“It’s going to be black dark before we make Littlebridge in this muck, and that bad hole’s still to come. We’re starting to break up in the rear. There’s a place to camp along on the right; it’ll be out of the wind if it stays as it is.”
“Yes, sir. Do you mean that old wanderer campground?”
“That’s it. There’s a spring straight downhill.” The captain wheeled his horse and rode back past the column. Paks noticed that he looked as wet as she felt. She was glad they were stopping soon. The next two hundred paces seemed to take forever. She watched Stammel search the edge of the woods.
“See this path?” he asked. Paks could barely see a dim gap between the trees. “We follow this; it’ll open out on a firm slope. Stay on the path; we don’t want the tribe angry with us.” He led the way, and Paks followed. File by file they slipped into the woods. After a few twists and turns, they came to a large clearing, dim now in the dusk, but easily large enough for all. Paks followed Stammel to the right, and they settled down under a row of cedars to rest. Stammel went back to direct the others. It seemed to take a long time. Paks began to stiffen in the cold, and her belly cramped and growled as if she’d never eaten lunch. She looked back through the trees and saw a flickering light—torches—someone had gotten torches from the pack mules.
The light roused her, and she stood, swinging her arms back and forth. If they were camping, Stammel would want a fire. And the captain had said something about a spring, and they’d need a ditch—she looked around for her file, and called them over. The other file leaders of her unit looked up, listening.
“As soon as we can get a torch,” she began, “we can see to set up. Same assignments as night before last, except I don’t know if we’ll be cooking. I’ll find out. Wood gatherers, try to find something dry—at least not soaked. Everybody up and get working, or we won’t sleep dry.” She was sure they would have a miserable night.
It seemed to take a long time to get organized. Torches sizzled in the rain, giving barely enough light to see, until the main campfire finally caught. The clearing was a slightly irregular oblong, edged all around with thick cedar trees, and sloping just enough to shed water. Off to one side was a smaller clearing where Stammel told them to dig their trench. The tribe, he explained, always used it so. Paks and Malek went with Bosk to find the spring, down slippery wet rocks until they heard a frog splash into open water. By the time they came back, the fire was burning well, and Stammel had them fill several kettles. Steam rolled up from their wet tunics. Bosk took the packet of ground roots and herbs for making sib, and poured it into the kettles.
“It’ll be stronger this way, and bitter, but we need it strong.”
Paks stirred the brew with a wooden spoon, enjoying the fire’s warmth. More and more of them were clustering near the fire to eat their ration of trail bread and salt beef. Bosk assigned someone to stir the other kettles.
“Here, Paks.” Her file-second handed her a share of bread and meat, and squatted beside her. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so wet, and had to sleep out.”
Paks grunted around the hunk of meat in her mouth.
“You should see Kefer’s unit,” he went on. “Mud to the waist, it looks like. I wonder how much more of this there is.”
Paks finished chewing the beef into submission, and washed it down with a swig of water. “I guess it depends on how long it rains. Lucky for us we were in front today. If they change the marching order—”
Keri looked startled. “They wouldn’t. The Duke himself said we were the first.”
“As an honor, yes. But in this—whoever marches last has the worst of it. It slows us all down, and it’s not fair.”
“Maybe it will dry off tomorrow.”
“Maybe.” Paks stirred the brew again, and took a bite of bread. Her right side, near the fire, felt dry and hot; she shifted to the other side of the kettle and decided to take off boots and socks. She could dry her socks on the firepit rocks. She struggled with her boots, and had one off and the other half-off when she saw Stammel approaching. She tried to stand, but he waved her down.
“Don’t get up. How’s the sib coming?” It had begun to smell good. He dipped the spoon in and took a sip. “Another half-hour, I expect. Don’t scorch your boots. I wanted to talk to you about the order of march tomorrow.”
Her head came up. “You’re changing it? I wondered if you would.”
Stammel looked surprised. “I didn’t think you’d expect it, but yes. It’s nothing to do with the honor, you know; it’s the mud. The last unit has the hardest time, and slows us.”
