Read The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Online
Authors: Craig R. Saunders,Craig Saunders
Ruan
the Blade Singer, The Skald, long ago crossed the Culthorn mountains into his
homeland. The whole of the Draymar nation lay before him. Chill with winter,
but warm compared to Sturma and the snows that Ruan had left behind. At first,
coming down from the mountains, his land was lush, trees were plentiful and the
plains were grassy. As he travelled further inland, though, toward the heart of
his nation, the trees grew sparse, the grass turned brown, and the cold suns
beat down on his back despite the chill in the air. Little rain fell on this
side of the mountains. Further to the west, on the steppes where the Draymar
bred their horses, rain was common and the land was verdant. Yet out on the
plains it was dry and harsh and barren. It was a hard land.
Ruan
ate only what he could forage or kill on the journey west to find his people,
the remains of his kind - the Blade Singers. He was lean at the beginning of
his journey, running to gaunt now. His teeth ached from chewing tough meat and
frozen roots and tubers. Forage was hard, out on the plains. Ruan did not use a
bow, either, so hunting was an exercise in futility unless prey wandered close
enough for him to skewer with his sword.
Minstrel,
too, had lost weight, but she had gained muscle. She bore the many miles well.
Water and grass just out of the mountains had been plentiful. Now, Minstrel
watered at the few streams that Ruan knew off, and fed on the scrawny grasses
that grew along the banks. If it was good enough for Drayman horses, it was
fine for Minstrel, Ruan figured.
Though
Minstrel did not seem overly impressed, having been coddled by Roskel, grain
fed and watered often.
Ruan
knew horses well, though. Minstrel was in the best shape of her life.
Ruan
slowed the mare to a trot, careful as they negotiated a narrow ravine, a mere
trickle of water running along the bottom of the dry bed. He wasn't worried
about meeting marauders - his curved blade and his hair set him apart from the
Draymen as a Blade Singer. No one but other Singers would know his shame. He
was in little danger. On the way across the mountains, though, he had avoided
his people. The border patrols were easy enough to avoid for a man that knew
the trails.
Ruan
wondered again at his folly, seeking out the other Blade Singers, an outcast
asking for aid for their ancient foes, the Sturmen.
Folly,
stupidity...hubris. Hubris in himself and perhaps misplaced pride in the
abilities of his people against an army of mages and fiercely talented
warriors.
But
his course was set. Ruan believed in fate, in a preordained life. He believed
utterly that his life was leading to this moment.
He
guided his horse, Minstrel, toward it.
There
was no snow this far into the heartlands, and the ground was dry and hard with
the biting cold. Minstrel took it steady up the gradual incline from the ravine
toward the plains. When she reached the plains again, and sure footing, Ruan
coaxed the mare into a gentle gallop, onward, toward his people and death or
glory.
He
let Minstrel have her head, then, his heart set on his course.
Death
or glory
, he thought...but it was his last thought that did not come with
pain for a long time.
In
one moment he was revelling in the feeling of the freezing wind burning his
cheeks, the next he was staring at the sky with Minstrel grazing happily nearby
and three faces looking down upon him. He was suddenly aware that the three,
two men and a woman, wore curved long swords like his. His head pounded and he
felt blood leaking from his scalp. The men and the woman looked familiar...hair
like his, swords like his...
He
tried to think, tried hard, but the pain in his head made his thoughts swim
away.
He
noted an absence of weight at his hip. His sword...gone...stripped away from
him.
Stand
and fight,
he thought. But then on the tail of that thought,
and you'll
die...
These
were no mere brigands that he could deal with while his head swam and he was
disarmed.
He
had found the Blade Singers.
*
Roskel
Farinder was not a warrior. He knew this in his heart. It mattered little to
him that he could not swing a sword well, because he was confident in his other
talents.
No,
he would never be a warrior of great renown. He had neither the build, the
skills, nor the look.
Yet
he needed to be seen to be one.
Like
it or not, this was
his
army.
And
what an army it was. Ragtag, some no more than boys and yet some veterans of
squabbles along the borderlands in the west. Old and young, all hale enough,
but for the wind and snow setting chills into bones. Armour was patchy at best.
This army did not look like anything much. The might of the north. The four
largest Thanedoms had fielded this army at great sufferance, and Roskel was
under the distinct impression that all the Thanedoms bar Naeth had sent their
scallywags and scoundrels in the place of real soldiers.
Fights
among the men were common, though not often to the death. Even poor soldiers
knew better than to draw blades over simple disagreements.
But
damn
, thought Roskel, it was a mean, sad excuse for an army.
Roskel
rode his horse around the camp each day. This day, he watched the men with
renewed interest, trying to learn some of his commanders names, trying to get a
feel for the men...would they stand, would they flee? Could any of them
actually swing a sword better than he?
At
one tent, a good fire burning, few men trained in slow movements with the blade
while an old grizzly captain looked on. He looked amused at the display. Now
there was a man, thought Roskel, that looked like he could head up an army.
But
of course, Roskel couldn't ask anyone to take this burden from him.
He
was the Lord Protector, wasn't he? This debacle was his, and his alone.
For
his part, Roskel had heeded the words of the Queen of Thieves - his Queen? He
had, perhaps in folly, brought the entirety of the northern armies to the
bitter coast to wait for an enemy to attempt to breach Sturma's shores.
The
Queen. Her hand, it seemed, was in everything. From Tarn's ascension to the
throne, Roskel's long incarceration...how many more catastrophic events had she
presided over?
And
while he was thinking of the Queen, he wondered, not for the first time, just
how old she was. He wondered sometimes, too, if she had chosen him, and if she
was inescapable.
