Lady Knight

by Tamora Pierce

  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 w
ay 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.