by Trish Mercer
The only one not grinning, Perrin noticed—besides Thorne—was Shem, who kept eyeing his commander. But Perrin didn’t care. By dinner time a tent village was erected three miles from the village of Moorland and the more than one thousand men were happy, eating, and eager to go hunting.
Perrin spent only one moment of the hectic afternoon to pause and take in the scene. Men, horses, tents, shouts, and swords; a farm turned into a camp for an army the size of which hadn’t been seen in generations; a nervous farmer and his wife cowering in their house, their curtains flickering as they watched column after column of soldiers turn their rich dark fields into a mucky mess—
Perrin’s chest swelled and burned with pride. “Father,” he whispered when he had an uninterrupted minute, “I hope that you’re in the part of Paradise that will let you see me breaking your rules, because I think you and Grandfather Pere would love this!”
---
“Hum-hum . . . this doesn’t look right . . . ho-ho, what’s this? A crevice. Hmm. Not good, not . . . good.”
Beneff stretched his leg over the gap in the ground that presented no discernible bottom. He grasped hold of a tree limb above him, used it to stabilize himself, then jumped over the crack in the earth. Safely on the other side, he chuckled smugly.
“Still know my way around, hee-hee. Younger men learn a thing or two from me still, hum-hum. Just need to bring them to where my true expertise lies. After all, the wood knows how to grow and burn. And Gadiman thought I couldn’t do any of this anymore. Well, is he in for a surprise!”
He looked around at the trees.
“Seems thicker than some years ago. Taller, too. Suppose forests have a way of growing, you see, ho-hi. Thicker . . . denser . . . hmm. Oh my. This isn’t quite . . .”
He stopped and stared off into the distance which, at that point in the forest, was only about three feet in front of him.
“I think the wind’s about to hit the droppings. The question is, Am I the wind, the droppings, or what’s about to get hit?”
After another ponderous moment he said, “Now where the slag did that mountain go?”
---
After dinner twelve men stood around a large detailed map of Moorland in the command tent, studying the marked houses and the directions outlined for the assault.
Everyone except for Shem, who looked around the tent. “Colonel, where’s Beneff?”
Perrin waved that off. “Said he wasn’t feeling too well, some hours ago. We really don’t need him now. He got his section of the camp set up so I told him to go lay down for a while.”
Shem shifted nervously. “Permission to go check on him?”
Perrin looked up from the map. “You think that’s really necessary?”
The look in Shem’s eyes was undeniable.
Now several other officers looked up from the map and stared at Zenos.
“Sir, I know the map and your plan as if I wrote it myself,” the sergeant major told him. “Please give me just a few minutes to check on Beneff.”
“Of course, Zenos,” Perrin said, unable to decipher the veiled look in his friend’s eyes. It was something he’d never seen before, and that was rare. “But get back soon. You don’t know everything.”
Shem nodded and darted out of the tent.
Yordin looked at Perrin for an explanation, but Perrin shrugged. “Zenos will just have to catch up. You all have had the past two days to review the attack plans. I’ve worked in your suggestions, and now I have one more announcement to make.”
Each man looked up from the map at Perrin.
“We don’t attack at dawn,” he said quietly. “We hit Moorland after sundown—tonight.”
“Tonight!” Karna cried, saying what every other man would have said if his mouth were not hanging open.
“I’m sure Colonel Shin has a good reason for attacking tonight,” said Thorne loyally.
Perrin fought the urge to roll his eyes. “I do. We now all realize that even the most trusted soldier might be an agent for the Guarders. Should there be any other Tace Riplaks among our men, they will still believe the attack is in the morning . . . until they find themselves in the middle of it, incapable of sending an early warning to his partners in Moorland.”
The expressions on the other commanders’ faces suggested they had considered the same possibility.
“We now have only eleven,” Perrin continued, “who know the attack will begin in just one hour. If the Guarders at Moorland have been warned in any way, they’ll be preparing right now to ambush us while we sleep. So we’ll just have to get them first.”
Yordin grinned. “Then what are we waiting for!” Slap. “Call in the rest of the officers, and let’s mount up!”
Perrin smiled. Sometimes, his job was just so easy.
---
Shem didn’t know this part of the forest as well as he did the forest above Edge.
Actually, he didn’t know it at all. It had taken him several minutes just to circle back far enough to find a route in without being noticed by any soldiers. And once he was in the trees he felt for the first time the nervousness every other man must have felt about the forest. He didn’t know where anything was, not even Beneff. He wasn’t in his tent, and none of the men from Edge had seen him for the past three hours. And now Shem, just thirty paces into the unfamiliar trees, smelled a hint of sulfur. Not knowing its source made him jumpy.
The whole day was making him jumpy. But he couldn’t reveal that to anyone, especially Perrin.
The colonel was in rare form. As hesitant as Shem was about the offensive, Perrin was enthusiastic. A part of Shem was thrilled to see his friend so engaged in something besides his paranoia. Watching Perrin sit astride a willing brown stallion, directing their 200 hundred soldiers, 30 wagons and teams, and 150 horses as they rode in massive formation from the fort was breathtaking. Hundreds of villagers had rushed to see the spectacle heading west.
