Her mentor stared. "Can you understand his cawings, then?"
"Barely," Alea said, "but I can make some sense out of them, yes." She turned back to the patient. "Am I wrong?"
The old man shook his head.
"Rest, then." Alea laid her hand on his head. "Enjoy what life has left for you-you've earned it." But the old man shook his head again, gabbling, and she heard his thought: I know when I'm dying.
"You are surrounded by love," Alea said firmly. "You have reason to live."
Reason, but not enough life, said the old man's thoughts as he cawed. I have watched you since you tried to warn me against General Malachi, or had friends watch you. You spent a whole day sounding an alarm to which no one listened. When you gave up that, you went to join the priestesses. Did you think to help General Malachi's victims when he conquered the town?
Alea stared. Now she recognized him-the first person she had warned to defend himself and his town! The stroke had come suddenly and aged him tremendously. "I try to help everyone wherever I find them."
I knew you had a good heart, the old man said and thought. You truly wish to save tke people from General Malachi, do you not?
"Well, of course," Alea answered.
The old man caught her hand, though, and his words seemed to explode in her mind: You are devoted to other people, but you are not yet a priestess. Leave the temple. Fill my place in the Scarlet Company.
Alea stared at him, unable to move. Then she tried to wrest her hand away, but he held it with a death grip, mouthing the words, Say you will!
"I ... will do as you ask," Alea said slowly, "if it will ease your passing."
Bless you. The old man let go of her hand and closed his eyes. Talk to Kethro the Tailor. I can leave this world now.
Don't you dare! Alea thought, but he had already fallen asleep. She freed her hand from his grip and looked up at the old man's wife and daughter through swimming eyes. "Care for him well," she advised. "Do not let him be alone for a second."
"Lady, we shall not," the daughter said, eyes round. The priestess watched her, gaze speculative, but said nothing until they were out in the street again. There, though, she asked, "What did he say to you?"
"That he is dying." Alea caught her breath on -a sob, bowing her head. "Reverend Lady, I-I cannot bear this."
"Can you not, then?" the priestess's gaze was probing but sympathetic.
"No! It will be bad enough in my life to watch a few people die-but to see it every day, perhaps several times in one day ... I-I have not the strength."
"It is well you have learned that so soon." The priestess laid a hand on her shoulder. "You may still be devoted to the goddess, child, and may enter the temple to worship as much as you wish-but it would seem she has another role in life for you than that of priestess."
"I-I fear so," Alea said, head bowed still.
"Then go to discover how you must serve." The priestess touched Alea's forehead, lips, then breastbone as she said, "May the goddess grant you wisdom, kind words for all you meet, and a tender heart." She withdrew her hand with a gentle smile. "Live well, my child, and happily. Farewell."
"Farewell," Alea whispered as the other woman turned away. Alea watched her go and wondered whether she was sad or relieved to be so easily out of her new career.
She was sure, though, that she had done it well: Head still bowed, she turned away-to seek out the booth of Kethro the Tailor.
When she sat down to meditate in the common room of an inn that night, though, she wasn't at all sure whether or not to tell Gar what had happened. Kethro had been very insistent about secrecy.
She need not have worried. As soon as she made contact with him, the problem was solved. Gar was tense as a fiddle string.
What happened? Alea demanded, appalled.
For answer, Gar's memories of the day flooded her mind.
The rider burst out of the woods, following the deer track, and slewed to a halt in the center of the camp, waving and shouting, "Attention! All of you, listen!"
Looking up, Gar saw it was one of their scouts, stationed well outside of camp to see anything that happened in the wood around them. With the rest of the rankers and recruits, he snapped straight, standing still, but the sergeants and officers only came walking over, alert and wary.
"General Malachi's coming!" the sentry called. "Police the camp! Polish your leather and brass!" The captain exchanged a glance with his lieutenant. "Not that much to police," the younger man said. "We've been keeping things in shape."
