Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  Kel sized the matter up quickly. One of the brawlers she recognized as an Anak’s Eyrie headache, a handsome fellow who doled out romance to as many women as possible, whether or not they already had a partner. The other brawler she didn’t know. Neither did she recognize the young woman who stood closest to the fight, but she knew what this was just the same. Rather than choose one or the other man and put an end to the problem, this girl had let them go at it with their fists to prove she was desirable. It was in the way she stood hugging herself, her brown eyes eager as the men lurched to their feet.

  Kel had seen enough. As the brawlers grabbed each other in bear hugs, she strode in. They were big, strong fellows, but she’d spent eight years strengthening her arms and learning the right time and place to attack. She grabbed both men by the hair and slammed their foreheads together. The watchers gasped in awe.

  The men released each other. Kel hauled them apart without letting go of their hair. They were dazed, but that faded quickly. They tried to grab each other.

  “Well, they say the front part of the head is the hardest,” Kel remarked. She smashed her captives’ heads together a second time.

  Now they staggered. Her grip was the only thing that kept them upright. One of them flailed at her arm. Kel shook him briskly, as a terrier might shake a rat.

  “This saddens me,” she informed them. “It does. Grown men brawling like apprentices. Now, here’s what you may do for me. Promise to be good lads and go to your beds, and I won’t remember your faces later.” She turned their heads so they looked at her. Both sported black eyes and swollen mouths. The Anak’s Eyrie man bled from a bite on his ear and the newcomer had a broken nose. “On second thought, if you promise to be good, I’ll let you visit Sir Nealan. I won’t even ask him to make sure the healing stings so you’ll remember all this. Would you like that?”

  Kel’s voice was soft and reasonable. The look she gave them was anything but. She’d never beaten anyone and doubted that she ever would, but these two didn’t know that. It was wicked of her to play on their fear of being flogged—it was a punishment favored by many nobles—but she would take what she could get in the way of good behavior, never mind why it was given.

  The newcomer nodded agreement first. The Anak’s Eyrie troublemaker required another shake before he, too, nodded.

  “Clasp hands on it, like good lads,” Kel told them.

  Both men hesitated, then exchanged hand-shakes. Kel let go, and they stumbled off toward the infirmary.

  The young woman who had set this in motion tried to melt back into the crowd. The row of women behind her refused to let her by. She glanced at Kel, who beckoned her with one finger.

  “A word, if you please, Mistress . . . ?” Kel let the question hang in the air.

  The young woman looked down at her patched skirt. “Peliwin Archer, if it please my lady.”

  Kel folded her arms. “Mistress Peliwin, on the coast, there is a way of doing things. If two men declare an interest in a woman, it’s her duty to announce which she prefers, if she does prefer one. Then the second lover takes his leave. If he does not, the woman may bring him to the court of the Great Goddess for refusing to accept her right to choose. Does this custom not apply here?”

  “It does.” The speaker was a big, black-haired woman with sunken dark eyes and arms as muscled as a smith’s. “It applies throughout the realm. It’s how I got rid of my first husband and got another to suit me.”

  The other women nodded or murmured in agreement.

  Kel looked at Peliwin. “Why did you not declare your choice, mistress?” she asked.

  Peliwin twisted back and forth like a child who wished to go. “I couldn’t decide, lady knight,” she muttered.

  “Then the custom is that you ask both to stand back until you do,” Kel reminded her. “Instead, we now have two fellows who might be called to defend this place at the healer’s. I think you need time to decide what is truly important here at Haven, and what only serves your vanity. I give you that time. Tomorrow morning you report for a week’s latrine-cleaning duty.”

  Peliwin yelped, finally meeting Kel’s eyes. “That’s not fair! You can’t expect—”

  Kel interrupted, “I can and I do. At the end of that week, you will state your preference and that will be the last I hear of this, Mistress Peliwin. I’ll have no troublemakers here, understand?”

  The young woman was still gasping in horror, hands over her mouth.

  “Good evening to you, mistresses, masters,” Kel said to the onlookers. They knew they were dismissed. The men bowed, the women curtsied, and the gathering broke up.

