Deep Water

by Pamela Freeman

  What was happening to her was horrible, worse somehow in daylight.

  “She agreed to do it,” Safred reminded Martine, reading her thought, as she so often did. “This was her task, and she knew it.”

  “That doesn’t make it right,” Martine responded.

  Cael and Zel were off in the forest, hunting or foraging or perhaps just walking. No doubt Zel was searching for a new flint, too. They had struck up an odd friendship, speaking little but attending briskly to all the practical things that had to be done: setting up tents, seeing to the horses, cooking. Martine could see that there was a comfort in doing ordinary, necessary jobs, but she couldn’t pull herself away from Bramble. She was in danger, Martine was sure. She felt that conviction deep in her bones, although she had no idea what threatened her. Obscurely, she felt that she owed it to Ash, who had risked his own life to save Bramble’s, to make sure that the girl was all right.

  “Is there danger?” she asked Safred abruptly. While it went against the grain to ask someone else instead of the stones, if you had a prophet handy, you might as well use her.

  “There’s always danger.”

  “From what?” she demanded and then, remembering the ghost of the girl Ash had killed in Turvite and her warning, she added, “From whom?”

  Safred spread her hands. “I don’t know.” She was embarrassed. “But the Forest has said Bramble will be safe, and we must trust to that. The gods are guiding her, no doubt.”

  As so often with Safred, Martine felt that she meant more than she was saying, that she intended her to feel in need of guidance. She remembered Bramble’s attitude to Safred, defiant and challenging, and smiled. Perhaps she needed some of Bramble’s defiance in order to protect her. Perhaps she should trust her own annoyance, and let it guide her.

  “It’s the Forest that’s hurting Cael,” she said harshly.

  Safred paled. “He’s better this morning.”

  “When he comes out of the Forest, he’ll be worse,” Martine predicted. “You should keep him out of the trees.”

  She was right. When Cael and Zel emerged, he was leaning on her arm, shaky and pale, but he waved aside Safred’s offer to try to heal him.

  “I’ll last until we’re away from here,” he said. “You can try again then.”

  “Stay out of the Forest,” Martine said. “It will do you no good.”

  He nodded somberly and then smiled, as if he couldn’t help it. “Caught between flint and striker,” he said, gesturing from the trees to the lake. “If one doesn’t get me, the other will. But we found a stream a little way back, where we can water the horses and fill our skins.”

  “Don’t trust it,” Martine said. “Check it every time, in case it has the smell of — whatever that was at the other stream.”

  Zel nodded. “Hell’ll melt before I trust any stream in this place,” she said. She looked at Bramble. “How’s she?”

  “Fighting something,” Martine said. Bramble did, indeed, look as if she were fighting some internal battle, her face tight, her arms twitching, like a dreamer in a nightmare.

  “Protect her, then, if you feel you must. She may be glad of it,” Safred said.

  Martine sat down next to Bramble. She doubted that the threat to Bramble would come from the outside, but she loosened the knife in her belt and the one in her boot and sat with her back to Bramble and the lake, scanning the Forest edge. But although she tried to put all her attention into her eyes, she was aware of Bramble, twitching slightly behind her, all her muscles taut as though she wanted to run, far away from here. Martine wanted to run, too. Her body was still keyed up from the ritual, and she was feeling unsettled and nervy.

  She also didn’t want to think about what “destiny” of hers required her to stay in the Last Domain instead of Traveling with Ash. She had seen many people meet their destiny, and it had mostly been very unpleasant, often deadly. She shrugged. Well, if it came, it came. Elva was safe, and that was all that mattered. Elva and the baby.

  Leof

  HE HAD LET his anger at the Voice doom the town. He should have swallowed the insult and kept her talking, convinced her to surrender and then consult the Lake. Buy some time.

  Leof rode back to the camp in a foul mood, angry with himself, Vi, Thegan, even the Lake itself, ignoring the glances Hodge and the men exchanged behind his back. What was the point of this? Fighting the Ice King’s men when they had attacked the Domains, that had been necessary. This was just politics.

