by Julia Knight
“A medical tent,” she said. “Which would be great, if we could reach it without getting killed.”
“The main army isn’t here yet,” Dom said. “They’ve had messages, to be sure, but Licio and the rest are still on the march. No one here knows what we look like, except a couple of really bad likenesses of you two on a pamphlet.”
She looked at him sideways. “No, and that’s fine for you to say, but I’m really going to stand out, aren’t I? How many blonde women do you see down there? Besides, our clothes are a dead giveaway.”
“Training for assassination also gives you the skills of a sneak thief, don’t you find?”
“I try not to.”
“No, well, needs must, Kass. Look at the messengers. They gallop in, change horses and gallop out. No one looks at them, not closely anyway. They just try to make sure they don’t get run down.”
“So we pretend to be messengers? When Voch can hardly stay on a horse let alone gallop it through a bloody army? Even Cospel, on his pony?”
“It may present a challenge, true. It’s not much of an idea, but it’s the only one I can come up with.” He pulled out his telescope, took a look and then passed it to her.
Campfires dotted the ground, and smaller tents and more makeshift arrangements sprawled everywhere along with more men and women than Kass had ever seen in one place before. Not just soldiers, she now saw, but all kinds of camp-followers as well. Traders were selling weapons, clothes, food. Dogs lurked in the shadows, looking for scraps. A blacksmith had set up a temporary forge over by one rock wall and was doing a roaring trade in sharpening blades, as was a clockworker making repairs to guns. There were more than a few women soldiers, and many more women taking care of other things, cooking and mending clothes and bits of leather armour, tending to the sick and those with minor injuries from the trail. There were even some children scampering about, getting under everyone’s feet.
Over by the big tent at the entrance to the Neck huge lanterns were strung across the ravine, leaving no shadows to hide in. Hard-eyed men stood under the lanterns and glared at anyone crossing an invisible line until they showed a chit.
“It’s a safe bet they’re just as vigilant at the other end,” Dom said. “More so, perhaps, it being the Reyen end.”
They watched closely as a messenger galloped across the invisible line in a cloud of dust and headed straight for the horse picket. Two men leaped to untie a fresh horse, while another ran to get him a canteen of water before he swapped horses and was on his way again less than a minute after he’d arrived.
“They don’t ask for any orders or anything,” Kass said.
“They don’t need to. Did you see the flash on his hat? I noticed it earlier. All the messengers seem to have one.”
Kass twisted the eyeglass to take a closer look at a poster outside the main tent.
“You know what, I think I have an idea. Cospel likes distractions, doesn’t he?”
Only it seemed that suddenly Cospel had gone right off distractions.
“But, miss, they’ll know me.”
“No, they won’t. That leaflet had our pictures not yours. This is Ikaras. As far as they’re concerned you’re not much better than a slave, and who cares what they look like?”
Cospel bridled at that. “Slave! As if. I’m a respectable working man, with respectable employers who pay me and everything. Or I was,” he muttered as an afterthought.
“And you will be again, just as soon as we manage to save the day and restore our reputations. But if we don’t, then you’ll stay being not very respectable at all. Or turn into being dead, if we don’t get out of here. They’ll find us soon enough, and if they do…”
Cospel eyed the horse they’d stolen. Well, hijacked was probably a better term, along with the messenger they’d found on a lonely and less populated part of the tracks that led over the mountain. He glared at them from where he sat tied up and semi-naked, Dom having stripped him of his clothes to give to Cospel.
“Huh,” Cospel said. “Dress up like the enemy. I mean it’s not like they won’t be expecting that, is it? Four people turn up looking just like them leaflets only with different clothes on, that’ll fool them for about half a second, that will. Wouldn’t fool my blind old granny for any longer than that.”
“Ah, but it won’t be four of us. Just you. And your face isn’t on the leaflets.”