  Kel wandered between the barracks, nodding to those whose faces she recognized. Two women approached her. Were they coming to praise her handling of the brawl or to welcome her back?

  “Lady knight, you have got to tell this clay-brained besom that if she can’t keep her bratlings from strewing my wash over half the camp—” one began.

  “You’ve been nattering at my children since we moved in,” the other woman interrupted. “Lady knight, it’s enough to drive you mad, the way she goes on!”

  Kel quieted them and sorted out the quarrel. She resumed her walk to headquarters, but it took longer than it should have. Other refugees asked her for news of the war, to settle a dispute over a litter of kittens, to learn the truth of a rumor that the crops sown in the newly plowed fields were to go entirely to the Goatstrack refugees. Someone else wanted to know why the newcomers had the barracks closest to the cookhouse. One of the cooks came to report that a keg of Haven’s mead was missing. By the time Kel made it to the headquarters meeting room, she had a headache. She found Neal, Merric, and the chief clerk, Zamiel, already at work, mugs of tea at their elbows. Kel dropped into a vacant chair and rested her head in her hands. Zamiel pushed a stack of reports toward her.

  “Tonight I will name Lord Wyldon in my prayers,” she muttered rebelliously. “Tonight and every night until I am freed of this gods-cursed, reeky-armpit ratsbane camp.”

  “You notice she didn’t mention to whom those prayers might be addressed,” Neal remarked. Zamiel sniffed and sipped his tea.

  Merric nodded, checking duty rosters for the soldiers. “Given the rest of her statement, I believe they won’t be addressed to any gods of happiness.”

  “What’s the matter, love?” Neal asked, pouring a mug of tea for Kel. He watched her rub her temples for a moment, then added drops from a vial he carried in a pouch on his belt. “Did they wear you out with their exuberant welcome?”

  “I broke up a brawl, sorted out a few quarrels— why in Mithros’s name do they keep coming to me?” she demanded.

  “Because they trust you,” Neal told her. “They look up to you.”

  “They know you’ll be fair,” added Zamiel. All three nobles looked at him. While extremely competent, Zamiel seldom offered opinions.

  “I hear them talk,” the clerk explained. “I believe they think it’s impossible for anyone to write and listen at the same time.” To Kel he said, “They missed you.”

  “They surely did,” Merric told her. “I’d ask if they wanted help with something, and they’d say they’d wait for you to come back.” He grinned. “Frankly, I was glad of it.”

  “Oh,” Kel replied, her cheeks warm. She wasn’t sure that she deserved such praise, not when she barely knew what she was doing. Changing the subject before she heard more unsettling remarks, she asked Neal, “What did you just put in my tea?”

  “Something for your headache,” Neal said.

  “It’s very good, and very fast,” Zamiel added. “I recommend it.”

  Kel looked at Neal and sighed. “Thank you. I never had so many headaches before I came here.” She picked up the mug and sipped. Almost instantly she felt her neck and shoulder muscles loosen. The throbbing in her skull eased.

  “Kel, don’t let these commoners impose on you so much, not if it makes you weary,” Merric said, taking a drink of his own tea. “Tell them to cl
ean up their own messes. You’re too easygoing. You have to keep a proper distance, or they’ll climb all over you.”

  Kel and Neal exchanged looks again. Zamiel’s expression was carefully blank. Merric’s views were common. Kel and Neal didn’t share them.

  “I have a suggestion,” Neal offered. “It won’t solve every problem, but fewer will get as far as you.”

  “Please, anything,” Kel begged.

  “Make each building elect two council members, a man and a woman. Have that council sit in judgment of quarrels,” he suggested, leaning back in his chair. “Appoint one of the smarter soldiers— your ex-bandit friend Gil, say, or Sergeant Yngvar— as witness. If a vote is tied, his is the vote that decides the matter. Change the witness every two weeks. That keeps the soldier from getting tired or getting so friendly with individuals that it might affect his vote.”

  Kel sat up. She loved this plan! “Neal, you’re brilliant!” she exclaimed.

  Neal grinned. “I knew that.”

  “So what’s the news from Steadfast?” Merric inquired. “I keep asking, but Sir Meathead says we should hear it from you.”

