The Lions of Al-Rassan. Guy Gavriel Kay

riders drew near, and Garcia saw then, with disgust, that they were mostly boys. It gave him a flicker of hope, though.

      “Dismount,” said a well-built, brown-haired boy.

      “Not until you say why you have just killed visitors without provocation,” Garcia temporized, his voice stern and repressive. “What sort of conduct is that?”

      The boy so addressed blinked, as if in surprise. Then he nodded his head briefly. Three archers shot Garcia’s horse from under him. Kicking his feet out of the stirrups, de Rada leaped free just in time to avoid being crushed by the falling horse. He stumbled to one knee in the wet grass.

      “I don’t like having to kill horses,” the boy said calmly. “But I can’t remember the last time visitors approached us unannounced at full gallop with swords drawn.” He paused, then smiled thinly. The smile was oddly familiar. “What sort of conduct is that?”

      Garcia de Rada could think of nothing to say. He looked around. They had been bested by children and stable hands and it hadn’t even been a fight.

      The boy who was evidently leader here glanced at Garcia’s riders. With unbecoming celerity they threw down their weapons and sprang from their mounts.

      “Let’s go,” said a second boy.

      Garcia glanced over at him, and then quickly back at the first one. The same face, exactly. And now he realized where he had seen that smile before.

      “Are you Belmonte’s sons?” he asked, trying to control his voice.

      “I wouldn’t bother with questions, were I you,” said the second boy. “I’d spend my time preparing answers. My mother will want to speak with you.”

      Which was an answer to his question, of course, but Garcia decided it would be unwise to point that out. Someone gestured with a sword and Garcia began walking towards the compound. As he approached he realized, belatedly, that the figures on the wall holding bows and spears were women. One of them, wearing a man’s overtunic and breeches, with mud stains on her cheeks and forehead, came along the wall-walk to stand above them, looking down. She had long, dark brown hair under a leather hat. She held a bow with an arrow nocked.

      “Fernan, please tell me who this sorry figure is.” Her voice was crisp in the grey stillness.

      “Yes, Mother. I believe it is Ser Garcia de Rada. The constable’s brother.” It was the first of the boys who answered, the leader.

      “Is it so?” the woman said icily. “If he is indeed of rank I will consent to speak with him.” She looked directly at Garcia.

      This was the woman he had been imagining pinned and naked beneath him since they’d left Orvilla. He stood in the wet grass, water seeping through his split boot, and looked up at her. He swallowed. She was indeed very beautiful, even in man’s garb and stained with mud. That was, for the moment, the least of his concerns.

      “Ser Garcia, you will explain yourself,” she said to him. “In few words and very precisely.”

      The arrogance was galling, bitter as a wound. Garcia de Rada had always been quick-witted though, nor was he a coward. This was a bad situation, but no worse in its way than Orvilla had been, and he was back in Valledo now, among civilized people.

      “I have a grievance with your husband,” he said levelly. “He took horses belonging to my men and myself in Al-Rassan. We were coming to square that account.”

      “What were you doing in Al-Rassan?” she asked. He hadn’t expected that.

      He cleared his throat. “A raiding party. Among the infidels.”

      “If you met Rodrigo you must have been near Fezana, then.”

      How did a woman know these things? “Somewhat near,” Garcia agreed. He was becoming a little uneasy.

      “Then Rodrigo was dealing with you as the king’s officer responsible for protecting that territory in exchange for the parias. On what basis do you claim a right to steal our horses?”

      Garcia found himself unable, for the moment, to speak.

      “Further, if you were captured and released without your mounts you will have given him your parole in exchange for a ransom to be determined by the heralds at court. Is that not so?”

      It would have been pleasant to be able to deny this, but he could only nod.

      “Then you have broken your oath by coming here, have you not?” The woman’s voice was flat, her gaze implacable.

      This was becoming ridiculous. Garcia’s temper flared. “Your husband ordered a cousin of mine slain, after we surrendered and sued for ransom!”

      “Ah. So it is more than horses and armor, is it?” The woman on the wall smiled grimly. “Would it not be the king’s task to judge whether his officer exceeded authority, Ser Garcia?” Her formality, in the circumstances, felt like mockery. He had never in his life been so spoken to by a woman.

      “A man who slays a de Rada must answer for it,” he said, glaring up at her, using his coldest voice.

      “I see,” the woman said, undisturbed. “So you came here to make him answer for it. How?”

      He hesitated. “The horses,” he replied finally.

      “Just the horses?” And abruptly he realized where this questioning was going. “Then why were you riding towards these walls, Ser Garcia? The horses are pastured south of us; they are not hard to see.”

      “I am tired of answering questions,” Garcia de Rada said, with as much dignity as he could manage. “I have surrendered and so have my men. I am content to let the king’s heralds in Esteren determine fair ransom.”

      “You already agreed to that in Al-Rassan with Rodrigo, yet you are here with drawn swords and ill intent. I regret to say I cannot accept your parole. And tired or not, you will answer my question. Why were you riding towards these walls, young fellow?”

      It was a deliberate insult. Humiliated, seething with rage, Garcia de Rada looked up at the woman on the wall above him, and said, “Your husband must learn that there is a price to be paid for certain kinds of action.”

      There was a murmur from the boys and ranch hands. It fell away into silence. The woman only nodded her head, as if this was what she had been waiting to hear.

      “And that price was to have been exacted by you?” she asked calmly.

      Garcia said nothing.

      “Might I guess further, that it was to have been exacted upon myself and my sons?”

      There was silence in the space before the walls. Overhead the clouds were beginning to lift and scatter as a breeze came up.

      “He had a lesson to learn,” said Garcia de Rada grimly.

      She shot him then. Lifting the man’s bow smoothly, drawing and releasing in one motion, with considerable grace. An arrow in the throat.

      “A lesson to learn,” said Miranda Belmonte d’Alveda, thoughtfully, looking down from the wall at the man she had killed.

      “The rest of you may go,” she added, a moment later. “Start walking. You will not be harmed. You may give report in Esteren that I have executed an oath-breaker and a common brigand who threatened a Valledan woman and her children. I will make answer directly to the king should he wish me to do so. Say that in Esteren. Diego, Fernan, collect their mounts and arms. Some of the horses look decent enough.”

      “I don’t think Father would have wanted you to shoot him,” Fernan ventured hesitantly.

      “Be silent. When I wish the opinions of my child I will solicit them,” his mother said icily. “And your father may consider himself fortunate if I do not loose a like arrow at him when he ventures to return. Now do what I told you.”

      “Yes, Mother,” said her two sons, as one.