“You have lately seen battle?” said Gray, to distract him.
“Not battle, exactly,” said Morvand, ducking his head. “A skirmish, involving weapons and magework, which both sides afterwards regretted. Near Klison, on the Sèvre.”
Now that they were out in the open, crossing the central square of the encampment (and drawing not a few curious stares), Gray saw that in addition to whatever injury might be concealed beneath the eye-patch, his companion walked with a pronounced limp, and he slowed his own long stride to compensate.
“You were wounded there?”
“I was.” Mr. Morvand shrugged, as best he could manage with a valise under either arm. “Lord Mithras smiled upon me; some others were not so fortunate. The healers did their best with what remained; I am of less use in the field now, but the Colonel knew my father, and has been kind enough to give me useful employment as his aide-de-camp.”
Gray caught back, just in time, the words I am sure you are very useful to him, which (though true) must have been unbearably condescending.
“These night-scouts,” he said instead, “what sort of men are they?”
“They are men of Breizh, as I am,” said Mr. Morvand, rather stiffly—as though his name and his manner of speech had not declared as much already. He turned his head minutely to glance up at Gray, then turned his one eye back to the way ahead. The camp—like Colonel Dubois’s tent—was excruciatingly tidy, the tents arrayed in precise rows, the cookfires distributed with mathematical exactitude. Over all of it drifted the smells of smoke and, faintly, of horses.
“My wife is Breizhek-born,” said Gray, slipping easily from Français into Brezhoneg. He watched his companion sidelong, in his turn, as he added, “That country breeds brave spirits, in my experience.”
Mr. Morvand’s shoulders straightened minutely, and his chin lifted a little. Did he truly think I should suspect him of something, only because he is a man of Breizh?
“Mr. Ollivier and Mr. Lécuyer,” said Mr. Morvand, “are perhaps rather reckless than brave. Though not so reckless as the day-scouts, for at least they make their sorties under cover of darkness. Ollivier is a barn-owl, and Lécuyer—some other sort of owl, a brown one, but I cannot say which.”
So that is what the Colonel meant by his cryptic remarks about owls.
“They are shape-shifters, then?” Gray inquired. “Are all the scouts . . . ?”
Mr. Morvand waited some moments for an end to this question before supplying his own: “Are all of them shape-shifters, do you mean, sir? Or owls?”
Gray himself was not perfectly sure which he had meant. “Shape-shifters,” he decided. “How many are there here in your camp?”
“Four scouts to each company, sir,” said Mr. Morvand promptly, “and we have only four companies of the regiment here at present.”
“Sixteen shape-shifters!” Gray could not imagine such a thing; he had not met more than three others in the whole course of his life.
“Oh, no, sir,” said Morvand, and produced the first genuine smile Gray had seen from him. “Sixteen scouts all told; only those in Captain Tremblay’s company are all shape-shifters, however, and very few of the rest. Most of the mage-officers are in Captain Tremblay’s company, you see, because—Oh, I beg your pardon, sir.”
He halted abruptly, turned on his heel—valises and all—and led Gray back twenty paces or so, to a tent which was exactly like all the others, but for a pair of scarred and pitted fence-posts driven into the ground before the door.
Morvand deposited the valises at his feet and rapped sharply with his knuckles against the nearer of the two posts, calling in Latin, “Hallo the scouts!”
There was a long pause; Gray shifted the heavy trunk in his arms, pondered putting it down, and decided that he had rather not be required to pick it up again. Then the tent-flaps parted, and a stocky young man with a head of auburn curls and a most unmilitary two-days’ beard stumbled halfway out into the sunshine, rubbing one eye with the heel of his free hand. He was very evidently off-duty, clad only in linen drawers and a shirt with neck and cuffs unlaced and gaping.
“Mr. Marshall, may I present Mage-Lieutenant Arzhur Lécuyer of this regiment; Mr. Lécuyer, Mr. Graham Marshall of, er, London.”
Mr. Lécuyer sketched a gesture vaguely reminiscent of a salute; Gray, who had not the least notion of the proper protocol for a civilian greeting an officer so thoroughly out of uniform, made him rather a stiff bow in return.
