Halls of Law

by V. M. Escalada

  Ker checked that her knife was secure, shifted the crossbow, and blew on her hands again. She knew that the cold could affect bows and bowstrings, but just couldn’t remember whether it affected the mechanisms of crossbows. Her military training was too long ago, and she’d had to study so many other things since. Just learning to read and write took up a lot of time, concentration, and memory.

  Her pack she’d left at the bottom of a birch tree, two pine trees farther from the road. She couldn’t afford to have someone who came into the woods to relieve himself find it at the bottom of her tree. From here, she had the sentry silhouetted against the light of the fire, and all she had to do now was wait until the middle of the second watch. And not fall asleep herself.

  The sentry was sitting where anyone who came creeping up on the camp in the dark wouldn’t see him clearly. But to anyone who’d watched them set up, as she had, he was a clear target. Though if he kept turning to look at the fire, he’d have no night vision at all. Between that and the noise the sleepers were making, Kerida was fairly certain she could walk up behind him and stick a knife in his ribs before he even noticed she was there. Just like the man in the stable. She rubbed her suddenly sweaty palms on her breeches.

  The sliver of moon had not moved any significant distance when the sentry got to his feet and prodded one of the sleeping forms with his toe. The watch seemed very short, but Ker knew that could work in her favor. Any soldier learned—and never forgot—that the body had natural rhythms, particularly when it came to sleep. Wake too soon, and you’d be groggy and fall asleep again easily. Either these two didn’t know that, or the invaders’ bodies worked at rhythms different from what Ker was used to.

  Kerida blew on her fingers again, and brought the crossbow up to a ready position. She was farther away than she’d like to be, but her height in the tree would give her shot more distance. Still she waited, biting on the inside of her lip to stay alert. She couldn’t wait long, not if this watch was as short as the first, but she had to wait long enough for the first sentry to fall well asleep, and this second one to begin to doze once more. There, didn’t his head drop just a little?

  Kerida breathed in, breathed out slowly, and let fly.

  Without waiting to see where—or whether—she’d hit the guard, Ker set the butt of the bow on her breast bone and pulled the string back with both hands. She fit the new quarrel into place and took aim, only to see her target on his feet and staggering toward the fire. She was trying to get the sighting bead back on him, when one of the recumbent forms rolled over, knocking the man down. Tel?

  Before she could relax, the sleeping sentry, a man in a red hood, came charging to his feet. Without pausing to aim, Ker again let fly. She was certain she’d missed, but before she could call out a warning to Tel, she froze. In coming to the aid of his mate, the invader in the red hood had stepped into the path of the flying quarrel, taking it square in the chest. Ker’s breath burst out in a giggle. She couldn’t have made that shot on purpose if she’d tried.

  She came out of the tree in a controlled fall, grabbing at branches as she slid down, and ran for the camp, trying not to twist her cold, stiff ankles on the uneven ground as she went. Whoever had knocked down the first guard was on her side, and she needed to go and help.

  The first guard was still down, tangled up in limbs long enough that they could only belong to Tel Cursar. As Ker reached them, Tel rolled on top, grinding the crossbow quarrel, high in the man’s right shoulder, into the ground. The second man lay completely still, though Ker could see blood trickling out of his mouth, and his eyes moved toward her. As she watched, the human light in the man’s eyes dulled, until there was only the flicker of the firelight left.

  “Quick, quick, free my feet.” Tel had a good grip on the living sentry, but was losing the wrestling match since his bound feet kept him from applying the leverage his longer limbs gave him. Ker drew her knife, but Tel was moving about so abruptly she had to be careful not to cut him instead of his bonds. Finally, she lay down on top of both of them and sawed at the strip of hide until it snapped.

  Once his feet were free, Tel twisted his torso around and braced himself to put maximum pressure on the guard’s chest, holding him pinned to the ground. “Don’t just stand there,” he growled.

  Startled, Ker looked at the knife still in her hand and grimaced. She reversed it, and knocked the man on the head with the heavy hilt. She’d judged well, and she clenched her teeth against the crunching sound, but at least there was no blood.

  “Watch it!” Tel jerked his own head back. “Why didn’t you cut his throat?”

  “And cut you by accident?” Ker said. “Stop complaining and hold out your hands.”

  As soon as his hands were free Tel snatched the knife from her and cut the sentry’s throat. “Better to be sure,” he said.

  Ker nodded. The man had to die; she just hadn’t wanted to do it. She frowned, realizing she could still hear snoring. None of the others around them had woken up.

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  “What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with you?”

  “What?”

  “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you escaping? I only let myself get caught so you could get away.”

  The injustice of it almost left Ker speechless. Almost. “You let yourself get caught? Oh, I’m sure of it. You mean you deliberately left hiding, calling to the enemy and running around like a mad fool in order to help me? Here I thought it was because you mistook them for friends.”

  “You were supposed to get away.” He spoke through clenched teeth.

  “And go where? How? I’m no good cross-country, and you see what I’d likely run into going along the roads.” She pointed at the guard’s corpse with her chin.

