by Sarah Remy
After some time wasted exploring back and forth along the edge of the cliff and an evening spent gnawing tasteless jerky while trying to think like a squirrel, Liam finally worked it out.
“Water,” he explained to Morgan their second morning at camp. “Surely they don’t drink from the Maiden below—it’s foul. They must come up to drink, I’m sure of it. Somewhere close to the edge, somewhere sheltered, somewhere they’re not easily picked off by bird or fox.”
“The only fresh water is all the way down the hill,” Morgan argued, “in the old well.”
“The arrowroot pool,” Avani suggested from where she sat near Bear, ripping strips of cloth from a pile of embroidered petticoats and rolling the strips into bandages. Liam was certain she hadn’t ridden out of the city with court fancy dress bundled in her journey pack. “Ai, it’s more of a puddle than a pool, but it’s close to the cliff and surrounded all around by old heather.”
Morgan had run off to look and reported back that although the ground around the puddle was too marshy for tracks, it seemed a fine solution for a colony of thirsty squirrels, so Liam had taught the young earl the trick of anchoring a line of snares to a heavy piece of broken lance pole borrowed from a refuse pile, and the secret of anise seed for bait. Avani carried plenty of anise and the broken lance was solid enough to stay put in the mud near the arrowroot pool.
Morgan and Liam set the trap before dark and on their third day on the hill they had an abundance of squirrel meat for their cook pot and extra for Bear.
But on the fifth day, their snares were empty. Morgan, already in a pother over Avani’s visions, with Liam’s tooth marks still healing on his wrist, took the empty traps as a personal affront.
“By the Aug,” the lad complained, stomping in the mud. “Someone’s been about thieving our catch. Dammit all, my mother will hear about this. Wythe makes no allowance for theft. This is treachery!”
“A few stolen squirrels are not treachery. And I don’t expect Wythe makes allowance for a tattling earl, either,” Liam said mildly, squatting to examine the trap. “You’ll never make a good commander if you run down to mum every time something goes awry. You didn’t used to grouse so much before His Majesty pinned the bar to your breast. What’s changed?”
Morgan didn’t reply. Liam, without looking around, could feel the young earl tensing to spring.
“Do it, my lord,” he said, “and this time I’ll box your ears. It’s not ‘practice’ if you deserve a thrashing.” He rolled the lance pole over in the mud. The snares had been carefully loosened which meant Morgan was correct in assuming thievery.
“Sir,” Morgan said, gone abruptly somber, “look.”
He’d wandered away from the drinking hole and was peering at something in the heather. Curious, Liam joined him. What he saw there made him reach for the knife on his belt and wheel around, staring about, though he knew better. If Cleena had meant to be seen, she’d be standing before him, not leaving prettily wrapped gifts in the heather where she must have known he would find them.
Cleena, for it must have been she, had spread a patchwork kerchief in the mud beneath a large gorse, and weighted it down with an assortment of stoppered pots. Liam counted seven of the familiar jars, each decorated with a sprig of flowering herb. He’d seen their like many a time in her stall at the Fair when he’d stopped by to sample her sweetmeats.
“She took our squirrels and left us honey,” Morgan said, baffled. Although he’d not heard the whole of Liam’s wild Hunt, he knew enough to reach for his own blade and cast a nervous glance around the cliff edge. “What does it mean?”
“A game, I’m supposing.” Liam wished the sight of those little pots didn’t make his heart constrict behind his ribs. The wounds in his leg were barely scabbed over. He kept Faolan’s torque hidden in his bedroll with the few other precious things he could call his own. He hadn’t expected to mourn the aes si so deeply; he’d met Faolan just twice, he was for every purpose a stranger.
But Faolan had been kind to him, as much as any sidhe knew kindness. In welcoming Liam into the Hunt, he’d offered up a chance at belonging.
“Some sort of barrowman jape,” Liam said. Still, he bundled the pots together, knotting the kerchief into a neat bag. “Or warning. She doesn’t like me much.”
