The Falcon in the Barn (Book 4 Forest at the Edge series)

by Trish Mercer

  “Colonel,” his frail voice came as forcefully as it could. “Don’t criticize sedation until you’ve experienced it. That stuff is a miracle, and you know I don’t believe in miracles.”

  The only man in the tent who knew just how much sedation the colonel had experienced found, at the most opportune moment, the strength to keep his face completely somber.

  “And a ‘hear, hear’ to that!” Yordin called from the floor. His assistant held up his hand again for the major to smack. “Days of planking are over!”

  “What was so bad about being planked?” Perrin asked.

  Yordin tried to push himself up into a sitting position but he cringed in pain and collapsed.

  Perrin winced in sympathy. The major’s arm wasn’t the only thing injured. He took a deep dagger plunge into his upper back thigh—he wanted to make sure everyone referred to the location of his injury that way as well—when he startled one of the last Guarders hiding in an abandoned bedroom. If Yordin tried to lie on his side to relieve the pressure on his thigh, his injured arm had to support his weight. If he shifted to the other side, then his thigh wound bore his weight. The only option was to lie on his stomach, which Gari refused to do claiming it wasn’t dignified.

  The other officers had a bet as to when he would finally relent. Perrin guessed by midday meal.

  Now the major tried propping himself against his ever-ready Burk who struggled to find a way to support Yordin without inflicting more discomfort. Burk offered him his knee to lean against. For about a minute, Gari would be comfortable. “Shin, have you ever been planked?” Yordin said from his semi-prone position.

  Brillen and Shem both began to chuckle.

  Perrin ignored them. “Yes, maybe a couple of times.”

  Shem chortled. “Maybe a couple?”

  Brillen jabbed him in his side and coughed back his own laugh.

  “Well, each time they hit me over the head to knock me out for stitches, I wake up with a headache worse than the pain of the stitching!” Yordin declared. “With sedation, I wake up only groggy as if I’d had a bad jug of mead. Since I’m used to that from my Command School days, I’ll take sedation over planking any day.”

  Perrin nodded obligingly. “I’ll be sure to look into it if ever I need stitching again.”

  Another low groan came from Thorne.

  Shem gave him a casual glance and waved at Perrin. “He’s fine. Best get on with your briefing before he’s fully awake. He’s got maybe ten minutes.”

  “Heard that,” moaned Thorne.

  “Bet you won’t remember it!” Yordin chuckled.

  “With any luck,” Fadh murmured, “he won’t remember a great many things.”

  Colonel Shin cleared his throat, unsure of what to do about those many things. “Additional wagons are on their way from Edge,” he told the men in the tent. “Because of the explosions, our casualty numbers are higher than we anticipated. But I sent a messenger to Edge telling them of our situation, and my surgeon assures me we can care for all of the wounded in our training arena, provided we can borrow a few of your surgeons for a few weeks?”

  The commanders nodded at that.

  “So the wagons to head back to the fort will be those carrying the most severe cases first. Once the injured are taken care of, we’ll use the wagons to retrieve the dead, likely this afternoon. Fadh and I will go to Moorland to oversee the retrieval of our fallen—”

  Shem shook his head. “You’re not supposed to leave this farm, Colonel. Have you forgotten? You did so well last night staying where you should, don’t ruin it now.”

  Several of the assistants smirked and looked down at the ground. Yordin’s guffaw was so loud that Perrin saw the tent wall move.

  “Thank you for the reminder, Zenos,” Perrin said dutifully.

  “Besides,” Shem continued, “I’m sorry to report that your horse is, um . . . unable to take you.”

  Fadh cleared his throat as if Shem had just broken some agreement they had.

  Perrin squinted. “Why?”

  Shem shrugged an apology to Fadh, who gently took Perrin’s arm. “We found it dead, this morning. Exhaustion, maybe colic—we’re not sure. I’m very sorry.”

  Perrin exhaled and rubbed his forehead. Of course there were more casualties than he anticipated, but the horse . . . He was even trying to think of a good name for it, too. “That was actually the first decent animal I’ve had since I’ve been to Edge.”