He narrowed his eyes in the gathering darkness. “What do you mean, just me? What are you going to be doing, miss, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Waiting for you to make everyone run in the wrong direction, Cospel,” Dom said. “The professional soldiers are all up by the entrance to the Neck; the rest are draftees, farmers and such, who by the look of things have brought plenty of rum with them. They don’t care who rides through the camp, or not much. Once we’re in past the professionals, who will be chasing in entirely the wrong direction thanks to you, we should be able to avoid trouble till we get to the other end, especially as only their officers have horses. But we need to get in first. Hence you, this fine horse and a set of clothes with a messenger’s flash on the hat. A very fine horse, Cospel, all for you.”
Cospel folded his arms and adopted a haughty look. “Don’t hold with horses. A pony was good enough for my da, a pony is good enough for me. Can’t say I put on airs and graces, like. My pony is a good, honest animal, and that horse looks like it’s got mischief in it, you mark my words.”
Kass looked at the horse, a docile chestnut wiffling its lips over the ground as though hoping to find a stray bit of hay. It looked about as far from mischief as possible.
“Will your pony keep you alive when the Ikarans find us? That life-warrior? No. Fancy waiting here until he finds us?” Dom asked. “Exactly. I thought you’d see sense.”
Cospel disappeared behind a rock with the clothes, muttering all the way. While he was busy Kass hunkered down by Vocho.
“Hey, Voch. Time to go, eh? Time to ride to glory and infamy. Can you get on your horse?”
He turned a sour eye in a face dank with sweat on her. “Glory and infamy, my arse. But I’m not staying here for that bastard to find me. Get me up and I’ll stay there.”
Cospel looked the part at least, and Dom had him repeat what to say, had him change it a little to try to get the accent right before he declared he was satisfied.
“One last time then, what are you going to say?”
Cospel glared at him. “Tempting though it would be to say, ‘Hey, you stupid buggers, this is a distraction,’ I’ll wave at the poster on the tent and say”–here he switched to Ikaran and Kass was grateful he was better at it than she was–“‘Back there, on the trail, riding hard this way. Orgull is giving a year’s pay to the man who kills them!’”
“Excellent.”
“I don’t suppose that messenger had a gun on him, did he? Because I’m going to feel a bit naked down there on my own, and I miss that crossbow already. No?” Cospel’s shoulders slumped. “Of course not. If we get out of this alive, miss, I think I’ll be asking for some time off for the good of my nerves.”
“Here,” Kass said, handing over the gun she’d stashed, forgotten, at her waist. “I picked this up but Voch always looks like he’ll pee himself if I look like using it. And if we get out of this alive, I’ll be wanting some time off myself. We’ll meet you in the camp by that black outcrop, all right?”
Cospel went, muttering, “This is never going to bloody work,” under his breath.
Kass didn’t dare admit even to herself that she agreed with him, but it was this or nothing, and they were trapped. She went to help Vocho up onto his horse.
Chapter Twenty-one
Vocho sat hunched in his saddle and stared down through the night at the tents, at the brightly lit picket of horses and the knots of officers. It seemed like for ever before Cospel came down the road like a sack of potatoes bouncing around on the back of his unfamiliar horse. He reached the main tent and began to ham it up go
od and proper, pointing at the poster and gesticulating wildly back up the path.
The only hope they had was that, while there were a few professional soldiers down there, most of the officers had qualified for their posts only according to how much money or influence they had.
Cospel generated quite a fuss–it was a talent of his, one which had stood Vocho in good stead on more than one previous occasion. Officers went to fetch more officers, and they seemed very animated. Some sort of argument erupted, which Cospel seemed to fan quite nicely with the odd comment. Vocho could almost see his twisted grin from here. If they got out of this, Cospel was getting a day off. Maybe even a pay rise.
