Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "Them's mean 'uns," he'd said laconically, as he delivered the hobbled, bellowing, head-tossing creatures to the cooks. The smile on his face when he accepted a slice of roast, and the tale her quartermaster told later of putting the cattle down, convinced her that they had done the man a favor.

  The last tent went up, and Geyr, currently in charge of the crew digging the jakes, hove into view from the other side of the camp, and waved his hand. Kero sighed with relief, and dismounted.

  Slowly. She was having a hard time feeling her feet. Hellsbane let out a tremendous sigh as Kero pulled her left foot out of the stirrup and the youngster assigned as the officer's groom came trotting up with his mittened hands tucked up into his armpits. He took the reins shyly from Kero, and led the mare off to the picket lines at a fast walk.

  Kero made her way toward her tent at a slow walk; first of all, it wouldn't do for the troops to see the Captain scurrying for her tent like any green recruit on her first winter campaign. And second, she didn't trust her footing when she couldn't feel anything out of her feet but cold and pain.

  The command tent was easily three times the size of the others, but that was because the troops' tents only had to hold two fighters and their belongings. Hers had to hold the map-table, and take several people standing up inside it, besides. That was the disadvantage of the little dome-shaped tents, and the reason she had a separate packhorse for her own traditional tent.

  Her orderly held the tent flap open just enough for her to squeeze inside without letting too much of the precious heat out. And the first thing she did, once in the privacy of her quarters, was peel her boots off and stick her half-frozen, white feet into the sheepskin slippers he'd left warming beside the brazier for her.

  As life returned to her extremities, she thanked the gods that she had made it through another day on the march without losing something to frostbite.

  "There has to be a way to keep your feet from turning into chunks of ice the moment the wind picks up," she said crossly to her orderly. "It's fine when there's no wind; the horse keeps your feet warm enough—but once there's a wind, you might as well be barefoot."

  Her orderly, a wiry little fellow from the very mountains they'd just crossed, frowned a little. "'Tis them boots, Cap'n," he said solemnly. "'Tis nothin' betwixt the foot an' the wind but a thin bit'a leather. 'Tis not what we do."

  She took an experimental sip of the contents of her wooden mug. It was tea tonight, which was fine. She hadn't had any more of those dreams of Eldan since crossing the Comb, which left her with mixed feelings, indeed, and wine was not what she wanted tonight, even mulled. She didn't want to go all maudlin in her cups, mourning the loss of those illusionary lovemaking sessions.

  Whatever was wrong with me is cured, she though resolutely. I should be thankful. I'm back to being myself. But—come to think of it, Need's been as silent as a stone, she realized, with a moment of alarm. Nothing. Not even a "feel" at the back of my mind. She might just as well be ordinary metal!

  Dear gods, what if she won't Heal me anymore?

  I'll deal with it, that's what. It's too late to turn back now. Think about something else. "Enlighten me, Holard. What do your people do?"

  "Sheepskin boots, Cap'n," he replied promptly, "An' wool socks, double pairs. Only trouble is, 'tis bulky, an' has no heel. We don't use stirrups, ye ken."

  She shook her head. "That won't do, not for us. I guess I'll just have to suffer—"

  At that moment, the guard outside her tent knocked his dagger hilt against the pole supporting the door canopy, and let someone in with a swirl of snow.

  Quenten, and Kero had a feeling she wasn't going to like what he was about to say the moment he came fully into the light from her lantern. He was haggard and nervous, two states she'd never seen Quenten in—and the mages had been conspicuous by their absence since they'd crossed the Comb. There was something up, and whatever it was, it was coming to her now because they couldn't handle it themselves.

  "Captain," said Quenten, and his voice cracked on the second syllable. She waited for him to try again. "Captain," he repeated, with a little more success this time. "We have a problem...."

  Gods. Need, and now the mages?

  "I'd already gathered that, Quenten, since you look like a day-old corpse, and I haven't seen so much as a mage's sleeve for a fortnight. Is it just you, or do all the mages look like you?"

