Oath of Fealty

by Elizabeth Moon

  Once in the lead again, Arcolin changed the formation, putting out flanking scouts for the first time. “We need the practice,” he told Stammel. “I don’t think anyone will attack today, but just in case.”

  “Mounted or afoot, sir?” Stammel asked.

  “Mounted, so we don’t slow,” Arcolin said. “Stay in sight. I’m most interested in who’s watching from near the road, and in assessment of the cover.”

  “Notice the animals,” he said to Burek, when they were moving again. “The scouts are out far enough that they shouldn’t disturb rabbits and birds nearer the road. We should see a little movement of animals into the cover beside the road, but anything moving out of cover toward the scouts means something else is in there.”

  Nothing showed for almost a glass, in Arcolin’s estimation. The pasture land continued to roughen; along the line of the unseen stream, brush thickened to a line of scrubby trees. Then, as that bore away eastward, a flock of pink-fronted doves racketed up and away, and downstream of them, another.

  Arcolin held up his hand; the cohort halted. “They’d need someone closer,” he said to Burek. On the right, ahead, the ruins of what he remembered as a herder’s night-shelter canted sideways; next to it, a thicket had grown up where he remembered a small cattle pen. “There, for instance. Let’s see what happens when our flanking scout gets closer.”

  The scout, checking position on the cohort, had reined in; Arcolin signaled her on. “Watch the horse’s ears,” he told Burek. Another five strides, and the horse lifted its head, ears pricked.

  “It’s seen something,” Burek said.

  “Right,” Arcolin said. The scout loosened her sword and rode on. Two more strides, and four crows lifted from the thicket, cawing. The scout glanced back. Arcolin signaled again; she turned her horse a little away and held position.

  “One hand to flank,” he said quietly to Stammel. “Two hands with me. We want him alive, if we can.” To Burek, he said, “Come on—we’ll try to cut him off.” He drew his sword and legged his horse to a hand gallop. Burek caught up with him; they passed the ruin and thicket. Beyond, an ungrazed field had grown up in tall grass and patches of scrub. Arcolin looked to the left—no sign anyone had crossed yet.

  “He’s probably got a crossbow,” Arcolin said. “And he’ll probably shoot at us. But if we make him run, he won’t be very accurate.”

  “There,” Burek said, pointing to the right. Arcolin, too, saw grass move against the breeze.

  “Good eye,” Arcolin said. He legged his horse into a gallop, trusting Burek to follow. The movement ahead quickened. Arcolin yelled; his horse flattened out, crashing through the tall grass and weeds for a point ahead of the movement. He could hear Burek behind him. The grass stilled—the man was getting ready to shoot. Arcolin shifted his weight; his horse threw a flying change, veering sideways, then another and then he saw the man, struggling to span his bow again. One jump, and Arcolin’s horse was there, skidding to a halt; Arcolin swung his sword, knocking the crossbow from the man’s hand. Burek pulled to a halt on the man’s other side, as the man snatched a short curved blade and swung at Arcolin’s horse.

  Burek rode closer, tried to hit the man with the flat of his blade, but the man whirled, and Burek’s horse took a cut on the chest, and reared. One hoof caught the man’s arm; Arcolin swung his cloak over the man’s head as he staggered, blinding him, then leaned over and hit him as Burek had planned. The man dropped. Burek was off his horse and leapt onto the man’s back and pulled his arms back before he could struggle. Arcolin looked back. His tensquad was making its noisy way through the weeds now, halfway to them. He waved to the scout, calling her in, and saw her pass the signal to the hand of men headed for the ruin. Burek’s horse stood quietly, for a wonder, head drooping. Had the blade been poisoned?

  He dismounted and walked over to the horse. A bad gash, gaping open, but not life threatening in itself. He took the reins. “Burek, that blade may be poisoned. When the tensquad gets here, try to keep our prisoner from cutting himself on it.”

  “Is my horse all right?” Burek asked.

  “I’m not sure. He’s quieter than I’d expect.” Arcolin looked the horse over. No other injuries. Sweaty, but they’d galloped and the day was increasingly hot and humid. The horse blew into his hand; Arcolin sniffed. “What’s he like? You’ve had him long enough now.”

