fourteen

VASSA CROSSING

Five miles down the road they found other, less heartening signs that the refugees had passed that way. A woman lay crumpled at the roadside. Kel thought her skirts were dull maroon until she saw that they were stained with blood. She knew the woman, the young, pregnant wife of one of the Hanaford loggers.

Neal dismounted to examine her. “Dead over a day,” he said, his green eyes dull as he looked up at Kel. “She lost the baby. I’d say she hemorrhaged— bled out. It happens, sometimes, if there’s no healer.”

A hundred yards down the road they found the woman’s husband hanging from a tree. His hands were marked with bruises and cuts. Kel guessed that he’d fought the disposal of his wife and the Scanrans had hanged him for it.

Biting the inside of her lower lip to stop herself from crying, Kel rode over and stood in her stirrups, wrapping her arm around the dead man’s legs. Flies, disturbed at their business, buzzed around them. With her right hand she took her glaive from its saddle holster and cut the rope. As the man’s weight fell onto her shoulders, hands reached to take him from her. She glanced down. It was two of the convict soldiers, Jacut and Uinse.

“Give ’im to us, lady,” Uinse told her gently. “What was you wishful of doing?”

Kel fumbled her glaive back into its socket. The buzzing of the flies gave her the shudders. “Place him with her, please,” she replied. “We—we haven’t time to bury them, but at least they can be together.”

“Aye, lady knight,” replied Jacut. He and Uinse took the dead man back and laid him gently beside his wife, then bowed their heads. Kel bowed hers, too, saying a prayer. She’d known them both, their names, their families, their hopes for the future. Now their future lay in some other realm than the mortal one. All she could give them was her word that she would try to send those who had killed them to the Black God’s domain, where his judges would punish them for their crimes.

Sunlight glinted on steel. She looked up and saw a female Stormwing, freshly streaked with blood and flesh. It was the same female who had talked to Kel back at Haven.

“Rot your eyes, they didn’t die in battle!” Kel shouted. “Leave them be!”

The Stormwing licked a wing feather. Her metal parts seemed as flexible as her human ones. “Mortals,” she remarked. “Always jumping to conclusions.” She took wing and flew in circles over Kel’s head. “I’m just hoping you’ll provide us with a meal soon. With Scanrans all over this border country, the least you could do is give us a snack.”

Kel took up her longbow, braced it against her stirrup to string it, then grabbed one of her griffin-fletched arrows. “Why don’t I turn you into someone’s snack?” She put the arrow to the string and raised the bow. The Stormwing was nowhere to be seen.

“Don’t take them so personally,” Neal advised. “They are what they were made to be.” When Kel glared at him in reply, Neal smiled crookedly. “I’m sorry—I forgot,” he admitted. “You are what you were made to be, too.”

They rode steadily through the morning, taking their noon meal in the saddle, stopping only to water and rest the horses. As the animals relaxed, the men and knights would pair off to spar with weapons or fight hand to hand, keeping their bodies ready.

As scouts, the dogs, cats, and sparrows were priceless. They gave Kel’s people a degree of safety they couldn’t expect with two-legged scouts. Humans missed things. Daine’s wild magic had transformed Kel’s animals so that they cared about the same things she did. They missed nothing, and they could pass unnoticed through the forests between the old Fort Giantkiller and the Vassa River. They warned their humans of a column of Tortallan soldiers headed west and steered Kel’s people around them. Kel silently promised the sparrows that if she lived through this, they would have dried cherries every day, and the dogs and cats fresh meat.

Five miles from the river, the refugees’ trail turned due north. Their tracks went down gently sloping ground to the shores of the Vassa, where flat-bottomed boats left distinctive marks in the stone-and-mud shore. The boats were gone. Kel used her spyglass to look across the river. They were beached on the far side. Beyond them the captives’ trail began again.

Dom reined in beside her. “Rafts, do you think?” he asked, blue eyes measuring the far shore. “Or Fulcher and I can swim across, and start bringing those boats here.”

Kel grimaced. The Vassa was no Olorun, flowing calmly to the sea. It tumbled and roared in spots, rushing along its bed. The waters were icy, even this late in the year.

