sixteen
OPPORTUNITIES
Now Kel was free. She was surprised that she didn’t float despite her mail and armor. The confusion, frustration, and uncertainty of the last few months were over. Her path was clear. Stenmun was in her way, as were the soldiers he commanded, but Kel had an idea or two about how to deal with the odds against her and her people.
Most of the cats and dogs had gone back to Tortall with the refugees, but Jump and ten camp dogs were part of her group, as was a cat who had tucked herself into one of Dom’s saddlebags. She’d hissed and clawed when he tried to give her to Merric’s group. Dom informed Kel he made it a rule never to argue with a lady, and the gray-and-orange-marbled female rode like a queen before him, viewing the landscape with pale green eyes. Kel had negotiated with the sparrows until the flock split. Part went with Merric; part stayed with Kel. Nari, Arrow, Quicksilver, and Duck were the four Kel knew were with her, but there were eight more, all eagerly scouting the trees.
They couldn’t range far on either side of the Pakkai. Between the river and the mountains that bordered it lay just a mile of ground, thick with trees and brush. It was forsaken country, given over to deer, elk, boar, wildcats, and the occasional bear. On the far side of the river was a scant border of trees at the edge of steep, hard cliffs. The Pakkai itself ran fast and cold, as cold as the Vassa. All Kel needed in such restricted country was a handful of human and animal scouts.
The road showed signs of recent horse traffic. She hoped that was Stenmun and his men, not a sign that the road was much used by anyone else. When they stopped to rest and water the horses, Kel beckoned to Fanche, Saefas, and the convicts who had been taken by the raiders. “Tell me about Stenmun and his command,” she ordered.
It was Fanche who spoke, her eyes as hard as jet. “He’s a big one,” she said, arms wrapped around her knees, skirts neatly drawn over her legs. “Six foot five?”
“Six foot seven,” amended Saefas. “A broad-sword of a man.”
“Handsome enough in a Scanran way,” Fanche continued. “Long blond hair, beard. Graying at the sides and in the beard, but he’s fit.”
“More than fit,” grumbled Morun. “Backhanded a man at Haven in the throat and crushed his wind-pipe.”
“He favors a double-headed axe,” continued Fanche. “He’s as fast with it as you are with your glaive, Lady Kel. Brown eyes, thin nose, hard mouth.”
“He wouldn’t let ’em hurt the little ones, for all their mischief undoing laces and saddle girths,” Gil pointed out.
“He said his master, Blayce, wants them unmarked,” Saefas replied. “He didn’t so much as look at the grown folk, ’less we crossed him.” He frowned at Fanche. “You kept needling him.”
The woman shrugged, stiff despite Neal’s healing. “I wanted to see if I could make him slip. Lots of control, that one. The men were afraid of him, you could tell.”
“One of his soldiers said he’d a man skinned alive for liftin’ supplies,” one of the convicts volunteered. “I believed ’im. He’d the look of a man that’s seen a skinnin’.”
“I don’t mean to let him skin any of us,” Kel said.
“But what can we do?” Owen asked. “There’s five of them to one of us, just about.”
Kel smiled at him. She had wondered when they’d remember that. “I learned something from Lord Raoul,” she said, looking at Dom, who stood nearby listening as he watched Neal eat. His cousin leaned against a tree, exhausted by the healing he’d done just so the refugees could make it back to Fort Mastiff.
“Which lesson would that be?” Dom asked. “He teaches so many useful things.”
“When the odds are against you, change the odds,” she explained. “We don’t throw a log down and try to light that for a fire. We whittle it to kindling. That’s how we’ll treat this Stenmun and his folk. We’ll whittle them down. First, though, we narrow the distance between us and them.” She stood and twisted her shoulders back and forth to loosen her spine. “Mount up.”
On they rode, as silent as mounted warriors could be, straining eyes and ears for signs of the enemy. They set as fast a pace as the warhorses could manage. It wasn’t as quick as they could have traveled with lighter animals, but it had to do. They needed all the fighters they had, and that included the warhorses. When Tobe said they had to rest, the company halted. Kel would take no chances with the health of Peachblossom, Neal’s Magewhisper, or Happy.
All along the way they found signs of Stenmun and his captives. There was no need for Meech to strip his doll of hair when buttons, buckles, food, coins, and scraps of leather and cloth littered the road. Haven’s children were not cowed by Stenmun’s soldiers. Their courage gave Kel hope.
She was thinking that it was almost time to stop for the night when sparrows and the forward scout, Owen, rode in. “They’re camped three miles up,” he told Kel. “They’re well settled and have sentries posted.”
“Good enough.” Kel looked around. There was a clearing inside the trees that bordered the road. “We’ll stop here for now.”
“Fires?” asked Uinse.
Kel shook her head. “Take care of the horses, eat something, but we’re just resting till moonrise.”
Owen grinned, his eyes shining. “Time to start whittling?” he asked.