  Thegan was overseeing the making of fire arrows, checking that the men didn’t wind so much linen onto the arrowheads that they would go wildly off course when fired. Leof knew the drill. The arrows would be dipped in oil and lit just before they were shot into the air to rain down destruction on Baluchston, as they had tried to do to the reed beds. The Lake doesn’t like fire, he thought. She won’t be pleased about this. At noon, they won’t even be spectacular. The thought gave him a thread to follow when he spoke to Thegan.

  “It’s a shame to fire these things in broad daylight, my lord,” Leof said. “They’re much more frightening at night. Sometimes you only need one or two before they surrender.”

  “So they’re going to fight?” Thegan rested one brown boot on a barrel of oil and gazed sharply at him. The spring sun picked out the lines on his face, but it flattered him; he looked sharp as well, sharp and ready for action, ready for battle.

  “The Voice has gone to ‘consult with the Lake,’ ” Leof said deprecatingly, as though “consult with the Lake” was a euphemism for something else, something more political. “She says it will take until sunset. I don’t think she — the Voice, I mean — will let her people be killed. She would surrender before that.”

  “So she will surrender as we approach the town.”

  “Mmm. If she’s there. She said the consultation had to happen in deep water. That she — and perhaps others, do you think, my lord? — would be out on the water all day. If we attack when she’s not there —”

  “Then she will be spared the sight of her town being put to the flame,” Thegan said briskly. “Order the men up for noon. Tell them to have their farings early, and to eat lightly. We don’t want them weighed down and sleepy for the fighting.”

  Leof bowed. “My lord.”

  He knew Thegan well enough to accept that any attempt to sway him was useless. The only thing that could stop the sacking of the town was Thegan’s death. Perhaps the Lake would accomplish that. Half of him was appalled at the thought, while the other — the part that had been well taught by Thegan, he recognized — knew that it was the simple truth. And although he winced at the thought of Thegan’s men descending on the townsfolk, angry at the Lake’s destruction of their comrades, and believing Thegan’s claims about the enchanter from Baluchston, still he was Thegan’s man, and would follow his orders. What else could he do? Set his own will up against that of the warlord? Claim some right to command, a right that didn’t exist in any form? Nor would walking away, giving up his position, help. The town would still die. Perhaps he could keep the men under some control once the town was fired: keep the rapes and looting to a minimum. He wondered if Acton had ever faced a moment like this. But Acton had laughed as he killed, a thing Leof had never understood.

  He called the sergeants together and gave them Thegan’s orders. As they left, he called Hodge back, knowing that Thegan had been testing him all day, and would continue to test him.

  “Get those lists of the dead ready for me. My lord wanted them before noon.”

  “Aye, my lord,” Hodge said. He hesitated. “The old lady… she was the Voice?”

  Leof nodded. “She’s gone to consult the Lake. But my lord Thegan wants their surrender by noon, and if he doesn’t get it . . .” Leof shrugged.

  Hodge pulled at his lower lip, considering. “Seems like someone should have told her my lord doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Saving your presence, my lord.”

  Leof chuckled without humor. “Perhaps someone did, serge
ant. And perhaps she ignored it.”

  Hodge spat in the dust. “More fool her, then,” he said dismissively, and went to follow his instructions.

  The sun was climbing. Hodge brought back the list of the dead — too long, much too long, no wonder Thegan was angry, Leof thought. A waste of men, of time, of training — of sorrow and loss.

  He presented it to Thegan in his tent.

  “What a waste,” Thegan said, frowning blackly. “When I think of all the training we put into getting the Central Domain men into shape!”

  Leof said nothing. He was an experienced commander; he’d thought the same thing. It just sounded colder said aloud. He nodded and went back to readying his men, lecturing them about discipline and orderly occupation of the town, hoping to fend off the worst behavior.

