One flight. Two, down the back stair apparently forbidden to travelers, as no sentries were posted. He eased through the archway, and there was that court. He checked himself. The glimmering blur reassured him that the illusion was still strong.
He put his foot out to take a careful step—and knew as soon as the worn sole of his boot touched down that he was about to step on raked gravel. At this time of night, in still air, the crunch would reach the sentries above.
He jerked back into the archway. No noise, except the cadenced steps of the sentries on the wall.
Quill crouched down, eyeing the open space, so innocent-looking from above. From this vantage, he made out the fact that the gravel was not evenly spread after all. It humped subtly in neat rows.
He frowned at those, then pivoted on his toes, and peered at the base of the wall, discerning a long, dark bar too defined to be shadow. With painstaking care he crawled along the base of the wall—the gravel painful under knees and hands—and felt the iron bar, with a chain welded into it, stretching perpendicular to the bar.
He worked his way back, and surveyed again. His nerves chilled when he made out the dull gleam of starlight on steel at regular intervals about halfway out into the court.
Now he knew was he was seeing. The gravel covered a series of chains to which sharpened spears had been attached. These could winched up to chest height: horse killers. He thought of those sentries above with crossbows, and knew that this was a carefully planned killing field.
Sickened, he surveyed the rest of the court, which might cover other lethal surprises. He lifted his gaze to the outer wall with the massive iron-reinforced gate. He counted the sentries.
I’m not getting out that way, he thought.
He was done.
He straightened up wearily, and clenched his fingers over his transfer token. The visceral wrench of magic to that Destination beside the stream on the other side of the mountain flung him to the grassy ground. He dropped down unconscious.
TWENTY-FOUR
When Noddy rode into Ku Halir and saw the King’s Army banner flying, he grinned with relief and anticipation.
He was still grinning when he dashed impetuously into command headquarters and spotted Connar and Ventdor on either side of the table, reports and a big map spread between them.
“Connar!” Noddy exclaimed. “I hoped I’d catch you here before you rode off again.”
In two strides Connar closed the distance between them, and he and Noddy each pounded the other on the back. “This is a surprise!”
“Cabbage Gannan invited me to inspect Yvanavayir—Stalgoreth,” Noddy conscientiously corrected himself. “I can’t quite get used to Stalgoreth, such an odd word.”
“The old Iascan name, before we turned up,” Connar said, laughing.
“I know. Da said going back to the old name is a compromise, that the people up there like it. He said to keep it for now, at least until he decides on the new jarl. Which I’m going to suggest for Cabbage. All year there’s been nothing but good reports, and Da said, if it’s as good as the reports say, he may as well remain there another year, as you’ve got everyone else readying for the Adranis.” At the word ‘Cabbage’ he saw Connar’s expression shutter, and old habit caused him to turn the subject. “I hoped I might catch you here,” he said, starting again. “It’s good that I did.”
“Come! You must be thirsty.” Connar flicked a glance at Fish, who turned to one of the waiting runners and sent him with a brief gesture.
As the runner vanished down the hall, Noddy said, “I know you’ve been inspecting at East and Hesea Garrisons. Da and Ma were hoping you might stop into the royal city on your way north again.”
Connar raised a hand. “Too much to do. I set out to make my inspection somewhat late last spring. I was hoping for a report on the Pass. Unrealistic, I know. I didn’t even make it down to Old Faral, much less all the way to Parayid garrisons, nor will I make it to the Nob this year. I’m leaving those until after we deal with the Adranis. And I still have Lindeth and Larkadhe to inspect before winter hits us. We were going to ride out a few days ago, but....”
He paused, thinking over the past week, during which Commander Ventdor had been reminiscing about the struggle to form the King’s Army out of the remains of Mathren’s force, and inside gossip about various commanders since—all the sort of thing the adults had kept to themselves, but which now, Ventdor had said over his third cup of bristic, Connar ought to know.