Kel nodded. “Care for your horse,” she told him. Turning to the big dog, Shepherd, she said, “Bring Jacut in.” The dog galloped off to collect their rear scout.
Kel worked on Peachblossom and Hoshi, thinking. They would have to get as many of Stenmun’s command as they could at dawn. If they picked off too many sentries in the early watches, Stenmun would know there was an enemy on his tail. He’d take precautions, perhaps even attack. Kel wasn’t about to risk her tiny company in a battle with over a hundred soldiers. The best time to strike was at dawn, when the Scanrans would be sleepy, cross, and bored. She wished she could send dogs with weapons to the children, but she didn’t have the courage. Saving them from Blayce meant nothing if she got them killed by Stenmun.
Besides, the big man had to keep some captives. He was going to lead Kel to Blayce the Gallan.
After dawn, the game would be up. Stenmun would know he’d been followed: he’d be watchful. Kel and her people would be reduced to picking off his scouts, the tail-end riders in his column, and the men he sent for water—at least until he realized their weakness and started to send children for it. Sooner or later he would think to protect his men by allowing them to ride with children on their saddles.
How to get rid of the soldiers without endangering the children? she wondered as she watered her horses. Tobe. Tobe could call the horses to him. Her people could then drag the riders down, sparing the children. Mithros, god of warriors, must have sent Tobe to Kel. The boy was worth his weight in gold.
She gnawed a cold sausage, got down some mouthfuls of cheese, and made herself eat a wedge of bread. She wasn’t hungry, but fainting later because she hadn’t eaten would be foolish. More than at any time in her life, she could afford no mistakes.
Once the moon was high enough to see by, they resaddled their mounts and put the spare horses on lead reins. Kel and Dom checked each mount for the slightest jingle in its tack and muffled each piece with cloth. Only when they could move quietly did they head toward the enemy camp.
The moon was overhead when they took places in the woods around Stenmun’s camp. The man had chosen carelessly, halting in a pocket formed by the land at the foot of a set of bluffs. From those bluffs Kel and her people could look down into his camp. The children slept, some restlessly. Those who tossed soon woke up. It was a little while before Kel saw why. Each of them was picketed next to a soldier by a stake and a chain. If they moved too hard, the soldier instantly awoke. He would give a yank on the chain until the child tethered there huddled unmoving once more.
It was time. Kel snapped a branch. Humans might think an animal made the sound, but Jump would know his signal.
Furious yowling split the air, the sound of a cat in combat with a hated enemy. The cat’s yowls and the crash of battle in the underbrush were loud even on the bluff. Dom turned to Kel and grinned. All over Stenmun’s camp everyone woke, the men flailing for their weapons. The gray-and-orange cat, all fur and claws, raced through the camp and back, screaming her rage. Jump and another dog, a brown, black, and white fellow, with lungs of leather, charged here and there among men and children, baying as they “chased” the angry cat.
One of the soldiers got to his feet, a big, double-headed axe in hand. He swung and just missed hacking the cat in two. She raced up his legs and chest before he knew what she was doing, gouging his flesh. She sank all four sets of claws into his scalp before she launched herself from his head into the dark. The dogs had vanished the moment that axe came down.
Kel surveyed Stenmun in the scant moonlight: here at last was one of the enemy. Not only was he big, he handled that axe as if it were made of straw. She would have her work cut out for her if she fought him.
“Animals!” she heard him roar. “It’s just animals— all of you shut up and go back to sleep!” His was a battlefield voice that could be heard over the clash of weapons and men’s yells. Kel admired the order, though she thought Stenmun didn’t know babies. His roar on top of the dog and cat fight just made the five infants in the camp shriek all the louder. The men who cared for them had a dreadful time calming them until they could sleep. Some of Kel’s men stuffed their forearms into their mouths to stifle laughter.
Kel watched the camp, marking who had the babies, where the horses were picketed, and where the sentries were posted. Obviously Stenmun felt safe here. He took no care to conceal his people. One of her human scouts reported the two men now detailed to watch the road and the river had sat down to drink and dice against one another. A woods sentry between the road and the bluffs sat on a stretch of rock lit by moonlight, biting his nails and scratching his scalp. He’d taken his helmet off, something his relief scolded him for. At the far end of the bluffs, the silhouette of the man on watch there was clear against the sky. His relief was no smarter, because he took the same place out in the open.
Kel poked Dom after the new watch was posted and the old had gone to bed. Dom poked the man next to him, and so on down the line to Neal, who tossed a pebble down below. Shepherd, hidden in the brush, began to howl. The dogs of Kel’s command lifted their heads and joined him. In the distance wolves heard and began their own song. The babies came to immediate, shrieking wakefulness; the soldiers scrambled to their feet.
They had barely settled down to sleep again when Kel signaled Tobe. She couldn’t see or hear what he did, but suddenly the picketed horses went mad, neighing and trying to free themselves. They yanked and plunged, forcing the men to rise once more to calm them and make sure their tethers were secure. Some men couldn’t lie back down. They had the next watch.
