Chapter 17
Ketya
The Mountain Road: Three weeks after the Loss
Guthre sought me out to talk that evening. The young scout had returned just after dark and spent an hour talking with Sperrin and the sergeants.
“May I sit here?” asked Guthre. Her breath steamed a little. Even in summer, nights grew chilly in the mountains.
I sat eating on a low, flat rock at a quiet edge of camp. I’d wanted privacy to think, but for some reason found myself glad the scout had come over.
I haven’t actually had a conversation with anyone my own age since Tenia died. The thought hurt. Only three weeks. It feels like she’s been gone forever.
At my half-smile and nod, Guthre sat on the rock beside me and started eating her own stew.
In the center of the refugee part of camp, I could hear my father holding court. I couldn’t hear the words, just the tone of his voice—measured and pitched perfectly, as always—and the laughter of the refugees in a circle around him.
He was doing a lot to cheer them up, I knew. So why didn’t I want to be around him? For years I had wanted to have more time to spend with my father and now that he was here I wasn’t taking advantage of the time. Once we got to Whitmount he’d be busy with more important things than me. But I supposed that keeping the other refugees cheered up and helpful on the march was also more important than spending time with his magicless channeler daughter.
This was the first hot meal we’d eaten since I had joined the column. Since every enemy in the area clearly knew our location, there no longer seemed much point to avoiding fires.
“Did you find them?” I asked, when Guthre looked up from her bowl.
“I found them,” the scout answered quietly.
“How close did you have to get?”
“Close enough,” said Guthre. “The others stayed farther away, but I needed to be sure of their positions.” She put a hand on top of mine. “Thanks for telling me about the smell. That helped a lot.”
“I’m glad I helped. I’ve been feeling a little useless here. We need more people with your skills, not mine.”
I felt oddly relaxed, but tense at the same time.
“We won’t always be here,” said Guthre. She moved her hand to brush hair from her face, then lay back on the rock, supporting herself on her elbows.
I had to lean back to hear her. I lay on my side facing Guthre, so we could still talk.
“You’re going back tomorrow?” I asked.
“Probably,” said Guthre. “Overcaptain Sperrin will tell me in a little while, when they’re done planning.” Her breath tickled me a little. It reminded me of whispered conversations in the old theater back in the palace, when Mala and I would hide in the caves made by the racks of furs in the costume room and tell each other secrets.
I didn’t want to move. Guthre and I didn’t really know each other enough to be friends, but the illusion felt nice. I missed having friends. I missed Tenia. Thinking of the theater, I even missed Mala, who might still be alive out there somewhere. By sending her away from the palace, my father might have saved her life.
“How did you get to be a scout when you’re so young?” I asked. It seemed like a safe question. “I mean, we’re about the same age and I only just became a channeler when... you know. But you’ve been a scout for years, it looks like.”
“I had an early talent for it,” Guthre said.
“What do you mean?”
Guthre snorted. She looked up at the stars, so she no longer made direct eye contact with me. “I’m good at running and finding trouble,” she finally said.
“What do you mean?” I asked again.
I didn’t think Guthre was going to answer. I don’t know why I asked such a personal question. I just lay on my side and watched the scout thinking. Guthre had a scar on her wrist and the back of her hand where her tunic pulled back. And a crease on the side of her neck that looked like a magical burn.
Finally, Guthre took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “My father wasn’t like your father,” she said softly. She still looked up, avoiding eye contact, so I had to lean closer to hear her. “My father had been a soldier, though he hated the scouts. Funny how I ended up here.” She seemed to want to talk, but had trouble choosing words, like the subject was difficult.
“Anyway, my father wasn’t a soldier anymore by the time I was a kid, but he was violent. He would beat and...hurt my mother and me.” I noticed the pause. Guthre glanced at me briefly as if making sure I had caught it. Whatever she saw in my face seemed to encourage her, though. “By the time I was ten or twelve I learned that if I could get my father to chase me, he would forget about my mother. So I would run. At first he always caught me eventually, and he would”—that pause again—“hurt me. The longer I could keep away from him, the tireder he would get, and then it wasn’t as bad.”
