Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Mercedes Lackey

  :Don’t take it out on me.: Rath replied. :It’s not my fault you have the emotional range of a sling bullet.: The Companion’s mental voice carried a tired good humor, but there was an edge. The last time he’d heard that edge, she’d dumped him in a well.

  :Of course, the caterwauling when you were drunk may have helped.:

  “I was singing.”

  :Oh, is that what that was? It sounded like a cat hung by its tail. The maid’s father wasn’t impressed either. He chased you for nearly a mile. And having him present the foundling’s bill to Haven for the babe was what got you busted back to Circuit. That was what . . . second promotion, second bust. You know what they say about you in Haven? That’s our Gonwyn . . . stand up guy in a fight or for a girl, stands up for every fight and every girl.:

  Gonwyn felt stung. “Anything else?”

  :You’ve got your own issues, Chosen. So lighten up on the kid.:

  He looked back to where Danilla followed. She had mounted. Her Companion moved slowly on the injured leg. The young mare wasn’t likely to pull up lame, but she wasn’t going to run any races either. He furrowed his brow. Same leg, same injury as Adreal’s Claris. He lodged that one away.

  “Look,” he tried again. “We’re in a fix, and I need you in the here and now.” He softened his voice, adding firm but fair compassion. Anything she interpreted as pity would only make the situation worse. “What is done is done. We can’t change what happened. But we can learn from it and move on, try to do better. We won today, but it may not be over. We’ve got units all over these hills . . . along with many Tedrels. Our job is to find as many of the good guys . . . and as few of the bad guys as possible . . . so that we can reknit the army in case we have to fight tomorrow. Understand?”

  She nodded. “Yes.” A little firmer.

  “Now, time to ride.”

  They pressed farther into the hills, calling several Valdemaran units, a half-company here, a few scattered squads, a platoon of mismatched parts, and a string of individual men lost from their units. They skipped around Tedrels, some of whom remained bent on violence, but most were as lost and confused as the Valdemarans. Gonwyn got the further sense that while the great center of the battle may have retained some organization, out here in the boonie-flanks command had all but collapsed on both sides.

  He noted as they rode that the girl had firmed up. She’d stopped looking at the dirt in front of her. Once it became plain that there were others there who’d broken in that first confusion, she felt less alone. They weren’t Heralds, of course, but they were all human. By the time they stopped for the evening, she was watching for traps and ambushes, and had some of her confidence back.

  It wasn’t in him to go tale-telling, so the girl would not have to face the Heralds’ version of censure . . . where everyone understood, of course we understand. When what they meant was, we understand you failed, and then the duties got easier after that. You were still a Herald, but not quite in the same league as those hadn’t let down the side. He’d sipped from that bitter cup himself and saw no reason to pass it to another.

  It was better in the Guards, where the senior Sergeant took you behind the woodshed and just beat the dung out of you when you screwed up. The thrashing fixed all and let you back in the platoon’s good graces.

  He pulled up as the sun was eaten by the hills to the west. Full dark would be here soon, with some hours before moonrise. Rath found a good campsite, well back in a valley, with close overhead trees, a steep rill that would provide a way out in an emergency, and good water. Gonwyn’s camp-picking ability remained a running joke between them, at least since the flashflood and the beehive.

  He turned in the saddle back to where she followed.

  “It’s getting too dark to continue,” he said, “with all of these Tedrels in the hills. We’ll rest here until the moon comes up. Until then, it’ll be too dark to be blundering about. We should have a couple of candlemarks to eat and sleep, then we’ll press on.”

  He dismounted with a grunt and loosened Rath’s bellyband.

  He could see her in the failing sunlight, copying him, her brow puzzled.

  “Why do you do that?” she asked.

  “Do what? Ever tried to put a saddle on in the dark, when arrows are flying?”

  “No. I got that. I don’t understand why you usually talk to your Companion, to your Rath. Why don’t you just Mindspeak, as I do with my Enara?”

