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At this point, Alvar decided that it would be ill-mannered to observe them further, even out of the corner of his eye—as he noticed the others doing while they pretended to busy themselves with their horses or gear. A Horseman of Jad, he told himself firmly, had no business concerning himself with the words and affairs of the great. Alvar virtuously turned his back upon the forthcoming encounter and walked to a corner of the yard to attend to his own pressing business in private, on the far side of a hay wagon.
Why Count Gonzalez de Rada and Ser Rodrigo Belmonte should have elected to stroll together, a moment later, to the shade of that same wagon would forever after remain one of the enduring mysteries of the world Jad had created, as far as Alvar de Pellino was concerned.
The two men were known throughout the three Jaddite kingdoms of Esperaña to have no love for one another. Even the youngest soldiers, new to the king’s army, managed to hear some of the court stories. The tale of how Rodrigo Belmonte had demanded at the coronation of King Ramiro that the new king swear an oath of noncomplicity in the death of his brother before Ser Rodrigo would offer his own oath of allegiance was one that every one of them knew. It was a part of the legend of the Captain.
It might even be true, Alvar had cynically murmured to some drinking companions one night in a soldier’s tavern. He was already becoming known for remarks like that. It was a good thing he knew how to fight. His father had warned him, more than once back on the farm, that a quick tongue could be more of a hindrance than it was an asset in the army of Valledo.
Clever remarks by young soldiers notwithstanding, what was true was that although Rodrigo Belmonte did swear his oath of fealty and King Ramiro accepted him as his man, it was Gonzalez de Rada who was named by the new king as his constable—the office Rodrigo had held for the late King Raimundo. It was, therefore, Count Gonzalez who was formally responsible, among other things, for overseeing the selection and promotion of young men throughout Valledo to posts in the king’s army.
Not that many of the younger horsemen had been observed to deviate greatly from the collective view that if you wanted to be properly trained you did whatever you could to ride with the Captain. And if you wanted to be numbered among the elite soldiers of the peninsula, of the world, you offered money, land, your sisters, your own young body if need be, as a bribe to whomever could get you into Rodrigo’s band.
Not that anyone could get you in, for any of those offerings. The Captain made his own choices, often unexpected ones, with gap-toothed old Laín Nunez his only counsellor. Laín was manifestly uninterested in the alleged pleasures of boys, and the Captain … well, the very thought was near to sacrilege, besides which, Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda was the most beautiful woman in the world. So all the young men in Esteren agreed, though almost none of them had ever seen her.
On the morning he stood pissing against a wagon wheel in a sidecourt of Esteren’s palace and overheard certain things he ought not to have heard, Alvar de Pellino was one of those who had never met the Captain’s wife. He hadn’t met anyone, really. He was less than a year in from a farm in the northwest. He still couldn’t believe they were going to let him ride with them this morning.
He heard footsteps and voices approaching from the far side of the wagon; that was not of great concern. Some men might have to be alone to empty their bladder or bowels; they didn’t last long in an army. But then, on that very thought, Alvar’s groin muscles clenched in a spasm so hard they cut off the splashing flow of his water. He gasped, recognizing the Captain’s wry tones, and then realized that the second man’s voice—the one that sounded like slow honey being poured—belonged to Count Gonzalez.
With a decision to be swiftly made, Alvar de Pellino made what turned out to be the wrong one. Panic-stricken, irrationally preoccupied with remaining unnoticed, Alvar almost injured himself holding in the last of his water and kept silent. He hoped, fervently, that the two men were only here to exchange parting pleasantries.
“I could arrange to have your sons killed and your ranch burned,” Gonzalez de Rada said, pleasantly enough, “if you make any trouble about this.”
Alvar decided that it was by far the wisest course not to breathe for a time.
“Try it,” the Captain said briskly. “The boys could use some practice against assault, however incompetent. But before you leave, do explain how I would be the one making trouble and not your pig of a brother.”
“If a de Rada chooses to go raiding in Al-Rassan, what business is it of yours, Belmonte?”
“Ah. Well. If such is the case, why bother asking me to close my eyes and pretend not to see him?”
“I am merely trying to save you an embarrassing—”
“Don’t assume everyone else is a fool, de Rada. I’m collecting tribute from Fezana for the king. The only legitimacy to such a claim is that Ramiro has formally guaranteed the security of the city and its countryside. Not only from brigands, or his brother in Ruenda, or the other petty-kings in Al-Rassan, but from buffoons in his own country. If your brother wants to play at raiding games for the fun of it, he’d best not do it on my watch. If I see him anywhere in the country around Fezana I’ll deal with him in the name of the king. You’ll be doing him a kindness if you make that clear.” There was nothing wry or ironic, no hint of anything but iron in the voice now.