Perrin, riding at the front with Shem by his side, was . . . well, the only word Shem could think of was glowing. He had something to do and he was on fire to do it.
But he was almost frightening. Perrin’s countenance shone with what Shem could define only as ferocious joy.
And all of the men felt it, too. If any were apprehensive, they simply looked at their commander and were instantly infected with his determination to rid the world of its most vexing neighbor. The thirty men left behind at the fort with Radan and Offra—some ill, some injured, some timid—looked almost envious they weren’t joining the throng.
Shem saw the same joyful ferocity contaminate the other armies that met them at the farm. Yordin, Fadh, and Karna broke into grins at the sight of the massive army. The four commanders shared conspiratorial winks as if they were teenage boys who were just about to pull off the greatest prank in the history of the world.
And in a way, Shem thought to himself, they were.
He seemed to be the only one worried about how all of this might shake down in the end.
Besides Lemuel, that is.
But Shem wasn’t going to devote any more thought to the captain—unpredictable and recently quiet—than he had to. He just kept reminding himself that in this battle situation, Shem outranked him. It was the only thought that cheered him that day.
A few times on the ride over, Perrin caught Shem watching him. “What is it, Sergeant Major?” he finally said. “I’ve never seen you so serious.”
“This is serious, Colonel,” Shem reminded him.
“I know that,” Perrin responded, almost insulted. “But look around you, Zenos: did you ever imagine we could bring something like this together?”
That was part of his concern. There were many things Shem had seen that Perrin had never imagined.
Years ago Shem had felt overwhelmed by his position at the fort. It didn’t help any that Hogal Densal had pulled him aside, told him he knew—really knew—who Shem was and why he was there, then told him it was his duty to keep watch over Perrin. After that e
verything became so . . . complicated.
And it never, never got easier. Sometimes he felt as if he could barely keep it all straight. Days like this, for example, were especially taxing. And now the forest had swallowed up one of Shem’s most nagging worries.
“Beneff!” he muttered. “Where did you go? You’re not supposed to be out here!”
Shem crept cautiously up a rise, picking his way between the trees and listening for hissing, bubbling, or babbling, as Beneff was prone to do. Shem had been gone for at least forty-five minutes. Perrin surely must have missed him by now.
A horn blast in the distance spun Shem around. The blast drifted toward him a second time, then rapidly for a third time.
“No! Not already! Perrin! We’re not attacking until morning, remember?” Shem kicked at a rock and groaned. He had to take the risk. “BENEFF!”
He felt a presence right behind him, then a hand covered his mouth while an arm wrapped around him tightly.
“What is wrong with you, Zenos?” the voice hissed in his ear. “You’re going to ruin everything!”
The arm released him and Shem twisted away to face his captor. “Oh, Dormin, am I glad to see you! It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” he said to the man in dark green mottled clothing.
“No time for reunions, Shem. Why are you yelling at the trees?”
“Beneff’s out here—I know it. He’s going to warn the Guarders we’ve arrived, but—”
“It doesn’t sound like that matters anymore,” Dormin said. “The colonel is starting the offensive right now. Isn’t that what the three horn blasts mean? Mount up?”
Shem shook his head. “I had no idea. Honestly. No idea he was up to this. I need to get back. I’m supposed to be leading the charge on the north side!”
“Then go! We’re ready. And we’ll watch for Beneff.”
Shem slapped Dormin on the back and ran out of the forest, hoping he was going in the right direction. How ironic would it be if he couldn’t tell his future grandchildren about the first major offensive in the army’s history—the one that he missed—because he was lost in the forest?
---
Perrin sat atop his mount watching the last of the men ride west. The sun had set ten minutes ago and he quickly lost the silhouettes of Yordin and Thorne as they led the charge of nine hundred men. Not since the Great War had so many soldiers ridden together toward a common enemy which, back then, meant the soldiers of the northern villages attacked those of the southern villages. At least now the enemy was clear, with no innocents involved.
Or so Perrin hoped.
If there were children there—
No. No, he couldn’t explain it, but he was sure there weren’t. Something else was there, however, which needed to be destroyed. Tonight, on the 59th Day of Planting.
As the cloud of men and horses rumbling like thunder faded into the dusk of the evening, Perrin envisioned for the hundredth time the attack patterns six of the groups would execute in order to reach each remaining structure at the same time. Torches would be lit, swords and long knives would be employed, and if it all went well—which it should, because there was no reason why it shouldn’t—all of it would be swift and humane, which was more than the Guarders could say about their assaults on the world.
A seventh swath of soldiers would encircle the village, trapping any Guarders that tried to escape. And, if perchance a Guarder slipped through that line, there’d be another fifty new and somewhat raw recruits not so skilled with the sword, but well-trained in bows and arrows, and ready to take aim.
And maybe—just maybe—one exceptionally lucky and desperate Guarder may slide past them and find himself running blindly to the east, and perhaps jump across a canal where he could meet the sword of Relf Shin—
Perrin gripped the reins tighter, unsure if he really wanted that or not. Instead, he focused on the fantastic sight leaving him. He wished he’d hired an artist to render the image. The uniforms. The horses. The dust. The fading golden light. The rumbling of hooves. There was no way to capture that sound, but the ground trembling as they cantered away would stay with him forever.
