Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Everyone except Pol, that is, whose continued weakness left him sitting while the rest stood.

  "The main force of the Karsite army appears to be here," Herald Fedor said, marking a rough oblong on the map on the far side of White Foal pass with his finger. "Right at the moment, they don't seem too keen on trying the pass a second time. I haven't seen any more of those new priests of theirs—"

  "That doesn't mean that they aren't there, however," the Lord Marshal rumbled, though he did look fairly well satisfied with the current situation. "Best guess from the ForeSeers?"

  "Is that they'll move eastward, along here," Fedor replied, tracing a path along the back of the mountain ridge divided by the pass. "You can see that there's a small river running along here, enough to cut a long valley without too many obstacles, and there's something of a roadway beside it. It's not the easiest place to take a major force, but it's the best they're going to get. That's what the two with Foresight think."

  "I wish it was what they knew, but beggars can't be choosy about what they get," Commander Releigh sighed. "Well—look at this, if they come along this route here, can they come through at us here?"

  His finger stabbed down at a minor pass, one that came out in a heavily wooded area on the Valdemar side, marked only as Pine Forest. Lan noted thankfully that there didn't seem to be any major habitations there, not so much as a village.

  All eyes went to the chief scout, who pulled at his lip, then nodded. "It does go though to their route, if that's the one they take, and it's wide enough at that point to bring them through in numbers. Odds are they aren't going to give up, not at this point. For all they know, it was their own priests that did something wrong, and not something we did."

  The Lord Marshal grimaced. "And they can make better time than we can to get to that pass; their route is shorter, with fewer obstacles in the way. Damn. Well, pass the word, we'll march in two candlemarks. Are we dealing with anything between here and there?"

  "Some pockets here, here, and here," the scout pointed. "Maybe more; we'll find them before they know where we are." He sounded confident, and Lan knew that he should be; the Valdemaran scouts had yet to be detected by the Karsites, and brought far more information than the couple of FarSeers, who had to concentrate on areas where they already knew were worth spying on.

  "Young Lavan—" the Lord Marshal said, turning to him, somewhat to his surprise. "I want you to work with Fedor and Scout Calum, here, while we're on the march. You're going to be our—catapult. Our way of getting at someone entrenched. If any of those pockets of Karsite force are well-entrenched, I'd rather deal with 'em at a distance than winkle them out like snakes in a crevice."

  Lan saluted the Lord Marshal, as he had seen other Heralds do, with a quick snap to attention and a nod. "Yes, my Lord," he replied simply. "I'll need Herald Tuck as well. I can't Mind-speak while I'm—ah—working."

  "Take him," the Lord Marshal replied simply, and waved Lan, the other Herald, and the chief scout off, as he and his Commanders got back to detailed battle plans.

  Lan didn't at all mind being dismissed; he followed Fedor and Calum out of the tent and into the sunlight. Fedor took his elbow and pointed at a Companion near to a tent on the upward slope of the next hill. "We're over there; make sure there's someone assigned to handle your tent and supplies, then meet us there. And bring the other boy as well."

  "Yes, sir," Lan replied, and the scout and Herald hurried away. Already the camp was a sea of activity as tents were broken down and supplies packed up. He ran to the tent he shared with Pol and Tuck.

  Word had already been passed, and the Lord Marshal's own chief servant was at the tent with a couple of other servants, packing things up for them. Pol and Satiran were with the Commanders, of course, but Tuck and the other two Companions watched the packing with interest.

  "Hey, Tuck!" Lan called, waving, as he ran towards them. "We've got an assignment!"

  Tuck's face brightened, and he jumped up into his Companion's saddle; Kalira cantered down the hill towards Lan, who mounted on the run. He was secretly pleased to be able to accomplish the maneuver, especially in front of an audience.

  :With a little help from me, of course.:

  :Of course!: he acknowledged, as Kalira paused just long enough for Tuck to catch up. Then they loped through the encampment, which now seethed with activity, heading for the Scout camp.

  Fedor and Calum and the rest of the scouts who were not currently out on patrol waited for them there, at the edge of the main encampment, supervising the final pack up of their own belongings, such as they were. Scouts tended to pack lightly.

