All were afraid, and all tried not to show it.
Amris went on. “And you all would know better than to take it, if they did, or any other bribe they might offer. If you’ve not read the histories, I’m sure you’ve talked to those who have. You know what they’ll do if we don’t stop them here, how much wealth will avail you, and how long any safety they offer you or yours will last.” He searched the crowd, focusing on faces at random for just long enough to make them flinch, then moving on. “If you know not, there are many who can tell you. Believe them.”
The crowd was quiet. Thyran had done this much of their work for them. No human would betray the fortress, save perhaps one whose mind was a match in hatred for Thyran’s itself.
Hallis stepped forward. “We’re already working against hunger and thirst. The well’s in no danger of going dry, thank the gods, and we have some stores here already. When you’re not trading or getting the walls ready, you’ll be stretching your muscles by lifting and carrying, or you’ll practice your knifework butchering pigs or goats, or you’ll help build rain barrels. No job’s below us. Not any of us. The civilians are gone, and there’s no rank here that isn’t the army’s or the gods’.”
As many in the crowd glanced—some subtly, some failing at subtlety, some not bothering—at Amris, Hallis added, “For orders, Amris, like the Sentinels, the mages, and the priests, is a first lieutenant. They’re not regulars in this army, but they’re experts about what we’re facing, and you’ll listen to them unless I say otherwise.”
Some muttering arose from that announcement, but less than Amris had feared. Classing him with the mages and priests had put him on known ground. He saluted Hallis, right hand pressed in a fist against his shoulder, and then did the same to the assembled soldiers. The woman who’d gotten directions from him was there in the crowd, he saw, and so were Isen and two of his stable hands.
“First watch,” Hallis went on, “recruit training, groups of twenty.” He rattled off a list of five names—the officers who’d supervise. “Stay here. Second and third cohort, you’re with me. We’ll get the landscape out front ready for our guests. Fourth and fifth, you join Amris on the walls. Outer, then inner. Dismissed.”
He strode off, and forty soldiers broke from the crowd to follow him. Amris went the opposite direction, found the pile of prepared supplies, and picked up one of the great barrels. It reeked of fat, and the weight was almost more than he could handle. That was all right—that was, indeed, encouraging.
“Two to a barrel,” he told his troops, “and any empty-handed when those are gone, pick up spears or arrows. The Dark Lady gave us fire and steel, and it’s best we be generous with Her gifts.”
Chapter 30
On other nights, nights that now seemed a hundred years ago themselves, Darya had sat in the Lonely Wolf’s taproom. The other patrons had mostly given her wide berth, but sometimes she’d gone with another Sentinel, or soldiers worldly enough to approach friendship, and often there’d been a minstrel, though the skill of those had ranged widely. There’d always been spirits, and their quality had been a constant—rougher than you got closer to the cities, but clean and sharp.
The spirits were gone, taken up to the walls in case their defenders needed to start fires or doled out to the herbalists in case they ran out of salves for wounds. Most of the furnishings had vanished too. The owners had taken the curtains, the candlesticks, and the flatware. The army had grabbed the tables and chairs, moving them into the stack of potential emergency firewood. War stripped buildings with the efficiency and thoroughness of a good hunter butchering prey.
But beer was actually useful for very little in war, and old Colton hadn’t been able to get the barrels onto his wagon. His son was in the army and had issued a general invitation—“If we empty the kegs, we can use ’em for other things, so we’d truly be doing a good deed, aye?”—and so Darya, Branwyn, and Katrine sat cross-legged on the tavern floor, soldiers around them and crude clay mugs of beer in their hands.
“It’s a bit sad, isn’t it?” said Katrine, looking around at the bare walls.
“We’ve all drunk in worse places,” said Darya.
“But we didn’t remember any of them being better,” Katrine replied. “Or I didn’t.”
“No,” said Darya, “no, you’re right,” and thought of Amris’s face as the two of them had walked through Klaishil. She sighed, not wanting him in her mind, and looked around at the local talent.
