Medric said, “It’s extremely unlikely. Don’t call me that.”
Karis clenched her big hands, fingers interlocked. Fascinated, Garland watched her biceps swell. “How do we make it certain?”
“Ow!” Medric had been upset from his cozy berth and dumped summarily to the floor.
The gray man, who had come in seeming so frail, was on his feet, facing Karis, saying as ferociously as she, “Send your ravens, then! Tell her that her death was a farce! Bring her back to the certainty of a world in which change is impossible!”
There was a silence. Karis unclenched her hands. “No, I think not,” she said.
Emil said, more gently, “If you didn’t fail her when you were in despair, perhaps you won’t betray her out of hope either.”
“I need to do nothing?” she said unhappily. “Even more?”
Emil took two steps to her, and clasped her big hands in his. “With all your heart,” he said earnestly.
“How much longer?” she said desperately.
“Until Long Night,” said Medric, still sprawled on the floor. He sat up then, looking as surprised as Karis did. “Long Night? I have to write a book by then!”
Emil turned to him, still clasping Karis’s hands. “Better make it a pamphlet,” he said.
Chapter 20
Two days into the six-day journey to the children’s garrison, the first snow fell: heavy, wet flakes that turned the roads again into quagmires, and forced Clement and her mounted escort of seven to spend a day and a night holed up in an abandoned barn. On the seventh day, when Clement should have already reached her destination and begun the journey home, it snowed again: real snow this time. The soldiers cursed, the horses stumbled and slid; in the tiny village that was the only settlement they could find, the people sullenly vacated an entire house for the soldiers, stabled their horses with the cows and sheep, and showed up at the door with placating offerings of cooked food.
In the cozy room she had commandeered, Clement cracked open a shutter and observed the villagers below, who went watchfully about their business as the snow continued to steadily fall. At this rate, it would soon be knee deep. She had been a fool for relying upon the reprieve in weather that usually comes between autumn mud and winter snow. Now, she was stranded, with eight horses too valuable to abandon. She watched angrily, enviously, as a villager strode briskly across the snow in snow shoes, pulling a sledge laden with firewood, atop which perched a laughing young child in a red coat.
And we sneer at them for going afoot, thought Clement. How hard is it to learn the virtues of traveling light? Apparently, too hard for us.
That poor village was the last before the wilderness. The road petered down to a mere path, snow-veiled, invisible except for blazes on the trees. Horses and dismounted soldiers alike went floundering through the woods. The sun appeared for a few hours and the snow began to melt, which increased the journey’s misery. After sunset the snowmelt froze to ice, and the wind picked up. Eyes burning, tears freezing, Clement hoarsely reassured her company that there was a shelter.
But when the soldiers at the head of the line shouted back that they had found it, Clement’s relief was short-lived. The shelter had an unmended roof, walls of rough-sawn planks with airy gaps between them, and a circle of stones for a hearth, with a hole in the roof above, that had allowed this hearth to be filled up with snow. For the horses there was corn and hay—that was a relief—but in place of firewood there was a half-barrel of cider. Whoever ran the supplies up and down the mountain during the warm season had apparently valued some comforts over others.
They got what warmth could be had from huddling together as the wind whistled through every knot and crack. They ate their rations cold, and Clement, to much approbation, allowed them each two cups of surprisingly potent ice-cold cider. Later, a few sleepers snored, but most of them sat awake like her, too cold to sleep, drearily awaiting dawn.
They spent the next day in a bitter, steep climb, up a path that the wind had now blocked with snow drifts. The soldiers cursed whenever they had breath to spare; the weary horses sometimes balked and had to be dragged or beaten. The sun used the snow as a reflector to blind them.
“Is that it?” someone asked.
Watery-eyed, Clement stared up through a haze of light. There, at the top of the mountain, at the end of the path, in splendid isolation, stood the children’s garrison.
Someone, a hazy shadow, took a noisy sniff. “Woodsmoke!”
