The Price of Valor

by Django Wexler

“What am I looking for?”

  “Anything that says Halverson.”

  He nodded, and they began their search. The dust was thick enough that Raesinia had to run her finger along the spines of some of ledgers to see the names penciled there. There were more ledgers than she’d initially anticipated, but they were tied up and grouped together, so she made relatively quick progress. She was nearing the back of the room when a sound from outside made her stand up straight.

  “Think I’ve got it,” Marcus said. “There’s a whole stack that says Halverson, anyway—”

  “Shh.” Raesinia raised a hand. The distant footsteps were getting closer. “Someone’s coming.”

  “Should I try looking stuck-up again?”

  “That would have worked better before I broke the door open.”

  “Maybe you should learn to be a polite burglar.”

  Raesinia couldn’t help grinning at that. Marcus could be witty, when he forgot he was talking to the queen. It felt a little like working beside Sothe, with her dry, dark humor.

  The footsteps came closer still. Raesina crept up to the doorway and risked a peek. Just turning the corner was a young man in a three-cornered hat and a blue-on-black sash, looking from door to door as though he was searching for something.

  “Patriot Guard,” she whispered. “I think he’s come to find us.”

  Marcus pressed himself against the open door on the other side of the doorway. “Any ideas?”

  “When he comes in here, I’ll get his attention, and you jump him.”

  “Any good ideas?” Marcus said, but the footsteps were close now. He waved frantically to Raesinia, not daring to speak.

  Raesinia cast around. Against the wall on her side was an invitingly large wooden box, which was probably intended as a wastepaper basket. She grabbed it and turned it upside down, then looked speculatively at Marcus. The guard had been roughly his height. I’ll have to jump a bit.

  Marcus apparently guessed her intention, because he made more frantic hand signals, waving no, no, no. Raesinia bounced once or twice on the balls of her feet, getting ready.

  The guard rounded the corner, glancing at the splintered jamb and then looking for the door. That left him facing away from Raesinia, which was precisely what she needed. She leapt at him, box in her hands, and slammed it down over the top of his head. The guard let out a startled squawk and stumbled forward, and Marcus grabbed him by the arm and spun him face-first into the wall, knocking the breath out of him with a whoosh.

  Raesinia was right behind him in an instant, pressing her index finger into the small of his back. “Make a noise, and you’ll get it in the kidneys,” she said in her best thug’s voice. She didn’t actually have a knife, but she didn’t think he could tell the difference through his jacket. “Stay quiet and you’ll get out of this. Get his sword belt.”

  The guard whimpered but stayed silent. Marcus extracted his belt, set the sword on the floor, and used it to tie the man’s hands behind his back. Raesinia undid his sash, stood on tiptoes to pull the box off his head, and then looped the roll of blue-on-black fabric over his mouth. She tied it tight at the back of his neck, then stepped back to admire her handiwork.

  Marcus looked at her and raised his eyebrows. Raesinia went to the stack of ledgers he’d been investigating and picked them up with a grunt. Once she was out of the room, Marcus pulled the broken door shut.

  “I can carry those,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to be your courier. It’s my job to carry things.” She had to tilt her head back to put her chin on top of the stack and see where she was going.

  “So we’re just going to walk out of here?”

  “Exactly. Nice and slow. Nothing wrong, nothing to see here.”

  “But be ready to run?” Marcus said.

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  MARCUS

  Marcus never would have believed it, but that was exactly how it went, nice and slow and completely uneventful. He and Raesinia strolled out of Exchange Central with the records, past a dozen Patriot Guards and as many army soldiers, and no one said a thing. Whatever had sent the guard to investigate, it apparently hadn’t called for anything like a general alarm.

  Once they were out in the bustle of the Exchange crowd, Marcus felt a lot safer. He directed Raesinia to a nearby alley, where a few twists and turns put them among the back entrances to the Exchange’s buildings, right on the waterfront. They took shelter in the lee of a stairway, and Raesinia set down the stack of ledgers. She was fitter than she looked—she wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “That,” he said, “was not a good idea.”