There was a slim honey-blond man by the door who looked a little like an assassin, which had its appeal. A new recruit across the room was older than most of his fellows and had an impressive mane of black hair and a damned fine chest, from what she’d noticed walking by him at training. The knight was a strapping young man, although she’d always found Tinival’s sworn irksomely earnest.
She wasn’t without choices.
That might make a good experiment, if we have time, Gerant said, completely confusing Darya. She looked blankly from her waist to the other Sentinels, and Katrine, reading her face, laughed.
“Those of us with our minds above our belts,” she explained, “were talking about whether two of us could—link?—as you did with Amris. It’d be a four-way tie, of course, since we’d both have soulswords.”
“Yathana says she’s willing to try,” Branwyn added, “but she’ll need detailed instructions, since she…ah, never was much of a scholar.” By the other woman’s face, Darya thought that was probably a tactful translation.
Gerant laughed in her head. I’ve never minded an opportunity to lecture. Just ask…ah, Amris!
Darya wasn’t sure if he’d truly seen the figure across the room before she had, or if she’d just avoided the knowledge. Once Gerant spoke, though, the words locked her focus into place. Every detail about Amris stood out: his tousled hair, his straight back and slim hips, the faint but gentle smile on his lips as he spoke to Olvir. It wasn’t just heat that ran through Darya’s body at the sight, but pure sensation, awareness as bright as sunlight on her first steps outside a ruin.
She wished she were alone so that she could start swearing.
* * *
“Ah,” said Olvir, helpfully, “there’s the Sentinel who brought you in!” He raised a hand, which, given his height, was hard to miss, and beamed a far-too-engaging smile in Darya’s direction.
She was sitting on the floor with two of the other Sentinels, long legs folded neatly beneath her and a mug of beer in one hand. As Amris turned to regard her, she laughed at some comment and waved her free hand, dismissing the suggestion or the speaker. The firelight flickered over her, and the shadows welcomed her when it faded.
Amris couldn’t have avoided her, not without rousing Olvir’s questions or offending Gerant—and he didn’t really want to do so, only thought he should. He was old enough to know the difference.
However the top of his mind might protest, whatever he knew of temptation and risk, he couldn’t be displeased that Olvir had called his attention to Darya, nor hers to him. When she turned, not only Amris’s body leapt to attention—though that was certainly a factor, and one which made him glad he still wore armor and a long tunic.
He raised his own hand and thought resolutely of troop numbers and defensive preparations. The soldiers in the tavern laughed. A few of them had already started singing, and a few others were groping in corners, seizing what might be their last few hours with vigor.
Amris looked away quickly and let Olvir lead him over to the group of Sentinels.
“You haven’t died from recruits yet?” asked Darya, with a determined smile. “Good to see it.”
“In my day, I’ve trained far worse. And in my turn, I’m glad to see that you returned safely from your mission. I hope the same holds true for your friend.”
“Oh, Emeth’s fine, thank you,” said Katrine, “only she has to wait in our room in case any of her creatu
res return with warning. She’s far from thrilled about it, but I’ve promised we’ll drink with her later.”
“It’s a noble sacrifice,” said Olvir, and Amris introduced him around. He bowed low over the Sentinels’ hands and smiled earnestly.
He is egregiously adorable, said Gerant, laughing. If he weren’t a knight and they weren’t Sentinels, at least half of them would be carrying his picture next to their hearts.
“You’re not wrong,” said Amris, thinking of the way most of the women and some of the men in his squad had watched when Olvir came up the lines. “And I now have many questions I can’t ask, you know.”
I wasn’t thinking of that, but it is an unexpected gift.
Amris laughed, started to make a face, and then caught himself.
“It must be a very strange situation,” said Branwyn. “We’re all used to it, and it’s just one more odd thing about us where everyone else is concerned.”
“You do look normal otherwise,” Darya added.
