“I don’t care who he is, unless he’s here,” Braids cut in rudely, flinging his arms out wide as if he could shake off the mounting tension. Everywhere he turned, or looked, there was no escaping the grim reality: he was about to break orders to run a defense that looked more impossible with every heartbeat.
He stepped up to Neit. “Look. I never really learned command. I was only at the academy a short time, and—oh, never mind that. What I know is running the flanks, weak left, strong right. I’m really good at that. I’d intended to run that now, along the river. But I’ve never put together a defense outside of a couple small ones at the academy, and this isn’t small. You know the territory. You’ve run big games. I think you should take command.”
“Me?” Neit’s voice squeaked. “Right. You’re joking. Ha. Ha.”
But nobody laughed.
“Field promotion,” Braids said grittily. “At least, until Rat shows up. I don’t believe he’d bail on us. But he’s late, and if you’re right, he’s going to get jumped before he can get to us.”
Neit did not want command. She wanted to protest, deny. She was a runner. But while she consciously argued, she was seeing the map. She knew Ku Halir’s terrain at least as well as any of the rest of them. Maybe better.
It was her turn to sigh sharply. “If I were to command, I’d want runners going right now, running off-road to avoid the spyeyes, to find Rat.”
“I sent runners,” Braids protested.
Neit was silent—everyone was silent, knowing what that probably meant.
Braids turned to his captains, and to Pepper Marlovayir, who stood a few paces away, arms crossed. “Everybody here is a witness. This is a field promotion, Neit to Commander. After this order, I’m stepping down to second in chain of command—until we catch up with Rat Noth.” Because he hadn’t spent years in the academy, he forgot to salute, but even Pepper Marlovayir didn’t want to say anything about irregularities.
Braids faced Neit. “You want me taking the marsh?”
Lineas had been watching silently, hurting for both Braids and Neit, both such good-humored people, their faces made for smiling. Both with the sun-bleached hair of people who lived most of their lives outdoors. Both clearly aware that whatever they did next would spend lives. Not just enemy lives, but their own people.
Neit’s head jerked up, her clean-lined jaw jutted. “No. Lineas? I know you can make a grass run. Did you royal runners train in running doggo?”
“By which you mean, remaining undiscovered?” Lineas asked, her heart pounding. “We did.”
“Good. You’re already covered in mud. Good camouflage. Get the fastest horse here, run west off-road and find Noth, or whoever is forward, and warn ‘em what’s coming at ‘em. Pepper, you take your flight to the marsh. Don’t let ‘em reach the east gate.”
She turned to the rest. “Braids, we’re going west. You and your fastest are going to have to be the hammer. The rest of us are the anvil.”
She clapped Lineas on the shoulder, Braids gave her a lopsided smile, and the two began issuing orders.
Lineas backed away, thinking hard. Notecases could be replaced. But secrets, once out, could not be unlearned. To make a run knowing that enemies are actively hunting you means you have to consider the fact that you might be stopped and searched. Her journal had three levels of code, the top one substituting farming terms for other words. The real danger was the notecase.
Should she write to Quill before she hid her notecase? She wished she had more experience with relationships! Would it be more of a burden then a relief for him to know she was heading into danger while he was already in danger?
Lineas mulled these questions as she crossed the camp to the picket line, where runners were already saddling the fastest of the available mounts. Braids’ first runner handed her a stale bun stuffed with crumbling cheese and slightly withered greens, which she accepted gratefully. She began to eat as she rode out, doing her best to ignore the occasional bite of grit from her less than clean hands.
When she reached the place where the path diverged, she halted. No one was around. She slid off the horse, holding her arms tightly across her front as she sifted her way to a decision: Quill was on a dangerous mission, therefore it seemed right not to distract him with her current orders.
She unwrapped her notecase, pen stub, and ink, and wrote a brief report to Mnar Milnari, ending with the promise to bury her notecase as soon as she sent the note.