“Swimming that is just mad, Dom,” she replied.

He dismounted and stuck his hand in the water. Pulling it out, he winced. “I’d cramp up ten yards out. Doesn’t this river know it’s summer?”

“Even if it could be swum, does anyone know how to use one of them boats?” asked Connac, scratching his head. “They got to be poled across, fighting the current all the way.”

“It’s that or build rafts,” Esmond pointed out wearily. “I doubt we’ll be any better with rafts.”

“More like have ’em bust up mid-river,” grumbled one of Connac’s men.

“If we string ropes across, we could pull the boats over. The horses might swim it,” offered Jacut. “Maybe it takes us all night to get there. We sure don’t want to do this in the daylight.”

“Military folk,” Neal said with comic patience, shaking his head. “The only way you know to solve problems is by beating them with a stick.”

“And you’re not military folk?” asked Seaver. “Oh, I forgot—you’re a mage. Mages think, if you can’t twiddle your fingers at it, what’s the point?”

“Lads,” Kel began, “this isn’t valuable in the least.”

“I wasn’t referring to magic,” Neal said loftily. “I was referring to a scholar’s way to solve problems. When a situation arises, rather than bungle it yourselves, call in an expert. Follow me.”

He said it, but he and everyone else waited for Kel to speak. She shifted in her saddle, not sure that she liked the way they looked at her, as if she knew things they did not. “Will your solution get us across sometime before next week?” she asked Neal.

“Considerably,” Neal assured her, his tone serious, not mocking. “It’s not entirely legal, but I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.”

Kel bit her lip, but her need to reclaim her people was stronger than her need to find out which legality Neal meant. “Let’s go, then.”

Neal rode down a track that followed the high ground as it rose above the Vassa, until they rode single file along the edge of a forested bluff. Kel was fascinated. The path looked like a game trail until she noticed the hoofprints on the edges. The path was also beaten down at the center, as if it were used regularly by heavier animals than deer. By the time they had ridden three miles, fording the Brown River in the process, she knew they had technically crossed the border into Scanra. Fortunately, no one lived in these surroundings to tattle. Every farm-house and woodsman’s shack was either smashed and empty or burned and empty. No one stayed to see if they could survive in border country when two lands were at war.

The trail rose, taking them in sight of the river, until it descended into a broad clearing. At the far edge stood a cluster of Scanran-style longhouses inside a log palisade. Chimney smoke rose inside the palisade, a hint that this place, unlike others, was still occupied. The noises of goats, chickens, and geese added to the impression that peaceful life continued behind the log wall. Kel would bet that the residents were either Scanran allies or smugglers.

“Wait,” Neal told their companions. “String out along the trees so they can see how many we are. Kel, you’re with me.”

“How did you know this was here?” demanded Seaver, his dark eyes suspicious.

Neal smiled crookedly. “You meet the most interesting people, riding with the Lioness,” he replied. “They’re usually friends with her husband. Kel?” He urged his mount down the track.

Kel told Seaver, “Relax. He’d never risk his own skin, let alone ours.” She rode after Neal. Double fistfuls of sparrows, as well as Jump, five dogs, and three cats, came with her.

“No!” someone protested. She turned. Tobe and Peachblossom broke away from Dom’s restraining hand and followed her.

“Tobe, Neal said just me,” Kel told her young henchman.

“He can come, just be quiet,” Neal called over his shoulder. “Look like we know what we’re doing.” The palisade gates swung open. Four men and three women, all Scanran, walked out, armed with crossbows.

Air rippled behind them. Kel drew the griffin-feather band down closer to her eyes and saw a tiny old woman doddering in their wake, using a cane to make her way. She was a mage, concealed by spells that made her look like her surroundings. “Neal!” Kel whispered. When he looked at her, she hand-signaled a warning about the mage.

“Fine,” he whispered. “Now, you and Tobe stay here, and look serious.” He rode up to the local people. Kel, ten yards back, couldn’t hear what he said, but she saw its effect. The man who led the group stepped back as if startled, then grinned and walked forward to slap Neal familiarly on the leg. His companions lowered their crossbows.

