"Well, Majesty—" Lord Orthallen began.
But he was interrupted.
"Dammit, I will see Her Majesty!" snapped a querulous, aged, female voice that he knew and had not expected to hear. And a moment later, the owner of that voice, someone he knew—as well as he knew himself—
—pushed her way in past everyone.
He should know Herald Laika, though he'd last seen her just before she left to infiltrate the Tedrels in her guise of an old washerwoman. After all, he'd helped form half of the "memories" that now made her what she was.
:And given that fact, you shouldn't be surprised that she's as stubborn as a mule and as intractable as a goat,: Kantor put in, as she bullied her way right past the Lord Marshal, made a pretense at a courtly curtsy, then stood glaring at Selenay with her hands on her hips.
Selenay stared at her blankly and without recognition; well, she wouldn't recognize Laika, though she might know the name, for as far as Alberich knew, neither she nor Caryo would have seen Laika before.
"Herald Laika, Majesty," Alberich said carefully. "One of our four Herald-agents, behind Tedrel lines, she was. Within the camp; infiltrated, was she, as a washerwoman. And very valuable."
"Damn right," the old woman grunted. "And that's why I'm here. I want to know what the hell you're going to do about the children?"
Selenay blinked. "I beg your pardon, Herald Laika, but we do already have people—Healers and others—out trying to find the children whose parents were killed by the Tedrel cav—"
"Not those children!" Laika exclaimed. "Not the children of Valdemar! I'm talking about the Tedrel children! What are you going to do about the Tedrel children?"
18
"What Tedrel children?" Selenay asked, blankly.
Alberich was going to explain, but Laika saved him the effort. "This wasn't just a mercenary company, this was a nation," she said, with the irritation of a teacher whose student hasn't studied her subject sufficiently. "Granted, they'd made a vow never to wed or have families until they had a land of their own again, but that sure as hellfires didn't stop them from breeding."
Selenay's eyes widened, and her mouth made a silent, "oh" shape.
"What's more, they used to pick up every stray boy-chick they could get their hands on and throw him in with the rest!" Laika continued. "Not to mention the ones they kidnapped, not a few of 'em from our own people. They didn't have much use for girls until they were of breeding age, but boys—oh, my, yes! That's why they were taking such pains to keep our littles alive, so they could turn them into Tedrels. Now you've got a camp full of orphans and other youngsters over there that the Karsites are not going to want. You've killed off their fathers and protectors, if they even have mothers, their mothers are probably halfway to Rethwellan by now and might not have waited about for them, and what are you going to do about it?"
"Won't the Karsites just take them?" Selenay asked, looking to Alberich.
"Probably—no," he said, reluctantly. "Karse needs no extra mouths that come not with hands that can work. And—they are heretics, and the children of heretics, and what is more, even their own blood, to the Sunpriests' eyes, they are not—or no longer are—Karsite."
He did not elaborate on what that meant, but there was something very unpleasant stirring in the back of his mind; something like a—protovision. An intimation, not of what would be or what was about to be, but what might be.
A vision of the Fires of Cleansing. And the fuel that fed them.
"I don't want to sound utterly callous and hardhearted, Herald, but—not to put too fine a point upon it, what can we do?" the Lord Marshal asked. "They're on Karsite land, in Karsite hands."
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. "And this stopped Vanyel? This stopped Lavan Firestorm?"
The Lord Marshal wasn't about to back down. "That was in another situation entirely," he retorted. "And if you're referring to the 'Demonsbane' legend, Vanyel was on Hardorn land, not Karsite."
Alberich cleared his throat. "Ah—Herald Laika—a question. Suppose I must, that you have these children been among. Think you, they can be anything but Tedrel?"
"Most of 'em aren't now," she replied, and shook her head. "Some of 'em, in fact, a lot of 'em, are Karsite orphans—some of 'em are camp followers' children. And, dare I repeat myself, some of 'em are ours, grabbed every time they hit Valdemar in the past three years! But like I said, they don't have much use for girls that aren't breeding age, so they don't pay any attention to 'em, and boys aren't useful until they're thirteen and old enough to take into a Tedrel lodge for training, so they're all right up until then. Basically, they're not Tedrel, they're not Karsite, they're not anything, really. When I was in there, they had a lot of the camp followers that were tending to all of them, and most of those were girls out of Rethwellan, Seejay, and Ruvan, with a couple of Karsites. So that's what they've been raised as."
"Raised as nothing, then," Selenay ventured.
"Pretty much. A pretty weird mix, they all speak a kind of Tedrel-pidgin with words from all over. The girls don't ever get taught pure Tedrel tongue; that's a man's mystery. The kiddies have got some little religious cult they've made up on their own that isn't like anything I've ever heard of. Like I said, they aren't Tedrel, they aren't anything." She sighed. "What they are, is dead needy for adult attention. Even an old hag like me, they swarmed over."
"But babies—without mothers—" someone put in doubtfully.
