Chapter 6 Cenric
Cenric
Cenric found Ovrek in the shipyards, as he had said. The sun was relentless in summer, turning the water into a glaring expanse of light.
Ovrek’s men were hard at work building ships. Dozens of them, from the look of it. Ships sat along the beach and inside workshops in all stages of repair and construction. Ovrek was building himself a fleet.
The specter of last night’s foretelling hovered in the back of Cenric’s mind. Were these portents of his own impending death?
Ships were the pride of the Valdari. In a land lacking the fertile farmland and lush jewel mines of the south, their ships were their greatest achievement.
Ovrek and his veterans loved to tell tales of how their longships had outrun the Kelethi navy.
After decades as mercenaries, their relationship with the Kelethi emperor had soured.
Cenric still wasn’t clear on what had happened.
There were whispers it had involved the emperor’s mistress, but Ovrek himself had never confirmed that.
Cenric approached Ovrek as the king finished speaking to several of the workmen in the process of layering boards into a ship’s hull. The Valdari king had no attendants or guards in sight, almost as if he dared his enemies to attack him in broad daylight, surrounded by his own men.
“Cenric!” Ovrek barreled toward him. “How did you sleep, my friend?” He addressed Cenric in Valdari now that Brynn wasn’t here.
The king wore no visible weapon, but didn’t mention Cenric’s sword at his hip, either. In the warring days, he’d ordered his men to carry their arms at all times.
“Well enough, lord.” Cenric clasped forearms with the king, coming to stand beside him as he watched the mast of a ship raised and hammered into place.
Friend! Snapper cried, greeting Ovrek with his tongue lolling out one side.
“And you, you mighty beast!” Ovrek rubbed Snapper’s sides, earning happy yips from the dyrehund.
Cenric searched down the beach, looking for Brynn. She’d planned to take Guin and Esa for a walk this morning, but he didn’t see her from this side of the bay.
“It has been too long.” Ovrek took in the work around him. “Two years?”
“Closer to three.” Cenric adjusted his cloak.
“How does lordship suit you?”
“It suits me well enough.” Being a lord had its own set of inconveniences and burdens, but Cenric enjoyed his life.
“At peace with your father’s countrymen?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly?” Ovrek’s head tilted at that as if to angle his ears to the word.
Cenric decided there was no harm in honesty. “Leofstan, the alderman to the south, seems uninterested in friendship.”
“Why would you say that?” Ovrek seemed just a little too interested from the way his shoulders shifted.
This past spring, Leofstan’s shepherds had begun crossing boundary stones north to graze their sheep on Cenric’s lands.
They swore ignorance when confronted by the Ombra shepherds.
For now, the incidents were annoyances at worst, but they were the kind of small slights that might swell into feuds over time.
Shepherds were as proud as thanes and men had been killed over less.
Leofstan had ignored Cenric’s messengers and done nothing to stop the incidents.
Cenric had to assume the shepherds grazed their flocks on his fields with Leofstan’s approval. “Aldermen are no different from jarls,” he said wryly. “We always want what the others have.”
“Mmm.” Ovrek stroked his beard, seeming to think. It wasn’t like Ovrek to stall, but that was what the man seemed to be doing.
“Why am I here, Ovrek?” Cenric had never needed pretense with his mentor before. “Unless, of course, Valdar has been so dull without me.”
Ovrek did not respond to his humor. “Walk with me and tell me about this new wife of yours.”
Cenric went rigid, humor gone, but he fell in beside the king. They walked side by side, Snapper trailing after them. “Brynn is a fine woman,” Cenric answered. “What do you want to know?”
“She’s kin to several kings?”
“Dead ones, for the most part.” Cenric kept his gaze neutral and straight ahead.
“Niece to the current king?”
“She is.” Cenric cast Ovrek a sidelong glance. “Is there something in particular you want to know?”
“You must have done a great service to Aelgar for him to wed you to his niece.”
Cenric stopped, facing Ovrek. “Aelgar married her to me to get rid of her. He fears she could still try to take the kingship from him, but Hylden would never accept me as king.” When Cenric finished, he stared down his former liege lord.
He had been learning the art of politics from Brynn, but with Ovrek, he would rather be honest. It seemed like he and Ovrek owed each other that much.
Ovrek threw back his head and laughed. “I have always liked that about you, son.” He clapped Cenric on the shoulder. “Straightforward. Very Valdari.”
Cenric dared to smile back.
Ovrek cleared his throat, eyes shining with mirth. “You do not care for Aelgar, then?”