  "All of us," Quenten replied unhappily. "We'd like permission to turn back, Captain. It isn't you, or the Company, or the job. We think it's Valdemar itself. There's something strange going on here, and it's driving us mad."

  He waited for a moment, obviously to see if she believed him. She just nodded. "Go on," she told him, figuring she was about to have her little puzzle of mages and Valdemar solved, at least in part.

  "I remembered what you told me, about how the Heralds seemed surprised by magic, and you never heard of a mage up in Valdemar. I thought maybe it was coincidence or something." His hands twisted the hem of his sleeve nervously. "Well, it isn't. The moment we got across the border, we all felt something."

  "What?" she asked, impatiently. "What is it? If there's something around that's costing me the use of my mages, I want to know about it."

  Quenten ground his teeth in frustration. "I don't know," he said, around a clenched jaw. "I really don't know! It was like there was somebody watching us, all the time. At first, it was just an annoyance; we figured there was just some Talented youngling out there, thinking he could spy on us. But we never caught anybody, and after a while, it started getting on our nerves. It was like having somebody staring, staring right at you, all the time. It goes on day and night, waking and sleeping, and it's like nothing any of us have ever seen or heard of before. We couldn't get rid of it, we couldn't shield against it, and its been getting worse every day. I can't even sleep anymore. Please, Captain, give us permission to go back. We'll wait for you at winter quarters."

  Now if it had been one of the others who asked that of her, with a nebulous story like that, she'd have suspected fakery, slacking, or at least exaggeration. But it was Quenten, as trustworthy as they came, and not prone to exaggerate anything. And he did look awful.

  And if all this was true, even if she kept them, they wouldn't do her any good. You can't take time to aim when you have to keep ducking, and that's obviously the way they feel right now.

  "Are the Healers being affected?" she asked anxiously. "Or is it only you?"

  "The Healers are fine, Captain," Quenten reported, with a certain hangdog expression, as if he felt he was somehow responsible for the mages being singled out.

  Then with luck, Need will still be able to Heal me. And with none, she's still a good sword. Besides, a sword probably wouldn't care about being stared at. "All right," she said unhappily. "You can go. You go back on noncombatant status, though, and we can't spare anyone to get you back home."

  "That's all right," Quenten replied, nearly faint with relief. "Once we're across the border we'll be fine. Thank you, Captain. I think if I'd had to go two more days, I'd have killed someone. We've already had to restrain Arnod twice; he tried to run off into the snow last night with nothing on but a shirt."

  "Oh," Kero replied, wishing that they'd told her about this earlier. Then, it might have been possible to get Quenten to fiddle with Need again, to extend the protections over the mages....

  Then again, maybe not. Need never had protected mages from magic. They were all probably better off this way. And besides, Need was silent. Who knew if she was actually working or not?

  She told her orderly to go with Quenten and see that the quartermaster gave them what supplies he could.

  Something watching you all the time, she thought, bemused, as she settled down to the remains of her dinner. Now that I think of it, that is something that would drive you crazy. Especially if you were already unbalanced. Which mages are, a lot of times, and with good reason.

  No wonder there are no mages in Valdemar. They're e
ither mad, or fled. Clever defense. End of puzzle.

  Except I hope my blade is still working. Things could get sticky if it isn't.

  Halfway to the Valdemar capital of Haven, it seemed that their purpose and reputation had preceded them. People came out of the towns along the way to watch them pass; reservedly friendly, but cautious, as if they didn't quite know what to expect of a mercenary Company. Kero ordered her troopers to respond to positive overtures, but ignore negative ones. And there were negative responses; old men and women who remembered the Tedrel Wars, and had decided that all mercs were like the Tedrels had been. At least once every time they halted, someone would shout an insult (which more than half the troopers couldn't understand anyway), someone else would half-apologize for "granther," and Kero or one of her Lieutenants would carefully explain the difference between Guild and non-Guild mercs. It got to be so much of a commonplace, that the troops began laying bets on who the troublemaker would be the moment they entered a town. Privately, Kero was relieved that the Tedrel Wars had been so very long ago—years tended to bring forgetfulness, especially in the light of this new enemy. It didn't matter so much anymore that the Karsites had hired fighters calling themselves mercenaries—those hired fighters had been just like the Karsites who hired them; they fought with steel like anyone else, and could be killed with that same steel. Ancar had hired mages, about which there were only tales, and every childhood bogeyman came leaping out of the closet to become the adult's worst nightmare.

