Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  Everyone looked at Kel. She wished they wouldn’t.

  “You’re sure he isn’t killing them right now?” she asked the child seer.

  She closed her eyes. When she spoke, it was in a thin, whispering voice that Kel knew. He welcomes them as his own, the Chamber of the Ordeal said. Everyone around her made the sign against evil on his or her chest. He says they are safe now. They are to have sweets, hot baths, a feast, easy dreams. He makes his dog, Stenmun, grovel for them. It is your time, Keladry of Mindelan, Protector of the Small.

  The child staggered as the Chamber released her. The lank-haired man swept her up in his arms and walked down the road, bound for the village. Kel followed, weary.

  Neal stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Kel, who was that?” he wanted to know. Kel turned. All of her people stared at her.

  She sighed. “It was the Chamber of the Ordeal,” she told them. “It sent me here. Sort of.”

  A convict brightened. “Then we’re to succeed? If it’s been foretold?”

  The hollow-eyed woman had stayed within earshot. She faced them with a crooked smile. “Irnai—the seer child—she says your chances are one in two. Since that’s better than ours, we’ll pray for you.”

  June 10–11, 460

  Blayce’s Castle

  seventeen

  THE GALLAN’S LAIR

  After a look at the villagers’ meager rations, the Tortallans added their own supplies: sausages, stale bread, hunks of cheese. The men of the Own produced noodle balls, dried noodles and herbs that made a decent soup when dumped into boiling water. Kel, restless, walked around the village. The farm animals had returned. The villagers had concealed them from Stenmun. At least the fowl, goats, and cows looked decently fed. The dogs and cats were as rail-thin as the villagers. The grain and vegetable fields were rich and green, the orchards flourishing. Why did these people go hungry?

  The lank-haired man—he’d introduced himself as Zerhalm—laughed bitterly when Kel asked. “We’ve a mage in the castle, in case you’d forgotten,” he informed her. “Most of it goes to him, and he knows what’s due. If we hold anything back, like our children, Blayce has Stenmun grab one of us, skin him, and hang him from the castle walls to wait for death. Or her, in my wife’s case.”

  “Why don’t you go to his overlord?” demanded Owen. “Or even to the king in Hamrkeng, and ask for justice?”

  “We did,” Zerhalm retorted. “King Maggur has made a pet of this mage from Galla. Couriers say we’ll eat like kings when we’ve land in the south, but we don’t hear of any great victories.”

  The phrase “like our children” had sent a shock wave rolling through Kel. She’d thought—hoped— that their young people were hiding. “Have you no children left?” she asked. “He took them all?”

  “First it was just the prettiest girls and boys, around ten years old,” Zerhalm replied, his eyes seeing a horror invisible to Kel. “Those days, we didn’t know it was him. We’d go to bed and wake in the morning to find them gone. Next went the pretty ones who were nine, eleven, twelve. Around then we found our weapons had gone missing; our bows, our spears, all we used to defend ourselves from raiders. We went to him for help against the thieves and for weapons to fight them with. Stenmun had his men beat us, demanded our older boys and girls as servants, and kicked us back home. We were told to feed the castle and not ask questions. Then the young children went. The warlord Rathhausak, King Maggur now, he came to the castle. We begged him for help. He had ten of us killed and hung on the walls.”

  “Your children?” repeated Kel softly. “All?”

  “Even the ugly ones, the crippled ones, the slow ones, the babes in their cribs, over winter this year,” Zerhalm whispered. He trembled from head to toe. “All. And in every village hereabouts.”

  Kel remembered the three devices she and her people had just killed. One had seemed slow.

  “They brought more children in by cartloads, under Maggur’s banner, so no one would try to save them,” Zerhalm went on. “Our neighbors, folk beyond—the lords of Scanra were afraid to protest. By then Rathhausak had their wives and children.”

  “What about the seer?” Owen asked. “The little girl, um—” He looked at Kel.

  “Irnai,” Kel said.

  “Why doesn’t Blayce have her?” demanded Owen.