  “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Just because it worked doesn’t make it a good idea. If he’d shouted for help first thing, we’d have been in serious trouble.”

  “Not much to be done about that, unless you wanted to try and cut his throat before he got the chance. I figured you’d rather not.”

  “You figured correctly,” Marcus said. He might not care for the Patriot Guards, but killing one in cold blood for doing his job properly wouldn’t have sat well on his conscience. “I hope you’ve realized that once someone finds him, word is going to get out eventually that records are missing.”

  “I know,” Raesinia said, untying the twine of the stack of ledgers. “That’ll get back to the conspirators. Sooner, rather than later, if it is Maurisk that we’re dealing with.” She flipped open the top book and turned a few pages, then shook her head. “We’ve got to get these to Cora. It would take me weeks to make anything out of it, and we haven’t got that kind of time now.”

  Marcus looked down at her, in her boyish red courier’s uniform—now stained with dust—and jaunty little cap. He shook his head.

  “What?” she said.

  “I was just thinking that it would be hard for you to be less like I expected.”

  Raesinia rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry to be such a disappointment.”

  “It’s not a disappointment,” Marcus said, surprised to find that he meant it. “Just a bit of a surprise.”

  “See if you can find us a boat,” Raesinia said, tying the ledgers up again. “That’ll be the easiest way back to Twin Turrets, and then we can change into something inconspicuous to visit Cora. I doubt she gets many Exchange Central couriers.”

  “As Your Majesty commands,” Marcus said, bowing low.

  “Don’t make me hit you with something.”

  Chapter Eight

  WINTER

  In the course of a single afternoon, the camaraderie Winter had worked so hard to build between the Royals and the Girls’ Own had evaporated. Getting the brawl broken up had left them barely in time to join the day’s march, and their assigned route took them off the road and up a wooded ridge, so they’d arrived later than usual. Without orders, the Girls’ Own had camped separately again, with armed sentries standing guard. Many of them bore the marks of the morning’s fighting—bruises and black eyes, bandaged cuts and the occasional splinted finger. The same marks were visible among the Royals, and there was a great deal of grumbling coming from that quarter.

  Finding the man who’d started it all had not been difficult, since he’d been lying insensible in the dirt when Winter arrived to restore the peace. His identity, in retrospect, was not a surprise.

  “Lieutenant Novus,” Winter said, standing just inside the tent they’d pressed into service as a prison. Novus was tied to a camp chair, sporting a huge bruise that covered half his face, and his carefully coiffed hair now looked more like a rat’s nest. In spite of all that, he summoned up a smirk to greet her.

  I should have seen this coming. Novus had made it perfectly clear he had no respect for either the Girls’ Own or Winter’s authority, and she’d let him believe he’d gotten away with his ranting without repercussions. He was bound to try something
stupid.

  “Colonel,” he said. “I assume you’re here to clear up this misunderstanding?”

  “Something like that,” Winter said.

  “Ranker Valon struck me in the face, in full view of witnesses,” Novus said. “I trust she’ll be disciplined appropriately.”

  Winter stared. Novus had a mad gleam in his eyes, and she couldn’t tell if he expected a serious answer to that or not.

  “Ranker Valon,” Winter said, “told me that you grabbed her chest and then attempted to push her to the ground. Do you deny that?”

  Novus shrugged, as best he was able in his restraints. “She made the offer obvious.”

  “She didn’t mention anything about an offer.”

  The lieutenant raised an eyebrow. “If a woman walked past you half-naked, making sure you got a good look, what would you think, Colonel?”

  “That she was coming back from her bath?” Emily Valon, the blond woman who’d done so well in the handball match, had told her that Novus had been waiting by the path leading up to the stream the soldiers had been using for that purpose. Novus claimed he’d just happened to be passing, but no one believed that.

  He gave her a pitying look. “Well. Some of us have been around the block a few times.”

  “I thought the sight of someone like her made you sick.”

