The Sea Peoples(19)
And I think that may have been to clear the decks for this . . . abduction of Prince John, Deor thought.
Deor also thought that Anak was a competent man of war, but that he was very, very worried about how his ruler would balance the loss of his holy man against the admittedly crucial victory.
The Tuan dismounted from his horse and knelt in the dust of the road, bowing his head before the elephant and the figure in the howdah and holding his ivory-hilted parang-sword across the palms of his hands. The elephant trumpeted again, and the mahout tapped it with the goad. It sank down into a kneeling position—rather imposing since the beast was of an African breed and twelve feet at the shoulder—and Raja Dalem walked down a sort of extensible ladder-stair that let down from it.
“Courtesy of Uncle Pete and Aunt Fifi and Mum,” Pip whispered. “They shipped the elephants of Oz—feral zoo stock. Twice.”
Deor nodded, knowing the story. That had been necessary because the original shipment to Bali had mysteriously disappeared . . . courtesy of the South Sea Adventure, back when its owners had still been fully human and merely piratical.
The Raja was a slight-built man in his sixties, but the human being nearly disappeared behind a towering crown of gold fretwork and golden leaves, a jacket of black silk riotously embroidered in threads of precious metal and jewels, gold-and-emerald earrings, and a sarong of shimmering batik. Guardsmen only slightly less gorgeous shaped up around him; Tuan Anak looked dusty and plain beside them.
The Raja took the parang from Anak’s hands, and the crowd’s noise died away in a ripple as those who could see passed on the news, as if they were holding their collective breaths. Then he reached behind him and took another weapon, similar but with a blade of watermarked steel and a hilt fancy even by the standards of what he was wearing, and presented it to the warrior.
The crowd’s roar rose again, louder than ever, and Tuan Anak rose and bowed deeply as he tucked the mark of favor into his sash.
Kings will forgive a good deal, for victory, Deor thought.
“And that’s my cue,” Feldman said. “I’ll handle the Raja. Now get him to the villa and get him back for us!”
CHAPTER FOUR
KERAJAAN OF BARU DENPASAR
CERAM SEA
NOVEMBER 20TH
CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD
Deor sighed, looking down at the body on the snowy cotton sheeting of the carved teakwood bed, stripped and washed and dressed in a light cotton robe.
“Not injured at all,” Pip muttered. “But . . .”
No one was counting the chafing and scrapes and bruises that mottled the fair skin. That was just the cost of doing business when you fought in full plate, and better than the alternative.
They’d politely rejected the offer of Raja Dalem Seganing’s personal physician; luckily victory had the Baru Denpasaran court preoccupied enough that they weren’t suspicious and Feldman had stepped in smoothly. Even giving the servants here leave to go join their families for the ceremonies of thanks and the riotous celebrations you could just hear in the distance over the whisper of the palms shouldn’t arouse too much comment. The folk of Baru Denpasar hadn’t seen any outsiders save enemies in two generations now; few remembered the world before the Change. Perhaps the foreigners were kind, perhaps too grief-stricken that their Prince was badly injured, perhaps both and who could say?
Toa had grunted satisfaction at that. “Better if we’re sodding careful about who we let see him.”
He jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Carcosa.
“I wasn’t having you on when I said Scrag ’em and let the Gods sort ’em out is their motto. If they realize he’s not just had a thump on the noggin we’ve got problems, gratitude or no gratitude.”
Deor nodded. “Not to mention that Timorese sailor you mentioned, the one they found drifting and mad after his ship tried to escape from here.”
Pip and Toa nodded, both looking uneasy to a degree that was alarming in a pair so fearless. According to them, the man had been strangled in his sleep . . . either by his own hands . . .
. . . or possibly by his own shadow.
Fortunately Prince John had been given the use of a villa of the Raja’s outside the palace compound, one built before the Change with its own gardens and stretch of beach, blinding white sand where the waves broke in blue and foam. That made it less desirable to the local folk if anything; they’d brought from Bali itself—which he and Thora had visited—the conviction that kelod, evil and chaos, came from the sea while virtue and right order ran down from the mountains.
Evrouin rose from John’s bedside, tight-held frustration on his olive-skinned face.
“I’ll go check on Sergeant Fayard and the guard detail, then, my lords, my ladies,” he said unhappily.
Fayard commanded the detachment of the Protector’s that had followed Prince John to the Tarshish Queen. After the battle at the Carcosan fort he’d be doing his commanding on crutches for a while, but only one of his men was too badly hurt to walk. Deor thought they were all happier to be serving their Prince outside this room, being Associates and strong Catholics to a man and uneasy with . . .
What they know I must do, he thought. At least that I must call on Powers their faith forbids.
John was Catholic too, of course, but he was of House Artos and . . . broad-minded. Deor and Thora were both heathen and offered to the northern Gods, though they called them by slightly different names. Deor’s folk in Mist Hills used the Saxon names, Woden and Thunor; the heathen half of Thora’s Bearkiller kindred used the Norski ones and called their faith Asatru. And while Thora gave Them due honor and the seemly offerings and paid respect to the land-wights wherever she dwelled—she’d had the Hammer on a thong around her neck since he’d first met her—she was content to leave it at that.