The village was made up of fairly unusual buildings, if one supposed this to be an ordinary village. Three inns, a blacksmith, an armorer, and several other, less identifiable places that were obviously businesses of some sort. No sign of a village market, no signs of craftsmen or farmers.
The one aspect that dominated everything was that stockade at the heart of the place.
Every town that served as winter quarters to a Company looked like this, more or less. The Company would build or buy an appropriate establishment; several buildings were needed for a Company of any size. Barracks for one thing, and you could add armory, training-ground, stables, and administrative office at the least. Once the place was up and tenanted and past its first year of occupancy, the rest would follow. The only craftsmen that would establish themselves would be smiths and armorers; for the rest, members of the Merchants' and Traders' Guilds would take care of anything material the wintering troops needed to spend money on. And for their nonmaterial needs, the innkeepers would take care of anything they might desire. The Skybolts hadn't been established long enough to acquire an entire town about their walls as old members retired and chose to stay nearby and raise families. Hawksnest, the Sunhawks' wintering quarters, supported a thriving population of noncombatants.
A token force stayed behind even during fighting season, to train new recruits, and see to the upkeep of the place. Those were usually members of the Company that were no longer fit for field duty, but couldn't or wouldn't retire. If the Captain judged them fit enough, and if there were positions open, they could become caretakers and trainers, especially if they'd been officers. There was no sense in wasting resources.
Evidently word of her defection hadn't preceded her, for the guard at the front entrance to the stockade, a taciturn one-eyed fellow she knew only vaguely, welcomed her in through the gates with no comments, opening the smaller, side gate for her rather than forcing the great gates open against the piled-up snow. She was mortally glad he was the one on duty; he seldom spoke more than three words in a row, and then only if spoken to first. She didn't want to have to answer questions, and she most especially didn't want to have to lie. She feigned a weariness only a little greater than she felt; she knew she and the mare were thin and worn, and those things evidently were all the excuse she needed for silence.
The snow-covered training-ground was silent and looked curiously unused as she rode past; she thought perhaps all the new recruits were eating dinner, but when she dismounted and brought the mare into the darkened, redolent stables, and saw how few horses there were there, she realized that, for the first time in her knowledge, there were no new recruits.
Evidently, since the Skybolts weren't going to be there to train them, the riders recruited and rough-trained during the summer months had been sent down south to join the rest of the Company.
Which meant that in order to take any kind of job in the normal fighting season, what was left of the Company would have to accept green recruits or free-lancers who'd never been with a Company before, and put them right into the front lines with the rest.
That was just more evidence of the kind of shortsighted thinking Ardana had been displaying all along. While it was true that the Skybolts had only accepted seasoned fighters, without proper drilling and practice, new recruits were twice as likely to die as old hands. And that was in a nonspecialist Company; in a Company of skirmishers, Kero wouldn't have given a new recruit a rat's chance of surviving the first fight.
But that certainly explained where all the new faces had come from while she'd been across the Karsite border. And it would give Ardana a fine excuse for why the casualty figures were so high if the Guild made inquiries.
She left Hellsbane under saddle; just backed her into the nearest empty stall and gave her a good feed, then went off to the empty barracks to retrieve her gear.
There wasn't much of it, but there were warm winter clothes to replace her threadbare garments, some weaponry to replace things lost or left behind. And as for the personal gear, every little bit would help. She'd undoubtedly have to sell the semiprecious gems she'd stored to carve into little figurines this winter. The carving equipment itself wasn't worth much, and didn't take up a great deal of room; she'd keep it a while, on the chance that she would one day be able to carve again.
The barracks were dark, with most of the windows shuttered. Her footsteps echoed hollowly and her breath showed white in the gloom, telling her that the place hadn't been heated at all this winter.
Somehow the very emptiness oppressed her more than the entire trip back. Maybe it had something to do with actually seeing the place that should have been full of people standing deserted.
She didn't bother with pulling off her worn gloves or cloak; it was too cold. She had no intention of sleeping here; if she found herself with enough breathing space, she'd draw on the little credit she had at the Woolly Ram and spend the night there. She felt her way across the building and climbed the creaking stairs to the veterans' floor, and sought her own little niche in the barracks.
Cold penetrated her cloak, and depression weighed heavily on her shoulders. She threw open the shutter to get the last of the light. Beside her bare bunk was her armor-stand with her spare suit of chain, which could be sold easily enough. At the foot of the bunk was the locked chest where she kept the smaller objects she didn't want to carry with her on campaign, and under the bunk was the clothespress that held the rest of her wardrobe.
Winter clothing, all of it, and she bundled it all up and bound it into a pack with a spare blanket. She unlocked the chest and looted it just as thoroughly, though there was considerably less in it. Knives, her jewel-carving supplies, a couple of pieces she'd finished, various odds and ends. Some were too bulky to take with her; some impractical. It was only after she'd made it all up into packs that she saw the letter lying on the shelf above her bed, with the odd bits and carvings she'd picked up over the years, the sentimental things she could not take with her.
