The wind picked up. They wrapped their faces, tied down their hats, put a second pair of gloves on their already gloved hands, and faced the wind only when they had to. There was no more laughter. Karis stopped once, pointed at Medric, and pointed at the half-empty sledge of books she hauled. He mutely took a seat in the sledge, and folded himself up against the cold, passive as a piece of luggage. Karis hauled him.
Later, she stopped again, and turned her back to the wind. They huddled around to hear her cold-slurred words. “We’ve been seen.”
Emil tried to speak, vigorously rubbed his frozen face, and tried again. “How many?”
“Many more than us.”
“Armed?”
“Yes.”
“Paladins. They’ll try to head us off first.”
They sorted themselves out, with Emil in front now, Norina at his right, Leeba complaining in Karis’s arms, Medric afoot again, hauling the empty sledge, Garland hauling the sledge of supplies and J’han the sledge of books. Garland supposed Karis carried Leeba for the child’s protection—there was no place safer. But perhaps Leeba would also protect Karis, for the Paladins might go out of their way to avoid injuring a child.
Soon, a black-dressed woman swooped down the hill, flying on her skis as the ravens swooped on the wind overhead.
She blocked their way. Two pistols, certainly loaded and primed, were holstered in the belts that crossed her chest. A dagger was sheathed at her side. “You’re lost,” she informed them politely.
Emil pulled open his muffler.
“Emil?” she said. “Shaftal’s Name!”
Garland thought, Is there anyone in Shaftal who does not know and admire this man?
“Greetings, Commander. Do you know Norina Truthken?”
The commander said after a moment, “By reputation.”
Garland could see only a part of Norina’s muffled face, but whatever Norina heard in the commander’s voice appeared to have amused her greatly.
Norina said, “We’re inviting ourselves to Councilor Mabin’s Long Night.”
Certainly the woman’s duty was to deny the Councilor’s presence, but that she apparently could not do with a Truthken two paces away. Her visible surprise became perplexity. “How do you know the Councilor is here?”
“Perhaps you would have one of your people carry a message to her that Karis wishes to speak to her.”
“Karis?” said the commander blankly.
“You weren’t there by the river five years ago,” said Emil, “but surely you’ve heard about what happened there.” He stepped aside—a small movement, but it brought the commander’s attention to the large, somber woman behind him, with the wide-eyed child in her arms.
Norina said, “Karis G’deon.”
When something incredible must be said in such a way that it will instantly be believed, then certainly, thought Garland, that was the time for a Truthken to speak.
“I bind you,” Norina added, “to silence.”
The commander’s jaw shut with a click. She turned and signaled. A whole host of Paladins came flying down the hill.
They were as graceful, deadly, and powerful as any bird of prey. Impressed and terrified, Garland wrapped his arms around himself, shivering, thinking that at least if he were killed he would not feel cold anymore. Medric, swaying with weariness beside him, said in Sainnese, “If they’d had a few thousand more like that, you and I would have never been born, my brother. Think of it!”
“How can you even talk?” said Garland.
“I can always talk,” said Medric. “Gods of our fathers! What a sight!”
His spectacles had frosted over again, so Garland was uncertain exactly what he saw. The past? The future? Or even both at once?
The Paladins brought their swift approach to a halt in shining sprays of snow. One, designated to carry a message, skied away nearly as swiftly as he had arrived. The others formed a polite but impenetrable escort: one took Garland’s sledge, while he worried unreasonably what would become of his far-traveling rolling pin. Soon after they had begun to walk again, one firmly pressed the stumbling Medric to become a passenger again. Leeba reacted with outrage when Medric curled into her nest of pillows, but he made faces at her, and soon it became a contest. Garland realized that he, J’han, Norina, and Emil had all drawn up around Karis like ribs around a heart. Around them skied the Paladins, ice-masked, indistinguishable, wordless. If Karis stopped, they all would come to a halt. But she kept a steady, restrained pace, square-shouldered, forward-gazing, like a brave prisoner walking to her execution.