That done, she aimed the horse between the paths, oriented herself on the sun, and began her run.
That night, Pepper’s flight reached the marsh to the east of Ku Halir roughly about the time the Winter Company searched through the silent West Outpost at the mouth of the southern pass, taking scalp trophies and looking for any hiding survivors to kill.
Already the flies were gathering about the dead.
Quill slipped back in among Ghost’s company, who he suspected had been selectively blind toward obvious noncombatants making their desperate way toward the ruined gate.
Pale light filled the V of the pass behind them, dawn imminent. The ferocious spike of battle lust had ebbed, leaving Connar’s combined force filthy, stinking of sweat and blood, exhausted. Tempers ranged from exultant (Connar, and at the other end of the castle, Cabbage Gannan), to vile.
Jethren could not be read by anyone. He seemed tireless, striding everywhere to check that no enemy survived and that his company was diligently searching. Quill, watching in order to keep at a distance, noticed how often Jethren turned toward Connar. Expecting what?
Connar seemed unaware of him. Unaware of anything, including the piles of dead, until at last the captains converged on him, Gannan prudently keeping himself behind Connar’s favorites.
“Outpost secure,” Stick said, after a glance from Ghost.
Connar’s exaltation at how his plan had worked was already diminishing: not surprising, Elsarion had not been among those in the command center. But enough of his good mood remained for him to turn Cabbage’s way, and say, “Excellent attack. You’ll take command here, with your people. Hold it until our return. Where’s Henad Tlennen?”
“Here,” she said, coming forward, avoiding Quill’s gaze; he suspect she had also colluded in pretending not to see the castle children and their minders or guardians fleeing.
Connar pointed toward the west gate and beyond. “Keep patrolling. Orders still stand, anyone suspicious, kill them. If there’s a question, lock them up until we return.”
He lifted his voice to include the lancers Commander Ventdor had sent. “The rest of us will make the run up the pass, all the way to Elsarion.”
Jethren roared, “Victory!”
His company responded with as much force as they could muster, raggedly joined by most of the rest. Many were silent, shocked by what they saw, which only worsened as the darkness began, inexorably, to lift.
When the shouts died away, Connar beckoned to his three captains. “Withdraw to the supply wagons. There should be a meal prepared. Half a day of rest, then a hard push. We’ve cleared the traps, so there’s nothing left to slow us. The less time we give them to dig in at the other end, the better.”
Connar caught sight of Quill. “Prepare to ride with us. I expect we’ll need translation when we dictate terms.” He turned away.
In a sharp, hortatory voice that to Ghost Fath and Stick Tyavayir managed to sound sycophantic, Jethren marshaled his diminished company into strict order. His intent was to demonstrate their instant obedience as well as their superior discipline, but the effect was to divide them off even more thoroughly from the rest of the Winter Company, many of whom looked on in weary, not-so-covert disgust at such unnecessary swagger.
Quill had hoped to be sent to the royal city with a report. That clearly was not going to happen, but at least he had half a day.
He waited until the last of the Winter Company and the lancers had departed through the east gate, then forced himself back inside the castle hecat
omb, where he spotted Cabbage’s company healer and his aides already laying out and Disappearing the dead.
Quill slipped through the smashed gates that were being dismantled by a party of carpenters. He walked far enough away to breathe air not tainted by blood, and then a little farther to be certain he was unseen.
He took out his notecase and pen, noting wearily that he had very little ink left. He wrote Lineas:
I’m free. Where are you?
He waited—surely he’d caught her between bathing and breakfast? But no answer. He put his head on his knees to rest his eyes...and woke with a snore, drool pooling at the corner of his mouth, his neck stiff.
He squinted upward. The sun had not even moved a finger. He must have slept no more than the small sandglass’s quarter-hour.
He opened his notecase, in case he’d slept through the signal. Nothing. Dipping the pen carefully, he wrote:
Vanadei: West Outpost taken. I’ve orders to ride up the pass. Is Lineas on duty?