  “Solid, I’d say. Sound, well trained. Not as spirited as yours. By his teeth, two years older than the seller told me; I got a nata knocked off his price for that.”

  “We’ll hope it’s just a quiet disposition,” Arcolin said. Blood dripped freely from the wound; horses always bled a lot, in his experience, and could lose much more blood than a man before falling over.

  Devlin arrived with the tensquad; in moments they had the prisoner yanked upright, the cloak off his head, and trussed. Arcolin warned them about the blade, and they left it for him to examine. Burek came over to his horse. “It’s bad …”

  “The surgeons can sew it up, if he’s as quiet as you say. You’ll have to ride your spare.” Arcolin gave the reins of both horses to Burek and went to look at the blade. Like the other, it had no guard but a simple flange; the grip was less ornate, made of wood carved into ribs. The blade was smeared with horse blood; Arcolin sniffed. Under the smell of blood was the odor of something else. He picked the blade up by its grip, and handed it to Devlin. “It’s got something on it, probably a contact poison. Wrap it up and bring it along.”

  The prisoner meanwhile had said nothing, made no attempt to escape. Arcolin looked at him, and was reminded of the men in Alured the Black’s camp. Darkly sunmarked, as expressionless as a carving, no fear in his eyes, he might have been standing sentry somewhere instead of being bound in hostile hands. He had an old scar on his face, and doubtless more elsewhere on his body. Arcolin looked him up and down. No change in expression at all.

  “Get him back to the road,” he said. “Send the surgeon.” Then he turned to Burek. “How’s he doing?”

  “Bleeding’s slowed,” Burek said.

  “We don’t want to be here too long,” Arcolin said. “I’ll leave the scout and five with you. I need to go see our prisoner.” He mounted. “Hand up your saddle; I’ll see someone saddles your spare and brings it out to you.” He went back to the road in an arc, checking the road ahead of the cohort for anything suspicious. The flanking scout on the far side waved a clear, and Arcolin rode back down toward the cohort. Stammel, as he expected, had set up a temporary perimeter, wagons in the middle.

  “Prisoner’s tied to a wagon wheel,” he said. Arcolin handed down Burek’s saddle.

  “He’ll need his other mount,” he said.

  “Will the horse make it?” Stammel pointed to one of the men, who took the saddle and went to get Burek’s spare from those tied to the last wagon.

  “If the poison wasn’t strong enough. If he can walk fast enough to keep up with us.” He hoped it would. They would not easily find a replacement in southern Cortes Vonja; it wasn’t good horse country. He dismounted and went to look at their prisoner. The man was staring straight ahead, ignoring everything or pretending to.

  “I’m sure you recognize the uniform,” Arcolin said. “That scar on your face is at least three years old; you would have seen us before.”

  No response, not the flicker of an eyelid.

  “Some men prefer death to life, and that’s a choice any man can make,” Arcolin said. “You will shortly have that choice. You can tell me one of three things: who your leader is, where your leader is, or who hired your band. Or you can die. Think about it.”

  “Ya’kint make muh,” the man said, without looking at Arcolin.

  “I won’t try,” Arcolin said. “But I will see you dead before midday if you don’t.” He turned away.

  “I’ll die,” the man said.

  “Your choice,” Arcolin said over his shoulder.

  “Better you than them,” the man said, more softly.

&n
bsp; “Them?” Arcolin said, turning back.

  The man spat toward the left. “You been here before—you figure it out. How you do it?”

  “Kill you? Sword to the neck, how else?”

  The man’s brow furrowed. “You do it quick? Even if I don’t tell?”

  Arcolin’s memories of the last season in Aarenis rose to choke him. “Yes,” he said.

  “You one of them Girdish?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then—go on. Do it now. I got nothing to think about and nothing to live for.”

  Arcolin looked at him a long moment, but the man stared past him, unresponsive again. He drew his sword, aware of many watching eyes—the veterans of the last trip to the south in particular.