Morgan looked doubtful. “Is it poisoned, do you think? The honey, I mean? Because it seems a fair trade to me, and she did save you from dying, so I don’t know why you insist she dislikes you, and I wouldn’t mind having something sweet to eat with our supper.”
“Avani can tell us, I imagine,” Liam said.
“No squirrel for the pot.” Sighing, Morgan reset the snares. “Best visit the quartermaster after all.”
“Avani first,” Liam decided. “If the honey’s good, we might trade some for extra rations.”
“Oh, aye.” For the first time in days the young earl brightened. “But not all of it. If the world’s to end soon I’ll enjoy a pot of honey first.”
The walk down the hill to the healer’s tent meant they had to pass through the center of Wythe’s makeshift garrison. While the king’s constable administered to the royal cavalry as a whole, it was Morgan’s duty to directly marshal those mounted troops put forth by house Wythe. There were near one hundred tents flying Wythe’s proud green-and-gray pennant beneath Wilhaiim’s scarlet and silver, making house Wythe one of the largest and oldest divisions of the cavalry. Wythe took singular pride in the horses bred and raised on their land for service to the throne. Similarly the men and women sent to serve as Kingsmen were by custom drafted into the cavalry for their dexterity in the saddle.
During the day, the garrison was mostly empty of Kingsmen. Horses, hobbled near individual tents at night, needed exercise and distraction during the day to keep sound. Some were ridden out on scouting assignments. No one knew for certain from which direction the desert would emerge and a soldier on a horse could survey surrounding terrain much more efficiently than any foot infantryman. The rest were ridden in practice or in recreation. Every animal was meticulously groomed morning and evening to check for signs of illness or injury. A soldier’s horse was more than just a livelihood; a cavalryman without a mount was infantry.
Servants and squires tended to the fitness of the camp while their betters tended to the safety of the kingdom. Water for soldier and horse had to be carried up in buckets from the stone well at the base of the hill. Meat, bread, fruit, and ale from the quartermaster’s tent also needed to be refreshed daily. Armor and tack required mending and maintenance. A Kingsman’s battle readiness, Morgan liked to lecture Liam, depended on the comfort of his temporary home.
In the wake of the Red Worm, Wythe’s squires were grown men and women, farm folk better suited to battle than servitude drafted to replace lost children. When the time came, they would be expected to fight alongside their commissioned champion instead of keeping back and out of direct danger as a young squire might.
They were kind to Liam despite the rumors attached to his scars. He fretted over their own battle readiness after days of backbreaking work but found small consolation in the knowledge that, because they worked for the cavalry, they would at least be provided a good horse while their less fortunate counterparts in the infantry would not.
They paused in their work to bow in Morgan’s direction as he and Liam made their way through the garrison. Morgan accepted their recognition with a congenial word here and a stiff nod there, but it was obvious from the growing color in his cheeks that he was unhappy with the attention. That he was uncomfortable was impossible to miss; servants and squires muttered amongst themselves as he passed.
“You might at least pretend you’re pleased to see them,” Liam said under his breath. “Instead of walking like you’ve a stick shoved up your arse. My lord. They’re looking to you for courage.”
“I’ll ask for your advice,” Morgan responded out of the corner of his mouth, “once you’ve commanded one hundred and eight soldiers to take futi
le stand. Sir.”
“Futile?” Liam lengthened his step until they walked side by side, though tradition dictated a squire walk a perfect two paces behind his master. “Bit glum, don’t you think? His Majesty wouldn’t send out soldiers on a hopeless cause.”
Morgan snorted. “Of course he would. He has to.” He leaned close. “By all reports the odds are six to one, and if they have access to sidhe tunnels they could appear anywhere at all—or several places at once. I’m leading my brother’s men to their deaths, Liam, and they must resent me for it.”
“They’re your men now,” Liam reminded him, “and they’d resent you less if you pretended some pride. A soldier going to his or her death—why, I imagine they’d feel better about the job for some gratitude. I know I’d feel better about dying at your side if I thought you loved me more for it.”
Morgan chewed his lip. “They’ll be dying for Renault.”
“It’s not the king walking amongst them now,” Liam retorted. “It’s you.”
