Lady Knight

by Tamora Pierce

  Supper was held in Lord Wyldon’s dining room, with all the camp’s senior officials present, as well as Prince Roald, Baird, Numair, Neal, Harailt, Daine, and Kel. Owen and his friend Rengar handled the service as officers and mages talked about the war, the killing devices, and the army’s next assault on King Maggur’s troops.

  “The problem is that the chief damage is being done by these raiding parties,” Wyldon remarked as the table was cleared. “Maggur sends his regular troops to nail down Northwatch, Steadfast, and Mastiff, then turns raiders loose in the country behind our lines to burn and loot. Some of those raiding parties fetch killing devices with them, and the humans kidnap more people than they kill. We’re assuming the adults are made slaves, kept or sold to the markets in the south. The young ones all go to Blayce the Gallan.”

  “We need more troops,” said one of the captains. “And soon. There’s just too much border. We can’t stop the enemy from crossing the Vassa. If we can get more men, we can turn the Scanrans away before they reach the back country.”

  “The killing devices worry me,” Harailt said, his normally cheerful face troubled. “Until we learn precisely how Blayce makes them, we fumble for ways to stop the things. My biggest fear is that he’ll get enough captives to create hundreds of them, or bigger ones, or a new kind even nastier. I’m not sure only children will serve as the power to make the devices work. In all my reading about this vile magic, I’ve found nothing that says the age of the spirit matters. I believe that Blayce uses children for his own putrid reasons. If some other mage learns how to do it, and starts using all the enemy’s captives to make new ones, we could be overrun.”

  “You’re certain it’s just this one mage who builds the things?” inquired Neal.

  “Definitely,” replied Numair and Daine. They smiled quickly at one another before Numair continued, “Once you remove the iron, I find the same runes and commands, made by the same hand, cut into the bones that shape the limbs. And they’re on the inside of the head-domes. Blayce had a reputation at the City of the Gods as one of those mages who feels that if others know his spells, he can be dispensed with. Unless he’s changed completely, he’ll keep the secrets of his devices to himself.”

  “So he tells King Maggur only he can do this,” Baird said, his eyes bleak. “What a dreadful blessing for us.”

  “That’s war,” muttered one of the captains. “One dreadful blessing after another.”

  Kel fought to sit still, she was so upset. Blayce could do even worse harm if pressed to create more devices, and here she sat, useless.

  “Do we know where this fellow is?” she heard herself ask. “This Blayce? Daine and Numair told me he’s not in Hamrkeng. Has there been word?”

  “None,” said Harailt, his gray eyes sharp with anger and frustration. “Our spies—mostly Daine’s spies—have searched the capital cellar to roof, with no success. And the place is so well protected from scry-searching in mirrors and crystals, magical searching in mirrors and crystals, we’re lucky if we can as much as glimpse the laundry maids at work.”

  “I don’t understand this!” cried Neal. “How can anyone give shelter to this creature? If we know how the devices are made, surely Maggur knows! How can he use such a monster as Blayce?”

  Silence followed his outburst, until Wyldon sighed. “He wants to win,” he said quietly. “Everyone with half an eye can see this war turns on the killing devices.”

  “If only it were a matter of armies and navies, we’d have sent Maggur into his mountains with his tail between his legs,” added Harailt. “As it is, with more killing devices arriving each day, we can barely hold our own. It isn’t just that they’re fast and vicious—they’re terrifying.”

  “Troops who would face a giant without turning a hair are afraid of the devices,” said one of the captains. “Two devices, they falter. Three, they break and run. Nobody wants to be cut up by a seven-foot iron insect with knives for fingers and toes.”

  “There are rulers and generals who would sacrifice anything for such a weapon.” Numair looked grim. “Ozorne—the former emperor of Carthak— would have given his own children, and those of his nobles, for such a weapon.”

  “Maggur doesn’t even have to risk his nobles turning on him,” Prince Roald said, his eyes glittering like cold sapphires. “All he has to do is keep Blayce and his workshop hidden, and feed him a stream of our children. With no threat to their own children, and with slaves and loot to keep them happy, his nobles can pretend to know nothing about how the devices are made.”

  “Then why don’t the gods put a stop to it?” demanded Neal. “All the legends say they loathe necromancy. It interferes with the balance between the mortal realm and that of the dead.”

