Protector of the Small Quartet

by Tamora Pierce

  “We’re ready to do business,” Dom remarked. “Welcome to the Own, Kel.” He swung himself onto his saddled mount, a dappled gray gelding.

  Lord Raoul rode over. “All set to give Hoshi a try?” he asked. Kel nodded. “Mount up. Normally our remounts go in a string at the rear—the servingmen lead them with the supply train. We’ll make an exception for Peachblossom. You ride a neck length back on my left, and keep him with you. Behave,” he told Peachblossom, speaking directly to the horse. “Or I’ll muzzle you like a dog.”

  Peachblossom shook his head vigorously. Kel hoped that was restlessness, not disagreement. With no time for another word with him, she gave a silent prayer to any listening gods for his good behavior and swung into the saddle. Hoshi stood patiently as she settled in.

  Kel twisted to look into the carrier behind her saddle. “You have to move,” she told the drowsy sparrows huddled there. “Otherwise Jump will squash you.”

  The birds hopped out. Once the carrier was empty, Kel nodded to Jump: he sprang neatly into the leather box. Hoshi flicked two ears back, then swung them forward again. Not even Jump could shake the mare’s calm.

  “Well, I’m impressed,” drawled Raoul, who had watched. “Come along, Squire Keladry. Time to get your feet wet.”

  Following him to the front of the mounted force, Kel took note of the dogs. Thin, fine-boned greyhounds sat on the ground beside three riders. Four other men rode with terriers in carriers like Jump’s. Six wolfhounds stood beside Captain Flyndan, tails wagging. There was no sign of Third Company’s hunting birds—probably they were in carriers, asleep.

  Lord Raoul faced his men. “Doubtless you know as much as I do,” he said, his calm, steady voice carrying over the fidgets of horses and the creak of leather. The men fell silent the moment he began to speak. “Haresfield in the Royal Forest was attacked by a band of centaurs and humans. We’ve got reports of twenty-three dead. Balim’s squad is there now. Chances are the raiders cleared the district, but they could be stupid enough to stay around. Keep your eyes open.”

  He wheeled to face the gates, raised a kid-gloved hand, and brought it down, nudging his big bay mare into a trot. A brunet young man with a snub nose rode on his right, carrying the flag that announced they were Third Company of the King’s Own. Captain Flyndan rode on the standard-bearer’s right. Obeying her instructions, Kel followed Lord Raoul on his left. Behind her she heard the thunder of hooves as the riders took places in a long double column.

  Kel felt a thrill of pride. I could be a general, leading an army to war, she thought, and smiled. She had no particular interest in armies, but it was fun to imagine herself a hero from a ballad at the head of a mighty legion.

  Except that ballads never mentioned horses like Peachblossom, or one-eared, ugly dogs like the one who sat behind her. Nor did they mention sparrows perched in a neat row on a horse’s mane. Used to these passengers, Peachblossom ignored them. Crown had claimed her place on Kel’s shoulder.

  Once they rode through the Least Gate and across a bridge into the greater world, Kel looked back. The company made an impressive display; two columns of fifty men, each in the white, blue, and silver of full members of the Own, followed by ten men in blue and white. These were the servingmen, who led the remounts and supply train. In the predawn light she could see that five of the Own rode with hunting birds on their shoulders.

  “You mind those hawks,” she told Crown. “You’re safe while they’re hooded or caged, but keep out of their sight when they’re hunting. At least we’ll eat well enough.”

  “We do try to eat,” Raoul called back to her. “I go all faint if I don’t get fed regularly. Only think of the disgrace to the King’s Own if I fell from the saddle.”

  “But there was that time in Fanwood,” a voice behind them said.

  “That wedding in Tameran,” added the blond Sergeant Osbern, riding a horse-length behind Kel.

  “Don’t forget when what’s-his-name, with the army, retired,” yelled a third.

  “Silence, insubordinate curs!” cried Raoul. “Do not sully my new squire’s ears with your profane tales!”

  “Even if they’re true?” That was Dom. It seemed Neal wasn’t the only family member versed in irony.

  Suddenly Kel’s view of the next four years changed. She had expected hard work mixed with dread for the Ordeal of Knighthood at the end of it. Never had she guessed that other Tortallan warriors might not be as stiff and formal as Lord Wyldon. Never had she thought that she might have fun.

