Chapter 178 Master

At the third watch, the night-soil cart came to the corner gate of the General's house, and Brendan, waiting in the shadows, slipped into the compound with it.

He pushed open the door of his own room, and Toby, on the bed, bounced up at once, a picture of injury:

"Young lord — the young lady is home today. Please don't make me stand in for you again. You may fool the whole world — you'll never fool her..."

"What do you know? I was out on great business. My sister's fierce, is she? She'll marry off soon enough. Think I'm truly afraid of her? I've only let her have her way out of habit. Now — don't forget the errand I gave you at the South Market. Her birthday's next month; we'll have her pleased for once. Out with you, lock the courtyard gate — I'm for bed."

Brendan was in a fine humor. He'd reckoned on bleeding silver tonight; against all odds the night's big loser was the Lord Regent, and he himself was not merely even but a little ahead.

Satisfactory.

With his sister back, his freedom was a gone thing. Her whole nature was one long report to Mother — the least little matter carried upstairs, and then those two, old and young, nattering at each other all day long: wouldn't they nag him into his grave?

Toby had it right: the young lady was home. She stood at the bow, letting the wind have her hair. Home ran downstream — with the current under her, the boat made far better time than coming out.

But there was only the one boat now — and gone were the young riders racing the wind along the bank.

Corin and his men stayed behind to build the pasture: horses were their trade, and they were to hold the ground until Lorne Chase's people came to relieve them.

Shawn and Lyle had both gone off with Linn, because Armand had sniffed out a piece of news: Goldwater was at that moment readying the King's birth-tribute for Joss Wray.

Now that was a chance walked up to the door and knocked.

Well then — let him hop and swagger on till the King's Birth-Feast next month.

"My lady — there's a thing I'd say to you..." Norton came up behind Lora and hung back on the words. "Once we're back in Lohenheim, I mean to ask my leave of you, and go out to Thornford. The house has guards enough now, and I... I want to get back to the camp and keep at my training."

"Leaving so soon? Is the wound healed through and through?"

Norton grinned from ear to ear and slapped his chest, bang, bang:

"Healed! What you said to Dr. Osler that day — I had every word of it. You said the lungs are a pair, and when one takes the hurt, the other breathes for it; the wounded one carries the lighter load, and so mends the better. And me, I'm still growing — it'll knit up fast."

Lucy's eyes had gone round beside them: "Norton — you just talked a whole streak, without one stumble!"

Norton chuckled, simple as ever: "My foster-father says: to pay the Odenheims back — to pay the young lady back — a man must make himself stronger."

Leon came over; he had caught the whole of it, and a light smile crossed him:

"I remember — you've begun your letters. I have a copy of the war-methods of Duke Jarren — but it's not a book I can hand you. If you've the will to learn, come to my house and copy it out. Whatever you can't make out, you may ask me — and I'll answer each thing once, and once only."

That the lord himself would teach him war-craft — Norton hadn't dreamed it; his mouth hung open and nothing came out:

"I... I..."

"Who means to attack must first sharpen his arms. Norton — what are you waiting for? Call him 'Master.'"

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Lora hid her mouth behind her hand and laughed: this man, who could seldom be bothered to answer anybody at all, had gone and offered himself up as somebody's master.

"Master!"

With Lora's word to back him, Norton dropped to his knees on the spot and bowed his head to the floor before Leon.

Leon had watched Norton throw himself in front of Lora and take that arrow for her, and he knew the boy — straight-grained, without one crooked thought in him. Second brother's report ran the same: quick at his learning and willing to sweat at it; only he'd set out late, and the fear of being late had made a "young lord run stark mad with study" of him — he'd pestered Gareth half bald.

Given time, Norton would grow into a commander.

And so he chose this way to pay, for her, the debt of a saved life.

"I can teach you one month. How much you carry away from it — that part is your own fortune." Leon finished, turned toward the cabin — and Lora followed him in, tugging his sleeve, saying it small:

"I'll learn war-craft too, and call you 'Master.'"