Who would send me a letter? My brother? But the seal was unfamiliar, and the handwriting on the outside none she'd seen before. She picked the folded parchment up, her hands trembling for no reason that she could think of, and opened it, breaking the strange blue-and-silver seal.
It contained two pieces of paper. The first was a simple note of two lines and a name.
"I kept the letter of our agreement, but you can't fault me for arranging the terms to suit myself," it read. "If you want to redeem this, you'll have to come here, and you'll have to see me."
And it was signed, simply, "Eldan."
The other paper was a draft, in Valdemaran scrip, for the amount of the Herald's ransom. She would have to go to Valdemar in person to cash it in.
More specifically, she would have to go to the capital of Haven, as the draft had been written on a Crown account there. And it had to be countersigned by the issuer, which in this case was Eldan himself.
To claim her reward, she would have to confront him on his own ground, and deal with him and all her tangled feelings about him.
It was a bitter sort of salvation he offered. If she went to him, to Valdemar, her troubles would be over, temporarily at least. She would have ready cash to tide her over until she managed to land a free-lance position. She might even be able to get a position within Valdemar. Surely they needed bodyguards, personal guards, and caravan guards even there.
But if she went, Eldan would undoubtedly try to persuade her to stay with him, perhaps even teaching at that Collegium of his as he had suggested. And right now she had no better prospects than to give in to that persuasion. But if she did give in, she'd be right back in the situation she had fled from in the first place, first from Lordan's keeping, then from his. The idea of being completely dependent on someone else made her feel as if she was being stifled. If she did that, she wouldn't have proved anything, not even to herself.
But she'd be with the one man she'd ever been able to love, to give herself completely to, heart a
nd mind and soul—because he had given himself to her in the same way.
She stood there, staring at the blank wall above the shelf, unaware that she had crushed both papers in her hand until a clamor from beyond the gates of the stockade woke her out of her trance.
There was no mistaking that kind of noise; friendly shouts, whinnies, someone pounding on the gate. All the sounds indicating a crowd of riders wanted entrance.
She stuffed the papers into her belt-pouch hastily. She could decide what to do about them later. Right now she needed to get out of there and quickly. Ardana's messengers must have been right behind me, she thought, shutting out panic. I have to get to the Guild before they throw me in detention!
She had no doubt that Ardana would court-martial her if the Captain ever got her hands on her. If Ardana had her way, Kero would never even see a Guild Arbitrator.
She grabbed up her packs and bolted down the stairs just as she heard, from the open window behind her, the sound of the great gates being forced open, groaning against the load of snow pressed up against them.
She thought about her possible exits as she ran down the stairs and out the side door of the barracks. There was a back postern-gate that self-locked right behind the barracks. Kero waited for a moment until she was certain that no one was in a position to see her, then dashed across the open space between the buildings into the stables. She fumbled open the stall door and grabbed Hellsbane's reins to lead her out. Now she heard people and horses milling around just inside the gates; at least twenty if not more. It would take them a few more moments to get organized, then they would have to explain their mission to the guard and the guard would have to remember what direction she'd taken.
That would all take time, precious time, time she could use to make her escape.
She threw the packs over Hellsbane's rump without fastening them, and led Hellsbane in back of the stables, past the odorous manure pile, to the back of the stockade itself. There was the postern gate; narrow, scarcely tall enough for a led horse, not tall enough for a rider, and a real test of a rider's ability to get his horse to pass through something the animal judged to be too small.
But the mare would follow wherever Kero led; such was her training and breeding, and the trust they had built together. Kero had to pull the packs off and pitch them into drifts beside the gate to get her through, but the mare gave no trouble with squeezing through the gate, even though the saddle scraped on the stockade walls on either side of her.
The counter-weighted gate swung shut behind her horse's tail, and the lock clicked. Hellsbane flicked her ears at the sound and whickered nervously.
Kero pulled the packs out of the snow and swung them back up behind the saddle, fastening them as best she could to the lean packs that were already there.
She mounted as soon as the packs were in place; every heartbeat counted at this point. I had no idea they were so close behind me, she thought worriedly. I know we didn't make the best time, because we had to keep backtracking to avoid the towns—and I know Hellsbane wasn't in the best shape, either, but I thought we were farther ahead of them than that.
There was another possibility as well. If Ardana had wanted her badly enough to mount up the freshest horses and the best riders in the Company to go after her, with enough money to permit them to change horses at every posting-house, they could have caught up with her quite easily. And that made getting to a town with a strong representation of the Mercenary's Guild all the more important.
Even if it meant riding all night.
It had meant more than riding all night, it had meant riding past dawn. Kero had never known a person could be so tired, so deep-down exhausted, and still be standing. She stifled a yawn as she recited her story for the third time before the representatives of the Guild.
Each time, she had faced a different set of people. The first time was right after she'd come through the city gates. She wanted bed and food, but with Ardana's flunkies out there looking for her, she knew she didn't dare stop for either.
