Wolf's Eyes

by Jane Lindskold

  Only when he was certain that he had discharged his duty to Earl Kestrel did Derian head for the camp, but he did so at a quick trot that was nearly a ran. Overhead he heard Elation shrill something like laughter. The great peregrine had taken to following Derian about more often now that Firekeeper was scouting for the army and a beacon overhead would not be either welcome nor wise.

  Arriving at the Kestrel camp, Derian found Race and Valet waiting for him. As before, their camp's location had been selected to permit Firekeeper to come and go without Blind Seer panicking the rest of the army. Backed against the Barren River, downstream from Good Crossing, they were the farthest group east but for the pickets who patrolled the camp's border.

  Across the river, Derian could see lights glowing in the Watchful Eye and along the northern side of the river. For the first time he realized that evening was gathering. To-morrow if all rumors were correct, there would be battle, a massive thing that would make the battle a few days before—now called the Battle on the Banks—look like a minor skirmish.

  And he might be in it. Not wanting to introduce the matter, Derian commented:

  “I always meant to ask why we built the Watchful Eye oh our side of the river but Bright Bay never built any similar fort on their side.”

  Valet poured him a cup of mulled cider and commented, “When die Civil War ended, Bright Bay received Good Crossing. Hope didn't exist then—just a few houses and farms as I understand it. The Watchful Eye was built to house the garrison that would protect this newly vulnerable point.”

  He fell silent, having been far more talkative than was his wont. Race added:

  “Good Crossing had a watthtower—it's part of the walls now—and was a whole lot bigger. Hope grew up pretty fast, though, what with smuggling and tolls and soldiers to supply. I've heard that when it got to be a town rather than a cluster of houses they called it Hope because folks there hoped they wouldn't get attacked.”

  “My father,” Derian said, “told me it was named for a hope for peace and reunification.”

  “Maybe,” Race shrugged. “I'm no historian. Anyhow, thanks for getting here so quickly, Derian. I've got your marching orders, if you'll take them.”

  Derian nodded, swallowing cider despite the lump that suddenly appeared in his throat.

  “Go on,” he said.

  “I was told to tell you that this was a request, not an order,” Race began. He stopped, scratched his beard and started again. “Sorry, I'm not much good at speeches.”

  Derian wanted to strangle him, but waited with what patience he could muster.

  “It's been decided,” Race began again, “that Stonehold's biggest weak spot is that they've got a long way to go to get in their supplies. The king and the duke, though, they don't want to send the army after those supplies. They figure it would be too easy for Stonehold to defend them.”

  “Would it?” Derian asked.

  “Well, I haven't been over there myself,” Race said, “but from reports we've got they've got their wagons drawn up alongside the road that leads back to Mason's Bridge. They're keeping the road mostly open, but their camp is all along there as well as along the southern end of the field outside of Good Crossing.

  “Now,” Race continued, “if our army does succeed in breaking Stonehold's lines and going through we'll get those supplies, no question. The thing is, we may not break those Unes, at least not right away. It might take days of fighting.”

  Derian refilled his mug, mostly to hide a shiver.

  “And during those days,” Race said, “they'll be bringing in more supplies and maybe even build good defenses for what they have. So, what King Tedric and Duke Allister have decided is that at the same time the main armies are hitting each other out on the field, a small group—one that could circle wide around the eastern fringes of the Stonehold camp and come in where they'll only have guards, not a whole army—that small group could come in and destroy as many of the supplies as possible.”

  Derian nodded. “That makes sense. If the group could get through, they could do real damage.”

  “Right.” Race nodded. “Now, the problem is that the king and the duke figure that there are spies in the main army.”

  “Our army?” Derian asked, a little shocked, even though his common sense told him that this must be so. After all, didn't Hawk Haven have spies around Stonehold's army?

