Paul Kearney: Ships from the West

Bleyn was watching her. 'How can you sit here like this, Mother – so uninterested? You're a woman, I know – but not like any other-'

'You know so many then?'

'I know other noblewomen. You are a hawk amongst pigeons.'

She laughed. Perhaps he was not so much of a boy as she had thought. 'I keep my place, Bleyn, as I must. Lord Murad is not a man to cross lightly, as you know, and he prefers that you and I stay away from court. The King prefers it that way also. We are a skeleton long hidden in the back of a closet. We must be patient, is all.'

'I am a man now. I can sit a horse as well as any trooper, and I'm the best fencer in all of Galiapeno. I should be out there on those ships, or at least commanding a tercio in the city garrison. My blood demands it. It would demand it even were I Murad's son and not the King's.'

'Yes, it would.'

'What kind of education do you think I get out here in the country? I know nothing of court or of the other nobility-'

"That's enough, Bleyn. I can only counsel patience. Your time will come.'

Bleyn's voice rose. 'It will come when at last I am a dodder shy;ing greybeard and my youth has been poured out on the stones of this damned backwater!' He stormed out of the chamber, his shoulder thumping the door frame as he went. The dust of his passage hung in the air after him. Jemilla could smell it. Dust. All that was left of sixteen years of her life. She had aimed high once – too high – and this semi-imprisonment had been her punishment, Murad her jailer. She was lucky to be alive. But Bleyn was right. It was time to chance another cast perhaps, before sixteen more years passed in the arid dust and sunlight of this damned backwater.

The first primroses were out, and new bracken was curling up in gothic-green shoots through the massed needles of the pinewoods. That smell in the wind – of pine resin and new grass and growing things; a clean sharpness from which the chill was finally departing, to be replaced by something new.

The horses had caught the flavour of the air and were prancing and nipping at each other like colts. The two riders ahead of the main party let them have their heads, and were soon galloping full tilt along the flank of one of the great upland fells which formed this part of the world. When their mounts were blowing and steaming, they reined them in again, and continued at an amble.

'Hydrax is coming on well,' the man said. 'It seems you have a talent there, after all.'

His companion, a girl or young woman, curled her lip. 'I should think so. Shamarq says that if I spend any more time on horseback I'll be bow-legged. But who would notice in court dress anyway?'

The man laughed, and they rode on in companionable silence, the horses picking their way through the tough gnarls of hill heather. Once the girl pointed wordlessly skywards, to where a solitary raptor soared in the north. The man followed her finger and nodded.

Half a mile behind them a straggling band of some forty riders followed doggedly. Some were richly dressed ladies, others armoured cavalrymen. One bore a silk banner which whipped and twisted in the wind so that its device was impossible to make out. Many led heavily laden pack-mules that clanked as they walked.

The man turned in the saddle. 'We'd best let them catch up. They're not all centaurs like you.'

'I know. Briseis rides like a frog on a griddle. And Gebbia is not much better.'

'They're ladies-in-waiting, Mirren, not horse troopers. I'll wager they sew and cook a good deal better than they ride. Well, sew at any rate.'

That curl of the lip again. The man smiled. He was a broad-shouldered fellow in middle age, his once dark hair grey at the temples, giving him the look of a grizzled badger. Old scars marked his weather-beaten face and his eyes were deep-hollowed, grey as a winter sea, and there was a coldness to them that softened only when he looked upon the girl at his side. He sat his mount with the consummate ease of a born horseman, and his clothing, though well-made, was plain and unadorned. It was also black, dark as a panther's pelt with no hint of colour to relieve it.

The girl at his side, in contrast, was dressed in bright brocade heavily worked with pearls and gems, with a lace ruff at her white throat and a finely woven linen and wire headdress on her yellow hair. She sat her horse like a young queen. Her elegance was marred, however, by the battered old riding cloak she had thrown over her shoulders. It was a soldier's cloak, and had seen hard service, though it had been lovingly repaired many times. Peeping out from under its folds there appeared for a moment the wizened face of a marmoset. It sniffed the bracing air, shuddered, and withdrew once more.

'Must we go back, Father?' the girl asked her sombrely clad companion. 'It's been such fun.'

Her father, the King of Torunna, set his warm hand atop her fingers on the reins.

"The best things,' he said quietly, 'are better not savoured too long.' And there came into his cold eyes a shadow that held no hope of spring. Seeing it, she took his hand and kissed it.

‘I know. Duty calls once more. But I'd rather be out here like this than warm in the greatest palace of the world.' He nodded. 'So would I.'

The thud and snuffle and chatter of the party behind them as they caught up, and Corfe turned his horse to greet them.

'Felorin, I believe we may begin to make our way back to the city. Turn this cavalcade around, and warn the steward. We will make camp one hour before sunset. I trust you to find a suitable site. Ladies, I commend your forbearance. This last night in tents, and tomorrow you shall be in the comfort of the palace. I entrust you to the care of my Bodyguard. Felorin, the Princess and I will catch you up in a few hours. I have somewhere I wish to go.'

'Alone, sire?' the rider called Felorin asked. He was a slender whip of a man whose handsome face was a swirl of scarlet tattoos. He wore a black surcoat with vermilion trim shy;ming, and a cavalry sabre bounced at his thigh.

'Alone. Don't worry, Felorin. I still know my way about this part of the world.'

'But the wolves, sire-'

'We have fleet horses. Now stop clucking at me and go seek out tonight's campsite.'

Felorin saluted, looking discontented and concerned, and then turned his horse about and sped off to the rear of the little column. The cavalcade, turning about, made a clanking, bray shy;ing, confusing circus of soldiers, ladies and servants, restive mules, mincing palfreys. Corfe turned to his daughter.

'Come, Mirren.' And he led her off into the hills at a fast canter.

The clouds broke open above their heads, and flooding out of the blueness came bright sunlight which kindled the flanks of the fells and made them a tawny and russet pelt running with tumbled shadow. Mirren followed her father as he pounded along what appeared to be an old, overgrown track nestled in the encroaching heather. The horses' hoofs thudded on hard, moss-green gravel instead of soggy peat, and they picked up speed. The track ran straight as an arrow into the east; in summer it would be well-nigh invisible beneath the bracken.

Corfe slowed to a walk and his daughter wrestled her own mount to a similar pace beside him. Despite her youth her horse, Hydrax, was a solid bay fully as large as her father's black gelding. A martingale curbed some of his wilder head-tossing, but he was still prancing mischievously under her.

'That bugger will have you off one of these days,' Corfe said.

'I know. But he loves me. It's high spirits is all. Father, what's all the mystery? Where are we going? And what is this old road we're on?'

'You've not much notion of history – or geography – despite those tutors we gathered from the four corners of the world. I take it you know where we are?'