08 Blood War-Blood Destiny

by Suttle, Connie

  "The Pelipu's troops will be arriving by sea this afternoon, and will march from the port to meet us tomorrow. I expect trouble when they arrive. Some are mercenaries, although they wear the uniform of the Temple. Don't ever let that fool you, Liss."

  "Don't you worry, sir." I was back to walking slightly behind him, down a trampled grass trail between tents. We were into the tents for the Regulars, and eight Regulars slept in a single tent slightly larger than Captain Solis'. We passed the Regular mess tents on the way to the sparring grounds.

  "The officers' mess is on the other side of the officers' tents," Solis said, as sounds of metal blades clanging and wooden blades clacking against each other grew louder. "You'll either be eating with me there, as my bodyguard, or bringing both our meals back to the tent if I have work to do while I'm eating," Solis said. I nodded mutely.

  His eyes, just like mine, were now on the practice ground and the sparring that was taking place there. Some of the men barely knew how to hold a blade, and if they did, they held it badly. Dragon and Crane would have scowled before wading into that mess and yelling at all of them. Dragon always said if you didn't have enough strength to hold a sword with one hand, then you'd best use two hands and be faster than your opponent. These guys would have washed out of the Warlord's army, I think.

  "I hope the enemy either gives up or dies laughing," Solis muttered sarcastically as we watched. Desmun caught up with us as we stood and watched.

  "Pitiful," he grumbled. "Are they taking civilians off the street?"

  "I believe so," Solis replied.

  Desmun stared at the hilts over my shoulder. "Steal those blades?" he asked.

  "They were a gift," I said. "Sir."

  "Of course they were." Desmun turned back to the sparring. One particularly clumsy young man dropped his wooden practice blade and got thumped when he stooped to retrieve it. A Sergeant, standing nearby and watching, yelled at him, causing the boy to flush to the roots of his light-brown hair. If he'd done that in a real battle, his head would have been missing when he straightened up. I didn't understand what had motivated him to join the army to begin with, without benefit of any training.

  "Lack of money," Solis commented, as if he were reading my mind. I'd been shaking my head; I realized it after a moment. Desmun turned to watch the clouds gathering behind us.

  "Messy night, tonight, and messier day tomorrow," he complained. Great. Rain was coming. "I hear those Green bastards can make it rain anytime they want," Desmun went on.

  "Sounds like you're jealous," Solis replied indifferently. "I hear the locals who've joined the Green Fae once practiced a different version of the same religion the Pelipu practices," he added. "They rejected it in favor of living a peaceful existence."

  "I wouldn't repeat that rumor near the Pelipu's troops," Desmun snorted. "They think religious deserters ought to be boiled in oil."

  "What do you think, Liss?" Solis asked, his dark eyes studying my face.

  "I'm still trying to find something worthwhile in this whole, sorry mess," I answered truthfully. If Toff weren't somewhere on this planet, I wouldn't have bothered.

  "Mind if I see what your bodyguard is made of?" Desmun asked.

  "You want an excuse to take your shirt off?" Solis wasn't looking at Desmun.

  "I won't whack her around too much," Desmun replied.

  "Use wood blades," Solis didn't sound as if he cared. Desmun took off to find some wooden practice blades. I started to follow him. "Liss," Solis said softly, catching me by the shoulder, "If you don't know what you're doing, now's the time to say. If you do, don't let him hurt you. If you're better than he is, best not to let him know. Not right away, anyway. He'll warm up to you after a while." Solis jerked his head toward the practice ground, where Desmun had claimed two wood practice blades.

  "Fuck," I muttered, causing Solis to snicker.

  Desmun only fought with one blade, and only handed me one. I let him whack me lightly after about a minute, and then let him whack me again a couple of minutes later. In between, I settled for blocking his blows with the flat of my blade, just as I'd been trained. Honestly, one of my twins could have knocked him senseless wearing a blindfold and armed only with a knife. I let him get one last blow in—he was satisfied with that—and I walked away, rubbing my wrist. That's where Desmun's last blow had landed. Desmun challenged a Sergeant afterward. I had no desire to stay and watch. Solis was ready to go, too.