The company uttered a ragged cheer, and even the horses blundered forward with somewhat more enthusiasm. In the shadow of the building now, Clement’s scoured eyes could see more clearly, but the building still looked very strange. What had the sun done to her eyes? She rubbed them, and looked again. “The bloody thing is round! I thought I was losing my mind!”
It really was no garrison at all. A fortress, maybe, with narrow out-of-reach windows, and an unfriendly, arched entrance big enough for a small wagon to pass through, but barred, quite decisively, by a padlocked iron gate, through which the snow had drifted.
Clement peered between the bars. The dim passageway plunged into silent darkness. “Oh, hell,” said one of the exhausted soldiers who crowded up around her to take a look. “There’s no one here.”
“Quiet as a tomb,” said another gloomily.
“Not for long,” said Clement. She reached between the bars, and took hold of the frayed bell rope.
The clangor of the bell was jarring. The horses jumped, the soldiers cursed some more. Clement jerked the rope until her arm ached, and finally there emerged quite cautiously from the gloom a boy in heavy clothing that was much too big for him, wide-eyed and clutching a knob-headed cane as though it were a drawn sword. “Uh . . . ?” he said inquiringly. Insignias sloppily tacked onto his cap identified him as a lieutenant.
“Urgent business,” said Clement briskly.
He cleared his throat nervously. “Your orders?”
“I write the bloody orders!”
His gaze traveled to the insignias on her own hat, and he belatedly and confusedly saluted. “Lieutenant . . . ?”
“Lieutenant-general. Let us in, sir!”
“I haven’t got the key.”
From the darkness of the passageway grated another voice. “Gods’ sake, boy, you’re a soldier! Stop wailing like a baby and open the gate.” The boy-lieutenant scurried to meet the approaching old man, who limped on a wooden leg with the support of a cane. He gave the boy a big, rusted key, and stood leaning on his cane as the boy fiddled it into the snow-clogged lock.
“Lieutenant-general,” said the old man.
“Commander Purnal?” asked Clement.
The man uttered a biter laugh. “Been a while since anyone called me commander to my face. Well, it’s about time Cadmar sent you here! How many people you got with you? Six?”
“Seven. And eight horses. I hope you’ve got a stable and fodder.”
“What do you think we do with the donkeys that haul supplies for us, eh? What’s taking you so long, boy?”
The padlock opened with a sullen groan. The gate squawked open. Purnal turned away and started thumping down the passage, shouting backward over his shoulder, “Send a couple of your soldiers to the kitchen and the rest of you follow me to the infirmary. Boy, you get the stabling crew together. Some real horses for once. Good practice for them. Anyone gets kicked and I’ll hold you personally responsible. Come on!” he bellowed, his voice much magnified now by the echoing passageway. “We’ve got some sick kids here!”
“Gods of hell,” muttered Clement.
The exhausted soldiers were looking at her beseechingly.
“You two.” She selected them at random. “See the horses are cared for, find your way to the kitchen, and make yourselves useful. The rest of you come with me. Not one more complaint!”
The arched passageway eventually emptied itself into a big, circular yard, with a center post thick as a tree in its exact middle, from which beams radiated
out to support the massive roof. The horses milled anxiously in the shadows, then settled down, probably recognizing the familiar shape of an exercise ring, though this one was large enough to easily turn a wagon around in. To the left, a big double door likely led to the stables. Ahead, a more human-sized gate hung ajar, giving access to the corridor that encircled the ring behind a sturdy half-wall.
“This way,” said Clement. She could see little, but she could hear Purnal’s peg-leg and cane, thumping down the hallway. The soldiers, muttering so quietly she could hear no words or distinguish one complainer from the next, followed.
They did not catch up to Purnal until he had nearly reached the end of the hall and they were, Clement judged, near the outer wall of the building again, on the far side of the entrance gate. “You’ve got some kind of winter illness here?” she asked, haunted now by a memory of the dreadful illness that had mowed the Sainnites down that spring. “How bad is it?”
