The Icemark Chronicles: The Cry of the Icemark by Stuart Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

exactly the same position, so no matter where they were, in the Empire or on campaign, they felt completely at home.
    And now they could see their great leader, Scipio Bellorum himself: part man, part god, ruthless and aloof, riding the lines of troops as they presented arms. They awaited his command.
    Thirrin spent the rest of her day happily taking weapons drill with her father’s elite corps of housecarls. Within a few minutes of hitting a bull’s-eye with her throwing ax, she was happy and relaxed and the dust of the schoolroom had been blown away. The huge soldiers, all of them especially picked for their height and strength, treated her fighting skills with enormous respect. She was not only their future Queen but also their mascot and lucky symbol. They cheered every time she hit the target with her javelin and politely ignored her misses, but over the three years she’d been training with the weapons master, there’d been far more reason to cheer than to remain politely silent.
    By sundown when the training session ended, she was pleasantly tired and began to make her way back to her rooms with happy thoughts of supper. Then, changing her mind, she headed instead for her father’s apartments. There was no official banquet tonight, so the kitchens would be having an easier time before the next round of diplomatic dinners for one or another of Redrought’s barons. And the King would be eating as quietly as he ever could in his rooms. Thirrin had decided to join him, knowing he’d be pleased to spend the evening with his daughter. Besides, she had things on her mind and wanted to talk to him.
    She crossed the shadowy Great Hall, listening to her booted footsteps echo from the smoke-blackened beams high aboveher head in the gloom of the roof. As she passed by, some of the ancient battle standards waved lazily, as though some ghost of wind from a long-ago battlefield still stroked the faded regimental colors. Ahead she could see her father’s throne on its high dais rising out of the gathering shadows like a mountain made of carved oak. She reached it and quickly skirted around the back, where the door set in the wall behind stood slightly open.
    “Grimswald! I said I wanted ale, not brown river water!” Redrought’s booming voice lashed the Chamberlain-of-the-Royal-Paraphernalia.
    “Well, I’m sure that it came from the same barrel that His Majesty was happy to drink from yesterday,” a voice of old leather and dust answered.
    “Well, it tastes like river water today! And fish do unspeakable things in rivers, so get me some more!”
    “As His Majesty wishes.”
    Thirrin walked in just as the old chamberlain waved forward one of the servers who stood in the shadows at the back of the cozy room. He handed the man a jug and, with a huge wink, told him to fetch beer from another barrel.
    “Thirrin!” her father shouted when he caught sight of her standing in the doorway. “Come in, come in! Grimswald, set another place; my daughter’s come to eat with her old dad.”
    The little chamberlain bustled around fetching cutlery and placing a chair at the plain wooden table where Redrought ate when there were no dignitaries to entertain.
    “I hear you equaled my best housecarl with the throwing axes today,” he said, smiling proudly at her.
    “Yes. And if the weapons master hadn’t called an end to the session, I’d have beaten him,” Thirrin replied.
    Redrought roared with laughter. He often roared withlaughter when other people would have only smiled. “I bet you would have, too! Sigmund’s getting a bit long in the tooth. I’ll have to see about retiring him soon. His people come from the northern provinces. I’m sure he’ll be happy with a bit of land and a pension.”
    “He’s still a better axman than men half his age,” Thirrin said in the old soldier’s defense. “It’d be a pity to lose his experience from the bodyguard.”
    “Oh, don’t worry, he’s still good for another five years