Lady Knight

by Tamora Pierce

  “You didn’t—” Neal and Wyldon said at the same time. Both looked horrified at having the same thought as the other.

  “I know,” Kel said. She went to gather the squads she would need, Connac’s and two of Captain Tollet’s.

  “Mindelan,” Wyldon called.

  Kel turned to see what further orders he had.

  “Round up any animals—cows, sheep, pigs, and so on,” he told her. “We’re not so oversupplied we can leave them for anyone to take.”

  Kel had been thinking the same thing. “Yes, my lord,” she said.

  She was positive they would find people in the woods around Haven. The refugees knew the area as well as she did. Given warning, they could have fled. She led the troopers on a search, using the spiral pattern they followed on Haven’s patrols. They were a mile out, having found signs of people only where the enemy had lured Merric away from Haven, when they heard horn calls demanding their immediate return.

  Wyldon, Captain Tollet, and five mounted squads were riding down the road from the gate as Kel and her soldiers arrived with the livestock they had found in their search. Tollet and his men crossed the bridge as Wyldon stopped to talk with Kel. “Courier rode in from Company Eight,” he said tersely. “Scanrans left a trap on the Giantkiller road—four killing devices. Our mages are holding them, but they need help. Get those animals inside your walls and put men to grave-digging, but close by, understand?” Kel nodded. Wyldon ordered, “Wait here until I send word, Mindelan.” He galloped on to catch up with Tollet’s force.

  “Get them in,” Kel ordered her sergeants. “Try to pen them somehow. I’ll be along in a moment.”

  The soldiers obeyed, urging the cows, pigs, sheep, and goats they’d found up the road, helped by the camp dogs. Kel stared at the troops headed to the rescue of Company Eight, her thoughts bitter. The army had mages who could actually hold the killing devices—not kill them, perhaps, but hold them. Stop them from advancing. Company Eight had mages to hold four killing devices at once. Haven was forced to rely on metal-and-hemp nets, pickaxes, and local hedgewitches who struggled with unfamiliar spells. Haven’s mages struggled and their efforts left only blackened outlines of killing devices next to their own mangled bodies, while one company held four of the things.

  Kel’s hands shook, her rage was so intense. Companies. That was another thing. Wyldon had companies at his disposal. So did Raoul and General Vanget. Haven had been granted six squads, four if she was at Mastiff to report to Wyldon and Merric was on patrol. Six squads and over five hundred civilians with scant combat training . . . They had been left out here in harm’s way, and harm had come calling.

  In quiet moments Kel knew the shape of the war, the way Tortallans were forced to protect a lengthy border through forests and on mountains. When they met the enemy in force, they beat him resoundingly, but such battles were few. As head of their defenses, Vanget did his best. The whole realm was in danger, not just a camp of homeless people. Vanget’s first priority was the use of his armies to defend strategic sites. Those armies could only be so many places at once.

  But this was not a quiet moment. Kel didn’t care about the large tapestry, about thousands of miles of border to protect, two cities under siege, the movement of armies, raiding parties, and ships at sea. She hadn’t even been here to defend Haven with her own body. She had been at Mastiff, reporting like a good little clerk and gathering what supplies could be spared by those who did serious fighting.

  Jaws clenched, she rode back to what was left of her command. There she chose ground for the graves, then helped the men find any shovels that had not burned and make new ones. The graves would have to be common. She doubted that Lord Wyldon would stay here long enough for her to dig individual ones. The ground she picked belonged to Haven itself. She marked off four large pits around the flagpole. It stood untouched, its banners flapping. Their sound was a slap to Kel, another reminder that she had failed her people.

  During breaks in digging, she continued to search. Surely someone had escaped and was hidden somewhere, in the heaps of burned furnishings, in a hidey-hole under or behind the buildings. She couldn’t believe all they had was sixty-four dead.

  At mid-afternoon Wyldon sent a messenger to summon Kel and Neal to meet him at the intersection with the Giantkiller road, with instructions to bring Merric and the other wounded. He also wanted four of the squads he’d left with Kel. Neal growled curses at people who thought to ride with half-healed men and showed the soldiers how to rig stretchers that could be hung between two mounts. Merric, Sergeant Yngvar, and two corporals were loaded onto the stretchers and carried down the Haven road. The procession crossed the river and rode to join Wyldon, Tollet, half of Company Six, and what remained of Company Eight.