Everything was going as planned. Kel rolled onto her back and took a nap.
A hand nudged her. She sat up, blinking sleep from her eyes as she reached for her bow. From the sounds of the birds and the ghostly light that filled the air, it was almost dawn.
The others had fanned out to assigned positions. Kel rose to her knees, squinting in the iffy light, set an arrow to her bow, and sighted on her target, a man in the woods. He crouched by a stream that fed the river, splashing water on his face. Kel loosed. Her first arrow skimmed over his head. He scrambled to his feet, looking around in panic. Her second arrow killed him.
Around her rose the soft twang of bows. Saefas and Fanche shot, as did Gil, Dom, Uinse, and Fulcher, the best of Kel’s archers. Six more sentries died as quietly as Kel’s had. A signal came up the chain of watchers: Owen had killed the road sentry. Lofren of Dom’s squad had killed the man on the riverbank.
Once the easy shots were over, everyone but Kel retreated to the spot two hundred yards back where Tobe and the dogs waited with the horses. Kel found a hiding place in a massive tree, one that still gave her a good view of the camp. She’d had to argue with Neal and Dom, but at last they’d seen that she had a point. She could weigh their future tactics by observing how Stenmun reacted when he found all of his sentries for the pre-dawn watch dead. They had killed nine, almost a tenth of Stenmun’s force. Not bad for a night’s work, Kel thought grimly as she shifted so a knot in the tree wouldn’t dig through her mail into her kidneys.
The raiders’ camp slept through dawn. The sentries were to rouse the camp as they came off duty, except that none lived to do so. Predictably, it was the babies who woke first. They began to cry from hunger or wet diapers. The toddlers and slightly older children woke to strange, uncomfortable settings and the faces of strangers and joined in the infants’ wails.
Stenmun lunged to his feet with a roar of fury: “Can’t a man sleep—”
Kel, watching through her spyglass, saw the big man notice that the sun was well over the horizon. He scowled and barked orders. A handful of men scurried out to check their sentries.
They returned at a run to tell Stenmun that the last guard shift of the night was dead. This was the moment Kel had waited for. In Stenmun’s place she would have searched the woods, taking hours if necessary to track down who had killed her men and ensure the safety of those left. If her notions about Stenmun were right, though, Blayce and the killing devices would be of greater concern than his soldiers. If that was the case, Stenmun would rush on to his master with his prizes. She hoped that wouldn’t sit well with his men: angry men were slip-shod. It would mean she could pick off more soldiers as the Scanrans fled.
After the last searchers returned to tell the big man what they had found, Kel watched as Stenmun thought. He pulled on his lower lip and scowled, then glared at the men who’d brought the news and gave them an order.
The men argued fiercely. By their gestures and their expressions, Kel guessed that they wanted to properly bury the dead and say prayers. Stenmun cut them off. The argument got worse; one man slapped his chest as if asking, “Will you do this if I am killed?”
Stenmun’s answer was a snarl and a blow that knocked the man back six feet. The men got to work. Once the horses were ready, they untethered the children, tied their hands together, and helped them onto horses. Some children rode with a soldier; others paired up on a horse that was led by one.
Her lads had to be careful, thought Kel as she waited for the Scanrans to ride out. Those children were the soldiers’ best protection. Stenmun would know that as soon as he found time to wonder why only his sentries had been killed. She’d be reluctant to tamper with any man who rode with a child, and she couldn’t let Tobe call a horse that might throw a child and kill him or her by accident.
Once the Scanrans were gone, Kel climbed down the tree and ran back to her men to describe what she’d seen. As they mounted up, Neal handed Kel a slice of bread covered with melted cheese, followed by another. Kel wolfed the food. She looked at him reproachfully as she ate.
“We used dry wood,” he said. He knew she was thinking that a fire was risky. “No smoke at all.”
“Smell,” she mumbled around a mouthful.
“The enemy was upwind,” Saefas replied. “They’d have to be gods to smell it.”
“Mother gets so upset when she thinks we lads have been careless,” Dom teased Kel as she gulped some water.
“If I’d been your mother, I’d’ve beaten you,” she informed him, swinging onto Hoshi’s back. “Bows, everyone. We’ll use the road till our forward scout spots the enemy. After that, we take to the woods. It’s risky, but we have to chance it. They’ve got little ones with all the men. No shooting unless a man dismounts and leaves the children on the horse. Remember the plans we made last night. We can do this if we go at it carefully.” She’d had to work to persuade her companions not to kill Stenmun or all his men. Stenmun had to lead them to Blayce.