  Another half shrug. “Everyone knows Captain Verity’s ‘soldiers’ are servicing half the battalion by now. Why should I abstain?”

  Winter took a deep breath. She wanted to scream at him, take a rock and beat a lesson into his tiny skull. Jane must be rubbing off on me. It wouldn’t be appropriate behavior from a superior officer; fortunately, she had other options.

  “Lieutenant Benjamin Novus,” she said, “you are hereby relieved of your command. You’ll be returned to Vordan City with the next supply train and held there to await the judgment of the army commander.”

  “You’re not serious.” He jerked, as though he wanted to jump to his feet, and tugged against his ropes. “She struck me!”

  “Ranker Valon was defending herself against assault, in the best traditions of the army.”

  “You incompetent fool,” Novus spit. “You have no idea who my family is, do you? If you planned on having a career after escaping from this freak show, forget about it. You’ll be lucky if they don’t ship you back to Khandar!”

  “You’re right that I have no idea where you come from,” Winter said. “Nor do I care. More important, I doubt Janus cares, either. He sent a dozen colonels packing, so one lieutenant is not going to trouble him.” She leaned a little closer. “More to the point, Lieutenant, you are lucky I’m willing to be so lenient. I’d be within my rights to shoot you.”

  That might be stretching the point a bit, but not too far. There was nothing in the Regulations about attempted rape, but “unprovoked assault on another soldier resulting in serious harm” could be a capital offense in the field, at the commanding officer’s discretion. Valon’s well-thrown punch had most likely saved Novus’ life, not that the lieutenant was ever likely to thank her for it.

  Novus gaped. “You can’t do this. You can’t! We’ll be fighting tomorrow. The men need me.”

  “I think the men will manage.” Though Winter did feel guilty about depriving Captain Sevran of a staff lieutenant on the eve of battle. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and clean up the mess you’ve made.”

  Novus was correct about one thing—there would be fighting tomorrow. The Deslandai army showed no signs of pulling back from its position around Gaafen, a semicircular line anchored on the outlying edge of the town and some surrounding farmhouses, with each end snug against the river. The brilliant stroke Winter had hoped Janus would come up with to avoid a frontal battle had yet to make an appearance. Orders had come dawn before dusk that the Third Regiment of the Line was to seize a ridge about a mile forward of their current camp in the morning, then wait for further instructions.

  Winter badly wanted to see Jane, but it was Sevran who was waiting for her when she returned to her tent. She waved away his salute, wearily, and gestured him inside.

  “I wanted to apologize, sir,” he said. “Novus is one of mine, and I ought to have kept him under better control.”

  “I should have done something about him myself.” Winter sat heavily on her sleeping pallet and starting unlacing her boots. “Any of your other young nobles likely to try something similar?”

  “I doubt it.” The ghost of a smile crossed Sevran’s face. “I think the lesson was pretty clear. Captain Verity’s soldiers defend one another.” He shrugged. “You may find this hard to believe, but a lot of the rankers are just as angry with Novus as the Girls’ Own.”

  “That didn’t stop them from getting into a punch-up this morning.”

  “They didn’t know what had happened. When you see people from your unit in a brawl, you don’t ask questions, you just jump in and help out. Afterward . . .” He shook his head. “But Captain Verity’s people are back to treating us like the enemy.”

  “I’m not sure I can blame them.” Winter sighed. “I’ll speak to Captain Verity. But we haven’t got time to smooth things over.”

  “You’ve gotten our orders?”

  She nodded. “We move three hours past dawn. Make sure all the officers get the word. I want everyone up as soon as there’s light, in time to get a hot breakfast and get formed up.”

  “Understood, sir.” Sevran turned to leave, then hesitated. “Again, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  * * *

  The day of battle dawned bright and clear, with a chilly autumn wind playing over the field and shredding the wisps of cloud overhead. Winter, back astride Edgar, blinked back the gummy feeling in her eyes and watched her regiment advance across the browning stubble of harvested fields.