Cenric surveyed the beach littered with ships. “I must make peace with my neighbors.” He glanced to Ovrek. “Whoever they happen to be.”
Ovrek made a sound of understanding. “Aelgar has sorceresses, yes?”
Cenric hesitated. “They supported his rise.”
“But?”
Cenric was sure Brynn would be upset if he revealed this part, but Ovrek almost certainly knew already. “There is a faction of sorceresses that would seek to put a sorceress on the throne.”
“I heard there was an attempt to make your wife queen.”
“Your ears must be long indeed, lord.” Cenric suspected Ovrek had spies in Hylden, but he hadn’t been sure—until now.
Then again, perhaps it had been Hróarr. It stung to think of his cousin being a spy, but then again, why should he have kept it secret?
Hróarr and several of his men had been injured in her mother’s attempt to abduct Brynn and they had spent weeks recovering and repairing the damage before sailing home last fall.
“But if you heard that, then you must also have heard my wife has no desire to be queen.”
“Are you sure?” Ovrek clasped his hands behind his back, looking across the beach and to the men at work across it, toiling like so many bees in a hive. “Power is a thrill like nothing I know.” Ovrek winked at Cenric. “And I have known many thrills.”
“She…” Cenric wasn’t sure how to explain it. She chose me, he thought to himself. She’s a sorceress and a king’s daughter, but she chose me.
Cenric had seen Brynn tear a ship to pieces and flatten trees with her spells.
He had seen her charm warlords and cajole even the fiercest warriors into friendship.
He had no doubt Brynn could be queen if she wished it, but instead she spent her days as lady of Ombra, managing his house and serving his people.
She could be anything she chose, yet she chose him.
Cenric thought of the story of Eponine, the moon goddess who had left life in the stars for the love of a shepherd. There were times with Brynn when he felt like that shepherd, a mere man somehow permitted to touch divinity.
“Brynn chose me.”
“How long have you been married?” Ovrek pressed.
Cenric didn’t like what Ovrek was implying, but it wasn’t anything the older man wouldn’t already know. “Seven months.”
“Seven months,” Ovrek repeated the words slowly, deliberately, like he was chewing on them. “You think you know her so well? Sifma still surprises me after decades.”
“I can manage my own house,” Cenric snapped. “Is there anything else you would like to say about my wife?”
Ovrek tsked. “I meant no offense, son.”
Cenric chose not to answer.
“You are quite taken with her.” Ovrek made a dismissive gesture in the air. “Come.” He beckoned, continuing his walk down the beach.
Cenric shifted to follow the king. He’d moved his right foot back, braced in a battle stance without realizing it.
“Would you fight for Aelgar if he called on you?” Ovrek was finally getting to the point, it seemed.
“Depends,” Cenric admitted.
“On what?” Ovrek cast Cenric a sidelong glance.
“Why he wanted me to fight.” Cenric tilted his head toward the sky. “And if there might be more compelling reasons not to fight.”
Ovrek was quiet for a long moment, as if for effect. “I’m going to take Hylden.”
Even without his foretelling last night, the words would not have been surprising. Perhaps Cenric had spent too much time with the likes of Aelgar, but it was refreshing to have the truth out in the open. “You sound confident.”
“You doubt I could do it?” Ovrek gestured to the beach. “Five thousand men will sail before midsummer. And whoever joins us once we reach Hylden.” Ovrek gave Cenric a significant look.
War.
Cenric thought of his thanes back in Ombra.
Many of them, like Edric, had once been thralls in Valdar, but they had fought in Ovrek’s war, and he had rewarded them with wealth and freedom.
Offensive war was always preferable, when there was treasure, thralls, and land to be taken.
Many of Cenric’s thanes would be happy for the chance at such wealth.
But Cenric also thought of his fields and flocks. Men fighting would mean fewer to plant, plough, and reap. Fewer to tend the animals.
Most of all, he thought of Brynn. Thought of how she described the war to establish Aelgar. This would break her heart.
But Morgi seemed to be warning Cenric that if he went against Ovrek, he would lose.
“I cut the throat of a young stallion on the first snows and released him,” Ovrek said. “When we tracked him down, he had bled out facing the southern sea.”
A stallion? Ovrek must be serious if he was willing to sacrifice such a valuable creature for his auguries. Since not everyone had Cenric’s foretellings, those who wished to know the future had to resort to other means.
Ovrek’s eyes glinted with excitement as he spoke. “I sacrificed bullocks and boars to the Grandfather Yew. The ground soaked up their blood, leaving nothing behind.”