They rode at a trot, doing their best to go easy on the warhorses, gaining on Stenmun. They had not gone far when Dom tapped Kel’s shoulder and pointed up through a gap in the trees. Kel looked and growled under her breath. Four Stormwings flew lazily along the road, closer to Stenmun than they were to Kel and her fighters. If Stenmun didn’t know that someone followed him, he does now, she thought grimly. Within moments the trees closed in again, which stopped her from having to choose between pursuit and a brief halt to shoot Stormwings.
At last the convict soldier who rode as forward scout returned with the sparrows to say the enemy was in sight. Kel and her people fanned out in the northern woods. That slowed them, forcing them to watch the ground for rabbit holes and other hazards that might cause a mount to break a leg or a rider to bang his head. They’d been in the woods long enough for Kel to realize she needed to find a bush where she could relieve herself in private when the forward scout returned a second time. Their quarry had stopped to water their horses.
Kel hand-signaled for Gil, Fanche, and Owen to dismount, go forward, and pick off any soldiers they could. When they were gone from view, Kel signaled four more of her people to go forward with their bows. She and the others drew back to a stream they’d just crossed.
There they waited. Kel relieved herself, then returned to gnaw a handful of the dried dates favored by the Bazhir among her companions. She made a face as she nibbled. They were sticky sweet. To the man who’d given them to her she whispered, “Your people like these things?”
“If you don’t want them,” he began, reaching for the handful.
Kel yanked them back. “I need the food,” she confessed, trying not to yawn. She was tired despite two naps the night before. Catnapping in hostile country was not restful.
They heard crashing in the woods. The sparrows came winging back to signal the approach of friends. It was Fanche, Gil, and Owen, sweating and bright-eyed with success. Gil raised a bony fist, extended his thumb, and dipped it four times. They had shot four men.
They heard more crashes and battle sounds. Kel and the others grabbed their weapons and waited. Five horses, riderless and wild-eyed with terror, galloped through the trees to halt beside Tobe. The four archers who had gone to cover Gil, Fanche, and Owen returned, wiping sweaty faces on their sleeves. One of them, Lofren, grinned as he raised his hand, made a fist, extended a thumb, and dipped it five times.
“Old Stenmun must be wetting his breeches,” Dom murmured to Kel. “He’s down eighteen men.”
When a scout reported that Stenmun was on the move again, Kel and her people returned to the road. They could speed up now, Kel decided. Stenmun knew the enemy was still with him. If he wasn’t going to send anyone after them—and his departure after they’d killed nine of his men told her that he wouldn’t—he’d ride for Blayce as fast as he could. His captives would slow him down even more as they now outnumbered his warriors. It was time to see if they could recover some of the children.
The problem with catching up to Stenmun was that with fewer men to burden the horses, his train could ride faster. Wolset, Kel’s latest forward scout, sent word back that horses without soldiers to ride them had been put on lead reins, children tied to their saddles. Kel ordered him to keep Stenmun always within sight. She thought as she rode. There had to be a way to separate some of those horses from their lead reins.
“What about the sparrows?” Neal asked softly as he drew even with Kel. “If they came at the faces of the men holding those lead reins, the men might drop them. Tobe could summon the horses back to us.”
Kel smiled at her friend. “I always knew you were the clever one,” she said. To Nari on her shoulder Kel explained what she wanted. Nari listened, then rounded up those of her flock not on scout duty. Tobe, Gil, and Saefas followed the birds down the road.
“You know, when I was growing up, talking to animals was considered more than a bit cracked,” Kel remarked to Fanche, who had come to ride on her other side. “But the more I do it, the more reasonable it seems.”
“It helps that you know they understand,” replied the woman. “I wouldn’t want to visit that palace of yours.”
“Why not?” chorused Neal and Kel, startled. In their travels they were always asked to describe the palace and the people who lived there. When they did so, the usual responses from their audience were sighs and the wish to actually see it, just once.
“Just your animals here are unnatural. What if you return to find the horses have decided not to work for men and the dogs are running the courts of law?” Fanche asked.
Kel grimaced. Sometimes she wondered the same thing.
When she heard Stenmun’s roar of frustration, she knew he must be in an area hemmed in by rock, which bounced the noise back along the river. I hope you told Blayce how many children you would bring, she thought with grim satisfaction. I hope he holds you to account for the missing ones.
Tobe came back on Peachblossom, three horses trailing him. They trotted along the road neatly, taking care not to spill their precious burdens, two girls in their early teens, three boys of seven to nine years, a toddler, and one infant. Kel welcomed each with a smile, a clasp of the hand, or a ruffle of the hair, but her insides twisted. Stenmun still had more children, including Loesia, Gydo, and Meech.
She sent a convict soldier up to take over as scout. Wolset, when he returned, was sweating hard. Kel gave him her second-to-last handkerchief.
“Thanks, milady,” he said gratefully, wiping his face. “They won’t make that mistake a second time, I fear. Stenmun ordered them that’s leading horses to wrap the lead reins around their waists or their saddle horns. Where we are now? In about five hundred yards the land starts rising. It looks like there’s a castle on a mountainside ahead, with the river in front. Ten miles, perhaps? I think they’re riding for the castle.”