  The scout contingent was a very mixed bag. There was Calum, who looked like most of the career fighters in the Guard or army, and a couple more men and women like him, but the majority were nothing at all like professional soldiers. The youngest was no older than Lan, a dim-looking, shaggy-haired youth mounted bareback on a pony that was just as shaggy, whose main article of clothing was a rough-sewn coat of sheepskin and hat and boots to match. The oldest was a stick-scrawny graybeard, whose horse could have been plucked from the King's stable just before a parade, and whose costume seemed to consist of odds and ends he'd picked up over the course of his lifetime.

  The rest of the group was just as eclectic, and included a young woman who kept close to the old man and was obviously highborn, a male and female pair of hunters (or at least, that was what Lan guessed their profession had been), a couple of farmers, and five people who were clearly civilians, or former civilians, but whose former professions weren't immediately obvious.

  Calum didn't bother to introduce anyone; he just fired off some orders, and roughly half of the scouts mounted up and vanished over the next hill. The rest formed up into a rough group behind him, and with Herald Fedor, followed him over the hill at a slower pace. Tuck and Lan, with Lan leading, worked their way through to Calum's right, since Fedor was already on his left.

  "Did you have anything in mind for me, Sir?" Lan asked diffidently.

  "We're going to wait at the outermost picket for the army to get marching," Calum replied, with an amused quirk of his lips, perhaps at Lan's diffidence. "Then this lot will spread out and work the leading edge of the march. You Heralds will stick with me, until someone comes back with word—either of a pocket of trouble we already know about, or something we don't. I'll decide if it requires the—hmm—catapult solution. If it does—" He pointed a finger at Lan. "You and your friend there will go with the scout to deal with it."

  That seemed simple enough, and Lan nodded.

  "I hope you've got an arrow in your quiver that's a bit more subtle than what you did at the pass," Calum continued. "We won't need to burn down the forest; in fact, the people that live here wouldn't appreciate that."

  "I do, sir, I do!" Lan hastened to say. "I—we—we've never done anything like that before, Kalira and I. I—didn't know we could." If the last words came out in a faltering tone, Calum didn't comment on it.

  "Good. That's a relief. Yo, Ben, Diera—come over here and tell the boys what they're likely to be up against, will you?" Calum waved at the old man and the young woman with the magnificent horses, who cut across a line of brush to take their places on either side of Lan and Tuck.

  "I'm Diera Ashkevron, and this is Ben Dotes, our Horsemaster," the young woman said.

  "Retired, missy," the old man corrected. "Barnebin be every bit the Horsemaster I ever was."

  Diera smiled, and continued. "We volunteered, first thing; brought a string of horses from the Home Farm and volunteered ourselves. We don't know this country, but we do know scouting and horses, so here we are."

  Diera was not an attractive young woman; she had a face like an abused ax-blade, but her friendly and open personality made her face irrelevant. But it was Tuck who identified her, not Lan.

  "Ashkevron?" he gulped. "The Ashkevrons? Of Forst Reach?"

  :Oh, my ears—that's the family that Herald Vanyel came from!: Kalira exclaimed as
the girl nodded.

  "We're all girls but my one brother, and he can't fight, he's laid up with a leg broke in three places," Diera continued. "There's more of us coming, but I was the only one ready to go now. Fancied I'd go into the Guard, and been training for it."

  "And I wasna about to let her go off alone," the old man added, with a stubborn set to his mouth. "But thas' neither here nor there. We're to tell you 'bout what we know, eh? So les' get to it."

  Over the next league or so, the ill-matched pair detailed the three or four pockets of Karsite strength they thought would fall to Lan to eliminate. Rather as he had expected once they began, these places were all small fortresses, manned by no more than twenty or thirty, that overlooked key passes. With that handful of fighters, the Karsites could easily delay the Valdemaran army by a day and perhaps more, if they had Sun-priests with them who could command similar powers to the Heraldic Gifts.

  The excitement of being called a hero had long since worn off, and when he realized that he would be expected to burn these people out, he began to feel queasy. Kalira sensed his unease, without knowing the cause, and enveloped him in a wordless blanket of assurance.