Connar considered what to say, realized that Noddy likely didn’t know any of it, and promised himself to share it with him later. Meanwhile here were all these watching eyes. He finished quickly, “I had to stop for some matters having to do with Tlen and the Eastern Alliance. I sent a detailed report down to Da, which you can read when you get back, if you want. It looks like you have news.”
Noddy unslung his gear back and reached into it, pulling out a carefully rolled scroll, tied with a fine linen strip, then slung the bag again so he could sign in Hand as he spoke, habit by now. “I told the runners that I’d bring word, in case I was able to catch you. You have a daughter! She was very nearly born on my Name Day. Ranet wanted to name her Danet, but then thought that Noren might want to name a daughter that, when...if,” he amended, his smile wavering.
Connar pitched his voice in an attempt to cheer. “It’ll happen. We’re young. We have years yet.”
“I know,” Noddy said quickly, lest it seem he might be complaining. Noren was an excellent, loyal wife, hard-working and kind. It seemed a betrayal to even hint how much it hurt that in a year of trying he had yet to get her pregnant, and he worked hard not to feel anything but happiness that Connar and Ranet had managed to successfully conceive a child in the week Connar had been in the royal city the previous winter.
His gaze dropped as he held out the scroll. “I remembered that Lineas was so good at drawing, so I asked her to make a sketch of little Fareas. That’s what Ranet decided on. For her mother, and also Noren’s ma, though already everybody is calling the baby Iris, on account of her blue eyes. They chose a flower name because of Blossom. Who thinks the baby is her toy.”
He paused and unrolled the drawing, then held it out so everyone could see the sketch of a round infant face indistinguishable (most thought) from any other infant, except for the thatch of black hair. The room full of men said everything that was appropriate, the fathers among them demonstrating real, if brief, interest.
Noddy was still holding out the drawing. Connar took it and laid it on the desk, as the runner reappeared with a loaded tray. “Go ahead. Help yourself.”
Noddy pulled his knife, speared three cabbage rolls, plopped them into a shallow dish, and passed them to Vanadei standing behind him. He speared one for himself, gobbled it in two bites, then said, thickly, “That’s all the news I have. I hoped you had more.”
“I expect my scout report at any time,” Connar said. “As soon as I finish the inspections at Larkadhe and Lindeth we’ll be back to preparing.” He paused as the watch bell clanged. “I expect those are what we’re having for dinner. Come join us.”
Noddy wolfed down the last two rolls as Ventdor led the way out.
Connar lingered behind, tidying the desk. When he was alone in the room, he looked down at the drawing lying beside the map, then laid his hand over the careful sketch Lineas had made, his fingers spread. Gift, apology, appeal?
Pity?
A spurt of anger and he crushed Lineas’s drawing, turned to one of the candles a runner had brought in, and held the paper to it until the flame caught. He watched it burn nearly to the end, then pitched it into the fireplace and walked out.
Quill woke with a throbbing headache and blinding thirst. The stream had diminished to little more than a trickle this late in the season, but it was enough.
He crawled over on hands and knees and slurped water in his cupped hands until he was breathless, then turned and lay on his back as the sky wheeled gently overhead. The cool w
ater worked its way through him, and the worst of the headache receded, leaving him in a stupor of hunger and lightheadedness.
The sun had nearly gone. It was far warmer here than on the heights, so the old urgency to find shelter had receded. But he needed to get moving. Urgency gripped him again, much stronger: if he was gone too long his absence might be misinterpreted, causing the king to launch a war.
First, Lineas and Camerend.
Camerend had twice sent resupplies of ink, paper, and traveler’s bread. Quill fetched out his nearly ruined pen, a scrap of paper, and scrawled on it, I’m out, at the top and on the bottom. He tore the paper in half, stuck one in his notecase and tapped Lineas’s sigil, then sent the second to Camerend.
Then he forced himself to pull out the half-loaf of traveler’s bread still remaining in his bag. The sight of the bread made Quill’s stomach lurch, after months of eating nothing but. He forced himself to gnaw a few bites, washed them down with more water, filled both his flasks in case the stream beds had gone entirely dry further out, then got wearily to his feet.