  Kel’s good mood faded. “Tobe!” she cried.

  The door opened. Tobe stuck his head in. “Lady?”

  “I need all of the sergeants who aren’t on duty,” Kel said. “Get them, please?”

  “It’s that important?” asked Merric. “You know how hot it gets in here when there’s a crowd.”

  “It’s that important,” Kel replied grimly. “Giantkiller has fallen. I’ll tell the rest when the others are here. It’s not a report I want to give more than once.”

  Merric and Zamiel, their faces ashen with shock, sketched the sign against evil on their chests.

  The next morning Kel returned to her routine: glaive practice, with Tobe and his friends doing spear exercises beside her; breakfast; then archery practice on the riverbank. She was about to return to Haven with her archers when a plowman on his way out of the fort approached her.

  “They’ve got you listed for kitchen cleanup. A big lass like you’s wasted on scrubbing pots,” he informed her. “D’ye know how to plow?” Kel shook her head. “Then it’s past time you learned,” the man informed her. “That idyit Edort went and sprained his ankle. Whilst he’s getting coddled by Grandma Nealan, we could have more acres done.”

  Kel met the plowman’s eyes. He was a stocky older man, black-eyed, his hair silvery, his mustache salt-and-pepper. Like the other refugees, he looked as if he’d seen better days, but there was an imp of spirit in his eyes. “You do understand I’ve never plowed in my life, Master—”

  “Just Adner, no ‘master’ in me,” he retorted. “And if you keep that attitude, you’ll never learn. Carry on, y’ens,” he ordered Kel’s archers, using northern slang for “you people.” “I’ll give ’er back to yez unbroke.” He took Kel by the arm and steered her toward the fields being readied for planting.

  “But that’s the lady knight!” cried one of Kel’s archers, shocked. “You can’t just carry her off!”

  “I can unless one of y’ens will plow in her stead,” he called over his shoulder. Kel waved the archers on. They were bakers, laundresses, and carpenters, all with their own work to do. It was vital to get as many acres plowed and seeded as they could, as soon as they could. They needed all the food they could produce.

  Trudging along with the men and women who managed plows and animals with easy familiarity, Kel was glad to see something familiar to her: bows, quivers of arrows, and staves. Adner bore a crossbow that must have been his. Longbows were easier and cheaper to make in the north, so few people outside the army used crossbows. She wondered what kind of shot Adner was. Maybe he would shoot against her some evening when they had time.

  At last they reached the ground beside the acres that had been plowed while she was away. Adner chose an ox for her and showed her how to hitch him to a plow. “You’ll pick it up,” he assured Kel, indicating the strip of ground that was hers. “There’s some good dirt here. Toss what rocks y’hit over aside the river, not onto ground we’ve yet to plow.” He looked Kel over as she gathered the reins in her hands. “I’m workin’ that strip there. I’ll keep an eye on yez.”

  Kel faced the ox’s rump. I ride Peachblossom, she thought. An ox will be no trouble at all.

  The plowing should be easy enough. She’d watched plowmen and -women all her life. All she had to do was flap the reins now and then, keep the plow moving in a straight line, and turn the thing at the end of the strip.

  “Easy as pie,” she said, and flapped the reins gently against the ox’s back. “Come on, big fellow,” she called softly, so the others couldn’t hear. “Let’s bustle a bit.”

  The ox didn’t wish to bustle. He was more interested in the grass. Kel flapped the reins harder, then harder still. She thought she heard snickers from the others, but when she looked at them, they were in motion, calling encouragement to their own horses or oxen. It took Jump and five sparrows to get Kel’s beast going. When he did plod forward, it was not in a straight line. He veered as Kel fought both reins and plow to straighten the ox’s course. She stepped three times in lumps of fresh dung she was sure the ox had left for her on purpose. At the end of the furrow she wrestled the plow and ox around to prepare for her second furrow. The evidence of her long, sweaty labor was a meandering furrow that stretched the width of the field.

  She looked at the others’ results. Their furrows were straight. They’d plowed more of them, too.