She'd breathed a whole lot easier after she passed the door of the Guild, a sturdy stone edifice that didn't look a great deal different from the Guildhall of any other Guild. Once inside, she asked for directions to the Arbitrators. She had been sent up a flight of worn wooden stairs to a tiny office, where she'd told a shortened version to a stone-faced secretary of some kind.
He gave her a chair when she'd finished, and went off somewhere. When he came back, his stonelike demeanor had thawed a little, and he took her to another office. That was where she had told the story a second time, to a much friendlier and sympathetic official—one who seemed to strive to make her feel comfortable, and to convince her that she could trust him. She did—but mostly because she was convinced she was in the right, and she was only trying to protect herself and her standing within the Guild. She could see how someone with a falsified tale could easily get himself in deep trouble with this man; he had asked many careful questions, all designed to make her incriminate herself or uncover flaws in her story that would reveal it to be a fabrication.
That had taken the better part of the morning, and she was dizzy with fatigue when he was finished with her. She didn't try to touch his thoughts, but she had a very real sense that everything he said was part of a carefully prepared script, and that he wasn't about to deviate from it except in the most extreme circumstances.
She couldn't help but wonder how many cases the Arbitrators saw that never got beyond this man. Probably quite a few, judging by his reactions to her. Although he didn't actually say anything that (probably) fell outside his prepared speeches, she got the distinct impression that he was warming to her—outside of the "hail-fellow-well-met" facade he presented.
Once again she was sent off to wait, this time in a little room with three other people, all as silent as she, and two of them looking considerably more harried. The third was black and blue, with splints on one arm. She got the feeling that this man was desperate, under the fog of his pain-killers. If the Arbitrators denied him his perceived justice, he might well do something, something excessive.
He was the first called, and she didn't see him again. Evidently, petitioners did not leave by the same door they came in, because the other petitioner was called a few moments later, and when Kero was summoned into the room, there was no sign of either of them.
She found herself in a large, well-lit, barren room, empty of everything except a long table with three chairs behind it. In those chairs sat the Arbitrators, two men and a woman, all three of them the very image of the perfect soldier. All three sat as erect as if this was a parade ground, all three wore identical long-sleeved tunics of brown leather, and all three wore their graying hair close-cropped.
This third and final time she recited her entire story to the panel of three Guild Arbitrators, who all remained as impassive and unemotional as statues. She thought that was probably a good sign. This town of Selina was completely outside Ardana's immediate reach, and had a strong town council of its own. And the administrative branch of the Guild here was well known for fair play. Their completely impartial attitudes let her know they would be weighing not only everything she said, but how she said it.
By now she was exhausted, and she greatly envied Hellsbane, safely and warmly installed in the Guild stables, fed and groomed and probably now asleep.
She tried to tell things simply and clearly, with as little emotional weight as possible; tried to act as impassive and neutral as her judges seemed to be. But she heard herself slurring words as if she was drunk; and so she was, but with weariness, not wine.
It wasn't hard to sound impassive after all. As she did her best to make sure she kept all her facts straight, she discovered that right at this moment she didn't care much about anything; all she was really aware of was her acute need to sleep and the hollow emptiness of her stomach. Too late, she thought perhaps that her approach was all wrong; maybe she should have been passionate and full of righteous anger—maybe
she wasn't convincing them. Maybe they read her stoicism as the facade of someone who was making everything up.
But it was too late to change now, and besides, she was too tired. It was all she could do to keep her narrative clear, and answer their questions with some semblance of intelligence.
Finally she came to the end of her story, and the Arbitrators came to the end of their questions.
They sent her out through a second door on the opposite side of the room, where she found a small chamber identical to the one she'd waited in before her "audience."
It was a tiny, windowless box of a room, stuffy, and airless. There were three chairs, all empty, all equally uncomfortable, which was just as well. She wouldn't have been able to resist the implied comfort of a padded chair, and once settled into something like that, she'd have fallen asleep for certain.
She took her seat to await their decision in the middle of the three chairs, a high-backed, unyielding piece, so tired that only the deep ache of hunger kept her awake.
That, and the fact that her imagination began to run wild. Being alone like this, with nothing to think about except her performance and possible fate, only made her worry more.
What if they don't believe a word I said? What if they think I'm lying? There had been no way to tell what they were thinking while she was talking; if they hadn't been breathing occasionally, she would nave taken them for corpses. But what possible motive could I have for lying? Ambition? I was promoted under Ardana. Revenge? She never did anything to me directly. But that might not make any difference. People had mutinied against their leaders with no apparent reason before this. She worried the fear until the edges were frayed, but she couldn't dismiss it. It seemed to be taking forever for the Arbitrators to make their decision.
She got up and paced the floor, hands clasped tightly behind her back, trying to walk softly, but unable to keep her boots quiet against the hard wooden floor. What if Ardana's flunkies went here first, instead of the winter quarters? What if they told Ardana's version, and the Arbitrators believe her?
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