Only the Bold

CHAPTER SEVEN

As they sailed, Royce was aware of the sense of hope on the boat. They’d found his father, the mirror sat in its bag in the bottom of the boat, and now they were heading for home. They’d actually done what they’d set out to do, in spite of all the challenges that the Seven Isles had put in their way. If they could do that, maybe they could do everything else that needed to be done as well.

“It’s actually the king,” Mark whispered to him, looking over to where Royce’s father was sitting, looking out over the waves. His friend sounded awestruck, and seemed to follow King Philip’s every move, as if waiting for instructions for him.

“And my father,” Royce said. As far as he was concerned, that was the important part.

“Your father, the king,” Mark agreed. “I’m sorry, I know how I sound, and you’ve done plenty of impressive things, but I know you.”

“And in time, you’ll know my father too,” Royce said. He wanted to get to know his father better too. After all this time apart, they had a lot to catch up on. Royce wanted to know all that his father had done in the time since he’d left, and wanted to learn more about what kind of man he was.

He started to make his way forward, toward the spot where his father was sitting. That meant going past where Matilde and Neave were perched amidships. The two appeared to be bickering about some story of his father’s exploits.

“I’m telling you,” Matilde said. “He was a great hero. He fought the nobles.”

“He was a noble,” Neave countered, “and then he lost to the nobles.”

“He fought monsters.”

“We’ve fought monsters,” Neave pointed out.

“He hunted bandits to keep the roads safe.”

“Some of them were Picti.”

“Is that what this is about? You don’t like him because he’s fought Picti? Because I’ve fought Picti. I beat you, remember.”

“Is everything all right?” Royce asked, before the argument could take off into more. It was always hard to tell with these two whether they were truly arguing or not.

“Neave doesn’t think that your father is someone worth following,” Matilde said.

Neave shook her head. “You’re the one who thinks that we should just follow him blindly, without thinking.”

“Neave?” Royce said with a frown. Did the Picti girl have some kind of problem with the return of his father?

“I’m glad we found him,” Neave said, “and I know that he’ll be useful in the battles to come, but Mark and Matilde are looking at him like… it’s almost as bad as the way we all looked at Lethe. No questioning, no thinking, just awe.”

“Because the rightful king has been found again!” Matilde insisted. “What more do you want? I thought the Picti always followed those who could display the right magical signs.”

“Those who can make the stones sing and make the old magic respond have our respect,” Neave agreed. “But we do not follow blindly. Sometimes someone must lead, but that does not mean we follow without thought, without asking questions, without deciding for ourselves what is right.”

“Is there going to be a problem among the Picti with my father coming back?” Royce asked her.

“I don’t know,” Neave admitted. “He is a man who has done many impressive things, but he was also the one who left the kingdom to King Carris and his nobles. He could have given us back our place in the world, and didn’t. He could have done more.”

“Perhaps he will this time,” Royce suggested.

“Perhaps,” Neave said. “In any case, I will continue to follow you. I heard you make the stones sing, at least, and you have shown me that you are someone who does what is right, Royce.”

Royce felt a note of pride at that, grateful for Neave’s trust after everything they’d been through. Maybe it was even good that someone was less in awe of his father than Mark and Matilde seemed to be, because it would help to keep things in check, help to make sure that they were all following along for the right reasons.

For now, he made his way further along the boat, to where his father was sitting, looking ahead at their progress with Gwylim the bhargir nearby. It almost looked as if his father was discussing something with the wolf-like beast, Gwylim’s head turning in acknowledgment as his father spoke.

“If I can return you to what you were, I will,” his father said. “But you must also know the dangers of the things that are to come. Without your skin, you may be trapped, but you are still powerful.”

“Father?” Royce said, moving closer.

His father turned and smiled up at him. “It’s so good to hear you call me that. I have just been discussing plans with our friend here.”

“And do you think he understood all of it?” Royce asked. It seemed so strange to be talking to a thing that looked like a wolf.

“Do you understand what a bhargir is, Royce?” his father asked. “A man who could take the skin of a beast imbued with magic and become it. An old thing, and a powerful one. A creature like him can heal wounds that he suffers, can fight against the most ferocious foes, and then walk back into camp as the man he was. Except that this one cannot.”

Royce nodded. He understood that. Even so, it was hard sometimes not to think of Gwylim as the creature he appeared to be.

“You have strange and powerful companions,” his father said, with a gesture up toward the circling form of Ember. “You will need to speak to your witch soon, because I would like to know what she plans to do next. As for me… may I borrow your sword for a while?”

“It’s yours, if you want it,” Royce said. He took the obsidian blade from his belt and held it out almost reverently.

His father shook his head. “Not to keep. Living alone for so long has taught me a few skills, though, and I think that I can help make this blade better.”

“Better?” Royce said.

