Redoubt

by Mercedes Lackey

  He didn’t ask Amily if she could climb to the loft; he knew she would, or die trying. But he had something else in mind for her.

  There were more doors in the stable now—one for every stall, in fact—and all of them stood wide open. The ground floor was mostly empty except for a few bales of straw and some Trainees and stable hands taking advantage of the quiet places to sit, for there were not a lot of those available with so many people on the Palace and Collegia grounds. Only the two night lamps, one on each wall, were lit. Mags had a notion that in some of the darker corners people were taking advantage of the quiet places to do more than just sit, but that wasn’t any of his business. Dallen went around to the hoist side of the stables, where four or five young ladies in lovely gowns were waiting with varying degrees of impatience and varying degrees of giddiness.

  The hay hoist was made for one man to haul up a pallet of several hay bales at once, so the weight of one young lady was hardly likely to strain its capacity. A comfortable canvas sling, stolen from one of the tree swings down by the river, had been fitted to the hoist. Anyone who wanted to ride up to the loft rather than climb the steep, ladder-like stair would be able to take this somewhat more exciting route up. The trick, however, was that the man at the top of the hoist would use a hay hook to snag the rope and haul the pallet in through the open door at the top. Rather than flailing about in the dark with the heavy hay hook, the young ladies were being encouraged to swing their way to the door and be caught by their escorts. There were a lot of squeals and giggles. And every so often, one of the lads appropriated the swing so he could show off by swinging and jumping in through the door at the apex of his swing.

  If the teachers and other elders had known about this, Mags reflected, they would probably have had a proper fit over it. But they didn’t, and he was pretty sure that with all the Gifts scattered among the crowd, no one was going to get seriously hurt.

  His thought was confirmed when he spotted First-Year Trainee Finny standing just inside the hayloft door, out of the way of the swingers but well in line-of-sight. This was important, because young Finny’s Gift was a particularly powerful one, a kind of Fetching that allowed her to lift or catch objects with her mind that could weigh as much as a Companion. Finny would not allow anyone to fall.

  “Well,” he said over his shoulder to Amily, “Care to try? Finny’s up above, so it’s safe as houses.”

  He could just see Amily’s face by craning his neck, and she looked both excited and a little bit anxious as she watched one of the Bardic Trainees fling herself into the waiting arms of another.

  “If you’re going to catch me, and Finny’s there . . . I think so. But you won’t think badly of me if I get scared and ask to be put down on the ground again, will you?” She bit her lip a little.

  He wanted to kiss her. “Nay, I’ll just reckon you have more sense than the rest of us.” He swung his leg over Dallen’s saddle horn and dropped down to the ground, then lifted Amily down. And, feeling emboldened, he led her into the line while Dallen ambled off to be divested of his regalia and join the other Companions in the Field.

  :Don’t get yourself knocked silly-sideways,: Dallen said mildly as he vanished into the darkness.

  :Eh, this is nothing compared to m’roof-running,: Mags assured him, as he took his place in the sling and waited to be hauled aloft. And really, it wasn’t. He’d done much more perilous leaps on the nighttime rooftops, and the loft was very well lit. The absence of hay meant people could bring up as many lanterns as they chose, and they did. A couple of good pumps of his legs got him the height and momentum he wanted, and he capped his jump by turning it into a somersaulting tumble through the air, rolling to his feet, that left him standing again with his arms spread, taking a little, mocking bow.

  “Allo, Finny,” he said, nodding to the short, shy girl who must have changed out of her Formal Grays into something more comfortable as soon as she got the chance. I should’ve done that. Oh, well, too late now. These’ll need a wash. “Glad to see you’re here to keep us from breaking our necks.”

  Finny blushed with pleased confusion. “Really . . . I couldn’t . . . I mean . . .”

  Mags beamed at her. “Damn shame with a Gift like yours they won’t let you on the Kirball teams. Did you think about volunteering for the Healers’ squad? Be really useful to have someone that could lift a person with a busted bone without moving anything.”