"I hope your sergeants have been inspecting their men's gear," the captain said. "Get them busy!" There followed a hectic hour while everything that had been overlooked was swept and scoured and everything clean was cleaned again. Gar hauled water and scrubbed where he was told like a beast of burden, wondering if it was time to disappear again-but he remembered the ashes of the youth village and his anger began to burn again. He had burst away from the bandit general's men before and he could do it again if he had to. Meanwhile, what could he say to bamboozle the man into keeping him near?
Then General Malachi rode into the camp surrounded by his bodyguards. The first soldier to see him shouted, "General!" and everyone ran to their places in line.
They snapped to attention as the general dismounted and swaggered along their rows, enjoying the panic he'd created. He looked up and down soldier after soldier, snapping out a criticism here, a nitpick there-leather not polished mirror bright, spear-edge not honed to razor sharpness. Gar watched him come, surprised that the general hadn't picked him out already, tense for a fight but sure of what he was going to say, the proof he could offer that he wasn't a danger. Crel was next; after him, General Malachi would be looking up into Gar's face....
Crel stood at attention, spear slanted outward. Malachi stopped in front of him, holding his hands open for the spear. "Present arms!"
"Sir!" Crel said, and presented the weapon point first, straight into Malachi's ribs.
Malachi's scream broke into a gurgle even as his bodyguard shouted and fell upon Crel. The young man went down under a wave of men while the captains ran to cradle the general in their arms, arguing furiously about whether or not to pull out the spear. They closed around him, hiding him from view, and Gar stood paralyzed, hearing the thoughts of a dying man and his last guttural words: Kill him!
Then the captains stood, moving away from the corpse, and Major Ivack came over to the soldiers who had yanked Crel to his feet. The youth was bruised and bleeding but still alive enough to spit in Ivack's face.
The major backhanded him casually, then caught his hair and yanked his head back, demanding, "Why?"
"Because you burned my village and slew my friends," Crel gasped.
Ivack digested that, holding the youth's head still, then snarled, "Who put you up to it?"
"The Scarlet Company!" Crel shouted.
Furious, Ivack backhanded him again, then said to his captors, "Torture him until he tells their names."
"Quince the Potter in Cellin Village," Crel said through swollen lips. "Ivor the Cooper of Cellin. Joco Smith of Cellin."
"You won't, escape the torture that way," Ivack snarled, then called out to all his men, "What kind of loyalty is this? He names his cohorts in an instant just to save himself a little pain!"
None of the soldiers answered, none breathed even a word. All knew that the pain would not be little and knew the legend even better-that the Scarlet Company's people always gave names readily.
Ivack swung back to Crel. "You'll die in agony for this, laddie."
"Stopping Malachi is worth my life," Crel retorted. Ivack backhanded him across the mouth yet again. "We'll see if you still say that when we've used you for a threshing floor." He turned to Crel's captors. "Throw him down and beat him with flails." Doom-faced, the soldiers hustled Crel away.
Ivack turned to a captain. "Send twenty riders to Cellin and bring those men."
The captain turned away to shout orders. The rankers s
tood frozen, faces expressionless, all with sinking spirits. They knew that the riders would find the potter, the cooper, and the smith fled, all gone on sudden errands. In fact, given the reputation of Malachi and his band, they might find the whole village deserted. They might burn it for revenge, but no one would die.
Except Crel.
Major Ivack came back from the interrogation in the middle of the day, his face thunderous. The soldiers gravitated to the men who had given the beatings, who were swilling ale after their hot work and more than willing to talk about the horror they had visited.
"We beat him to pudding," said the one Gar found, a stocky bandit named Gorbo. "He told us his name right off-Crel, it is-but we beat him for it. Then Ivack asked him what else he knew about the Scarlet Company. He told us that the cooper, the potter, and the smith had all taught him ways to kill with one blow, but that he'd only needed the smith's way-one short stab with every ounce of his strength behind it. Major told us to beat him after the answer, since we hadn't needed to beat him before it."
"Who gave the orders to the potter, the cooper, and the smith?" someone asked.
