Paladin's Strength

by T. Kingfisher

  They did not camp. They walked as long as the mules held out and then they stopped until it was light enough for the mules to start walking again. They lit no fires at night. No one even really slept. They sat with their backs to the wagon, shoulder to shoulder, waiting for attacks from the dark.

  “You could sleep in the wagon with the wounded, Domina,” said Istvhan.

  “I could,” said Clara, not moving.

  “No one will think less of you.”

  “Mmm.” She gave him the best smile she could muster under the circumstances, but she didn’t get up. He sat on one side of her, Thorn on the other, all of them half-dozing, half-watchful, waiting.

  Clara woke once to find herself slumped against his shoulder. She moved awkwardly, trying to resettle herself, and he only murmured something that might have been “It’s all right,” but it was clear that he wasn’t entirely awake either.

  When it was light, they got up again. You could steep tea leaves in cold water and make something that wasn’t exactly tea but still had some kind of kick. Galen passed the tea around. It tasted gritty and bitter, but everyone drank it.

  They put Marli on the third mule and Thorn led her behind the others. Everyone else watched the woods and the hills for movement. A partridge taking flight set them all jumping, grabbing for swordhilts, and there were too many partridges and too many geese and everyone made themselves even more tired.

  Now? whispered the beast. Now?

  No. It’s only birds. Go back to sleep.

  The beast grumbled. It understood watchfulness. It was good at watching. Unfortunately, as groggy as Clara was, she didn’t know if she could contain it if something startled it too badly.

  Go to sleep. It’s cold. You should be napping.

  It obeyed.

  They rested the mules. They sat on the cold ground and didn’t quite sleep. They stood up. They went on again.

  By the morning of the third day, Clara had stopped really believing there was a town ahead of them. There was no town. Towns weren’t real. What sort of world had towns in it? You just walked along forever, not really sleeping, hoping the wounded didn’t die. Maybe they had already died. Maybe everyone had died in the attack, including Clara. They were all ghosts, walking beside the wagon, pulled by the ghosts of mules. Did mules have ghosts? Probably they did, if it would be inconvenient for someone. Mules were like that. There was no town. There was only the road, which was damp clay splotched with stones, like a toad’s back. Perhaps it was a toad. Perhaps the whole world was a toad. It was no stupider than anyone else’s cosmology. Clara would leave the order of St. Ursa and found the order of St. Toad. They would sleep a lot. Yes. Sleeping seemed like a good commandment for the order. Sleep and hot tea. Yes.

  She was working out the various ranks and the secondary rules for St. Toad’s worship when Galen said, “There’s smoke rising ahead. We’re nearly there.”

  The town probably had a name, but Clara never learned it. It was the Place of Hot Tea and Beds, Sacred Holy Land of St. Toad. There were a half-dozen houses, a blacksmith, and a public house with two stories. Istvhan and Brant went ahead to the public house. The rest of them stood on the edge of town, clutching the wagon sides for support. Brindle got down and patted the mules, telling them that they were good and handsome and patient and almost as good as an ox.

  Clara grayed out for a bit, then came to as Istvhan returned. “All right,” he said. “Troops, we’re in the stable. Brant, Domina, they have rooms for each of you, and we’ll put Marli in the third. They’ve got a doctor who will come out to look at her. Thorn, you stay with her.”

  As he passed Clara, he leaned over and added “I’m afraid your feet will dangle over the end a bit.”

  “At this point,” said Clara wearily, “so long as my head is on the pillow, I do not think the rest of me has much say in the matter.” He chuckled.

  The room was the size of a large closet and thus roomy compared to a novice nun’s cell, and it was clean. There was a tiny slit of window to let in air and a chamberpot under the bed. Clara peeled off her filthy outer robe and dropped it outside the door, then fell down on the bed. Her legs dangled off. Her arms also dangled off. It did not matter. She slept.

