The Prince of Midlow suddenly rode into the center of High Street, the village’s topmost street, and halted there, sitting sternly erect on a creamy white horse that stood with its nose pointed at the largest house in the village, Arne’s dwelling. The polished leather of her boots and jacket and the flaming red of her overs gleamed in the early sunlight. Her long, golden hair tumbled in careless disarray on her shoulders. Only peerager females had the perogative of long hair, and they guarded it jealously—as peerager males defended their distinction of being clean-shaven—but most of the women piled their hair into elaborate structures dictated by the latest fad. The Prince of Lant scorned fashion and allowed her hair to fall freely.
Even from a distance, she was awesomely beautiful. Arne had admired her since they were children, but that did not prevent him from holding her in utter comtempt. He might have been hopelessly infatuated with her—liasons between peeragers and one-namers were unheard of in Midlow except for an occasional scandal involving a one-name server who lived at the court—if he had found it possible to love a woman he despised. The Prince of Midlow’s fellow peeragers were notable for sexual excesses and fits of selfishness and cruelty, but even they considered her flagrant misconduct shocking.
Old Marof took his place at Arne’s side. He had approached without a sound, and he stood motionless for a moment, staring down at the village, before he began muttering curses.
“Let’s burn ‘em,” he said scornfully. “Let’s get the weapons and burn ‘em. The prince, too. It will be easy. They aren’t expecting a thing. We can cut ‘em to pieces and dump their bodies in the quarry.”
Arne said soberly, “We can’t. The entire village would know, and an entire village can’t be trusted with a secret like that.” He paused. “There is nothing we can do. We don’t dare offer any kind of resistance to the next Peer of Midlow.”
“Her mother must be told at once,” Marof said. “We can do that.”
“The lashers are members of the prince’s new guard. Has there been any gossip at court about those uniforms?”
Marof shook his head.
“The Prince of Chang has a personal guard of uniformed lashers,” Arne said. “When our prince visited Chang Court last Haro, she saw the prince’s guard and wanted one for herself. The peer her mother said no. The prince must have recruited one without the peer’s knowledge, which is why she has been so secretive about it. I would like to know where she got the uniforms.”
He was anxiously scrutinizing the activity around his dwelling. As he watched, a lasher emerged from it, strode up to the prince, saluted, and handed something to her.
Marof cursed again. “He don’t even kneel. A lasher, and he don’t kneel to his prince. Let me tell the peer.”
Arne spoke slowly, keeping his eyes on the drama being enacted in the street below. “You came to me last night to report a rotten plank in the bridge below the east pasture.”
Marof chuckled. “Aya. Bad plank, that. If you say so, that’s what I did. Is there really a rotten plank there?”
“There is one that looks rotten. I have been saving it for an emergency like this. We went out before dawn to have a look at it. Then I sent you on a watchwalk along the South Wood Road to see whether the other bridges show signs of rot.”
“Aya. We parted at the fork. Do you want me to give the alarm at the ruins?”
“Tell them what is happening. Someone has talked, and the prince is looking for something—if she hasn’t already found it. Roszt and Kaynor were staying at my house.”
Marof turned in alarm. “Aya. That sounds bad. I’ll give the alarm.”
“Circle around by the swamp road and inspect the bridges there. Then head back and approach the court from the south. If anyone asks, tell him you have been inspecting bridges all day, and you have come to tell the land warden about that rotten plank.”
“Aya.”
“The prince’s guard may may bar the road to keep news of this from reaching the peer, but I don’t think they will stop one-namers arriving from the south. If they do, come back and tell me, but don’t enter Midd Village unless the lashers are gone.”
“Aya.”
“If you are able to talk with the land warden, tell him what you saw here. He will decide whether the peer should be told— or when.”
“Aya. This wouldn’t have happened if the peer weren’t so sick.” Marof nodded at the village. “Are you going down?”
“Of course.”
“You will get a lashing.”
“I must do what I can.”
They returned to the road. Old Marof, giving Arne a grim nod and an absent gesture of farewell, started back the way they had come. Arne turned in the opposite direction.
As the road approached the village, it passed through a barrier wall that Arne had designed himself. A tall, sod-covered mound of dirt with steep sides ran from river to hill and back to the river. Dwellings on High Street, at the top of the village, had walled gardens. Thus the entire village was enclosed, including the mills and a large garden common that was used as a sheepfold in winter. In other peerdoms, drunken or bored lashers had slipped their restraints and rampaged through the one-name villages, vandalizing, raping, and looting, and Arne used these incidents as an excuse for fortifying Midlow’s one-name villages.
Midd Road, which became Midd Street as it passed through the village, was supposed to be blocked from dusk to dawn by logs slid into place between stone pillars where the road passed through the barrier on either side of the village. Further, Arne had ordered a niot watch kept on barriers and foot paths and a dae watch by village children. Unexpected though the raid was, there would have been ample warning if Arne’s orders had been followed.
This was no blundering assault by drunken lashers. It was a carefully calculated military operation by a peerager’s personal guard, and nothing like it had happened in Midlow within living memory. It seemed all the more sinister because Roszt and Kaynor had moved from the ruins to the village only two daez before. They wanted to be closer to Wiltzon, the elderly schooler, who was drilling them in studies Egarn had prescribed.
Arne never wasted time looking for scapegoats when something went wrong. He accepted the responsibility himself and set about salvaging what he could, even if—as in this case—he had to take a lashing. He approached the village boldly as though nothing unusual were happening.
Two hulking lashers were posted at the barrier opening. They stood like grotesque statues with whips poised and black capes flapping in a brisk breeze. Their horses were munching grass in the nearby drainage ditch. Arne walked past them without a glance, and a blow from a heavy whip sent him sprawling. The lashers roared with laughter; Arne calmly got to his feet and walked on. They made no further attempt to interfere with him, which meant they knew who he was.
He strode along Midd Street for some distance before another lasher noticed him. This one charged from a dwelling bellowing angrily. “Inside! You heard the orders!”
For a lasher to speak unbidden to the peer’s first server, let alone attempt to order him about, was a flagrant breach of custom. If the peer had been present, she would have ordered the man lashed severely. Merely to take notice of him was beneath Arne’s dignity. He walked on, and another vicious snap of a whip hurled him to the cobble stones. He was seized and marched away with one arm brutally twisted behind his back. At the first crossing, he was jerked to the right and rushed up the slope to High Street where the prince still sat on her horse. By the time he reached her, he was stumbling badly, and only the excruciating grip on his arm kept him from falling. He was flung casually to the ground in front of her.