  There were hundreds, thousands of fighters in the army depending on him, who could—would—lose their lives if he didn't do what he was expected to do.

  "You'll be able to take care of them, won't you?" Diera asked anxiously. "If you can't—it would be bad, very bad, I think."

  I hesitated once. I swore I never would again, and I won't. I won't.

  When that didn't extinguish the queasiness, he called up the mental image of Pol with his bandaged eyes... Ilea beside him, with a reproachful look aimed straight toward him.

  That awoke guilt, but guilt was better than indecision. "Just get me there," he told Diera. "I'll do the rest."

  *

  SINCE they would travel with the Lord Marshal and the bulk of the army, Pol and his family were left at loose ends until everyone was underway. There were servants to pack up the Healers' gear, and the Lord Marshal's people dealt with Pol's. So Pol found himself with a rare moment of leisure to share with his wife, as they perched on a log with the last scrapings from the mess kettle to eat (nothing went to waste when a Guard-cook was in charge) and tried to stay out of the way.

  "What's wrong with Elenor?" Pol whispered to Ilea to get her mind off of her own failure to restore his sight, although he was afraid he already knew the answer. His daughter's listless behavior since Lan had awakened was something he would have called moping in anyone else. Most of her conversation was in monosyllables, and although he couldn't actually see her face, he suspected that her eyes were reddened from secret crying.

  "What do you think?" Ilea replied, with a distinct edge to her voice. "Lavan woke up and didn't ask for her, didn't look for her, didn't even thank her. In fact, Lavan hasn't even looked at her since your accident."

  "Ah." Well, that was what he had expected. Though it would have been better for poor Elenor if her infatuation had turned to anger that Lan hadn't prevented the accident. "And you? How do you feel about the boy?"

  "I am... mixed in feeling," Ilea admitted. "It's not the boy's fault, but I am annoyed with him; I wish he'd at least notice she's in love with him! But he's so thick-headed!"

  "Boys that age usually are, if they're unaffected by the girl in question," Pol said dryly. "If they do notice, they're generally so embarrassed they try to avoid her altogether, and I can't see where that would be an improvement so far as Elenor is concerned."

  "At least it would be rejection, and maybe she could stop trying to convince herself that if she just proves her devotion he'll repay it," Ilea responded, and took the empty bowl from him. There was more irritation in her voice now, and Pol guessed that she was more put out with her own daughter than with Lavan.

  "It's Elenor I'm really irritated with," she continued, confirming his guess. "How much will it take before she gives up? The boy couldn't be more indifferent to her, and she's a Healer. She has to be able to sense his lifebond with his Companion by now!"

  Interestingly, Ilea's annoyance with her daughter lessened Pol's. "She won't see it until she stops believing it isn't there," he told Ilea, and put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her a little closer. She resisted for a moment, then gave in and relaxed against him. "She doesn't want to see it, and at her age, what you want seems more important sometimes than what is."

  "Gods," Ilea groaned. "We may be dealing with this for years, then. Can't you do something?"

  "Lan doesn't need me now," Pol replied, after a moment of hesitation. "Not after White Foal Pass. If—when this war is over and the Karsites are driven back, perhaps it would be wisest to have him stationed here permanently...."

  Even though he was thinking aloud, the idea caught hold of his imagination, and he could see how well it would work out. Elenor would not be allowed to go far from the Collegium; Mind-Healers were too rare, and most people that needed them were brought to them rather than the other way around.

  And for Lan, this would be the ideal place. He could be left here on circuit for the next two years with a senior Herald, then take over the circuit on his own. If the Karsites dared set foot across the Border again, Lan would send them back with their tails smoking.

  "That would be perfect!" Ilea replied, seizing on his idea. "Separate them! She can't obsess about someone who forgets to even answer her letters!"

  "We can't do anything until the war is over," Pol cautioned her, as he sensed her relief and enthusiasm. "A great many things could change between now and then—"

  "I know—I know—"

  "And during that time we're going to have to bear with her tears and tantrums," Pol continued. "Not to mention every other wretched thing that a war can throw at us."