Paks nodded. “I thought so. How will you change it?”
“We’ll change places every two hours—the change will keep any one unit from wearing down, I hope. The mules will go first; with those narrow hooves they have a bad time in soft ground anyway. You’ll be the last unit when we start, then move to second and first in rotation.”
“Why can’t we walk in the fields, when the road’s so bad?”
Stammel shook his head. “No. We don’t trample fields. It’s one of the Duke’s rules, and one of the reasons we can travel without trouble. The farmers don’t fear to see us coming.”
“How far do we need to go?”
“Tomorrow?” Paks nodded. “We’re almost an hour’s dry walk from Littlebridge, and the next good stop beyond that is Fiveway—a nice day’s march in good weather, and I don’t know if we can make it in the rain. Depends.”
Paks turned her socks over; they were almost dry. “Is it usually like this?”
“Sometimes. There’s a lot of rain south of Vérella, all the way to the foothills of the Dwarfmounts. Then it’s usually drier, going west and over the pass—not bad at all once we’re in the south itself. By then it’s summer anyway. But this stretch of road—three to six days depending—is always bad if it rains. You’d think the Council in Vérella would do something, with all the trade coming this way, but they haven’t since the old king died. They leave it to the local landholders. And they just leave it.”
Paks thought back to the city she’d seen that morning: a very different world from the wet dark clearing. “Sergeant Stammel, why did that man call us carrion crows?”
Stammel grunted. “You heard that, did you? You don’t want to listen to that sort. Well—crows follow a battle, I suppose you wouldn’t know that—they come to feast on the carnage. And some folks call mercenaries that, as if we were bloodseekers.”
Paks thought that over a moment. “But who were they? They had rich clothes. And why did they say that about the Duke? He really is a duke, isn’t he?”
“Them? Town bravos is what they looked like. They’d like to be thought lords’ sons by their dress and jewels. As for our Duke—I haven’t heard anyone dispute his title—any time lately, at least. He’s Duke enough for me, and more worth following than some pedigreed princeling that can’t sit his horse without a tutor, or draw blade without six servants to protect him.” Stammel stopped short, and stirred the fire for a moment. Paks asked nothing more, but turned her socks again. They were dry, and she brushed the dried mud from them. Stammel tasted the sib again and shook his head.
When the sib was finally ready, Stammel dipped a large spoonful of honey into each kettle. After a mugful of that stout drink, Paks felt warm to her toes. Her unit, being least tired, had the first watch. For the first hour or so the drizzling mist lightened, and Paks hoped it might stop entirely. But heavier rain returned, hissing and spitting in the fire. Stammel brought a length of waxed canvas to lay over their store of wood.
When the watch changed, Paks took her dry cloak from the protected pack with a feeling of futility. Everything was wet. She found a space under a cedar where the tree’s thick foliage kept the rain from falling directly on her, but she was sure she would not sleep.
Stammel’s call took her by surprise. She had slept the night through, despite the damp. She unrolled her cloak and crept out. A wet mass of cedar foliage smacked her in the
face. Paks shivered. Around her the camp came slowly to life. She stretched the kinks out of her back, then looked distastefully at her sodden boots, and walked barefoot to the firepit.
The last watch had put porridge on the fire as well as sib. Paks checked to see that her file was up and moving, then took her place in line. Her wet cloak dragged at her shoulders. She wondered if they would pack the wet cloaks or wear them. When she could get near the fire, she turned her back to it, hoping to dry the cloak. The hot food warmed her; she wondered if she could march barefoot, and save her boots. But Stammel explained the dangers of this, and she resigned herself to the discomfort.
Soon they were ready to leave; yesterday’s last unit grinned slyly as they filed away through the trees. Only the captain on his horse stayed behind. When they came out on the road, Paks started after the rest. The road surface was churned into uneven mush, like half-eaten porridge gone cold. Their boots sank in several inches at once. Downhill the mud deepened. Rainwater on the surface splashed high up their legs. The next unit was already far ahead, but when Paks tried to pick up the pace, several of them slipped in the mud and almost went down.