Neal twisted in his saddle and waved Kel and Tobe closer. As they advanced, Kel heard him remark in Scanran, “—brisk of late.”

The man shrugged as he surveyed Tobe, then Kel, with the hardest blue eyes Kel had ever seen. “Business is always brisk, one way or another,” he replied, also in Scanran. “We survive.”

Kel propped herself on her saddle horn. “Were you part of that interesting business two or three miles downriver?” she asked in Scanran, her voice as cool as she could make it despite the furious pulse beating in her throat. “The very noisy and complicated business, with nearly five hundred captives?”

“Strangers. Pah!” said a short woman, and spat on the ground. “They had naught to do with us, nor we with them.”

“Not their slaves, not their vile metal beasts,” added another man. He, too, spat, the spittle landing an inch from Peachblossom’s right front hoof. The gelding regarded the man with one large, brown eye.

“And you didn’t think to warn anyone?” Kel asked, struggling to breathe normally.

“Not our lookout,” replied the man who seemed to be in charge. “We do business with all up here, whoever they be. It’s the only way to live, on the border.” He looked at Neal. “Not one of the Whisper Man’s, is she?”

Kel raised her eyebrows. What was a Whisper Man? Despite her curiosity, she remained silent. When negotiating with possible enemies, her people had to show they were united and sure of their loyalties. She would ask Neal about the Whisper Man later.

“No,” replied Neal to the stranger’s question, “but she’s all right. You don’t want to get on her bad side.”

Kel wanted to roll her eyes at his extravagant claim but didn’t. Neal was in charge here. Instead, she tried to appear imposing, and hoped she looked like something other than a complete stick. Out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed the man who had spat near Peachblossom. He sidled closer to the big gelding and Tobe, his eyes on the reins.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Tobe remarked to him in Common. “He’s smarter than he looks.”

The man reached anyway. Peachblossom whipped his head around and grabbed the man’s outstretched forearm, big teeth closing on cloth and flesh.

“Peachblossom, let go,” Kel ordered in Common. In Scanran she told the man, “He’s not for sale or for stealing. He’ll kill you. He’s killed men before, he doesn’t seem to find it difficult.”

Peachblossom released the man after a wait to show Kel he didn’t take orders. He then spat foam onto the man’s shirtfront. The man backed away, grimacing as he tried to wipe gooey green saliva from his clothes.

Kel looked at Neal. “We’re wasting time,” she told him.

“We’re here to do business, coming and going,” Neal said to the smugglers’ leader. “Us and our friends back there.”

A loose feather in Kel’s band tickled her nose. In a moment she would sneeze. “Grandmother, come out from behind your veils,” she suggested, looking straight at the old woman. “It’s uncomfortable, pretending you aren’t there.”

Cackling amusement, the old lady shed her magical concealments with slow flicks of knobby fingers. Neal and Tobe started when she seemed to appear from the wood of the palisade. “Now there’s a toy I wouldn’t mind having,” she said, pointing to Kel’s griffin-feather band.

“It has its uses,” Kel replied. She pushed the band higher, where it was less likely to drop over her eyes. The errant feather she pulled free and offered to the old woman. “A good-faith gift, Grandmother,” she said.

The mage lurched forward and accepted the feather. “A useful thing,” she remarked, turning it over. “Amazing how many folk try to lie to those who are just trying to survive in a cruel land.”

Neal and the leader had embarked on a harsh, whispered argument. Kel and the old woman looked at them as the leader said, “—out of my mind! I don’t care if you are from the Whisper Man, I know trouble when it rides up on warhorses!”

Neal reached into his belt purse and drew coins from it. He held up three gold nobles.

“Not if it was a thousand gold!” snapped the leader. “You think I’m blind? Your lot is plain dangerous, and I won’t risk my people!”

Neal produced two more gold nobles. Kel resolved to pay him back somehow. Perhaps it was time to sell some griffin feathers.

“I’m not trying to drive up the price,” the man growled.