Sometimes
he felt like a man at the top of a long flight of stairs, beginning a tumble
and seeing nothing but hard flagstones to break his fall. Yet for all his
reservations, still he followed her word. So here he was, at the head of a camp
of hard, cold men, striding or riding around the poorly tended camp of
thousands of warriors, exchanging a word here, a word there, just to be seen.
Waiting
like a fool beside the sea for a force that might never come while a larger
force headed for the north of his lands. Waiting here, with this ridiculous
army of braggarts and men with no morals. Not mere brigands or bandit, no, but
soldiers.
At
least his own soldiers, those under the banner of Naeth, would stand firm. They
were a professional force. He knew this.
Hadn't
he once fought at their head? He could have laughed. Now, that truly was
ridiculous.
Despite
it all, his lack of confidence in his army, not knowing when or even if the
enemy would come, he knew what was necessary. And what was necessary was that
he
look the part.
He
rode, sometimes, to seem a taller man, to look like an imposing figure. He wore
the finest armour he could find. He wore, too, a great fur cloak died bright
red so that everyone, even those in the distance would know that the Lord Protector
of Sturma was at their head and would be fighting alongside them. The man
who...
The
man who had killed Orvane Wense in open battle.
Roskel
did laugh, then. A small burp of a laugh that he tried to keep in. If only the
men had known that the spirit of the dead Outlaw King had swung his arm for him
in that battle.
But
these men would never know.
Roskel
knew what was needed. His friends, Rohir and Wexel, also travelled the camp,
but he was under no illusions. He was the figurehead of this show.
He
was the troubadour, once more.
*
With
the Northern Thanes assembled behind him and Rohir and Wexel beside him, Roskel
stared out to sea. Same as every day, he looked for the great ships of the
enemy, coming to Sturman shores, bringing with them nothing but death and pain.
And for what?
For
one babe, nothing more than a child. The last of the line of kings. The deaths
of many to secure the death of one.
And
still, could he, Roskel would never give up the child of his best friend, nor
any child, to save them from this war. Once, he remembered, he and Tarn had
discussed this - whether each would sacrifice a child to save the
world...Roskel had said that he would. And now, faced with the stark reality,
he realised he would not. Could not. He would die before giving up the babe to
the Hierarchs.
Tarn
would have been proud of him, Roskel knew. The thief, it seemed, was
discovering nobility within himself that he never knew he had.
It
wouldn't help a damn when the Hierarchy came, but that, it seemed to Roskel,
was not the point.
Wexel
disturbed Roskel's train of thought, as the thief was congratulating himself on
his change of heart.
'They
are not coming today, Roskel,' said Wexel. The giant bandit wore a grimace on
his scarred face.
Rohir
snorted, to Roskel's left. 'If they don't come soon the Thanes will start a war
happily on their own. Already there are rumblings around the camp of a feud or
two.'
'That's
not my concern,' said Roskel.
'Perhaps
it should be. This is rank stupidity. We have nothing but the word of the Queen
of Thieves that a force comes from the sea. We know there is a force in the
North, and yet we sit here, pissing into the wind. The longer we wait, the more
raucous the men become.'
'I
know, Rohir. I know. But men will be men, and soldiers, it seems, more so.
Letting off steam, no doubt. And as to the Queen, she has never steered us
wrong.'
'Don't
mean she never will,' argued Rohir.
Roskel
didn't retaliate, because he knew his friend and fellow steward was right. The
Queen was not to be trusted, and yet he was drawn to her, still.
'I
don't think she steers us wrong, Rohir. I think she plays her own game, yes,
but I think that game happily coincides with our own.'
'Happily
coincides?' said Wexel. It was his turn to snort. But then, as the three men
fell silent for a while, Wexel noted a speck out to sea.
'What's
that?' he said, breaking the tension as he pointed one thick finger out to sea.
Roskel
squinted, but could make out nothing on the horizon. Nothing at all.
'I
don't see anything.'
'There,'
Wexel said, jabbing that soiled finger out to sea as though trying to stab the
ocean itself.
Roskel
strained his eyes. The sky was gloomy with clouds pregnant with snow. It was
hard to see anything but grey.
And
yet, yes, there was something. Something coming across the water at a fair
rate, too.
'A
ship?'
'A
ship,' said Wexel, almost sounding proud that he had spotted it first.
It
came on fast, faster than any ship Roskel had ever seen.
'Call
to arms?'
'It
is but one ship.'
'A
scout? Like an outrider?'
Roskel
shrugged. 'I don't know. We have no force to put to sea. If they spy the force
here, then they will be well-prepared. We are not a nation of ship builders,
though. We cannot chase them down...and look at how fast...it will be here in
moments...' Roskel stared at the ship, looming larger and larger all the time.
A
light snow began to fall over them, coming in from out to sea. The light snow
settled on Roskel's fine cloak and on his uncovered scalp, but then the wind
rose, too. It was soft, at first, and then it set the snowfall swirling around
their heads.
He
could feel the taint of something on the back of his neck, the likes of which
he had felt a time or two before.
'Magic,'
he said.
He
could hear soldiers near to the beach head rising, their armour and arms
clattering. He turned to look. Some were donning armour. There were murmurs
among the men closest to the beach at first, then shouts arose.
'Wexel,
go and calm them, would you? It is but one boat. In a panic the men will
probably end up trampling each other in their eagerness for battle. We'll lose
more men to idiocy than...'
But
the ship slowed, thirty or forty yards from the shore. Bowmen stepped forward
behind Roskel. He held up a hand to stay them, because he could see what they
could not.
It
was no hierarch ship, but a Seafarer ship, and sorely used by the look of it.
*