Between the daily breakdown and then pitching of camp, the slow pace of the footmen and the lack of anyone driving them to move faster, Idgen Marte figured they covered about half as much distance in a day as they should, and it had been three days since they’d left Standing Guard.
Finally she drew herself to a fire, where the younger Naswyn, Lord Harding, and a gaggle of favored knights and armsmen were drinking wine and boasting to one another, while they didn’t listen to Andus Carek strum artfully upon his lute. She didn’t recognize the song; only belatedly did she realize that it wasn’t a song, as such, just an unobtrusive and endless series of runs and trills, not too high an octave, not too loud. Designed not to catch the ear, his playing didn’t interrupt conversation or draw their attention to him, just provided a light underpinning to their chat.
Though she wasn’t much more than a shadow on the edges of the firelight, she felt his eyes drawn to her. Perhaps he had learned, with time, to recognize when a shadow moved unnaturally.
Don’t be an idiot, she told herself.
“Where’s the Baron,” she heard one of the carousers call.
“With a doxy,” some rough voice called back, “showin’ her why Oyrwyn girls are bowlegged.”
“No, he isn’t,” called another voice. “Not yet. He’s talking strategy with the great lords.”
There was a general ruffle of laughter, but not a chorus of it.
She wandered away from the fire. Perhaps inevitably, her feet were drawn to that huge silken pavilion at the center of the camp.
Two mailed, surcoated guardsman stood at the entrance, staring ahead, shields at the ready, hands on the hilts of belted swords. They were creditably ignoring the chatter coming from within.
Idgen Marte turned as if to leave when she heard the sudden outbreak of laughter. She listened hard.
“That’ll show the lot of them,” a voice said. “Soft-headed idiots following a traitor.”
Her fingers curled around the hilt of her sword. She took a step to the back of the pavilion, crouched in the shadows there.
A lamp hung from the pole in the center of it. Gilrayan and Joeglan stood over a table, peering down at its surface. The curled edges of a map fell over its sides. She wasn’t close enough to read it, but she could see a few wooden blocks positioned atop it.
“All we have to do is take our time,” Gilrayan said. “If we arrive at the field and find that the Braechsworn have smashed them, we simply pledge our allegiance to Braech if we can, stop them with the combined might of all Oyrwyn if we cannot. If we find that the traitor has won, then we simply fall upon him with the strength we have gathered. Provided conditions favor it.”
Idgen Marte decided to risk a step closer. The amount of furniture scattered around—an armorer’s dummy, a sword rack, two trunks of clothes, two folding tables, a washstand with basin—gave her plenty of shadows to slip into.
“And if they do not? If Varshyne surprises us all with something resembling an army? If peasants flock to the Sunburst?” Joeglan Naswyn’s voice was a distant rumble in the dark. She stood but a decent lunge away from them both, in the shadows cast by the tent’s cot. “The other Barons will well remember that you made a promise and did not live up to it.”
“Nonsense. If we are late it was because I was making sure that Oyrwyn, as Varshyne’s closest neighbor, could bring enough strength to bear to make the difference.”
“What do we make of the reports coming in from the lords and levies that say they will not meet their spring obligations?”
“They always complain. They’ll come clean in the end or we’ll squeeze it from them.”
“If there are no horses to squeeze out of Coldbourne, m’lord, there are no horses.”
“Is that what the reports say, then?” There was a shuffling of papers on the desk. “Then why do Harding’s light horse, screening our backtrail, tell me that a sizable number of horses are being gathered at an old Harlach guard tower inside Coldbourne’s demesne?”
Shit. Idgen Marte’s first thought was to draw her sword, paint the inside of the tent in Oyrwyn and Naswyn blood, and then go about her night. But then this column will be a leaderless mob, and there’s no telling what would come of that.
“I’d say we send a party to investigate. I will lead them,” Naswyn said, only to be cut off by a waving hand.