  So far, everything was going according to the book. Each battalion was marching in a two-company column—with two companies side by side in the lead, followed by two more, and so on—and there was enough space between them that they could both deploy into line. The Royals, it had to be said, kept their formation a bit better than the Girls’ Own, who were less used to maneuvering in the open, but on such easy ground even relative novices could keep their lines straight. Folsom and Graff led the two companies at the front, and even from where she sat, well ahead of the line, she could hear the steady beat of drums and Folsom’s barked orders. At the head of each battalion, color parties carried blue Vordanai flags that snapped in the steady breeze.

  Farther out, the rest of the Army of the East was emerging from the wooded ridge. That height, a long rill running roughly east-west, was perpendicular to the line of the advance. The land sloped down to a streambed, running too low this late in the season to be an obstacle, and then up again to a shallower ridge. From that modest elevation, where Winter was currently positioned, she could see that the fields ran downhill all the way to the Kos, visible as a ribbon of silver in the middle distance.

  The ridge was too far from the river for the Deslandai to contest it with more than a few scouts, who took off at a run when they saw the blue-uniformed line advancing. Winter guessed it was more than a mile from the edge of the town, which was a neat cluster of shingled and whitewashed buildings, like a larger version of the little villages they’d been passing by. Tiny figures scurried everywhere, wearing flame-colored yellow-orange jackets darker than the bright yellow of their Hamveltai allies. At this distance, they looked like a swarm of colorful insects.

  Her regiment was on the far right, at the eastern end of the Vordanai line. To her right, there was only a battery of artillery, moving laboriously uphill as the horses strained at their limbers, and a few squadrons of cavalry keeping pace at a walk. On her left, another regiment, this one in three battalion columns, was working its way up the ridge. Beyond that was another, and another, with still more following in reserve an
d cannon interspersed at intervals. Forty thousand men make for an impressive array. On the march in separate columns, it was easy to forget how big the Army of the East actually was, six or seven times larger than the whole Colonial force Janus had led in Khandar.

  Winter shaded her eyes, searching the line for a familiar flag. The Colonials had become something like Janus’ personal guard and his most reliable troops, following him into battle and doing the jobs he could trust to no one else. Ordinarily, they would be in place at the very center of the line, but either they weren’t there or some trick of the ground was hiding them. Maybe he’s holding them out of sight as a reserve. She shook her head and turned back to more immediate problems.

  She and Edgar, with Bobby and Cyte mounted and waiting nearby, now occupied roughly the position Janus had ordered her regiment to take. The ground was mostly harvested fields, with only the occasional rocky outcrop or hedgerow to disturb the smooth order of the advancing lines. A few hundred yards ahead, where a tiny stream emerged from the earth and trickled down toward the river, there was a small cluster of buildings—a sprawling one-story farmhouse and a couple of barns, surrounded by a white waist-high fence. A few chickens were visible in the yard, but nothing else moved; the farmers had either fled or hidden in a cellar.

  For a moment, waiting for her troops to mount the slope, Winter felt a strange peace. Men and women were about to die in large numbers—she herself could die, with no more warning than the scream of a cannonball—but it somehow seemed unreal, inappropriate for this picturesque valley with its perfect little town and gently winding river. She felt as if the morning had reached this moment and gotten stuck, as though they’d all been frozen into a painting.

  “Sir?” Bobby said.

  “Hmm?”

  Winter blinked and looked around. The columns had reached the top of the hill, and the peace was broken by the close-up roll of the drums and the shouts of the sergeants. While the front two companies of each battalion waited in place, the rest of the column split down the middle, each company marching sideways enough to clear the one in front of it and then forward until it was level with the rest. That was the theory, anyway. The Royals did a passable job, but the companies of the Girls’ Own tended to misjudge the distances and end up overlapping or too far apart. Lieutenants gestured imperiously while sergeants swore and screamed and shoved women to where they were supposed to be standing. In a few minutes, the regiment made a nice neat line, blue-on-blue uniforms on the Royals to her left and blue-jackets-on-whatever-they-could-find among the Girls’ Own to her right.