seen as greater than they were. True enough that Soferu, who wore the Wolf Crown and sat upon the Iron Throne, was but a man. True as well that he was not a man like any other, for lust for power ran as hot as magery in Soferu’s veins, and so the Iron Throne was an iron boot upon men’s necks, and an iron collar about men’s throats, and an iron chain about men’s minds, and only a fool would sow treason farther than he must.
And Baron Valdemar had been no fool.
Only he, and Juuso Beltran, whose line had served Valdemar’s as seneschal since the lands had first come into Valdemar’s hands, and Terilee, Valdemar’s lady, brave and bright as a swordblade, had known all Lord Valdemar’s heart and mind. The three of them had warded their plans with subtle spells (so Navar heard later, and this tale he was moved to credit)—not wards that would draw the attention of the Hellhound Mages of the Imperium, but layer upon layer of subtle shields of misdirection, a deception as artful as a swirl of autumn leaves concealing a doe from the hunter’s bow.
Of the journey to freedom itself, Navar knew as much as any man, for a scout’s skills were as vital as a mage’s when one must make one’s way through lands first hostile, then unknown. They brought with them not merely the household troops that a barony was permitted to arm and muster, but nearly all who dwelt within Valdemar’s bounds—all save for the baron’s eldest son. Lord Dethwyn, fostered as was the custom at Soferu’s court as hostage against his father’s obedience, would have willingly ascended to his father’s honors across his father’s grave were he granted the slightest chance. When Valdemar’s second son Restil came of age, he was meant to join his brother at the Wolf Court. It was not unknown for the sons of inconvenient nobles to perish at court so that their fathers’ lands might return to the emperor’s gift, and it was—perhaps—the thought of losing both his sons as much as anything else that caused the baron to move when he did.
It was the work of a year—hard travel, and sometimes terrifying; through the empire, then (by stealth and misdirection) across the kingdom of Hardorn, and at last into the western lands, which Hardorn did not claim—that brought them to haven. And Haven it was in truth, the city that they built upon the banks of the river that Valdemar named for his lady. Some had died on that journey, but their numbers were greater at the end of it than at the beginning, for the rumor that their fellowship journeyed to a freedom beyond the persecution of the Empire had spread, and those who did not join them in the first days of their exodus followed them in the sennights and moonturns that followed. To all who came seeking asylum, Valdemar—now King Valdemar—granted it, for the work of building a kingdom was the work of many hands.
For Valdemar now ruled a kingdom. The lands Baron Valdemar could now claim as his own were vaster by far than those that he had once ruled at the emperor’s pleasure, and he ruled now at no man’s pleasure save his own. And just as Valdemar’s lands had grown, so had the army grown into a great force of many companies, many captains, many sergeants, and Harleth now styled general over them all.
That growth was the reason Navar was now uneasy.
The days in which Navar had known every man and woman with whom he served were long gone—had been gone since before they had come to rest in their Haven. Thirty years ago, when he had been new come to the baron’s levy, he had known everyone his duties brought him near, both holder and servant alike. He had been able to measure the hearts and minds of all who sought to command him. Any soldier knew that just as there were good orders and sensible orders, there were bad orders and senseless orders, and it was a good soldier’s duty to evaluate each given order to see where it fell. He had seen countless lives saved by a swift-witted sergeant playing sunstruck at precisely the right time, and he had kept his own list (in his mind, never written where agents of the Iron Throne might see, for no one would think to look within the thoughts of a common sergeant, and Navar played the fool better than most when there was need) of those whose orders he himself would “lose” for precisely long enough to ease their disaster.
In Baron Valdemar’s holdings, that had been possible. In King Valdemar’s country, it would not be possible for long. In the moonturns since they had settled here, many men and women had stepped forward to take places of service, and that was well and good, for the tally of things to be done to create their safe haven was so great that no one man could oversee them all. King Valdemar could direct their work from long before sunup to long past sundown and still not make every decision that must be made.