  Thank you, Goddess, she thought. Thank you, Mithros. I’m going to learn, and enjoy myself while I do!

  They followed the Conté Road southwest into the forest as the sun rose. About the time Kel used to eat breakfast, Raoul held up his arm. Everyone slowed to a walk, Kel a beat behind the others. She had to learn the hand signals. Maybe Qasim would teach her.

  Third Company halted beside a river to rest and water the horses—Haresfield lay farther still inside the forest. Kel dismounted, Hoshi’s and Peachblossom’s reins in her hands. When Raoul climbed down from the saddle, Kel whisked his mare Amberfire’s reins from his grip and led the animals to the river. Caring for a knight-master’s horses was a normal part of a squire’s duties. She glanced back: Raoul grinned and raised his hands in surrender.

  Once all three horses had drunk, Kel turned them. Her path to Raoul was blocked by the snub-nosed standard-bearer. He was an inch taller than Kel, a broad-shouldered eighteen-year-old with level brown eyes and a firm chin. He wore his blond-brown hair cropped short at the sides; his bangs flopped over his forehead.

  “My lord only took you because he felt sorry for you,” he informed Kel icily. “I did his chores before you came. I was good at it.”

  Kel returned his look with Yamani calm, her emotions hidden. This young man’s words stung a little. She knew that Raoul wanted her Yamani experience on the Great Progress. She also knew many would see it as the standard-bearer did. “I’m sorry you feel that way,” she replied. “If you’ll excuse me?” She took a firmer grip on Peachblossom’s reins. The gelding watched the young man with too much interest for her comfort.

  The standard-bearer gripped her arm. “Watch your step, squire,” he informed her. “Just because Wyldon didn’t have the brass to get rid of you doesn’t mean we won’t.”

  Kel flexed her bicep. He stared at her as muscle swelled under his fingers, forcing them open. With a quick jerk Kel freed herself. “Excuse me,” she repeated, and walked off with her charges, keeping Peachblossom away from the standard-bearer.

  Of course he’s resentful, she thought as she joined the column. I’ve taken his place with my lord—or what he sees as his place. There’s nothing I can do about that.

  “You spoke to Lerant of Eldorne.” Qasim appeared at her side to offer Kel a piece of cheese.

  “No, thank you,” she said politely, turning down the food. She added, “He talked, actually. I listened.”

  “He is a good fighter, and devoted to my lord,” Qasim explained, eating the cheese. “He took an arrow for Lord Raoul last year, when we fought bandits in the Tusaine hills. He was unhappy to learn my lord took a squire.” He offered some cheese to Jump, who gobbled it.

  “It’s all right,” Kel said.

  “There is more to it,” the Bazhir told her softly. “He applied for a warrior’s post in the army, the navy, even as a man-at-arms, though his birth entitles him to better. No one would take a son of House Eldorne after his aunt’s high treason. They feared the king’s displeasure. My lord Raoul heard of it, and brought Lerant into the Own.”

  Kel felt a twinge of sympathy. She knew what it was like to be unwanted. Lerant’s jealousy was understandable, even if it wasn’t likeable. “Thank you,” she told Qasim. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “He will come around,” Qasim assured her as the Own mounted up. “His is a good heart, though temper makes him sharp. He regrets it later. You will see.”

  Kel led Amberfire to Lord Raoul, stead
ying his mare as he swung into the saddle. “Thanks, Kel,” he said as he accepted the reins.

  Kel remounted Hoshi. Of course she understood Lerant’s feelings. There was no treason in her family, but hadn’t Lord Raoul rescued her, all the same?

  three

  CENTAURS

  Smoke rose over the wooden stockade that surrounded the town of Haresfield. The wind carried scents of burned, wet wood and cooked meat. Kel knew those odors; she had smelled them often in raided Yamani and Tortallan villages.

  They picketed their horses with those of the squad sent to the town earlier, in a field within view of the walls. The servingmen remained to guard them. Raoul explained to Kel that he didn’t want the Own’s tracks to blot out those left by the bandits. Anyone who entered or left the town had to skirt the broad space of trampled mud and grass before the gate, leaving the ground untouched until the raiders’ signs could be properly read. Third Company entered Haresfield on either side of the gate. Once inside, the men formed their squads. Assigned areas by Captain Flyndan, they dispersed to survey the damage.