It was a long walk. At last, it brought them to a great complex of buildings near the edge of river, from which the snow had been cleared to make it a highway. As they approached, an ice skater could be seen in the distance, but he traveled so swiftly that he had passed before they arrived.
On the broad porch of the central building, an old woman, flanked by Paladins, awaited them. The sun was already setting. In the garish glare the shadows were long and black, but the old woman’s face was in the light and the three gold earrings in her right ear glittered as the harsh wind swept by.
She, too, had the blank look of a prisoner awaiting the executioner.
Karis gave Leeba to J’han. As she turned her head, Garland saw the white lines of tears, frozen solid on her cheeks. She walked forward, and stopped at the bottom of the steps. The wind tore at her hair, tried to rip off her cap. She jammed her hands into her pockets, and waited, stolid.
The old woman asked, “What are you doing here?”
“Aren’t you tired,” Karis said, “of the pain in your heart?”
“Yes, Karis.”
“Will you allow me to heal you?”
The old woman took a step forward. Then, stiffly, she knelt in the blowing snow. Her companions started forward too late to help her, then stepped back at her impatient gesture. The black-dressed Paladins were folding back their masks, uncovering their faces, staring in bewilderment at the old woman unbuttoning her coat, her jacket, her shirt, to bare her breast to the wind’s deadly breath, and to reveal the dull steel of the spike embedded in her heart.
Across the glaring red field, a murmur of shock and surprise. Had these people lived with and served Councilor Mabin, never knowing that the rumor of her spiked heart was true? Karis started up the steps, peeling the gloves from one hand and then from the other. She towered over Mabin. On her knees, with her shame exposed, Mabin looked in Karis’s face. She did not ask—for healing or for forgiveness. Her proud features revealed no repentance.
Karis lay one hand to the woman’s breast. With her other hand, she plucked the steel from Mabin’s heart. Mabin uttered a gasp of pain, but there was no blood. Karis crushed the spike in her fist, and handed to the wind a twist of glittering dust.
Mabin caught her breath. She said, distinctly, so that everyone within hearing could understand her, “What does this act mean? Are you forgiving me, or are you merely weary of keeping me alive?”
“I will not come to the Lilterwess Council,” said Karis. “I will not sit in the G’deon’s chair. I will not renew the old order. I will not justify this terrible war.”
Mabin stared at her, pale.
“I will not serve you,” Karis said. “I will not serve your dreams. I will not be your hope. I will not be your symbol. Do you understand me?”
Mabin said, harshly, bitterly, “ Then what are you doing here?”
“Councilor, I want you to go to the Sainnites, and offer them peace.”
“I will do no such thing!”
“I’ll do it without you, then.”
Outraged, Mabin got to her feet, rejecting the many hands that reached out to help her up. “By what right?”
Karis looked at her. Then, she turned her back on her, and Garland could see her drawn, wind-flayed face as she looked closely at the stunned audience of Paladins. The tears frozen on her cheeks were visible to everyone. Garland discovered it was easy to track her gaze as one Pal
adin at a time looked into her eyes.
When Garland looked back at Karis, Norina was mounting the steps. “Be silent, Councilor,” the Truthken said, and only then did Garland realize that during all that time Mabin had been directing an angry tirade at Karis’s turned back.
Councilor Mabin held her tongue.
Norina said to the Paladins, “On the day Harald G’deon died, he vested this woman, Karis, with the power of Shaftal. Also, on that last day of the existence of the Lilterwess Council, they chose not to confirm Karis as G’deon. So for twenty years, in accordance with that decision, Karis has not exercised the power of Shaftal. By my vows as a Truthken, I affirm that I am telling you the truth.”
Someone in the crowd of Paladins said in astonishment, “Madam Truthken, why did the council not confirm a decision already, irrevocably made?”
Norina said, “At the time, Karis was a smoke addict, which is no longer the case. At the time, she was only fifteen and had only ever lived in the whore-town of Lalali. And at the time it was unacceptable that Karis’s father is a Sainnite.”
