and just a little twist of birch bark. A man who wasn’t afraid to work from sunrise to sunset could build himself a modest house in a few tendays, starting with nothing more than an ax and a stand of pines.

  A man who knew how to use a bow could feed himself on grouse and deer and elk forever, and absolutely anybody could snare for rabbit. Somebody who had been taught what to look for — and what to avoid — could harvest enough mushrooms, wild onions, and bitter greens to make even a humble meal of spit-roasted rabbit an absolute feast.

  Perhaps the nicest thing about woods was the noise. The distant chittering of birds and squirrels was always a notice that there was no danger about, and their sudden silence the loudest of alarms. Kethol could sleep more deeply in the woods than he could anywhere else, only to be awakened instantly when everything went silent.

  So he had little sympathy for the Keranahan rulers, who had been forced, the poor fellows, to live just outside a fine woods, rather than in a smelly city.

  He spurred his horse, and rode down to the gates of the Residence, trying as hard as he could to look like a man who had ridden down this road a thousand times before, and utterly sure that he was failing.

  “I’m sorry to say,” Leria said, again, “that you’ll find that almost all of the staff is new to you.”

  “Miron’s mother never did like anybody that my mother had brought on,” he said, as she had told him to. “So she finally got rid of the last of them? That’s like her.”

  Miron let that pass without comment, which was a nice change.

  “Treseen didn’t mention that he was sending a rider out ahead of us,” Pirojil said.

  “No, he didn’t.” Erenor’s mouth twisted. “Did you ask him if he was?”

  “No,” Pirojil said.

  Shut up, he meant.

  Yes, their coming had been announced, something that Kethol could have worked out even if he hadn’t noticed the groom walking down an obviously hard-ridden mare over in front of the stables, or the messenger, in Imperial black and silver, dippering water from the well next to the kitchen.

  A small troop of eighteen soldiers had formed up in two lines beside the gate, all in the green and gold livery of Keranahan. Not much of a company, but Keranahan was still under occupation, and it would have been more than a little surprising if there were a regiment-sized House Guard.

  What did surprise him was the thick-waisted guard captain, who broke into a trot, panting as he ran up the road toward them, a broad smile under a broad, many-times-broken nose threatening to split his face.

  “Forinel, Forinel,” he said, his voice thick. He took the reins as Kethol halted his horse. “It’s been so long, boy. I mean, Baron.” He grinned, and beckoned with his free hand. “Would you be so kind as to get yourself down off that sorry, spavined, swaybacked excuse for a mount and greet me properly, boy, or I just might let myself forget for a moment that you’re the baron and I’m just a simple soldier, and give you a good blading across the backside.”

  You could try, Kethol would have said.

  But that didn’t seem like the sort of thing that the baron would say.

  Awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say or do, Kethol levered himself out of the saddle and lowered himself to the ground.

  “Captain Thirien,” Leria said, formally, as she dismounted easily from the back of her small brown mare. “Are you not happy to see me, as well?” The tone of her voice held only a hint of reproof.

  She slipped her arm familiarly about Kethol’s waist, and gave him a reassuring squeeze that almost made him forget how adroitly she had given him the captain’s name without drawing attention to the fact that she was doing just that.

  The captain’s smile didn’t falter as he drew himself up straight, his ample belly threatening to split his tunic’s stitching.

  “Lady, I am always happy to see you, and always happy to welcome you to the Residence,” he said, his tone no less warm for being formal. “And I’m pleased enough to piss to welcome you as the new mistress-to-be of the Residence, if you don’t mind my saying
so.”

  He turned from her to grip Kethol by the shoulders. The captain — Thirien, his name was — had stronger hands than Kethol would have guessed.

  “But this one, this man-who-left-here-as-a-boy — him I never expected to see again, and you’ll forgive me, I trust, if an old man’s joy leaks out and splashes around.” He blinked tears from his eyes as he looked Kethol up and down, and nodded, approvingly.

  “Filled out a little, you finally did,” he said. “Always thought you were too skinny.”

  He waited for Kethol to say something.

  “It’s good to see you, too, Thirien,” he said. “It has been a long time.”

  That, at least, wasn’t a lie — forever was a long time, after all, and Kethol hadn’t met the captain when he had visited the Residence once before as himself, in his own flesh.

  “That it has, boy, that it has.” Thirien beckoned to a pair of soldiers over at the gate. “Well, what are you clods waiting for? Take the baron’s horses and see that they’re properly curried and fed, if you please.”

  He clapped a hand to Kethol’s shoulder. “Let’s get you settled in, shall we?”

  ***

  Kethol finished lacing the linen vest tightly over the blousy white shirt, then stooped to put on his boots.