  “Perhaps the gods are preparing to interfere,” said Daine.

  Kel flinched.

  “But the gods have their own notion of time,” continued the Wildmage. “It isn’t ours, and sometimes they come at things in a way we see as, well, cockeyed. They may prefer to work through a human vessel.”

  Kel lowered her head, feeling more useless than ever. If she were such a human vessel, she’d have figured a way to get at Blayce by now. She bit the inside of her lip and pleated her napkin tightly as she made herself listen to the rest of the conversation.

  The supper meeting continued past Kel’s usual bedtime as information about the war was traded over the table. When Kel emerged from Wyldon’s meeting room, she found Tobe waiting to guide her to the chambers they’d been given.

  She was asleep and dreaming as soon as her head touched the pillow.

  The big man, Stenmun, was putting tops on crates as Blayce watched, a finger digging in one ear. Kel walked over to the first crate. A killing device was inside, but this one didn’t have that sharp, alien face with its visor-lips. It had a face, Loesia’s face. Kel’s body carried her unwilling spirit to the next box, which held a device with Meech’s face, and the next, with Gydo’s, and the next, with that of Tobe himself.

  Your paths will cross, insisted the Chamber of the Ordeal. Its face was embedded in the stone wall of Blayce’s workshop. Neither Stenmun nor Blayce seemed to hear it. In time, your paths will cross. That is destiny.

  The door to the workroom opened. A line of children, all from Haven, straggled in.

  “Lady!” A hand was on her shoulder, jostling her. “Lady, you’re talking in your sleep again.”

  Kel sat up, bleary-eyed. “I’m sorry, Tobe. That’s what, every night this week?”

  “Good thing for you I’m a catnapper, myself,” the boy informed her. He sat on the edge of her bed, eyeing her sternly. “You said them names again, Blayce, an’ Stenmun. And the Chamber of the Ordeal. If I was you, I’d take a pickaxe to that Chamber, the way you’re allus dreamin’ about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kel said apologetically, as she did every night she woke him up. “I keep telling you—”

  “I’d be better off sleepin’ someplace else,” the boy recited, and rolled his eyes. “And how much rest would you get without me to wake you? Lucky you, dreamin’ just once a night.”

  Kel got up. “Go back to sleep,” she ordered, groping for her clothes. “I’ll have a bit of a walk to clear my head.”

  Tobe shrugged. “As you will, lady.” He wriggled under his bedclothes and was snoring by the time Kel left the room.

  A walk on the ramparts would ease her mind. She climbed to the walkway around the inner wall as Fort Mastiff slept. Only the night watch was awake; they seemed used to visitors taking a late stroll. They kept their attention on the open ground around the fort and ignored Kel.

  Owen leaned on the northern wall, staring gloomily at the moonlit ribbon of the Vassa River. She settled in beside him and admired the way silver moonlight turned the land into something magical, hiding the gouges and scrambled earth left from some recent attack.

  “It’s not what I expected, Kel,” Owen told her suddenly. “Not at all. I mean, patrols, and fighting the enemy, that’s just
jolly. We gave them a pounding. They ran like rabbits. I would have followed, but my lord grabbed me and told me I could chase game another day.” He was silent for a while.

  Kel waited. It would be hard for the cheerful Owen to find words to describe bad feelings. When she saw a tear course down his cheek, she gently asked, “Giantkiller?”

  He nodded and swiped angrily at the tear. “The dead were just strewn everywhere, like my sisters’ dolls, all cut up. The ones in the sun were swelling. There were flies, and Stormwings and animals had been at them.”

  Kel nodded. At least she had gotten the Scanran dead burned and her own dead buried before the indignities of rot and scavengers settled on them.

  “What chaps me is that by the time we got there, the trail was a day old,” Owen said. “We’d no chance to avenge them. And so many were taken— civilians, mostly, waiting to move on to Haven. They killed the soldiers. Those refugees—some were children, Kel. I wish I could find that mage, that Blayce. I’d gut him and drag him around Scanra by his insides.”

  “Then you’d have another rotten body to deal with,” Kel pointed out.