  Twelve

  Istvhan wanted sleep more than he wanted air but he could not until his people were settled. The stables were clean and warm by the standards of a mountain in early winter. The woman who ran the public house was definitely used to caravans coming in, but also had not been expecting any this late. She told them plainly that she could provide dinners but not supplies for the road. Istvhan agreed. He would have agreed to just about anything if it included a doctor for the wounded, which it did.

  It took an hour for the doctor to get there. He was an older man with shockingly white hair. “I’m nothing fancy,” he said. “I treat horses and humans. I was out on a farm when word came.”

  “It’s fine,” said Istvhan wearily. “It’s been days, another hour won’t matter now.”

  “Mmm.”

  The word came back about as Istvhan had expected. Colt and Nils would heal on their own. Marli was different. “She needs to not be in a wagon or on a horse,” said the doctor bluntly. “Her brain’s addled and bouncing around isn’t helping. She’ll get better…probably…but she needs quiet and rest.”

  Istvhan nodded. “Right, then,” he said, and went to go make arrangements with the innkeeper.

  “I’d like to stay with her,” said Thorn. “I know the job’s not over, Captain, and I know you’re short-handed, but…” She trailed off. Thorn was not the type to beg.

  Neither was Istvhan the type to be needlessly cruel. “I expected you would. I wouldn’t leave one of our people alone with an injury like this. The room’s taken care of for a season. I did volunteer you to help chop firewood for our host.” He paused. “You’ll get snowed in, I expect. Can’t be helped. Make for a Temple of the White Rat when Marli’s well enough to travel, and they’ll make sure everything’s square.”

  “Good of you, Captain. Thank you.”

  He left Marli’s room and went down the hall. Snores emanated from Clara’s room. He smiled ruefully. The nun was a trooper, he’d give her that. She’d stayed on her feet for that entire grim forced march, even if she’d been half-asleep and holding onto the wagon toward the end. He checked in on Brindle and the mules, and found the gnole stretched out atop a pile of grain sacks. “They doing well?”

  “Eh.” The gnole shrugged. “A mule is tough. A mule sometimes pretends otherwise, if a mule thinks it will get out of work, though. A gnole thinks they will be fine.” He closed his eyes again, which Istvhan took as a clear dismissal.

  At last, with all his charges settled, he spread his cloak and his bedroll over the straw and sank down himself and sleep fell on him as quickly as an enemy.

  Clara woke with her back aching and her feet aching and her head aching. She sat up. Everything ached more or less the same amount, so nothing was getting special treatment. She wrapped the blanket around herself. How long had she slept? Was it time for breakfast or dinner?

  Apparently, it was dinner. Her robe, newly washed, was waiting outside the door. She shrugged into it. It had been dried over a fire, as was the fashion here, so the fabric smelled strongly of woodsmoke. Pungent, but not unpleasant, and at least it covered other, more bodily odors. She ran a brush through her hair. She needed a bath badly. Her last splash in the river had been days ago. Still, nobody else was going to be in any better shape.

  She came down the stairs and saw that several of the mercenaries, including Captain Istvhan, were standing in the common room of the inn. They waved and Istvhan gestured to a table.

  Clara let out an internal groan when she saw the seating arrangements. A long, low table, flanked by long, low benches. The people in this part of the world tended to be short and compact and they built their furniture accordingly.

  She sat down. Her knees were higher than the table. She was going to have to bend near
ly double to eat. It’s fire and food and you’re not being attacked by bandits. Shut up and thank St. Ursa for your blessings.

  Istvhan sat down across from her with a grunt. She looked across the table and saw that his kneecaps were also up around his ears. They shared a long, speaking look across the table, two very large people in a much smaller world, and Clara felt a smile spreading across her face.

  “I’m so glad to sit down that I don’t even care,” said Istvhan. “But it’s probably going to take a couple of people and a pulley to get me back up again.”

  “Oh, Saint Ursa, you and me both.”

  “Are you doing okay?”

  “I feel like you look.”

  Istvhan glanced down at his scratched hands and rumpled clothes. “I’m so very sorry. You look much better than I feel.”

  “Is that chivalry I hear talking?”

