It was a tempting thought, but Elphons pushed it aside. The wagoners would be no less hot than he, and the lake was common ground. It would be enough for the Duke and his retainers to ride close and wait patiently. The wagoners would get the message and move on more swiftly. Even so, it meant that before the day was over the Duke and his retainers would be eating dust thrown up by the convoy.
Elphons patted the sleek neck of his charger. ‘You are tired, Osir,’ he said to the horse, ‘and I fear I am not as light as once I was.’ The horse snorted and tossed its head.
The Duke touched heels to the animal’s flanks and began once more the long descent. A solitary cloud drifted momentarily between the sun and the land and Elphons enjoyed a few seconds of relief from the heat.
Then it was gone. With the prospect of the lake looming, Elphons drained the last of the water from his canteen, and swung in the saddle to watch his wagons making their slow and careful descent. There was scree upon the road and if not handled with skill a wagon could slide off and smash into shards on the rocky slope.
His wife, the silver-haired Aldania, waved at him, and he grinned back. As she smiled she looked young again, he thought, and infinitely desirable. Twenty-two years they had been wed, and he still marvelled at his luck in winning her. The only daughter of Orien, the last but one king of the Drenai, she had fled her own lands during the war against Vagria. Elphons had been merely a knight at that time, and had met her in the Gothir capital of Gulgothir. Under any normal circumstances a romance between a princess and a knight would have been short-lived, but with her brother King Niallad slain by an assassin, and the Drenai empire in ruins, there were few suitors for her hand. And after the war, when the Drenai declared for a republic, she was even less sought-after. The new ruler, the fat giant Karnak, made it clear that Aldania would not be welcome back home. So Elphons had won her heart and her hand, bringing her to Kydor and enjoying twenty-two years of great joy.
Thoughts of his good fortune made him forget burning heat and painful joints, and he rode for some time lost in the memories of their years together. She was everything he could have wished for: a friend, a lover, and a wise adviser in times of crisis. There was only one area in which he could offer any criticism. The raising of their son. It was the only subject on which they rowed. She doted on Niallad, and would hear no words said against him.
Elphons loved the boy, but he worried for him. He was too fearful. The Duke twisted in the saddle and glanced back. Niallad waved at him. Elphons smiled and returned the wave. If I could turn back the years, thought the Duke, I would throttle that damned story-teller. Niallad had been around six years of age when he had learned the full story of the death of his uncle, the Drenai king. He had suffered nightmares for months, believing that the evil Waylander was hunting him. For most of the summer the boy had taken to creeping into his parents’ bedroom and climbing into bed between them.
Elphons had finally summoned the Drenai ambassador, a pleasant man with a large family of his own. He had sat with Niallad and explained how the monstrous Waylander had been hunted down and how his head had been cut off. The head had been brought to Drenan, where, stripped of skin, it had been displayed in the museum, alongside the assassin’s infamous crossbow.
For a while the boy’s nightmares ceased. But then news had come of the theft of the crossbow, and the murder of Karnak, the Drenai ruler.
Even now, nine years later, Niallad would not travel without bodyguards. He hated crowds and would avoid large gatherings when he could. On state occasions, when Elphons forced him to attend, he would stay close to his father, eyes wide with fear, sweat upon his face. No one mentioned it, of course, but all saw it.