There were only two horses in the stable tonight, and both were asleep. One of the stableboys dozed beside the door, but leapt to his feet when she passed him. She patted his shoulder, suppressing a tired smile. “Good lad,” she said calmly and with reassurance, as she would to a dog. “Just checking on things.” He stared at her with wide, half-frightened eyes, and she felt the sting of rejection. She turned away without saying anything more. She knew there were several other animals in the paddock with Hellsbane, but she seldom bothered to check them; the mare herself was more than enough guard. She stopped by the fence, suddenly lonely for any kind of a friendly face, even a horse’s. But Hellsbane was asleep, and Kero decided on reflection not to wake her. What would be the use, after all? The warsteed was only a horse, not an intelligent creature like a Companion. Hellsbane couldn’t talk to her, and probably wouldn’t even know how unhappy her mistress was.
She turned her back on the paddock and began the long walk back to the inn.
Just as she passed the stable, something jumped out of the shadows of the stable door. Her reactions, numbed by weariness and inadequate food, were not what they had been. Before she could turn to meet her attacker, he was on top of her, and hit her in the back with a scab-barded blade.
She saw stars of pain and went down, breath driven out of her. The unknown grabbed her arm before she had a chance to recover, and hauled her to her feet.
She tried to make her arms and legs move, but they wouldn’t obey her. She was hauled around to face her attacker, and he seized a handful of her tunic and pulled her nose-to-nose with him. His ale-sour breath made her cough; and even in the dim light she had no trouble recognizing him or his uniform. It was the guardsman; still drunk, and obviously ale-crazed.
“Thought ye’d slip out on me, she-man?” he snarled. “Couldn’ face a real man? ‘M minded t’ gi’ ye a lesson i’ th’ way a wench should mind ‘erself.”
A hand as massive as the business end of a club holding a sword hilt connected with the side of her face so hard her teeth rattled. That was a mistake, for the blow managed to knock her out of the stunned daze she had been in. She brought up her knee—not into his crotch, which he was expecting, but in order to stamp down hard on his instep.
She was wearing riding boots with a hard heel—they were the only foot-covering she had; he was wearing soft town-shoes. Something cracked under her heel. He screeched, and let go of her.
But only for a moment. He’d taken in so much ale—or possibly other things—that the pain was only temporary. While she was still trying to get her breath and to clear her eyes of the tears of pain, he swung out and bashed her in the side of the head with his still-sheathed blade.
She cried out, and grabbed automatically for the hilt of her own sword as she went down to one knee—
And Need took over.
Even while her mind was still reeling, her body jumped to its feet, unsheathed blade in hands, driving straight for the guardsman. He parried clumsily with his weapon; Need came in over the top of his blade and only by slipping and falling on an ice patch did he escape a heart-thrust. He scrambled back up to his feet (if anything, more enraged than before), while Kero slipped on another bit of ice. The blade’s control faltered for a moment; still half-stunned, she tried to get control of her own body back, as Need reasserted control and forced her to attack again and again while the guardsman scrambled backward. After the second attack, he seemed to have gotten the idea that he was in imminent danger of being killed; now he was only trying to get away from her.
Finally, the guardsman fetched up against the wall of the stable. There were lights and shouts behind Kero now, but she paid no attention to them; she was far too busy trying to get the upper hand before the blade killed the man.
Need caught the man’s blade in a bind and disarmed him. Kero thought for a moment that the sword would release her then, but it held her as tightly as ever. Evidently the man’s crimes against women were such that the blade had no intention of letting him get away. The guardsman’s eyes were wide with fear, reflecting the torchlight behind her, and he flung up both his hands in a futile attempt to ward her off, as Need drove toward his throat.
And at the last moment. Kero got just enough control back to reverse the blade and punch the man in the chin with the pommel.
As he slumped to the ground, and the blade’s control over her vanished, hands seized her from behind.
Kero lay on her stomach on the hard wooden shelf that served as a bed in her damp, unheated cell. It hurt too much to lie on either her back or her side. She hadn’t been treated badly; they’d brought her food and water, earlier, but stabbing pains ran down both legs every time she tried to move, so she ignored both. Her back hurt so much she was afraid that the guardsman might have broken something.
Not that it mattered. Drawing steel on a city guardsman was an offense punishable by a flogging and exile from the city, stripped of all possessions. Which, in her circumstances, was tantamount to a sentence of death. Right now she couldn’t have moved to save herself even with Need in her hand and in full control.
They’d taken the sword away from her, of course, which meant she was without its Healing and pain-blocking powers again. She’d collapsed in agony the moment it had left her hand, but it wasn’t likely anyone had made the connection. Probably they’d assumed she’d been in the same kind of berserk rage as the guardsman. Certainly they wouldn’t have left it with her even if they had known she was injured.