Guthre stopped to brush a nonexistent hair from her face. “I had to learn to plan things, even though there was never any time to plan. Just when I was running. I had to be careful not to get too far, or he would give up and take it out on my mother. Too close and he would catch me too soon. The older I got, the better I got at it. Eventually I got to a point where unless I was careless, he couldn’t do anything to me I couldn’t survive.”
I nodded. That part I understood. You do what you need to survive. Guthre stayed on her elbows, but turned her head so she faced me more closely.
“Then one day, I got home from school and my mother was gone. I don’t know where, just gone. And I should have been sad, but instead I realized I could leave, too.” She smiled, not convincingly. “I wasn’t one of the popular girls or the smart girls like you, so I didn’t have a lot of options that would get me far enough away from my father. And I couldn’t take a position where he might have a chance to catch me someplace where I couldn’t run.” She moved an elbow to brush hair out of her eyes again, and ended up on her side facing me. I wondered if Guthre had ever told this to anyone. Why is she telling me? I wondered.
Guthre continued: “So anyway, I went to the local army post and talked to the oversergeant there. I was underaged, but I...convinced him to take me anyway. He had a quota to fill from the province, and I did have scout skills. I never saw my father again.”
Like when Sperrin had told me his story on the wall, I didn’t know how to respond. “I wasn’t one of the popular girls,” I finally said. I realized too late that Guthre had probably meant the words as a compliment.
Guthre looked at me dubiously. “You look like one to me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Did your father ever hit you?” It seemed like a strange thing to ask.
“No,” I said. “He wasn’t home much, especially after my mother died. But I know he would never have hurt me.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Guthre said. “I didn’t think he hit you. He doesn’t look like the type.”
What type is that? a part of me wanted to ask. But mostly I didn’t want to talk about my father. I liked lying on the rock, sharing secrets with Guthre. It felt safe somehow, like that last day with Mala.
“Does your father tell you he loves you?” Guthre asked. It seemed like a strange question from someone who didn’t know me that well.
“That’s not really his way. I don’t think he’s ever said it in words. Mostly I have to infer it. But I know he would never hurt me.”
“Whenever my father used to...hurt me,” said Guthre, “he would tell me how much he loved me, over and over again. At first I loved him too, like any kid. But after a while he beat all the love out of me.”
“That’s sad,” I said. It didn’t really seem like the right thing to say, but I wanted to say something.
Guthre shrugged. “It’s life. But now you know why I don’t mind being chased by giants to bait a trap.”
I heard the familiar sound of Sperrin’s boots approaching. Guthre and I both sat up at once. I felt my face flush, like the adults had caught me sharing
secrets in my cave back in the theater. I could see Guthre’s face flushed as well.
The scout gave me a regretful smile, slipped off the rock and stood up. “Time to hear about where I’m going tomorrow. Let’s talk afterward, please?”
“I’d like that,” I said.
I hoped Guthre lived through the day tomorrow.
Sperrin
I wasn’t concerned with the bait, I was concerned whether the trap would be there on time, or quietly enough. The Riverhead Scouts were competent enough, but I hadn’t commanded them long enough to know how they would handle today’s situation.
A squad jogged by me, each group of three carrying a long, iron-tipped pole toward its carefully planned position. I felt relief at how quietly they moved, despite the heavy poles. Most of the soldiers had worked nearly all night preparing components of the trap. I’d left the tiredest behind to guard the camp, while the others put the plan into operation. If all went well, they wouldn’t be needed to do actual hand-to-hand fighting, so they could be tired without losing much effectiveness. If the plan didn’t go well, light infantry without magical support couldn’t stand for long against four giants anyway.
