Book 2 - An Ill Fate Marshalling Read Online Free PDF Page B

than before.
    Gales nibbled his lower lip. Had he spoken too boldly? Had he betrayed too much?
    Josiah Gales was a victim of love. It was a hopeless love. There was no chance it would be consummated in any manner more intimate than what had just taken place.
    He had resigned his head to the limits long ago, before Ragnarson ever entered his lady's life. It was his heart that would not admit there were insuperable barriers between a lady of quality and a middle-aged foot soldier.
    He let imagination run with the moment just fled. Fanta sy chided him for not having been sufficiently daring.
     

3
     
    Year 1016 AFE; Captures
    Kavelin's king interrupted
    his ride at Vorgreberg's ceme tery. He had left the city early so he would have time before the game.
    He first visited the mausoleum of the family Krief. They had ruled Ravelin before him. He leaned over the glass-faced sarcophagus of his predecessor and former lover. Queen Fiana's clay had been cunningly preserved by Varthlokkur's art.
    „Sleeping beauty," he whispered to the cool, still form. „When will you waken?" Imagination insisted that her chest was rising and falling slowly. His heart wanted to believe it. His mind could not conquer the lie.
    He had loved her. She had born him a daughter he had hardly known. Little Carolan lay interred nearby. This jealous kingdom had pulled them down... .
    There had been fire in their loving. It had been that once in a lifetime perfect physical match, where all the needs and likes had meshed to perfection. The remembered heat of it made him doubt his commitment to Inger now. He was a little afraid to let himself go, to owe this latest woman completely. Fate had a way of striking down everyone for whom he cared.
    He kissed the glass over Fiana's lips. For an instant imagination supplied a ghost of a smile.
    „Be patient with me, Fiana. I'm doing the best I can." After a minute, „Trying times are coming. They don't think I suspect. They think my head is in the clouds. They underestimate me. Like they underestimated you. And I'll go on letting them think I'm just a dumb soldier till they fall into the pit I'll dig for them."
    She seemed to nod her understanding.
    They worried about him in Vorgreberg. He did not come here often, but they thought it strange that he visited the dead at all. They thought it stranger still that he spoke to the dead.
    He let them think what they would. This was one of his away places, his thinking places, his refuges for those moments when he had to be alone.
    He went outside and sat on the moist grass near a freshly filled grave. The rain had stopped. For a time he did nothing but sit and chuck the occasional soggy clod at a nearby headstone. It had begun to add up. To what he did not yet know, but a whisper here, a rumor there, and news of something strange from beyond the mountains. ... It all meant something.
    As a boy he had made one passage reeving with his father. They had sailed from Tonderhofn with the ice floes, and had been one of the first dragonships through the Tongues of Fire. A few days into the ocean they had become becalmed. The sea had taken on the look of polished green jade. The crew had been in no mood to man the oars. Mad Ragnar had taken the opportunity to teach his sons a bit of his philosophy.
    „Look around, boys," said the man called both Mad Ragnar and The Wolf of Draukenbring. „What do you see? The ocean's beauty? Its peace? Its serenity?"
    Not knowing what was expected, the young Bragi nod ded. His brother Haaken refused to go that far.
    „Think of the sea as life." Ragnar seized a maggoty chunk of the pig they had sacrificed before hazarding the treacher ous currents of the Tongues. He drove a spear through it, leaned over the gunwale, swished it through the water. Then he leaned against the ship's side, meat poised inches above the glassy sea. He waited.
    Soon Bragi saw something moving through the green glass. Another something passed beneath the dragonship. A fin