“The Colonel’s compliments, Mr. Lécuyer,” said Morvand, saluting somewhat less smartly than before, “and Mr. Marshall is to be billeted with you and Mr. Ollivier for the present, and to join you on duty tonight if he so desires. I am to see his kit stowed away and then take him to see Captain Tremblay. The quartermaster’s boys will be round with a bed and so on presently.”
What, Gray wondered, was comprised in the phrase and so on?
Lieutenant Lécuyer blinked up at him, then turned back to Morvand, his eyes narrowing. “Billeted with us, why?” he said, switching into Brezhoneg. “What does he mean, ‘join us on duty’?”
“I believe,” said Gray in the same tongue, concealing a smile, “the Colonel feels that we may prove birds of a feather.”
Mr. Lécuyer gaped at him a moment.
“You speak Brezhoneg,” he said.
“As I have just been telling Mr. Morvand,” said Gray, allowing the smile now, “my wife was born in Breizh. I am from Kernow myself; the tongues are not dissimilar. For example—”
The tent-flap opened again, and another stubbled, bleary-eyed face appeared, twisted into an expression of irritation beneath an uneven fringe of dark hair.
“Ah, Mr. Ollivier,” said Morvand, who appeared to be enjoying himself.
The introductions were repeated—this time in Brezhoneg; Mr. Ollivier emerged from behind the tent-flap, revealing himself to be half a foot taller than his fellow officer and clad only in his uniform breeches, but did not cease to look annoyed.
“What is it to do with us?” he asked Morvand.
Morvand shrugged—this conversation, thought Gray, was growing less martial by the moment—and said, “You may have a burning wish to go aboard your commanding officer, but I have not. The Colonel wishes him billeted with you. I expect he has good reason.”
Lécuyer, who had begun to look more alert, narrowed his eyes at Gray. “What did you mean, ‘birds of a feather’?” he said.
* * *
With Morvand’s help Gray bestowed his gear in a corner of Ollivier and Lécuyer’s tent—less slatternly in appearance than its occupants’ own persons might have suggested, it reminded Gray very strongly of a certain species of undergraduates’ rooms at Merlin—and shifted the two camp beds to make room for a third. Gray eyed the dimensions of these and repressed a sigh; like the cots aboard the Asp and many a bed in the posting-inns where he had lately been sleeping, they were at least a foot shorter than himself. Then, with a brisk Kenavo deoc’h!—Until we meet again—Morvand left the two lieutenants to their own devices, and conducted Gray to the presence of their Captain.
Mage-Captain Tremblay was a lean, dark man of perhaps five-and-thirty, upon whose face life and military service had scored deep lines as well as a single long, thin scar from temple to cheek. Impeccably and immaculately clad, not a hair out of alignment, he was difficult to imagine as the immediate superior of Lécuyer and Ollivier.
Seated behind his camp desk, he frowned at Morvand through the entirety of the Colonel’s compliments and the forms of introduction, then frowned at Gray, and at last said dismissively, “I cannot spare any of my men to nursemaid a civilian attaché.”
Gray counted ten, in Greek, before replying, “I have not the least intention of disrupting your operations, Captain; my charge is to observe the movements of forces in the Duchies on behalf of Lord Kergabet in London, not to interfere in any way with yours. Col
onel Dubois has suggested that I might join your night-scouts on this evening’s patrol—that is, if you have no objection?”
The frown deepened. “Has he, indeed,” said Captain Tremblay. His voice was a deep, irritable rumble. “And why in Hades should he do that, hmm?”
Gray glanced aside at Mr. Morvand, whose rigid, wooden-faced stillness suggested either suppressed terror or suppressed mirth. The mages are nearly all in Captain Tremblay’s company, he had said, and then had begun some sort of explanation which had never been concluded. The most logical conclusion, however, was simply that His Majesty’s army considered it wisest to place mage-officers under the command of one who understood their ways—not to speak of their tricks.
“I should never presume to speak for Colonel Dubois,” he said, “but I expect, sir, that I have been seconded to your company, and to your night-scouts in particular, because my particular talents are well matched with theirs.”
