Elanor left to ready the evening meal while Tarnoor sat thinking. He would write to Geavon suggesting a compromise. For two generations it had worked with a Keep here in the far South. He sent the letter swiftly by messenger. Geavon received it and blinked. Wisdom from a backwater. It just might work. He sat to write letters of his own. There was an advantage to be gained. Two of the disputing lords were of Geavon’s clan. If they combined, the others would back off.
They might have done so, had the letter arrived in time. Even in the South they heard how the lords battled over Verlaine. Finally, Tamoor’s suggestion ended it, but not without many dead and hatred stored up. There was a marriage. Verlaine was again ruled. By the second son of one lord, wed to the eldest daughter of his neighbor. In a year he was dead, poisoned. His wife could not hold the Keep and fled to her clan. The war began again and spread this time.
But Tarnoor had used the year wisely. He’d bargained, traded, bought, and sold. Aiskeep was stronger than it had been in many generations.
The kits, too, had contributed. Their first litter had sold for very high prices as Tarnoor had expected. The second litter, already bulging the small female’s sides, was sold in advance. Tanrae had visited Aiskeep, once bringing a long train of loaded wains. The same Sulcar ship had met him quietly on the coast. With the trader came a second female kitten for Ciara.
Elanor might wonder that the Sulcar who allied with Estcarp would come to trade. Tarnoor did not. Civil war in Karsten could only profit other lands. If they sold Karsten goods and gear to war, then the longer and more deadly that war, while the Sulcar profited and other lands lay safer.
From overseas news came that the hounds of Alizon hunted. Karsten could not look to them for aid. They had strange allies, men said: perhaps those Kolder who had done so ill by Kars after all their promises. Meanwhile in Karsten war came closer. Twice Keeps near Kars were clan-besieged. The fighting spread to Kars for several days. It died again but sullenly. Then one arose supported by two of the clans. Kieren was young, but a fighter known from the wars with Estcarp. Since many believed that their troubles were all Witch-caused, that stood him in good stead.
He made truce with a third clan by marriage. Another year of peace, and half again. Ciara was growing. She’d been twelve last name day and Trovagh thirteen. She was not beautiful but there was strength and sweetness in her face. She and the boy were as close as ever, always up to some ploy. The letters from Geavon came regularly to Aiskeep. Tarnoor expected another shortly. Instead, Geavon’s nephew came quietly in the night.
He stood in Tarnoor’s study talking softly. “My father is being drawn into clan councils. Kieren does not treat his wife well. Her clan plans to wait until she bears her child, then declare her Kars Regent in the child’s name. My uncle thinks this will bring war again. He asks that you allow his family to come here while there is yet time.”
The man he addressed nodded. “Bring them cautiously. Travel as traders or a garth family on the move. They’d be good hostages against Geavon’s compliance with orders.”
“Yes, my lord.” The young man slipped away before dawn, riding back to the Keep.
Events overtook him. It was weeks before Tarnoor heard, then he sat silent. Geavon’s letter was open before him. The boy had been slain on the return. By whom Geavon did not know, only that the body lay before their gates one morning. The lad’s father was not a man to think deeply for meanings. He assumed that it had been done by the clan opposing his and acted. A third clan had been drawn in. The remaining three might have stayed out of the fight. It was none of theirs. But the duchess’s.father deemed it a good time now to strike for the duchy. The baby had been a son.
Kieren died in an ambush. The other clans swept in to do battle. Geavon was full of regret. It would not be possible just at this moment to send his family to Aiskeep. Tarnoor swore, tossing the letter into the fire. Outside on the stairs he heard the clatter of heavy boots. That was Hanion in a hurry; what troubled them now”?
He opened the door. Hanion burst in already speaking. “Lord, there’s men at arms at the gates. They tried to enter but we had the gates shut in time. They say they are from Lord Geavon but we recognize none of them and they are heavily armed. They demand entrance.”
Tarnoor followed Hanion to the gates. There he looked down at those below. Men at arms? No, more like a small army. He counted more than a hundred men along with a dozen wains. They had set a half circle about the gates just over an arrow’s flight back. This was no message from Geavon. He leaned far out to search for any known face. An arrow sliced the collar of his cloak as he shied sideways.
He swore again. He seemed to have done a lot of that since Yvian’s death, he thought. Then he descended to the gates.
“Unfriend, come forward and tell me what you wish.”
From the other side a voice called, “Open the gates and yield to Clan Grothar.”
“If I choose not to?”
“Then we remain here. Nothing goes in or out save it be one to offer surrender.”
“Stay then and be damned to you,” Tarnoor bawled back. He marched up the wall steps again to look between the crenellations. Aiskeep was under siege. The war had arrived in the South at last.
5
Ciara and Trovagh were bored. Outside the enemy had been camped at Aiskeep gates for a month. Nothing more happened. The soldiers sat there, firing an arrow now and then at anyone they saw on the Keep walls. Sometimes one of the Keep men at arms shot back. It had been quite exciting that first week where there was a lot of that going on. But the men outside had moved back a few more yards. They stopped bothering to shoot. Now they just sat. They didn’t even bother to reply to the colorful insults Aiskeep men hurled at them. After a long consideration of his maps, Tarnoor had identified the probable reason for the siege.
“Look, here’s where their land runs. This land belongs to Septan, who’s just wed into the clan. His land reaches almost to Aiskeep. Clan Grothar has a very old dispute with our clan.” He snorted. “The idiots have decided to take advantage of the general unrest to see if they can add to their boundaries.”
“Why is that so stupid, Uncle Nethyn?” Ciara was puzzled.
“Because, my dear, as any effective soldier knows, before you begin a fight, you should know what shape your enemy is in.”
Both children stared, then understood. “Oh,” said Trovagh. “All the stores we’ve been getting in.”
“The walls are all fixed, too,” Ciara added.
“Exactly. We’ve spent the last couple of years expecting this. The walls are just about the strongest they’ve ever been. We have enough supplies in the lower storerooms to last a year or more even without our own harvest, and we have a water supply. The armory is filled with arrow bundles, bar steel, and anything else we may need. So this pack of fools pick now to start something.” He snorted again. “I never did think Ager had any sense. He heads the clan because he has seven idiot sons who all back him. That’s why. Not that even they’ll continue if he does much of this.”
The sons—or Ager—must have come to a similar conclusion. The siege remained in camp ineffectively another couple of months. Then one morning they were gone again leaving only an awful mess and an incredible stench behind them. Tamoor promptly sent out scouts, Hanion leading them. They returned to say that Clan Grothar had far worse troubles of their own.
Hanion was grinning. “They have their own siege now, my lord. It seems the boy who wed into them isn’t so happy with his bargain. His own clan seems to have taken up his quarrel. Do we head for Teral while our gates are clear?”