thirteen

FRIENDS

Not until she reached four puddles of molten iron surrounded by Stormwing-ravaged bodies did Kel wake up to the fact that what she was doing was insane.

Her lips quivered as she dismounted to inspect the scene, her eyes stinging. Twice, she thought as she crouched beside the dead. She had failed her people twice: once by being away when the enemy had come for them, and once by riding off to their rescue alone.

She looked up, blinking away tears, and surprised herself with a strange giggle. She clapped her hand over her mouth, but the giggles bubbled insistently in her throat. How could she think she was alone? After all, she had a horse, a flock of small birds, Jump and twelve motley dogs, and ten cats.

“This isn’t a rescue,” Kel whispered. “It’s a joke.”

She could still turn back and tell Lord Wyldon she’d come to her senses. He might let her off easy if she returned soon. He was a commander; he knew that losing so many people could make anyone run mad.

She straightened. About to take the reins and mount Hoshi again, she glimpsed something that was not a shredded soldier’s corpse at the far side of the road. She lifted her glaive from its rest and went to investigate. It was a heap of clothing. From the feel as she prodded it with the butt of her glaive, it covered a civilian’s body. She approached, holding the glaive point down in case this was someone pretending to be dead. Kel reached out with her free hand and tugged on the clothes. The body rolled over.

Though animals had fed on the dead woman, the Stormwings hadn’t touched her. The earth had protected her face. Gently Kel brushed the mud away. Through the dirt, bloat, and darkening of dead flesh, Kel recognized Hildurra, Zamiel’s assistant clerk and one of Fanche’s best friends. From the caked places on the dead woman’s clothes, Kel guessed that she had taken a number of wounds during the attack and had bled dry as the raiders fled. There were healers among the refugees, but Kel guessed the enemy hadn’t allowed them to care for the wounded. So Hildurra had died. The Scanrans had thrown her aside like so much rubbish and ridden on.

Kel sat back on her heels. The icy grip of rage settled around her heart once more. I can’t even bury her, she thought. I can’t slow down at all if I’m to catch them before they kill any more of my people. Before they give the children to Blayce the Gallan. I’ll free them, somehow.

Knowledge struck her like a sudden ray of sunlight. What am I thinking? she asked. My people are trained with weapons. They’ll fight if they think they have a chance. And I didn’t see any of Gil’s squad among the dead, which means they have a squad of convict soldiers among them. Mithros, even the children can fight. All I need to worry about is finding them and getting weapons into their hands. We’ll manage just fine. Once they’re on their way home, I’ll find Blayce and finish him.

Kel stood and found one of the many handkerchiefs tucked in her armor. She laid it over Hildurra’s face. “May the Goddess bless you, and the Black God grant you a place of peace in the summer sun,” she whispered. “Mithros grant you justice.”

She swung onto Hoshi’s back and rode on through the warm afternoon, following the broad, churned-up path left by the raiders and their captives. The sparrows flew in a broad circle, watching for enemies in the brush.

With Hoshi as her only mount and no replacements available, Kel took extra care of her. She watered the mare often, dismounted and walked her to relieve her of Kel’s weight, and rested her from time to time. The slow pace chafed Kel, but it was better to move slowly than to kill her only mount.

The Scanrans would be slow, too. While they seemed to have put many captives in wagons, those who rode were not bred to it. They would fall, they would run into each other, they wouldn’t care for the horses as an experienced rider might. Some might even do those things on purpose. Kel knew her people. They would make the enemy’s retreat a misery. Kel smiled at the thought. Wagons would develop lost wheels and tangled reins. Things would fall off the horses’ tack. Cooking food would burn. Unpleasant herbs picked when no guards saw would find their way into the Scanrans’ tea. She might not reach her captives before they crossed the Vassa, but she would find them eventually.

Kel had been able to get few supplies in the way of food, but when night came, she didn’t go hungry. One of Jump’s friends, a big, wire-haired, boar-hound herd dog mix named Shepherd, dragged a freshly killed small boar to Kel’s fire as she made camp. Kel accepted the gift with thanks, skinning and gutting the catch before she cut it up. She kept a chunk to cook for herself, then shared the rest out with the dogs and cats. The sparrows, able to eat grass seed all day, slept.

There wasn’t enough boar to fill twenty-three meat eaters, but four dogs found squirrels and rabbits. Kel soon understood that the animals saw her as a convenient way to get at supper without dealing with the nuisance of fur. She did her part of the task, skinning and gutting; her companions did the rest. She left entrails and furs in a heap, murmuring a Yamani prayer to the local forest god to accept the offering from her and her companions, then finished cooking what would be her supper and two of the next day’s meals.