There was a silence. Alvar could hear Laín Nunez barking instructions over by the horses. He sounded angry. He often did. It became necessary, despite all his best efforts, to breathe. Alvar did so as quietly as he could.
“Doesn’t it cause you some concern,” Gonzalez de Rada said in a deceptively grave, an almost gentle tone, “to be riding off into infidel lands after speaking so rashly to the constable of Valledo, leaving your poor wife alone on a ranch with children and ranch hands?”
“In a word,” said the Captain, “no. For one thing, you value your own life too much to make a real enemy of me. I will not be subtle about this: if any man I can trace to your authority is found within half a day’s ride of my ranch I will know how to proceed and I will. I hope you understand me. I am speaking about killing you. For another thing, I may have my own thoughts about our king’s ascension, but I believe him to be a fair man. What, think you, will Ramiro do when a messenger reports to him the precise words of this conversation?”
Gonzalez de Rada sounded amused. “You would actually try your word against mine with the king?”
“Think, man,” the Captain said impatiently. Alvar knew that tone already. “He doesn’t have to believe me. But once word of your threat does reach him—and in public, I promise you—what can the king do should any harm befall my family?”
There was a silence again. When de Rada next spoke the amusement was gone. “You would really tell him about this? Unwise. You might force my hand, Belmonte.”
“As you have now forced mine. Consider an alternative, I beg of you. Act the part of an older, wiser brother. Tell that bullying man-child Garcia that his games cannot be allowed to compromise the king’s laws and diplomacy. Is that really too much authority to ask of the constable of Valledo?”
Another silence, a longer one this time. Then, carefully, “I will do what I can to keep him from crossing your path.”
“And I will do what I can to make him regret it if he does. If he fails to respect his older brother’s words.” Rodrigo’s voice betrayed neither triumph nor concession.
“You will not report this to the king now?”
“I will have to think on that. Fortunately I do have a witness should I have need.” With no more warning than that he raised his voice. “Alvar, finish doing what you have to, in the god’s name, you’ve been at it long enough to flood the yard. Come let me present you to the constable.”
Alvar, feeling his heart suddenly lodged considerably higher than it was wont to be found, discovered that he had gone dry as the desert sands. He fumbled to button his trousers and stepped gingerly out from behind the wagon. Crimson with embarrassment and apprehension, he discovered that Count Gonzalez’s features were no less flushed—though what he read in the deep-set brown eyes was rage.
Rodrigo’s voice was bland, as if he was oblivious to the feelings of either of them. “My lord count, please accept the salute of one of my company for this ride, Pellino de Damon’s son. Alvar, make a bow to the constable.”
Confused, horribly shaken, Alvar followed instructions. Gonzalez de Rada nodded curtly at his salute. The count’s expression was bleak as winter in the north when the winds came down. He said, “I believe I know of your father. He held a fort in the southwest for King Sancho, did he not?”
“Maraña Guard, yes, my lord. I am honored you are so good as to call him to mind.” Alvar was surprised his voice was working well enough to manage this. He kept his gaze lowered.
“And where is your father now?”
An innocuous question, a polite one, but Alvar, after what he’d heard from the far side of the wagon, seemed to catch a feathery hint of danger. He had no choice, though. This was the constable of Valledo.
“He was allowed to retire from the army, my lord, after suffering an injury in an Asharite raid. We have a farm now, in the north.”
Gonzalez de Rada was silent a long moment. At length he cleared his throat and said, “He was, if memory serves, a man famous for his discretion, your father.”
“And for loyal service to his leaders,” the Captain interjected briskly, before Alvar could say anything to that. “Alvar, best mount up before Laín blisters you raw for delaying us.”
Gratefully, Alvar hastily bowed to both men and hurried off to the other side of the yard where horses and soldiers awaited, in a simpler world by far than the one into which he’d stumbled by the wagon.
LATE IN THE MORNING of that same day, Ser Rodrigo Belmonte had dropped back from his position near the front of the column and signalled Alvar with a motion of his head to join him.
His heart pounding with the apprehension of disaster, Alvar followed his Captain to a position off one flank of the party. They were passing through the Vargas Hills, some of the most beautiful country in Valledo.
“Laín was born in a village beyond that western range,” the Captain began conversationally. “Or so he says. I tell him it’s a lie. That he was hatched from an egg in a swamp, as bald at birth as he is today.”
