Two to Conquer Read Free Page B

one concession, that she should not be married until she was full fifteen years old.
    When they call me forth to be handfasted I will scream and refuse to speak, I will cry out. No when they ask me to consent, I will run out of the room … But in her heart Carlina knew that she would not do any of these disgraceful things, but would go through the ceremony with the decorum befitting a princess of Asturias.
    Bard is a soldier, she thought despairing, perhaps he will die in battle before the wedding; and then she felt guilty, for there had been a time when she had loved her playmate and foster brother. Quickly she amended her thoughts: perhaps he will find some other woman he wishes to wed, perhaps my father
    will change his mind…
    Avarra, merciful Goddess, Great Mother, pity me, spare me this marriage somehow…
    Angry, despairing, she blinked back the tears that threatened to flood her eyes again. Her mother would be angry if she disgraced them all this way.

    In a lower room in the castle, Bard di Asturien, foster son to the king, and his banner bearer, was being dressed for his handfasting by his two comrades and foster brothers: Beltran, the king’s son, and Geremy Hastur, who, like Bard, had been reared in the king’s house, but was a younger son of the Lord of Carcosa.
    The three youths were very different. Bard was tall and heavily built, already a man’s height, with thick blond hair twisted into the warrior’s braid at the back of his head, and the strong arms and heavy thews of a swordsman and rider; he towered like a young giant over the others. Prince Beltran was tall, too, although not quite as tall as Bard; but he was still thin and coltish, bony with a boy’s roundness, and his cheeks still fuzzed with a boy’s first traces of beard. His hair was cropped short and tightly curled, but as blond as Bard’s own.
    Geremy Hastur was smaller than either, red-haired and thin-faced, with sharp gray eyes and the
    quickness of a hawk or ferret. He wore dark, plain clothing, the dress of a scholar rather than a warrior, and his manner was quiet and unassuming.
    Now he looked up at Bard, laughing, and said, “You will have to sit down, foster brother; neither Beltran nor I can reach your head to tie the red cord about your braid! And you cannot go to a
    ceremonial occasion without it!”
    “No indeed,” Beltran said, hauling Bard down into a seat. “Here, Geremy, you tie it, your hands are defter than mine, or Bard’s. I remember last autumn when you stitched that guardsman’s wound—”
    Bard chuckled as he bent his head for his young friends to tie on the red cord which signified a warrior tried in battle and commended for bravery. He said, “I always thought you were cowardly, Geremy, that you did not fight in the field, and your hands as soft as Carlina’s; yet when I saw that, I decided you had more courage than I, for I wouldn’t have done it. I think it a pity there is no red cord for you!”
    Geremy said, in his muted voice, “Why, then, we should have to give a red cord to every woman in childbirth, or every messenger who slips unseen through the enemy’s lines. Courage takes many forms.
    I can do without warrior’s braid or red cord, I think.”
    “Perhaps, one day,” Beltran said, “when the day comes when I rule over this land—may my father’s reign be long!—perhaps we may reward courage in some other form than that we see on the battlefield.
    What about it, Bard? You will be my champion then, if we all live so long.” He frowned suddenly at Geremy and said, “What ails you, man?”
    Geremy Hastur shook his red head. He said, “I do not know—a sudden chill; perhaps, as they say in the hills, some wild animal pissed on the ground which will be my grave.” He finished twisting the red cord around Bard’s warrior braid, handed him sword and dagger and helped him to bind them on.
    Bard said, “I am a soldier; I know very little of other kinds of courage.” He shrugged his