John Dalmas - The Lion Returns

He turned back to Quaie. "As for your gift, I already have ylvin women. Several of them, selected from thousands for their beauty. This one…" He gestured. "… is sufficiently robed, that all I can see is her face."

Kurqosz paused. "But the crux of the matter is your qualifications as an advisor. Tell me about them."

Quaie began to recite a resume. As he ran on, Varia was vaguely aware that it was almost totally false-his father's, not his own. His own acts, his abilities, even his evils were trivial by comparison with the elder. But her mind was not on Quaie. It was on the captured general. An icy fist had gripped her heart. It's Raien, she thought. It has to be.

There was another rap at the door, followed by a murmured exchange with the junior officer tending it. The young voitu interrupted Quaie's recitation. "Your Majesty, the ylvin general is here, unconscious on a stretcher. Agrux is with him." He'd spoken in Vismearcisc. It seemed to be his master's choice this evening.

"Have him brought in." Kurqosz turned to his aide, and gestured. "Clear that table for the stretcher."

Raien Cyncaidh's torso had been bared and bandaged. His face, always fair complected, was ivory white.

"I know him!" Quaie said.

The crown prince stilled him with an imperious gesture. "What are his wounds?" he asked the physician.

"A crossbow bolt struck his chest, Your Majesty, but his unconsciousness is from a heavy blow to the head. He will probably awaken from it before morning."

"Then he is not near death?"

"Seemingly not, Your Majesty."

The crown prince turned to Quaie. "Tell me his name."

"He is Lord Raien Cyncaidh of Aaerodh, Your Majesty. Gavriel's-the emperor's-chief advisor and sometime deputy." He pointed at Varia. "Her husband."

The crown prince smiled at Quaie. "I could as well have named him for you. He is not our first prisoner, you see, and we always question them. It is standard intelligence procedure, and occasionally recreation."

He pursed his lips in mock thoughtfulness. Quaie began to sense that he was in trouble. "I do not envision needing a viceroy. I will rule by force, not politics. As for an advisor…" Kurqosz paused, watching emotions wrestle in Quaie's face. "I can smell liars," the crown prince said, "and liars make poor advisors. No, I have no need of your services."

Again he paused. "But I will reward you for your gift of the general's wife. Yes." He stroked his chin. "But what will it be? Hmm." He turned to the scarred, hard-eyed rakutu who stood behind Quaie, and spoke in Hithmearcisc: "Strangle him, Tsulgax."

Tsulgax reached a forearm across Quaie's throat and pulled him backward hard against him. The ylf's eyes widened, and he clawed at the rakutu's wrist and hand.

"You'll find it quick and relatively painless," the crown prince told him. "Merciful, compared to the death I will visit on Lord Cyncaidh."

The whole room watched till Quaie's heels stopped drumming the floor. When it was over, Varia looked pleadingly at Kurqosz. "Your Majesty," she whispered, "please. Don't torture my husband, I beg you."

"My dear woman," he said. "Consider all the trouble he's been to me! It would be utterly immoral not to."

She ran to the table then, and turned to face the crown prince, her arms spread as if in protection, or supplication. The move captured every eye in the room. Tsulgax moved to get her, but his master stopped him with a gesture.

One of her hands rested on the knob of Cyncaidh's boot knife, concealed by the folded top of a heavy woolen stocking. "Please!" she said. "I beg you. I'll…" Abruptly she drew the knife, and turning, plunged it into Cyncaidh's solar plexus, thrusting upward, twisting. Blood gushed over her hand and wrist, then a fist struck her, knocking her to the floor. There, on all fours, she vomited. Tsulgax jerked her upright by the hair, to face the crown prince, her eyes wide with shock, mouth open, vomit on her chin.

Kurqosz's eyes had widened. "Well!" he said. "We have a wildcat among us! Remarkable!" He laughed, the sound genuinely admiring. "You fooled us all with your act of the pitiful wife.

"You will pay me for that, you know, but not with your life. You are loyal and highly courageous, and you think quickly. An excellent bloodline. The pleasure of fathering sons on you will be my recompense."

To the crown prince, the death of the ylvin commander, and possession of his beautiful wife, were favorable omens. Quaie he'd already forgotten.

Shortly before his orderly would have wakened him, Kurqosz came awake on his own. And sat up abruptly with a new knowingness: Conditions would be right! Soon!

Without bothering to have Gorvaszt brought to him-it was a familiar channel-he reached through the hive mind to his younger brother. ‹Chithqosz,› he said mentally, ‹come to my headquarters! As quickly as you can! With your circle. Leave this morning! I need you here!›

36 Decision

When Macurdy and the 1st Cohort had reached forest again, he'd divided its four companies into two independent forces. Blue Wing, through the great raven hive mind, had already called for another great raven to work with the second force. After that the two forces traveled north still as a unit, to the district through which the supply routes ran. There they separated.

Macurdy's first ambush was a success: somewhat costly, but less than he'd feared. They'd ambushed a company of rakutur patrolling the road, outnumbering the half-voitar nearly two to one. No prisoners were taken, and so far as he knew, none of the rakutur had run. All, or nearly all, had died.

As a side benefit, he and a few of his Tigers now wore the coats and fur caps of actual rakutur.

He'd known since his time in Hithmearc that the rakutur were the offspring of human women impregnated by voitar. Also, from his reading at the Cloister, he'd learned that after the Voitusotar had crushed the continental ylver, there'd been a prolonged period of hunting down refugees, killing the men and boys, and making sex slaves of the women and girls.

It had been a period of considerable chaos. The Voitusotar were in transition from being migratory barbarians to "civilized" rulers and administrators. The sex camps had been haphazard and unmanaged, and the voitik warriors ill-disciplined when away from their commanders. Thus numerous ylvin women had escaped. Those who could, then fled in small boats to Ilroin. Sometimes on their own, but often with hithar who hoped for sanctuary from the Voitusotar themselves. Some had left pregnant, and later gave birth. And the ylvin attitude was that sound infants should be nurtured regardless of their origin.

Many or most-perhaps all-of the voitu-sired babies were red-haired and green-eyed, and rather like the voitar, had large flexible ears. Over generations of subsequent back-crossing with the ylvin gene pool, the "rakutik ears" disappeared by "genetic dilution," though contributing perhaps to the ylvin trait of pointed ears. But the voitik red hair and green eye traits persisted, manifesting infrequently but strongly. Sarulin, the founder and progenitor of the Sisterhood had had them, and according to tradition, so had her consort.

It seemed to Macurdy that Sarkia, at least, had seen the possibilities. The Tigers had probably been bred deliberately for rakutur traits-athletic redheads bred to athletic redheads, and the offspring graded according to "Tiger" traits. Those who met specifications would then have been segregated and trained. The breeding and genetic segregation records could probably be checked, if they'd survived Ferny Cove.

Varia had been interested in genetics and animal breeding when she'd been married to Will, back in Indiana. She might have drawn the same conclusions. If he ever got back to Duinarog, he told himself, he'd ask her.