Thus far all of them had proven to have hearts as good and as kind as King Valdemar himself. But how long, Navar wondered, before someone with honeyed words and subtle magic stepped forward to cloak a desire for power in a promise that his actions were in Valdemar’s best interests? Had they made this long and frightful journey only to stand vulnerable at the end to one who would seek to rebuild the empire with themself at its head? King Valdemar was a good and honest man and would likely raise young Restil to the same values, but—after him?
How long until Valdemar’s people had to flee tyranny once again?
Navar kept his suspicions quiet, for lessons learned in the shadow of the Iron Throne would take longer than a single year of flight and a few moonturns of safe haven to fade away. They had reached their new home in autumn and suffered through their first winter scrabbling to feed and shelter themselves, for provisions ran as low as spirits ran high. But if nothing else, there was good timber and good grazing in plenty, and what began as a bedraggled city of camp tents in the first weeks of autumn was a crude (though growing) settlement of wooden huts by spring. Stakes and stone cairns marked the location of future streets and roads, so that the building could progress in an orderly fashion. All through the fall and winter, those who could be spared from the labor of building and hunting had ridden out to map and explore, for the new kingdom of Valdemar was an unknown place. Navar had been among them, for no longer was he Baron Valdemar’s only scout, nor yet one of a dozen. Four score served in the King’s Army who had once been the baron’s huntsmen, or his spearmen, or common farmers, and (as all the army) they wore, not the uniform of the baron’s guard, but ordinary clothes, with nothing to mark them out save a gray brassard worn upon their left arms. Yet both caution and weather dictated that the scouts did not go far from Haven.
When the snow was gone, and Navar’s labor was no longer needed to help put the first crop into the fields, Captain Arwulf—he who had charge of the scouts now that they numbered a whole company of men and women— summoned Navar and asked him to command an expedition to scout the great forest to the western edge of the lands Valdemar’s people had claimed. “See what we can use there,” Captain Arwulf said, “and if there are any people who have claimed that land. I’ll send a mapmaker with you. We need to know more about our neighbors.”
It was a mark of King Valdemar’s new teachings—for he had chosen as the motto of his kingdom the words “No one way is the true way”—that Navar felt that he might refuse this order did he think it was a task beyond his ability; and true it was that never had he commanded men and women in the field, though he was well liked by his fellow soldiers. Navar’s skills had always been set to tasks where he must only command himself. Yet it was a needful task and one he did not think beyond his ability, and so he asked merely to choose those who would accompany him. And to this request Captain Arwulf made no demur, saying only that there was no better mapmaker than the one he had already chosen.
Almost did Navar reconsider his audacity at accepting such a great undertaking when, on the very day he and his dozen chosen soldiers were to depart, he first met young Doladan. The lad seemed to him hardly older than Prince Restil, and he frankly admitted—after he’d fallen off his mule while attempting to adjust his cloak, greet Navar, and repack his saddlebags all at the same time—that he’d never held sword or bow in his life. In the old Valdemar, he’d been the Master Gardener’s chief assistant, and when several of Navar’s soldiers dared to laugh at this admission, he pointed out hotly that the baronial gardens had covered several hundred acres, and without detailed mappings of what was planted where—and what
“I wouldn’t be so high and mighty if I were you,” Doladan said fiercely. “If Mistress Karilgrass weren’t here now to tell everyone what plants were safe to eat, you louts would have had a leaner winter than you did.”
“True enough,” Navar said, for the beginning of a journey was no time to set a grudge. “We’ve all become more than we were in the last year and more. And if you’ll oblige me by learning a bit of swordwork, why, Torimund and Felara here will learn a bit of gardening.”
Doladan, Navar realized, was quite beautiful when he laughed.
They followed the river north and west, for rivers were natural roads, and any threat to come to Haven would come more swiftly along the water road. At each stop, Doladan sketched tirelessly, filling page after page with detailed notes, and taking samples of plants and leaves as well.
Navar had hoped to be back in Haven by high summer, but the expedition took longer than he had planned, for the forest proved to be dark and dangerous, full of twisted creatures. When Torimund died, Doladan said angrily that that the name of the forest should be “pelagir,” a word that meant “danger” in one of the Old Tongues, and