Kel gnawed on her lip. She couldn’t push the horses any harder, not the warhorses, anyway. “Gil?” she asked, waving the grizzled convict soldier to her. “Take your lads and Saefas. Try to get into the road in front of them. Start shooting, but don’t hit anyone. I want them stopped or slowed down, not killed. Tobe, take Hoshi.” She dismounted and collected her weapons as Tobe climbed from Peachblossom’s back to Hoshi’s. Kel took Peachblossom’s reins. “Ask Stenmun’s horses to slow down if you can.”
Tobe rubbed his forehead. “If I can. It’s easier with just two or three.”
Within moments the convicts, Gil, Saefas, and Tobe were gone, dust rising from the road in their wake. Kel swung herself into Peachblossom’s saddle with a grateful sigh. She didn’t want to exhaust the gelding by riding him too long and too fast with the burden of her weight, armor, and weapons, but it was very comforting to be on him again. She looked at Neal. “Shall we?” she asked.
They had not gone far when her advance party returned at the gallop. Kel drew up. They wouldn’t have returned unless something was direly wrong.
“There’s an army ahead, beyond a rise in the ground,” Gil reported, his weathered face ashen. “Or at least a company, ready to do battle. If their scouts find us, we’re dead.”
Kel frowned. Surely the sparrows would have reported an army. She and her people spread out in the woods and rode up the hill ahead, ears straining for the faintest sound. A hundred feet from the crest, Kel and the others dismounted, leaving Tobe with the horses. As they crept through the undergrowth toward the peak in the land, the road barely visible on their right, she realized that the dogs were also relaxed and comfortable. They trotted gleefully through the brush, pouncing on hidden mice, acting not at all like her fierce scouts and defenders.
Slowly and carefully the humans crawled the last yards to the break in the ground and peered over. Neal and Owen went pale and made the sign against evil on their chests. Dom made the sign as they did, but his frown indicated puzzlement, not fear. Kel was the last to find a spot from which she could see into the small valley below. When she did, she noted forest, open fields, a small, ill-kept village on a creek, and the road. At the far end of the valley she saw Stenmun’s group, riding on for all they were worth.
“Where’s this army?” she whispered to Gil on her right.
“Milady—are you well? It’s there, across the road,” he said, pointing with a bony finger. “They’re at least two hundred strong, maybe more.”
Kel wondered if her bandit had cracked under the strain of fumbling through enemy territory. It startled her to see him giving her a similar look.
“Two hundred without the mages,” Neal added in a husky whisper. “Five mages, and they look like real trouble.”
Owen frowned. “Why are they here?” he wanted to know. “Are they on their way south? You’d think they’d be on the road if they are, not camped.”
“Their banners don’t flap,” said Dom, his brows knit. “We’ve a good wind, but their banners hang limp.”
Kel took her griffin-feather headband off. Suddenly she could see the army, sprawled and waiting on the road. Dom was right. Their banners didn’t fly on the wind.
She put the griffin band on. The army vanished. “It’s an illusion, lads,” she told them. “Just a village down there.”
“I hear them,” Saefas insisted. “I can smell their horses.”
“It’s a very good illusion,” Kel admitted, though it seemed the griffin feathers protected her from the part of the illusion that smelled, too. “But it’s an illusion. And Stenmun’s getting away.”
She got halfway to her feet. Neal yanked her flat. “Are you mad?” he demanded hoarsely. “I see their mages!”
Kel lifted her face out of dry leaves and dirt, blowing them out of her mouth and nose. If he wasn’t my friend, I’d hit him, she thought, wiping her hand over her nose. She yanked the feather band from her head and thrust it onto Neal’s.
He looked at the valley and turned beet red. “Oh,” he said, and slipped off the band. “Very well, then, it’s the best illusion I’ve ever seen.”
Dom surveyed the griffin feathers with thoughtful eyes. “Almost makes it worthwhile to raid a nest,” he murmured.
“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” replied Kel. “They’re nasty beasts.”
“Are you sure it’s an illusion?” asked Owen. “What if it’s an illusion that we’re hearing you and Neal say it’s an illusion? It could all be a fakement. We wouldn’t know until it was too late. If we’re smelling illusions, maybe we’re hearing them, too, and we’ll be chopped up before you can say ‘King Maggot.’ ”
Kel got to her knees. A headache brewed behind her eyes, and Stenmun was gone from view. “Since I don’t feel like going to every one of you and jamming this curst itchy thing onto your faces, you’ll have to take my word for it,” she growled. “While we pick our noses the quarry’s getting away, and there’s still a village to worry about!”
This time Fanche, who had remained mercifully quiet until now, spoke. “There’s a village?”
Kel thumped her forehead with her fist. Dom gently pulled her arm down, then borrowed the griffin-feather band. He didn’t put it on, only laid it on his forehead. “Looks pretty dead. I don’t see movement, but there’s smoke coming from the bakehouse. There’s tools just lying about.”
