C. Brittain: Voima

But where she had expected hot words in return, he said quietly, “He is still young, Karin. Perhaps you would prefer to wait a year or two. There has mostly been peace of late among the Fifty Kings, and even the upcountry bandits and southern booty have provided less opportunity for boys to be hardened into warriors. Most of the ships now on the channel are merchants’ ships, not war ships. I had already killed three men in combat when I was Valmar’s age.” She thought he was finished, but then he added, almost under his breath, “Of course, there are some, like Roric, who do not need war to make them men.”

She clenched her fists until the nails bit into her flesh. “And he is the man,” she said in a voice that she was dismayed to hear tremble, “that I shall marry.”

Again she expected a hot answer, but Hadros only went perfectly still for ten seconds, then turned to look at her gravely. “He did not say he had spoken to you already…”

She caught herself just in time from shouting, “And would that have made any difference in your ordering him killed?” Instead she kept her fists clenched at her sides and asked as evenly as she could, “And how can you possibly object to my marrying him?”

“You have always been a princess, even before your brother died. You were a hostage, but I intended to treat you as though you were my own daughter, and no man without a father could marry a daughter of mine.”

“ You’re his father just as much as you’re mine.” She spoke in a low, intense voice. No one else was in the hall, but there might be highly interested maids outside the open doorway.

He pulled out his dagger and started trimming his nails, not looking at her. “Don’t be childish, Karin,” he said, and it was only the faintest unsteady note in his own voice that kept it from being patronizing dismissal. “You know I never formally adopted him, even though my queen loved him, even though the lords of voima had not yet granted us sons of our own. He is my sworn man, but I would as soon see you married to Gizor One-hand.”

“Well, small chance of my wanting that!” she said, trying desperately to laugh. She started to ask why then, if he never intended to adopt the baby found at the castle gate, he had had his own wife raise him, but she closed her mouth without asking.

Hadros glanced at her from the corner of his eye. “And Roric is too young to marry anyone,” he said slowly.

“He’s five years older than Valmar!” she thought but did not say.

“He could still carve out a lordship for himself, maybe in the upcountry, maybe somewhere along the coast. My own grandfather won this kingdom in war, and even in these more peaceful times-and maybe especially in these more peaceful times-there is room for a man of courage to rise high through his own strength. I would not see him shackled to a wife and a fancy southern kingdom.”

Karin slowly digested what this implied of the king’s attitude toward his own oldest son. At last she said, very quietly, “But Roric could be fated to die in his first battle as easily as to win renown.”

“And I,” said the king, just as quietly, “would rather see him dead than wasting the strength within him.” He rose abruptly to his feet. “I had better see how those lads are getting along with the foals.”

Valmar shouted and waved his hat to turn the mare, then dug his heels into his gelding to pursue her down the line of trees. She saw the pen at the bottom too late, and before she could turn again both she and the foal running at her heels had had the gate slammed behind them.

He pulled up, panting and wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “Is that all of them?” he yelled to Roric.

Roric sat on the fence, relaxed and self-assured, counting horses. He wore a sleeveless leather jerkin that showed all his muscles-Valmar hoped he would have arms like that some day.

Even though the mares had been running free all spring and were nervous about letting anyone near their babies, they were used to King Hadros’s men and were already calming down. “I think we’re still short one mare,” Roric called to him. “Has anyone seen the spotted one?”

Just then the spotted mare, with a jet-black foal beside her, appeared at the top of the hill. Nole, Valmar’s youngest brother, was right behind her, but she wheeled and darted away again, Nole and a half dozen housecarls at her heels.

Roric swung back up on Goldmane. “Should we give him a hand?”

Valmar smiled and shook his head. “Let him catch at least one by himself.”

Roric stilled his stallion with a firm hand on the reins and looked at the pen full of circling mares. But Valmar, watching, thought he did not see them. Ever since he had quarreled with the king last week, and especially this last day and a half, since he had returned from his errand to the manor, Roric had not been himself. He could still joke with the king’s sons and ride a horse who would not allow anyone else on his back, but any time there was a pause his face took on an expression as though his thoughts were a hundred miles away.

And his own father was also acting strangely. Valmar was still not sure what Roric’s remarks had meant when he came home the morning before, or why his father had listened to them without saying anything at all.

“Tell me,” said Valmar suddenly, “why you and Father quarreled.”

Roric gave a start, then smiled what appeared to be his normal smile. “I gather we were heard all over the castle. But men sometimes say things when they have sat too long drinking that they later regret.”

“Is that why you slipped away last night rather than drinking with us?” But as he spoke he remembered: that shouting match in the hall with the door closed, the voices loud though the words were indistinct, had taken place in the middle of the morning.

“I just had somewhere to go,” said Roric offhandedly, though Valmar, watching his face, thought there was more here than he wanted to say.

“Even though you quarreled with Father,” Valmar asked, “will you stay at the castle? Will you continue to serve him-and,” he added almost shyly, “once I am king, will you serve me?”

This time Roric looked disconcerted, as though he had not thought this through. “I do not know,” he said, not quite meeting the other’s eyes. “There are reasons-the lords of voima know what powerful reasons-for me to stay, but something has happened that may mean I shall go away for a while… How about you, Valmar?” he added suddenly and with a grin. “Are you going to travel far and boldly, to win a fortune and a place in all the songs?”

It was Valmar’s turn to be disconcerted. “But I could not leave,” he said slowly. He had grown up knowing he would someday inherit this kingdom and had never seriously considered going elsewhere-even if the day he would inherit always seemed impossibly far in the future. “Without someone directing the castle, nettles would invade the fields, deer roll in the meadows, geese nest in the forest clearings-”

“Here comes Nole,” said Roric. “He has her this time.”

As the spotted mare galloped down the hill, a band of shouting men on her tail, Valmar glanced up to see a single rider in the distance, silhouetted against the sky. Father was coming after all, he thought. He would try to talk to Roric privately some other time.

The three brothers, Roric, and the housecarls leaned on the fence to look at the foals. Valmar was glad now that his father had not accompanied them. When Hadros reached here in another minute, he would find everything as it should be. Valmar had showed he could be trusted with the horses, and the housecarls had all obeyed him today without any of the humoring he sometimes sensed, the faintest suggestion that he was still a child.