The Price Of Command

We were coming up through Ruvan, along the Pelagiris Forest; we met up with a couple of the cousins on the way, after I’d left word of our route with one of the Outriders. I remember that he and Kra’heera vanished about the same time, telling me he’d get back to the fort on his own—then in he comes, just before the first snow, with the bitch and her half-grown litter of fourteen. That kind of fertility all by itself is suspicious, and smacks of the Pelagirs.

The Shin’a’in didn’t use dogs much, except for herding sheep and goats—but the Hawkbrothers might well have been able to produce something like Geyr’s dogs on very short notice.

She watched them checking out the wagons, one on each side, and it did not escape her notice that they performed their duty with a brisk efficiency that reminded her of her own veterans. Certainly there was an odd look of intelligence in their eyes—unlike Geyr’s little messenger-dogs, who had brains that would shame a bird, or at least acted like it. They knew three things only—eat, run, and be petted.

I tried Mindtouch, but all I got was images, not the kind of real speech I got from Warrl or Eldan’s Companion.

Damn. Thinking of the Companion always made her think of Eldan—and she’d had another dream last night. She caught herself caressing the smooth fabric of her sleeve at the mere thought, and clenched her fist. Damn him. You’d think after ten years I could forget the man.

Maybe Kra’heera could suggest something to make the dreams stop. Though she’d have to tell him why she wanted them to stop. And that could be—embarrassing. Her Shin’a’in cousins had much the same dry sense of humor as Tarma, but they occasionally got a bit odd even for Kero, and the Shin’a’in notion of what was funny didn’t always match hers.

It was amazing how fast the Clan had grown, once the children that had elected to take Clan membership were of an age to claim it. They’d had as many young adults join them as they could provide tents for. Part of it had to be the glamour, the mystique of the “Clan that could not die”—certainly orphans and “extra” children had flocked to the Tale’sedrin banner once it was raised again.

But part of it, no doubt, had to do with my cousins’ sheer good looks. They’re all damned attractive, and with Grandmother’s green eyes and Grandfather’s blond hair, they must have been as exotic and fascinating to the Shin’a‘in suitors as the Shin’a‘in are to us.

None of them had lacked for potential partners, and in the end, all but one had taken up multiple marriages. Like queen bees with entourages, or stags with harems. No, I don’t think I’ll tell Kra’heera about the dreams of Eldan. He’ll only give me a hard time about it, and ask me why I didn’tjust knock the man in the head and carry him off with me like a sack of loot. Besides, he’s young enough to be my own child; I just can’t confess something like that to a person who looks like he’s waiting for me to tell him a story. Gods, they make me feel ancient.

Though still small, the Tale’sedrin Clan was as thriving as any on the Plains, boasting no less than three shamans, a Healer, and even a Kal’enedral—

The last was Swordsworn by choice, rather than because of the kind of circumstances that forced Tarma to her vow. Kero liked him the best of all of them. He never turned her away when she asked for lessons, and his sense of humor was a little less mordant than the rest of her cousins.

Her thought of them might have summoned them; they made no noise on the stairs with their soft boots, but she heard their distinctive chatter echoing up the shaft of the staircase long before she saw them.

“Heyla, cousin!” Istren, one of the two horse-trainers along this year and the only one of the three who was actually related to her by blood, sprang into the room as if he were taking it by storm. He was followed at a more sedate pace by the other trainer, Sa’dassan, and the shaman-in-training, Kra’heera. Where Istren boasted the dusky-gold skin of his Shin’a’in father, and his father’s black hair, his mother’s startling green eyes flashed at Kero with excitement.

“Second cousin, to be precise,” Sa’dassan said mildly, her Shin’a’in blue eyes as tranquil as a cloudless sky. “And both a Captain of the Company and your elder. A little more respect, youngling.”

Istren ignored her; when a normally reserved Shin’a’in became excited, it was pretty hard to get them calmed down. “Have you heard, Cousin Kero? Have you seen? What do you know about these North men, these Valdemar men?”

For one startled moment, Kero thought he was talking about her dream and Eldan, and her tongue seemed glued to the roof of her mouth. But Kra’heera solved her dilemma for her, by snorting, “What, do you think she is a mage, like our uncle? She can’t possibly know anything—these Valdemar men have only just arrived.”

She shook herself out of her paralysis. “What Valdemar men?” she asked.

“We have heard, heard only, that there are men from the North come to buy all that we will sell them,” Sa’dassan said, with a fine precision of speech. “We wish you to come and look at these men. You can speak their tongue and say the things that will call the thoughts that we wish to read to the surface of their minds like little fish to crumbs on the stream. Kra’heera can then judge of their thoughts. And, perhaps, you also, for you had converse with one of their kind before, not so?”

“I did,” she said, slowly. “The man that I knew, if he is a good representative of his people, was a good and honest man, and one who would treat your jel’sutho’edrin as children of his own heart and hearth. But he was only one man.”