  "Someday," he said, as we walked toward his tent, "I want to see you fight with both those blades."

  Chapter 4

  It was late spring in Farus, and the thunderstorm that came through drenched everything in addition to making the footpath between tents look like a river as night fell. I was grateful the tents had some sort of waterproofing in the cloth; otherwise, we'd have been dripped on all night. I took the small shovel that Solis handed me and dug a trench around the tent, with a channel on each corner to divert the rainwater into the pathways in front of and behind the tent.

  The footpaths were the lowest ground we had around us, which meant everybody walked through water up to their ankles to get anywhere in camp. We walked in the rain to get to dinner and walked in the rain back from dinner. I helped hang up Solis' clothing after he undressed, in a useless attempt to dry it out. I think he and I would settle for extreme dampness at that moment; we were both soaked. Solis, sitting on a campstool in his underwear, wrote out two messages by candlelight as darkness fell around us. I heard plenty of cursing going on outside the tent—there wasn't any way to keep a fire going during the storm.

  "Take this one to the General," Solis handed a message to me with a wax seal. "Take this one to Captain Cordus; his tent is just this side of the General's." Cordus' message didn't have a seal. "Use this bag," I was given a waterproof courier's bag. After stuffing both messages inside the bag, I nodded to Solis, walked from the tent and headed into a driving rain.

  "Message, General," the General's bodyguard announced when I showed up at the green tent. I pulled out the sealed message and handed it to the General.

  "You are?" he asked, examining the wax seal.

  "Liss, Captain Solis' bodyguard and runner, sir," I replied. I hadn't seen anyone saluting, so I was thankful for that.

  "Wait for a reply," he growled and opened the message, reading it swiftly. I stood near the tent flap while the General wrote out a reply, rolled it up and sealed it with wax from a candle. I took it, slipped it inside the waterproof bag and walked into the rain again.

  Captain Cordus came next, and he didn't ask me to wait for a reply. I handed off his message and left, carrying the General's reply to Captain Solis. Solis gave me thanks in a distracted sort of way, so I left him in his half of the tent and went to dry myself off as best I could.

  * * *

  The General read Solis' message again before committing it to his candle flame. If something happens to your bodyguard, the note read, ask for Liss.

  * * *

  I'm sure the Pelipu's troops would have looked much more dashing if they hadn't been soaked to the bone when they rode up the following morning. As it was, they looked somewhat bedraggled in wet gray tunics beneath chain mail. A tabard was worn over the chain mail bearing a large, red hand across the chest. That red hand was supposed to be the hand of their god and according to them, it ran with blood when the god was angry. Well, if Red Hand was anything like Solar Red, the god's hand probably ran with blood when he was happy or even feeling so-so, too. The chain mail these troops wore had to be a bitch in a rainstorm, too. I wanted to snicker at their obvious discomfort, but held myself back as Solis and I watched the Pelipu's troops ride past. Their horses weren't happy either; their manes and tails hung in wet clumps as they clopped along, their heads down in the rain.

  "What do you think, Liss?" Solis asked after the last Red Hand mercenary went past.

  "You're right," I nodded. "Trouble just arrived." Solis offered a humorless chuckle.

  * * *

&nbs
p; In addition to my blades, I now had a knife clipped to the back waistband of my leather pants—Connegar had sent a note wrapped around the knife. I'd found it inside my duffle while looking for a bar of soap to clean up after dinner the night before.

  "Glinda insisted that you take this—just in case," the note read. The knife was a good one, with a black steel blade. A long, sharp knife was Glinda's weapon of choice, apparently, and I wasn't about to argue with her. Before she joined the Saa Thalarr and Jayd had inadvertently found her, Glinda worked as Erland's bodyguard on Campiaa for more than twenty years. I clipped the sheathed knife to my waistband and practiced drawing it a few times. Since I couldn't use claws without giving myself away, the knife might come in handy.