Alvar was too nervous to laugh. He managed a feeble grin. It was the first time he’d ever been alone with Ser Rodrigo. The slandered Laín Nunez was up ahead, rasping orders again. They would be taking their midday break soon.
The Captain went on, in the same mild voice, “I heard of a man in Al-Rassan years ago who was afraid to leave the khalif’s banquet table to take a piss. He held it in so long he ruptured himself and died before dessert was served.”
“I can believe it,” Alvar said fervently.
“What ought you to have done back there?” the Captain asked. His tone had changed, but only slightly.
Alvar had been thinking about nothing else since they had left the walls of Esteren behind. In a small voice, he said, “I should have cleared my throat, or coughed.”
Rodrigo Belmonte nodded. “Whistled, sung, spat on a wheel. Anything to let us know you were there. Why didn’t you?”
There was no good, clever answer so he offered the truth: “I was afraid. I still couldn’t believe you were bringing me on this ride. I didn’t want to be noticed.”
The Captain nodded again. He gazed past Alvar at the rolling hills and the dense pine forest to the west. Then the clear grey eyes shifted and Alvar found himself pinned by a vivid gaze. “All right. First lesson. I do not choose men for my company, even for a short journey, by mistake. If you were named to be with us it was for a reason. I have little patience with that kind of thing in a fighting man. Understood?”
Alvar jerked his head up and down. He took a breath and let it out. Before he could speak, the Captain went on. “Second lesson. Tell me, why do you think I called you out from behind the wagon? I made an enemy for you—the second most powerful man in Valledo. That wasn’t a generous thing for me to do. Why did I do it?”
Alvar looked away from the Captain and rode for a time thinking hard. He didn’t know it, but his face bore an expression that used to induce apprehension in his family. His thoughts sometimes took him to unexpected, dangerous places. This, as it happened, was such a time. He glanced over at Ser Rodrigo and then away again, uncharacteristically cautious.
“Say it!” the Captain snapped.
Alvar suddenly wished he were back on the farm, planting grain with his father and the farm hands, waiting for one of his sisters to walk out with beer and cheese and bread, and gossip from the house. He swallowed. He might be back there, soon enough. But it had never been said that Pellino de Damon’s son was a coward or, for that matter, overly shy with his thoughts.
“You weren’t thinking about me,” he said as firmly as he could manage. There was no point saying this if he sounded like a quavering child. “You pulled me out to be a body between Count Gonzalez and your family. I may be nothing in myself, but my father was known, and the constable now realizes that I’m a witness to what happened this morning. I’m protection for your wife and sons.”
He closed his eyes. When he opened them it was to see Rodrigo Belmonte grinning at him. Miraculously, the Captain didn’t seem angry. “As I said, there was a reason you were chosen to be tested on this ride. I don’t mind a clever man, Alvar. Within limits, mind you. You may even be right. I may have been entirely selfish. When it comes to threats against my family, I can be. I did make a possible enemy for you. I even put your life at some risk. Not a very honorable thing for a leader to do to one of his company, is it?”
This was another test, and Alvar was aware of it. His father had told him, more than once, that he would do better if he thought a little less and spoke a great deal less. But this was Ser Rodrigo Belmonte himself, the Captain, asking questions that demanded thought. He could dodge it, Alvar supposed. Perhaps he was expected to. But here they were, riding towards Al-Rassan through the pine-clad hills of Vargas, which he had never seen, and he was in this company for a reason. The Captain had just said so. They weren’t going to send him back. Alvar’s customary nature seemed to be returning to him with every passing moment.
Alvar de Pellino said, “Was it an honorable thing to do? Not really, if you want my true thought, my lord. In war a captain can do anything with his men, of course, but in a private feud I don’t know if it’s right.”
For a moment he thought he had gone too far. Then Ser Rodrigo smiled again; there was real amusement in the grey eyes. The Captain stroked his moustache with a gloved hand. “I imagine you caused your father some distress with your frankness, lad.”
Alvar grinned back. “He did caution me at times, my lord. Yes.”
“Cautioned?”
Alvar nodded. “Well, in fairness, I don’t know what more he—”
Alvar was not a small man, and there had been nothing easy about life on a northern farm, and even less that was conducive to softness during a year of service with the king’s army in Esteren. He was strong and quick, and a good rider. Nonetheless, the fist he never saw coming hit the side of his head like a hammer and sent him flying from his horse into the grass as if he’d been a child.
