“So let us follow them north,” said the queen, returning to her seat with a smile and a quick hand-motion to her own men. “Then we can question them as to what really happened. My ship will take us more swiftly up the coast than they can ride overland. We should be in those mountains before they are.”
“That troll-horse of Roric’s is fast, ” Dag piped up in objection.
But Hadros paid no attention to his son. “We’ll take my ship, now that I have it back again,” he said thoughtfully. “Yours got us across the channel, Arane, but mine has more oars.” He had stopped making accusations, real or mocking, and seemed now interested only in planning for tomorrow. “We may catch them even before the mountains-there is that one spot where the peninsula narrows to almost nothing…”
“You have to take me with you, Father,” interrupted Dag again in a high, clear voice. The king cocked his head toward him. “If Valmar- If I am now your heir, then I- That is, I think that Roric might talk to me even if he wouldn’t answer questions from you.”
Gizor One-hand spoke at last, lurching to his feet and spilling his ale. “Do not let this woman muddy your thinking,” he said to King Hadros, his voice thick but not at all confused. “Roric killed your warriors, attacked me, and through us attacked you. We may ‘question’ the princess, but for him there can be only one fate. There is but one way a foresworn man may pay the blood-guilt against his lord, and that is with his own life.”
King Hadros’s warship came around the headland and straight into the teeth of a north wind. The two kings and Queen Arane stood out of the way while the sailors lowered the sail, its red canvas snapping furiously as though alive and fighting back. The helmsman shouted as oars splashed into the water, and the sailors bent their backs to pull.
Kardan wondered again about the “troll-horse” of Roric’s. He realized he knew very little about this man, other than that Hadros had raised him from a foundling as his foster-son and had made him one of warriors. He did not like to think of him with Karin, but the image kept coming unbidden: a rough, unmannered man, the get of some slut on one of the smaller manors, whose hard hands might even at this moment be peeling Karin’s clothes from her body to satisfy his base lusts.
He should never have let Hadros take her as a hostage, he told himself, even if it meant all their immediate deaths. He had tried to deny it, but all the evidence suggested that she loved this man who might be half-troll himself. If she had never come to Hadros’s court, she would never have been brought up to think a man like Roric was better than the alternatives, would not now be galloping on a horse of voima far faster than this ship could possibly take them, far away into the northern mountains.
“Worried how far they’re ahead of us?” asked King Hadros good-humoredly. “My seamen are strong rowers, and the wind can’t stay against us for long. Riding double, they’ll be much slower than we are. And they’ll have to hunt-not many people live in the center of the peninsula, and they will have trouble finding food. We’ll catch them, all right.”
They were starting north along the west shore of the peninsula on which all the northern kingdoms were located. The coast on their right was dark and rocky, and to the left stretched unmeasured miles of open ocean, flashing green and silver in the sun.
“I can barely remember the last ten years, now that we’re underway at last,” said Hadros, grinning into the wind. “How could I have spent so long at peace? This is the real life for a man-feeling the waves, hearing the creak of the mast, chasing down an enemy in a fast ship with good warriors on board and good seamen at the oars.”
Kardan looked away, pretending he had not heard. He had no intention of becoming nostalgic for a war he had lost, and he would not let the other king goad him into a reply.
At the same time ten years ago that Kardan had sworn on steel and rowan to pay the tribute, Hadros had sworn to treat Karin as his own daughter-as long as the tribute was paid. He had been happy then to accept the black-bearded king’s word.
But should he have done so? Had Hadros already enjoyed the princess’s embraces many times, perhaps beginning when she was still a little girl? Had she then been passed to Valmar to teach him the ways of manhood, and had young Dag recently begun to take his turn as well?
Kardan closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. He reminded himself that when Karin returned home she had not seemed coarsened or abased. Hadros’s offer for her to marry his heir suggested that he still considered her a woman worthy of a king’s son, a maid who could command a fine bride-price rather than a discarded concubine. But she had never seemed completely happy to be home again, and especially in the few days before she disappeared her moods had been wild. She had denied any feeling for Valmar, although Hadros had said she had spent the night with him at least once, and she had kept it from her father when Roric arrived. He had to conclude bitterly that he just did not know his daughter-and if they did not find her he never would.
“I was thinking about Dag,” said Hadros beside him.
Kardan opened his eyes, startled as though the other king had read some of his thoughts.
“If Roric doubles back, I hope Dag will be able to direct the castle’s defenses himself. I even have doubts he’ll be able to manage the breaking of the yearling colts. It should have been Valmar left in charge. Well, I have thought a few times that my sons might use the toughening of war! And the boy may be right; it is possible that Roric would talk to him when he wouldn’t to anyone else.”
Hadros glanced toward the bow of the ship where Gizor One-hand reclined in front of the mast. “When he insisted on accompanying us,” he added in a lower tone, “I had no one else but Dag to put in authority. Roric knows all too well exactly how many warriors I have, and just what to do to spread them to maximum thinness.”
Queen Arane stood a few feet away, easily balancing herself against the ship’s motion with a hand on the rail, following their conversation with a faintly ironic smile on her lips.
Hadros turned to look again at Kardan. “You look terrible,” he said with another grin. “Not a good sailor, is that it? Is that why your own ship had not been made ready?”
Kardan shook his head hard. He did feel queasy, but this ship’s rising and falling through the waves had only a little to do with it. Besides thinking about Karin, he kept being reminded of his oldest son, dead so short a time, whose ship had risen and fallen through waves like these until it had smashed against the rocks and all had drowned.
He had thought then that he had nothing left to live for, having neither wife nor child, and a kingdom his only at Hadros’s whim. Karin, restored to him, had abruptly given his life purpose again, but she had also given him a whole new array of events to fear.
“Worried about the lass?” Hadros added, this time without the grin. “I am too. Did she tell you she took over the direction of my household when my queen died? As soon as I returned from the All-Gemot without her, I knew the castle would never be the same. I just wish she had the sense to stay with Valmar! Women,” he added in a mutter.
Kardan turned from him and tried watching the waves, rising higher than the ship before they fell, their tips edged in white, then decided it would be even better not to watch them.
But Hadros was not done. “Roric won’t hurt her, but neither of them can have any idea what they will find in the northern mountains. There are creatures of voima there that are worse than even those in the tales told late at night when the youngsters are asleep. I’ve been in those mountains-I know.”
Kardan seized him by the arm. He immediately tried to make it seem that he was just trying to keep his balance, but there was more to it. Without knowing Karin’s mind now that she was a grown woman, without being able to see her fate, he desperately needed an ally. As much as he considered Hadros his enemy the other king kept appearing the only ally he had.
“When I encouraged Roric to go north,” added Hadros almost apologetically, “I had no idea he would take her with him. He’ll find plenty there-men and creatures of voima both! — for his restless spirit. I do hope he survives the adventure, however. For one thing, I personally want to wring his neck.”
They put in that evening at a cove King Hadros said he knew of old. He took the helm himself to guide them in between rocky islets, thick with brush, to a sheltered harbor as smooth as a pond. “We should be safe here,” he told Kardan. “We’re still too far south for any of the dangerous creatures of voima, and there never used to be any human settlements nearby.”
He sent several warriors ashore anyway to check for danger and to refill the water barrels. Gizor insisted on leading the party even though he had to be helped into the skiff. Queen Arane went with them, saying she wanted to stretch her legs after the day’s journey. The two kings stayed on board as the sailors rigged the awnings, then ate some of the smoked meat they had brought along while waiting for the shore party to return.
“Why do you think the queen insisted on coming along with two widowers looking for their heirs?” Kardan