  “If the spies got wind of this flank maneuver,” Race said, “they would certainly tell their chiefs and perimeter patrols would be beefed up. So the raiders are being drawn from people who have the skills but aren't part of any regular units. Take me, for instance. I'm with the scouts, but I haven't given up my primary allegiance to Earl Kestrel. There's another scout—one who came with Earle Kite's group—who's also semi-independent.”

  Derian could see where Race was heading. He decided to anticipate it.

  “And me? I'm one of Earl Kestrel's people, too.”

  “Right.” Race puffed his chest a bit. “I told my commander that you'd learned a lot from me on the trip west—and more from taking care of Firekeeper.”

  “Is Firekeeper part of this, too?” Derian asked, momentarily dismayed that his tme worth was actually as a watch on die wolf-woman.

  “Actually,” Race seemed embarrassed, “she's not. They discussed it and decided that Blind Seer would spook the Stonehold animals. It's happened a time or two already, when Firekeeper's been scouting for the king, but it hasn't mattered then because the two of them just took off before the guards could be sure of anything.”

  “Whereas we need to stay,” Derian said.

  “Another reason is that Firekeeper,” Race shrugged, “just doesn't know how to pick a target. She wouldn't know how tofigureout what's valuable and what's not. She's also fairly reluctant to kill people.”

  “A good thing,” Derian said dryly, “given how good she is at killing game.”

  'True,” Race agreed hastily, “but we can't have someone distracted by needing to give her orders or clarify a target. All the raiders need to be capable of initiative. King Tedric has spoken with Firekeeper already and she's agreed to stay out.”

  “I hope she listens to him better than she does to me,” Derian said, recalling how Firekeeper had followed him and Doc into town.

  “I think she will,” Race said. “I think this entire concept of war has her rather confused.”

  Valet added quietly, “I agree. She is most distressed.”

  “I hadn't noticed,” Derian admitted, “mostly because she's been away so much and I've been with the cavalry mounts where she doesn't dare come—not with Blind Seer.”

  “Talk with her,” Valet urged. “You will have time before our departure.”

  “Our?” Derian looked at him. “Are you going along on this raid, too?”

  “Earl Kestrel,” Valet said with a faint sigh, “has requested I join, recalling how Race praised my woodcraft when we were seeking Prince Barden.”

  Derian grinned, assured despite himself. It seemed impossible that anything could go wrong if Valet was taking part.

  “Who else?” he asked. “Us three, the scout Race mentioned, and…?”

  “About a dozen other people chosen for both their skills and their certain loyalty,” Race said. “It's not been easy to find what we need, especially on short notice and with most of those assigned to the army mled out lest they be missed. Still, scouts are harder to pin down and my commander has found clever ways to cover for those we're taking. The other members are personal attendants on various of the nobles who have arrived with their troops. You'll see them all at a meeting tonight.”

  “Meeting?” Derian asked. “Won't that be risky?”

  “We've a safe place,” Race assured him. “Anyhow, it would be more risky to go in without a chance to plan, practice, and meet each other.”

  Derian thought fleetingly of Prince Newell's man Rook and hoped he wasn't being included. The times their paths had crossed—which hadn't been often—he had n
ot liked the man any better than he had liked his master. Derian decided not to ask. If Rook had been ruled trustworthy, then it was not Derian's place to question.

  Instead he looked out across the camp, watching the glow of the campfires, listening to the rise and fall of voices, the sound of weapons being sharpened, of meals being prepared. In the middle distance, a clear baritone voice began a mournful song.

  It's for real, Derian thought. I'm going to war.

  He rose then and went to check his own armor and weapons. There wasn't any time to waste.

  XXV

  GOOD CROSSING WAS THE WESTERNMOST town iff in Bright Bay. The reason for this was that no one could live in the Barren Lands. Out of the Barren Lands flowed the Barren River, widening as soon as the waters reached less rocky land, like a broad-shouldered man stretching after a day in a cramped coach.

  Long ago, those rapid-flowing waters had carried enormous boulders downstream. These, over even moretime,had collected other rocks, dirt, and detritus, becoming small is-lands that would one day entice colonists to rest the supports for a bridge upon them. Around the bridge a town would grow up and someday the bridge itself would be a town.