  “Kill only those who resist,” he said. “Remember, we don’t know how many were involved in the enchanter’s plot. Most of the townsfolk are probably as innocent as you or I. No breaking into homes without orders. No rape. If a woman fights, kill her cleanly. No destruction. My lord Thegan wants this town intact for his own use, and I’d remember that if I were you.” He said it with a smile and there were a few chuckles from the older men.

  “Sergeants, you will be held responsible for the behavior of your men.”

  The sergeants turned as one to glare threateningly at their squads.

  “We’re like Acton’s men,” Leof concluded. “We don’t want to destroy everything, because we’ll have a use for it ourselves. Understood?”

  The men nodded, but Leof doubted that, in the thick of it, amid the noise and the heat and the shouting, they would remember to control themselves. He’d done what he could.

  The sun was climbing. Less than an hour to noon, and no word from Baluchston. Leof found himself checking the road to town every few moments, hoping to see a messenger bringing the surrender.

  At noon, Thegan emerged from his tent and came to stand before his troops. The sun lit his fair head and reminded Leof of the old songs about Acton marching into battle with a head of shining gold.

  “The town has defied us. The town has killed our comrades. The town will be taken. You have your orders. Kill any who resist.” He paused deliberately. “There will be pleasures afterward, for those who fight well. But I want order and I want discipline.” He smiled, that miraculous smile that no one could resist, and the men smiled back, even the crusty old sergeants. “Those who fight well today will be rewarded. Are you ready to avenge your comrades?” He raised his voice to a shout on the last words.

  “Yes! Aye!” they shouted back.

  Thegan nodded and turned to his officers.

  “Tib, take the lead —” he began but a scuffle behind the men attracted his attention and a quick frown.

  “What’s toward?” Leof shouted at the rear.

  “A messenger, sir,” someone shouted back.

  A stir went through the men, half of relief and half of disappointment. Leof sent a quick prayer of gratitude to the gods and shouted again, “Take his horse and let him through, fools!”

  But the man who struggled through the troops was clearly not a messenger from Baluchston. He had ridden hard and long; ridden to the point of exhaustion. He was an older man, completely bald, wearing a dark robe and carrying a stonecaster’s pouch at his belt.

  He was staggering as he walked, and almost fell as he passed Leof. Leof supported him the last few steps to Thegan.

  “My lord,” the man said. His voice was hoarse with travel dust and he tried to clear it. Leof grabbed a waterskin from a nearby sergeant and gave it to him. He swallowed a mouthful and waved the rest away.

  “Later. My lord, Carlion is attacked.”

  Thegan straightened, his attention like an arrow finding its mark.

  “Who? Not old Ceouf?”

  The man shook his head.

  “Not by the living, lord. By the dead.”

  A stir ran through the men.

  “To my tent,” Thegan said, nodding to his officers to follow. Leof supported the man until he sank onto the bench before Thegan’s work table.

  “Now,” Thegan said.

  “I tried to warn the Council,” the man said in a flat voice leached by exhaustion. “I’m a stonecaster, I saw disaster coming on us and I warned them. Every stonecaster in the city warned them, but there was no way we could read the truth in the stones and no way we could prepare for such an attack.”

  “The dead,” Thegan said. “An attack by the dead?” His voice was carefully noncommittal.

  The man smiled. An intelligent smile. “It sounds mad, I know. You remember the enchanter who tried to raise the ghosts against Acton? To give them strength and body?”

  Thegan nodded. Everyone knew that story. After Acton’s men had taken Turvite, a mad enchanter had tried to raise a ghost army against him, the ghosts of those he had killed. The story said she had wanted to make them solid so they could fight again, but when that failed, she tried to use the ghosts to frighten Acton away. Acton had laughed at her, asking why he should fear the dead when he had already defeated them alive? He wanted his people to live with a reminder of their victory. He laughed as he said it, and she cursed him with the loss of the only thing he held dear, that he should never have what he most wanted, but he shrugged and said he already had it, and gestured to the city. Then she jumped off the cliffs.