“A warrior should have a good sword,” his father said. “Go, speak with your witch. I will do what I can here.”

Royce wanted to explain to his father that it wasn’t that easy; that Lori was only there to speak to rarely, when she wanted. His father seemed so confident, though, that Royce reached up his senses toward Ember, calling out to Lori as he did so.

He had an image of a space out of doors, among a set of ancient stones. There was a fire set in the middle of it, slow burning with peat, but also with something that made the edges of the flames burn in shades of green and purple. Royce felt as if he were walking into that image then, moving forward to the edge of the firelight.

“I hoped you would come,” Lori said, the witch looking up at him. “Come, Royce, sit by the fire. Tell me what is happening.”

“Don’t you know?” Royce asked. He moved to sit by the fire, in a spot where a low stone served as a seat. Royce could both feel it and not feel it, there and not there, all at once.

“No,” Lori said, and now Royce could see just how worried the witch looked. “That’s the problem.” She cast something into the fire, the color of the flames changing once again, the edges burning with the orange heat of a forge. “Look into the fire, Royce, and tell me what you see.”

Royce stared at the flames obediently, looking deeper and deeper, assuming that if he stared deep enough, it would give him visions of what was to come. Compared with the many possibilities of the mirror, it was a crude method, but Royce would welcome any guidance that he could get.

“I… just see flames,” Royce admitted after a few minutes of staring.

“That’s the problem,” Lori said. “So do I. I should see more, I have seen more, but from the moment you looked into that mirror of yours, I have been able to catch only glimpses of things to come.”

“You’re saying that the mirror interferes with other magic?” Royce asked, thinking of the glass that even now sat safe in their boat.

“Maybe,” Lori said with a shrug. “Or maybe the fact that it has shown you so much makes my kind of prediction less certain.”

“Not being able to see anything might be disconcerting,” Royce said, “but it doesn’t have to be a problem. I’ve looked into the mirror. I’ve seen…” Even here, like this, he knew that he couldn’t admit exactly what he’d seen, and Lori was already holding up a hand to stop him.

“Don’t,” she said. “The future is too fragile. You’re treating it like some steel hawser, when it’s a gossamer thread. Be more careful, Royce.”

Now the worry in her voice seemed to have turned to outright fear.

“Lori,” Royce said, “I know you can’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean that anything’s wrong.”

“I didn’t say that I couldn’t see anything,” Lori said. “I told you, I still catch glimpses, and those glimpses are things of shadows and blood. I see violence, Royce, everywhere I look.”

Royce shook his head. “That’s one possibility, but it’s not the only one. I have found my father. We will return, and the people will follow him. They will see the true king returned, and everyone will understand that things have changed. If we’re lucky, even King Carris will back down and run.”

Lori laughed at that. “I sometimes forget how young you are, Royce, or maybe how old I am. Not everyone has seen… whatever you have seen. Not everyone has wisdom straight from a mirror, or your certainty that your father is the perfect king. People won’t just bow down to him because he returns.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Royce said.

Lori smiled at that, but the smile was a brittle one. “So do I, Royce. So do I.”

The image of her by the fire faded, and Royce found himself back in the boat with the others. To his surprise, the sun had moved across the sky in the time he’d been conversing with the witch; much farther than it should have done in what had seemed like only a short time.

“You’re awake,” Matilde said. “That’s good. I think we’re getting close to shore, and we’re going to have to row when we get close.”

“You just don’t want to be the one doing it,” Royce guessed.

“After all the rowing in the Seven Isles?” Matilde shook her head. “I’ll leave it to you.”

Royce was happy that she and Neave seemed to have given up arguing for the moment. He went over to his father, who was still sitting in the prow of the boat, working on the obsidian sword.

Royce barely recognized it. His father had worked on the edges, turning the weapon into something smooth and sharp and deadly. He’d rewrapped the grip in leather, burning in wood above it to form a cross guard. Now he appeared to be fitting something into that cross guard, and it took Royce a moment to recognize—

“Your signet ring?” Royce said.

His father nodded, finishing pressing the symbol from it into a groove cut perfectly for the purpose.

“It’s not much, but I wanted the blade to be something personal, something that could only ever be yours,” his father said.

“It’s perfect,” Royce said, taking the blade from him. He tried the blade, and he could feel the adjustments that his father had made. It was lighter now, the balance refined, the blade singing through the air when Royce made an exploratory sweep with it. It wasn’t the shining perfection of the crystal sword, but it was something else in its own right, and it moved easily in Royce’s hand.

He stood there with his father, King Philip’s hand resting on his shoulder as they looked out in the direction of the kingdom. Soon, the dark line of the coast started to come into view, and Royce looked over at his father.

“We’re going home,” he promised.

“We are,” his father agreed. “And then the fight for it will begin.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Olivia wasn’t sure why the need to find Genevieve drew her south quite so strongly. Sense dictated that she should have stayed with her father’s forces, safe at the heart of a thousand men, rather than riding out here with only three.