  "But I can put out my hand and feel the candle, even if I can't light it yet," Ilea replied, sounding much less anxious already. "Just knowing it's there is enough."

  Pol just nodded, and tightened his arm. Sometimes knowing that there would eventually be an end to something was enough. Strange, that Ilea could cope cheerfully with the endless flood of injured and dying, and be thrown so off-balance by the mere heartache of their daughter.

  And of her own inability to create a miracle.

  "I have to go; the Healers should be packed up by now," Ilea said abruptly. "I suppose—"

  "You know where to find me," Pol replied, with a final squeeze before he let her go. "You go to your duty, love."

  "And you to yours," he responded, and waited until the creak of her footsteps on the snow faded out of hearing range before summoning Satiran.

  :Are we ready to join the Lord Marshal, old friend?: he asked, as he felt his Companion's warm breath on his neck.

  :Better ask if they are ready for us!: Satiran replied, with a mental chuckle, as he linked in with Pol and gave him sight again. :Let's ride!:

  TWENTY-THREE

  Lan lay flat on a rocky overhang, peering down at his latest target, with the shepherd Wulaf beside him. Young Wulaf was a native of these parts; he and his shaggy pony could go very nearly anywhere that a goat could go. The boy was far more intelligent than he looked, and so was the pony; Lan and Tuck marveled at how much he knew about the area, and his pony's clever ability to find trails where there was no sign of where to go. Both pony and boy were, in the main, shaggy, untidy, brown. Both surveyed the world from beneath heavy forelocks of brown hair with blond streaks bleached by the sun.

  So far Lan had managed to eliminate two potential trouble spots without actually killing anyone; both of the Karsite strongholds positioned strategically above the route the army would have to travel had been simple wooden fortresses, thrown up out of local logs, and just starting a fire that the enemy couldn't put out had driven the Karsites into the open. He burned their fortresses to the ground once there was no longer anyone in them to prevent the enemy from retaking and repairing the places. Once they were no longer protected behind walls and out of local logs, just startin
g a fire that the enemy couldn't put out had driven the Karsites into the open. Once they were no longer protected behind walls, the garrisons retreated back south and east without even putting up token resistance.

  This place, however, would prove a harder nut to crack.

  Below Lan, tucked into a flat space about halfway down the mountain, was what had begun its life as a robber-baron's stronghold. Built stoutly of stone, kept even safer within high stone walls, it must have taken a very clever plan to capture it in the past. Subsequently, it had become a farm; mainly raising sheep, goats, and mountain ponies. Then the Karsites took it for themselves, and it became the platform from which they could prevent any passage through the pass below.

  "Look, yon," Wulaf said, pointing at the largest building in the complex, with a round, squat construction beside it. "That war yon barn an silo, an' reckon they hain't took out fodder an' th' like, nan?"

  "Huh. Hay burns," Lan replied, shading his eyes to get a better view. "And their main gate is wood. I can take that out, and leave them without a way to keep attackers out."

  "Aye that," Wulaf agreed. "Reckon ye burn all what hain't stone, they canna stay. Burn gate, food, beddin', clothes.... Start wi' barn, belike, an' silo."

  Lan narrowed his eyes, held tightly to the dragon's bonds with both mental hands, and allowed it to wake—a very little.

  He projected the power past the slate roof of the round towerlike silo, sending a little spark into it to find tinder.

  He sensed it catch.

  Then the mountainside beneath him shook with a deafening roar!

  The mountain trembled; he and Wulaf clung to their rocky perch and stared at each other; Wulaf s pony locked his legs in place but screamed with fear, tossing his blunt head upward, his eyes wild beneath his shaggy brindled forelock. Beneath them, a fountain of rock, dust, and snow blew out in an extravagant plume from the spot where the farm had been.

  "Get cover!" Wulaf shouted, far quicker of wit than Lan; he and his pony scrambled back beneath the safety of an overhang, while Lan and Kalira followed—and just in time, as a rain of rocks, some half the size of the pony, plummeted down on the mountaintop. For a few moments, all they could do was cower as boulders crashed all around them, chipping ice and rock from their protection, landing nearly at their feet. Every time one crashed near them, the rock under their feet vibrated.