“Send Harding. I need you here.” He paused. “Let’s give him a fistful of warrants in case anyone who matters needs killing.”
The casual way he said that almost ended Gilrayan Oyrwyn’s life. In case anyone who matters needs killing. Idgen Marte’s hand tightened on her sword, but she leapt away to the back of the tent, soundlessly, as Naswyn came to the bedside table and pulled a stack of fresh parchment.
“It is Coldbourne itself that has turned away most requests,” Naswyn warned. “Are you sure you wish to issue warrants there?”
“We’ll put the sister’s name on one. Garth will forgive me, especially if he keeps the fief. Wives are more easily replaced than holdings.”
Goddess, he is as awful as Allystaire said he was. Her hand was white-knuckled on her hilt. The first handspan of blade was clear.
Letting it slide carefully back into the sheath was the hardest thing Idgen Marte had done in many a month.
She glided to the back of the tent with silent steps, then went from shadow inside of it to the shadow outside.
* * *
Idgen Marte slipped into the tent she and Andus Carek shared. He was laying atop the bedding spread on the ground, wearing only his pants, arms behind his head, feet crossed at the ankles, asleep.
Even his breathing sounded musical, somehow, a faint trill of notes.
She shook her head to drive away the sentimental rot that threatened to rise up and seize her. She placed a hand on his chest; he awoke instantly, half sitting up.
“Andus,” she murmured, adopting their native Concordat tongue. “We have to go. Tonight. Pack up. I’ll see t’your horse.”
“Why?”
“The Baron is useless. He’ll offer no aid to Allystaire. He means to gather all his men, his entire host, and take advantage of whatever greets him on the field once he’s good and ready. I can do no more good here aside from killing him.”
“Then do it.”
“We’re inside an Oyrwyn host that’s only going to get stronger. We’re not up to it. Listen, you’re headed north. I’ll take you to the trailhead. From there, you follow it till you come to an old border fort. Shouldn’t be hard for an old road-hand like you. You may have to ride hard for a day. Wait there. It’s t’be a meeting place for Harlach men who’ll need remounts.”
He sat up, nodding slowly. She started to pull away, but he caught her hand and held it against the bare skin of his chest. She felt the steady drum of his heart for just a moment.
“You’d best not disappear on me before the battles,” he murmured, his voice as honeyed and smooth as hers wasn’t. “I’ve got songs of you to write still. And songs for you.” He paused a moment, his chest rising with a breath as he added, “Marte.”
She stiffened, startled at the presumption of intimacy. “No one has been that familiar to me in more years than I care to count,” she murmured, uncertain.
In the darkness, she could still see the maddeningly perfect smile he unleashed at her, knowing full well what it did, and said, “I only followed your lead.”
She remembered with a jolt, mere moments ago. Waking him with his single name. She took a deep breath and lowered her eyes from his.
He leaned forward and pressed his head to hers for a moment, just a moment. “So many songs I’ve yet to sing for you, Marte,” he murmured, his lips moving almost against her ear.
Her finger stroked his chest once, then she pulled her hand away. “Then take care of your voice, Andus.”
She fled the tent f
or the picket line. It was the work of a skilled child to unhobble his horse, find his tack, and lead the animal away in silence.
She found him just outside the camp, dressed warmly, lute case on his back, dagger on his belt. She knew there was one more up his sleeve, and what’s more, she knew that the edge of the cloak he wore gathered over one shoulder was lined with lead, making it a heavy—and perfectly hidden—cosh.
They didn’t speak as she led him onward. At the trailhead, Andus Carek pulled up onto the saddle, then his hand reached out and Idgen Marte’s slid snugly into it. Lutist’s callus met swordswoman’s, and yet she did not find the grip at all unpleasant.
“Come back to me,” she rasped, hating the way her native tongue sounded in her mangled voice.
“Where else would the road lead me?”
“Home is the road,” she murmured, the old minstrel’s phrase forming on her lips before she thought on it.