Haam, Wells, and William looked nervous riding out like this into spaces that were still under the control of King Carris, but part of the reason Olivia had selected them for the task of protecting her was that they wouldn’t try to go against what she wanted, what she needed, to do.

She had to find Genevieve; Olivia didn’t know why, but she had to.

“Are you sure it’s safe to be so far away from your father’s forces, my lady?” Haam asked. Olivia knew he was just voicing the concerns the others had. She didn’t even blame him for it. This was a dangerous place for all of them.

“I have you to protect me,” she said to them.

That made them instantly sit up straighter with pride. These three weren’t knights, and the difference was obvious. Their armor was battered and probably pieced together from a dozen different sources, their horses more suited to pulling a plow than to war. Their weapons were plain, functional things, and it was obvious that they were nervous, looking around at every noise from the side of the road as they continued heading south.

“How much further though?” William asked, as they reached a crossroads. They came to a halt, trying to work out which way to go.

“We should think about turning back,” Haam said.

Olivia sat atop her steed, absentmindedly fiddling with the ring Royce had given her on their engagement; her family’s ring, but the symbol of their love nonetheless. She stroked it, and as she did so, she thought of Genevieve. She thought of the way the other girl had looked at the castle, and about how much she had obviously meant to Royce.

“We keep going, as far as we need to go until we find her,” Olivia said. “My guess is that she’s heading for the king’s encampment. We need to get to her before she reaches it.”

“And if we can’t?” Wells asked.

Olivia shrugged, but only because she knew she couldn’t say what she was thinking: that if necessary, she would tear down any wall, find a way through any army, to find Genevieve. Just the thought of her was like a hint of grit at the back of her mind that wouldn’t go away. Olivia knew she couldn’t be happy with Royce knowing that things were unsettled with Genevieve, with her out there still feeling that way about him. She needed to find her.

“Genevieve will have gone to Altfor,” Olivia said, dodging the question. “Altfor is with King Carris, so we know where she will be going. That gives us a chance to catch up with her before she can get there.”

“I hope so,” Wells said, “but we need to think about what point we turn back at. How far do we go before we need to return home?”

“We go as far as we need to,” Olivia said, her determination absolute. Right then, she knew that she would follow Genevieve into the midst of a blazing fire if she had to. “And we’re wasting time sitting here when we could be riding. Every moment we sit still on our horses is a moment when she is getting further away from us.”

Olivia set off in the direction that their information had said King Carris’s court was in, kicking her horse into a canter. She didn’t care if the others managed to keep up or not. Their horses hurried into place next to hers, and from a distance, they probably did look like a noblewoman riding along with her protector knights.

Eventually, they rode through some stands of trees, and then up onto the brow of a hill. From up there, Olivia could see King Carris’s army spread out below, banner after banner raised as nobles had joined him to show their support. There were thousands of men there, ordinary soldiers and knights, archers and spearmen. The nobles and the knights had their tents separate from the others, each with their small entourages of servants and hangers-on.

There was a keep at the heart of it all, solid and imposing. Instinctively, Olivia knew that was where Genevieve would be. Altfor would have gone in there to find the king, and Genevieve would have gone in there to find Altfor. She might have spent a little time out in the camp below, but Olivia guessed that it would have been only a little. She would have marched up in the direction of the doors, the way…

…the way she had at Olivia’s home.

Maybe that was part of what made her want to find Genevieve so badly. She knew that someone who would just come there like that, demanding to see Royce, wouldn’t stop at that. She would never just go away. She rubbed the ring she wore again…

“I’m going down there,” Olivia declared, kicking her horse forward once more.

Haam was there, grabbing for the horse’s reins.

“My lady, you are not going down there,” he said.

“You don’t get to tell me what I will and won’t do,” Olivia snapped back, surprised by how she sounded, even to herself. “I have to do this. I need to—”

“We need to go home,” William cut in. “We’ve come too far. We’re right outside the enemy camp!”

“You can go home if you want,” Olivia snapped. She dismounted, heading off in the direction of the keep. “I’ll find a way to do this.”

“No,” Wells said. “It’s suicide.”

He and William dismounted and grabbed hold of Olivia, holding her back. It took everything Olivia had not to fight to break free and just run down there. She had to find Genevieve… she had to.

“My lady, this is not sensible!” Haam said. “We can’t just walk into the camp of the enemy, no matter the reason. Think, we have already achieved something to get this far. We have seen the forces that they have. If we get back now, we will be able to tell the others what we will be facing in the battle.”

“We don’t even know that the woman you’re looking for is there,” Wells said.

Olivia felt herself calming a little, and she was ashamed to admit that Wells’s point had a little more to do with it than Haam’s. If she had been able to see Genevieve there, Olivia suspected that she would have run down there, and that nothing would be able to stop her.