"Babes in arms—" she shrugged. "That little, the Tedrels don't take. The ones born to the camp followers, well, they may be whores, but they're still mothers; the ones that'll bolt, they'll take the children they can manage to carry and run for Rethwellan. That leaves the orphans, or ones whose mothers don't care, and there's a couple hundred, anyway, of an age we could rescue. No more than a thousand...."
Selenay glanced at Alberich, who was thinking furiously. "Karse—I think might be busy—elsewhere—"
Elsewhere hunting down all the escapees on their side of the Border and either conscripting them as bound slaves or making sure no one else ever does—
"—and," he continued, "If the rescue and evacuation were made quickly, might not know it had been entered at all."
"And a thousand children?" Selenay gulped.
"It's not an unmanageable number," the Lord Marshal put in. "It's not as if it would be a thousand captives; most of them couldn't run far."
Laika snorted. "Show 'em food and smiles, and most of 'em won't run at all. And don't forget—some of them are ours. And if word gets out that we left Valdemaran children to starve or hope for the mercy of the Sunpriests...." she let that particular statement sink in without elaborating. "What's more, they aren't more than a day's march inside Karse! When the Tedrels moved this time, they were preparing the full-on invasion, remember. They thought we were going to go over with just a push, and they had everything and everyone set to move straight across the Border."
"Surely not," Lord Orthallen said skeptically. "Surely they were not going to put all of that so close to the battle lines."
Laika smiled grimly. "And what makes you think they were unaware that the moment the fighters left the base camp, the Karsites were likely to grab everything? Believe me, that was the talk all over the camp—everyone wanted to be sure that they didn't get left behind. The last camp they made would be where they left all the non-combatants and the baggage and all. In fact, there was talk about setting it less than a half-day's march from the Border, figuring that the closer it was to Valdemar, the less likely it was that the Karsites would come calling. The campfire glow we saw in the farther sky last night was probably from their full camp, not their battle camp."
"I thought they looked rather too well-rested," murmured the Lord Marshal.
"Then that means we won't have to break the Border so much as—bend it a little," Selenay said speculatively. "I suppose one could consider what is in that camp to be legitimate war loot?"
Now it was the Lord Marshal's tu
rn to smile grimly. "One could, Majesty," the Lord Marshal said, "And in fact, one should. Why, after all, should the Karsites have the benefit of this—war booty—when it is Valdemar that suffered?"
Alberich merely raised an eyebrow. "How can we, calling ourselves civilized, leave children to suffer? And welcome in Karse, they will not be."
Now Selenay looked to the rest of her advisers and commanders. "I—honestly, gentlemen, ladies—I think we should do this. I know we can; I think we should."
"Bringing life out of death?" asked the Chief Healer. "I don't think there is any doubt. Sendar would."
Selenay smiled wanly. "My father would have been at the head of the expedition," she said softly.
That seemed to decide them all, and the prospect of having a positive task to organize also seemed to galvanize them, lifting them somewhat out of the slough of depression that most of the encampment had sunk into.
The mood in the tent suddenly lifted, and even Selenay's voice took on more life than it had held since before the battle.
"We'll need wagons to carry the children, won't we?" she asked, breathlessly. "How many? Where will we get them?"
"We already have them, Majesty," said the Chief Healer, catching fire from her enthusiasm. "We were going to send some of the wounded north—leg injuries, not so serious, but needing some recovery—but they'll gladly wait for a little to save these children! The horses are harnessed right now, the wagons are provisioned, we haven't loaded the wounded yet—why, we can be ready to go on the instant!"
She turned to Alberich. "Would—you—"
"Of course he would!" the Lord Marshal exclaimed. "Great good gods, who else! You used to patrol here, didn't you, man? And you won't be doing without him for more than a day or two—"
"What about us?" Laika interjected. "Oh, good gods, not as leaders, but we know the Karsite language and we came across here to get out, and the children know me, at least."
"Give me a moment, and I'll send a messenger about the wagons," the Chief Healer put in, and they were off with the bit between their teeth. Alberich simply stood there, while all the decisions were made for him. They seemed to accept without question that Alberich should serve as the leader, and that Laika and the other three spies should be in the rescue party, and that it would consist of Heralds, Healers, and wagons. Heralds to act as eyes, ears, and if need be, guards, Healers to soothe the children, and wagons to carry them. The decision to go was made so swiftly that if—as Laika asserted, the camp was no farther than a half-day's march away—Alberich reckoned that they might get there and back by this same time on the morrow.
And it slowly dawned on him that no one, no one at all, even thought about the question of his loyalty. Of course he would lead the rescue; he was the best person for the job. Of course he would bring these children—some of them Karsite—back to Valdemar. And of course he wouldn't even consider taking the opportunity to defect back to his homeland. He was a Herald, wasn't he? Divided loyalties didn't even come into it.
Perhaps there were a few who thought differently, but there always would be. There would have been had he come from Hardorn, or Menmellith, or Rethwellan, or anywhere else other than Valdemar.