  “No,” Owen replied stubbornly, his chin thrust out. “I’d dump him on King Maggot’s throne and let him clean up.” He shook his head. “We fight and kill all these raiders, but we aren’t getting anywhere. They just keep sliding by us, along with their thrice-cursed killing devices. This fortress is all very well, but if we stay in, the enemy goes around us. If we go out, we search miles of hills and canyons and forests, and maybe get something for our trouble. Mostly not.”

  “At least you’re allowed to search, and fight,” a new voice said on Kel’s right. Prince Roald leaned against the wall, surveying the river below. “They have me so well wrapped in lamb’s wool that I might as well be in Corus, for all the good I do. They only use me for magic, and that at a distance.” He sighed. “People say they’re grateful when I work a healing on them, but what if they hate me because I’m not allowed to take risks? Mithros knows I hate me.”

  Kel opened her mouth to say they’d get to do more sooner or later, but she didn’t. She couldn’t tell her friends something she didn’t believe was so.

  May 2–3, 460

  Haven

  ten

  THE REFUGEES FIGHT

  Approaching Haven at the head of a train of soldiers and wagons, Kel fought the urge to turn Hoshi, cross the river to Scanra, and find Blayce on her own. So the realm’s spies can’t find the man, she thought as she guided Hoshi up the inclined road. I’ve been chosen by the Chamber of the Ordeal to settle Blayce’s account. I might be drawn to him somehow.

  “Lady?” asked Tobe, who had turned back to wait for her. “You’ve got your Blayce face on.”

  Kel tossed her mad daydreams aside. If she bolted now, who would guard Haven against the killing devices? Yes, her people trained with the nets and the pickaxes, getting faster at tossing the nets over those who played the role of the device, but Kel heard the refugees’ whispers. They believed in their ability to best the devices because they knew she had helped to kill three of the things. Without Kel at Haven, its people wouldn’t feel comfortable about their chances to fight off the devices.

  Merric waited for them beside the gate, smiling as they rode in. Kel dismounted and passed her reins to Tobe. “Did you behave yourself while I was away?” she asked Merric.

  “I was just as good as gold,” replied Merric. To Neal he said, “A courier arrived from the south while you were gone. There was a letter for you. I left it on your desk in the infirmary. From the capital, and perfumed, no less,” he teased.

  Gydo took charge of Neal’s mount. Meech followed her, clutching the scarlet-haired rag doll that was his eternal companion. Neal raced for the infirmary.

  Kel looked around her as the refugees unhitched horses and oxen from the wagons and collected the supplies. She noticed unfamiliar faces among the population. “Merric, it looks like there are new people since I left,” she remarked.

  “That’s because there are,” he replied with a wry smile. “They came in late yesterday afternoon, both groups, from two little villages near Steadfast. Loggers and carpenters, mostly. And they don’t complain as much as the Tirrsmont crowd.”

  “Could anyone complain as much?” Kel inquired absently. “Did the Tirrsmont folk behave?”

  “Soon as you left, Valestone was all for having a meeting to choose him as headman, but no one was interested,” Merric told her. “That was the only noise. The plowing crews did five acres yesterday, all on this side of the river. The woodcutters brought more wood from where they’re clearing trees to the south.”

  “Did you patrol?” asked Kel.

  When Merric shook his head, his red forelock flopped against his forehead. “No, Mother,” he said drily. “I knew you’d give me a spanking if I went out without doing my chores.”

  Kel looked at him and sighed. “I’m sorry, Merric. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “You’re in command here, Kel,” he told her, his tone quieter. “You’re doing a good job. I won’t break orders to skylark.”

  “I’m not in command over you, precisely,” Kel began.

  Merric raised gingery brows. “Did you forget the day those bandits were set to cut us pages to dog meat? You saved all our lives because you think well in a fix. I know where I’ll look for orders when the enemy comes.”

  Kel smiled crookedly. She just hoped he’d never be disappointed in her. “Very well. How many new people?”

  “A hundred and twelve,” he answered. “Gods be thanked that Numair made all this extra ground for the camp, or we’d be popping through cracks in the walls by now. What’s the news from Mastiff?”

  “Later,” Kel said. “In private.”

  Merric winced. “That can’t be good.”

  “Some is and some isn’t,” she replied. “Speaking of good news, I have some for you.”