Once that was done, she doused the fire. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark by moonrise. She could take up the trail again. The sparrows dozed on Hoshi as Kel led the mare through the balmy summer night. The dogs and cats spread out into the brush once more. They would alert Kel if they found any humans.

Down the kidnappers’ trail she walked, Hoshi’s reins light in her hand, the three-quarter moon silvering the shadowed woods. In the distance she heard a wolf pack sound the first note of their evening howl. She listened as voice after voice rose, each pack member joining the song. Her dogs kept silent. None of them wanted to cross a wolf’s path.

When the pack’s song ended, Kel listened to the sigh of the cool wind in stands of pines and the rattle and rustle of the undergrowth as her companions startled nearby wildlife. Once, she rounded a pile of rocks to find a doe and two fawns in an open stretch of meadow. They darted into the trees as Kel whispered, “Shepherd, leave ’em be!”

Whether the biggest dog actually obeyed or refrained because he was well fed, he didn’t give chase. Neither did the other dogs. Jump, beside Kel, snorted. Kel wasn’t sure if he was pleased with his friends or vexed with her for being silly enough to think they would neglect guard duty to chase deer.

The brief summer night was half over when Kel saw the remains of Giantkiller’s walls. The Scanrans’ trail continued past the fort, but Kel had to sleep and Hoshi needed a proper rest. Giantkiller would give them shelter. Few Scanrans would face any ghosts that remained there to enter it.

Stopping at the open, wrecked gate, Kel spat on the ground, an offering of herself to the restless dead. She added a soft Yamani prayer in praise of the nobility and strength the ghosts showed in allowing her onto their ground without harm. It seemed to work with most ghosts. She’d never seen any in the Yamani Islands. While the Tortallan dead may have only spoken Common and Scanran when alive, priests said that after death souls understood everything. Kel was fairly certain this included Yamani prayers.

Dogs and cats streamed around her and her mare as they walked into what had been one of the barracks. Its walls and floor appeared to be solid. Kel unsaddled Hoshi and rubbed her down. She tied the mare to an empty bunk and set down her packs, then removed the plate armor she wore over her chain mail. She placed her glaive and axe beside the area where she would sleep, then lay down with the saddle blanket for cover and the saddle itself for her pillow. She did not remember closing her eyes.

The smell of cooking meat reached Kel’s nostrils, bringing her to instant, tense, complete wakefulness. Making as little noise as possible, she picked up her weapons. The light coming through the shutterless windows and gaping door was that of barest dawn. Outside her sanctuary she heard men’s quiet voices and the chatter of sparrows. There wasn’t a dog, cat, or horse in the barracks with her. Had some mage killed them all, or lured them away? Frowning, Kel got to her feet, thrust her axe into her belt, and held her glaive in both hands.

She eased across the floor into the shadows by one of the whole walls. She thought she’d made no noise, but a handful of sparrows darted through a window. They flew in small, tight circles, the signal for “friends.”

Kel looked out the window and scowled. She knew those horses picketed outside: geldings and mares, their markings and colors as familiar as Peachblossom’s or Hoshi’s. Hoshi stood with them, feeding from a bag marked with the blade-and-crown insignia of the King’s Own.

Irate, Kel left the barracks and located the fort’s well. She used the charmed cork on her bottle to ensure that the well’s water was still good. She drew some to wash the sleep from her face and rinse her mouth, then slicked back her hair.

Dripping, she marched over to the campfire, where ten men lounged, grins on their faces. They wore chain mail, but their tunics and breeches were light brown with green trim, not the bright blue that was their normal uniform. Their mail wasn’t parade gear, polished to silver, but plain dull steel. These men weren’t on a pleasure jaunt; they had come for deep-woods work. Despite their casual postures, she noticed that their weapons lay within reach. They also had companions: the Haven dogs and cats.

Kel knew them all, including the corporals Wolset and Fulcher. If they were here, then the man who sat with his back to her, cooking strips of bacon threaded onto sticks, was Sergeant Domitan of Masbolle. Jump sat next to him, intent on the meat. On Dom’s other side, oatcakes cooked on a flat rock.

“What is going on here?” demanded Kel, her voice harsh. “Are you out of your minds?”

“We wondered if we should wake you, but your breakfast isn’t done yet.” Dom handed the sticks of bacon to Wolset and turned to look up at her. “We figured you could use as much sleep as you could get.”

“We haven’t run mad, Lady Kel,” said Fulcher. “We’re under orders. My lord sent us to do whatever you say needs doing.” He was broader and taller than Wolset, with brown hair and a trimmed, full beard. He balanced the other corporal, who, in addition to being only five feet seven inches tall and hostile about it, was a quick, dark worrier. Fulcher provided ballast, Wolset brains.

Kel refused to admit, even to herself, that she was glad to see the squad. “My lord sent you,” she said, leaning on her glaive as she scowled at each man impartially. They were feeding their breakfast odds and ends to the dogs and cats. “And you got here all the way from Steadfast in, what, a day?”