But some things even giants couldn’t stand against.
Ketya
Sperrin had left behind Sergeant Talye and a squad of the most exhausted scouts to protect the camp in case the wolves returned. Talye had the guards sleeping in shifts, but even the awake ones didn’t seem very lucid to me. I hoped the wolves had other plans for the afternoon.
Right now I stood twenty paces—I had measured them out—from the target that Kern had left out for me, throwing knife after knife then jogging to recover them. My accuracy, pretty good at first, had gotten shaky as my arms tired, but eventually it had started to improve again. Kern had made the suggestion, whether by way of further apology or by way of torturing me I couldn’t be sure. But he was right: I needed to be able to hit things with a knife when I was tired, too. The handful of sentries fighting to stay awake at the edges of the camp gave evidence enough of that.
I liked to think of myself as calm under stress, but right now I seethed with conflicting emotions: anger, frustration, even a little jealousy.
I wondered if I would ever get to continue my conversation with Guthre. Would it turn into another conversation I never got to finish, like my last days with Mala and Tenia?
Why is it so important to have a new friend now? a bitter part of me wondered. Every other friend I’ve had is dead at the palace or gone. Does it really matter whether I lose another one now? Why even bother to make friends?
But another part of me really wanted Guthre’s friendship. I wonder why she opened up to me so much?
Then there was the part of me that was both proud of Sperrin and angry at him. I was excited that he had a plan to save all of us from the giants, and I hated that I couldn’t help with it, or even be there to see it. I was even a little jealous of Guthre’s featured role in the trap, although when I’d asked what the role was, everyone’s answers had been maddeningly nonspecific. I knew I had no business being near a battle and Guthre was a soldier by trade, but still I felt a bit jealous that Sperrin was ordering Guthre into a fight but not me. And I felt angry at myself for being jealous.
It’s frustrating. I remind Sperrin of the ghost of his daughter and he’s protective of me—but Guthre is the same age as me and he can order the other girl to her death if need be. It was because she was a soldier, I knew; because she had signed up for it, while I had signed up for a different role in the war and in the empire. But knowing didn’t make it less frustrating.
I almost missed the target on my next two throws, which just added to the frustration. I felt tears on my cheeks as I jogged to the target to recover my knives.
Angrily, I wiped the tears on my sleeve, forced my breath back to evenness, and resumed throwing.
Once it was gone, the anger didn’t return. I felt calm and empty, and settled into a routine of throwing and jogging.
Talye surprised me a little by stopping to watch me throw. Wordlessly, the sergeant adjusted my release angle. She looked much more alert than the other soldiers, though she had worked as hard as any of them.
It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to ask the question I’d wanted to ask Sperrin before he’d left that morning. Finally, I just blurted it out:
“I thought you couldn’t kill giants without magic,” I said to the sergeant.
Talye looked at me appraisingly. “It requires a certain creativity,” Talye replied. “A rare kind, but it’s the kind Sperrin has.”
Suddenly I understood. “Someone who likes to kill, you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t think the overcaptain likes to kill. I think he needs to kill.”
That’s not quite what he told me, I thought. Really, I had no idea what to believe.
“Do you wish you were there?” Talye asked me.
“Yes. I really do.”
“I thought you might. I do, too. But someone has to stay here and hold the camp. And you’re more useful here working on your knife-throwing skills.”
“How hard can it be to hit a giant?”
Talye laughed, a little hollowly. “You tell me. You’ve faced one.”
I’ve faced two. But I got the sergeant’s point: I would have had no chance at all of harming either of those giants with my knives, even if I’d had the opportunity to throw one.
Talye turned to go, took two steps, then turned back again as I started to throw.
“One other thing,” the sergeant said.
“Yes?” I wondered if I’d let my release point get too high again.
“I think you should be very careful before becoming involved with Trooper Guthre. She’s not what you think she is.”