"Rubbish — I'll be no master of yours. You want to learn? Trade me the war-craft you taught Alvin."

"Ohhh — so you've been sitting there all this time with your heart set on what I taught my brother, while wearing that face of perfect unconcern..."

The two of them were inside the cabin before Lucy let out her soft laugh:

"Norton, you lucky creature — that's our lord, you know! The lord takes you as his man — doesn't that make you a great general one day?"

Norton couldn't have said a word to save his life; his grin never once came down. Ruth, leaning on the rail and taking it all in, said it with a sour little edge:

"Better by half to keep near the young lady — the lord looks twice at anyone standing in her light. Out in the deep hills you may pile up merit, but who ever saw a great general crown himself out there?"

"Great general — my saying, that was, not Norton crowning himself. And Ruth here — isn't she coming back to Lohenheim with us? When the day comes, we'll have my lord make her a great general too." Lucy put out her tongue at her, hauled Norton by the arm, and away they ran for the stern.

Ruth and five other daughters of the Frost Ravens had been picked out by Lorne Chase and sent to the young lord's side as chambermaids — sent, in the main, to stand guard over him under that cover, and, when need came, to carry word between Leon and the Frost Ravens.

The King was a suspicious man. He believed the Frost Ravens long since lost in the river of history — had even put on the full ceremonial and proclaimed it to the realm: the Frost Ravens now answered to Baron Leon of Charnwood.

But Leon and the old commander had settled it between them: let them stay hidden a while yet.

The river boat stopped at no landing on the way; everyone ate the dry rations laid up at dawn, and by dusk they were back in Lohenheim.

Far off on the dock they made out Keane and a guard of the Odenheim house come out to meet them, and Lora knew the man at once: one of Roland's own — the very man who had stepped off the boat at Weybrook and gone down toward the Southern Protectorate, off to the Kingdom of Southland.

"Arran? When did you get back? Did you find it?"

Arran, black as a berry from the sun, saluted with his fist and grinned: "As you wished."

Lora was startled and glad in one breath. All she had known was that Southland lay in what the modern world called Vietnam — and in this age most of that country was still the Empire's Southern Protectorate, and the "kingdoms" round about were, half of them, unopened tribes.

Just where Southland sat, then, she could never have said.

Arran had been gone whole months, with nothing but that scrap to steer by — and had brought the Southland rice seed home in truth. The heart she'd kept hanging in her chest dropped back into place at last.

Southland rice is no table delicacy — coarse stuff, unpolished brown grain. But to common folk who'd eaten chaff and gone hungry through drought year on drought year, it is grain that saves life itself.

Leon was glad too. With the farms bought off the Windsors thrown in, the better half of Lohenheim's eastern outskirts now lay in their hands.

The beauty of it: no crowds, few eyes.

Transplanted crops always want a few generations of breeding before they take wholly to new ground. By the time he held power in his hands, there'd be no more worrying over the people's empty bellies.

Leon sat in his wheelchair, watching Lora's carriage carry her off.

"My lord, to your carriage. We've sent word ahead — Josiah Waite is waiting at the house."

The guards whose hands he was used to were all out on errands, and the two who had come to fetch him, Weldon and Mungo, hadn't the trick of loading the chair: they shoved it forward with the brake still set.

Ruth pushed Weldon aside in a hurry: "Another shove like that and the chair's done for! Go — hold the curtain."

The carriage had its two planks for running the chair aboard, but strength went with it. Ruth would not let go, so they let her push.

She had been helping to tend the old commander since she was ten; her hands were truly quick, and a girl raised in the mountains is no hothouse thing. In short order they had Leon, man and chair together, backed up the planks.

Ruth strapped the chair fast, then bent to back out of the carriage.

But her foot found empty air; she cried out and went over backward — and Leon's hand shot out and had her by the wrist before she could fall off the carriage.

"Let them do it next time. Once they've failed at it, a few more tries and they'll have the trick."

Leon said it mildly.