She had to slow again; she and the other file leaders began a marching song to keep everyone in step, and that seemed to help. When some ran out of breath, or stumbled, others took it up. The downhill grade eased, but the mud was deeper still. It dragged at their boots; Paks felt her thighs begin to ache from jerking against that pull with every step. Around another turn of road, Paks saw that they’d gained half the distance to the unit in front of them. Then she saw why: it was floundering in a section of road that seemed to have no bottom.
“Tir’s brass boots!” growled Captain Pont. “I told them that the next time I mired a troop in this place, I’d fix it myself, then and there.” She looked up at him; he was scowling. “Very well—Paks—”
“Yes, sir.”
“We’re going to put some stepping stones in that mess. See those walls?” He pointed to the drystone walls that bordered the road. Paks nodded. “Get your unit off the road; when they get to the bad spot, take those stones and pile ’em in until you can walk across. Those Tir-damned farmers have made enough pulling wagons out of this hole—we all pay toll on this road anyway, and some of it is supposed to go for repairs.”
The edge of the bad patch was obvious: the gaping hole where a mule had gone in belly deep. Already the mired unit was beginning to tear up the wall for stones. The first stones sank at once, but eventually they began to fill the hole. Finally Paks had her unit lay the flat topping stones from the wall over all, and they walked across without sinking.
Beyond that hole, they were back in ankle-deep mud, but the change of pace had rested them. Now they slogged on together, all three units chanting one song after another. “Cedars of the Valley” gave way to “The Herdsman’s Daughter” after many verses. On the left, trees thinned to pasture, and across the fields Paks could see a river as gray as the sky. The road edged toward it. Soon she could see a cluster of cottages huddled near the road. As they neared them, the road firmed. Paks could feel gravel through her sodden boots. They came to a paved square, streaming in the rain. Around it were larger buildings: an inn, a tall building with wide doors painted blue and red, several large houses. Stammel halted the column. Paks shifted her shoulders under her wet cloak and wondered if they would get anything from the inn. She looked around. The square was empty but for them; their mules were caked in mud to the belly, and the other units looked as muddy as she was. Her legs ached. She tried to see out the other side of the square, where the road humped itself up—a bridge, she thought. This must be Littlebridge.
A short time later, they marched out, having seen the inside of the inn very briefly, while downing fresh rolls and mugs of hot soup. That interval of warmth and dryness helped, but all too soon Paks was back out in the rain, lining up behind Vona’s unit, with Kefer’s behind her.
They started briskly across the square and over the narrow humped bridge beyond it. On the other side were more houses, some large, and craftshops. Then the houses dwindled to cottages flanked by gardens, and the gravelled road softened to mud.
The rest of that day was a matter of endurance. At times the rain slackened, but mostly they marched before a chill, wind-driven rain. Mud was always with them: now thicker, and clinging to their boots with every step, now thinner and splashing like water. They passed sodden little villages, too small for an inn, and wet farms that seemed half-melted into the ground. Every two hours they halted for a brief rest and change of position. By midafternoon, they were numb with fatigue, stumbling along the road like drunks. Paks ached from head to heel. She no longer worried about her sword rusting, or where they would sleep. She put one foot ahead of the other with dogged intensity. As the light faded, her unit shifted again from last to middle, this time with no pause for rest.
“We’ve got to get them to Fiveway,” she heard Stammel say, but she did not look up to see who else was nearby. They started again, lurching in the mud. Soon it was too dark to see anything but the nearest ranks and the road beneath. Then that faded. They marched on in the darkness more by feel than sight. The last singers lost heart and the marching songs died away. Paks could not have said how long they’d marched—it seemed like half the night—when a line of dim orange lights broke the darkness ahead. She could not tell how far away they were, nor how big—they were merely blurs that brightened step by step. After awhile, she realized that they were square: windows, she thought suddenly, with lights behind them. At once she felt even colder and stiffer than before.