  He looked at her as he leaned into Rath, crossing his elbows on the saddle-bow. “I’m almost totally head-blind. I can hear Rath, and she can read me, but I can’t send worth a damn. If I buckle down and really focus, I can just about get a whisper out. It’s just easier to do it this way.”

  Her expression appeared no more than half-believing. “What’s your Talent?”

  :Drinking?: Interjected Rath.:Wenching?:

  Gonwyn ignored the Companion. “I don’t really have one. I was already a Guards officer, nearly twenty-one when I was Chosen. The masters said I was too old to learn Mindspeech, which is why almost everyone who is Chosen is a child.” Alberich hadn’t been the first adult chosen, though clearly the oldest. He wasn’t comfortable with this topic or its memories and wanted to change the subject. “What’s your Talent, then?”

  “Oh, me?” she replied. She looked around and found a stick as long as her forearm, and as thick as her finger. She snapped it, green wood splintering along the ends of the break. She held the stick between her hands and stared at it in intense concentration. Gonwyn was just convinced she was having him on when a thin wisp of smoke emerged, and the splintered ends burst into flame.

  Gonwyn thought she looked a little relieved.

  “You’re a Firestarter,” he said.

  “I’m not very good. I can just about manage this stick, and it doesn’t always work.”

  “Well, I’d bet it beats my flint, steel, and profanity when I can’t get my tinder to light.”

  She smiled then, showing dimples.

  :Uh oh.:

  The girl had turned back to her saddlebags and had pulled out a bedroll when she abruptly laughed. She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Enara tells me I am in the presence of a notorious womanizer and flirt. She is worried you’re going to seduce me.”

  Gonwyn turned his head and gave Rath a long stare. Rath contrived to look innocent, a dead giveaway.

  “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Seducing me.”

  Gonwyn gave her a disgusted look.

  “All right, all right” she said taking her bedroll, and heading toward their campsite. “How about now? Are you seducing me now?” She smiled again. “If you were, I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

  Gonwyn managed to convey his response in a single snort that encompassed Rath, Enara, and Danilla.

  “I mean, at your age, you probably would want to give it a good running start.”

  Gonwyn took his blanket out of his rather thin field pack and followed. “Did you have to?” he asked Rath as he passed.

  :You do have a certain reputation.:

  He gathered such small wood as he could find as he crossed to where the stream burbled down underneath a widespread oak. She had already dug a narrow, deep hole in the dirt and had started the side vent to let in air. The fire would burn hot and small within its deep pit, cook well, and throw out little light. Her campcraft seemed good enough, even if it looked more like a final exam than a field rig.

  She still smiled in good humor but kept her attention on her work. He moved to one side and gutted the rabbits, using the skins to lay the carcasses on while he jointed them. He dug a second pit for the offal and trash, deep enough for scavengers to be put off the scent, at least until what they left began to rot.

  Their camp preparations went quickly, both moving with an efficiency driven by the quickly fading light. He took a small leather bucket from his bags and soaked it in the creek water to thoroughly wet it, then set it on a small tripod to boil. He began cut
ting small pieces of meat from the rabbit and dropping them in the water.

  She made a face at his filthy hands, then frowned as a drop of blood fell from between his fingers and onto the rabbit pelt.

  “Damn,” he said, seeing the blood. He reached up under his surcoat and adjusted the rag he had stuffed under the hauberk to try to contain the bleeding.

  “You’re hurt,” she said. Not a question.

  “Took an ax in the fight this morning. It split the mail.”

  She crossed to where he knelt to work and knelt in front of him. She pulled back the surcoat and pulled the dirty rag out of the cut in the chain where Gonwyn had pressed it back in. Blood streaked the chainmail links and stained the linen undertunic.

  Her expression told him what she thought of his efforts. “No, no no” she said. “This just won’t do. That wound may need to be stitched.”

  Gonwyn felt his stomach drop. “Stitched? Don’t I need a Healer for that?”

  She glanced around. “Do you see any Healers? My dad raised cattle, and I’ve stitched lots of bulls after they’d gored each other.”