As it was, she could at least seek out some kind of certainty.

“You’re right,” she said. “But that just means that we can’t go back yet. We need proper sketches of what we’ve found, and we need to find out if there are any weaknesses to be seen. Come on.”

Brushing them away, she started to lead the way around the encampment. It meant that Olivia could look down, trying to find the thing that she truly wanted: a safe way in. There had to be one; with an army that size, it was impossible that everyone would be accounted for. There would be coming and going, with people delivering food from the surrounding farms and messages from the world beyond.

Olivia thought of the challenges that faced their army. They were gathering people every day, and that process was one that brought risks with it. Already, there had been plenty of chances for spies to slip in, and controlling the flow of people here looked as if it would be almost as bad. Perhaps if they could find some way to fit in with a group trying to join the king’s forces, she would be able to get into the keep, and from there, find her way to Genevieve…

Olivia found her thoughts interrupted by the sound of booted feet cracking twigs. She spun and found half a dozen men exiting a stand of trees, all dressed in the king’s colors. One held a bow, half drawn, another a spear, while the rest were all armed with swords.

“My lady,” Haam whispered, “you need to be ready to run.”

Olivia nodded, edging away toward her horse.

“Well, well,” the one with the spear said. “What’s all this then? Spies lurking around the edge of our camp?”

“Not spies,” Olivia said quickly. “These men are my escort. I am on my way… on my way to join my father, who is down in the camp.”

“Oh really?” the guard said. His tone said that he didn’t believe her. “And just who is your father?”

“Lord Illyne,” Olivia said, picking a lord she knew to have a daughter, and whose standard she could see down there among the king’s forces.

“Nice try,” the man said with a sneer, “but Lord Illyne’s daughter fell in a hunting accident two days ago, and she’s been in bed since.”

Olivia cursed her luck.

“I was trying to be discreet,” she said. “The truth is that I have messages for the ears of Lady Genevieve, Lord Altfor’s wife.”

She should have thought of that before. It was a ploy that would both explain her presence here and see her safely through the cordon of the army to wherever Genevieve currently was.

It was also news that made the guard’s eyes widen. “It’s her, the one they said to look for! The one his lordship’s wife was meeting with. Grab her!”

Olivia had the feeling of something happening that she had no idea about, but she also knew that there was no time to do anything but run. Haam, Wells, and William moved to protect her.

William cried out as an arrow struck him through the guts, with a sickening sound that Olivia knew she would hear in her darkest nightmares from now on. He didn’t fall, though. Rushing forward and striking at the spearman with his sword, he managed to get a couple of solid blows in, one ringing off the man’s armor, the next embedding deep into his skull.

Then a second arrow struck him in the chest and he fell, clutching at it as he died.

Olivia stood there in shock for a moment, her heart breaking at the thought that a boy who had come there only because she had talked him into it was dying now, gasping his last breaths on a muddy hilltop. She wanted to find some way to help him and make it all right, but she knew then that she had to get to her horse.

She took step after stumbling step toward it, hurrying as quickly as she could. An arrow flashed past her, followed by an angry shout.

“That one alive, idiot!”

Then there was just the clash of blades behind her, the sounds of a battle that she didn’t dare turn to watch. Olivia made it to her horse, pulling herself up onto its back and looking back the way she’d come. What she saw filled her with even worse horror than before.

Haam was on his knees, parrying blow after blow, but without the skill to do more than that. Wells was trying to fight his way clear, but two men were blocking his way, each cutting at him whenever he turned to the other, so that he bled from a dozen wounds or more.

Even as Olivia watched, she saw another of the guards come up behind Haam, and although she tried to scream a warning, it was too little, too late. Steel slid in and out of her protector’s chest, as efficiently as a farmer killing cattle, more butchery than war. She didn’t even see the moment when Wells fell, because he died somewhere in the long seconds that she was staring at Haam’s demise. By the time she looked back, he was down, and all of the remaining guards were advancing on her.

Olivia turned her horse to run, and she heard the bow sing out again, heard that horrible, wet thud as it struck flesh. Olivia looked down, half-expecting to see the shaft sticking from her chest, but no; instead, it was embedded deep into the flesh of her mare, the horse crying out in pain and rearing.

It fell, and Olivia threw herself clear, striking the ground far harder than she would have wished and knocking the air from her lungs. By the time she had enough for a gasping breath, strong hands were already taking hold of her, dragging her to her feet.

“The king will want this one,” one of the remaining guards said. “Let’s get her to the dungeon with Duke Altfor’s traitorous wife.”

The worst part, the very worst, was that even among all of this, a part of Olivia was pleased by that. Pleased to be taken to Genevieve, even while good young men lay dead in the mud behind her, and while the only thing that could come from all of this was her own death.