“I’m frightened,” Morgan confessed, voice cracking. “This wasn’t supposed to be me. It was supposed to be Michael, and me the squire scrubbing his gear. I’m not old enough. I don’t know how to be a man, much less an earl.”
A squire, lugging two buckets of water past them on the track, stopped to gape their way. Morgan awarded her a frozen smile. Liam shook his head and waved her on. Water splashed over the sides of her buckets as she hurried up the hill.
“They’re not meant to know that,” Liam argued, drawing Morgan on. “And it’s your job to see that they don’t. What did Riggins say about the Kingsmen who took a last stand against the barrowmen and in the end drove them to ground?”
One corner of Morgan’s mouth turned up. “He said, ‘It wasn’t their might nor even their steel nor even the horrific Automata that made the sidhe believe the war was lost. It was that they baffled the sidhe host with sheer bullshit, and made the world entire believe humankind had triumphed.’”
“Aye, good advice for a young commander facing his first test at warring, don’t you think?”
“Baffle them with bullshit?” Morgan enquired archly, but some of the hectic color had left his cheeks.
“Seems like a sound plan to me,” Liam proclaimed, and was delighted by Morgan’s honest mirth.
The quartermaster’s tent squatted at the bottom of the hill within sight of the red woods. It was a lively place during daylight hours, crowded with members of house Wythe vying for the choicest portions of meat, the newest pieces of fruit, and the least moldy bread and cheese. Rations of uncooked oat porridge and barley ale were passed out each morning for breakfast. In the evening there was wine for those who had their own coin to spend and more ale for those who did not. The tent closed at twilight. The quartermaster and his family slept in a covered wagon close by and rose again with the sun to start all over again. He was a florid man, but heavily muscled beneath his fat and by all accounts handy with the broadsword, while his two adult sons professed loudly and often their allegiance to the short bow’s deadly accuracy. If ever any person thought to rob the tent after sunset, they were quickly brought to their senses by the sound of the quartermaster’s hearty snore issuing from the bowels of his wagon.
The king’s constable spent her days riding the garrison line from east to west, checking in with her commanders and making sure the cavalry was in order, but at night she slept with Wythe in a private pavilion near the quartermaster. A Kingsman stood watch on her doorstep whenever she was away, minding whatever royal secrets she kept secured behind the tent flap, and accepting the frequent missives sent up the highway from the castle. Several times Liam had seen a message arrive by wing instead of by hoof, sent by falcon over the white walls. He’d goggled at the beauty of the hawk, her noble head and her ruddy feathers, awestruck.
Wythe’s priests lived beneath an open-air baldachin erected between the constable’s tent and the garrison well. The baldachin, a raised timber roof supported at four corners by gray stone pillars, was spacious enough to bed down patients and healers alike while also providing for a basic stone altar for garrison worship. It, and the well, were remnants from war with the sidhe; they came as a pair and were duplicated fourteen more times throughout the countryside in an expanding half circle around Wilhaiim’s flank.
Before, Liam had paid the ancient buildings little attention; the flatland was dusted with crumbling relics of time past. But now that he’d seen the garrison stations at work he couldn’t help but admire the arrangement. Organized by house and by station, the cavalry stretched in an unbroken line encircling city and farmland together, the initial band of defense before infantry and white wall. Against overland sidhe the borderline of mounted lancers carrying iron spear and sword must have provided matchless defense.
If the barrowmen had not in their exile wormed the earth with tunnels, the line might still be to Wilhaiim’s advantage. But a mostly immovable barrier would do no good against an enemy unfettered by the usual terrain. The sand snakes were equally as likely to erupt behind or within the line as they were in front of it. And in indiscriminate attack, Liam worried, it was possible the cavalry would break apart and fail.
It relied upon the Countess Wythe and her seconds to keep the line from falling into disorder no matter the threat. Liam did not envy her that task. It seemed to him an impossible one.
“Baffle ’em with bullshit,” he muttered, glancing gravely in the direction of the constable’s secured pavilion. “Bet your mum’s quite good at that, hey, my lord?”