She didn’t expect anyone to speak for her. Most city guardsmen had one or more influential friends. Rudi wouldn’t dare go against anyone who could close down his inn. The Guild had already told her not to expect help if she caused trouble.
And even if he dares to speak for me, he’ll have to fire me. Which will put me right back in the same situation, only inside the city gates. In fact, it probably would take less time for someone to find me and kill me. I don’t think even Need can fix this back in a few moments.
Worst of all, she was more alone than she’d ever been in her life. There was no one in all this city who would be willing to stand by her or take her in—or even offer a friendly word. Her entire “family” was somewhere in the south—assuming that even they still felt kindly toward her, which might be assuming a lot after what she’d done.
At least if they convict me, anyone who tries to take Hellsbane is going to see a lot of hoof, she thought, between the stabs of pain from her back. I hope it’s that bastard who tried to beat me. Serve him right to get his brains bashed in by a mare.
She knew she should be trying to think of a way out of her trap, but she couldn’t muster the energy to think at all, much less to plan a defense. All she could do was try and lie as quietly as possible, and endure the pain of her back and bruised and swollen face.
Slow, hot tears trickled down and pooled under her cheek, as she listened to heavy footsteps passing outside the door of her cell. It sounded like a regular patrol. She had no idea how long she’d been in here, and the win-dowless cell gave no clues either. The fellow with the food and water had come in once—which might mean a day, or only a few hours. The sound of those boots on the stone only made her more acutely aware of her own isolation.
Faced away from the door as she was, her only warning that some of those footsteps were for her was the rattle of the key in her lock. She tensed herself against seizure, and gasped as her back sent rivers of fire down her legs. For a moment she couldn’t think of anything but the pain.
“Guildsman Kerowyn?” said a strange, masculine voice. “Please don’t move.”
Please don’t move? She had expected to be hauled summarily to her feet; the request came as such a surprise that she probably couldn’t have moved if she’d wanted to.
A gentle hand touched her back—awaking agony beside which the previous several hours had simply held common aches. She yelped once, and passed out.
When she came to again, most of the pain was gone, subsided to a dull, bu
t bearable, level. Whoever had touched her back was gone, but she sensed that there was still someone in the cell with her, by the little sounds she heard beside the door. She levered herself up and turned toward the sounds. Another city guardsman stood there, a real giant of a man, a good two heads taller than anyone Kero had ever seen before. Kero gawked up at him, a tiny, idle part of her mind wondering how on earth he ever found uniforms to fit him.
“Guildsman Kerowyn,” the man said, in a surprisingly soft voice, “Several witnesses have come forward to testify that Guardsman Dane provoked you and you took no action in the inn. The stableboy has come forward to testify that the Guardsman struck the first blow. Your Guild has said that you are a sober and reliable professional with no history of troublemaking. Based on all these testimonies, it has been determined that you acted only in your own defense, although we strongly recommend that in the future you choose a weapon other than an unsheathed blade within the city walls.”
She blinked at him, feeling more than usually stupid.
“Because he provoked the fight,” the guardsman continued, “Guardsman Dane has been fined and the proceeds used to pay for a Healer’s services, which you just received.” The giant paused and seemed to be waiting for her to say something, and finally she managed to get her mind and mouth working enough to string a couple of words together.
“So that means what?” she asked.
“Your injuries have been treated. You’re being released,” he explained patiently, and stood aside.
The door behind him was wide open, and she rose shakily to her feet, to stumble out of it.
The guardsman took her arm to help her—she had no doubt that if he wanted to, he could have picked her up like a loaf of bread and carried her off, but he limited his aid to only what was necessary. They stopped at the room at the end of the long, stone corridor, and he took her weapons from the guard stationed inside and gave them to her with his own hands. As she buckled Need back on, she felt a hundred times better. The remaining pain vanished. That Healer had been good—but Need was better.
She was still numb with surprise, though, as the guardsman led her up the stairs to the wooden building above the jail cells and opened the door, for her to walk out. Rudi spoke for me—and the stableboy—and the Guild? Is this more of Need’s magic, or is it something I’ve done? And if it’s me, what on earth did I do to make them speak for me?
But that surprise was nothing to the one waiting for her outside the prison gates.
There was a crowd waiting there; a crowd wearing the silver and gray tabards she used to sport, with a device of crossed lighting-bolts on the sleeve. A crowd that cheered the moment she came stumbling out into the sunlight, squinting against the sudden glare.
“What?” she stuttered. “Wh-what?”
Someone took her arm; she turned at a flash of familiar golden hair. Shallan stood right at her elbow, grinning like a fool.
“You sure do get yourself in messes, don’t you, Captain?” she said.
Several hours later, she finally had a glimmer of the story, but only after putting together all the bits and pieces of it that had been flung at her during the long ride back to the Skybolts’ winter quarters.
And it took a good meal, a sleep from dawn to dawn, and another good meal before she was ready to try to make sense of it all.