  The sergeants of the two new squads of soldiers stood nearby, waiting. Loesia and other youngsters from Kel’s spear class had taken the men and horses in charge and led them to the stables. Yngvar’s men offered to show the fresh arrivals around. Kel beckoned the two new sergeants forward. “Sir Merric of Hollyrose, in charge of our outer defenses, may I present Sergeant Kortus and Sergeant Aufrec? The sergeants and their squads are permanently assigned to Haven, courtesy of my lord Wyldon. We’ve also brought five replacements for the men we lost.”

  Merric’s face lit as the sergeants bowed. “Is that so?” he cried. “Welcome, both of you, welcome indeed! We need all the help we can get. Were you stationed at Fort Mastiff long?”

  “Went in there with Lord Wyldon,” said Kortus, who seemed to be the more talkative of the pair. “Stayed with him at Giantkiller last year. It’s an honor to meet you, milord.”

  “Kel, do you mind if I introduce the sergeants to their counterparts?” Merric asked. “I’m sure they’ll want to settle in.”

  Kel smiled, pleased that the new troops were so welcome to her year-mate. She knew he worried about guarding Haven with only forty men-at-arms, twenty of them convicts whose experience, until recently, was not gained on a battlefield. “Of course. Sergeants, we’ll run into each other often,” she assured them. “In the meantime, I leave you in Sir Merric’s hands.”

  As the three men left, Kel heard Merric say, “Now, I handle the patrols outside the walls, but the lady knight governs all that’s inside, and I take her orders in a fight. Don’t look to this place as a restful one. You’ll see combat here.”

  Kel turned to find Saefas and Fanche behind her. “I heard Master Valestone tried to get elected headman,” she remarked.

  “He seems frustrated, poor fellow,” Saefas replied with his easy smile. Kel had ordered the refugees to stop bowing when they talked to her or they would get worn out quickly. “He wants to be a leader even if he isn’t one.”

  “We should set the young folk to making kites,” added Fanche. “Someone ought to have fun, as much wind as he blows.” She eyed
Kel. “Good to see we’ve more warriors. I believe I’ll keep practicing my weapons, though.”

  Kel grinned. “As will I.”

  Fanche nodded. “If you weren’t a noble, I’d call you a sensible girl. You’ve commoner blood, that’s the only answer.”

  She walked away, hands under her patched apron.

  “Fanche missed you desperately, lady knight,” Saefas assured Kel. “She just hasn’t got the proper words.”

  “You are a flatterer, Master Saefas,” Kel informed him.

  “So she tells me, all the time,” admitted Saefas, his eyes mischievous. “What do you think? Will I win her in the end?”

  Kel looked at him. “She will make your life a misery,” she told the man.

  Saefas grinned. “That’s what I hope for.” He left to see if he could help with the wagons.

  Kel looked around at the smoke, the dirty children underfoot, the ground churned by horses’ hooves, the raw buildings, and the chickens that pecked everywhere. Home again, she thought, and walked to headquarters.

  With Numair gone, Kel went back to eating in the camp’s mess hall. That first night she sat among the newcomers, who had not yet worked out cooking arrangements in their new home. They watched Kel from the corners of their eyes as she worked her way through roast boar with mushroom gravy, noodles, and wild greens. From the other tables, Kel heard snatches of whispered talk.

  “—have replaced her with a real knight . . .”

  “Saefas says she’s a good head on her.”

  “Saefas? You take his judgment? Mithros’s beard, look at what he’s courting!”

  “—how many more are going to be sent here?”

  “I’m off. Training first thing tomorrow. Sergeant Oluf says I’ve a knack for the spear.”

  Kel glanced at this speaker. It was a woman from Riversedge, so tiny she didn’t look as if she could even hold a spear up. Just shows you can’t judge us females by size, she thought with a smile.

  Kel had planned to return to headquarters after supper. There was news to tell Merric and her sergeants, news she didn’t want spread all over camp. Still, there were the newcomers who hadn’t eaten in the mess hall to consider. They ought to see her so they’d know who to complain to. She trudged toward their barracks, listening to the sounds of a peaceful summer evening: someone playing a recorder, the clatter of pans, girls skipping rope. Jump and the pack of camp dogs trotted around her; the sparrows had gone to bed.