  Gonwyn did not find this reassuring. Nonetheless, he slid out of the dirty remains of his White surcoat, then winced as he moved his arm back to unlace the hauberk. She moved to help him.

  “Oh, that’s interesting. The footloops here allow the laces to be drawn with one hand and tied off. One person can do it one handed, and while the metal doesn’t overlap, it does let you loosen it to let in some air if you have to.”

  She took the weight of the hauberk as he slid out of it, then felt the heavy weight drop onto his blanket. The armor was already dirty and would need a good scouring in the sand barrel, but more grime wouldn’t do it any favors.

  Gonwyn was surprised and more than a little concerned at the amount of blood that soaked his undertunic. The wound had not seemed that bad.

  She looked at the blood on his side, then at his face, which he kept carefully expressionless.

  “I need to see it.”

  He started to unlace the tunic, then gave it up as his arm wouldn’t reach.

  “I’ll need your help.”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t get any ideas.”

  They both laughed at the joke, however thin.

  She helped him out the tunic when he couldn’t raise his arm above his shoulder. Now that they’d stopped moving, the shoulder was stiffening quickly, and the movements threatened to cause the pain he’d banked away to break through.

  “Gods, Gonwyn,” she said, as the undertunic came away.

  His entire right shoulder was a single massive black bruise, where the chain had taken the force and spread it across the links. Broken links had scored the skin when they had been driven through the undertunic. The ax wound itself was about two inches long and looked deep enough to have cut into muscle. A large, black, crusted scab covered the entire wound and oozed blood. He moved his left hand to press on the skin, and she smacked it away. He did not tell her that while he’d been hurt before, he’d badly underestimated this one.

  “Bastard knew what he was about. Got me longwise instead of chopping down, just where the mail splices together. He cut right through.”

  “Those hands are filthy. Keep them away from the wound.”

  She moved to the stream and, with that innate facility that women have, produced a cake of soap. She washed her hands thoroughly and returned to him with her healing kit.

  She carefully cleaned the wound, while Gonwyn pretended this was all routine. He did swear when she doused it with the astringent wine, but just the once. The sun was nearly down before she finished probing the wound, extracting a small sliver of metal that had entered, stitched it . . . bigger stitches than the Healers used, as cattle call for different threads . . . and dressed it in linen. She set his undertunic to soak in the stream for a time and hung it to dry, as he had no other. For his part, he tested the arm and made several practice swings with his sword. It hurt like blazes, but he thought he could still fight if it came to it.

  “Don’t do that. You’ll pick them free.”

  She came over to him as he moved the chainmail and settled the blanket around his shoulders.

  “Let’s see that mouth.”

  He leaned away and spat out a gob of bloody phlegm.

  “Nice,” she said. “Now turn into the light so I can see.”

  They were nearly of a height. He angled his head this way and that and opened his mouth.

  “I can’t see much, but it looks like you you’re going to have to get those back two extracted before they get infected and abscess.”

  Gonwyn nodded. That was about what he thought.

  She looked at him, perplexed. “Why didn’t you go to the Healers?”

  He shrugged, embarrassed. “My friend was dying from a stab wound and was still doing his duty, right up to the last seconds of his life. I couldn’t go the Healers for a toothache, not after that.” He did not admit that he’d thought about doing exactly that. “I didn’t know the shoulder was that bad.”

  She gave him a very long look, then swallowed whatever she was about to say. “Well, I don’t want your dirty fingers in my dinner, so you sit over there.” She looked down at where he had been cutting the rabbit. “How were you figuring on eating?”

  “Boiling the meat into a broth. See if I could boil the meat soft enough to chew, and sip down the broth.”

  She nodded one time, an economical gesture. “We’ll do that.”

  She set to finishing the task he had started, cutting the rabbit into bits to boil and then spitting hers to roast. The cook fire brought the heat directly under the pot and spit, so the food cooked quickly and evenly. There was little enough left for them, but this fire was about eating, not comfort.