“Jump, Nari,” Kel said wearily, sitting back. “Take some friends. See if anyone’s down there.” As they obeyed, Kel looked at her companions. “The sparrows and the dogs didn’t see it. That’s why they didn’t warn us,” she explained. “It’s a very good illusion—”
“Layered,” Neal remarked with a sigh of envy. He took the griffin-feather band from Dom and laid it above his own brows. “Beautifully detailed. Almost perfect. Putting enough power into the mages so another mage would believe they were real, now that’s brilliant.”
“If it was truly brilliant, the banners would flap in the existing wind,” retorted Dom.
“Probably figured we’d just see the army and run,” commented Fanche.
“An illusion.” Tobe shook his head. “No accounting for these mages, what they’ll come up with, eh, lady?”
Kel rubbed the back of her neck. “No accounting at all,” she replied.
Soon the dogs and birds returned. “Anyone?” Kel asked Jump. The dog shook his head. “But there are people living there.” He nodded.
“Cleared out,” said Gil. “And not for us. For Stenmun. They don’t even know we’re here.”
“They’re afraid of their own people?” Owen asked. “That’s sad.”
“I wonder how many children they have,” murmured Fanche.
Kel chewed her lower lip, thinking. “Let’s risk the village and the road,” she decided. “We need to catch up to Stenmun. Gil, those of you with the last forward party, ride. Try to reach them before they get to the castle. There aren’t enough of us for a siege. You have to slow them down before they reach Blayce. Sparrows, some of you fly ahead. Try to get Stenmun’s horses to slow down without scaring them. Tobe will help once he’s close. Go, go, go!”
Saefas, Tobe, Gil, and the remaining convict soldiers rushed back to their horses. Kel looked at the others. “We’ll have to push the warhorses, I’m afraid,” she said regretfully. “If we catch the enemy soon, we should be all right. Please, Goddess,” she added. Horses were dedicated to the Great Mother.
They mounted and rode, the dogs and birds spreading into the woods to scout. As they passed through the village, Kel noticed a dropped broom, a tipped-over bucket, a lone chicken pecking at the dust. The people had left in a hurry. She had to pray that her animal scouts would find them if they waited somewhere nearby with bows, ready to shoot her and her companions in the back.
The road followed the rise out of the small valley that cupped the village. When it leveled, Kel found that her advance party had come to a halt. Their horses reared and danced in the road, their eyes panic-white all the way around the irises. They were terrified despite Tobe’s reassurances.
Sparrows flew shrieking around a bend in the road ahead, crying their most serious alarm. Kel’s scalp prickled. She put two fingers to her mouth and whistled. Saefas turned to look, and she waved him and the others back to her. Though the advance group’s smaller, lighter horses were terrified to advance, they weren’t too scared to return to Kel and the others. They came at the gallop.
The only bird sounds Kel heard were made by a few sparrows. The dogs and cat burst from the woods ahead, racing until they could stand in the road with their people. Jump and Shepherd came last, hackles raised, lips peeled away from their teeth as they voiced low, shuddering growls. They backed down the road to Kel, eyes fixed ahead. Beyond the sounds they made, and those of riders trying to soothe nervous mounts, Kel heard none of the noise of normal forest life. She got her bow and strung it, bracing its lower end against her boot in the stirrup. “Ropes,” she called. She had the feeling that just now readiness was more important than secrecy. “Dom, you remember the last time the birds got this upset?” she asked, making sure she could reach her quiver easily.
“I do,” he said grimly. “Boys, let’s have the special ropes out.” The men of his squad turned pale and moved the coils of rope they carried from the back of their saddles to the front. “We borrowed a page from your book. Ropes with a chain core,” Dom explained. “Oh, look, Mother. We have company for supper.”
Three black metal killing devices walked around the bend in the road. The hammered-iron domes that were their heads swiveled to and fro on the neck grooves, questing for their quarry.
The things stopped and fanned out. The sparrows attacked two, swooping and dodging, circling the devices’ heads like a swarm of flies. Both halted, confused. Helm-heads swiveled as they tried to follow the birds. Kel hoped none of the birds would try to climb into the things’ eyepits, as the bird that died at Haven had done.
The third device strode toward them on the grassy border to Kel’s left. Its steps were uncertain, its movements slow and uncoordinated. New? she wondered. Or was something not right with the child whose spirit gave the thing its unnatural life?
She selected an arrow and put it to the string. She rose in her stirrups, aiming at the slow one’s helm as two of Dom’s men galloped toward the closest device, a rope stretched between them. They spread apart to avoid the thing’s knife-clawed hands.
Kel loosed her arrow. It sped across the distance between her and the slowest device and punched into its iron dome. Shepherd raced over to the thing and leaped, twisting to avoid its wildly flailing knife-fingers and gripping the arrow’s shaft in his jaws. His weight snapped the arrow, allowing its head to fall into the dome, opening a gap for the child-spirit to escape. The dog’s momentum carried him free as the device collapsed in a heap.