  So, for the most part, the people of Valdemar came out to see these hired fighters—hired to fight on their side—and came away comforted. These were tough, seasoned veterans, on fast, slim horses like these farmers had never seen before—but they smiled at children, offered bits of candy, and let toddlers ride on a led horse. They had faced mages and won. When someone managed to find a Skybolt who knew either trade-tongue or had a sketchy grasp of Valdemaran, and managed to ask through the medium of painfully slow pantomime about fighting against mages, the answer always surprised the questioner, for it was invariably a shrug, and a reply of, "they die."

  Kero finally reduced it to a few simple sentences she had the officers teach the troops. "Tell them 'mages are human. They bleed if you cut them, die if you strike them right. They need to eat, and they get tired if they work magic for too long. And there are things to stop them and things their magic can't work on—'" And then would follow the list of all the little tricks every Guild merc knew; salt and herbs, holy talismans, disrupting the mage's concentration, spellbreaking by interfering with the components, sneaking up and taking the mage from behind, even overwhelming the mage with a rush of arrows or bodies so that he couldn't counter every one before he was taken down.

  These farmer-folk and tradesmen, crafters and herders, were ordinary people. They'd heard all the old tales, and nothing they heard gave them any confidence that they could do anything to protect themselves. The power of a mage seemed enormous and unstoppable, like a thunderstorm. To be told, by those who had faced them and won, that mages were just another kind of fighter, with weapons that determination could counter, gave the common people courage they hadn't had before, and a new trust in these foreign soldiers.

  All of which was all to the good, so far as Kero was concerned. A friendly civilian populace is the best ally a merc can have; that was one of Tarma's maxims—and Ardana had certainly proved what kind of enemy an unfriendly civilian populace could become, down in Seejay. The Skybolts knew the maxim, and the drill, and even here, where half of them didn't even know the language well enough to ask for the jakes, they were leaving allies on the road behind them.

  This kind of behavior was so ingrained in Kero and her troops that when Heralds Talia and Dirk rode in, about a week out of Haven, Kero was more than a little surprised by the broad grin of approval the latter sported.

  They arrived just after camp had been set up, and Kero was huddling over her brazier. The wind was particularly bitter, and seemed to find every weak point in the tent; the walls alternately flapped and belled, and Kero was hoping to get her cold bones into her bed where she at least had a chance of getting them warm. She'd been expecting the arrival of an escort at any point, so when a runner brought her word of the Heralds' arrival, she grumbled a little, threw a little more charcoal on the brazier, kicked loose belongings under the cot, and went back to trying to soak up a bit more heat until her orderly brought them to the tent, both of them muffled up in thick white cloaks, like walking snowdrifts.

  But when they entered and Kero invited them to join her in hot tea, Dirk's open friendliness came as something of a shock. Back in Rethwellan both the Heralds had been close-mouthed, but Dirk had been practically mute, with an overtone of suspicion. Now he acted like she was a long-lost cousin, his homely face made handsome by his genuine smile.

  Now what on earth caused that? she wondered. They made some small talk, and as soon as the tea arrived, Kero asked, cautiously, "So, now that we're within a week of Haven, how do your Queen and her Lord Marshal feel about our arrival? Is there anything we should expect?"

  Dirk laughed, and shook his head. "If you're expecting a cool reception, you aren't going to get it, Captain. You and your Skybolts have handled yourselves exceptionally well on the march up; she's very pleased with your diplomacy and restraint and—"

  "Diplomacy?" Kero said, too annoyed to be polite. "Restraint? What did she think we were going to do, ride down little children, rape the sheep, and wreck the taverns?"

  "Well—" Dirk looked embarrassed.