“Do it,” said the old mage abruptly. The leader—there was enough resemblance that Kel thought they might be mother and son—glared down into the old woman’s faded blue eyes. “The hand of fate is on them. On her.” She pointed to Kel and ordered, “Bring your people inside the walls till moonrise.”

“Mother,” protested the leader, “just look at them!”

“I did,” retorted the old woman. “Maybe you should look harder.” She turned and hobbled back through the gates.

The leader sighed and looked at his companions. They shrugged as one.

“Call your people in,” he told Neal, exasperated. “The Whisper Man owes us large for this.”

Neal turned and waved the others forward, down off the ridge. Kel and Tobe followed the smugglers inside.

It was the slowest evening of Kel’s life. From the signs left by the river, their quarry was only half a day ahead, but here was another delay. She understood the smugglers’ need for caution, but her heart shrieked that every moment the enemy stayed ahead of her was a moment when someone else might die. She paced until she realized all of the smugglers watched her nervously, hands on weapons. Then she went outside into the soft night air.

The old mage stood at the half-open gate, staring blindly at the clearing before her. Kel hesitated, not sure if she ought to distract the woman.

“You’re better mannered than most nobles,” the old woman remarked without turning her head. “Not that we’re experts, but we see more than we ever wanted to. That moon won’t rise any faster however much you fidget.”

She was right. Kel took a deep breath and thought of a broad, calm lake, its surface glassy and serene. Slowly she drew breath in and released it, until she felt more like that lake. Once she had recovered some of her calm, she looked at the mage again. “I thought smugglers worked in the dark of the moon.”

The old woman grinned at her. “Not on the Vassa, girl. You need all the help with the Vassa you can get. We have our little arrangement, both sides. They’re well paid to overlook us on the far bank, and we’ve a friend who explained to Vanget we do more good than harm.”

“You mean the Whisper Man,” Kel guessed. “Who is he?”

“He buys and sells information. More than that, I can’t tell you,” the woman said. “Mayhap your friend will say, or not. Look. There’s a fox, with her cubs.”

Kel looked over the woman’s shoulder to see a vixen and two cubs. They trotted across the clearing, the mother alert for enemies, then vanished into the trees near the wider path from the woods.

As the mage turned back toward the longhouses, Kel remembered something she had wanted to ask. “You said I had the hand of fate on me,” she reminded the woman as she thrust the gate closed and barred it. “How could you tell? Do you have the Sight as well as the Gift?”

The old woman cackled. “Who needs Sight to tell that much?” she asked. When Kel offered her an arm, she latched onto it with her free hand, her grip like an eagle’s claws. Together they walked slowly toward the woman’s home. “A wench in armor, wearing a griffin-feather band. You’ve got a clever set of animals about you, and you’re leading four knights and a bunch of men who don’t look sentimental. Oh, yes! And you’re chasing after two hundred warriors and nearly five hundred prisoners, led by Stenmun Kinslayer.”They entered the longhouse as the old woman continued, “You don’t need magic to see the fate in that, any more than you need a healer to know you and your folk are deranged.”

Kel hung her head. “I tried to stop them,” she muttered.

“That’s your fate, too,” the mage said, releasing her arm. “Be happy they respect you so much they didn’t listen. It’s not like you’re off to a May fair, not with Stenmun against you.” She tottered off to a seat by the fire.

Kel sighed. She was grateful. She just wished she didn’t know how little chance they all had to return alive.

The smugglers served a very well made dish of murrey. Having seen no cows anywhere, Kel was wondering how their hosts got the veal that set the pork off so well when Merric sat across from her. Kel eyed him as she briskly wiped the inside of her bowl with a piece of bread. She was fairly certain why he’d come and would have avoided this argument, but she knew him. Nothing would stop him from saying his piece. He’d been asleep since the smugglers had taken them in. If he were to speak freely, it had to be now, before they crossed the river or not at all.

When he opened his mouth, she quickly asked, “Feeling better? That’s the trouble with healings, you could sleep for a week. You shouldn’t be here.” She grimaced. In her eagerness to distract him, she’d given him the perfect opening.