The silence seemed very long. Garland realized he was shivering violently.
Someone said, “Karis, what does Shaftal ask of the Paladins?”
Karis’s gaze found the speaker, an older Paladin in the middle of the crowd. She spoke, it seemed, only to him. “Lay down your arms,” she said. She did not sound audacious, or even courageous, but only certain.
The entire host of Paladins tossed their pistols, daggers, and other weapons into the snow.
When Karis turned again to Mabin, the councilor remained speechless. With the brute force of implacable fact speaking for her, Karis also said nothing. Mabin, General of Paladins, last legitimate member of the old Lilterwess Council, drew her dagger and dropped it to the ground.
Chapter Thirty
On Long Night, the people of Shaftal burn candles to remind the sun to come again. But in the children’s garrison there were no candles, no night-long parties to keep an eye on those candles, no festive meals of carefully balanced sweet, savory, salty, and bitter foods to guarantee a balanced year. In the children’s garrison, the youthful soldiers were put to bed and barricaded into their dormitories by the disabled veterans who kept watch over them. For everyone, it would indeed be a long watch, but not a festive one.
Clement sat awake in her room, with a clock borrowed from Purnal to chime the hours. With Captain Herme she periodically inspected the preparations. They began their inspection at the top of a ladder, in the attic where six soldiers and a few children kept a crouched, dusty lookout at the cloudy windows tucked under the eaves. It was terribly cold up there, and the watchers were frequently replaced to thaw out in the warm dining hall where their fellows dozed uncomfortably in their boiled leather armor. Through the wavery glass of the attic windows, Clement might peer at a starry sky and a glowing field of snow, across which no one could have approached unseen. The inspection then continued, to the corridor that encircled the big central courtyard, where the ammunition lay ready: orderly bags of lead shot and powder tins, the little lamps by light of which reloaders could see to measure the powder. Again, Clement would check to see that nothing was visible in the darkness. They could make no mistakes.
The wait was terrible.
More terrible was the moment a child soldier pounded on the door and cried excitedly, “They’re coming!”
Clement was on her feet immediately with the door slammed open, the girl’s loose shirt captured in her fist, hissing, “Follow your orders, soldier! In silence!”
She let her go. The girl ran for her prescribed position without another sound. Clement stood a moment, listening, and could hear only the faint whisper of footsteps, near and far, hurrying across stone as the company got itself into position. No voices, no lights.
Gods, it was a bitter night.
Clement walked, swiftly and quietly, to the round building’s center. The corridor that encircled the round central courtyard was protected by a chest-high half-wall, sturdily built to withstand any accidental crashings of horses and wagons making the three-quarter turn to enter the stables. The corridor’s circle was interrupted only by the main passage through the building to the front gate. Here, both ends of the broken circle were blocked by barred doors. With the doors to the stable also barred, anyone who entered the building could take only two routes after coming into the courtyard: through the entrance to the main hall, or over the top of the half-wall.
And the invaders would have no reason to climb over the half-wall. They might look over it, but they would see no danger. Though faint starlight filtered down the long arched passageway from outside, the half-wall cast the corridor into unrelieved darkness. And there was nothing to see, in any case: the piles of lead balls, the powder horns, the spirit lamps, these were draped in dark cloth. The soldiers waited behind locked doors: on foot, their weapons sheathed for quiet, forbidden to utter a word, or shuffle their feet, or do anything other than breathe shallowly. There was nothing to see: nothing, that is, except Clement and her signal-man.
He was already in position: a light, lithe man, black-dressed, in soft, silent shoes. He had made a game of slipping through shadows these last few days, of learning to be invisible even to observers who knew he was there. But Clement’s knees sometimes crackled; her leather armor might creak, and after crouching a long time in the shadows she would be too stiff to move soundlessly. If the game were given away prematurely, she would be the one to give it away.