  “Someone has found a way to do what she could not. Someone has given ghosts a strong arm.” He paused, coughing, and Leof handed him the waterskin again. This time he drank deeply and sighed afterward.

  “They came at night, maybe a hundred of them. Only a hundred, but nothing could stop them. We had been warning the town for a week and most men slept with their weapons by their bed, so the ghosts found resistance, but it was a slaughter anyway. How can you kill someone who is already dead? How can you stop someone who feels no pain, who does not bleed?”

  Leof imagined such a battle and felt himself pale. The other officers clearly felt the same. Thegan’s face was unreadable, but familiar to Leof. It was the face of his general, a battle-hardened officer who had faced fierce enemies many times, and had found solutions where others had seen only disaster. The ability was one of the reasons his men followed him blindly — Thegan could always see a way clear even when they could not.

  “Cut off their arms,” he said. “Cut off their legs.”

  The man nodded. “Yes,” he said. “That might work. But lord, it would take a trained fighting man to do that, and we were just merchants! They killed… they killed so many . . .”

  “So you ran.”

  “I fought,” the man said bitterly, and pulled his sleeve up to show a long wound, barely crusted over. “Then I realized that perhaps no one would survive, and what we needed was an army. So I came to you. I have been riding for… I don’t know how long. Three horses have foundered under me. But it was the night after the full moon when we were attacked.”

  Thegan nodded. “You did the right thing. Go and rest now.”

  Tib went to the tent flap and called a solider to support the man and take him somewhere he could sleep.

  “Wait,” Thegan said. “Your name?”

  “Otter,” the stonecaster said. He hesitated. “Lord, when I rested a moment or two, I cast the stones. Carlion was just the beginning.”

  Thegan nodded, his face as grave as Leof had ever seen it.

  “Rest,” he said, his hand on Otter’s shoulder comfortingly. “We will manage it from here.”

  Otter smiled, a startlingly sweet smile. His eyes were strange, not one color or another. Right now they reflected Thegan’s brown uniform and shone dark with flecks of gold.

  “I knew I was right to come to you. The stones told me so.”

  Thegan smiled at him and clapped him on the shoulder in farewell.

  Thegan addressed his officers. “Strike camp. We march to Carlion. The nature of the attackers — that stays between us until the men need to know. We must avoid panic.”
/>
  There was nothing else to be said. As Leof turned to go, Thegan stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “A wave from the Lake here, on the same night as the attack on Carlion. No coincidence. Which means this was meant to weaken us so we could not aid the fight against this ghost army.”

  “So,” Leof ventured, hoping to rescue something from this new development, “perhaps it was not a Baluchston enchanter at all? Someone who could raise the dead like this could certainly control the Lake . . .?”

  Thegan looked sharply at him, but nodded. “Perhaps. Still, if one attack has been aimed at us, so may others be. I want you to ride immediately for Sendat and take control there. The reserves we left there must be trained up fast and hard; call in the oath men from the villages and begin training them too. We are going to need every spear, I think. As the stonecaster said, Carlion was just the beginning.”

  Leof nodded slowly. Every village owed the warlord men to fight in times of war — the men took an oath to come when called, and were given weapons and some training in return. But they weren’t soldiers, and they would need much more training before they could fight effectively.

  “I will send out messages from here to the other warlords,” Thegan said. “We must all be prepared. Perhaps other things have happened elsewhere.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Thegan picked up a knife from the table and studied the way the light fell on its blade. “Protect the Lady Sorn,” he said softly. “At all costs.”

  “With my life, my lord,” Leof said immediately. Thegan shook his head and smiled — not the miraculous smile, but the real one, the one he kept for people he trusted. It was, as always, like being let into a secret room, a treasure house. Leof couldn’t help but smile back.

  “Not with your life, Leof. I need you to stay alive, too. Let others die for her.”