  “You’ve never claimed a horse, Shin?” Yordin was amazed. “Request one! From the Stables at Pools. Tell them what you want.”

  Perrin sighed. “Maybe I will. Ah, well, there are still plenty of riderless horses today, and I fail to see how staying here now—”

  “You will stay here!” Shem’s tone was more forceful than Perrin had ever heard it.

  He glared. “We’ll discuss this later, Sergeant Major.”

  Brillen found enough strength to say, “You should stay here, Colonel. Let Zenos go with Major Fadh. We need you here.”

  Perrin sighed at the well-intentioned insubordination. He was being overruled at every turn. But they were also right.

  “I’ve asked Rigoff to compile a list of the missing men,” he said in resignation. “He should have that completed within the hour. We will take that—I mean, those going to Moorland will take a copy of the list, along with soldiers from each fort to help identify their dead should their name patches be unreadable.” He glanced around the tent. “No one’s seen Beneff yet, have they?”

  The men shook their heads.

  Shem stared off at a corner.

  “Zenos, you went looking for him last night. Did you—”

  “No, sir, I didn’t. I even went to the forest’s edge.”

  Perrin frowned. “Was there any activity in the forest near our camp? Anything whatsoever?”

  “No Guarder activity at all, sir.” Shem looked him in the eye.

  The doddering old fool likely wandered back to the fort and was asleep in his quarters, Perrin decided.

  “My goal,” he continued, “is to have the camp dismantled by tomorrow afternoon. I also want a team of volunteer to investigate the crater in Moorland. I want to know what happened there.”

  Major Fadh shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea, sir. There could be more of that black powder, in smaller amounts, somewhere in the area. I made sure the men touched nothing as they raided the houses. We don’t need another explosion—”

  “I agree. That’s why we can’t leave it then, can we?” Perrin said. “As much as I’d like to believe we killed every Guarder last night, I know that’s not the truth. What’s to stop any survivors from returning for that substance and using it against us?”

  “Then burn whatever’s left of Moorland!” Yordin insisted. “Pull out our dead and torch the place. Don’t give anyone else a reason to settle there.”

  Burk held up his hand for another Yordin slap.

  The rest of the men agreed loudly with the major until Colonel Shin held up his hands for quiet.

  “I agree. We destroy the village. But first we should find out what caused the blast. The knowledge of how to create it may have escaped last night, and someone may be able to duplicate it somewhere else. If we know what it was, we may be able to fight it.”

  “Colonel,” Shem said, “how could we fight Nature? What they did was a re-creation of Nature. You can’t conquer that. You can only run from it. It will do us no good to pursue this—”

  “But Zenos,” Perrin said, “what if we re-create it ourselves?”

  The air in the tent went deathly still.

  “Find out the secrets ourselves, Shin?” Zenos glared at him. “And use it where? Who are you planning to annihilate, sir?”

  Perrin felt the stares of nearly all the eyes in the room. Thorne’s remained closed, and the only sound was his faint, nasally snoring.

  Perrin held up his hands again. “Just a thought.”

  Shem shook his head. “Get rid o
f that thought, Colonel. We shouldn’t be copying the Guarders. We’re better than that.”

  Fadh turned to Perrin. “Sir, respectfully, I agree with Zenos. Let’s just torch the remaining areas, and hope that if the secrets did escape those who hold them are too terrified by what happened—”

  “Fadh, that’s not the way Guarders think,” Perrin hissed at him. “Nothing terrifies them—”

  “Colonel!” Shem interrupted. “We’ll put it to a vote if we must. But since you’re confined by the Administrators to this farm, and each of us here have pledged to serve the Administrators and follow their decrees and make sure you stay here, I don’t see how you’ll stop us from torching the village without us first finding its secrets.”

  Now all the eyes turned and stared at the sergeant major, but his hard gaze held Perrin’s equally cold one. Perrin had never seen Shem so adamant, nor so angry. “We’ll discuss this later, Zenos.”