“About as bad as usual. The older kids haven’t gotten sick yet. When that happens, my whole operation falls apart. So the adults are in the sick room and the kids are running the garrison. Good training for them. What are you doing here?”
Clement began to answer, but Purnal jerked open a door, and the stink of feces and vomit all but knocked her over. “Good gods!” she cried, gagging.
“You’ll get used to it,” he said.
They lay in darkness, like moles. No discernible warmth came from the smoldering hearthfire at one end of the big room. The sick children lay with nothing but thin straw pallets between themselves and the cold stone floor. Three exhausted men and women did what they could to care for them, but that was not much, since all of the caretakers were one-armed. In the dim, stinking room, to the accompaniment of an incessant, dreary whine of hopeless misery, some forty kids were puking and excreting themselves to death.
“No worse than usual?” Clement said to Purnal, once he had given her the grim tour.
“I’ve seen a hundred kids in this room. And the rest of them trailing about like wraiths. Five years you’ve been lieutenant-general—don’t you read the reports?”
Clement said hastily, “Every garrison is understaffed right now.”
“Because there ain’t no one growing up to replace us old and broken ones,” said Purnal. “And whose fault is that, eh? I got fifteen cripples looking after near two hundred kids. And as soon as the few survivors are old enough to be some use, you take them away and get them killed. Go ahead and demote me!” he added viciously. “It’d be a bloody mercy!”
“You won’t be that lucky today,” said Clement. “We’ll need some lamps.”
“Can’t have lamps around kids. They’ll burn themselves up quicker than you can stop ‘em.”
“Candles, then. And fresh linens.”
“You’ll have fresh linens after you’ve washed and dried them.”
“Broth, or weak tea?”
“That’s what your soldiers are in the kitchen for.”
“Warm water and soap,” said Clement evenly.
“You’ll find them in the laundry. But you’ll have to light the fires first, I expect.”
“After we’ve chopped the firewood,” said Clement. “No, that’s not a question, I understand the situation. Now you listen to me, sir. My soldiers are worn out. They’ll work until the night bell, and then they’re getting some rest.”
“Hell,” said Purnal, “what’s it take to make you lose your temper?”
“Plenty of people have tried and failed,” Clement said, but she was talking to his back. He stumped away, calling to the three sick-nurses that they should get some sleep while they had the chance.
Clement washed and force-fed children, emptied basins and packed fresh straw into stinking pallets until she couldn’t stand it any more. Then she took a turn at the wood chopping, and after that went to stir boiling cauldrons of laundry until the cold had been chased from her bones. Back she went to the sick room, where a soldier told her that two of the kids had been discovered to be dead.
Night had long since fallen, but there had been no night bell. She took up a basin of warm water and set to work again: she was so tired that every time she stood up from where she squatted or knelt on the floor, she practically fell over. Some of the kids who had been whining earlier had gotten quieter. Perhaps they too were dying.
Someone was calling her. Dim candle in hand, she made her way between prone bodies to the door, where a boy-sergeant executed a crisp, startling salute. “Lieutenant-general?”
“What is it?”
“Compliments of the commander! Would you care to join him for supper!”
In the sick room, two of Clement’s soldiers continued their dreary rounds. “My people have not been relieved.”
“Yes, ma’am! The night watch is at supper! They will come to the infirmary shortly! The rest of your people are eating with the senior officers! Then they will be shown to quarters!”
Feeling quite overwhelmed by the boy-sergeant’s energy, Clement set down her basin and candle on the table. The boy, alert and over-sprung, did not put even one toe over the threshold of the sickroom.
Clement’s uniform was wet and filthy, but her change of clothing had disappeared with the horses. In any case, she doubted she could eat, after such a wretched afternoon. She said to the boy-sergeant, “I do need to talk to Purnal.”
