Читать книгу The Mountain's Call - Caitlin Brennan - Страница 16

The School of War occupied the northeastern corner of the fortress. It had its own gates and its own staff of guards and servants, even its own stables. There were no white gods there, only ordinary horses, and precious few stallions.

The hostages had been delighted to discover that once they were admitted to the school, they were no longer treated like battle captives. They were students like all the others. They shared a room in the dormitory, with as much freedom to come and go as any of the offspring of imperial nobles and rich merchants for whom this place was an entry into officers’ rank in the emperor’s armies.

“Remember,” Euan Rohe had told his kinsmen before they came here. “They want to civilize us, which means carve us into puppets. Let them teach us everything that we can learn—the better to use it against them when the Great War comes.”

They were good men, his kinsmen. Every one was a member of his own warband, sworn to him by oaths of blood and stone. The arrogant imperials had made no effort to select princes of opposing tribes, or even to discover what enmities there might be among their enemies. That, the One God willing, would be their undoing.

The lessons so far were ghastly enough. It was beneath a prince’s dignity to play the slave to a stable full of hairy, farting beasts, but if the war demanded it, then he would do it. The riding was painful but slightly less insulting. As for the handful of hours each morning in a box of a room with tablet and stylus, learning to read and write the imperial language…

“We didn’t come here for that,” Gavin said in disgust. “These scratchings on wax stain our souls.”

“They help our cause,” Euan said. “They’re not the runes that only priests can touch and live. These will gain us knowledge we might never have had otherwise. They give us power.”

“They give us corruption,” Gavin muttered, but under Euan’s glare he subsided. He submitted to instruction, and learned his letters, although he flatly refused to form them into his name. He knew better than to snare his soul.

Euan did not tell these loyal kinsmen that he already knew how to read. His father had insisted that he be taught. The old man was wise when he was sober, and he could see farther than most.

Letters, for a while, would be Euan’s secret. He pretended to struggle as the others did, and watched and waited.

He did not have to wait long. The message came through one of the grooms, a pallid young creature with a perpetually startled expression. He looked flat astonished now, but he spoke the words he had been given without a slip or a stammer.

“Tomorrow as the sun touches noon,” was Euan’s answer. “Outside the walls. Follow the trail I set.”

The boy bowed. He did not argue, as the recipient of the message almost certainly would.

He would come to the summons. He would not be able to help himself.

Euan Rohe walked openly out of the School of War, testing for once and for all the limits of his position there. No one gave him a second glance. He stood outside the high grey walls and took a long breath. It was not free air, but it was as close as he would come until this game was over.

Hunter’s instincts came back quickly in spite of more than a year in cities or under imperial guard. Euan took in the lie of the land, chose his track, and set about leaving a trail that another hunter could follow.

The place that Euan found was pleasant, a clearing in the forest that robed the Mountain’s knees. The great stands of trees were almost bare of undergrowth, but the clearing was carpeted with grass and flowers.

When he first came there, he had thought the flowers much thicker than they were. Then as he walked onto the grass, all the white blossoms took flight. They were butterflies.

He sat in the midst of them and sipped water from the bottle he had brought with him. It was still cold from the stream farther down the Mountain. He had a bit of bread in his bag, and cheese and dried apples, but he was not hungry yet.

The one he waited for arrived just after the sun touched the point of noon. He made no secret of his passage through the trees. That was deliberate, and might be construed as an insult.

Euan stayed where he was, propped on his elbow in the grass, with the water bottle in his hand. The other man rode on horseback. His mount was white, but it was not one of the gods from the school. Euan was interested to discover that he could tell the difference.

The man on the horse was small and dark and sharp-featured for a Caletanni, but he was too tall and fair to be an imperial. He looked like what he was, half-blood, with his brown hair and freckled skin. He wore his hair in a long plait, which was considered quite daring in the imperial city, but he went clean-shaven. He was not daring enough to affect the full fashion.

“Prince,” Euan greeted him.

“Prince,” he replied, swinging down off the horse with grace that few Caletanni could match. He tied up the reins and left the beast to graze, and came to stand over Euan.

“Good of you to come alone,” Euan said. “Or is there an army on the other side of the hill?”