  The headman, a priestess of the Goddess, the blacksmith, and Sergeant Balim, whose squad had arrived before dawn, met Raoul in the square. They led Raoul and Flyndan through the town, showing the damage. Kel followed silently.

  Inside its untouched, fifteen-foot stockade wall a third of Haresfield had burned to the ground. Other buildings stood, but fire damage made them unsafe. The blazes had weakened support beams: roofs sagged, upper floors drooped into lower ones. Smoke drifted everywhere, burning Kel’s eyes and filling her nose with the reek of ash and burned flesh. Her stomach had already tried to reject her breakfast twice.

  People labored in the ruins. Bodies were set along the streets, pieces of cloth over their faces. Kel could only glance at those who’d burned; the sight of their swollen black flesh was too much. Worse, in a way, were those who looked as if they only slept: they had suffocated. Some charred animal bodies, mostly dogs and cats, lay with their masters. Every animal of monetary value—horses, cows, goats, poultry—had been stolen.

  Raoul crouched beside a dead man who clutched a long-handled war-axe. He hadn’t died in a fire: five arrows peppered his corpse. Turning him slightly, Raoul showed that the arrows had gone clean through him.

  “That’s a longbow,” Flyndan judged, fleshy face set. “One of those six-foot-long monsters the king wants archers to train on. Just as bad as crossbows for punching through armor.”

  Raoul checked the arrows’ fletching. “Centaur work,” he said. “They like feathers from griffins and other winged immortals. They say the arrow flies truer. Kel, feel this, so you’ll know griffin fletching the next time you see it.”

  As Kel obeyed, touching a feather like ridged silk, Flyndan commented, “Not that they can’t do plenty of damage with human-made weapons. I’ve never seen a centaur miss what he shot at. Or she,” he added. “Festering things are born archers.”

  “This isn’t centaur,” Raoul said, rising to yank a crossbow quarrel from a shutter. He showed it to the locals, Flyndan, and Kel. “A human shot this. Centaurs are snobs—they hate crossbows.”

  “I don’t understand,” the headman complained. He was an innkeeper, a short man with a barrel chest and straggly beard. “We’re on good terms with Graystreak and his herd—they wouldn’t attack us.”

  “They had help,” said the priestess.

  “You don’t know for certain,” the blacksmith snapped.

  “I know the evidence of my eyes,” retorted the priestess, crossing her arms over her chest. “Your nephew Macorm and his friend Gavan had gate duty last night. There’s no trace of them, and the gate wasn’t forced. It was wide open.”

  “Macorm’s a good boy,” argued the blacksmith. “Wild, a bit—”

  The priestess interrupted. “You always defend him!”

  “I know he’s family,” said the headman, “but it looks bad—”

  Raoul cleared his throat. The villagers looked at him. “Arguing without facts is pointless,” he said, kind but firm. “Flyn, have Volorin’s squad bring this Graystreak in. If it wasn’t his herd, he may know whose it is. Send a squad to the palace for aid: healers, clothes, food, and so on. And I want someone to go to the Riders.”

  Flyndan opened his mouth.

  “No jealousies, Flyn,” Raoul told him. “We can use one—no, two, Rider Groups here. Get the rest of the boys to help these people recover what they can.”

  “Two squads to start digging?” Flyndan inquired.

  Raoul looked down the main village street. Bodies lined it on either side, more than the twenty-three reported earlier. “Two’s fine,” Raoul said, his face bleak.

  As Flyndan, Balim, the smith, and the priestess went about their business, Raoul continued to view the damage with Kel. The headman left to oversee the inn’s kitchen so those who worked in the ruins might be fed.

  When Raoul and Kel had seen the entire village, they returned to the gate. “Well, squire?” Raoul asked. “What do you make of this?” He indicated the ground at the stockade gate.

  Kel looked at the churned mud. “I’d guess twenty-five, maybe thirty centaurs,” she replied, not sure if she had read the signs correctly. Lindhall Reed, one of her teachers in immortal studies, had shown the pages centaur hoofmarks in plaster so the pages would recognize their tracks. “Twenty or so humans. The humans left their horses outside the gates—there’s marks of horseshoes and picket stakes beside the wall. Centaurs aren’t shod.”