  “I’ll tell you what I’d like to discuss,” Yordin said, trying to break the tension, “since you two will be discussing quite a bit on your own later—I’d like to discuss what kind of medal I should get for being stabbed in the upper back thigh!”

  A couple of men began to chuckle.

  “In fact, I imagine there will be quite a few medals handed out in the next few moons,” Yordin declared. “Consider what we’ve done, gentlemen: we’re the first to find a Guarder holdout, wipe them out, and destroy their new weapon! I’m going to need stronger cloth to hold up the weight of all those new medals on my uniform.”

  Now even Perrin was smiling, but stiffly. “Actually, that is something we need to discuss: the report we send to Idumea.”

  “Yes,” said Brillen thoughtfully. “There may be a bit of a problem with that.”

  Fadh nodded. “I agree. Just how much detail do we provide?” He folded his arms and looked steadily at Colonel Shin. “Seeing as how some people weren’t where they were supposed to be . . .”

  A fragile voice from the corner piped up. “If he was where he was supposed to be, I wouldn’t be here now.” Thorne tried to roll over, but the thirty stitches in his side wouldn’t let him.

  The words Don’t remind me, nearly came out of Perrin’s mouth.

  Thorne attempted to sit up, and Shem halfheartedly offered him a hand.

  “Indeed, Colonel Shin,” Yordin smiled as he slowly slumped along Burk’s leg. “For what you put together, the success we had, and your valiant personal effort on the field, I can’t see how anyone could argue you don’t deserve immediate promotion to general!” His assistant already had his hand out waiting for the slap.

  Karna, Zenos, and Fadh grinned and several of the assistants cried out, “Hear, hear!”

  Perrin knew he was turning red, but he couldn’t imagine how to stop it. Then he had an idea. He looked at Thorne.

  The captain had struggled to a sideways sitting position, trying not to lean on Shem any more than necessary. He regarded the colonel with an expression Perrin couldn’t quite decipher, but it seemed to be part worry, part defiance, and part admiration.

  “There’ll be no promotion for me, gentlemen,” Perrin said quietly, meeting Thorne’s unreadable eyes. “In fact, there’ll probably be an extension to my probation for violating it so willfully. And as for planning the offensive in the beginning, without the ‘express permission of the hierarchy’?” He shook his head.

  Shem smiled at him. “Sir, probably the only thing that will keep you from being demoted to a measly private is that you saved the grandson of the High General of Idumea. Hmm. Too bad. I could have outranked you,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  Thorne glanced sharply in his direction, but nodded. “Funny.”

  Shem looked up, as if searching for strength.

  “Any volunteers to write our report?” Perrin asked the officers. “You may have all my notes, and my permission to relay the facts as best as you remember them,” he said in a tone full of suggestion.

  “I’ll do it,” Fadh said. “My men were the first to see them in Moorland, I sent the message to Karna who contacted you, so I started it all. Let me finish it, sir.”

  Perrin nodded at him. “Thank you, Major.”

  A messenger appeared at the tent flap. “Sirs, the first wagons from Edge are arriving. Along with a little extra help.” He sent a wary look to Perrin.

  Perrin shifted the look to Shem, with an additional level of, All right, Shem—what have you done?

  Shem leaped to his feet, nearly knocking Thorne back down. “We have our orders, right men? Fadh, I’ll need just a few minutes with the colonel before I join you for Moorland. Perhaps you can see to helping Thorne back to the surgeons?”

  It was presumptuous for Zenos to issue suggestions, but every man in the tent could see something was up between him and Shin, and no one wanted to get in the middle of it. Fadh nodded while Shem took a startled Perrin by the arm and pulled him out of the tent. “We need to talk.”

  “That’s right, we do!” Perrin growled at him. “This could be considered insubordination, and we weren’t finished—”

  “Yes, we were,” Shem said dismissively. “More importantly, we need to talk about what happened last night. About you.”

  He led a fuming Perrin to the edge of the woods where the first wagons were pulling up in the large open area, the camp well behind them on the other side of the command tent.