All he had to do now was walk, on flat ground, until he was spotted by the right perimeter riders. He started out slowly, working his way downhill before finding a sheltered spot under autumn-yellow leaves. He sat, decided he was done for the day, and stretched out on the grass, and dropped into sleep.
The soft air, after months of wintry frost-burn, was benevolent. He slept hard, woke, drank, ate, walked; when the sun rose behind him, he oriented himself and proceeded in the direction of Lake Wened, fumbling his notecase out to read as he walked.
Both Camerend and Lineas had immediately written back. Lineas was in Darchelde, having been given home leave after the Victory Day departures, and had visited his mother in her seclusion. Camerend reported on that as well, and both conveyed his mother’s good wishes, which he scarcely needed; he had grown up knowing that though proximity was sometimes more than she could bear, she somehow kept track of him through his dreams, a benevolent presence.
The rest of the news was small details that added up to the kingdom being quiet: the first year of boys and girls in the academy had finished with only the loss of one girl and one boy being sent home; the birth of Connar and Ranet’s little Iris.
Quiet, but not peaceful: everywhere, the talk of war.
Quill hadn’t the strength to respond, though he mulled words as he walked, and dreamed them when he slept. Most of his mental strength went to the wording of his report.
His mind drifted on a tide of deep exhaustion, his thoughts remote from the world. Perhaps it was the gift of his mother, but he could not entirely shut out physical awareness: the warmth of the sun on his cheek, the buzzing of insects, the sough of breezes over the yellowing grasses that smelled of sun and wind, the passage overhead of birds going north to avoid the coming winter; the stately parade of clouds driven by the weakening summer winds from the west.
He lost count of the days before he finally heard hoof beats. He’d drunk all his water by then, and the crackling grasses underfoot made it clear he’d find no more. He didn’t care who the riders were. He could probably survive the transportation spell if he was snapped up by Elsarion’s scouts.
These were Marlovans. He was scarcely aware of their suspicion at his Adrani clothing turning rapidly to concern after his murmured, in Marlovan, “Royal runner, returning from scouting the pass.”
“Oh, you’re that one?” a cracking teenage voice exclaimed as they all exchanged looks. “We’ve got orders about you.”
The riding captain, a hawk-nosed young woman who looked like the Tlennens, turned to a weedy teenage boy. “Report to Captain Sindan. Tell her we’ve got the royal runner, and are going straight to HQ.”
The boy took off, and at a gesture from the riding captain, the smallest female extended a hand down to Quill. He used the last of his strength to vault up behind her, and they rode on.
They camped out on a clear, moonless night, then resumed riding at sunup. He nodded and swayed, half-dozing, until the clack of hooves on cobblestones roused him sufficiently enough to slide down from the horse. His knees nearly buckled; someone took his arm and guided him into a small stone building, where he gazed incuriously into a weather-beaten Senelaec face under a sun-lightened horsetail.
“Wait—I’ve seen you before. Royal runner? Quill?” Braids exclaimed. “I’ve got orders about you. What happened! You’re nothing but bones!”
“May I requisition a horse, and riding supplies?” Quill winced, his husky thread of a voice taking on a semblance of life. “No travel bread, please.”
Braids grimaced in instant understanding. “I used to ride the borders every summer, and by autumn I couldn’t stand the sight or smell of honey. How long have you been eating it? How long have you been gone?”
“King sent me about this time last year.”
Braids whistled, then his mobile face lengthened in concern. “I’ve got orders, as I said, but I really think you should rest for at least a week before riding out.”
“Can you guarantee the king hasn’t launched the army yet?” Quill asked.
“The king?” Braids said slowly, “You do know that Connar-Laef is now Commander in Chief? And he issued specific orders to both Henad Tlennen and me to send you straight to him if we saw you.”
Quill rubbed his eyes. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know, but Commander Ventdor will, and Ku Halir is definitely close, straight west.” Braids smacked his hands on the desk. “At least get a meal into you—no honey or raisins, I promise—and a night of rest.”