  “Very good,” Raoul said. “I wasn’t sure you’d seen that. Go on.”

  “I agree with the priestess. The gate was opened.” She motioned to the gate. “It’s whole, the hinges are solid, there’s no blood or anyone dead. Even if the guards were fooled into opening up, there’d be signs of a fight. And they’d have shouted. We were told everyone was abed when the raiders got into the houses.” Something in the mud caught her eye: a doll, half-buried in muck. She picked it up and began to clean it with a handkerchief. “Setting fires after they stole, that’s mischief, or settling old scores,” she remarked. Her hands trembled with rage. The waste and cowardice—robbing their own people in the middle of the night!—had to be punished. “They took every animal they could sell. People are saying they cleaned out the valuables before they set their fires. And if folk here recognized the humans with the centaurs, they’re keeping quiet.”

  “They’d have to, wouldn’t they?” Raoul asked. “Villages like this, cut off from most of the world, everyone’s related. A raider could be an uncle, a cousin, a brother.”

  Kel nodded, cleaning the doll as people reported to Raoul and the squad bound for the palace left. This was the lowest kind of betrayal, for kinsmen to steal what little people had. She could not understand those who liked romantic songs of highwaymen and pirates. Anyone who took poor people’s life savings was not worth a song.

  The centaurs were just as bad. They’d been given homes after they had sworn to heed the realm’s laws. Now they were robbing those who had taken them in.

  She waited until Raoul had finished talking with his squad leaders before she asked, “My lord?”

  Raoul looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

  “They won’t stay local, will they?” she asked. The doll was as clean as she could get it. Kel thrust it into her belt. “They took all they could move. They’re on the run, looking for a place to hole up or another village to rob.”

  “Absolutely,” her knight-master replied. “We’ve got serious work ahead. Don’t worry, though. With help, we’ll bring these muck suckers to bay.”

  The local centaurs arrived. Kel watched the introductions, happy not to deal with these creatures, particularly the centaur chief, Graystreak. His black-and-gray hair was twined and oiled into ringlets, a style she disliked. Graystreak wore a dirty wrap-around shirt with a tangle of ribbons, beads, and chains around his neck, wrists, and pasterns, and braided in his tail. Only the belt at his waist was unornamented by anything but we
apons. His human parts were those of a fair-skinned man in his fifties; his horse parts were blue roan.

  Suddenly the chief broke off greeting Lord Raoul to approach Kel. He walked around her as if she were a filly for his inspection, ignoring Jump’s low growl. On his second circuit the centaur was smiling. “A female. A strong one, not a pitiful two-legger stick girl,” he commented. “You will breed easily, perhaps even bear sons of my kind.” His voice slid over Kel like oil.

  She swallowed hard. Keeping her face Yamani-blank, she imagined Graystreak put to dray horse work in the northern mines.

  The sparrows leaped from their perch in a nearby tree to dart shrieking at the centaur. Graystreak backed up, trying to shield his face. Jump advanced on him, hackles up, snarling.

  “Jump, enough,” ordered Raoul, coming over.

  The dog shook his head.

  “I need to talk to him. You aren’t helping,” the knight told the dog.

  Jump sighed. He walked away, frequently glancing over his shoulder as if to say, “I have to let him go?”

  “This is unnatural,” Graystreak snapped, still warding off sparrows. No matter how quickly he swatted, he never touched them. “Take these things away!”

  “It’s rude to single out the squire and ignore the knight,” Raoul said politely. “I didn’t give you permission to address her. Kel, call off the birds.”

  Without a word from Kel the birds flew to her. Crown and Freckle perched on her shoulders. The rest lined up on a branch.

  Graystreak looked at Raoul. “I will give three slaves for her,” he announced. “Two more if she breeds successfully within a year.”

  Kel stiffened. Slaves? There were no slaves in Tortall!

  Raoul thrust his hands into his pockets, still the picture of goodwill. “You forget our customs, Chief Graystreak. Offer all the horses you like, human females are not for sale. And you can’t have heard—I said she is a squire. A knight-in-training. She’s busy. Now, explain to me how you are not at fault for this.” He jerked his head toward the ruins of the village.