  “I don’t believe he knows she exists,” replied Zerhalm. “She walked in here a month gone. Never said where she lived, who her people are. Told us the Protector of the Small was coming. Told us it was our best chance.” He looked around at the soldiers, the young knights, Tobe, and Fanche, all sharpening their weapons. The dogs and the lone cat sprawled in the sun, asleep. The horses grazed in a nearby field. “Forgive my saying, but you don’t look like much of a chance to me, not against Blayce and Stenmun and a hundred fifty men-at-arms in the castle.”

  “He had a hundred seventy at midnight last night,” Gil pointed out.

  Zerhalm grunted.

  “Pessimist,” Neal remarked as he healed an ulcer on an old man’s leg.

  “Four years of Blayce the Gallan does that to a man,” retorted Zerhalm.

  “Then he wasn’t always here,” commented Fanche, looking up from the arrow she was checking.

  “Not if we call him ‘the Gallan,’ mistress,” Zerhalm told her. “That’s where he said he was from.”

  Fanche and Saefas glared at him.

  The Scanran sighed. “This was Fief Rathhausak, once,” he explained more patiently. “The line dwindled. Young Maggur went off to foreign lands to be paid for fighting. He came home but once, took his family with him, just his mother and an old aunt. We were happy with no lordling over us, till Maggur gave the castle and lands to the Gallan.”

  Kel’s gut twisted. Instead of caring for his people, Rathhausak had given them to a monster who murdered their future. Did it bother him that those who should be his first concern were now preyed upon by his successor? Or were the killing devices so important that he didn’t care?

  She crouched by a patch of dusty ground and, using a stick, began to draw a rough map of the castle wall and the surrounding lands in the dirt. Someone knelt beside her. It was the hollow-eyed woman, Agrane. She picked up her own stick and added to the map. “I was cook,” she explained as she worked, “until the Gallan decided I was too old and too ugly to keep. Would I had put metal shavings in his food before that. It wasn’t until after that we learned he was taking our little ones. We’ll bring you up through the cellars, past the dungeons. Now, here’s the underground level. Here”—she began a second sketch next to the first—“is the ground floor and the castle grounds inside the wall.”

  Kel watched the lines form in the dust. Other villagers added what they knew to the maps and made suggestions for the assault. Kel went over the maps again and again, making sure the distances were as accurate as the villagers could make them. Once she had the layout fixed in her mind, she worked out her plan of attack and presented it. Some villagers, Agrane and Zerhalm included, would go with them. Kel refused to let Irnai the seer child or any of the children she had recovered accompany them. They were to stay hidden in the village. Only Tobe would go, for the warhorses. Kel, Neal, and Owen would fight afoot, but the horses would be as good as four men in a battle with the castle’s soldiers.

  By the villagers’ count, there were a hundred and forty-six armed men inside the walls, not counting those Kel and her people had killed on the road. “The main thing is to hit fast and hard,” Kel told them over supper in the village alehouse. Outside, the shadows grew long as the sun dropped toward the horizon. “We take them by surprise, before many can so much as grab a weapon. If you don’t like hitting them when they’re defenseless, remember that they help Blayce. Now rest, all of you. We leave at moonrise.”

  She walked outside to enjoy the cool air and clear her head. She paused under the tree where her sparrows had settled for the night to thank them for their help that day. Footsteps made her turn. Neal and Dom approached
.

  “I wish you’d let one of us go in with you,” Neal began.

  Kel shook her head. “Connac’s squad and Gil’s convicts will do very well inside. Dom and his lads on horseback will create more confusion when they get in. You’re best placed with Dom—your group will be in more danger from archers than mine. You must also take command if I don’t make it,” she added quietly but firmly. “If I die in there, you have to get our people home. Listen to Dom—he’s more used to commanding groups. But your duty is to take our folk back to Tortall.”

  “We’d best take these people, if they’ll go,” Dom pointed out. He lounged against the tree trunk, hands in breeches pockets. “Leaving them here for King Maggot seems like a bad idea.”

  Kel scowled. He was right. “Will you talk to them?” she asked. “After, I suppose, if we get an after.”

  “We’ll get it, Kel,” Dom replied, his eyes serious. “I have faith in you.”

  “So do I,” said Neal, though he still looked troubled by her orders.