An answer came back almost immediately:
She was sent to Ku Halir a month back. We’re stretched thin here. She might have been sent anywhere. I’ve not heard from her.
Quill’s ink was nearly empty. He got to his feet and went back inside to commandeer a horse in order to rejoin the Winter Company, leaving Connar’s victory at his back.
At first it was just the Bar Regren gathered about Ovaka Mol, whose prestige had taken a drubbing after he abandoned his nephew and two other clan boys to the enemy at Chalk Hills. It took some weeks of fast talking and judicious use of fists to shift the blame to where it properly belonged: on the Marlovans.
During that time, Ovaka Mol had discovered what many did before, that there are few things more exhilarating than binding together a divisive group in righteous hatred.
When word passed up into the mountains that the Marlovans were going east to chase after the Adrani lordling who had teamed up with Yenvir, Ovaka said, “This is our time.”
He almost lost them in the argument about how to use their time—specifically, where. But greed won: Ku Halir was so much richer than any of the northern cities. The Bar Regren had long wanted Ku Halir, down there at the southernmost reach of their particular curve of mountains. To them it made a perfect match to the Nob, at the far end of the peninsula, which they had twice failed to retake. Ovaka Mol’s new plan was to trade Ku Halir for the Nob, once they’d looted it to the seams.
So they drifted along the mountain-tops in what they called hill-walking. At first it was just scouts, to make certain that yes, the Marlovans really were all going to the east. And when the scouts returned without having been seen, the Bar Regren began gathering in small groups, which got larger and larger.
It was true! The Marlovans were completely blind to anyplace they couldn’t take their horses, useless beasts in mountains. The bracing news that the Marlovans were, in fact, stupid, absolutely begged for boldness.
As winter gave way to spring, and more and more in the tiny mountain villages saw Bar Regren hill-walking south, they were joined by others: revenge, bloodlust, greed, gave way to larger parties, mainly of youth who were more than willing to down tools (especially with spring planting nigh) and walk off to the promise of a short adventure and plenty of loot.
Everybody was enjoined to walk in silence, which added to the excitement. And finally, you could only join if you brought a month’s worth of food, for there was no supplying so many. The last of winter stores got dumped into packs and bags, reinforced by discovery of gleanings along the way; toward the end, bolstered by sheer numbers, the venture took on a festival atmosphere.
Not for all. A few got tired of waiting in mud and bugs, and left for home. Others said warily the plan sounded too easy—and were scorned for their cowardly croakings. As the spring rains came on, turning the marsh into soup, the festival atmosphere gave way to grim determination: the Marlovans had made them suffer. They would pay for it.
People clumped closer to their own groups, until at last someone came around, saying that the time had come, and divided them up, promising that everyone would get an equal share of loot as long as they all acted together.
It was time to attack!
Lineas was fast, but no human on horseback would have been fast enough.
She realized it when she encountered her first riderless horse running wild-eyed through the trees past her.
Until then she had been fighting weariness. The sight of that horse, shortly followed by another, acted like hot needles to her nerves. She broke cover and headed north to where she knew the road lay—and so was first witness to arrive at the bend in the road where Wolf and Mardran Senelaec, leading the vanguard of Rat Noth’s hastily assembled company, was taken by surprise.
Her shocked gaze swept a sea of attackers waving hoes, scythes, bludgeons and here and there rusty blades besieging mounted Riders who stuck up like islands in a furious ocean.
“I’m too late,” she cried, and then whispered, “I’m too late, I’m too late.”
Horses kicked and plunged, Riders fought with sword and knife. Her horse sidled under her, ears flat; Lineas knew with profound, sick certainty that she would be useless riding to their aid.
She looked desperately—no familiar faces among those mounted Riders.
Rat Noth is not here.