The argument descended into blows, with one man, taller than all the rest, picking another up, giving him a good shake and throwing him to the ground. With that he called for a horse and jumped into the saddle, yelling something over his shoulder. A mad scramble for horses followed among the other officers, and the shouts of orders drifted up even to where they waited among the crags. Young boys–runners–scampered to and fro with messages, and the real soldiers camped out in precise lines near the entrance to the Neck were roused. Soon they were up and out, loping up the slope after their officers, leaving only one grizzled officer shaking his head by the main tent and a few to guard the Neck, plus a load of men and women who could just about tell one end of a sword from the other. Most of the horses were gone too.
Cospel looked up their way, then mounted his horse in the suddenly quiet area before the tents. The grizzled officer said something to him, to which Cospel shrugged. He trotted off, just another messenger off to look for a bed for the night.
“Ready?” Dom murmured.
A curt nod from Kass. Vocho sighed inwardly and held on to his saddle horn. He could do this although one arm was numb already and his hands were shaking. He had to stay on, had to ride, because if he didn’t he was dead. “As I’ll ever be.”
Dom led, and Kass brought up the rear without a word, ready to help Vocho. He felt every jolt as his horse scrambled down the dark hill after Dom. Every step was a shock to his back, a stab in his lungs, so that before long breathing was all he could think about, the fire of it. He couldn’t be sure how long they’d been going, or even where they were, when Kass brought her horse up next to his. “Fine,” he assured her, though that was gasped out of a raw throat. “I’m fine.”
A loud bang close by startled his horse into a shy, jerked his hands from the saddle horn and almost saw him off onto the rocks. Another bang, and it was only then that he realised what they were–guns going off. His horse recovered and sped up, trying to catch Dom’s horse with no urging from him. More bangs. His horse shied again at something in front–a man, he saw at the last moment, wielding a sword. The horse half-reared and spun in the dark, disorienting him. The man was still there, only on his right side now, the sword already coming for him. He could barely feel his hand as it reflexively grabbed for his own blade, pulled it out smooth as silk and parried on instinct. Then he was past, but other men stood ahead and to the side. Speed was the only way. There was no other path through this camp but hell for leather and hope for the best, trust to luck and put enough distance between them and any horses left at the picket.
Something slashed at his leg, cut through his breeches but not deeply, no more than a scratch compared to everything else. He gave the horse a kick and they shot forward, knocking men aside, the horse screaming as something caught at it, but not enough to stop its wild gallop. He kicked again, bent as low as he could over its neck, as another volley of shots came, further back now.
Then they were free, clear of men, the shots rapidly fading into the distance. Past the strangling pass of the Neck, the vista of Reyes before him, laid out below like a blanket. The lights of little villages, a faint glow on the far horizon that would be Reyes itself. He kept going, down one of the several paths that would take him back to where he wanted to be and didn’t want to be. Back home.
It was only then that it came to him. In the rush, the confusion, the white haze of his pain-filled vision, he’d not seen, not noticed; he’d been too busy just living. Kass wasn’t beside him, Dom was nowhere to be seen, even Cospel was conspicuous by his absence.
He was on his own.
A whirlwind surrounded Kass–of people, of swords, men shouting, women yelling, children screaming in the chaos.
The plan had worked well enough, up to a point. They were careering through the haphazard tents of the camp, not caring whose dinner they trampled or whose laundry got stamped into the dust. Dom and Voch were right behind her, following the path her horse made with teeth and feet, speed and sheer terrifying weight. Once they’d passed the line of lanterns, where soldiers had fired shots at them and scrambled for the few horses left, it had been easier. They entered a darker area, one with few campfires, and she took a moment to pull up her horse and take stock. Dom brought his own horse to a hard-breathing halt beside her.
“Where in hells is Voch?” she asked after a moment, breathing hard herself. “And Cospel? He should be here too.”
Dom shook his head, and then they had to move on as a gaggle of soldiers came around a tent. A bullet winged its way past. Where was Voch? She wrenched her horse round but couldn’t see him anywhere, Cospel neither. They had to keep moving, and she could only hope they’d find them both. It was darker here, which helped and hindered. The Ikarans couldn’t see them except perhaps in flashes, but they couldn’t see their way, couldn’t avoid holes to break a horse’s leg, or guylines to trip them.