  “Me too,” said Owen. None of them had heard him come up. “It’ll be jolly, Kel. An evil mage destroyed, a chance to take a bite out of Stenmun and his men—isn’t this why you became a knight?” He looked from Neal to Kel, who both watched him, speechless. “It’s why I want to be a knight,” Owen insisted. “I may not get to be one now, but it’ll be almost worth it, to rob Maggur of the killing devices. And I thought we were supposed to rest, and here you three aren’t doing it.”

  “We’re coming, Mother,” Kel told Owen with a crooked smile. “Or did you learn that from Wyldon?”

  Owen beamed at her, gray eyes bright with mischief. “Nope. I learned it from you, Mother,” he teased. He ducked Kel’s swipe at him and ran back to the house where they were to rest, a bounce in his step.

  “That boy makes me feel old,” grumbled Neal.

  The path they followed under the castle walls along the Pakkai River was little more than a goat track. The ground dropped sharply into the icy river not a foot from the trail. The moonlight shimmered on the briskly moving water but granted only a little light for their feet.

  Kel stepped on some fallen rock and slipped. Zerhalm, ahead of her, and Gil, at her back, grabbed her before she fell. Afterward Kel was grateful for the dark that hid her shakes. She had largely conquered her fear of heights, but she doubted any knight didn’t fear the result of falling into deep water in full armor.

  Agrane led, in front of Zerhalm. She guided them to a runoff tunnel from the castle’s depths. Kel did not look forward to entering it—human waste was dropped into runoff tunnels—but once inside they would be out of the open, safe if the guards chose to send out a patrol.

  Zerhalm came to a stop. Kel sent the signal back to her troops through Gil: wait. Kel peered around the villager’s broad shoulder to see what caused the halt. Agrane stood a few yards up, running her hands over a large, grate-covered opening as if they touched a solid wall. “I don’t understand!” the former cook hissed. “It was right here. I always counted the steps in and out!”

  “They bricked it up?” asked Zerhalm. He, too, ran a hand over the opening as if it weren’t there.

  “Can I get by?” Kel whispered.

  Zerhalm backed into a niche in the rock. Kel slid by, though a touch of her foot made the edge of the path crumble slightly. I will be so happy to leave through the gate, she thought as she reached Agrane. If I live to do it.

  As always now, she wore her griffin-feather band. “It’s an illusion,” she told Agrane. “An illusion that they filled it with rock.” She tested a bar of the grate. Ancient with rust, it broke in her hand, fragments dropping around her feet and rolling into the river. “That’s so shoddy,” Kel whispered in disgust. “He expends magic to hide the thing, but then he doesn’t replace the grate. Mages—so many are lazy.” She broke away more bars until she could walk into the tunnel. There was a faint clank: her helmet. She wouldn’t be able to wear it in this cramped space. With a sigh Kel removed it and laid it inside the grate, out of people’s way. When she re-entered the tunnel, she stooped to fit. Her glaive and longbow, strapped on her back, scraped the ceiling. Rolling her eyes, she took them off and leaned both against the wall. “Agrane, Zerhalm, come on,” she whispered. “The rock’s an illusion. Grab my tunic.”

  Agrane gripped Kel’s tunic, closed her eyes, and let Kel draw her into the tunnel. Once inside, the woman looked around. “Mithros’s mercy!” she exclaimed softly. “But I felt rock.”

  “Lantern,” Kel urged her, helping Zerhalm to enter. While Agrane fumbled to light their lantern, Kel helped the others past the illusion. Once the humans were safely inside, the dogs and the cat trotted through.

  The other lantern holders lit their wicks from Agrane’s, then spread out to light the way. The dogs and the cat went ahead, scouts once more. Kel gathered her weapons and followed Agrane, her neck and shoulders aching as she tried to keep from knocking the ceiling with her head. Her glaive and bow were encumbrances that she worked around. She was certain that she would have to go through Stenmun to get to Blayce, which meant she needed both weapons.

  Soon the reek in the stone passage made her eyes water and her nose itch. She breathed through her open mouth to avoid the worst of the stink, fought the urge to sneeze, and smacked her head on moldy stone. Biting her lip to stop curses from escaping her, she trudged on, catching up to Agrane.