“No, milady Kel,” said Wolset. “Us and Aiden’s squad rode to Mastiff with my lord—some parley with my lord Wyldon. We were there when Connac and Hevlor got in. My lord told us you’d likely be about here by now.”

“You can’t do this,” Kel argued. She began to feel silly, looming over them. “You don’t know what I’m doing, the laws I’m breaking—”

“Well, actually, we have a good idea,” Dom remarked. “Here, eat this before it gets cold. Which of you hedge pigs has the honey pot?”

Someone took charge of her glaive. The others made room for her. She began to sit, then had to straighten to pull the axe from her belt. The honey was produced. At last she was able to devour hot bacon and oatcakes with honey, a feast after last night’s unadorned boar meat.

Dom waited until her mouth was full before he produced his final bribe. He held up the roll of maps. “You don’t get these unless we come too,” he teased.

“Don’t forget the purse my lord gave us for bribes,” Wolset pointed out.

“That’s blackmail,” Kel said through a thick piece of bacon.

“Actually, it’s extortion.” That was Lofren, whose father was a magistrate. “Blackmail implies—”

His squad-mates dragged him to his feet and took him to saddle their mounts. Kel was grateful. Lofren was happy to talk about matters of law at length, in detail, to anyone who would listen.

In the confusion of cleanup and preparation to ride out, Kel lost the chance to argue further about their involvement in her rescue attempt. If Raoul had ordered them to come, they at least wouldn’t have to pay the price she did for disobeying Wyldon, she thought. Besides, they had maps. Resigned, Kel took out her griffin-feather band and tied it over her forehead and ears. As always, she felt ridiculous, but it was better to feel like a fool than to be caught napping by a Scanran mage.

She was saddling Hoshi, the sky overhead going from pink-tinted gray to hazy blue, when her placid animal reared and whinnied loudly. Swearing, Kel dragged her down by the reins. “What’s the matter with you?” she whispered. “Anyone could be outside!”

Two distant horses answered with loud neighs. The men, who had been joking as they prepared to go, jumped into the saddle, swords or bows out, their faces grim behind the nose pieces of their helms. The dogs and cats raced toward the sound, Jump and Shepherd in the lead. Sparrows darted inside Giantkiller’s damaged walls, again flying tight circles before Kel.

“More friends?” she asked, leading Hoshi to the gate. “What is this, a cavalcade?” She pulled her spyglass from a saddlebag and focused it on the shadows under the northwestern trees. The dogs had formed a running pool of fur around two riders. She recognized one horse, and his tiny rider, immediately. “I’ll kill him,” she announced. “I’ll kill him very dead and leave him for the border ghosts. . . .”

“Can we do it later?” asked Dom. “We lose daylight if you kill him now. Besides, Peachblossom is as good as a squad in himself.” He collapsed his own spyglass.

Kel could not deny that. What she wanted to deny was the identity of Tobe’s companion.

They left—they couldn’t afford to lose precious daylight—but they argued with Owen on the way. Nothing they said had an effect. Owen refused to return to Lord Wyldon. Kel gave up at last. She knew Owen as well as she knew Tobe. Neither would back down. And she had no time to deliver them to any authorities, not if she wanted to catch the refugees before they vanished into the heart of Scanra.

Tobe’s determination to come was understandable. He had friends among the kidnapped refugees, and Kel must not be permitted to vanish from his life. She could hardly deny him. But Owen’s presence broke her heart.

“Don’t be upset,” he said, drawing level with her on the broad trail left by the fleeing raiders. “I had to come. We owe these people our protection. My lord was just stuck. General Vanget sent word that the enemy will cross the Vassa into our district in five nights, when the moon’s full—”

“Owen, you shouldn’t tell me this!” Kel whispered, keeping her voice as low as Owen had kept his. “I doubt Vanget wants others to know!”

“But you have to,” replied her friend, his voice and eyes intent. “I know you didn’t understand why my lord turned his back on all those civilians. Well, that’s why. King Maggot wants to cross with a thousand men two miles downriver from Mastiff. My lord and Lord Raoul and General Vanget are smuggling companies and mages into Mastiff before the enemy comes. Kel, it must’ve killed him to refuse to save your people. That’s why I had to tell you.” Owen settled back in the saddle. “I think he knew I was going. He didn’t say anything, but . . .”

Kel shook her head. Let Owen believe Wyldon had guessed what he planned if it made him feel better. At least she knew why Wyldon had apparently turned his back on her civilians. He had a much bigger headache to deal with.

The sun had just cleared the eastern mountains when the sparrows came zipping back to them, peeping the alert. When Kel stretched out her open hand, Quicksilver bounced down to tap her twice, then lit on her forefinger. Three other birds flew in the figure-eight pattern signaling they were unsure if the eleven who approached were friend or foe.