  “This man has chosen to die,” he said, loud enough to be heard. “He wants a quick death, and I have promised it. Gird’s grace on him, Tir’s honor for his courage, and the High Lord forgive what he has done and tried to do.” He stepped to one side; the man continued to stare ahead. One swing of his sword and it was done; blood spurted and the man’s head fell forward. “I’m sorry,” Arcolin said softly to the man’s departing spirit.

  “What should we do with him, sir?” Stammel asked.

  “Bury him,” Arcolin said. “Let his fellows find that we gave him that much honor.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The soil was deep and soft; it didn’t take long to dig a grave, and they rolled him into it and covered it over before the others returned. The injured horse plodded along, barely at a foot-pace. “It’s the numbweed,” the surgeon said. “It’ll wear off by sunset. Wasn’t as bad as it looked, barely into the meat. Should heal clean.”

  “There was something on the blade,” Arcolin said.

  “Worse for men,” the surgeon said. “Would’ve felled you, left you barely moving, easy prey. Horses are bigger; it would take more than you could get on one blade. He’ll be slow today, possibly stumble now and then, no more. Walking will do him good. I’ll look him over again when we stop at noon.”

  The cohort moved on, the injured horse tied to the first wagon. Arcolin glanced at Burek, now on a stocky roan. He had the inward expression of a man arguing with himself. Arcolin cleared his throat, and Burek looked up. “We’re not going to make it two villages down the road today,” he said. “We lost two sunhands to that bit of excitement.”

  “I’m sorry,” Burek said. “My horse—”

  “It wasn’t your horse,” Arcolin said. “We needed to clear that lookout point. Is that the first horse you ever bought yourself?”

  “Yes. Well, I bought them both at the same time.” He patted the roan’s neck.

  “Our surgeon’s experienced. If he says the horse will live, the horse will live.”

  Burek took a long breath. “I believe him, but—horses don’t have choices.”

  “I’m not sure,” Arcolin said. “We train them, yes, and we expect them to go where we direct, but they come with minds, and they choose to trust us or not.” He kept scanning the road, the land to either side, checking the scouts for signals. Burek looked aside now, obviously doing the same.

  “Where will we camp, then?” he asked.

  “We have a reason to be slow,” Arcolin said. “We got one of their spies; they would have more than one. If they go looking for their man, and find all that blood, they may think we have wounded. I think we’ll camp before we reach the next village.”

  “Less than a day’s march?”

  Arcolin smiled. “We’ll find a nice obvious fallow field. Send a party down to get water, have them talk about wounded men. We should cut their trail there; if they aren’t using the stream for hidden access, I’ll be very surprised. Look at the sky.”

  Burek looked up. Clouds had thickened, the early feather-clouds followed by a thicker layer moving from the west. “Rain by morning,” he said.

  “And they won’t expect us to move,” Arcolin said. “We make camp early, a good strong barrier, then put the men to rest. Come dark and the rain—well, we’ll see what word we get from those we send down to the stream.”

  By midday, the sun was hidden behind the gathering clouds; the light dimmed and haze blurred the line of woods. The ground rose a little to their right, a low hump, and the road curved a little to the left. “The stream turns here,” Arcolin said. “There used to be a wide flattish area—there—” He pointed. “More than one company camped there, years past. You can still see the outline of a ditch.”

  A damp gust came from the west, bringing out all the smells of the land. Arcolin turned in the saddle. “The old campground,” he said to Stammel. “Rain’s coming; we’ll stop here and set up before it starts.” He raised his arm; the scouts raised theirs; he signaled them to stay in place for the time being.

  By the time the first wisps of rain touched the canvas, the camp was completed: a line of fresh stakes in the old ditch, whose perimeter was too large for one cohort to defend otherwise, an inner perimeter of brush, the jacks trench, the enclosure for the animals. Arcolin had a shelter rigged up for Burek’s horse, poles roofed with brush. The water party returned from the stream to report a beaten trail, hoofmarks and bootmarks both, on both sides.

  “There’s a branch off, up a sort of gully. We only went a little way up it; as far as we went, the tracks stayed in it.”

