The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

Mitt frowned disbelievingly. “You mean, like Alk’s Irons?”

Maewen did not know what he meant, so she turned back to persuading the rest of them. “It’s true. I really do know. Tell Kintor that if he’ll just pay you properly and wait, people will be yelling for all the coal you can mine, and more!”

She heard murmurs, back in the crowd, dubious and awed. “The One speaks to her. She might know, at that.” But Tankol, who was clearly a more practical type, said, “You wouldn’t be willing to walk down the dale and tell Kintor that yourself, would you, lady?”

“We don’t get on. He wouldn’t listen,” Maewen said. Besides knowing I’m not Noreth, I’ll bet. Great One, this is difficult! “Now what I think you should do is wait to go on strike until people start wanting coal again in the autumn, and Kintor really needs you. Then you all say you’re sick and—and those that want to can come and join me at Kernsburgh and be my army.”

“After Harvest,” someone said. “We could, if the harvest’s in.”

Maewen could feel them all slowly beginning to agree. She felt warm with victory. How was that for brilliance? How was that for a way to recruit an army without having one? How was that for killing several birds with—

Navis canceled all that by asking coolly, “After Harvest? But what, may I ask, will you be doing, Noreth, for the three months in between?”

Doesn’t it take that long to get to Kernsburgh then? Oh hell! “I shall be very busy,” Maewen said.

Navis’s eyebrow slid up. But quite unexpectedly Tankol came to her rescue. “Of course she will, hearthman. We all know she’ll want to be searching out the Adon’s gifts to take to Kernsburgh.”

Both of Navis’s eyebrows soared. “I beg your pardon? Adon’s gifts?”

Tankol, and several other people, gave Maewen knowing smiles. “Southerner, isn’t he?” Tankol said. “Knows nothing. But we all know they answer to the true Queen, and even the strongest claim can be stronger. Very well, lady. You’ve mapped us our way. We work all summer and then fall sick of starvation, and those of us still with our strength bargain with Kintor and then vanish away to Kernsburgh. What say, all? Is this what we do?”

To Maewen’s considerable amazement, there were shouts of agreement. Navis was possibly even more dumbfounded, but he kept his head even though they were suddenly being jostled every which way in a cheering crowd. He seized Maewen’s arm strongly, and quite painfully, just as it seemed that she might be swept away from himself and Mitt, and he shouted, in a ringing voice that came out over all the other voices, “The army is to gather at Kernsburgh. Bring weapons and food if you can. For now, will you please supply the lady Noreth with provisions for her ride.”

Maewen thought that last demand was

a bit much. These people were so poor. All the same, when Navis and Mitt dragged her clear of the crowd, more than half the people in it were already running the other way to see what the pens and stalls under the banners could supply.

They found Moril angrily hanging on to Mitt’s horse. Hestefan was off the cart, hauling at the mule. Wend, who had enough to do with Navis’s mare and Maewen’s horse, said, very irritably for him, “That vile gelding with the teeth bit the mule. Tell the boy to take care of it.”

Wend doesn’t like Mitt, Maewen thought. Doesn’t anyone like anyone on this expedition?

PART THREE

RING AND CUP

8

“Congratulations, Noreth,” Navis said as they rode away from Kredindale. Behind them Hestefan’s cart was laboring and creaking with its load of provisions. “Tell me, do you intend to call for an army in every dale we pass?”

Maewen had been afraid he was going to ask her that. While Mitt and Navis had been riding about choosing cheeses and bags of oats, and rejecting numbers of skinny upside-down hens, Maewen had put in quite a bit of thought. “I don’t think so,” she said judiciously. “Kredindale was special. Now they know I’m calling for an army, word will get round.”

“I admire your faith,” said Navis. “So we—”

“And I admire the way you got all the food organized,” Maewen said quickly, to stop him saying what she knew he was going to say next.

“Think nothing of it. I was an officer in Holand before you were born,” said Navis. “Although,” he added thoughtfully, “it was last year in Adenmouth that really taught me to do ten things at once.” Then, just as Maewen was sure she had distracted him, Navis went on, “But as I was about to say, your plan is that we spend the intervening months searching for certain objects with which to bolster your claim? Just what are these Adon’s gifts?”

Maewen tried not to sigh. But then people did not get made Duke of Kernsburgh by being easy to distract. The trouble was, she had no more idea than Navis did. “I think,” she said, “that the best person to ask is Hestefan. Singers always know more about these things.”

“I shall,” said Navis. “But you are aware, are you, that none of the earls are going to take kindly to our wandering the green roads like this? Three months will give them ample time to deal with your claim.”

Maewen knew he was right. She had been wondering whether to answer this one by saying piously that the One would provide, but she had a feeling that Navis would simply laugh at that. So she did the only other thing she could think of and smiled a secretive, knowing smile—or she hoped it was—and then asked Navis how he came to be in the North.

He had had an adventurous escape from some kind of danger in Holand, she gathered, though as he would only talk about it lightly, in scraps, as if it were a joke rather than a flight for his life. Maewen never quite understood what the danger had been. He had met Mitt for the first time in the Holy Islands. “Mitt appeared to be having dealings with the Undying. Quite beyond my depth,” Navis said lightly.

He was so easy to distract that Maewen felt rather sad. She knew he was letting her change the subject, and that had to mean that Navis did not really care what they did in the next three months. Someone like Navis was not going to join this expedition without some other, personal reason. Maewen suspected that he and Mitt were going to leave and go off on their own as soon as that personal reason led them in a different direction.

“Don’t worry, Noreth,” Navis said. “I promised your aunt I would take care of you. I intend to see you right.”