“Maybe a patrol from the new fort,” she whispered to Dom, who had ridden up beside her. “What do you want to do?”

He raised his eyebrows, looking so like Neal that Kel didn’t know whether to laugh or groan. “Your party, Kel,” he murmured. “Your orders.”

Oh, we’ll have to talk about this later, Kel thought as she hand-signaled everyone to hide off the road. I’m not about to command a squad of men older and more experienced than I am.

She wouldn’t have thought her friends could hide so completely, but they did. The men’s tunics and breeches helped them blend with the background, and their horses were all in colors that mixed with brush and trees. They’d even used dark saddle blankets and plain tack, another sign that they’d come prepared. The cats and dogs vanished easily; the sparrows fanned out once more to act as sentries.

Kel and Hoshi chose the shelter of a cluster of rocks hemmed by mountain laurel bushes. Soon they heard the approach of horses. Here came the patrol, as Kel had guessed, a squad of soldiers and a knight—Quinden of Marti’s Hill, one of her year-mates. They should have scouts in the woods, Kel thought. If we were Scanrans, they’d be dead in moments. She stifled the urge to grab Quinden and tell him so. He would have to arrest her, and she had no time to deal with that.

Once the patrol was out of hearing, she signaled her men to move out. As they mounted and headed back to the refugees’ trail, riding in the direction opposite the patrol’s route, Kel noticed that Tobe shook his head. She nudged Hoshi closer to Peachblossom—she still rode the mare, who was fresh from her night’s rest, leaving Tobe on Peachblossom, who’d been going all night. “What is it?” she asked the boy softly.

“They shoulda had scouts, lady,” he replied, just as quiet. “If we’da been the enemy, they’d be dead now.”

Kel smiled ruefully, thinking, What a grand world, when boys understand the tactics of war. “When we come back, we’ll tell their commander,” she assured him.

The sun was halfway up the morning sky when sparrows came in, signaling the arrival of even more friends. “Go back,” Kel snapped when Neal, Merric, Seaver, Esmond, Connac, his squad, and her six remaining convict soldiers were within earshot. “Have you lost your minds completely? You’re needed at Mastiff!”

“We’re needed more here,” retorted Seaver, his dark eyes level. “You’ll have a fight on your hands when you reach your people.”

“I have warriors, and my people can defend themselves, given weapons. You have an oath to the Crown!” Kel shouted, tested at last beyond the limits of her patience. “This is treason, you sapskulls! You can’t just decide when you’re in service to the realm and when you’re not!”

“Like you have?” Neal asked sweetly. The young knights halted in front of Kel.

“This is different,” Kel snapped.

“Of course it is,” Faleron said, leaning on his saddle horn. “That’s why we’re here.”

Kel scrambled for another argument, any argument she could use. She looked at the white-faced, swaying Merric. “He should still be in bed!” she cried. “You had to tie him to his horse to get him this far!”

Merric smiled. “But I’m really well tied,” he explained in a tone of utmost reason. “I slept most of the way here.”

“Why are you upset?” Owen came up beside the mounted soldiers. “It’s going to be a jolly scramble now.”

Kel gathered her breath and wits to argue, then surrendered without a word. There was no point to it. They had made their choice, as she had. She would just have to do her best to make sure they came home alive, if they had a home to return to.

“Hey, Sir Meathead,” Dom called, riding up to them. “You took long enough to get here. Sergeant Connac, good to see you.”

“Sergeant Domitan,” replied Connac with a grin and a bow. “Good to see you again, sir.”

Kel fumed silently. I never asked for help, never wanted to ruin anyone’s life but my own, she thought wrathfully. What is the matter with them? Can’t they see we’ll die if this goes wrong? Don’t they care that we’ve earned a warm and lasting reception on Traitor’s Hill if we choose to return? Why do men always have to complicate things?

“She’ll be all right,” she heard Owen say confidently. “She just needs to get used to things.”

What I need is a barrel full of dreamrose to dose your supper with, she replied silently. Then, while you slept and maybe came to your senses, I’d get so far ahead of you that you’d never catch me. You’d give up and go home, if you’re all as sensible as I used to think you were!

They set out again on the trail of the refugees. A mile down the road Kel spotted a bit of gaudy red on a bush. She reached down and picked it up: red yarn. Someone was taking Meech’s doll apart to leave a sign for pursuers. Kel tucked the yarn into her belt pouch.

Maybe having company isn’t so bad, she thought, more relaxed now. After all, if the Haven folk are making it easy for us to follow, then they deserve a proper rescue. She glanced back at the two columns that rode behind her and Neal. And at least I have a better chance to save them than I did all by myself.