And there he sat on his horse watching it all go on without him.
He wished for a moment that he was a falcon. An aerial view of the soldiers weaving through the village in perfect precision would be extraordinary to witness. No Guarder would have time to warn his neighbors. They may hear the commotion of the approaching army—Perrin was betting on that to bring each Guarder to his door in confused curiosity—but no man would have time to react to the offensive, arriving just after dark.
Just like they attacked.
And Perrin would miss every moment of it. He growled in frustration as the last soldier and horse left his field of vision.
At a gallop, even that last soldier would be upon Moorland in less than half an hour. Perrin closed his eyes to envision the small, scruffy hill that served as a buffer between the cluster of houses that used to be the village, and the farms beyond it. The mound of earth effectively shielded much of Moorland from the world’s view, and also would block Moorland’s view of the approaching army.
Perrin’s mental eyes rushed over the area until his mind decided to give up the useless dreaming. He opened his eyes to the abandoned farms before him, laid open in a wide expanse all the way to the ditch that marked the border between Moorland’s and Edge’s territories where Perrin’s mount stood as restless as its rider.
“This is stupid,” Perrin mumbled to Karna on his horse next to him.
Perrin’s horse trampled the ground and snorted in annoyance. For the first time Perrin had found an animal that matched his weight and personality, and he couldn’t let it run as desperately as he wanted it to.
“Even the horses know sitting here is stupid! Why am I here?”
“Colonel,” Karna said in his best calming voice for approaching a hungry bear, “because you’re needed here. Yordin’s fine. He’s the only man I know more aggressive than you. There’s plenty of leadership out there, and what happened to, ‘I can handle this’?”
“I thought I could, Brillen,” he said sullenly. “I’m not needed here, you know that. Because of stupid old men eighty miles away I can’t leave this farm!” He pouted as he swung his horse around and looked longingly to the west.
Brillen sighed. “You used to call me your second mind,” he reminded him. “I realize that Thorne now—”
Perrin’s severe look stopped him. “—will never be my second mind! You may have your own fort, but I still claim your mind.”
Brillen smiled at that. “Good. Then take my advice: get off your horse, Perrin.”
“What?”
“Just get off. Let’s go back to the map, review different scenarios should something unexpected happen, and be useful here.”
“Useful here,” Perrin repeated with a snarl.
“Part of leadership, you know. Realizing when it’s time to let the younger ones have a chance. Knowing that letting them go is difficult to watch, but vital to their development.”
Perrin scoffed. “Well that’s stupid, too!”
Karna’s eyebrows went up. “That’s the little speech your father told me when he first saw me off to Edge: let the younger ones have a chance. Lots of officers thought the job of starting a new fort was too much for just a captain and a lieutenant. But we did all right, didn’t we?”
“My father didn’t say anything to you,” Perrin grumbled. “You’re making that up.”
“Does it sound like something I would make up?”
“No,” Perrin admitted. After a moment he said, “I’ve been wondering what he would think of all of this. I’m not sure what he’d say, but I think Relf would be pleased.”
“I think he would, too.”
Perrin stared out in the darkness. “Really, Brillen, who’s going to know if I break my probation?”
“Only about nine hundred men out there, the hundred plus in the tents behind us overseeing supplies and waiti
ng for injured, and last and most worrisome of all, the High General’s main tattler, his grandson Lemuel. Come on.” Brillen dismounted and gestured to Perrin. “We have work to do.”
Perrin’s persistence flagged. He sighed, dismounted, tied up his horse to an old fence post, and trudged after Brillen to the tent.
Brillen lit a lamp and sat down at the large detailed map laid out on the makeshift table. “You really created this? All by yourself?”
Perrin scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean? I had Briter’s help, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I mean,” Brillen chuckled consolingly, “that I didn’t know you were a mapmaker. I know you have that collection of old maps you salvaged from the trash heaps in Idumea years ago, but I never knew you could draw one yourself.”
“I sense a compliment in there, so I’ll take it,” Perrin winked at him. “But yes, I consulted my outdated maps for different ways to designate terrains, buildings, and movement. Drawing all the little trees took forever, though.”
“But they’re very consistent,” said Brillen as if praising a six-year-old. “I think you got nearly every single one represented.”
Perrin scowled affably at him then looked out of the tent opening to the west, to the masses of trees that taunted him to come see if he drew them correctly.
“I was thinking,” Brillen said, and it sounded to Perrin as if he were very far away, “that should the Guarders retreat into the forest, over here to the east—Colonel, are you paying attention? Over here to the east, the forest narrows. We should deploy the remaining bowmen within this clearing just off the edge of the forest. Eyes here, please, Colonel. Good boy. They could take shots at anyone trying to return to Moorland in the morning . . . ”
Perrin exhaled as he sat down by Brillen. He rested his chin on the map and stared past it.
“Stupid,” he whispered to the tent.
---