Alvar struggled quickly to a sitting position, spitting blood. One hand went feebly to his jaw, which felt as if it might be broken. It had happened: his father’s warning had just come true. His imbecilic habit of speaking whatever he thought had just cost him the opportunity any young soldier would die for. Rodrigo Belmonte had opened a door for him, and Alvar, swaggering through like the fool he was, had just fallen on his face. Or on his elbow and backside, actually.
Holding a hand to his face, Alvar looked up at his Captain. A short distance away the company had come to a halt and was regarding the two of them.
“I’ve had to do that to my sons, too, once or twice,” Rodrigo said. He was, improbably, still looking amused. “I’ll doubtless have to do it for a few years yet. Third lesson now, Alvar de Pellino. Sometimes it is wrong to hide as you did by the wagon. Sometimes it is equally wrong to push your ideas forward before they are complete. Take a little longer to be so sure of yourself. You’ll have some time to think about this while we ride. And while you are doing so, you might consider whether an unauthorized raid in Al-Rassan by a band of Garcia de Rada’s cronies playing outlaw might take this affair out of the realm of a private feud and into something else. I am an officer of the king of Valledo, and while you are in this company, so are you. The constable attempted to suborn me from my duty to the king with a threat. Is that a private matter, my young philosopher?”
“By the god’s balls, Rodrigo!” came an unmistakable voice, approaching from the head of the column. “What did Pellino’s brat do to deserve that?”
Ser Rodrigo turned to look at Laín Nunez trotting his horse over towards them. “Called me selfish and unfair to my men. Guilty of exploiting them in my private affairs.”
“That all?” Laín spat into the grass. “His father said a lot worse to me in our day.”
“Really?” The Captain seemed surprised. “De Rada just said he was famous for his discretion.”
“Horsepiss,” said Laín Nunez succinctly. “Why would you believe anything a de Rada said? Pellino de Damon had an opinion about anything and everything under the god’s sun. Drove me near crazy, he did. I had to put up with it until I wangled him a promotion to commanding a fort by the no-man’s-land. I was never as happy in my life as when I saw his backside on a horse going away from me.”
Alvar goggled up at both of them; his jaw would have dropped if it hadn’t hurt so much. He was too stunned to even get up from the grass. For most of his life his quiet, patient father had been gently chiding him against the evils of being too outspoken.
“You,” Ser Rodrigo was saying, grinning at the veteran soldier beside him, “are as full of horsepiss as any de Rada I’ve ever met.”
“That, I’ll tell you, is a deadly insult,” Laín Nunez rasped, the seamed and wizened face assuming an expression of fierce outrage.
Rodrigo laughed aloud. “You loved this man’s father like a brother. You’ve been telling me that for years. You picked his son yourself for this ride. Do you want to deny it?”
“I will deny anything I have to,” his lieutenant said sturdily. “But if Pellino’s boy has already driven you to a blow I might have made a terrible mistake.” They both looked down at Alvar, shaking their heads slowly.
“It may well be that you have,” said the Captain at length. He didn’t look particularly concerned. “We’ll know soon enough. Get up, lad,” he added. “Stick something cold on the side of your face or you’ll have trouble offering opinions about anything for a while.”
Laín Nunez had already turned to ride back. Now the Captain did the same. Alvar stood up.
“Captain,” he called, with difficulty.
Ser Rodrigo looked back over his shoulder. The grey eyes regarded him with curiosity now. Alvar knew he was pushing things again. So be it. It seemed his father had been that way too, amazingly. He was going to need some time to deal with that. And it seemed that it wasn’t his mother’s pilgrimage to Vasca’s Isle that had put him in this company, after all.
“Um, circumstances prevented me from finishing my last thought. I just wanted to say also that I would be proud to die defending your wife and sons.”
The Captain’s mouth quirked. He was amused again. “You are rather more likely to die defending yourself from them, actually. Come on, Alvar, I meant it about putting something on your jaw. If you don’t keep the swelling down you’ll frighten the women in Fezana and ruin your chances. In the meantime, remember to do some thinking before next you speak.”
“But I have been thinking—”
The Captain raised a hand in warning. Alvar was abruptly silent. Rodrigo cantered back to the company and a moment later Alvar led his own horse by the reins over to where they had halted for the midday meal. Oddly enough, despite the pain in his jaw, which a cloth soaked in water did only a little to ease, he didn’t feel badly at all.
And he had been thinking, already. He couldn’t help it. He’d decided that the Captain was right about Garcia de Rada’s raid taking the matter out of the area of a private feud and into the king’s affairs. Alvar prided himself that he had always been willing to accept when someone else made a shrewd point in discussion.
ALL THAT was days in the past. A swollen but not a broken jaw had assisted Alvar in the difficult task of keeping his rapidly evolving thoughts to himself.