  Firekeeper found the ways and reasons for human settlement astonishing. It was so unlike the roving ways of the wolves, like but unlike the nesting of certain birds who would return to the same tree or cliff edge year after year.

  She thought about this as she stood with Derian on the hills to the west of Good Crossing, hills that were themselves the last remnants of the Barren Lands. Because the soil here was rocky, these hills had never been cultivated. Because the trees that grew on them were stunted and twisted, they had never been cut for lumber and only rarely thinned for fire-wood. Since the soil east of the Barren Lands had been enriched by the ash from the long-ago volcanic emptions, it produced not only good timber but good farming. So this poor excuse for a forest had been left alone.

  Surrounding Good Crossing there was a large, cleared area. In happier days, this had provided public grazing for the town, the place where market wagons clustered before the opening of the city gates, and the home of the horse fair held once in the spring and once in a autumn.

  Until a few days ago, Firekeeper had crossed those fields almost every night while gathering information for King Tedric. Now she was amazed at how different the place seemed—-transformed since the almost impulsive Battle of the Banks into an acknowledged battleground.

  After that battle, Stonehold's forces had retreated as far as the southern edge of the field, arraying themselves along the field and spreading to either side of the broad north-south road that would ultimately arrive at Mason's Bridge. The road had a grassy margin along it, bordered here and there with saplings or by hedges protecting farmers’ fields or by orchards.

  Firekeeper looked back and forth between the two camps. In the camp outside of Good Crossing, the scarlet and white shields borne by Hawk Haven's rank and file blended with the sea green and yellow of Bright Bay. On the other side of that cleared area, which to Firekeeper's eyes looked no different from any other patch of cleared ground, neither scarlet and white nor green and yellow could be seen, but only the triple chevronels of Stonehold—red, purple, and blue on a field of white.

  Even through the long glass that Derian had borrowed from Race, the array of flags and pennons was confusing. Ever since King Tedric had departed from Eagle's Nest to meet with Duke Allister, Firekeeper had been studying various insignia, trying to learn how to tell person from person by their signs, and occasionally regretting her refusal to learn to read and write.

  Her memory was good, far better than that of most humans she had met, but it was schooled to recall scents and sounds more than visual images. Notes would help her to remember, or at least provide a better sense of how human symbols worked.

  “I don't understand, still,” the wolf-woman admitted to Derian. “The simplest, yes. Hawk Haven's soldiers bear the shield split side to side on the slant: red and white. King Tedric's colors.”

  “Scarlet and silver are the preferred heraldic tdrms for those colors,” Derian said teasingly, “but red and white will do.”

  “And those of Bright Bay carry shields of green and yellow, split on a similar slant, but opposite,” Firekeeper gestured, miming a line that started high on the left and dropped to the right.

  “Very good. Sea green and gold—yellow in this case—are the colors of the royal house of Bright Bay,” Derian said.

  “And Stonehold soldiers,” Firekeeper continued, “have on their shields what looks like three skinny mountains against a snowy sky, colored one each red and purple and blue.”

  “Yes.”

  “But some shields—no matter the color of the background—have something drawn on the middle of the shield. A star—or what you call a star—or aflower—thoughI have never seen suchflowers—oranimals.”

  Firekeeper's snort showed what she thought of these last as representations of the tme beasts and beside her BUnd Seer laughed.

  “The basic shields,” Derian explained with the enthusiasm of a youth raised in the capital city for whom heraldry meant not just symbols but real people—some of them heroes, “are carried by the rank and file. The shields with a simple blazon—the star or flower or animal—are carried by the officers.”

  Firekeeper nodded. “This so those they command may know them when helmets are pulled low, but Earl Kestrel is an officer and yet his shield is ‘different yet more so. It bears the same blue and red bands set side by side with the golden hunting hom that he shows on hisflagand even on his clothing.”