Within a candlemark, the whole thing was organized and ready to go, with plenty of volunteers. He hadn't been surprised by the ones among the Heralds or even the Healers, but the fact that the teamsters had lined up to a man had come as a bit of a surprise.
He was a little uneasy about leaving Selenay on her own, though. Still—
She was essentially on her own from the moment her father died. She has trained for this for years, hasn't she? If she couldn't handle the reduced Council now, when there was so little opposition and she was the darling of the army, what would she do back in Haven?
And as for her bodyguards—they were taking their job just as seriously now as they had before the battle. If any true Tedrels had survived, now would be the time for an assassination attempt, for now, whoever still lived had nothing to lose, and such men were the most dangerous of all.
Selenay saw them off, but she kept things brief. "Go safely and swiftly," she said, and impatient to be off, they took her at her word. She didn't linger to watch them rattle across the little stream at the Border either; when he looked back, she was gone.
Not only was he not surprised, he was pleased. It wasn't as if she didn't have more than enough on her hands, for the aftermath of a war generally left both sides in shambles. There were hundreds of decisions to be made, and in the end, only the Queen could make them. Then, when one factored in all of the messages and dispatches arriving from Haven moment by moment, every one of them requiring her attention, he was certain she would be getting very little rest between now and when he returned.
Which might be just as well. It would give her very little time to brood, and might exhaust her enough that she would actually sleep instead of lying awake, staring at the darkness behind her eyelids.
It was a strange sensation, crossing onto the Karsite lands of the hills, where he had once ridden at the head of a troop of Sunsguard. "A close watch keep, for bandits," he warned everyone when they first set out. "Driven away by the battle, they were perhaps—but like vultures, return to feast upon the slain they shall." He had to wonder, though, as they rode through empty valleys, and over hills bare of the usual flocks of sheep and goats, if the Sunsguard had actually sealed off this area. If that was the case, and bandits had fled the coming conflict, they could easily have run right into the Sunsguard. He hoped so. He truly hoped so. Not only because it meant that they would not encounter any trouble going there and back, but because the scum that had fattened on the misery of the shepherds of these hills for so long well deserved to be cut down like the plague rats they were.
It was easy enough to know where to go, despite the fact that there was no road to follow. The marching feet of so many thousands of men had left a road across the landscape, the tough and wiry vegetation hereabouts pounded flat, then into dust. This was a tough country, of scrubby vegetation and endless hilly moors, punctuated (as he used to tell Dethor) by endless rocky hills, yet it had its own beauty. The gorse was in bloom, and the heather, and drifts of purple, white, and yellow spread hazy blotches of color across the face of those hills. The weather elected to smile upon them today—or the Sunlord Himself did—for the sun beamed down upon them, neither too brazenly hot, nor thin and chill, out of a sky whose blue was interrupted only by the occasional white, fluffy cloud like one of those missing sheep. Once or twice, they caught sight of wild goats on the ridges, or heard the bray of an equally wild donkey, but otherwise it was nothing but wind and birdsong.
He had no idea how low his spirits had been in the wake of the battle until they were well away from the battlefield, and he could allow himself to pretend it had never happened. But the clean wind swept through his heart and soul; he was going to a rescue, not a battle, and he felt as if the wind was carrying away his sadness, a little at a time.
And this was home... the breeze felt right, the hills smelled right, they were the right color of gray-green, and the right sort of rocks poked up through the thin soil. He might never see these hills again, so he absorbed the changing landscape, stowing it away in his memory to take out on those nights that would surely come, when he felt himself to be entirely alien in an alien land.
Finally, he had to remind himself to stay alert; this was no pleasure jaunt. Things could still go wrong at any moment. If the Sunsguard wasn't busy picking off former Tedrels, they could be here at any moment....
:This is a handsome land,: Kantor observed, ears pricked forward to catch every sound. :Hard, but handsome.:
:I think so,: he agreed, secretly pleased by Kantor's compliment. :Ah—we'll be coming up to a spring here shortly, if my memory of this area is any good. There aren't a lot of good watering places here; warn the others that we'll be stopping for a moment.:
His memory was good—and interestingly enough, the Tedrels had not made
use of the spring he recalled, for they had to deviate from the track and go over a hill to the east to get to the half-hidden water source. When they did, they found no sign that anyone had been there, and the Tedrels would surely have trampled the bank of the stream that the spring fed, and muddied the basin.
But Alberich was taking no chances. Just to be sure that they hadn't been here and tampered with the water (which would have been entirely like them) he called over one of the Healers.
"Test this, for fouling or poison, can you?" he asked the green-clad woman.
"Hmm." She gave him a sidelong glance, but bent to test the water, taking up a single drop on the end of her finger and touching it to her tongue. "That would have been like those bastards, wouldn't it?" she said absently. "Spoil what's behind them so the Karsites couldn't follow."
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