The signal-man said in a voiceless whisper, “The watchers count thirty-two people approaching the gate. There might be more, hidden in the trees.”
Clement nodded. The defenders outnumbered the attackers, and also had the added advantage of surprise. Awkward in stiff leather, she knelt on the waiting cushion and carefully picked up the loaded and primed pistol. The signal-man helped her to veil her head and body with black cloth, and then he made himself disappear. With the pistol resting on one thigh, Clement pressed herself to the half-wall where the shadows were most impenetrable, uttered a silent prayer to the god of luck, and put her eye to the peephole.
She could not see the roof beams; the center post at the middle of the circular courtyard was visible only because she knew it was there. The courtyard itself was mostly obscured in shadows that only faintly lightened near the arched passageway, down which the snow had reflected a trace of the starlight from outside. There was nothing to see. It was so silent that Clement could hear only the rhythmic rush of blood in her own veins. The attackers had perhaps realized by now that the padlock was too cold and rusty to be picked, and were quietly riling the metal instead.
To wait and watch, freezing cold, even colder from anxiety, skin crawling, nose itching (inevitably!) was terrible. Clement’s face rasped against the wood, as loud as a cough in her hypersensitive ears. Her armor creaked with every breath. She became convinced that the black veiling was slipping off, and that the revealed polished leather shone as brightly as a lamp. Cold sweat crawled from her armpit down to her ribs, and the tickling became such a torture she could think of nothing else.
Of course, the tension and discomfort seemed unendurable. It always did.
A movement in the faint light of the arched passageway. One person only. A man by the shape of the shoulders. What did he see? An echoing vacancy of blackness. An unguarded building where the occupants slept soundly, unsuspecting, where hearthfires warmed the rooms behind shut doors. What did he hear? The creak of Clement’s armored breaths?
He came in: not overly cautious, a shadowy shape whose hobnails crunched on gravel. Relaxed, in no great hurry, he tried one of the barred doors, peered over the half wall, walked part way around the circle of the courtyard, then stepped through the entrance to the corridor. Clement could no longer see him. Would he appear in the curved corridor to her right? If he did, then he might spring the trap too soon, and this would not be the ambush she hoped for: her soldiers would be chasing the attackers through the sno
w instead.
He stepped back out into the courtyard. Perhaps he had walked the other direction, or had gone down the main hall, trying the doors, looking into the empty refectory. Perhaps he wondered why so many doors were locked. Or had he even noticed? He finished his casual circuit of the courtyard. He brushed by Clement’s peephole. Not an arm’s length away, he peered over the half-wall. He stepped back, and stood a moment. She glimpsed his teeth, his glittering eyes, as he turned into the starlight.
She let out her breath. The leather creaked. He walked away. She knew he must be Willis: he would be a leader who insists on going in first. A leader for whom image matters more than common sense. Who did not see what he did not expect to see.
She breathed. She needed the air.
More shadows in the archway. His entire attack force was quietly coming in. They formed four clusters. If it were Clement’s force, and if she knew in advance that one quarter of the building was stables, one team would secure the exit and the other three would each secure a quarter. Again, she spotted her man, Willis, going confidently from team to team, clasping hands, patting shoulders, whispering assurances a bit too loudly.
He turned, smiling, to walk towards the last group, towards her.
She lurched to her feet. She sighted down the pistol. She squeezed the trigger. Gunpowder exploded, a handspan from her face. She dropped behind the shelter of the half-wall.
Chaos. The startled attackers promptly wasted their shots and time. Lead balls thunked where Clement’s gunflash had been. Doors crashed open. Crouching soldiers ran past.
The soldiers in the tack room raced out to block the exit.
“To me!” cried a hoarse, shocked voice in the courtyard.
“Fire at will,” said Clement quietly.
The signal-man began to pipe upon his whistle.
The positioned soldiers opened fire.
Clement could see a little now: the glow of spirit lamps being lit, the movement of the reloaders’ quick hands, the rhythmic rising and ducking of the soldiers.
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