Kass bent low over her horse and urged it on anyway –there was nothing else for it, because death surely lay behind. The beast took the dare of the touch of her heels and flew, seeming always to know where not to tread, Dom’s own horse half a pace behind so that she could feel its ragged breath on her leg. And always, always she was thinking, where’s Voch?
Her horse jinked left, almost spilling her from the saddle with it, a half-second before another bang signalled a bullet. Ahead a body of men arranged themselves into a crude line. Not professionals, but they didn’t need to be.
With them stood the life-warrior who’d found them in the woods, his disfigured face flickering in the light of torches lit from the campfires. Something so implacable about his face, it gave her the shivers. The worst had happened already, his eyes said. A heavy palla blade hung in his hand, loose and ready. Her horse baulked at the sight of the line, but being the stubborn bastard it was–and her sort of horse–for only a moment, and then snorted and went on. The bloody-minded thing was smarter than she was because it headed for two young men who look scared out of their wits.
She had her sword out, ready to cut down anyone who got in her way; Dom beside her let out a cry and waved his own sword over his head. The line held for a second before the man on the right broke and ran, the rest scattering in the face of a snapping set of teeth and a ton or so of horses bearing down on them at high speed. All except the life-warrior, who came for her as silently as before, heading her off. He dodged a vengeful hoof and brought the heavy blade around for the horse’s leg, hoping to dismount her and take away her best advantage. Kacha’s desperate kick made her horse leap forward and avoid the worst of the blow, but blade struck flesh along its flank. Her horse screamed and turned to bare its teeth at this new threat. One it had no hope of beating.
Neither did she.
They were past the wall of men now, which had fallen away in confusion, and into a clearer area. She turned the horse as well as she could, peering into the darkness to see where the life-warrior was, where he was coming from. A sudden bright light blinded her, some sort of shuttered lantern shining right in her eyes. The horse came to a juddering halt, favouring one leg and shaking its head at the invisible threat. Blades clashed, Dom shouted something, a dying horse screamed and the lantern went out, leaving her in darkness. The sounds of blades again, the lantern coming back on–it hadn’t gone out, only the shutter had come down–to sear her eyes with
brightness. She slid down from the horse, wary and keeping its comforting bulk at her back, just as the lantern turned away and let her see.
Not much though–a glint here and there, a movement in its beam too quick to pin down before it was gone, the shadow of a sword that flickered out and back. Dom’s face, there and gone into the darkness. The light shuttered off and on again four paces to her left, catching Dom unaware and showing the life-warrior right in front of her. She slashed on instinct, but he whirled to block her, numbing her arm with the force of it and knocking her back into the horse. She caught a glimpse of a face dead except for a grim glint, and then the shutter came down and they were in darkness again.
The soft scuff of boots on stone, but whose? Other sounds, the not-soldiers gathering their courage and moving back in, another set of hooves behind her and a whispered “Miss?” that could only be Cospel. The sigh of a slim blade in front of her aiming for something vital, and a strange sucking sound, a gasp, the clang of that blade hitting the ground. Dom–what the hells had he done to Dom?
The light came on further away as the life-warrior retreated, but he’d left Dom on his knees. She ran forward, pulling him up as she looked at the hesitant mob in the unsteady light, which was gathering the courage to come on under the exhortations of a man who sounded a natural-born sergeant.
Dom came to his feet, oddly ungainly for a man who seemed made of grace. She cast around, looking for the life-warrior, the hint of a heavy blade coming for her back, but there was nothing except Dom’s horse, dead at his feet. Nothing ahead either, except Cospel looking worried and the end of the Neck, the lights of Reyes far away down on the plain. And somewhere in all that, Voch, only barely able to sit his horse. She had to hope he’d managed to get through, that they’d find him before anyone else did.