“My thanks,” he said, with a slight sardonic bow, and then, to Branwyn, “It is, but little about this isn’t—for all of us, I expect.”
“Is that how you’re climbing the ladder?” asked a slurred male voice from behind Amris.
Olvir turned his head toward the speaker, and the three Sentinels, all in a position to see without turning, looked up: Katrine with bland curiosity, Branwyn with her eyebrows arched in quiet challenge, and Darya with tightened lips and narrowed eyes. Amris himself didn’t move. The drunk was too far away to be an immediate threat, and ignoring him might yet prove fruitful. He shook his head slightly at his friends.
They were his friends, albeit on very short notice—Branwyn and Katrine on the strength of only a few conversations, words passed when Katrine left the chapel as he was entering, or when Branwyn mended armor on the manor steps. Still they’d welcomed him, and if some of that had been for Darya’s sake, or Gerant’s, he couldn’t be unhappy about that either. In the barren taproom, Amris felt an unexpected tie binding him to that time and place, one which was more than necessity, and he smiled because of it.
“Oh, you think that’s funny?”
Ah, the drunkard. He was closer, and there was muttering behind him. Amris sighed and turned. He hadn’t even had the chance to sit.
The speaker was a washed-out blond man with an aristocratic lift to his chin—and lack thereof—that went with his voice, as well as a silk doublet and a fine linen shirt. Jewels shone in the sword at his hip, but Amris would never have mistaken him for a Sentinel, even without knowing there were only four in the keep. His friends, two women and three men, were also dressed richly. All wore sashes of rank.
“I assure you,” said Amris, “I desire no promotion. Should we leave this alive, I’ll eagerly relinquish my rank.”
What he’d do then, he had no idea, but that was a matter for another day.
“Is that what you told Hallis? Or did you tell him anything?”
“Sirrah,” said Amris, “that is flagrant disrespect to your commander. I advise you to rethink both your words and your state of mind, and do so speedily. We have far worse things to face than one another.”
“So you say,” said one of the women.
“Yes.” Amris regarded them one at a time. They didn’t want to believe what was coming. He was the one who’d brought the news. “I will not fight you, if that’s what you hope to achieve. Insinuate anything else about Commander Hallis, and I’ll see to it that you spend tomorrow morning doing the worst work in the keep, ale-head or no. That’s all.”
“And,” Darya added, “he’s not the only one who’s saying it. Any of it.” She hadn’t yet stood, but a coiled-spring tension in her body suggested she could be on her feet with blinding speed.
“Ah, yes”—another of the men chimed in—“you witnessed the invasion. It’s an emergency. So your gang of aberrations put your tool in place instead of those born to the responsibility.”
“Says a fellow who couldn’t put his tool in place with both hands and a diagram.” Branwyn’s voice was low, almost seductive, and a smile played over her lips. “Or that’s the word in Affiran.”
The man flushed an ugly red and made a move toward the knife at his belt, but Olvir put a hand on his arm. “This will do none of us any good,” he said, and touched the silver crescent around his neck. “As a servant of the Silver Wind, I give you my word they speak truly, no matter how much any of us might wish otherwise.”
“Doesn’t make it all right, stealing a man’s command,” the first man muttered, but his friend stopped reaching for his knife, and all of them dropped their gazes when Olvir kept looking at them. His eyes were as mild and brown as ever, but Amris felt a presence behind them, one miles and years beyond the peaceable young man who shared his room, and yet not completely separate from him.
Amris sensed the Sentinels and Olvir watching him, waiting to follow his lead. It wasn’t a matter of direct command—they, of everyone in the room, were least obliged to take his orders, and they, unlike everyone else in the room, might actually know more about their foes in some aspects than he did—but he had led men more times, and in greater numbers, than any of them. This was his terrain, and they would follow him as he’d followed Darya through the forest and into the underbrush.
“Take heart, then,” said Amris, with as easy a smile as he could muster. “Many an officer doesn’t survive battle. You may yet climb to glory over my body.”