  She flushed even redder. “Do you think . . . would you . . .”

  “I’ll talk to the Captains and Bear as soon as all this wedding flummery is over,” he promised. “Bet they’ll all be falling all over each other to ask you first.”

  “Oh!” she said, deep pink with pleasure. He gave her shoulders a friendly squeeze. Sometimes being “Mags the Kirball champion” and “Mags the hero” was nice. When he could make someone as shy and anxious as Finny feel wanted and good—that was when it stopped being annoying.

  She was so happy now her eyes just shone behind her glass lenses. He grinned again. “Thenkee, Finny,” he just said, with all the gratitude he could put in his voice. “Now, it’ll be Amily coming up next, so let’s make sure she comes in just as soft as a feather.” He looked over the edge of the loft door. Amily was just getting into the swing; she glanced up and spotted him, lamplight falling softly on her face, and she saw Finny’s close-cropped head beside his. She waved, looking relieved.

  “All right, boys, it’s Amily, give her a smooth ride!” cried a young Guard Trainee who was helping the girls into the swing down below. Mags looked over to see a cheerful-faced young giant of a Guard Trainee on the rope and nodded to him. The youngster nodded back and began hauling the rope, slowly, carefully, and very smoothly. At one point, only her friends had known Amily was the King’s Own’s daughter, and most people up here on the Hill were not aware she existed. But after the first attempted abduction, everyone became aware of her, and after the second, successful kidnapping, she suddenly acquired a veritable army of protectors.

  Finny remained poised at the edge of the loft door, practically quivering with concentration. When Amily came into view, Finny waved at her.

  “I can . . . I . . . I can give you a little push . . . if you want,” Finny said hesitantly. “If that would help . . .”

  “Oh, would you?” Amily begged. “It looks a lot higher from here than I thought!”

  On hearing that, Finny did a lot more than give Amily a “little push.” With her face set in a grimace of concentration, Finny stared at Amily, and without Amily having to move her legs at all, she began swinging in a gentle, highly controlled arc, until she was close enough for Mags to catch. And as he reached for her, he could feel Finny helping to steady her, so bringing her into the loft was no more difficult, and no more dangerous, than lifting her down from Dallen’s back.

  She felt it too, and she beamed as she thanked the Trainee. Finny went an even deeper pink but managed to accept the thanks graciously.

  Another girl was already coming up, though, and Finny quickly turned her attention back to making sure she did so safely. Mags and Amily moved out of the way and scanned the hayloft.

  There were dozens of lanterns hanging from the rafters, and since the loft was meant to store hay and straw through the winter for a great many Companions, these upper walls with their black timbers and white-plastered noggin between were a full story tall, with the roof and rafters above that. Without the hay, it looked like a rustic hall, and not part of a stable. There was plenty of room for whatever anyone wanted to do, even though there must have been more than fifty people up here. Mags had been part of the contingent helping to get food up during the day, so he had a pretty good idea of what was on the crowded tables down at the north end of the loft. “Are you hungry?” he asked.

  He certainly was. There had been an awful lot of running around today and not a lot of time
to eat.

  “Starving,” Amily replied, her eyes warming with her smile.