“What do you—”
“You’re not the first person that she barely knows that she’s told her life story to. It’s hard not to get sucked in.”
“It’s a sad story,” I said.
“Isn’t it, though? Trust me, getting involved won’t make it any less sad. I don’t know what she needs, but you can’t give it to her.”
“What do you mean by—”
But Talye had already turned and begun walking away.
What does she mean by “involved”? I wondered. She’s my age, and we had a conversation the night before Guthre went off to, probably, her death. What could—
She couldn’t possibly think—
I threw again. The knife hit dead center in the target, for the first time in an hour.
I buried the second knife a finger’s width away from the first, then jogged to retrieve them. I realized my face was flushing again.
Sperrin
Guthre beat the giants to the rockface, but not the water.
She reached the fresh rockfall that enclosed the narrow valley and began scrambling up nimbly, climbing between the wicked spikes of the protruding poles. By the time she reached the first safety rope the taunting roars of the giants chasing her had been replaced by a louder roar.
“Ropes up! Ropes up!” I yelled. If any of the giants grabbed a trailing rope all the scouts on the ridge could still die. The troopers holding Guthre’s rope paused as she clambered into the loop, but all the other rope crews pulled rapidly.
Then the water hit, slamming her into the rocks.
What had been a beaver pond before it had been released into the narrow valley now hit the rockface in a solid wall, slamming the giants into the spikes.
“Haul her up!” I yelled. The rope crew was already pulling hard, a second crew helping them.
The loop still held Guthre’s limp form, scraping the wet rocks on her way up.
“Spikes away!” I shouted as soon as she cleared the edge. Weighted wooden platforms covered with iron-sheathed spikes dropped from the walls on either side, to catch and weight down any giants not firmly lodged on the rockface. The spikes didn’t need to kill the giants: The water would do that. All the spikes had to do was hold the giants
below the surface for long enough.
None of the giants seemed to have gotten clear. A huge arm broke the surface and thrashed briefly, but I saw no other signs of struggle. A little bit of blood swirled at the edge of the rising floodwaters, but not much. I hadn’t expected much to be visible with the force of the water against the rockface.
“Clear the dam,” I called as soon as I’d counted off the safe time. It took longer to drown a giant than a man, but the rock wall wouldn’t hold for long against the force of the water against it. The scouts gave a ragged cheer as they walked off the dam in small clumps, the last six carrying Guthre on a canvas stretcher. At Kern’s instigation they called out my name, but the cheer seemed a little forced. This wasn’t the kind of ambush the Riverhead Scouts had trained in preparing—nobody had, really—and every scout on the wall had pushed him or herself to the edge of collapse. Then they had the long wait to see if the decoys beat the giants to the wall, and if their new overcaptain’s trap would work.
I scanned the surface of the water again before leaving the dam, waiting for all the surviving scouts to clear first. The water gradually grew still as the pond above emptied. I saw no sign of the two other scouts who had volunteered as decoys along with Guthre. Their job had been to distract the giants and then draw them in the right direction, quickly enough that the creatures couldn’t avoid the water, but not so quickly that they reached the wall too soon. The three scouts had worked out that plan together: They knew that part of the business better than I did and I left them to it. I hadn’t expected all of them to live, and neither had they.
I smiled as I saw blood seeping to the surface from the impaled giants below. I wanted to get away from this, and everyone else here would have wanted me to stay and do this. So I wonder why I enjoyed it so much more than everyone else here.
Chapter 18
Ketya
The Mountain Road: Four weeks after the Loss
Surprisingly enough, it was my father who suggested that I be the one put in charge of Guthre’s care. It made a certain sense: I did have some medical training from my time at the Empress’s Academy, if little practical experience. I wanted to care for her. And none of the other soldiers could be spared. But probably half of the refugees had more practical experience working with sick and injured people, and I knew Talye and probably others remained suspicious of my friendship with Guthre. In the end, my father’s arguments carried the day.
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