  Tel snorted. They were both on their knees. Yet even so, he towered over her. Their breath fogged around them. It might be a good idea for them both to calm down, Ker thought. She was trying to think of a soft way to say so when she noticed that the snoring still continued. She broke eye contact with Tel and looked around at the sleeping men.

  “Is it just me, or does this strike you as unnatural?” She glanced back at Tel, to find him looking around as well. Ker began to breathe easier. She got to her feet and he followed.

  “There’s more to it than this,” Tel said. “I know them—at least these two.” He pointed. “They were with me at the cave, before they had to go on. But they didn’t try to help me or try to get away. All the way along they seemed to be witless, like they were drugged.”

  Ker thought about her broken skull idea and nodded. “Might it be magic?”

  Tel wrinkled up his nose. “A few days ago I’d have made fun of you for asking that. But since the mines . . . What about Flashing them?”

  Ker sucked in her breath and tucked her hands into her armpits. The very last thing she wanted to do was Flash these men. “I told you I’m not good with people,” she said.

  Tel came closer to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right if you can’t,” he said.

  Ker breathed in through her nose. Somehow his sympathy made her reluctance feel like cowardice. “I’ll try,” she said, moving away from him. Maybe their auras would tell her something.

  Still looking at her with narrowed eyes, Tel squatted by the nearest sleeping soldier and turned him over on his back. He opened the neck of the man’s tunic, and his shirt, looping his identity plaque out of the way. “This one’s Shorden, if knowing his name will help you.”

  “Who knows? It might.” Ker’s mind jumped from place to place and she had to take a couple of deep, slow breaths to steady herself. Tel hovered over her and finally she twisted her neck to look up at him. “Do you mind? I can’t concentrate with you hanging over me.”

  “Sorry. I’ll go search the corpses.”

  Ker watched him for a moment, but then she closed her
eyes again, and this time she managed to reach her safe room right away. Paraste. She placed her hand on Shorden’s chest. And there was his aura, but the colors, yellow, blue, and green, were muted and barely moving, fogged over with a red haze. She looked up at Tel. His colors—the same three—were rich ribbons of dancing light. Suddenly, she heard someone crying. As her training had taught her, she tried to follow the sound, but just as it seemed she was gaining on it, it faded abruptly and was gone. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and tried again, this time repeating the five questions in time to the beating of the man’s heart, but nothing more came. Frowning, she took a grip on his shirt, and was immediately smacked with information.

  “These aren’t his clothes,” she said aloud. “Didn’t you say his name is Shorden? This tunic belongs to someone named Sar Malward. I’m afraid she was killed, and her clothes given to this man.” She reached over to one of the other sleeping forms. “This man’s not wearing his own clothes either.”

  “Would you mind checking all of them?”

  It didn’t take Ker long to check all five sleepers, and two others were wearing the clothes of a dead woman. Of the three, two had been killed in battle, one after capture. Ker stored their names away against the day she could report to someone in authority.

  “Do you suppose they’re killing all the female soldiers?” she asked. Where was her sister Ester? She squeezed her eyes shut. This is why Talents stayed apart from the world. So that what they Flashed couldn’t affect them personally.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions.” Tel’s voice was brittle, and his grip on her shoulder was tight. “What about the enemy? Worth checking them, do you think?”

  “Of course, it would be.” Ker crouched down again, this time next to the man in the red hood. She picked up a blood-free corner of his tunic between her thumb and forefinger.

  There was no point in saying that the Halian’s clothes came from a soldier in the Bear Wing, Tel could see that much for himself. And she might just as well keep the man’s name to herself as well. Whether Tel knew the officer or not, he didn’t need bad news of that kind right now.

  Kerida concentrated. Problem was, the clothes wouldn’t tell her anything more about the Halian. “Did you take their weapons?”

  “Here.” Tel handed her two knives, one with a plain, leather-wrapped hilt, the other with a more intricate hilt of horn. “One from each of them. Keep the one you like.”

  “These two were on their way back through the pass,” she said, sorting through the images. “They were separated from the main body, the ones with horses.” She looked around them. “They had to follow on foot, because these men can’t ride.”

  “What do you mean? Alken told me his father’s a hostler.”

  “Well, he can’t ride now.” Ker noticed she still had hold of the dead man’s knife and stuck it in her belt, rubbing her hands on her thighs, and muttering her closure word. “Maybe that’s part of what’s making them stupid.”

  “Why take them at all? Why not just kill them? What makes these five men so important?”

  Ker shook her head. She wished she knew how to interpret the auras, and what the obscuring red mist meant. “Could they just need the manpower? Could it be as simple as that?”

  There were dark circles under Tel’s eyes. Suddenly he knelt next to the one he’d called Shorden. “Shorden! Come on, man, wake up.”

  Whether the man reacted to the authority in Tel’s voice Ker couldn’t be sure, but his eyes snapped open, and his hand reached for the weapon he wasn’t wearing.

  “Get up, soldier.”

  The man then made a face as if a fly had been bothering him and rolled over again, muttering something that sounded like “no point.” Tel reached down again, but Ker took hold of his arm.

  “I don’t think we can wake them up,” she said. “Not in any way that will do them or us any good. They were our people, but they aren’t anymore.”