“No army,” said the prince from Aurelia. He had a suitably imperial name, but the one he claimed in front of Euan was Gothard. “There is a company of guards not far from here. Do I need to summon them?”

“Not yet,” said Euan. He gestured expansively. “Come, sit. Be free of my hall.”

Gothard was not amused. “None of this is yours,” he said, “even after you’ve won the war. Remember the bargain. Aurelia’s throne belongs to me.”

Euan smiled his most exasperating smile. “I won’t forget,” he said.

Gothard made no secret of his doubts, but he refrained from putting them into words. He said instead, “So. You’re in the school. How goes it? Have you found a rider yet?”

“Maybe,” said Euan. “It’s only the third day since I came here. Do all your caravans march at a snail’s pace?”

“Only when time is of the essence,” Gothard said sourly. “Gods. You should have been there a month ago. Tomorrow is the Midsummer Dance. It’s a bare three months until the Great Dance.”

Euan did not comment on the pagan oath. It was a habit, one could suppose, from living with imperials. “I’m well aware of the time,” he said. His voice shifted to the half-chant of an imperial schoolboy’s recitation. “We have to be in Aurelia on the autumn equinox, when the emperor celebrates his feast of renewal, four eights of years on the throne of this empire. The white gods will leave the Mountain for that, as they have not done in a hundred years, and dance in the court of the palace. That will open the gates of time and allow us—the One God willing—to impose our will on what will be. Then the emperor will die and his heir be disposed of, and a new reign will come to Aurelia.”

“If it can be so simple and so tidy,” said Gothard, clearly annoyed by the mockery, “we’ll thank every god there is, whether he be One or many.”

“I’ll do my part,” Euan said with studied patience. “I’ll find the rider who can be persuaded—one way or another—to subvert the Dance. You have enough to do. You’ve no need to fret over that.”

“None of it is worth a clipped farthing if you fail.”

“There now,” drawled Euan. “I wouldn’t say that. If we can’t control the Dance once it’s away from the Mountain’s power, we can certainly corrupt it. We’ll have our war, one way or the other.”

“There will be war,” said Gothard, “but who will win it? The Dance can determine that—but only a rider can rule the Dance.”

“It will be done,” Euan said. “And then you will have your part to do, and so will others. In the end, we’ll win the war.”

“I envy you your surety,” Gothard said.

Euan smiled sunnily. “I’m a raving barbarian and you’re an effete imperial. Of course I’m a blind optimist. You’ll be my voice of reason, my wise philosopher.”

Truly Gothard had no humor. He was fast reaching the limits of his temper. Euan waited to see if he would say something ill-advised, but instead he froze.

Euan heard it a moment after he did. A hoof chinked softly against rock. A bit jingled even more softly.

Gothard’s grey horse had been standing still, head down and hind foot cocked, asleep. At the sound of another horse’s passing, he threw up his head.

Gothard drew a complex symbol in the air. Euan saw the shape of it limned in dark light. His skin prickled.

Two riders rode into the clearing. They were mounted on white gods. Through the veil of Gothard’s sorcery, the creatures’ coats glowed like clouds over the moon. The men were shadows encasing a core of light.

Euan sat perfectly still. Gothard’s horse stood like a marble image. Only Gothard seemed at ease. He was alert but calm. Euan had understood that Gothard was a fair journeyman of one of the innumerable schools of imperial magic, but this was a little more than journeyman’s work.

The riders never saw them. One of the horses might have cast a glance in their direction, but if it did, it did not sound the alarm. They rode on through the clearing and away.

The sun had shifted visibly when at last Gothard let go the spell. He sagged briefly and swayed, then thrust himself upright. He had to draw a deep breath before he could speak. “It’s safe,” he said. “You can move.”

Euan stretched until his bones cracked, then rotated his head on his neck. His muscles were locked tight. He released them one by one, a slow dance that Gothard watched with undisguised fascination.

Euan let his dance stretch out somewhat longer than it strictly needed. When he was as supple as he could hope to be, he was on his feet. “You’re a better sorcerer than I thought,” he said. “I salute you.” He followed the word with the action, the salute of a warrior to a champion.

Gothard accepted it with little enough grace. Euan left him there, sitting next to his motionless horse, and slipped away into the shelter of the trees.