  “Possibly.”

  The innkeeper provided food. Clara had no idea what it was and didn’t care. Some local vegetable that resembled sweet potatoes, with a spicy gravy and unidentifiable meat bits. It was hot and not a tightly packed bar of meat and berries. It was amazing. The entire table put their heads down and ate in steady, business-like fashion, not speaking until they were done.

  “Madam innkeeper,” said Galen, placing his hand over his heart, “you have saved all our lives. You are a gem among women.”

  “Ah, get on with you.” She waved a dish rag in his general direction. “I know your type. You’d say that to anyone who fed you.”

  “Yes, but I mean it very sincerely every time.”

  “And now,” said Istvhan, sitting up and then grabbing for his lower back with a pained expression, “may I ask you for the news of the road? Or perhaps share ours?”

  “Ah?” The innkeeper pulled up a chair. Clara could practically see ears pricking up among the patrons who lined the bar. It was all innocent enough—travelers were expected to share the news from the road, a payment as real as coin, if less tangible—but she still wasn’t sure if she liked it.

  What do they know about the ones who raided my convent? The Arral let them pass, even though some of the thanes must have guessed. Are these people complicit as well?

  She hated having to be this suspicious. It felt like she was committing some kind of sin against these strangers, if only in her head, by suspecting them of such crimes.

  “Bandits,” said Istvhan. “Cost me a couple good men and laid out one of my best.” He jerked his chin in the direction of Marli’s room. “Don’t the Arral do anything?”

  The innkeeper sighed. “Only if they attack the Arral. And I’m not exactly blaming them for that, because you notice we’re not doing anything about them either.” She scowled. “Of course, we’re mostly farmers and hunters, we don’t have the kind of force the Arral do. And I won’t swear the nearest thane doesn’t get a payoff from the bandits for letting them alone.”

  “Way of the world, I suppose.” Istvhan leaned back. “Anyone I can pass the word to that might be able to do anything about it?”

  The innkeeper shook her head. “I’ve thought about it,” she said. “We’ve got no local lords and we sure as hell don’t want anyone’s army coming in. Lesser of two evils.”

  “Paladins?” asked Istvhan. Clara lifted her head, faintly surprised at that suggestion, or at least that it was a mercenary captain who made it.

  One of the regulars snorted. “If there was a demon, the Dreaming God’s folk would be here already. We’ve sent word to the Forge God’s temples, but they don’t much care for fixing problems in the middle of nowhere.”

  “They should,” said Galen, all humor gone from his voice.

  There was half a beat of awkward silence and then Istvhan said, “Ah, well,” in a hearty voice and held out his mug for a refill. “Way of the world, as I said. But this ale is fine enough it ought to be defended. Another question for you fine people. About a month ago, a pair of wagons might have passed this way.” He nodded to Clara to continue.

  “Two wagons,” said Clara. “With bars. Canvas rolled down over them, though, so you might not see the bars. And I doubt that the drivers would let anyone get close enough to see the contents.” She marveled, from a little distance, how calm her voice sounded, relating this information. She had been inside those wagons, watching her sisters, her sisters watching her back. When the canvas came down, things became hot and dim and close. When the canvas came down, you realized how much the fresh air through the bars was keeping you sane. “My sisters. Nuns from my convent. They were kidnapped.”

  “You can scream,” said the man who sat beside the wagon driver. “We are coming to a town. You can scream and shout and there is even a chance that they will hear you.” He lifted one hand, which held the ends of a narrow chain threaded through the bars. The middle of the chain passed around the neck of Anais, the youngest novice, holding her tight to the bars. “And if you scream, I pull. She’ll definitely choke to death. Her head might even come off, if I pull hard enough.” He smiled at them, a flash of teeth in the gloom of the canvas. “So think very carefully before you scream.”

  Anais looked at them and mouthed, Do it. The abbess shook her head. “We will not scream,” she said. And they did not, while tears streamed down Anais’s face and she breathed in short, panicky gasps and the chain around her throat twisted red lines into her skin.