“Morbid bastard,” said the woman who’d been quiet until then. “Come on, Brynart. There’s still a fair amount of beer to go around.”
They headed over to the barrels, making a good show of walking slowly and never looking back. Amris took that into account and sat down anyhow.
“She’s not entirely wrong,” said Branwyn. “Though I’m sure your parents were very respectable.”
“They were wed when I was born, at any rate,” Amris said. His oldest brother had been a little “early,” but still well within the realm of legitimacy, especially for farming folk.
“Prolapsed arsehole,” said Darya. “Wouldn’t have blamed you for breaking his nose.”
Yes, you would, said Gerant. You’d have said Amris should start with the kneecaps.
“Or the bollocks. Yeah.” The other Sentinels, clearly guessing the gist of things, laughed only a second or two after Darya.
“We need every able, warm body we can get,” Amris replied, “in as good condition as we can be. And that”—he gestured toward the nobleman and his friends—“was as much nerves as it was temper. Once we’ve had a battle or two, they’ll most likely settle down.”
“I think,” said Katrine, “that we should all have another drink or two.”
They did. There wasn’t enough to get most people really drunk—Darya suspected that the inbred shitpile and his friends had been using it as an excuse more than anything—and Sentinels held their beer well, anyhow, she more than most. Still, after a mug or two, she was pleasantly relaxed and lounging on the floor, resting her weight on alternate elbows and absently cursing the lack of cushions.
“There were very nearly wars over flowers,” Amris said. He sat up straight, even after beer, with his legs folded neatly under him and his hands light on the firm length of his thighs, which Darya was trying not to notice. “When first I found employment in Heliodar, it was with a noblewoman—guarding her prize roses by night, lest her rival send agents to steal cuttings.”
“Sounds like a euphemism,” said Branwyn. “Were the lady’s roses lovely and fragrant?”
The crowd laughed—and it was a crowd, if a small one. Their circle had opened up, letting in soldiers. Tebengri’s head was in Branwyn’s lap, where the Sentinel idly played with their hair—Good thing, Darya thought, that army mages get their own quarters. Katrine and Emeth were enough to deal with secondhand.
Of the men she coul
d have had without guilt, both of the appealing ones had vanished, one into the darkness of the bar, and the other off with a pleasantly curvy redhead. Darya had seen him go when the potential fight had died down, but she didn’t want to cut in on anyone else’s good time—assuming she could have managed it. The blond man had been gone entirely.
That left Olvir, who was listening to Amris and laughing like the rest of them were, as though he wasn’t freakish and god-touched. So was Darya—but stopping a fight with a word was, somehow, far more unnerving than killing things.
“They were,” said Amris, “but the lady herself was well into her eighties and not a pleasant woman.”
Her niece, however… Gerant added, making Darya laugh harder than the others.
Amris’s attention fell on her again, as it had done several times that evening, and he smiled as though he knew exactly what Gerant was saying to her. She grinned back and lifted her empty glass, trying to act as if her whole body hadn’t responded to the brief glance.
She was ridiculous.
Conversation broke out in spots again, the crowd dividing, and Amris rose from its center. He seemed like he was going for more beer, but on the way he diverted to talk with a young blond woman and the stocky man who had his arm around her. Darya watched him nod, watched them both stand a little straighter at whatever he’d said, saw the flash of his smile.
“This sort of thing is his ruin,” she said, mostly to herself.
“Is it so hard on him?” Olvir asked, frowning. “He hides it well, if so.”
“Oh. No, not like that. But”—she sighed—“I’m better in cities that were than cities that are. Climbing buildings, looting, breaking and entering. This”—Darya waved a hand that only wavered a little—“this is to him what that is to me. His…his place. His gift.”
Oh, yes, said Gerant, in a voice that would have gone with a wistful smile, if he’d had a body. But then, if he’d had a body, the smile wouldn’t have had to be wistful.
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