Captain Tremblay, he observed detachedly during the silence that followed, had a face very like an osprey’s.
Then the Captain produced a short, sharp bark of laughter, brought his palm down flat upon his thigh, and said, “An owl-mage, by Jove! I should never have guessed it.”
“Nevertheless, sir,” said Gray mildly.
“Sit,” said Captain Tremblay, waving one hand at a battered camp-stool in the corner. Gray fetched it out, set it before the desk, and, rather doubtfully, folded himself onto it.
“Off with you, Mr. Morvand,” the captain continued. “My duty to the Colonel, that is, and I shall see Mr. Marshall safely returned to his quarters.”
“Sir,” said Morvand, who had been lurking near the door. He produced another of his sharply executed salutes for his superior officer, bowed politely to Gray, and took himself off.
The moment the tent-flap fell behind him, Captain Tremblay tugged at his immaculate neck-cloth, exhaled a gusty sigh, shrugged out of his coat, and relaxed into his chair as though his strings had been cut.
“Le Floc’h!” he called, and in Brezhoneg continued, “Have we any of that claret left?”
A dark-haired young man—very young indeed, and also in his shirt-sleeves—emerged from what Gray now saw must be an interior room of the captain’s tent. “Sir?” he said, in the same language. “Yes, we have, Unc—er, Captain. Will I fetch it?”
Out of the newcomer’s line of sight, Captain Tremblay rolled his eyes. “Yes, Mr. Le Floc’h. The bottle, and two glasses, if you please.” He turned to Gray, and, reverting to Français, said quietly, “My sister’s boy. All manner of talent, alas, and very little in the way of either wits or common sense. I have undertaken for her sake to give him a profession and keep him out of trouble.”
“Are we,” said Gray carefully, “speaking in Français so that your nephew should not comprehend us, or because you suppose me not to understand you when you speak to him in Brezhoneg?”
Captain Tremblay’s languid gaze abruptly sharpened. “Brezhoneg a ouzit?” he demanded—the third man today to ask Gray this question—rocking forward across his desk. “How comes this?”
Shifting into Brezhoneg and leaning his elbows on Captain Tremblay’s desk, Gray explained, also for the third time today.
“There is some . . . ill feeling, I believe,” he concluded, cautiously, “between the Breizhek officers and the rest—or perhaps one side or the other is imagining it—but certainly Mr. Morvand seemed very concerned that I should not think him or his countrymen disloyal, and I do not see why that should be unless some such accusation has been lately made . . .”
Tremblay cleared his throat, looked over Gray’s shoulder, and met his eyes with visible reluctance.
“Tales have been spread,” he conceded at last. “No one will own to beginning them—or to repeating them, for the matter of that—yet still, of course, they spread. Somehow the armies of the Duchies have lately developed an ability to take our forces by surprise, and we appear to have lost our talent for doing likewise. To the military mind, this combination of circumstances inevitably suggests that the enemy has been receiving information on our movements.”
“Yes,” said Gray, frowning thoughtfully. “Even to my mind, Captain, that seems a likely explanation, and it is certainly one that has occurred to more than one mind at Court.”
Captain Tremblay gave a quiet snort of laughter. “Indeed,” he said. “And so, of course, the Breizhek troops are suspect—”
He broke off abruptly as Mr. Le Floc’h returned with a half-empty bottle of claret and two glasses. The young man made to pour out the wine, but his uncle waved him off—kindly enough—with an order to see to the horses and the tack, and when he had retreated, poured it out himself.
“Your very good health, Mr. Marshall,” he said, raising his glass.
“And yours, sir,” Gray replied.
After a moment, picking up the dropped thread of their earlier exchange, he said, “I do not entirely see, however—forgive me—why the premise The enemy appears to have some means of knowing what we are about should lead inevitably to the conclusion The Breizhek troops are guilty of treating with the enemy. The threat to all three provinces is equally great, surely; why should any of them be more amenable to treason than the others?”