He took it. “Kel, we shouldn’t be here, none of us. It’s not too late. My lord’s practical, he’ll overlook—”

Kel met her friend’s eyes squarely. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave my people to the enemy. To Blayce. I can’t. Even without what I know—” She stopped herself, grinding her teeth in frustration. She must be tired. Either that or the smugglers had put something in the food to make their guests talkative. She wouldn’t put it past them.

Merric pounced on the hint. “What do you know? Kel, if there’s something you’re not telling us, you owe it to us to spit it out.”

She was shaking her head. “You won’t believe me.”

Merric sat back with a frown, puzzled. “Come on, Kel. Give me the benefit of the doubt. I’m a gullible lad. I believe all sorts of things.”

“If it’s knowledge you’re after, try Neal,” suggested Dom. He straddled the bench Kel sat on. “It looks to me like he’s gleaning from the crop of spy fields.”

They looked across the hall. Neal sat in deep conversation with a knot of smugglers, unaware that his friends looked his way.

“What does Lady Alanna know of spies?” demanded Kel. “That’s how he said he knew of them, from riding with her.”

“He also mentioned her husband,” Dom reminded Kel. “I think that’s more to the point.”

“Enough!” snapped Merric. “Kel, just say it, all right?”

“It’s sommat to do with Blayce, an’ Stenmun, an’ that Ordeal room,” Tobe said. He’d come up behind Kel. “She dreams about ’em all the time. How can anybody talk to a room?”

“Tobe,” Kel began, and sighed. “It’s not just a room. Or there’s a thing in it, a god or something.” She looked at Merric, Dom, and Esmond, who’d come to listen. “I—I had reason to talk to it, before we left Corus.”

Merric blinked. “You talked. To the Chamber.”

“I said you wouldn’t believe me,” Kel reminded him. “It told me that my path and Blayce’s would cross.” The words were as bitter as gall when she said, “It just wouldn’t—couldn’t—tell me when, or where, or how many would die beforehand.”

“Well, that answers that. I’m so glad I was a younger son and never wanted a knighthood,” remarked Dom, getting to his feet. “I wouldn’t go in the Chamber once, let alone twice. Not to be abrupt, but it looks like we’re getting ready to move.”

He was right. Everyone was standing. As Kel and her people walked to the door, the old woman met them, holding a large, open cup of the sort known in Scanra as a krater. “Some protection for poor folk ground between two countries,” she said, meeting Kel’s eyes.

Kel sniffed the steam rising from the krater. “Neal,” she called.

He took the cup from its bearer. Emerald fire rose from his hands to drift over the liquid inside. He raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Very nice,” he said with considerable approval. “I don’t suppose you have the recipe?”

“I’ll give it to you when you return,” the old woman said. “Now reassure the lady, here, before she sets her birdies on me.”

Neal grinned and took a swallow from the krater before offering it to Kel. “It’s a very neatly specialized bit of magic,” he explained. “If anyone tries to learn how we crossed the river, or who helped us, we’ll forget. It’s keyed to the spot where you drink the potion, you see. Harmless, except if we’re questioned by mages or torturers, we won’t give this place or these people away.”

“You’re sure?” demanded Esmond.

Both Kel and Neal looked at him, Neal with more wrath than Kel. “Do you think he’d have taken the first drink himself if he weren’t?” Kel asked Esmond.

“Not our Sir Meathead,” Dom commented behind Kel.

“You’re like a dog with a bone about that name,” growled Neal as Kel slid the krater from his hands.

She ignored Dom’s reply as she sipped. Her tongue found hints of lavender, rosemary, and peppermint mixed in with other strong herbs. She grimaced—maybe healers like Neal lost their sense of taste after drinking their own nasty teas—and passed the krater to Dom.

When it reached Merric, he looked at it and sighed. “Why didn’t I start my page training with year-mates who were sane?” he asked sadly, then drank.

“You’re not looking at this the right way,” Owen told him sternly as he accepted the cup. “Here we are on an adventure. It’s glory, and fame, and all those people the Scanrans took. It’s not counting troops or finding ways to bury the dead so they won’t rot into the drinking water. And if we die in battle, Mithros will speak for us in the Black God’s court. You ought to be more grateful.” He took a gulp from the krater, nearly spat the mouthful out, and forced himself to swallow it instead.