  I'd left my body behind to turn to energy sometime before dawn; I'd know whether anybody tried to wake me and could get back in less than a blink if necessary. I'd also written a quick message to Connegar and Sent the note back to Le-Ath Veronis using Power. All I'd written was a quick thanks—to him and to Glinda.

  * * *

  I wasn't interested, but Solis wanted to watch the Pelipu's troops finish setting up their camp after breakfast, so we went to observe. They'd only erected tents the night before and many of them slept on wet ground since they hadn't dug trenches around the tents. Rain still fell around us, with the occasional rumble of thunder. Quite a few Red Hand troops decided to change the location of their tents, so Solis and I watched as they struggled in the downpour. Higher ground was at a premium and Red Hand's officers had most of that already covered with their tents, leaving the Regulars to scramble for better placement.

  Putting up tents in the rain was a tedious task, I discovered, and tent stakes don't hold well in rain-soaked ground. More than a few tents were blown over by occasional high winds. Red Hand's commanders had red striped tents, with the High Commander's tent a solid red. Everybody else had plain canvas, just as the Farus army did.

  "Message, Captain Solis," a runner, not more than sixteen or seventeen—I knew by the scent—splashed up beside us, handing a folded note to Solis.

  "Commander's meeting in a mark," Solis sighed, stuffing the note in a pocket. "Let's go dry off a bit before we have to show up and decide the pecking order." I trailed behind him, rain dripping off both of us as we went.

  * * *

  "Take the knife, leave the blades," Solis instructed, just before we left his tent. I'm ashamed to admit I used a little Power to dry off. I was sick of being wet, already. I put my blades, sheaths and harness inside my duffle before splashing after Solis toward the General's tent. His was much larger than any of the others, and he'd been inside the first room, (if you can call something with four cloth walls a room) when I'd delivered Solis' message and then waited for the General's reply.

  We walked into the main body of the tent; Solis and the other Captains got a campstool, Sergeants and Lieutenants stood at the back. The High Commander of the Pelipu's troops sat opposite the General, with only a small table between them. Only Captains and Generals got bodyguards, and I and the other bodyguards present knelt next to our Captain's seat. The other officers used a pool of runners to get messages around and depended on the Regulars for safety—they didn't get personal runners, either.

  I was the only female in the room, too. Was I surprised? Of course not. I'd seen a few women in the Regulars, and only one female Sergeant so far. She looked as if she could take on a charging bull all by herself. She'd been assigned to keep order among the troops while the meeting was held.

  "The Pelipu's instructions are quite clear," the High Commander huffed after lengthy introductions and much posturing took place. "He has placed me in charge. All others answer to me."

  "My men will answer to me, first," the General said quietly. "I will discuss orders with you but I will not be taken out of the chain of command. I answer to my King, after all, not yours. This is our country and I am familiar with it. I hold the maps and am able to read them. I know where the enemy is located and can lead you there."

  "Very well, but I expect full notification for all significant orders." The High Commander wasn't happy; we all knew that, but the General did have a point—this was his country and he knew where the enemy, such as they were, lived. I was holding off Looking, to be honest. This would be a slaughter unless I did something about it.

  There was more discussion, followed by questions and answers afterward, and one of those questions was what would be done if fights and squabbles broke out between the troops. It wasn't difficult to determine that Red Hand might be spoiling for a fight with Farus' army, whom they obviously held in contempt.

  "I suggest a joint judgment, with officers from both sides to hear and decide the punishment," Solis offered. That recommendation was eventually agreed upon, with two from each side to be appointed by the General and the High Commander. This march was going to take about a month. How much trouble were they expecting?

  The trouble started that afternoon. Two Red Hand troops wanted to cut in line at the mess tent. The Regulars shoved them out. Knives were pulled and three men were cut up—all of them Farus Regulars. Solis was called to the judgment afterward, which meant I was by his side the entire time.

  The Red Hand Captains wanted to dismiss it as high spirits. Solis didn't say anything; he chose to allow Captain Cordus to do all the arguing for some sort of punishment instead. Finally, it was decided that the two who'd caused the trouble had to pull night guard duty for a week. Night guard duty consisted of one or two nights before falling to someone else, so a week wasn't such a stretch. I thought that was rather light punishment for slicing up your allies, but I wasn't in charge and wasn't going to be. Not of this rabble.