  The innkeeper swore aloud. “A month ago, you say?”

  Clara nodded, yanked from the memory and glad to go. Istvhan looked from the woman’s face to Clara’s.

  “The plague wagons,” said one of the men at the bar. “Gods be damned.”

  “They played us for fools,” said the innkeeper. Her lips went thin and hard. “They said they had sickness in the wagons and couldn’t stop for fear of infection. The leader tossed us coin and we set down bread and meat and wine for him to pick up. Gave the bastards a good damn deal, too, since you don’t haggle over rations for the sick.” She looked as if she wanted to spit, but didn’t. “And they were prisoners, you say?”

  “Probably they were sick, too,” said Clara. “But I doubt it was anything they could spread. Just ill from being confined and kept in chains.”

  “I gave them a load of fodder for their horses,” said the man at the bar who had spoken. He had turned around to face the table full of travelers. “Only charged them half, because…well. Hells.” He looked Clara in the eye, and she saw only regret there. “I’m sorry, Sister. Didn’t mean to help them on their way.”

  “You couldn’t have known,” said Clara. “It was charity that motivated you. There is nothing to forgive.” Absolving the man of his small, misdirected kindness steadied her a little. This was the sort of thing she understood, even if she was a mere lay sister, and not trained in any of the higher mysteries. People wanted to know that they had done their best and that the gods saw them doing it. They didn’t need to know that you were a minor member of an exceedingly minor order, they just needed to know that you presumably had some sort of connection to the god you represented.

  Which I do, but probably not quite in the way they would expect… Still, St. Ursa had kept her on the trail of her sisters, and that was no small thing. Thank You. I am still following as best I can.

  “So they did come this way,” said Istvhan. “That’s useful to know. Thank you.”

  “I can’t believe someone would kidnap nuns,” muttered the innkeeper. “Is nothing sacred anymore?”

  Galen and Istvhan traded glances, not quite subtly enough for Clara to avoid seeing it. She said nothing. The reasons that the raiders might want these particular nuns was not a topic for general conversation. She folded her hands in her sleeves and looked away, trying not to meet anyone’s eyes.

  As her gaze traveled over the bar, she caught a glimpse of a man who was staring at her. He was medium height, which might make him tall for this region, medium build. Hair medium brown, skin medium tan. Nothing that would make him stand out, a man designed to fade into backgrounds. If
he hadn’t been staring at her so intently, she would never have noticed him.

  Why is he looking at me like that?

  Some men did like larger women, it was true. Clara was aware that she was a striking figure, when she wasn’t exhausted and travelworn. But she didn’t get any sense of lust from him, nor awkwardness, merely a kind of chilly appraisal.

  You may be imagining things. You were just feeling suspicious a moment ago, and now someone who stares a bit strangely is setting you on edge. Clara examined this thought dispassionately. Could she be imagining things? St. Ursa knew that she’d been through enough in the last few weeks to set anyone’s nerves jangling.

  No. No, I don’t think so. She recognized that little voice, the one that told you to be nice and get along and doubt your own suspicions. It was good at counterfeiting the voice of the convent, the one that told you to be kind and forgive, but it wasn’t quite right. She glanced over at the unobtrusive man again. He turned away, face half-hidden behind his mug. No. Something’s going on there. But we’re leaving tomorrow, and other people have their own oddities that occasionally intersect with yours. Keep an eye out, but don’t panic. Yet.

  The conversation went on around her. Galen described the Arral markets and gave a droll rendition on the current politics. The innkeeper jumped in occasionally with clarifications and questions. With a full stomach and a warm fire, despite the uncomfortable bench and the suspicious fellow at the bar, Clara might almost have fallen asleep.

  “Bit of an uproar in the farthest west market,” said Galen, waving a hand. “Down south, they said they found the damnedest thing. A dead body who’d had his head cut off—and another head that didn’t match!” He waited for the appropriate gasps from the audience.

  The innkeeper started. “What?”

  “A body with the wrong head,” said Galen. “Had you heard this story?”