  The south half of the loft was where the gathering of musicians had set up, so it wasn’t too hard to weave their way through the crowd to get to the food. It was every bit as good as a Midwinter spread at Master Soren’s. There were pocket pies, both meat and fruit, and tiny egg pies and fruit tarts. There were cheeses—sharp and yellow, mild and white, pungent with veins of blue running through them. There was white and rye and barley bread and even an oat bread that Mags was rather partial to. There were hard-boiled eggs and everything pickled that could be pickled. There was thin-sliced hard sausage and sausage in pastry. There were cookies, candied nuts, hard-boiled sweets, and plenty of fruit, but for once, there was only one sort of cake—the wedding cake, which Mags expected would be good enough that no one would miss any other sort. Mags was pleased to see that his favorites and Amily’s were still available. There weren’t any plates, probably because everything that even looked like a plate was in service up at the Palace, but knowing that this was coming, some enterprising soul had bought up the entire output of Haven’s apprentice basket-weavers to use instead. The work was terrible and would ordinarily have been burned, but it was certainly good enough to hold food for the night. Mags secured something that looked as if it had been intended as a sieve and something else that might have been a lid, and he filled them with little meat and fruit pies, cheese chunks, bread, grapes, and slices of the wedding cake, which was a rich, dark creation scented with spice and honey, bursting with chopped nuts. There was quite a crowd at the food tables and not so much at the drink tables, so with unspoken accord, Amily had gone to get drink for both of them.

  Although there was a light spiced honey wine available, Amily had gotten them both cups cleverly made of molded and waxed paper pulp full of spiced cider instead. “Oh, good choice,” Mags told her, when he managed to make his way to her.

  “Well, you’re playing a game tomorrow, and I don’t want you to have to do so with a mead head,” she laughed.

  He rolled his eyes ruefully. “I hope the others remember that,” he replied. The Kirball match was going to be an exhibition game, the Prince’s team against the King’s, with the members of each picked by their respective patron. Mags was on the Prince’s team, which pleased him quite a bit. If nothing else, that would put to rest the last unease about his loyalty and how Prince Sedric felt about it.

  The loft might have been cleared of straw and hay, but there were plenty of other things to sit on. The bedrolls everyone was supposed to make and keep available at all times, in case there was a sudden need to put everyone in the Field (or take a survival test), made perfectly good seating, some people had hauled up benches from the stable below, and others had brought up the folding cots some preferred over bedrolls, and which Mags did not trust at all. He had brought up his own bedroll and a couple of old cushions, and he got them out of the corner and spread out in no time at all. Amily needed a little help to get down to the floor, but once there, she seemed quite comfortable.

  It was rather like having a picnic indoors. All the loft doors were open, and a good breeze was coming through; all the musicians were clustered around the door at this end with people disposed on their various seats around them, too busy eating and drinking to talk.

  “Where’s the dancing?” Amily wanted to know.

  “Down below,” Mags told her. “There’re too many to fit up here and have dancing, so we all agreed the dancers would be outside, and people who just wanted to get together would be up here. That’s why the musicians are at the door there. Look! There’re Bear and Lena!” He waved at their friends, who had several more of their usual circle in tow, and before long there was a cluster of Kirball team members, a couple more Bardic Trainees besides Lena, and two more shy and very young-looking Healer Trainees. Mags remembered when Lena was as shy as that, a thin, delicate, dark-haired thing with sad brown eyes. Now although she was still thin, she gave the impression of strength along with delicacy, and her eyes were seldom sad. Bear, of course was Bear, still. Still peering from behind his lenses, still looking like a sleepy, affable bear full of honey and good nature. Not so round anymore—he’d grown into some good muscles of late. But it was no surprise that he’d rounded up the Healer Trainees—he was always one for picking up strays. Rather like Mags.

  Bear introduced them, but they seemed very much overawed by the company they were in, and they just sat there with round eyes, occasionally remembering to eat and drink. The rest of them, however, were as famished as Mags was, which was not surprising, really. Every free hand had been needed right up until the beginning of the ceremony, and what meals had been snatched had often been eaten on the run.

  The cooks had clearly rewarded their diligence, however. This was not cast-offs from the tables meant for the nobles.

  When he and Amily had sat down, the musicians had been a tambour drummer, a girl with a gittern, another with a hautboy, and someone Mags couldn’t quite see with a set of small-pipes. By the time Bear’s group settled, the hautboy player and the tambour drummer had been replaced by someone with a set of bones and someone with a shepherd’s flute. It was clear that the musicians—not all of whom were in Trainee Red—were rotating in and out as people got tired of playing or were ready to eat. Right now the music was all lively country dances, things most musicians knew very well. And from the sound of whooping and laughter outside, the dancing was going on apace. The breeze outside had strengthened, which was a good thing; it kept the air moving through the loft.