Once all of them had drunk, the smugglers led the way down the moonlit trail to the river. The sparrows rode, fast asleep for the night; many of the dogs and cats were tucked into saddlebags. They could rest their paws for a while, at least, after their long day’s run. Everyone in armor and mail wrapped themselves in blankets so no glint of polished metal gave them away. Even the horses’ armor was wrapped in large canvas sacks and carried.

The smugglers’ boats were well hidden, covered in nets through which leafy branches were laced. From the water they must look like greenery, Kel guessed as she led Peachblossom onto a flat-bottomed boat. She hadn’t realized how nervous she was about the crossing until the smugglers cast off and poled the boats into the current. Then she made the sign against evil on her chest, closed her eyes, and prayed. It could be worse, she told herself as the boat wobbled, rocked, and bounced under her feet. You could be falling off a cliff, or climbing one.

A warm, solid weight leaned against her left calf. A bigger, more solid weight pressed against her right side. Kel peeked. Jump had come to steady her on the left as Peachblossom braced her on the right. “It’s as easy as pie,” she told them. “A really bouncy pie.”

Once the boat slid to a stop on the far shore, Kel disembarked. It took three trips for the smugglers to land them all in Scanra, necessary with the large, skittish warhorses. Owen’s Happy did not live up to his name. He balked at the sight of the boat, fidgeted all the way across, and leaped off the boat as soon as he could, nearly yanking his master into the Vassa.

“I’m with you,” Neal told the stallion as Owen led him to stand beside Kel. “I felt safer on ocean ships in the middle of a storm.”

“The Vassa keeps what it takes,” Sergeant Connac murmured, repeating an old northern proverb.

Once they were across, the smugglers left them without prolonged farewells. If their Scanran kin were anywhere near, they refused to show themselves. Kel looked around, wondering if she would need the maps, but there was a good-sized trail along the river’s margin. They could follow it to the spot where the raiders had landed with their refugees.

“Let’s get ready,” she ordered her friends softly. Those closest to her passed the order down the line. “Tobe, I’d better take Peachblossom now. You ride Hoshi.”

Tobe nodded and got to work saddling the mare. Kel put saddle and armor on Peachblossom, then mounted up. The dogs and cats had already spread out to cover the ground between the river’s edge and the bluffs that rose a hundred yards away. They scouted for lurkers or enemy soldiers, sniffing the evening’s mild breeze.

As soon as everyone was ready, Kel signaled them to move out along the riverside trail. Merric rode beside her. For a mile or so he was quiet. Suddenly he asked, “The Chamber of the Ordeal?”

Kel nodded.

“You said you talked to it before we left Corus. You—you went inside?”

Kel nodded a second time.

“You went into the Chamber a second time.”

Looking at her friend, Kel sighed. “I had to.”

“And you’re allowed to talk about it? Your Ordeal?”

“Not the Ordeal,” Kel said patiently. “It said I could talk about the second time, the task it set me, if I could find anyone who would believe me. Do you believe me?”

“I have no idea,” replied Merric, his face troubled.

“Then we don’t need to keep talking now,” Kel pointed out. “That would be a good thing, seeing’s how we’re in enemy territory. Don’t you think so?”

Merric took the hint and returned to his place in the column.

Two miles of brisk riding brought them to the wide, mangled grassy verge where six large flat-bottomed boats had been pulled onto the land and covered over with branches. Kel’s instinct was to put holes in them in case the enemy meant to use them for the assault on Mastiff. At the same time, she knew they could be used to take the refugees home.

The three-quarter moon settled her mind: it was edging toward the treetops. They had to ride now. They were in the open and needed to find cover before moonset.

Raising her hand, she signaled her people to follow and turned Peachblossom. They rode down the broad, messy path left by raiders, wagons, and horses. It led northeast, toward the rise of the bluffs, deeper into Scanra. High overhead, moonlight glittered on Stormwing feathers and claws as a lone scout flew overhead.

June 8, 460
Scanra,
between the Vassa
and Smiskir Rivers