  The sun faded before the rabbits cooked, leaving them sitting ravenous underneath a purple-black darkness decorated with a skyful of bright-blazing stars. The evening brought a chill, enough that he sought his one not-as-dirty shirt from his field pack. He managed some cupfuls of soup, along with a few bits of rabbit. He shared the jouney bread he’d taken from the Tedrels, his well-soaked with broth to soften.

  By unspoken agreement, the mission had ended.

  Tomorrow they would abandon the search and return to the assembly area.

  Gonwyn felt a voice in his head, from a Mindspeaker powerful enough to punch through his head-blindness. Danilla and Enara’s heads came up. :Any units still fighting are to cease operations and return to start lines. All regiments’ and militia are to do a muster count and report by the numbers. All Heralds not assigned to military Mindspeaking duties are to report to command tent in fighting kit for briefing.:

  “Who the hell was that?” asked Gonwyn.

  “I think that’s Myste,” Danilla replied.

  “What’s a Myste?” asked Gonwyn, still impressed by the strength. His head-blindness had been described as a wall fifty feet high and a hundred wide.

  “Herald Chronicler.” She replied.

  “Herald Chronicler?” Gonwyn realized he was starting to sound rather dumb.

  “Don’t you ever get to Haven?” she asked him in turn.

  “No,” he replied, relieved to be on the granting end of the conversation, “it gives me hives. I try to avoid any kind of headquarters.”

  “Myste was in my year at the Collegium and an utter despair. No real friends. No one would partner with her for Trials, and we dreaded having to train with her. Couldn’t see, needs um . . . spectacles. Can’t fight to save her life. Nearly cut off her Companion’s ear the first time she tried it mounted. Can’t run Circuit.”

  “She can Mindspeak, though,” replied Gonwyn.

  “So, it would seem,” answered Danilla, just a little primly. He was ready to ask her what that meant, when Myste’s voice broke through again. :Pending instruction from the Queen, all actions against the Tedrels, except in strictest self-defense, are to cease. By Order of the Lord Marshal.:

  “What? Why?” asked Dani
lla.

  Gonwyn turned toward her. “I’m guessing it’s because the commissary is running out. We don’t have the time or rations to scour these hills, and the Queen has to think about the harvest. We took a lot of farmers out of fields to fill out this army, and she needs them there, or we don’t eat next year. I’d wager she’ll leave just enough down here to keep the Tedrels in check, and only in numbers that she can easily feed.”

  Rath broke in. :Something is up . . . I’m hearing that there’s going to be a raid into Karse to get some prisoners, so everyone is tied up with that.: She paused. :Daners made contact. Our report has been “noted.” We’re to pull back, and bring out Lady Danilla, and stop hunting Tedrels. I’ve explained what Adreal sent us on, but he died before his message could get passed through, so they’re going off of your reputation.:

  “Lady Danilla?” he asked the Herald. “You said your father herded cattle.”

  Even in the dark, he could feel her embarrassment.

  “It was a lot of cattle,” she replied.

  He exhaled loudly. “All right, we’ll stay on plan. Once the moon comes up and gives us some light, we’ll backtrack to where that big valley runs north and south. We should pick up the roadstead there and be back in the camp before moonset. The creeks are more direct, but they’ll all look the same at night, and the map is worthless.”

  He slipped his damp hauberk back on, then the chainmail. The pain flared when it settled over the wound, as did the spots where the second-hand mail had galled his shoulders. He made no effort to put the surcoat back on. It was too torn and dirty for even his low standards. He and Danilla then packed the camp in the dark, loading the saddlebags and field packs. Both pits were carefully covered. They could not conceal that they had been there, but they didn’t have to make it easy.

  Once they were done and ready to ride, there was nothing for it but to wait for moonrise. The Companions stood watch, trading guard while he and Danilla dozed. Sleeping in armor proved nearly impossible, as it just wasn’t possible to get comfortable. Gonwyn had done it enough to have a leg up, but his multiple hurts kept him from doing more than dozing fitfully. The time passed in short naps, measured by stiffness and metal digging into tender places.