  The rain had finally stopped when we set out the following morning, but we were going to be traveling over extremely wet ground, which meant the wagons would likely be stuck within the first hour or two. They were in the middle of the marching army, since they carried supplies. I'm not sure whom they expected to attack for what we had—the food was terrible.

  Our combined army consisted of three thousand Farus troops, twenty-five hundred Red Hand soldiers and a contingent of teamsters, coopers and blacksmiths. I wasn't counting the small group of camp followers that trailed along behind, both male and female. Honestly, we might have been better off with only a few hundred troops since we were going to a massacre, but some people tend to go for overkill.

  Solis and I rode along the south side of the marching army, with other officers scattered up and down the line. My poor horse was dubbed Brownie, and he was quite patient with me since I hadn't ridden anything after my short stint on Falchan. Yes, the ass was sore at the end of the day. I mentally told it to get used to this and went on.

  There wasn't much chance for the Regulars and Red Hand to get into altercations while we were on the march, but they found a way once we stopped for the day. "Come on, let's watch blade practice while we wait for dinner," Solis turned our horses over to the Regulars assigned to picket duty. I'd been about to take care of the horses myself, but that didn't seem to be my job. Instead, I gave Brownie a pat and followed Solis.

  The evenings were the time to get in blade practice, or in many cases, blade lessons. We watched some clacking away with wood blades, out on the muddy ground. The new grass on the practice ground was wet and slippery, too, and the heavy boots of sparring troops had mud churned up in no time. If the soldiers weren't careful, they'd lose their footing and fall right into the muck.

  I drew in a deep breath and almost went around Solis when I saw one of The Red Hand troops challenging the boy who'd dropped his practice sword in the dirt the first day. I didn't think he'd improved much in the four days since then, and The Red Hand soldier was comfortable with a blade, I saw that right off. Solis grabbed my arm and pulled me back. I gave him a swift glance; his face was set.

  Perhaps I should have done something other than stand there and watch The Red Hand mercenary give the boy a beating. And when the young man slipped in the mud, th
e mercenary deliberately delivered a hard blow to the head. I don't know whether the others heard it but I did—the boy's neck snapped and he collapsed like a sack of spilled grain.

  Solis didn't stop me this time; in fact, he was striding angrily beside me as we watched the mercenary deliver a kick to the already dead teen. Solis' shout had the mercenary backing up, however, and one of The Red Hand Captains was coming in—he was probably worried there'd be trouble. He was right.

  "The boy's dead," Solis knelt beside the body.

  "I wasn't expecting him to fall," the mercenary whined his excuse. I wanted to kill him, right then and there. It was all I could do to keep my eyes and fangs under control.

  "Take the boy and call the General," Solis snapped to the Regulars that came running up at his shout.

  That's how we ended up at another judgment that night, with the General and the High Commander weighing in. All the Captains had come as well, from both sides. Apparently, the mercenary was the High Commander's prized blademaster. His malevolent nature had led him straight to the most inexperienced youth in the Farus army.

  "If your man was as experienced as you say, then he should have been expecting the fall—the others were falling in the muck," Cordus complained to a Red Hand Captain.

  "But no one can predict when the fall might occur," The Red Hand Captain defended his position and the mercenary. We had set up the judgment in a clear spot outside the camp, far enough away that prying eyes and ears wouldn't be privy to the proceedings.

  The entire Farus army was angry over the incident, although they hadn't treated the youth very well, either. Red Hand had overstepped their bounds and I was beginning to wonder if it wasn't intentional. After all, the new King of Farus had sent the bulk of the army his country could afford on an errand, when a fourth that number might have sufficed. However, his advisors might have been worried over the number of well-trained troops the Pelipu was sending, and that, in my opinion, was a legitimate concern.

  "Your soldier knew the boy had no training; how could he not? He should have asked someone with more experience to spar with him," Cordus snorted.