The results, however, were obvious. The boy rolled to his feet, the whites of his eyes showing as he looked around them. Then, sprouting appalling Tallvenish gutterspeak that effectively stopped Kellen and Garranon's conversation and directed the attention of most of the people in the vicinity toward him, he reached down and grabbed a chunk of rock in his hand.
"Impressive," I said dryly in Tallvenish - which we'd been speaking out of courtesy to Kellen anyway. As I remembered from before his imprisonment, he could get by in the Shavig tongue, but was more comfortable in Tallvenish. "What do you think happens after you've hit one of us with the rock - assuming you can throw it hard enough to matter?"
He stopped swearing and glanced fearfully from me to Oreg and on to the rest of the men (Tisala was some distance away saddling a horse) who were watching him. A couple of them stepped forward, hands on their swords.
I shooed them with a wave of my hand. "Finish packing camp. I need a little time to explain matters to my brother here." I said it first in Shavig, for the men, and then again in Tallvenish for the boy.
Turning back to Tychis, I nodded my head in greeting. "I am Ward of Hurog - your half brother. Next to me is my mage, Oreg - also a relative of sort. Your uncle Duraugh and Tosten - another of your half brothers - are over there. Tosten is the one over by that oak with his hand on his sword. Duraugh is that one," I said, pointing behind Kellen, "the one frowning at me."
"I'm not your brother," Tychis said fiercely in broken Shavig. Then he repeated it, with a few more filthy words, mostly adjectival, in Tallvenish.
I shook my head sadly and settled myself on the ground where I was on more of a level with him, not so threatening. "I'm sorry if it pains you - but your father was Fenwick of Hurog, as was mine. You've half a dozen other half siblings in Hurog. Some of them, I'm sure, won't be all that you could wish for, either."
The rock was getting heavier; I could see his hand droop. Neither Oreg nor I gave him reason to throw. I was safely distanced by being on the ground, Oreg leaned negligently against a trio of sapling aspens. Everyone else was farther away. The Tamerlain, I noticed, had disappeared somewhere.
"You might as well drop the rock," said Oreg. "He'll sit here all day until you do." He caught the boy's eyes. "If you don't believe in futility, you might as well give up the hostility, too. It's as easy to stay angry with a puppy as it is to be angry at Ward. Ask Tosten someday if you don't believe me."
The rock dropped at last, and the tough front cracked a bit as tears welled in the boy's eyes. "What do you want with me?
I sat up and pinned him with my eyes. "I want you to be safe. I want to bring you back with me to Hurog - as my father should have."
"I'm a bastard. The son of a whore and your father," he spat, then added the bit he certainly seemed to think damning. "And the whore was your father's cousin."
Oreg made tsking sounds with his tongue. "The Tallvens have certainly done a job on you, haven't they. In Shavig, cousins marry all the time." That was overstating matters, but for a good cause. "Duraugh's son is married to Ward's sister - your sister, too - and no one thought a thing about it."
Tychis begun to look faintly alarmed - which was better than the fearful defiance he'd displayed before.
"No one says you have to marry a cousin," I soothed. "But you do have to be polite around Beckram and Ciarra - that I will insist upon." Since politeness was the last thing he was worried about, it succeeded in distracting him.
"Do you know how to ride a horse?" I asked, changing the ground under him.
He shook his head. I stood up and held out a hand. "Well then, come and meet your mount and I'll get you started. By the end of this trip, no one will ever know you weren't born in the saddle."
The bait was too great. Soon he was sitting on a bay gelding, newly named Death-Bringer. I'd given Tychis several choices of names. From the size of the horse's barrel I'd have called