  They walked for some time. Finally Agrane halted and raised her lantern. Overhead, Kel saw a grate. This one had solid bars, but it was not anchored and a little pressure raised it. Kel handed her weapons to Agrane and carefully pushed the grate up. Once it was clear of its stone rim, she eased it to one side. Gently she lowered it to the floor overhead. With it out of the way, Kel placed her hands on either side of the opening, jumped, and levered herself out of the tunnel. Agrane passed up her glaive, bow, and a lantern: Kel took them and set them aside before she reached down to grip the woman’s arms. Lifting Agrane and then Zerhalm was too easy. These people needed a proper meal.

  With them to help the rest, Kel held the lantern up to view their surroundings. They were in a clearly long-forgotten storeroom. Everything was shrouded in burlap and covered with an inch of dust. Mouse droppings lay everywhere; an assortment of rustles and squeaks came from the shadows.

  Kel burrowed in Agrane’s pack until she found a rugged sack attached to a coil of rope. She passed it to Agrane. As Zerhalm helped Connac, his squad, the convict soldiers, Fanche, and Saefas up, Agrane lifted out bagful after bagful of dogs, and one cat.

  At last they were all in. They wiped themselves clean of tunnel muck using the burlap in the room. Kel pinched her nose against sneezes as dust rose everywhere and mice scattered in panic. The cat spotted a mouse by the door. Her forelegs went down, her bottom wriggling as she prepared to attack. Kel nudged her with a booted toe. “Don’t,” she whispered. “We have work ahead.”

  The cat gave her a glare that would peel paint. She then sat and began to wash a paw, as if washing had been her intention all along.

  Once everyone was ready, Kel tried the door. It was unlocked. She slid through the narrow opening, glaive at the ready, Agrane at her back. They were in a shadowy corridor. At one end light flickered and bounced: torches in the next hall. Kel snapped her fingers softly, a signal to Jump. He trotted forward to the junction of their corridor with the one that was lit. He looked at Kel and shook his head. No one was there.

  They moved quickly and silently, trying not to scrape the wall as they oozed into the next corridor. The light came from a pair of torches at an intersection ahead. Once more Jump scouted and signaled that the hall was empty. The third corridor was better lit and punctuated with closed, locked metal doors. Kel waved up the picklock, Morun, then indicated each door. He nodded his understanding and got out his picks. As Kel and Zerhalm watched the stairs to the castle’s upper levels, Morun opened lock after lock. Out came the castle servants, imprisoned after supper was served because Blayce feared they
might use the nights to escape. The servants looked haunted. Kel tried to send them out through the tunnel and back to their village, but most refused. Instead, they showed her to the guardroom, where they helped themselves to axes, maces, and swords.

  The dogs and cat trotted upstairs to scout as Kel listened for humans. She didn’t think the animals would draw attention: people rarely noticed a castle’s rat catchers or hunting dogs. Agrane had said, and the present servants confirmed, that once they were locked up for the night, Blayce retreated to the upper floors to toy with the children and to conjure in his workroom. The soldiers went to their barracks, where they could ignore what went on in the keep. Kel hoped that was true, but she had to ensure that Blayce had not changed his routine tonight. Lord Raoul had drummed it into her that more expeditions went awry from bad scouting than from bad planning.

  One after another the dogs returned to report. The ground level was empty. The children were in rooms on the second floor, and a lone adult male was on the third floor in a room with a closed door. The villagers and servants watched with quiet astonishment as Kel and Jump quizzed the other dogs, who conveyed answers by tapping their paws, standing on their hind legs, shaking or nodding their heads, or giving very quiet yips.

  The humans climbed to the ground level and the main hall. It was a gloomy area, lit just enough to keep them from stumbling. Kel glimpsed tapestries and the usual lord’s trove of weapons on the shadowed walls: spears, swords, axes, bows. The hearth fire was banked for the night, the tables and benches cleared for morning use. Here the men ate and toasted their master while Blayce fed his children dainty bits and planned their murders.

  More than anything, Kel wanted to charge up to his workroom and finish him off. Somehow she kept herself in hand. Ignoring her carefully laid plans would get her and those who depended on her killed. Instead, she resettled her armor and waited. Jump, Shepherd, and two other dogs led Agrane, Gil, and Gil’s five convict soldiers, all armed, upstairs. They wore soft cloth wrappings over their boots or shoes to muffle their steps.