He took this as an urgent command and set a military pace until she told him to slow down. They passed the open door of the refectory, where a crowd of children sat in size order at the trestle tables, watched over by youthful goons with knob-headed canes in their hands. They went out to the circular corridor, where it was as cold as the outdoors and Clement wondered suddenly what had happened to her coat. Then they followed another hallway to an open door, where firelight flickered. A table was set by the fireplace, preventing Clement from getting close enough to those inviting flames. Purnal stumped out from his bedroom. “Well, sit down. I hope the food’s still warm.”
She sat, but it felt like a collapse. She wolfed down the stew the boy-sergeant ladled into her bowl, and the bread he sliced onto her plate, and when he offered more, she ate that too. When the boy had cleared away the dishes, poured hot ale, and served a wedge of cheese and a bowl of apples, Purnal dismissed him.
“Cheese!” said Clement, cutting herself a slice.
Purnal gestured vaguely. “There’s a dairy.”
The cheese was astonishingly good with a slice of apple. No wine, though, and the ale was typically bitter. She said politely, “Your young soldiers are well-disciplined. I’m quite impressed.”
“They want to learn their jobs so they can get out of here, the silly fools.”
Clement sighed, but Purnal had restrained himself during the meal, so she supposed she should be grateful.
He said, “What happened to Kelin, eh? She was a good girl! And I wrote to you personally!”
Clement cut another slice of cheese. “And I personally commanded her to stay out of action. But when the sky started exploding, I guess she got to thinking she could be a hero. I chased her halfway across the garrison, trying to stop her. So don’t you rage at me.”
He let her enjoy the cheese in peace, after that. And then he said, grudgingly, “I teach these kids to shoot a gun and swing a sword, but I can’t teach them any sense. She was a good kid,” he said again. “Smart, even-tempered. Officer material.”
Clement eyed him in some surprise—had he been drinking? But then she felt the sting of tears—Gods, she must be tired! She hid her face by swallowing some ale. Kelin: she had managed to avoid thinking of her for months. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. “I’m here to find one of those kids I sent you from Watfield.”
Purnal took a deep, preparatory breath and uttered a roar. “A scandal! You sent me a wagonload of babies. Half of them couldn’t even do up their own buttons. What was I to do with them, eh? Use them for target practice?”
She cut him off. “I’ll ta
ke one of them back.”
“Good luck. A lot of them are dead.”
It had been a dreadful journey already, and Clement had no idea how she’d manage to get back to Watfield. To do it empty-handed, to wait for Death-and-Life to do whatever they planned, to watch the Sainnites collapse into their own hollow center . . . “Gods,” she said wearily, and put her face in her hands. “All for lack of one little girl? A weight in the scale, indeed!”
“Eh?” Purnal looked at her blankly.
“Do you think I traveled here on holiday? You will produce the child, or give me an accounting of what became of her.”
“Or what, eh? You’ll hack off my other leg? You’ll exile me to some gods-forsaken corner of some wretched land and order me to turn babies into soldiers?”
“How about if I blame you personally for the destruction of your people in Shaftal?”
He uttered a phlegmy snort, but followed it with a shout to the boy-sergeant in the hallway.
“Sir?” the boy stuck his head in.
“One of the Watfield children, a girl named—”
“Davi,” said Clement.
“Is she still alive?”
“I don’t know, sir!”
“Well, go ask your fellow officers. And then ask the clerk to check the death records. Report back to me in the dormitories.” He added to Clement, as the eager sergeant raced away, “The longer it takes to find her, the longer you and your company will remain. Don’t think I haven’t thought of that.”
“Apparently, you think your garrison’s interests are the only ones that matter.”
“Take some advice from an old man,” he suggested. “Stop trying to shame the shameless. Let’s go look for your girl.”
In the youngest children’s dormitory, a dozen older children were putting the younger ones to bed. They were able to point out the Watfield children, who huddled together in shared beds. Clement spoke to them in Shaftalese, and soon regretted it, for they cried out for their parents, siblings, and homes. She had thought they would have forgotten them by now. None of them was Davi.
Earth Logic Page 22