  Tel’s face hardened and Ker licked her lips. Don’t say it, she thought. Please don’t say it. It was one thing to kill an obvious enemy, another entirely to kill sleeping men. She held her breath, steeling herself. If it had to be done . . .

  “We’ll leave them,” Tel said finally, his voice a croak. Kerida breathed again. “We’ve no choice. We’ll leave food and blankets—we couldn’t carry all this away even if we wanted to.” He gestured at the packs. “What about our things?”

  “My pack’s down there, just off the road,” she said, pointing in the direction of her tree. “The rest I hid where we were when we first saw them.”

  Tel looked up at the sky. “Come on. We can get back there by daylight, and find a better place to hide. We’ll try traveling by night for a while.”

  • • •

  It took them four days traveling across country, using the stars when they could and Tel’s sense of direction when they couldn’t, to reach Oste Camp. Twice they’d caught glimpses of enemy patrols, both larger than the group they’d escaped. They’d spent only one night in comfort, with an outlying farmer whose holding was cut out of the deep forest. He’d had no news of the outside world since the snow had come, and neither Tel nor Ker had much enjoyed having to tell him what they knew.

  “Oste seemed much closer to the pass before.” Tel’s voice showed the roughness of disuse. He’d been quieter since his escape from the false soldiers, and they’d had little energy and even less inclination to talk since they’d left the farmer.

  “I’m sure it is, by road. But with our having to go round about . . .” Ker shrugged. Neither of them mentioned the fear in both of their minds—that the fort would be in the same state as Temlin Hall.

  Administered by the Eagles, Oste Camp, in the northern foothills of the Serpents Teeth range, had at one time marked the border of the Peninsula, where the Polity had begun. But for generations since, it had been the main transit camp of the Battle Wings and the place any Battle Wing Faro had to wait for permission before crossing the Serpents Teeth and entering the Peninsula. Like all military camps throughout the Polity, Oste’s main gate faced the road. Coming as they were through the surrounding woods, daybreak found them watching the approach to the rear gate.

  “Blast.” Tel’s exhaustion leached any emotion out of his voice. “Something’s up.” The corners of his mouth and eyes drooped, and Ker resisted the impulse to reach over and pat his arm. “There should be Eagles on the walls, and all I can see are Bears—not that the color of anyone’s tunic means much just now.”

  Ker squinted, but in the dim light, she couldn’t see colors at all. However, what she did see worried her far more. The usual village that grew up around any fort, made up of tradespeople who made their living off the military, plus the families of those stationed here, was gone.

  “Tel, the village—” she began.

  “They’ve been under attack,” he said. “They’ve had to pull the houses down.”

  Ker nodded. Of course. Anything that might give an attacker cover would have been removed. She only hoped there’d been time to get the villagers behind the walls.

  “So the gates are closed,” she said. Though she herself had never seen Oste, it looked familiar. All military forts were built along the same lines. Ker scrubbed at her mouth with the back of her hand. “What now?”

  Tel was still frowning at the distant gate. “No cover for the enemy means no cover for us.”

  Ker nodded. The open fields between them and the safety of Oste’s gate suddenly seemed twice as wide.

  Tel stood up straighter and squared his shoulders. “Come on. Let’s not waste any more time.”

  As soon as they stepped out of the forest, Ker saw activity on the wall. Though they were still some distance away, she could tell they’d been seen, and that their approach was being watched. She hesitated, scanning the sky above them. What with traveling at night, and mostly through forest, she hadn’t seen
a clear sky for quite a while.

  “Son and Daughter, are you still looking for that griffin?”

  Stung at the harshness of his tone, Ker spun to face him. “And what do you mean by that?”

  “Never mind.” Tel straightened his shoulders and stalked away, raising his hands to wave at the guards watching them. The sound of trumpets came softly through the morning air.

  Ker straightened her own shoulders and lengthened her stride as Tel broke into a rough trot. They were both exhausted; whatever it was that was bothering Tel would have to wait.

  Halfway across the field an arrow appeared suddenly from the nearby woods, sticking out of the ground at Ker’s feet. She jumped to the left, as instinct and old training cut in; she changed direction, running faster, and then slower, and then faster again in as random a pattern as she could, to make it harder for the hidden archer to hit her.

  Out of the corner of her eye she could see that Tel was doing the same thing. She dodged another arrow just in time to stumble over the rubble that marked the beginning of the demolished village.

  “Halt! Identify yourselves!” The guard chosen for the gate post always had a good carrying voice.

  Ker hesitated, but hauled herself up and kept moving when she saw that Tel’s pace didn’t falter. Picking her way across the debris of wooden walls and abandoned furniture, Ker expected an arrow between her shoulder blades at any moment, not relaxing even when she realized that she and Tel were out of range.

  At last they were plastered against the fort wall, almost under the guard post that overlooked Oste’s rear gate.

  “Who are you? State your business.”

  Tel tilted his head back and took a deep breath. “Tel Cursar, Third Officer, Green Company, Carnelian Cohort, Bear Wing, asking leave to report.” He gestured to Ker. “This is Kerida Nast, Talent Candidate, Questin Hall. Bringing information and asking for refuge.”