“Can I have one of those arrows?” asked Fanche. Kel handed one over and selected a third for herself.
Dom’s first two riders galloped past the device in the center of the road. Their rope snagged neatly under the thing’s chin, in its neck groove. The riders then galloped at each other, crossing the rope so it encircled the device’s neck. It snapped off its feet, crashing onto its back. Two more of Dom’s men rode forward, twirling rope lassos. The nooses settled over the device’s arms and pulled tight. Behind them came more of Dom’s men to lasso the thing’s feet.
Kel and Fanche shot the third device in the dome, nicking a feather on a sparrow who didn’t move quickly enough. Both arrows struck the device and punched through. It began to spin, clawing at the arrows. Its knives sheared through the shafts, allowing the arrowheads to drop inside the dome. A small cloud issued from one of the holes, wailing like an infant. Its iron prison collapsed as the wind blew the infant’s ghost away.
The third device hung in the air between five horsemen, spread-eagled by tightly drawn ropes. It fought to get free as the men wrapped the ropes around their saddle horns and backed the horses until the thing’s limbs were stretched to their limits. Dom got down from his horse, choosing an axe from his weapons. It was like Kel’s own war axe, with a blade on one side and a sharp spike on the other. Dom smashed the spike into the device’s helm. When he yanked it free, the white ghost-cloud flowed out and broke up. The device went dead, and his men recovered their ropes.
“Lady,” Tobe called, “we got visitors.” Kel looked back.
From the trees on either side of the road came the missing villagers, men and women, armed with scythes, axes, flails, crude spears with knives strapped to them for blades, whips, and a few clumsily made bows. They spread out across the road.
Kel looked at Gil. “Take a scout and go ahead, in the woods,” she ordered. “I need to know what that Stenmun is doing.”
“This day just gets better and better,” groused Owen as they turned their horses. “Why can’t we fight real warriors, who know what they’re doing?”
Kel and Peachblossom advanced as her people moved aside. Neal and Owen followed on either side of her; Tobe rode beside Owen. The animals came with them, but for the sparrows who left with Gil or went to search the woods. Kel held up a hand; she and her immediate companions halted out of the range of the villagers’ weak bows.
“We don’t want trouble,” she called in Scanran. “Our business is with those who just rode through your village. We mean no harm to you if you mean none to us.”
A girl of no more than six or seven years trotted out of a clump of bushes to stand at the center of the road. She clutched a floppy rag doll to her chest. Kel thought of Meech and twisted her ring of bright red yarn, wanting to scream with impatience. Her problems were ahead, not behind. If she’d been alone, she might have run, but she didn’t want farmers who knew this area to be after her people.
The child stared up at her and smiled. She had vivid dark green eyes rimmed with long lashes as brown as her waving mass of hair. Her smile was full of innocent goodwill. When she grinned, she revealed a missing front tooth. After looking at Kel for a moment, she faced the villagers. “That’s the one, all right,” the girl announced. “I told you she would come, the Protector of the Small. And she’s got her knowing animals, the healer, and the horse boy, the armed men and the marked men, the trapper and the bitter mother. They’re all here. Blayce will fall.”
A man, sharp-featured and lank-haired, came up to stand beside the child. “She is a seer,” he explained, his dark eyes hard as he looked Kel over. “She prophesied that you would come and save us from the Gallan. You had better be worth the wait.”
“I’m not interested in waiting,” Kel replied, happy that her mail hid the goose bumps that rippled over her skin when the little girl spoke. “Every moment I sit here puts Stenmun closer to the castle and its walls. If you don’t mind, go home and let me do what I came to do.”
“You must come with us,” the little girl said matter-of-factly. “They’re closing the castle gates now. Blayce has your children.”
Kel’s heart froze. She turned Peachblossom and set him racing down the road toward the castle. She had not gone a mile when she met Gil, his companion, Morun, and the sparrows. The bleak look in the men’s eyes told Kel the young seer was right. Stenmun, and Kel’s charges, were in Blayce’s hands.
How could she get in? They couldn’t lay a siege here, not twenty-odd fighters without supplies or catapults. Were they completely helpless?
She rode on past her scouts. The castle. It wasn’t as far off as it had looked from the ridge above the village. The trees ended where the castle’s owners had cleared the land to leave half a mile around its walls with no cover for attackers. Armed men trotted to positions on the walls: Kel’s people were expected. She saw no moat or abatis. Her men might try to scale the walls that night. Dom and Connac had brought grapples.
The castle itself was not particularly big. The river flowed along its east side, a brisk, deep obstacle. On the north side a sheer stone cliff soared hundreds of yards into the air. The north and east walls, then, were well defended. The west and south walls might be climbed in the dark, if the guards were distracted, and if the mage had set no further illusions or killing devices to protect the place. Kel didn’t like to calculate with so many ifs to consider.