Captain Tremblay drained his glass in one long draught and chuckled ruefully as he refilled it. “You are not a student of politics, I conclude,” he said; without waiting for Gray to reply, he continued, “The Duke of Breizh was granted the right to levy his own troops only five years since; hundreds of Breizhek officers resigned their commissions in other regiments in order to take up commissions in those newly levied by the Duke, and their loyalties have been suspect ever since.”
Gray considered this, already mentally composing the beginnings of a report to Lord Kergabet. “But you did not,” he said slowly, “nor any of the Breizhek officers whose acquaintance I have made thus far today. That is—” He paused, wondering whether he had misunderstood—“that is, Colonel Dubois’s regiment is not a Breizhek one?”
“It is not,” said Captain Tremblay. “But the Colonel is Breizhek-born himself—though of a Mainois father, like myself—and an honourable man, if tediously attached to military pomp and ceremony.” He took another large swallow of wine. “Those who departed their Normand or Mainois or English regiments are suspected of serving Breizh above Britain,” he said, “whilst those of us who remain are suspected of harbouring divided loyalties, and of informing against our fellows—the ordinary sort of regimental rivalries, boiled up with political in-fighting into a most unpleasant ragout. It is the most natural thing in the world, therefore, that when any disloyalty is suspected, we should be at the head of the queue.”
Gray sighed.
Today, for the first time since embarking on this absurd journey, circumstances—Morvand’s wary sidewise look, and finding himself one flying shape-shifter among many, and the half-clothed Ollivier and Lécuyer in their dishevelled sleeping quarters, and now this, which he ought to have anticipated—made him grateful that Sophie was hundreds of miles away.
“Now!” Tremblay exclaimed after a moment, cheerful once more, “You wish to fly out with the night-scouts, do you? What is it you are hoping to observe?”
* * *
Ollivier and Lécuyer stripped to their skins quickly and without ceremony—like undergraduates at the public baths—baring with no trace of self-consciousness whipcord-muscled limbs and torsos marked with a bewildering variety of small scars. Their talk and laughter never flagged, and Gray, encouraged, followed their example—only to falter in the sudden, shocked silence that engulfed the magelight-lit campaign-tent when, for a moment, he turned his back to his companions to fold away the shirt he had just pulled off over his head.
“What made those marks, my lord?” Ollivier inquired, after a long moment. “Er . . . if I may ask?”
“A man with a horsewhip,” said Gray
shortly, “in a dungeon in Alba.” Not that it is any affair of yours. “Shall we get on with this business?”
He turned back to face them, concealing for the moment the almost mathematically parallel rows of scar tissue that striped his back and shoulders, which repeated applications of healing magick had blurred and softened but could not erase. They were gaping at him, just as he had feared they might; yet it was not pity or disgust he saw in their faces, but . . . something else altogether.
“You are soldiers, both of you,” he said, not troubling to hide his impatience. “You must have seen such marks before—or worse things.”
Lécuyer swallowed hard and gave a sharp nod; his right arm twitched, as though he were restraining himself from offering a salute.
“Colonel Dubois will send a runner with the signal,” he said, “very soon now.”
Gray nodded. “I should like, if it does not inconvenience you,” he said, “to observe the process—I am a scholar, you know, and I have not many opportunities to—”
“Oh, look all you like, my lord,” said Ollivier, cheerfully enough. He glanced at Lécuyer, who shrugged.
They crouched on the dusty floor of the tent, balancing on the balls of their feet and the tips of their fingers. Ollivier closed his eyes and spoke his shifting-spell almost inaudibly, his lips pressed close together and moving as little as possible; Lécuyer drew his arms forward to encircle his shins, then bowed his forehead to his bent-up knees, hiding his face entirely. Whereas Gray’s own transformation tended to happen slowly—those desperate, panicked shifts in the dead of an Oxford night and in the woods on the Ross of Mull excepted—His Majesty’s scouts took no more time to put on their talons, wings, and feathers than to strip off their clothes; before Gray had even begun to guess at their choice of spells, there stood before him, blinking their round dark eyes in the lamplight and stepping delicately away from foot to foot, a pale-faced barn owl and a large brown-and-tawny eagle owl.
A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel) Page 25