  “It was a trap,” Wyldon confirmed. “Four of the monsters, no humans. The mages had to melt them completely to stop them. Company Eight got badly chewed up before the spells took hold. Queenscove . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared into the distance.

  Neal waited silently until he realized that Wyldon was thinking of something else. “Excuse me, Lord Wyldon—you had orders for me?”

  Wyldon looked at him with a frown. “I did? Yes, of course. You’re the strongest healer in the district. You must check each man as we ride.”

  He stared at the Giantkiller road to the east, his eyes bleak. Stormwings followed it already, knowing they would find Company Eight’s dead in the hills. “The refugees are gone, long gone,” Wyldon said crisply. “The devices slowed us down long enough for the trail to go cold. I can’t waste more time searching when they’re across the Vassa by now.”

  “But sir,” Kel began, her mouth dry, “we haven’t found but a tenth—”

  “We have other problems, Mindelan,” snapped Wyldon. “Maggur’s got that cursed pattern, remember? Two or three attacks at once. I want us in Mastiff before he strikes, if he hasn’t already. And there are other factors. I can’t explain them right now. Here are your orders: I leave you Sergeants Connac and Hevlor. Bury your dead. Ride to Mastiff at first light. You’ll be reassigned. Bring those farm animals and keep your eyes and ears open. If Mastiff is besieged, report to Lord Raoul at Steadfast. Do not engage the enemy at Mastiff. Understood?”

  “But my lord, if the refugees are still alive—” Kel pleaded.

  Wyldon cut her off, his dark eyes hard. “We have bigger problems to concern us, Mindelan. You have your orders. Bury the dead and get your troops to Mastiff.” He signaled the captains at the head of the column of soldiers. They set out. The squads from Company Six who had followed Kel until now fell in with their comrades.

  She’d thought Neal would protest, given his inability to keep his mouth shut, but one of the wounded from Company Eight started to bleed through his bandages. Neal went to look at him. Merric passed her on his stretcher, hung between two troopers. “Take care. I’ll see you at Mastiff!” he called to Kel.

  Kel and Hoshi stayed at the side of the road. Jump and the camp dogs sat at their feet; the sparrows hopped on the ground, eating grass seed. They’ve given up, her mind whispered over and over. Wyldon has given up.

  You know he’s right, a second part of her insisted. Maggur does like to hit more than one target at a time. You saw that last summer. It’s a good strategy for him. It forces us to split our armies, and it frightens us, not knowing what else he’s up to. And now he’s got armies of his own to do it with, so he can cause greater harm.

  Kel turned Hoshi and rode back along the Giantkiller road. She wanted to see if the raiding party had left any trailsign that had not been destroyed by Company Eight’s passage.

  The sparrow Duck peeped and bounced into the grass. He returned to her with a twist of bright red yarn. Kel’s heart thumped in her chest. It looked like it came from Meech’s rag doll.

  Kel stared at the yarn, bright against her dirty palm, then tied it around her right ring finger. That done, she turned Hoshi and rode back to Haven, with Jump, his crew of dogs, and the s
parrows swirling around her.

  The graves were finished by dark. While the convicts made supper outside Haven’s ruined gate, cooking flatbread and some ducks and chickens, Kel and the other soldiers buried their dead, murmuring prayers as they filled the graves first with the bodies, then with dirt. The Scanran corpses they laid on a pyre on the far side of the river and burned. Kel was the only one to pray for these men, sent by their king to die so far from home.

  Back at Haven, they washed their hands in a cistern, now that there was no need for an emergency supply of water, then went to eat. After supper everyone sat around the fire and told stories of the fallen. Their best whittlers cut names into the planks that would serve as headstones.