The wind stirred. It bore a stench and a clacking sound. Gripping her spyglass with hands that trembled with frustration, Kel opened it. She found the source immediately. Corpses hung from the walls in iron cages. Some of the bodies were beginning to fall apart. At least two looked fairly recent. Some cages hung empty. The dead looked to be adults, not children. Kel wondered who had been so unfortunate as to suffer Blayce’s wrath.
Slowly she rode back, considering. They needed a distraction, a good one. An assault had a better chance of success after dark, but she feared to wait that long. How many children would be dead by the time she got her plans in order?
When she rejoined her force, the villagers were still there. “Come with us,” the little girl said. “We’ll help you.”
Kel looked bleakly down at her. “How?” she demanded. “And when?”
“Tonight,” said the man who had spoken before. “We know a way inside.”
It took a moment for his words to penetrate Kel’s gloom. When they did, her nerves came to fiery life. “A way in? Then we can’t wait. We’ll distract them, draw them off.”
“We wait,” the man replied stubbornly. “There’s no cover, and the way lies right under their walls. Unless you’ve a mage who can hide everyone, we’re not killing our own so you can bravely charge in.”
Kel leaned forward, clutching her saddle horn tightly in her effort to be patient. “You don’t understand,” she told them fiercely. “They have nearly two hundred of our children. I want them back—all of them. How many will he slaughter between now and dark?”
“None,” said a hollow-eyed woman. She wiped her mouth on a grimy sleeve. “Right now he’s arranging for them to have baths, and have their hair combed and curled. He’s showing them rooms of toys and beds with clean sheets and silken comforters. Later they’ll eat food the likes of which they’ve only dreamed.”
“He’ll talk to them, and tell them they’re safe,” added the lank-haired man. “He’ll make Stenmun apologize on bended knee for scaring them. They’ll play games tonight and tomorrow. They’ll have kittens and puppies and more baths. They get balm put on their chapped little hands to make them as smooth as a lady’s. He won’t pick his first one for a couple of days, and that only if he’s in a hurry.”
“How do you know all this?” asked Neal. “How can you be sure?”
“My daughter worked there, till he found she was smuggling poppy to the ones he’d chosen,” said the hollow-eyed woman. “She’s hanging on the walls right now.”
“And my daughter’s there, and my son,” the lank-haired man told them. “My grandchildren went in there and never came out.”
“Your children work for him?” demanded Owen. “They lend themselves to that?”
“He says if they don’t, he’ll kill us,” retorted another woman. “He tells us that if we refuse to till his fields, he will kill them.”
Kel sat for a moment, looking at these people. They were ragged, thin, and dirty. She remembered the homes in the village, the bad thatching, the windows with shutters made of trash wood, the crudely made pens and coops. These people got no profit from the creation of killing devices. They looked as if they were near starvation.
“I don’t understand,” Neal said abruptly. “He doesn’t need that for death magic. Clothes, or food, or toys. Bathing, maybe, for purification, but the rest makes no sense.”
“He doesn’t do it because it’s needed,” said the hollow-eyed woman, her voice thick with scorn. “He does it because he likes it.”
“He could use any ghosts for his magic,” the girl seer added, rocking her doll in her arms. “As long as the king in Hamrkeng gets his evil metal creatures, he doesn’t care who Blayce uses or how he uses them.”
“At least, he doesn’t care if our children are used, or yours across the border,” said the lank-haired man, his voice cracking. “It would be different if Blayce wanted nobles’ children.” He shook his head as if to clear it. “Well?” he demanded, brown eyes fierce as he glared at Kel. “Do you want in, or don’t you? Will you rid us of him, or will you stay here like a herd of cows?”
Everyone looked at Kel. She wished they wouldn’t.
“You’re sure he isn’t killing them right now?” she asked the child seer.
She closed her eyes. When she spoke, it was in a thin, whispering voice that Kel knew. He welcomes them as his own, the Chamber of the Ordeal said. Everyone around her made the sign against evil on his or her chest. He says they are safe now. They are to have sweets, hot baths, a feast, easy dreams. He makes his dog, Stenmun, grovel for them. It is your time, Keladry of Mindelan, Protector of the Small.
The child staggered as the Chamber released her. The lank-haired man swept her up in his arms and walked down the road, bound for the village. Kel followed, weary.
Neal stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Kel, who was that?” he wanted to know. Kel turned. All of her people stared at her.
She sighed. “It was the Chamber of the Ordeal,” she told them. “It sent me here. Sort of.”
A convict brightened. “Then we’re to succeed? If it’s been foretold?”
The hollow-eyed woman had stayed within earshot. She faced them with a crooked smile. “Irnai—the seer child—she says your chances are one in two. Since that’s better than ours, we’ll pray for you.”
June 10–11, 460
Blayce’s Castle