The twice-yearly collection of the parias from Fezana had become something close to routine now, more an exercise in diplomacy than a military one. It was more important for King Ramiro to dispatch a leader of Ser Rodrigo’s stature than to send an army. They knew Ramiro could send an army. The tribute would not be refused, though it might be slow in coming and there was a kind of dance that had to be performed before they could ride back with gold from Al-Rassan. This much Alvar learned during the shifts he rode ahead of the party with Ludus or Martín, the most experienced of the outriders.
They taught him other things too. This might be a routine expedition, but the Captain was never tolerant of carelessness, and most particularly not so in the no-man’s-land, or in Al-Rassan itself. They were not riding south to give battle, but they had an image, a message to convey: that no one would ever want to do battle with the Horsemen of Valledo, and most particularly not with those commanded by Rodrigo Belmonte.
Ludus taught him how to anticipate from the movements of birds the presence of a stream or pond in the windswept plateau. Martín showed him how to read weather patterns in the clouds—the clues were very different here in the south from those Alvar had known in the far north by the sea. And it was the Captain himself who advised him to shorten his stirrups. It was the first time Ser Rodrigo had spoken directly to Alvar since flattening him with that blow on the first morning.
“You’ll be awkward for a few days,” he said, “but not for longer than that. All my men learn to ride like this into battle. Everyone here knows how. There may come a time in a fight when you need to stand up in the saddle, or leap from your horse. You’ll find it easier with the stirrups high. It may save your life.”
They had been in the no-man’s-land by then, approaching the two small forts King Ramiro had built when he began claiming the parias from Fezana. The garrisons in the forts had been desperately glad to see them, even if they stayed only a single night in each, to leave letters and gossip and supplies.
It had to be a lonely, anxious life down here in Lobar and Baeza, Alvar had realized. The balance in the peninsula might have begun to shift with the fall of the Khalifate in Al-Rassan, but that was an evolving process, not an accomplished reality, and there had been more than a slight element of provocation in the Valledans placing garrisons, however small, in the tagra lands. These were a handful of soldiers in a vast emptiness, perilously near to the swords and arrows of the Asharites.
King Ramiro had tried at the beginning, two years ago, to encourage settlement around the forts. He couldn’t force people to make their way down there, but he’d offered a ten-year tax exemption—given the costs of a steadily expanding army, not a trivial thing—and the usual promise of military support. It hadn’t been enough. Not yet. Only fifteen or twenty families, clearly leaving hopeless situations in the north, had been brave or rash or desperate enough to try making lives for themselves here on the threshold of Al-Rassan.
Things might be changing year by year, but the memory of the Khalifate’s armies thundering north through these high plains was a raw one yet. And everyone with a head above the ground knew the king was too fiercely engaged by his brother and uncle in Ruenda and Jaloña to be reckless in support of two speculative garrisons in the tagra and the families who huddled around them.
The balance might be shifting, but it was still a balance, and one could ignore that only at peril. Thinking, as they continued south, about the narrowed eyes and apprehensive faces of the men and women he’d seen in the fields beside the two forts, Alvar had decided there were worse things for a farmer to contend with than thin soil and early frosts in the north by the Ruenda border. Even the fields themselves down here had seemed pathetic and frail, small scratchings in the wide space of the otherwise empty land.
The Captain hadn’t seemed to see it that way, though. Ser Rodrigo had made a point of dismounting to speak to each of the farmers they saw. Alvar had been close enough to overhear him once: the talk was of crop rotation and the pattern of rainfall here in the tagra lands.
“We aren’t the real warriors of Valledo,” he’d said to his company upon mounting up again after one such conversation. “These people are. It will be a mistake for any man who rides with me to forget that.”
His expression had been unusually grim as he spoke, as if daring any of them to disagree. Alvar hadn’t been inclined to say anything at all. Thinking, he’d rubbed his bruised jaw through the beginnings of a sand-colored beard and kept silent.
The flat, high landscape of the plateau did not change, and there were no border markings of any kind, but late the following afternoon old Laín Nunez said aloud to no one in particular, “We’re in Al-Rassan now.”
THREE DAYS LATER, nearing sundown, the outriders caught a glimpse of the Tavares River and, not long after, Alvar saw for the first time the towers and walls of Fezana, tucked into a northward bend of the river, honey-colored in the westering light.
It was Ludus who first noticed the strange thing. An astonishing number of carrion birds seemed to be circling and swooping above the river by the northern wall of the city. Alvar had never seen anything like it. There had to be thousands of them.