“And its next bend will surely lead me there,” he replied, then he clicked his tongue, setting his horse walking north.
Idgen Marte watched it disappear into the wooded track, then took her time returning to the camp.
* * *
Allystaire greeted the sun already armored. He’d slept for a few turns at most, and hadn’t wasted any time since waking in the just lightening dark before the dawn. He had left his bag of gemmary on the counter of the bar in the taproom, scribbled a note hastily on a scrap of parchment, carefully packed his maps in watertight leather cases in his saddlebags. Now with those same bags tossed over his shoulder he was heading for the stables.
A stick-thin figure wrapped in rags awaited his approach. Even from afar Allystaire could see the fevered eyes, huge above cheeks rubbed so raw by wind and cold that the skin was cracked and peeling away.
“Rede,” Allystaire said, taking in the sight of the man. “Have you been sheltered, man? Have you been fed?”
As if he hadn’t even heard the question, the priest stumbled towards him, reaching out to grasp Allystaire’s armored shoulders. “I must accompany you north,” he mumbled. “I must. If I don’t, disaster. Hosts of wind and air. The awful roaring rage. I must,” he pleaded, his hands clutching Allystaire’s vambraces with desperate strength.
“It is going to be perilous, Rede,” Allystaire said, “and I will be in the midst of the fighting. I will not be able to protect you.”
“Don’t need you to watch over me,” Rede said, his eyes going distant. “You need me to see the things you cannot.”
With that, he slumped forward against Allystaire, his eyes rolling back in his head. The exhalation of his breath smelled like rot when Allystaire caught him, and he weighed far too little for a man of his height.
For a moment, Allystaire hadn’t any idea what to do. He stood there holding Rede’s limp form, weighing whether to heal him or sling him over his shoulder, when a deep and welcome voice rumbled from behind him.
“I’ll take the charge of him,” Torvul said. “Like as not there’s nothin’ wrong with him can’t be fixed with a loaf of good bread and a jug of small beer.”
Allystaire turned and carefully lowered Rede towards Torvul’s outstretched arms. With surprising gentleness, the dwarf lowered him to the grass and carefully lifted his eyelids with a fingertip, then held that same finger to the side of Rede’s neck.
“How did you know to find me here?” Allystaire knelt as well, watching Rede’s now slumbering form.
“Despite my best efforts, you persist in this early rising nonsense. And besides, I’ve been up all night packing what I’ll need and fitting it to the frame of a packhorse. Can’t bring my home into battle.” He sighed then. “What I wouldn’t give for one of the war wagons our larger caravans roll on behind, ballistae mounted fore and aft and wheels o’finest steel.”
Allystaire snickered, earning a glare from the alchemist. He was reaching his left hand to Rede’s wrist when the man sat bolt upright. Whatever madness had been in his eyes seemed to have cleared, for he looked steadily on, even if his breath remained ragged. He pushed Allystaire’s hand away feebly.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I fear that your healing might drive away whatever gift of foretelling I still have.”
“You were divining?” Allystaire tilted his head. “You seem ill, Rede.”
“No,” he insisted, once again shaking his head. His hair had grown shaggy, unkempt, and matted; this close, he reeked. “I am not ill. I have done what I must do to chase the visions. I will pay you back, Arm. You and the Shadow, and the Voice, and the Mother.”
“What were you divinin’, then, just now?” Torvul muttered.
Rede looked to Allystaire, who said, “Hosts of wind? Roaring rage? You being able to see things I cannot?”
“I can make no sense of them,” Rede said, “but it is not given to me to understand. Only speak. And that is growing harder, receding from me like a tide pulling away from the shore.”
“I don’t like that talk o’tides n’shores,” Torvul muttered. “But hosts of wind? Braech is the Father of Waves, storms, the ocean, wind seems t’me to be a part of that. Perhaps there’s some part o’the host we haven’t seen yet.”