  Shem murmured, “I know something happened with you. I saw it in your eyes when you came back last night. You also haven’t slept enough, and—”

  Being hen-pecked by Shem was the last thing Perrin wanted. “Shem, I’m fine. And where are we going?” he added in annoyance.

  A wagon rolled to a stop in front of them, and he stiffened when he saw the “extra help.”

  No, this was the last thing Perrin wanted.

  Mahrree climbed off the side without waiting for assistance from the soldier who brought her. Jaytsy and Peto jumped out the back and stood by the wagon with eager, but apologetic, faces.

  “Ah, Shem!” Perrin snarled. “What’s she doing here?”

  Mahrree marched up to him. “Don’t ‘Ah, Shem’ him! This was my idea. You went out there, didn’t you?”

  Perrin was furious.

  At least, that’s what the emotion felt like. His wife, checking up on him as if he were a twelve-year-old runaway. How absurd.

  But there she stood, hands on hips, and her eyes severe as she gazed into his. Until she softened. “Perrin?”

  He wasn’t sure what she saw in his face, but the urge to grab her throat and check her pulse overwhelmed him. He took her wrist instead and dragged her past the edge of the forest into the shadows for some privacy. Her pulse quickened under his fingers as he sat her down on a fallen tree.

  Shem followed them in—apparently this morning no one remembered Pere Shin’s first rule about staying out of the forests—and waited for the Shins from a little ways off.

  “Yes, I went there,” Perrin confessed. “But I didn’t get hurt.”

  “Mahrree, if it makes you feel any better, he was pretty good out there,” Shem offered.

  “So you were, Shem,” Perrin said. “I’m actually more worried about you. Last night you were very effective, for once. More than once, by my count.”

  Shem looked down at a lone pinecone. “I know. I had no choice. I’m working on that myself.”

  Perrin took a deep breath. “Well, add that to the list of things we’re going to discuss later. We have enough to talk about for riding all the way to Waves. Now, I promise both of you that I had no problems during the battle.”

  Mahrree looked deep into his eyes. “But after?”

  Perrin couldn’t hold her gaze any longer. He sat down in the dirt in front of her and stared at a decaying log. There were no more images, but just the memory of the images. Of smoldering. Of Mahrree.

  “Shem,” he whispered, “we can’t let them use that weapon.”

  Perrin felt his wife’s arms wrap around him. �
�Weapon? Tell me what—”

  “No!” he exclaimed, pulling out of her embrace. He’d never tell her, especially here among the rotting wood that reminded him of burning limbs. “I never want to see it again!” He dared to meet her eyes, and searched himself as she searched his face. He didn’t feel the same as before. He was beating it, right there.

  “I can deal with it,” he assured them, “because Shem’s going to destroy whatever remains.”

  Mahrree turned expectantly to Shem.

  He nodded back to her.

  Perrin took Mahrree’s face. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “But you need us,” she said. “The children and I can help get the injured to the wagons.”

  “How long were you planning this?”

  “Ever since you told me what you were planning.”

  “Women don’t belong out here.”

  “Prove it.”

  He managed a short chuckle. “I don’t have time to debate you right now, woman.”

  “No you don’t,” she agreed, “But do you have a few seconds to accept my apology for checking up on you?” She put her arms around his neck again and kissed him.

  Of course he had to be polite and return the gesture, ardently . . .

  Shem groaned and turned around.

  “No, Peto,” he called loudly. “Stay at the wagon. Trust me.” He murmured to himself as he ambled out of the trees. “Yes, yes, advantages of marriage—you remind all the time . . .”

  ---

  Mahrree and the children proved to be more help than Perrin imagined they could be. While the surgeons and assistants attended to the more seriously injured, his family handled the minor cuts and the changing of bandages. He was surprised that wounded men responded so cheerfully to his wife and son. Seeing another face besides a sour surgeon’s seemed to be an effective treatment.

  But he was not at all surprised by the attention afforded his daughter. Soldiers who were barely injured suddenly needed Jaytsy to rewrap a wound that had just been bound by an aide, or required her arm around their waists to walk them to a departing wagon even though they had wandered over to the surgery area on their own.