  That's exactly what they expected. Which we knew, really. "Herald, we are professionals," she said tiredly. "We fight for a living. This does not make us animals. In fact, on the whole, I think you'll find that my troopers, male and female, are less likely to cause trouble in a town than your average lot of spoiled-rotten highborn brats."

  Dirk flushed, a deep crimson. "All we have to go on are stories—"

  "Yes, well, you should hear some of the stories down south about Shin'a'in in warsteeds, or Heralds. The latter are demons and the former are basically ugly Companions," she said, mustering up a frank smile. "Now, one man's demon is another man's angel, and since the lads calling you lot 'demonic' were thieves and scum that would rather do anything than work, I'll withhold my judgment on that. But I ride a warsteed, and while she's a very intelligent beast, specially bred for what she does, she's nothing like a Companion. So—"

  "So we shouldn't have been so quick to give credence to stories," Talia chuckled, bending a little closer to the fire. "A well-deserved rebuke. But I have to tell you, Captain, that I think we were rightfully surprised at the way you've made friends for yourselves coming up the road. We were expecting to have to do a lot of calming of nerves on your behalf; our people aren't used to the concept of mercenaries, and what they know about them is mostly bad. But you've done all our work for us."

  Kero shrugged, secretly pleased, and put another scoop of charcoal on the fire. "Well, one of my Clanmother's Shin'a'in sayings is, 'A slighted friend is more dangerous than an enemy.' We try to operate by that in friendly territory, and really, it isn't that hard unless the people really have a bad attitude toward mercs in general. In fact, there was only one problem I had—and it seems to be in the family tradition—"

  "Oh?" Dirk said, he and Talia both looking puzzled.

  She sighed. "All their lives, my grandmother and her she'enedra were plagued by the songs of a particular minstrel. The things he told about them were half-true at best, and led to all kinds of problems about what people expected from them. Well, when I was young and foolish and very full of—myself—someone wrote a song about me. It's called 'Kerowyn's Ride,' and to my utter disgust, it seems to have penetrated language barriers."

  Dirk looked as if he was having a hard time keeping from laughing. So did Talia. "I know the song," the woman said, her face full of mirth. "In fact, I've sung it."

  "I was afraid of that. Do I dare hope no one in your Court knows it's about
me?"

  Talia smiled. "As far as I know, they don't. But it's a very popular song."

  Kerowyn sipped her tea, wondering for a moment if there was anyone in the world who hadn't heard the song. "My troopers are ridiculously proud of that, and I can't get them to stop telling people that I'm that Kerowyn. And as soon as your villagers would find that out, I'd wind up having to listen to whatever unholy rendition of it someone had come up with in this village. And I don't even like most music," she concluded plaintively.

  Dirk was red-faced with the effort of holding in laughter. Kero glowered at him, but that only seemed to make it worse. "You should have had to sit through some of those performances," she growled. "The Revenie Temple children's choir, the oldest fart in Thornton accompanying himself on hurdy-gurdy, a pair of religious sopranos who seemed to think the thing was a dialogue between the Crone and the Maiden—and at least a dozen would-be Bards with out-of-tune harps. Minstrels. I'd like to strangle the entire breed."

  That did it; Dirk couldn't restrain himself any longer. He excused himself in a choking voice, and fled outside. Once there, his bellows of laughter were just as clear as they would have been if he'd been inside the tent's four walls.

  "Oh, well," Kero said with resignation. "At least he didn't laugh in my face."

  Talia was a little better at controlling herself. "I can see where it would get tiresome, especially if you don't care for music."

  "I don't like vocal music," Kero explained forlornly. "And the reason I don't like it is because every damn fool that can tell one note from another thinks he rates right up there with Master Bards. I have perfect pitch, Herald—nothing else, I certainly am no performer—but I do have perfect pitch, and my relative pitch is just as good. Out-of-tune amateurs make my skin crawl, like fingernails on slate. And it's no great benefit to have had a song written about you, either—just you wait, one of these days it'll happen to you, and then that tall fellow out there won't find it so funny to hear it every night for a fortnight straight, and only once in all that time will it be sung well."