  Kel prowled, unable to sit. She walked through Haven, in and out of buildings. She half expected the missing to crawl out from under the floors and shout “Surprise!” when they saw her. She climbed to the upper walkway, where she listened to the woods peepers and considered plans. Was this the moment the Chamber had spoken of, when her path to Blayce the Gallan became clear? She hoped it was, because she was about to destroy all she had worked for to recapture her people. If she could. She was only one person. She wasn’t god-touched, as Alanna the Lioness was. But she had to try, because she couldn’t live with an obedient return to Mastiff, leaving her people to the Scanrans. She had promised to keep them safe. She had failed at that, but she must not fail to bring them home.

  It was fairly simple, put in those terms. There were a few complications. Connac and Hevlor, their men, and the convicts who had ridden with Merric that day: they had to reach Mastiff and safety, or at least as much safety as any part of the north offered this summer. Jump and his friends would follow her, but she must talk to the sparrows and see if some of them would act as lookouts for Connac and Hevlor to make sure they weren’t ambushed. And she would have to time her departure very carefully. She couldn’t leave tonight. Hoshi wouldn’t fit in the hidden tunnel, and Kel needed a horse. More than anything she wished she had Peachblossom, but she would have to manage without him. She also didn’t want to keep these soldiers here, searching for her, when they should be safe at Mastiff. She would have to give them the slip on the road. That meant she would lose more precious time riding back to pick up the trail on the Giantkiller road.

  You’re going to take them all by yourself, are you? jeered part of herself. Just you, your glaive, and some ragtag dogs and birds.

  I’ll think of something when I see what I’m up against, she told that part firmly. I can’t plan with no information. Once I know more about their numbers and how far we must go to reach safety, then I’ll worry about how to do it.

  And Tobe. She would break her promise to him. She would disappear.

  All she could do was pray he would understand. Surely he’d know that she had to try to recapture his friends, to keep them from Blayce.

  So many things could go wrong. If she were caught by Tortallan patrols, she’d be sent to Corus in chains and put on trial for treason. If she were caught by Scanran patrols or war parties, she’d be cut to pieces. She would have to go quickly and silently. She had to pray that her reckoning with Blayce wouldn’t be scuttled by an overeager trooper or a killing device.

  At Fort Mastiff the next afternoon, Sergeant Connac finished his report and waited. Sweat rolled down his face. Sergeant Hevlor, at his side, was sweating, too. Both men, hardened veterans who feared very little, dared not move.

  “Surely I misheard,” Wyldon said quietly, his voice as crisp as a late frost. “I could have sworn you just informed me that Lady Keladry of Mindelan is not with you.”

  “She said she heard sommat in th’ woods, milord,” Connac replied, staring over Wyldon’s head. “She told us she’d check it out and catch up down the road. On’y down the road never came, no more than she did.”

  Wyldon rested his head in his hands and called himself seven kinds of idiot. He knew her better than anyone but Raoul of Goldenlake. If he hadn’t been preoccupied . . . Mithros curse him, it had been right under his nose. He knew the chit, knew that once she’d taken up those refugees, she’d guard them with her last breath.

  The office door slammed open, admitting the guest who had come while he had been at Haven. “Please say what the Haven convicts just told me isn’t true.” Lord Raoul’s voice was a rumble in his chest. “Please tell me Kel did not go haring off on her own.”

  “I can’t tell you that, Goldenlake, because she cursed well did,” snapped Wyldon, upset enough to break the leash on his own contained temper. “Eighteen combat veterans can’t keep their eye on one green knight—”

  “She ordered us on, milord,” protested Hevlor. “We can’t disobey an order from a noble, and she didn’t look at all odd. . . .”

  Wyldon’s cold stare silenced him.

  Raoul crossed his arms over his chest. “Would you men excuse us.” Despite the phrasing, it was not a request. The sergeants fled, pulling the door shut after them. Once they were gone, Raoul spoke again, his voice ominously soft. “I thought you knew her. Did you believe she would let them take her people? And yet you left her, just told her to bury the dead and report here. . . . I’d’ve wrapped her in chains and brought her back over her horse. This is the girl who risked having to repeat all four years as a page to find her maid.”

  “Gods all bless, Goldenlake, you think I don’t know I made a mistake?” Wyldon asked. He sat back with a sigh. “I wasn’t thinking. I had a dozen things on my mind. You would have, too, in that spot. Mithros! All those killing devices just thrown away for a refugee camp? I was sure it had to be a diversion.”