  “No reason for that but staying hidden,” Arcolin said. “Thanks, Donag.” Rain pattered again on the tent. “Get some rest now.” He turned to Burek. “If you’ll update the map, I’ll do the perimeter round. Then we should both rest; it may be a very long night.”

  Soft curtains of rain blew across the camp as Arcolin made his way to the first sentry’s post. This was no brief shower; it was going to rain for the rest of the day or longer. Though it was only early afternoon, the woods were no more than a dark blur in the distance.

  “Think they’ll attack, Captain?”

  “Not immediately. When they think rain and darkness have made us careless, probably.”

  “I won’t be careless, sir.”

  “I know, Seli.” Arcolin grinned at him, and went on to the next post. As he passed the enclosure for the horses and mules, he checked on Burek’s horse; the surgeon was there, feeling around the wound.

  “As I hoped,” the surgeon said. “He’s fine—walking won’t hurt him, but he shouldn’t be ridden or do anything fast. I put more numbweed on it; he’ll rest better.”

  “I’ll tell Burek,” Arcolin said.

  “He’s been here,” the surgeon said. “I just sent him back. First horse, is it?”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said, remembering his own first horse. He had cried when Arrow broke a leg in a ditch trap, hurt more by that than by his own broken arm. No horse since had been the same. “The first one’s always the best.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “We’re inviting attack,” Arcolin said to Burek when they met again in his tent. “With brigands, you can hardly ever bring them to pitched battle. They live by ambush and trickery; they are not crazy enough to come out of their hiding places at a challenge, even if they have a force large enough.”

  “But we don’t know how many there are,” Burek said. “What if they have superior force?”

  “Supply,” Arcolin said. When Burek looked confused, he explained. “Brigands must eat, the same as a regular army. They get their food by stealing it, or by scaring peasants into giving it to them. Where peasants are well fed, brigands are few. Too many for the comfort of travelers on the road, but too few to worry us if we’re alert. These brigands have made deals with the villages, that much is clear. But the villages still have food; none of the people look pinched, any more than those we passed coming into Cortes Vonja on the trade road. How many extra men—hungry men—can a village supply?”

  “If they’re a clandestine invasion, though, could not their commander be importing food for them?”

  “That’s possible for a few, much harder for many. We moved multiple companies around Aarenis
, that last year against Siniava. We used every wagon, every road … we left evidence everywhere of the size of our force. It’s true we’ve been here only briefly, but I see nothing like the mess just a few hundred men leave when they inhabit a countryside.” He took another swallow of watered ale. “The cohort will rest until dark; so must we. If they come, it will be after dark, first a probe to see if we’re alert, and then, if we’re lucky, an attack.”

  Arcolin woke to the smell of cooking; torches lit the center of the camp. Someone had lit the candle on his desk; it had burned down a finger-mark. Rain still fell, the persistent soaking rain he remembered. Burek stirred; Arcolin considered letting him sleep another half-glass, but already the younger man’s eyes were opening. “Sir?”

  “It’s dark, and supper’s almost ready. I’m going out; come when you’re ready.”

  The sentry posts, unlighted and placed so the sentries would not be silhouetted against the central fire, had just been relieved. Arcolin spoke briefly with each sentry, low-voiced in case someone had crept close in the wet darkness to listen. They would be stiffening if they had; he himself had spent more than one wet night creeping up on someone else’s sentries, and it was a cold, miserable job. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could just make out the outer perimeter.

  Coming back to the fire, he noted light glowing from the tent that would—if anyone had been injured—have been the sick tent, and a shadow within, bending down. So Stammel had already thought of that—no real surprise. He found Burek at the fire with the last of the soldiers.

  “Do we eat here in the rain, sir?”

  “No. In the tent, as the others are—they just aren’t lighting all the tents. It’s standard with us. The darker it is, the harder for the brigands to keep track of time.”

  Burek nodded; they carried their supper back to Arcolin’s tent and ate by candlelight. The glass emptied before they were through; Arcolin turned it and marked the turn in the log. Burek took the dishes back to the fire. Arcolin went outside again to regain his night vision. Stammel had gathered a few men near the fire to sing for a while.