Soon she could see light reflected on the wet road outside the windows. The road firmed under her feet: gravel again. She heard the crisp hoof-beats of the captain’s horse passing on the right. Torches flared ahead, wavering in the wind. By their light she could see wet pavement, the fronts of buildings, the gleam of steel. An abrupt challenge rang out before them. Stammel called a halt. She heard voices, but could not distinguish the words. She shivered. The torches came nearer; now she could see the men holding them, and the armed men behind. She slid a hand to her sword hilt. Stammel appeared, carrying a torch now. In its dancing light his face was strange; she could not read its expression.
“We’ve got shelter near here,” he said. “Vona’s unit will pick up food at the inn. Paks, yours will unpack the mules. Follow Devlin; he knows where to go.”
Paks did not think she could follow anyone anywhere, but when Devlin came with a torch, she found she could still pick up her feet. They turned down a lane beside a high stone wall, and came out in a field, onto short wet grass. Not far away Paks sensed a large structure looming against the sky. Devlin led them to it: a barn, stone below and wood above, easily large enough for all of them. The mules were already tied along one end, and the skinner had lighted other torches; a warm glow spilled out to meet them.
Once inside, the relief of being out of the wind and rain was enormous. The barn was almost empty, but for hay in one corner. Paks wanted to fall headlong in that hay and sleep, but Devlin prodded her to come unload the mules. She and the others stumbled over and pulled off the packs. Kefer’s unit, meanwhile, began placing torches high in wall brackets away from the hay. Then they laid out sleeping areas. Their final chore was setting up lines for drying their wet clothes; the barn had hooks built in, and Devlin handed out rolls of thin cord. By this time, Vona’s unit had brought the food, plentiful and hot despite the trek from the inn.
Long loaves of bread that steamed when they were broken—crocks of butter—kettles of savory stew—Paks ate at first hardly noticing what she put in her mouth, but as she warmed up she realized how good it was. Mug after mug of a strange hot drink not so bitter as sib. Bowl after bowl of stew. Suddenly she was nearly asleep, nodding as she sat. She glanced around. Devlin and Bosk were gathering empty platters and pots; she wondered if they would make the trip back tonight to the inn. She met Stammel’s eye and braced herself for the order to go back—but he smiled a
nd told her to get some sleep. When she tried to get up, she found she had stiffened from that brief rest. She barely made it to a heap of hay and an empty blanket, falling into a deep sleep before she could review any part of the day.
Chapter Nine
The next morning rain still fell in curtains. Captain Pont decided to delay at least a day, and the barn filled with drying clothes. Everyone felt stiff and grumpy at first, but by noon they were all awake enough to be restless. Paks even welcomed a walk through the rain to the inn for food. A caravan bound for Vérella had come in; great wagons blocked the streets, and the inn was full of wet and disgruntled merchants.
“Camped!” she heard one exclaim to the landlord, as she led her file toward the kitchen. “By Simyits, we weren’t camped. We were stuck—flat stuck! Gods blast your count or whatever you’ve got down here! I pay toll on this passage every year, and he hasn’t set stone on the road since my father died.” Paks glanced at the speaker, a tall, powerful man in mud-stained leather with a gold chain around his neck and a ring in each ear. The landlord, shorter and plumper, had a fixed smile on his face. “You can tell him for me,” the big man went on, “that the Guild League can find another way north, if it comes to that.” Then Paks was in the kitchen, dodging a squad of agitated cooks to the table where their food was laid ready. She noticed on her way back out that the landlord had escaped from the tall man, and was leading a party of velvet-clad ladies up the stairs.
When she mentioned the incident to Stammel, he laughed. “That’d be the wagonmaster,” he said. “Let’s see—it might be the Manin family caravan, or maybe Foss Council. Did you notice what they carried?”
“No, sir. What’s the Guild League he mentioned?”
“Guild League cities, that is. Those on the north caravan route, not the Immer route.” Paks felt that this explained nothing. Stammel noticed her blank look. “Don’t you know anything about the south, about Aarenis?”
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