Taddeusz glared past Golsingh toward his daughter. She looked away angrily.
Golsingh shrugged. “So be it, then,” he said without raising his voice. “But—if you do this thing, against my express will, Lord Taddeusz . . . you will leave Peace Rock and never return. I swear it.”
Taddeusz nodded. “So be it, then,” he said.
An opening at warchief—just the kind of move that Hansen needed for his reorganization to work, though a bit early, three months later after Malcolm proved himself, that’d be better. . . .
Except that everybody was assuming Hansen, the catalyst of the change, would be dead after tomorrow’s duel.
Golsingh looked around the hall bleakly. “Go to your beds,” he ordered. “There’s been enough harm done this night.”
“Wait,” said Malcolm. The veteran was wearing boots and a linen nightshift, damp with the snow that had fallen on him when he ran to the hall at the sound of trouble. His body, from chest through hips, was a solid tube of muscle. “You can’t set the meeting so soon.”
Taddeusz looked from Malcolm to Hansen and snorted dismissively. The big man was no longer angry, just determined. “What’s the matter?” he said. “Is your friend afraid to die?”
Hansen smiled. He wasn’t sure what the answer to that one was. Too much had happened. Been happening.
“He’ll meet you in a tennight,” Malcolm insisted. “You can wait that long.”
Krita had disappeared, but most of the others in the hall, warriors and servants alike, were listening with interest. Golsingh waited with a hard, emotionless expression which Hansen suspected was a mirror of his own.
Taddeusz shook his head. “The challenged has three days by custom to settle his affairs,” he said. “Three days and a half day, then.”
Taddeusz looked at Hansen. His visage was that of a man glaring at the turd onto which he’d just stepped. “Or he can run. He can go farther in that time than I’d be willing to chase him.”
Malcolm looked at Golsingh. “Excellency? A tennight would—”
The king shook his head. “Lord Taddeusz will have what custom dictates during his remaining stay at Peace Rock,” he said coldly. “In three days and a half day, then.”
He and the warchief both turned and strode toward the ladder to their chambers above the far end of the hall. They didn’t look at one another. When the crowd didn’t part quite fast enough, a thrust of Taddeusz’ arm slammed a number of people into the wall.
Golsingh turned at the base of the ladder and shouted, “Go to your beds, damn you!”
The crowd scattered to side-chambers and the entrance, murmuring in voices as dim as the glow of the long hearth.
Hansen let out his breath. He was stark naked and the hall was cold. Malcolm stood beside him, and Maharg was returning from having stripped off his armor in his own chamber.
Now that the lamps were gone, the hall was dark. Its framework creaked mournfully as wind pressed the roof.
“Just a second,” Hansen said, slipping into his cubicle. He closed the remains of the door before he started exploring the darkness with his hands.
His battlesuit stood ajar. There was no one within the armor, no one hidden in the pile of bedding. The tear in the thatch Hansen had made as camouflage was wider and a real gap, now that somebody with a sharp blade had slashed through the mesh of withies.
The knife must’ve been in her robe, because it sure wasn’t hidden in what she was wearing when Taddeusz started banging on the door. . . .
Hansen started pulling on his coveralls. “Come on in here, then,” he said as he reopened the door. It wasn’t much privacy, but with Malcolm’s cubicle to one side and Maharg’s to the other, it would do about as well as anything available.
He couldn’t see Malcolm’s expression in the darkness, but there was a combination of wonder and regret in the veteran’s voice as he fingered the torn thatch and said, “Well, laddie, you’ve got expensive tastes, haven’t you? This time it’s your life they’ve cost you.”
“I appreciate your confidence,” Hansen snapped.