Quill passed a hand over his face. He longed for just that, but he had to stop a war that would lose more than it would win—if won at all. “I have to write my report anyway,” he murmured, mostly to himself. “Show it to Connar, take it to the king.”
Braids rolled his eyes at a waiting runner, who guided Quill out.
A hot meal, some lister-steep, and a much-needed bath restored a semblance of focus, enough for him to establish that he’d been brought to Wened Lakeside, which was currently Braids’ headquarters as his company watched and guarded the mouth of the pass. Anyone who came down the pass was surrounded and interrogated before being sent on, weapons confiscated.
Quill thought of the young lordlings, though perhaps they’d been recruits for West Outpost, and hadn’t attempted to travel into Halia despite their claims of being in search of horses to buy. “Do they cooperate?”
“They have to,” Braids said, with a brief, grim smile and a flash of his palms. “Those trying to buy or get our horses, we send ‘em straight back to the pass, like it or not, and watch to see that they go. Anyone we think might be a spy gets muscled straight to Ku Halir. When the traders complain, we tell them to blame Mathias Elsarion. They don’t like hearing that,” he finished with satisfaction. And then a puzzled look, “You say you were scouting the pass? How far up did you get?”
Tired as he was, Quill understood he was on the verge of a blunder: he must avoid mention of transfer magic. “Climbed up over the mountain. I managed to see the east end of West Outpost, but couldn’t get through it to scout the west end.”
“We’ve been watching nothing but,” Braids said. “Taking it won’t be easy. What’s beyond the gate?”
Quill told him. Braids grimaced at the mention of horse killers, but reverted to his former train of thought. “So...if you went over the mountain, that explains how you ended up so far north. The patrol that found you thought you got lost. I didn’t think royal runners ever got lost.”
“I knew where I was, but I got back so late in the season I was out of water. Please tell Henad Tlennen thanks.”
Braids flashed a grin. “Just following orders.” He watched Quill inhale a last bite of fresh-water fish cooked in pepper sauce, then said, “If you don’t mind some advice, I think you should rack up now. Sleep as late as you like. We’ll have a meal ready when you waken.”
Reluctantly Quill turned his hand flat. “I’m a
lready late. What I need is paper and ink so I can compose my report as I ride.”
“Ink, paper, horse, anything you want.”
Quill had enough strength left to thank him, and follow a runner to the attic over the stable where runners were usually housed. Someone had hastily excavated the usual tiny chamber at the end with a door, meant for people not sick enough for the lazaretto, but who were coughing or sneezing enough to disturb everyone else in the dormitory-style space.
The next day Quill woke and felt immeasurably stronger—or so he told himself. It was mostly an absence of hunger, thirst, and ache. He bathed again, grimacing as he put back on his dirty clothes. Laundry could wait until he safely delivered his report; after all these months, what was another week.
In spite of many earnest wishes that he would stay, urgency pressed him to depart.
Over the next week he rode west to Ku Halir, thinking out his report by day and carefully writing each night when he camped. When he reached Ku Halir, Ventdor ordered the quartermaster to furnish him with proper royal runner’s clothes, and Quill to get a meal and rest, in that order.
Quill gladly rid himself of the Adrani clothes as well as his old stockings, which he had walked holes into. He kept only Fox’s black coat. Clean, fed, and dressed properly, he reported back to Ventdor.
Now that Quill didn’t “look so much like an Adrani brigand,” Ventdor told him where Connar could be found.
It was a two-day ride. Quill used that night, camping alone, to finish writing his report by firelight, then read it through, and rewrote a page until he was satisfied he had explained everything clearly. A report must state eyewitness facts, without opinions, but he strove to make it clear just how expensive in lives as well as materials attempting to take all four castles in the pass would be.
A long line of gray clouds tumbled against the north in the fading light as Quill rode toward Connar’s camp. He was handed from outer perimeter scouts to inner perimeter to guards, all young, formidably armed, alert.
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