She called a half-dozen of her old friends together in the outer room of the Captain’s quarters. That, she still had trouble with. She didn’t feel like a Captain. And no matter how often someone called her that, she kept looking over her shoulder to see who they were talking to.
She ordered hot tea all around from the orderly, feeling very uneasy about doing so, even though the one-armed twenty-year veteran who had served Lerryn seemed equally content to serve her. “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” she said, as the others nursed their mugs in hands that looked fully as thin as hers. “When I walked, you lot kept Ardana from sending her hounds after me. Then you called a vote?”
“It’s an old law, part of the oldest part of the Code that goes right back to the Oathbreaking ceremony,” Tre said solemnly. “Nobody uses it much, but nobody’s ever revoked it. What it ‘mounts to, is any Company that’s lost more’n half its officers an’ a third of the rest can call the Captaincy to vote from the ranks. Me an’ Shallan, we’d been talkin’ ‘bout that since you’d got hurt. Lot of the rest was thinkin’ it was a good notion, but nobody wanted t’ start it.” He took a sip of his tea, and smiled ruefully. “Not even me.”
“But when you walked like that, an’ Ardana was gonna haul you back in chains for takin’ your rights, well, it made everybody mad.” Shallan ran her hands through her short hair, and scratched at a new scar. “So since we knew everybody’d been told about vote-right, we started hollerin’ for it. Next thing you know, Ardana’s out. Out of Captain, and out of the Company.”
Tre took up the thread again. “So we needed a Captain, and the only person ev’body could agree on was you.”
“Blessed Agnira.” She covered her face with both hands. “This isn’t something I’m ready for—”
But who is? asked a little voice in the back of her mind.
The Guild representative that had come with them spoke for the first time. “Neither Tre nor Kynan are trained in tactics, logistics, and supply the way you are, Kerowyn. Their expertise stops at groups larger than a squad. And neither of them care for mages.”
Which is a definite liability, she though, reluctantly. One thing this Company needs badly is a couple of competent hedge-wizards.
“How do you know I’ll be any better?” she asked, dropping her hands.”
“You can’t be worse,” Shallan replied emphatically.
“You’ve seen for yourself how vulnerable a Company is to bad leadership,” the Guildsman said solemnly. “We think that judging by your past performance, you would step down rather than cause the Company harm.”
She stared at his impassive face; he was cut of the same cloth as the Arbitrators, if a great deal younger. You know I would, she thought at him, as if he could hear her. These are my friends, my family. It would be hell on earth to spend the rest of my life leading them into situations where some of them are going to get killed....
... but it would be worse watching someone well-meaning but incompetent or untrained double those deaths. And worse to ride off on my own, knowing it was going to happen.
I haven’t a choice. They’re my people, and my responsibility.
And in that moment, she suddenly understood Eldan, and the way he felt about his duty and his own people. His “Company” was simply very much larger than hers.
She tightened her jaw, and raised her chin a little. “All right,” she told them all. “You’ve convinced me.”
Shallan let out a whoop, and the others started to congratulate her, but she held up a hand to forestall them. “Let’s first find out if we actually have a Company left.”
She turned to the Company accountant and quartermaster. “Scratcher, how bad is it?”
The man she queried did not much resemble a scholar; he was as lean and hard as any of the rest of the Skybolts, but there was a shrewd mind behind those enigmatic eyes. He chewed the end of his pen, studied the open book before him, and muttered to himself a little. Finally he looked up.
“With all the losses we took in people and supplies, Captain, we’re going to exhaust the bank just replacing them. We aren’t going to have enough to take us out again in the spring. We may not have enough to last the winter.”
The Guild representative stirred a little, and Kero took the chance to read his thoughts.
We could—should—extend them a loan. But I don’t have the authority—
She ground her teeth silently. Take a loan that would be years in repayment? And what if we have a bad year, or a bad run of years. What, then? She shifted her weight, and a crackle of parchment in her belt pouch made her frown.
What in—
Then she re
membered. Eldan’s ransom. Which she couldn’t get. But the Guild?
She smiled slowly, and pulled it out, leaving the letter within. “Here,” she said, handing it to the Guildsman. “This is from the Herald I pulled out of the fire. I think you can see he’s played fast and loose with the conditions. Think the Guild can do something about that?”
The flat-faced mercenary took the parchment from her, opened it, and his lips pursed in a soundless whistle. “All that for a mere Herald? Are you certain he wasn’t a prince?”
She shrugged. “All I care about is that right now that little piece of paper can make us if we can redeem it.”
The Guildsman scrutinized the writing carefully, then suddenly, unexpectedly, smiled. “It specifies that the holder of the note is the one who has to redeem it in person,” he pointed out. “If you signed it over to us, in return for an immediate sum minus—oh—ten percent, our representative would be the holder.”
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