“Excruciatingly so,” agreed Morgan, laughing again. “Are you suggesting I keep my mother in mind as I ride into battle? I’m told most men prefer a lover’s token on their sleeve for inspiration.”
“A lover!” Liam smothered a snort. “You’ve not yet grown chin hair, my lord. No self-respecting lass would have you.”
“You’re a bastard,” Morgan said. “I should have you whipped for insolence.”
But he said it with a grin and looked lighter of heart than he had for days, if not weeks. He lifted a cheerful hand to the men and women tending their horses in the shade of the red wood, and called hallo to another group galloping past. Pleasantly surprised, they all returned his hail with matching exuberance. Silently, Liam congratulated himself on a job well done. Mayhap, he thought, with a little encouragement the young earl would yet settle in to his role.
Chapter 17
Avani appreciated Brother Absen for his unflappable kindness and for his practical competency. He was soft spoken, yet firm. Skinny as a fence post, yet strong enough to hold a skittish soldier in place as he examined her badly dislocated shoulder, he had more gray in his tonsured hair than black. He did not seem at all put off by a foreigner in his ward, nor even by the raven that accompanied her on her daily visits.
“I know Deval,” he explained when she introduced herself that first day on the hill. “Some days, when I’ve visited Wilhaiim for research and he’s working late in the temple library, we taker supper together. He’s an interesting man. He speaks highly of your character and your many talents. I’m not so foolish as to turn assistance away no matter what strange form it takes.”
“They call me witch,” she’d confessed then. She planned to make herself useful even if he turned her away for being magus, but it seemed considerate to give him a chance at cooperation. “And sometimes they used to call me vocent. The king’s discharged me from that service for being lenient when wickedness might better further his cause.”
“Even as far as Wythe we heard how you did in the city, battling the Red Worm,” he returned, unruffled. “And I daresay I’ve heard all the rumors: it was because of you Stonehill burned to the ground, and because of you His Majesty consents to take a foreign wife. You make consort with barrowmen kept in the royal catacombs, you killed Armswoman Lane with a fiery hand, you take counsel from the dead, you drove Lord Malachi mad and then into your bed. Yon raven speaks your goddess’s commands aloud and you can heal a man’s
putrid leg with a handful of grubs.”
Avani bit the inside of her mouth. “Jacob has lately and inexplicably mastered the king’s lingua,” she said. “And if a healer doesn’t recognize the value of maggots in an infected wound, she doesn’t know her trade.”
Absen narrowed his eyes at Jacob where the bird crouched on the grass in a spot of sunshine. Then he blinked. “How are you at sutures?”
“I have a steady hand.”
“Good.” He placed a sponge and a shallow bowl filled with tepid water in her hand. “Go and tend Laurence, there. He’s gashed his hand badly on a splintered lance, and is not pleased about it. Once the bleeding’s staunched and he’s clean, come back and I’ll show you where I keep the needle and catgut.”
Absen was not the only theist come from Wythe to work the garrison baldachin, but he was the eldest of the three men who had and as such the most senior. He led worship sunrise and sunset at the low, east-facing altar, and in between times he ran his sickroom with the zeal of a person who knew and accepted his calling. Absen’s priestly companions looked to him always for advice and leadership, and as such they put aside any quarrel they might have otherwise had with Avani or her heretical beliefs.
“The raven must keep his distance,” Absen decided when Avani and Jacob arrived for their second day in the baldachin. “Brother Shin couldn’t sleep last night for worry and Brother Cenwin woke badly disconcerted from dreams of black-feathered birds.”
To keep the peace, Avani consented. She sent Jacob away to the edge of the red-flowered forest where he kept watch from the branches of a stout evergreen. He still preferred the comfort of a ride on her shoulder over flying, but he could take to the air again when necessary and seemed to enjoy judging the garrison from new heights. She thought he had forgiven her whatever wrongdoing had sent him from her side. Sometimes when they walked the hill, he still muttered complaints in her ear—Cast him out! Cast him out!—and she knew he must mean Mal.