He had to be still coming. She clucked at the horse, backing up behind a hedgerow, and skirted the area, heading west as soon as she dared lest she miss Rat Noth...who was in a grim mood, after being mired by three hard storms in a row, the middle one of which caused two of his summoned companies to ride completely past one another. When he saw the foam-flecked horse galloping toward him, a figure so dirty swaying on the animal’s back that he couldn’t tell the age or gender of the rider, he held up his fist to halt the company.
Lineas caught up, her mouth working before she could get words out. “They—it’s bad,” she cried hoarsely.
Rat looked at those dark-ringed, bloodshot eyes and knew that if he wanted a coherent report he had to get it a piece at a time. “What’s bad?”
“They attacked—I think it must be Senelaec? Braids said his family would come first,” Lineas said numbly.
“Where?”
“Bend in the road, just past the west end of the lake—”
“Who is where? Tell me exactly where Braids put everyone.”
“Neit put them,” Lineas said in that same distant voice, trained to be exact.
Neit? Rat made a motion as if to swat away the questions in his mind: get to what mattered. “Where did Neit put everyone?”
Lineas could do that. Relieved, she recited, word for word, what Neit had ordered.
Halfway through it, Rat had the picture. By then his riding captains had all crowded up to hear. He brought them in with a fist, issued a stream of orders....
And you know the rest, if you’ve heard “Noth’s Arrow” and the middle seven verses of “The Ballad of Braids Senelaec.” Once again, iron discipline, delivered at the gallop, smashed into what had become a mob completely out of control.
Senelaec and his company had been utterly taken by surprise by a host more than five times the size of his own, but Rat Noth was not. And, like often happens with mobs, the mood changed with lightning speed from bloodlust to fear.
Those not shot, stabbed, beheaded, or ridden down, turned and ran, scrambling over one another—then fighting one another—to escape the scything swords and the lethal rain of arrows.
Panic scattered those left alive, swarms running back to the lake in the darkness, where the press of their own numbers forced many into the water to drown. Others decamped for the woods.
Patrols of very angry Marlovans galloped through in waves until the roads were quiet, deserted except for the dead.
At dawn Ku Halir’s gates finally opened to the weary defenders.
THIRTY
When not riding with weapons ready, the Winter Company drilled at every stop, and when they camped, the
y worked on shaping more arrows from materials scavenged from West Outpost and the settling rubble that used to be West and East Towers.
Jethren’s men were always the first to volunteer if Connar asked for anything, and the first to set up his tent when they camped, before their own. They irritated Fish to no end with their encroachments on his duties, but of course he said nothing. If Connar didn’t want a king’s honor guard, which is what Jethren was striving to give him, he could say so.
They all found the emptiness in the pass eerie, heightened by the moaning, soughing wind around the spires and down the sheer cliffs. By night, they camped with a triple perimeter, swapped out every four hours.
On the eastward descent they still saw no one, only fresh prints. Someone was riding ahead of them, watching from a distance. Quill suspected that whoever paced them had a notecase for magical transfer.
At last they approached the east end of the pass, carrying bows loosely slung, arrows in reach, swords ready in saddle sheaths, knives at belt, boots, wrists. Helms crowned with long locks of hair gently bobbing.
Finally, between two slopes, they caught sight of a glimpse of the plains of Anaeran Adrani.
That night, Connar paced out of the center of the camp to where the off-duty runners camped beside the horse picket.
The runners, whose hands were busy with sewing, arrow-fletching, and other repairs, looked up and saluted, echoed by Quill. When they saw Connar’s gaze go to the single royal runner, then flick at the others dismissively, they rose as one and carried their work away from their fire, leaving royal runner and commander alone.
Quill had stood with the rest, holding the harness he was repairing. Connar waved at him to sit back down. Quill did, but held the harness on his knee as Connar hunkered down next to him. He glanced away, the fire outlining his profile, then back. “My guess is, we’re two days out. You know they’ve been watching us.”
Time of Daughters II Page 47