  “Are you planning on playing later?” Amily asked Lena, who nodded.

  “We brought up practice instruments and left them here to share,” she explained. “That way nobody needs to worry about his personal instruments tonight. Accidents do happen after all. No one wants to have a foot put through his prize gittern.”

  One of the other Bardic trainees shuddered and ate a big piece of cake to comfort himself. “That happened to me over Midwinter,” he explained. “Family gather got rowdy. I was like to die.”

  He ate another piece of cake to comfort himself. “Did all right out of it I s’pose,” he said, after a while. “Family took up collection, Master Martin, the luthier in Haven, took pity on me, and I got a nice gittern out of it, I guess . . .”

  “But no instrument is like the first good one you ever get,” said Lena sympathetically. “That one is special.”

  The other lad nodded glumly.

  “Write a song about it,” Lena suggested. “It probably won’t make you feel better, but it’s good to get things like that out in the open. You know what the teachers say, strong emotions make strong music.”

  “Huh. Maybe I will,” the other Trainee said after a moment, then turned his attention back to his food.

  Amily got up and slowly made her way to the open door, smiling a little at the musicians as they made room for her. She settled down where she could look down at the dancers. Mags picked up the cushions and brought them to her.

  Down below, the crowd was egging on two young men who were particularly good at some sort of rather acrobatic endeavor that involved a lot of jumping and kicking and tumbling. It didn’t look like any dance he was familiar with, but, then, he wasn’t familiar with a lot of dances.

  “I’ll dance at Midwinter,” Amily said, softly, out of the blue. “I will.”

  Mags felt as if he were going to burst with pride. “Yes,” he said simply, and sat down beside her. “You will.”

  He had been afraid that watching the dancers would just make her more aware of what she still couldn’t do, but instead, it seemed to be making her more determined. She’d never wanted to watch dancing before—

  Dallen put in his two coppers’ worth of observation. :Maybe that was because before, she’d been defined, at least in her own mind, by everything she wasn’t.:
>
  :You think?: Mags asked.

  :Use that clever magpie mind of yours. How many things did she have that she was?:

  Dallen was right, as Dallen usually was. The more he thought about it, the more he could see all the “nots” that had been in Amily’s life, and fair few positives. She wasn’t able to walk without help, which automatically made her someone who had to be aided rather than someone who could aid. All that could have been worked around if she had qualified for any of the Collegia, but she had no Gifts and obviously no Companion. She wasn’t a courtier, she didn’t have her father’s ability to seduce information out of people without them knowing it, she wasn’t—well, so very many things. But Bear had changed all that. One thing that had been impossible, that she should ever be like everyone else in the most basic of ways, suddenly became not only possible but actually happened. And if one impossible thing had happened, how many more could? She could dance, she could learn to ride, herself, and on a horse, not a Companion, she could—

  “And I am going to ask the Weaponsmaster to help me,” she went on, as the two young men finally exhausted each other. She turned to look at him, her chin set stubbornly. “After all, Lydia and Saski and some of the other girls all know how to fight as well as any of you Herald Trainees. I want to be able to fight back if I need to. I don’t want to be the weak point anymore. I don’t want to be the one everyone has to worry about. And if something happens again, if there’s another attempt . . .” for a moment, her eyes flashed steel” . . . I want to give anyone who thinks they can hurt Father through me the surprise of their lives.”

  :Well good for her,: said Dallen. :I expected something of the sort from her, but not quite so soon.:

  “That sounds like a good plan to me,” he agreed. “It can’t help but strengthen you more, faster. Bet Bear’ll agree. The Weaponsmaster knows all sorts of tricks, all kinds of—well—dirty-fighting ways. Sounds like something worth doing.”