  “That's because he's heir to a Great House and entitled to bear his own house's colors instead of those of the king,” Derian said. “If you look to where EUse's father stands with his archers you will see that his shield is different again: white with an archer upon it shooting a scarlet arrow from his bow.”

  Derian pointed. “If you look you'll see that there are others carrying Earl Kestrel's red and blue stripes. These are troops raised from his lands, his local militia. There aren't many of these because Norwood lands are all the way cross Hawk Haven—in the area bordering New Kelvin. Most of his troops have stayed home to patrol banks of the White Water River, just in case the New Kelvinese get to wondering if we're watching our flanks. Still, there were some based at the Kestrel Manse in Eagle's Nest and they've come along so that Kestrel can demonstrate its support of the king.”

  Firekeeper nodded, noting that what Derian said of the Kestrel colors was tme of the other Great Houses as well. She resigned herself to confusion, wondering how anyone could keep all of this straight. In addition to those devices she had come to know there were so many new ones: mostly devices designating military companies or personal devices such as Sapphire's gem-blazoned shield.

  “I have a new respect for heralds,” she said to Blind Seer. “When we were in at the castle they seemed stuffy, self-important sorts. Now I see how useful their knowledge is.”

  Blind Seer granted agreement. I wonder what keeps one soldier from carrying another's shield or stealing a great noble's banner?”

  “A good question.” She repeated it to Derian, who replied:

  “In the heat of battle one soldier will often seize another's shield, especially to replace one lost or damaged. However, the imposture couldn't continue after helmets were removed.”

  “But deliberately change,” Firekeeper pressed, “to make oneself more important.”

  Derian laughed. “That would be its own penalty, for those with reputation enough to merit a personal coat of arms are usually the target of many soldiers. Killing a common soldier is useful, but killing an officer or a noble may strike fear in those who depend on his or her commands.”

  “I see,” Firekeeper frowned. “You speak lightly of killing and even laugh. Have you ever killed anyone?”

  Derian sobered. “I have not. Honesdy, I'm wondering if I'm a great coward for being so glad that my place will be off the main field.”


  “I don't think you're a coward,” Firekeeper said, looking out over that strip of empty land and thinking of the coming batde as Derian had described it to her. “I think you show great good sense. What will they fight for? How will they know who has won?”

  “Our troops fight to defend their position and to drive the others away,” Derian explained. “Their troops fight to take ground and make our soldiers lose heart.”

  “Then we will win,” Firekeeper said confidentiy. “We are here already and have nowhere to go. It is easier, too, for more of King Tedric's troops to join this army here.”

  'Trae,” Derian said, “as far as that goes. But the damage done to land and property is all ours to take. If this war stretches on, we are hurt by those damages.”

  “Long? I thought this war was to be this afternoon!”

  “This battle,” Derian said heavdy. “Wars are made of many battles or sometimes of only one.”

  “Which is this to be?”

  “I wish I knew,” he said. “I bet King Tedric wishes that he knew, too.”

  “Is there any way to make the war end without many battles?”

  “Never start,” Derian said, then regretted the flippancy in his tone. “I take that back. If that quick wisdom was trae our country and Bright Bay would not have been spatting these hundred years and more. Sometimes a war is needed to clear the enmity as a thunderstorm clears a late-summer sky—or so they say.”

  Firekeeper granted, politely noncommittal about what she thought about this bit of human wisdom.

  “The other way wars are won,” Derian continued, “is If one side captures a place or person so important that the other side will surrender rather than risk their destruction: a king or queen or perhaps someone like Duke Allister Seagleam, who has taken lids queen's place here. I have heard that in New Kelvin there are buildings so revered that the New Kelvinese honor them more highly than any hving thing.”

  “Buddings?”

  “So they say,” Derian shrugged, “but then New Kelvinese are mad for old things and older customs.”

  Firekeeper caught her breath in excitement. “Do the Stone-holders have a king here? Where is his sign?”