“Rede,” Allystaire said, “I will tell you again because I do not know if you heard me the first time. If you accompany us north, I cannot spare myself, or any other man, to protect you. Not until our forces grow. You will be in danger. There is not going to be a rear element or a distant command post to shelter you.”
“I am no coward,” he protested. “And I will follow you unless you lock me up here, or you kill me. If you did not kill me when I deserved it, you’ll not do it now.”
“I have not the time to debate this further,” Allystaire said, shaking his head. “Follow if you will. Horsed, if one can be found to bear you.”
“I’ll look after him,” Torvul said. “I’m curious to see this puzzle play out. Go on, boy,” he said, waving a hand at Allystaire. “Rouse the troops. Catch the sunlight on yer armor. S’why I made it.”
Allystaire stood and picked up his saddlebags once more, went into the small stables. Ardent was awake and whickered softly as Allystaire came near.
“As eager to be off as I am?”
The stallion raised his tail and flicked it once. Allystaire opened the stall; before he could enter, the destrier brushed past him gently, but Allystaire reflected that gently for a horse of over a hundred-and-fifty stone weight was essentially undeniable.
The enormous grey walked over towards the shelves that held the tack and saddles, stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at Allystaire.
“Well, then,” he said, coming up behind the stallion, making sure to look him in the eye, and running a hand over his densely muscled flank as he walked, “let us get on with it.”
* * *
The people of Thornhurst lined either side of the road leading past the Temple and the wooden palisade they called the North Gate, to watch Sir Allystaire Stillbright lead his horse past them, to begin in earnest his defense against the Braechsworn Crusade.
They did it in silence. There were no cheers, no songs, no hymns of praise sung as he rode past them. The pennant they had made for him months ago, the golden sunburst on a blue field, fluttered at the end of his lance. The sun shown brilliantly on the silver of his armor, the golden sunburst on its cuirass.
As he rode, the Order filtered out of the crowd, leading horses, falling into a line. Like him, they had hard faces and rode in silence. They bristled with weapons: swords, axes, a few lances, bows, flails, spears. They didn’t look like the knightly companions of a paladin in a story, Allystaire reflected. Dressed in oddments of mismatched armor instead of shining plate, they looked more like a band of robbers than knights. Those who carried shields had applied quick and uneven coats of blue paint to their fronts, and none had any other devices.
The Order of the
Arm didn’t look, in a word, knightly.
But from their hard faces and grimly-set mouths, from the hands that gripped their melange of weapons like craftsmen clutching the tools of their trade, to the eyes that betrayed nothing, they seemed practically to radiate devotion. To him, perhaps, for what he’d been able to do in healing them. To the Mother, surely.
Devotion was starting them on a long road north to grapple with a larger enemy of unknown strength, to defend people they’d never know, people who’d likely never know them. There was no gold in it, no titles, and, given their looks, probably no fair folk sighing at the sight of them, either.
There was only, for them, the fact that the task needed to be done, that they were suited to it, and that it would mean others could rest easy.
And that, Allystaire thought as he watched them line up behind him, is precisely what knightly ought to mean.
The youngest of them, a bow cased on his now broadly-muscled back, a spear in his hand, had to carefully pull himself away from the hard embrace of his new wife. Neither of them shed tears. Not tears for anyone else to see, at least.
The crowd was so quiet that many could hear her fiercely whisper, “Come back to me,” as he took his place in the line, and more heard him calmly reply, “Always.”
There were nine of them who led their horses behind him when he reached the Temple. He paused then to look towards the doors, thinking on the altar beyond, the field of graves nearby, the mass grave of those massacred by the reavers, Renard’s. Too many of them.
He turned to take a look at the village then, at the familiar faces gathered to watch him.
“Look at them,” he said to the order lined behind him. “Hold them in your mind as we face the storm. Remember what we are bound to.” He placed his foot into a stirrup and swung himself into the saddle, his armor flashing in the sun. “Any burden,” he called.
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