"That we could beat him for," Gorbo said, "because he didn't know."
"They never do," another soldier muttered.
"He told us he had joined the Scarlet Company only for the privilege of killing the general," Gorbo went on. "That's what he called it-a privilege-and he didn't know nor care who'd guv the three their orders. We gave him a privilege of another halfdozen blows, we did."
"Who told him how to get in among us?" a soldier asked.
"The cooper, he said," Gorbo answered. "The cooper told Crel that the Scarlet Company had known some young man would come along with a lot of hatred and nothing to lose,,that he would be the one to slay the bandit chief. We beat him another dozen blows for that one, too." He took a swig of ale, stared off into the distance, then delivered his judgment.of the ordeal: "That didn't make him know nothing more about the Scarlet Company, though."
"There anything left of him?" Gar asked, already planning a rescue.
"There's some life," Gorbo allowed, "and we didn't break his legs. Major Ivack wants to hang him fancy. Something about drawing him and quartering. Don't know how he means to do that."
"We'll find out tomorrow," another soldier said. Gorbo shook his head. "Before sunset. The major wants to chop him while General Malachi's ghost is still around to see."
The men shuddered, looking around them, and making signs against evil.
Then you had no time to save him, Alea thought, her heart breaking.
I didn't need to, Gar said, and let her remember the rest with him.
Major Ivack had taken command. He didn't seem to be aware of any increase in status, didn't puff himself up or strut, only strode angrily about the camp looking for objects on which to vent his wrath, giving orders in short, clipped phrases. Nonetheless, Gar had the feeling he was about to promote himself to general.
The most pronounced order had been to throw a rope over a tree limb and lay a workbench before it. Gar wondered where the man had heard about drawing and quartering but realized that this was the sort of gruesome tale that passed down from generation to generation without any planning-and resisted efforts to weed it out. Major Ivack looked like the sort who would have listened to such tales with avid attention. Gar didn't like him.
He liked him even less when Ivack took up station before the table, surrounded by the bodyguards who had been General Malachi's. The sergeants bawled orders and marched their men into place around the ancient oak with the noose hanging from its limb. The soldiers stood at ease, glowering and somber, as Gorbo and another ranker frog-marched Crel out of a tent, face dark and swollen with bruises. Up to the oak they hauled him, hands tied behind his back, and stood him with his back to the trunk, facing Ivack. They set the noose about his neck, then snugged it up. "Do you have any last words?" Ivack snarled.
Crel managed to cough the words out of a swollen mouth. "Death to the brutes who kill the innocent!"
"Hoist him up!" Ivack roared, and the bodyguard nearest him pivoted, jamming his dagger into the major's heart.
17
The whole company was silent, shocked at the suddenness of it, and they all heard the bodyguard say, very clearly, "Malachi was too careful. You weren't."
A captain found words. "Wh-why?"
"He led the troops who conquered my village." The bodyguard lifted his head, glaring around. "All right, they'd cast me out, but they were mine, damn it! That's when I joined the Scarlet Company."
"Grab him!" the captain roared.
The bodyguard brought his spear to guard. "You really want to?" He turned to the captain. "Come and take me! But remember-I may not be the only one here from the Scarlet Company. I was waiting, my moment-who else?"
The whole company stood, wavering, irresolute. Gar could feel fear balancing outrage, saw each bandit glancing at the men to left and right of him, saw the twitch of the head as each tried to look behind without others seeing-and felt the moment when fear won out and men eased back just a little.
The bodyguard felt it, too. He turned, stalking over to Crel and drawing his dagger. Crel braced himself, but the bodyguard, jabbed his spear in the ground, took hold of the rope, and sawed through it with half a dozen quick strokes. Crel tottered and almost fell against him.
The bodyguard hoisted him over a shoulder and took up his spear again. He glared around him and said, "We're going now. If you try to follow, be careful who walks beside you." Then he turned and strode away into the woods.
