taken south in chains by a renegade who would certainly find her more attractive than the slovenly women they had found in the castle. But the watch fires were burning by Hadros’s ship when they finally reached the salt river, and Queen Arane’s elegantly dressed warriors challenged them with very sharp weapons held ready.
The queen came to greet them once her warriors recognized the kings. “No, I have seen no one all day,” she said, looking from one to the other in the torchlight. Night hid both mountains and river, and there was a steady lapping of waves against the pebble beach. “Might they have gone higher up into the mountains, or hidden from you in caves down by the sea?”
“And left just a few men on guard, a guard they hoped would be sufficient and was not?” said Hadros thoughtfully. “That would only make sense if they were terrified of us, or if they were hoping the dragon would corner us in their fortress. But they did not seem terrified when they attacked the first time, and I doubt the dragon does anyone’s bidding!”
“Some of these men must know where they took the princess,” said Kardan grimly. “Torture should make them talk.”
“Too bad Gizor’s dead,” said Hadros. “He was my best torturer. Let’s try the women first.”
The first woman they tried needed no more persuasion than being dragged before the two kings and a torch held close to her hair before agreeing to tell them what she knew. “But this is only what Wigla told me,” she said darkly, looking up at them from shadowed eyes.
“Wigla?” said Kardan.
“She is his woman but she hates him too. She tried to leave last year; that is when Eirik had her lover killed.”
This was all very well, thought Kardan, but it had nothing to do with Karin. “But where are Eirik and the princess now?” he demanded.
“I only know what I was told,” said the woman sulkily, “and I don’t know about that fancy girl Eirik found. But Wigla told us to stay and wait for them. She and the king and a lot of the men were going, she said, to raid the Wanderers. I’m only telling you what she said!” she added as Kardan leaned toward her threateningly.
“One cannot ‘raid’ the Wanderers,” said Hadros sternly. “Was this a code term for some sort of attack?”
“If so, no one ever explained it to me,” said the woman, sulky again. “And I must say I was surprised to hear her mention the Wanderers. The king, he doesn’t like to hear talk about the lords of voima. He says the only lords he serves are those in Hel.”
Kardan had never before known, first-hand, of someone who served the lords of death rather than of voima. A chill went through him right down to the pit of his belly. There were hints of such things in the old stories, but to have his daughter held by such a man!
Hadros sent the woman off, still bound. “What do you make of her story, Kardan?”
“Maybe there is a door into the Wanderers’ realm here,” Kardan suggested slowly, “as Roric said there was. But the lords of voima would never allow someone to rampage through such a door in search of booty!”
“Let’s see if we get any more sense out of one of the men,” said Hadros.
But the warriors whom King Eirik had left behind seemed to have even less information. Brought bound before the kings with knives at their throats they proved quite willing to talk, but all they could say was that Eirik had taken more than half his men, leaving the rest with instructions to open the gates to no one until he returned.
“We’ll find them in the morning,” said Hadros, yawning widely. “They can’t have gone north because the mountains are too steep, and they can’t have gone south or Arane would have seen them, and they can’t have gone anywhere out to sea without a ship. They’re in a cave down by the shore or hiding in the rocks somewhere. They’ll be hungry and come back-unless instead of the Wanderers they were trying to raid the dragon’s lair, and discovered that this one likes to eat more often than they hoped! When they return to their fortress and find it standing open and empty, they’ll be down soon enough to talk terms.”
Kardan felt exhausted and beaten, and yet he kept a core stubborn streak that would not let him believe Karin was already dead. As they rolled up in their blankets, again preparing to sleep by the ship, trying to work indentations into the pebbles for shoulders and hips, he suddenly said, “This all started, Hadros, when you refused to let Karin marry Roric.”
“Of course I wouldn’t let her,” said the other king sleepily. “I had to keep my side of our agreement and send her back to you as the unfettered maid you had sent to me.”
“Well, if we find them alive,” said Kardan determinedly, “I want them to marry at once. I know, I know, you told me that she had spent the night with Valmar during the All-Gemot when I thought she was with you. And I know a marriage between our heirs would keep peace between our kingdoms. But she prefers Roric, and he must be with her or we would have found him again.”
“It was you who was supposed to stay with him yesterday,” said Hadros grumpily.
“I do not even care,” Kardan pushed on, “that he is a man without a family, No-man’s son. If she had married him, fatherless man that he is, she would now be home safe.”
King Hadros suddenly rolled over and sat up. “Do you see the queen?” he asked in a low voice.
“No,” said Kardan, surprised. “Arane’s tent is over on the far side of camp; she must be asleep by now.”
“Well, she never wanted to talk about this,” said Hadros quietly, “and would never let me ask questions. But I am nearly certain who Roric’s mother was. If you’re thinking of having your daughter marry him you ought to know. And I also have a very good guess for his father.”
Kardan thrashed out of his blankets, bit back a shout, then said, “Why did you never tell me this before?” between his teeth.
“It was no concern of yours that I could see,” said Hadros mildly.
“But the man my daughter loves! Tell me at least who his mother is!”
“Well, I cannot be completely certain. But Arane and I have been friends for a long time. There was a time some years ago, when I had been married a while but the lords of voima had not yet granted sons to my queen and me, when I had to visit Arane’s kingdom. It must have been on business of the Fifty Kings.”
“Probably plotting a war against someone,” muttered Kardan, realizing that it could not have been too many years later that Hadros had found an excuse to attack him.
“As I recall,” said Hadros, as though rather surprised at the memory, “I had been going to invade her kingdom. She invited me for a parley, and she talked me out of it. Hard to say how… Well, I stayed in her castle for a week that winter,” he continued after a brief pause, “and she thought I might be lonely and cold, so she sent her maid each night to make sure my bed was warm. Thoughtful of her-and a very sweet maid.”
“And then?” Kardan demanded when Hadros seemed to slip away into pleasant reminiscences.
“Well, it was close to a year later when I was again back that way.” Hadros was only a dark shape, lit from behind by the watch fires. “I did not see the maid this visit; I was only there the one night. But Arane took me aside and asked me a favor.”
“And the favor?” asked Kardan, already knowing the answer.
“She said there had been a baby born in her court, a little boy. Bright red face when I first saw him and a shock of black hair, and yelling as loudly as any grown man. He deserved a good home, she told me, said he was of a lineage that should not be brought up with the children of the housecarls. A baby was the last thing I needed at that point. But I took him home.”
“And that was Roric,” supplied Kardan when the other king fell silent.
“He fought me even then,” Hadros said quietly. “Small enough to fit in my two hands, but he kicked and yelled all the way across the channel and home again. Poor little chap didn’t have anything to eat for two days, though we dripped water in his mouth so he wouldn’t be too thirsty-I tried him on ale but he wouldn’t swallow it. As soon as we got to the castle I had him put to the breast of one of the serving-maids who had just borne a babe of her own. And my wife liked him. He would quiet for her when he wouldn’t for anybody. I didn’t want it generally known that I had been weak enough to agree to carry a screaming baby all the way home with me, and it didn’t seem right to have everyone know he was mine when my queen was still barren. So I put out that he had been a foundling, a little baby lying in front of the gates when we came up the hill from the harbor.”
“Your queen must have known the real story.”
“I suppose she did. I suppose a lot of people did. But she accepted what I told her and started taking him into our bed. The old women had told her that sometimes sleeping with a baby will make a woman conceive. Maybe it did work, but it took a while. He slept with us for several years. He never screamed much after I had him home,