  “If they can do it, we can,” she said grimly. This time she set the ox forward by thrusting the plow through the ground toward his rump. The ox looked around, startled by the sudden slackness in his reins. He saw the approaching threat to his tail and ambled ahead, away from both plow and Kel. Finally, Kel’s animals, who seemed to have learned a great deal from their time with Daine, made their own choice to help. Each time the ox tried to swerve left, Jump leaped up beside his left eye, startling him back to a straighter course. If he tried to swerve right, the sparrows fluttered around his right eye until the ox straightened his path again.

  By the time Kel reached the end of her second meandering furrow, she had begun to think longingly of latrine duty. She stopped for a ladleful of water, envying the way Adner and the others moved steadily across the ground, making rows as neat as razor cuts, turning up rich black earth.

  Her fingers twinged as she took up the reins again. Kel looked for the source and found, to her horror, that she was developing a blister.

  A blister! she thought, cross. These reins were nothing like those she used in riding. As if I were some lily-handed noble, good only for poems and dancing! She smacked the ox with the reins more firmly than she had before. The ox looked back at her, startled. Something in the way Kel scowled at him seemed to convince him that she would accept nothing but motion.

  Kel was turning him a third time when sparrows darted out of the woods thirty yards ahead, cheeping the alarm. Seconds later came horn calls. Merric had sighted the enemy in the woods. The sparrows flew straight at Kel. All but one dropped to the ground and nibbled grass seed. The one was a bird Kel recognized, the male she called Duck because his lack of a tail gave him a duck-shaped behind. He hovered before her.

  “How many?” Kel asked, and stretched her hand out, palm-down. Duck stooped to tap her hand three times before he lit on the plow. “Fifteen, is it?” Kel murmured. She listened to horn calls as she trotted back to the spot where her glaive leaned against the water cart. Merric had the Scanrans on the run. He wanted soldiers from Haven to strike the enemy as he drove them toward the river. Unless he’d lost men, his strength was at eleven, counting his own sword, against fifteen Scanrans. Haven’s soldiers might not reach the field before the enemy came into sight. She had an opportunity here, if she cared to take the risk.

  Kel looked at her companions: they were trying to unhitch their plows. She held up a hand palm-out, the “wait” signal, and walked over to them.

 
; “Get your bows; prepare to shoot,” she called, her voice no louder than necessary. In the distance she heard the sounds of battle approaching. “They’ll come out of the north woods. Turn side-on to them so they won’t see your bows. As soon as you have a clean shot at one, in your range, take it. Try not to shoot our soldiers. Lord Wyldon won’t give me any more.”

  Adner grinned wolfishly as he stood clear of his plow. His stance was easy, his crossbow held down against his side. It was already cocked with a bolt in the notch. Unlike longbows, whose strings went loose if the bow was kept strung for too long, crossbows could be readied to shoot and set aside until needed.

  The other workers, women and men, didn’t share Adner’s comfortable readiness. Some fumbled as they strung their bows. One dropped an arrow. Kel didn’t even try to reach her bow nearby. If these people could help Merric’s soldiers without her assistance, it would be a victory everyone in Haven would celebrate.

  She saw movement among the trees. The sound of men’s shouts and the crash of running horses announced the arrival of the fight. Out of the woods burst eight or nine men in Scanran dress: rough reddish tunics and strapped-on leggings. One of them went down, an arrow in his back. Then came Merric and his squad, ducking to avoid the last branches of the trees, swords unsheathed.

  Once the Scanrans reached the open field, they ran for all they were worth. They raced straight toward a handful of civilians who were too terrified to run for the shelter of the fort.

  Wait for it, Kel thought. Her farmers had to decide the timing for themselves. To her left she heard Haven’s gate open and the thud of racing horses. Rescue would arrive in a moment if her people froze.

  Adner’s muscled arm swung up. He braced his crossbow against his shoulder. He shot almost as soon as he leveled the weapon, hardly stopping to aim. A Scanran went down with a bolt in his throat. Adner bent to cock and load the crossbow again.

  Two farmers’ arrows struck a Scanran; another arrow from Merric’s soldiers brought down a second man. A Scanran stumbled and dropped, a civilian arrow above his knee. A slight, weathered older woman shot the enemy’s biggest man in the chest. He spun with a cry and was shot in the back by Adner.