There was a collective intake of breath, of leaning forward, of waiting for an order-but every man glanced at those beside him again, then turned to the captain.
The captain glared darkly after the two men of the Scarlet Company but said nothing.. After a little while, he turned and stalked back to his tent.
The men relaxed, began to talk to one another in hushed tones, to mill about. Gar gazed about him, seeming blank and confused, but listening intently for any mention of the Scarlet Company, anyone thinking it was his duty to draw a dagger.
He heard no one. The bluff had worked.
Of course, the bodyguard hadn't known it was a bluff.
Alea absorbed it all, dazed. Finally she thought, Gar, . what are we doing here?
I've been wondering that myself, Gar answered. I'll meet you tonight and we can talk it over face to face.
Meet me? How? You're a soldier!
Men are beginning to leave already, Gar told her, just packing up their gear and walking off into the forest. Nobody seems to care about stopping them.
Without General Malachi, the whole army is falling apart, Alea thought, still numb.
Certainly after Ivack tried to hold it together. No one wants to be the third-time charm. I can certainly walk away after dark. Where shall we rendezvous?
I'm at the Inn of the North Star, Alea told him. Let me know when you get here and I'll come out to meet you in the common room.
She had a few hours before he came, though. Dazed, Alea made her way down to the river, then followed it upstream, stopping frequently to stare at the water as though it could reveal the mysteries of human greed and cruelty-or at least swallow them and let them dissolve. Then she walked again, letting the sound of the running water lull her, soothe her spirit. When the brook ran in among the trees, she accepted the shade and the murmuring of the leaves as balm. She knelt on a rock and dipped a hand in the stream, letting it run through her fingers. At last she stood up with a sigh-and saw Evanescent.
"You meant it, didn't you?" With no one nearby to hear, she could speak her thoughts aloud. "That you are the Scarlet Company."
Us, and all of you, Evanescent replied, even you newly come, for it seems you have joined them now.
"Why not?" Alea demanded, somewhat irked. "They're the only ones doing anything to cleanse this planet of the evil ones!"
So say many, but not until they have encountered that evil themselves, Evane
scent replied. We remind them, that is all-remind them of evil, and of their dedication to their fellows.
Alea frowned. "You mean you're the ones who keep the men and women of the Scarlet Company from trying to use it as a tool to gain power and riches for themselves?"
When there are no evil and greedy men prowling the land, Evanescent explained, people can grow complacent and forget their zeal for others' freedom, forget there is something greater than themselves, greater than any one human being or even any one family. An encounter with a strange and powerful being reminds them and renews their devotion.
"You scare them back into line," Alea interpreted. Or overawe them and make them rededicate themselves, Evanescent said, for surely if beings of such power as our kind can forgo glory and dominion in search of a greater good, smaller and weaker beings such as people can do so, too.
"You put the fear of the gods in them."
The awe, perhaps. Fear is the smallest part of that. Then they forget us, but the zeal remains.
"Neatly done," Alea said with a cynical smile, "to forget you but remember your impact. What do you gain from it, though?"
A reason for living, mortal woman, the alien native replied, for we may be of different kinds and birthed by different worlds, but we are both living souls, and the welfare of one is the welfare of All-and that All overawes even we of fur and teeth, for we are also of mind and soul.
"And therefore dedicated to the goodness of all," Alea said thoughtfully. "What do you do with those who seek to exploit and hurt their fellows, though?"
Why should we do anything? Evanescent returned. You have seen, through your mate's eyes. The human folk will sooner or later go to the Scarlet Company, who shall train them to turn on the tyrants.
"But they can't always be successful," Alea objected. "Even Malachi stopped the first three assassins. And I somehow doubt that only one man in a hundred years will try to gain power."
There are many, Evanescent admitted, but most are careless and wander in the forest alone.
Alea shuddered.
Even them we do not eat, Evanescent told her, the tone a rebuke. We bury them deeply, after the fashion of your kind-and their deaths are quick and sudden; many do not even know they have died.
A Wizard and a Warlord Page 18