Roland Green - Great King_s war

Kalvan cut in saying, "Phrames, Queen Rylla has appointed six nursemaids for our child. I'll recommend you as the seventh, if you so wish."

Phrames winced as if slapped. Kalvan immediately felt guilty for taking out his frustration with the weather and the state of the world on him. He felt even guiltier for throwing the fact of Rylla's pregnancy in Phrames' face. One of the many little details about the Princedom of Hostigos Kalvan had learned, after the campaigning season ended and there was time to think and ask questions, was that Count Phrames had been Rylla's betrothed since childhood. To see her married to a total stranger, even if sent by the gods, couldn't have been pleasant for him-even if the stranger gave her a throne and a crown.

"I am truly sorry, Phrames. I spoke in anger and in haste; my words were unworthy of a king."

Phrames grinned, white teeth showing above a frost-tinted brown beard. "I spoke without proper respect to you, I admit. But I did speak with proper respect for Queen Rylla, who's the one I'll have to reckon with if I'd let you come to harm, be it by wolves, bandits or an ill-fated fall from your horse."

"Then by all means let's both show her respect and turn for home. There appears to be nothing more out here worth seeing or doing today than a helmet full of snow. Also, the envoy of Prince Araxes is coming tomorrow, and I want to show him at least the respect of being awake and unfrozen."

Kalvan pounded his gloved right hand against his saddlehorn to see if there was any feeling left in the fingers. It was a good thing he hadn't done any more writing in the Journal; he'd had one bout of frostbite in Korea that had made him more susceptible to a second.

Phrames snorted. "What his Reluctance Prince Araxes needs is a swift kick where he sits down from the Great King's army and everybody else who wants to help. We may have to sell tickets."

Kalvan didn't entirely disagree, after three months of hearing Araxes' excuses for not swearing fealty to Hos-Hostigos and another of total silence. He wondered if the Prince of Phaxos was deep into Styphon's pocket. However, if he was going to the trouble of sending an envoy over wolf-ridden, snowbound roads, common courtesy required listening to him.

They rode across the little bridge built over the stream last autumn, one of a score or so that Kalvan had ordered built by peasants and prisoners of war to make it easier to move guns and wagons around Hostigos. The beams and planking seemed to be holding up, but one railing was sagging ominously. Kalvan called out to his scribe to make a note. He pretended not to hear a petty-captain adding that if the Great King could notice something like that, he would certainly notice a man riding a horse like a sack of cabbages, "-so remember that you're on a horse, Nicos, and not on the ridgepole of your father's barn, thank you, you'll wish to Dralm you'd never been born!"

Two hundred yards up the road, the head of Kalvan's escort overtook a woodcutting party-twenty men and a dozen oxen, with horns the size of Texas longhorns, and horses laden with branches and logs-that completely filled the road. Phrames swore like a trooper, several of the woodcutters swore back, and finally Kalvan had to urge his horse through the drifts to restore order. Voices stilled as he approached.

The leader of the woodcutters was the yeoman farmer, Vurth, who'd been Kalvan's first host here-and-now. Kalvan had amply repaid the farmer for taking in a stranger, who didn't know when or where he was, by helping fight off a band of Nostori raiders threatening Vurth's homestead. Kalvan didn't believe in omens, but he had to admit that seeing Vurth's homely bearded face grinning up at him made him feel better-despite the rising chill wind and lightly falling snow.

"The wolves aren't what they were a moon ago, Your Majesty," Vurth explained. "It's worth it, to not sit by a cold hearth. So we went out, and what with the frost breaking off the branches, we didn't even have to do much cutting."

"Good work, Vurth. We'll buy three mule-loads for the shelter at Hostigos Town. Pick men to take it and they can ride along with us." Kalvan looked past Vurth to a pair of oxen halfway up the train. "I'll pay the bounty on those wolf skins, too. How many are there?"

"Five and a half-grown cub, Your Majesty."

"I hope you didn't use any of the royal fireseed on them?"

"No, no. Styphon's owl dung is good enough for those, and we didn't even have to shoot two of them. My oldest daughter's husband, Xykos-he's as big as a bear and found himself a suit of armor at Fyk-just stands there and lets the wolf bite his armor. Then while the beast's trying to reckon why the man doesn't taste right, Xykos swings his axe. Wolves don't take to being hit on the head with axes, let me tell you!"

Kalvan and Hectides laughed. "Your son-in-law sounds like a good man. Would he care to join the hunting parties, or take a post with my Guard?"

"I don't think he'd say no if you asked him come spring, Sire. Right now, though, my daughter's half a moon from her first. So he'd as soon not be away from home for a spell. I know you understand we mean no disrespect."

"None taken, Vurth. I know a little of what he's going through, and by summer I'll know more. I'll send a gift for the child and speak of this again some other time."

"Dralm bless, Your Majesty, and give you and Queen Rylla a son to go on ruling over us as well as you've done." Kalvan heard murmurs of agreement from the other woodcutters. He backed his horse away, thanking Somebody or Other it was too dark for anyone to see his face turning color.

It helped to hear things like that whenever he had the feeling that maybe he was on the wrong course and should have simply ridden on instead of starting the biggest war this world had known in half a century. If his subjects, the people who had to pay the price in burned houses and ruined farms, stolen livestock and poisoned wells, dead sons and raped daughters, thought he was ruling well-maybe he was doing something right.

"God helps those who help themselves," had been one of his father's favorite aphorisms. He wasn't going to place any bets on the source of whatever help he received, with all due respect to the late Reverend Morrison, R.I.P. It was also true that Kalvan had never heard of any good coming from just lying down and letting events roll over you like a steamroller.

Kalvan sighed happily as Rylla wrapped the freshly heated cloths around his feet. He wasn't worried about frostbite any more, but the warmth seeping through him still felt delicious. The temperature must have been dropping toward zero when he rode into Hostigos Town, and the wind had been blowing half a gale.

"There," Rylla said decisively. "Your toes don't feel quite so much like dried peas." She stood up and took his hands. "Your fingers still feel cold, though." She sat down on the bench beside him and tucked both of his hands inside her chamber robe.

Between the warm fur lining of the robe and the warm Rylla inside it, Kalvan's fingers quickly finished thawing. In a few minutes, he could feel how Rylla's waist was beginning to swell with the child she was carrying.

"Has it moved yet?" he asked.

Rylla's blue eyes clouded for a moment. "No. Amasphalya, the chief midwife and Brother Mytron both said it would not be a good sign if the child moved so soon. When the snow turns to rain is when it should start moving."

"If the snow ever stops! If the winter is at all like this in Grefftscharr, they must be watching for the coming of the Frost Giants and the last battle of the gods."

Kalvan tried to keep the fear out of his voice. He doubted he'd succeeded any better than he had all the other times since he learned Rylla was pregnant and what had happened to her mother. Princess Demia had two miscarriages, bore Rylla safely, then died in childbirth trying to give Prince Ptosphes a son. That was why Ptosphes had never remarried; he had a daughter who was as good as any son. He would not send another woman to Ormaz's realm when he didn't have to.