  “If it was, then our information about next week’s attack here is wrong,” Raoul informed Wyldon. “No, Haven was another matter entirely. Five hundred–odd slaves will fuel a lot of iron monsters, don’t you think?”

  “I know I erred,” Wyldon said through numb lips. “You’re not saying anything I don’t know.”

  Raoul shook his head. “If she dies, Mithros forgive you. I never will,” he informed the other man. He walked out of Wyldon’s office.

  Instead of returning to his room, Raoul wandered the grounds of Fort Mastiff. He was looking for the two squads who had come with him as guards. They were sparring in the practice grounds between Mastiff’s first and second walls.

  Subtly Raoul hand-signaled Dom to gather his squad and meet him at the stable where their mounts were kept. As Raoul trudged uphill through the gate in Mastiff’s inner wall, he saw Dom stop by each of his men briefly. Raoul took a moment to talk to Mastiff’s watch commander. Afterward he returned briefly to his quarters, then ambled down to the stables, pausing now and then to chat. Dom and a few of his men casually drifted to the same destination.

  By the time Raoul reached the stable where the Own’s mounts were housed, all of Dom’s squad was there. The men climbed to the loft, where they could talk in privacy. The stable was deserted, but Raoul took no chances.

  “I have a mission for you lot, if you’ll take it, but it’s risky. Volunteers only. If anyone wants out when I’m done talking, I’ll understand,” he told them softly.

  The men exchanged puzzled looks. Since when did the Knight Commander of the King’s Own give anyone a choice in duties?

  “This isn’t a fight or a patrol,” Raoul continued. “It’s behind the enemy’s lines, I’ve no doubt—way behind.”

  “We’re following Kel?” asked Dom eagerly.

  The men looked from him to Raoul. “What’s this about milady?” asked Fulcher, one of the corporals. “We’ve heard nothing.”

  Raoul looked at Dom, who shrugged. “I had to use the latrine,” he explained. “I overheard Connac and Hevlor in there.”

  “As long as I’ve been soldiering, you’d think I’d know how fast word gets around,” Raoul commented ruefully. “Tell them.”

  “The rest of the Haven burial detail got here safe,” Dom told the men. “They managed to lose Kel, though.” He looked at Raoul. “She went after her refugees, d
idn’t she?”

  Raoul nodded. “Alone. I need volunteers—” Every man’s hand went up. Raoul smiled grimly. “Very well. Quartermaster’s people will leave packs with supplies here shortly. The story is, I’m sending you to Northwatch with urgent messages for Vanget. Here’s a purse for bribes and road expenses.” He plunked a leather pouch of coins on the floor between him and the men. “Saddle up, get your gear, prepare for hard riding and combat. I doubt she’s reached the border yet if she’s following the refugees’ trail. I just spoke to a couple of the men who rode with her till she went off on her own. The refugees were taken along the Giantkiller road. She’ll follow that.” Raoul reached into his tunic and pulled out the maps he’d retrieved from his quarters. Placing them on the loft’s floor, he traced Kel’s probable route with a broad finger, showing the men where they might intercept her. “Or, if she’s moving faster than I think she can, just follow the refugees,” he said at last, passing the maps to Dom. “From what I heard, the Scanrans aren’t trying to hide—speed’s what they want.”

  “The wagons’ll slow them down some,” remarked Corporal Wolset. “And I doubt those civilians will go quietly. They’re tough, and she’s been teaching them to fight. We’ll catch them.”

  “But probably not this side of the border,” Raoul pointed out. “You’ll be in enemy country. Once you find her, take your orders from Kel and stay with her. Questions?” Dom’s men, combat and tracking veterans, shook their heads. Raoul nodded. “Then don’t waste daylight. Try to come back with her, and yourselves, in one piece. You know I hate training new men.” He stood with a grimace as his knees protested. “Mithros bless you all. Go.”

  “But that’s treason,” Merric protested, sitting up in his bed. Neal, Owen, and two of Kel’s other year-mates, Seaver of Tasride and Esmond of Nicoline, had come to his room in Mastiff’s infirmary to relay the news about Kel. “Deserting in the face of the enemy, that’s what they’ll call it. She’ll have destroyed her life, just for commoners.”