Paladin of Souls (Curse of Chalion)

by Lois McMaster Bujold

  Ista blinked. Then she began to look around more carefully.

  The mounts of the men who’d overtaken them were every bit as lathered and exhausted as their own, and Ista, remembering Liss’s remarks about horses flagging late in the race, wondered if her party might not have outridden them after all, but for being trapped by the advance patrol. The men looked hot, worn, filthy, stubbled. Their fine Roknari pattern-braids were in disarray, as if they had not been redone for days or even weeks. The men riding up late looked worse. Many were bandaged or bruised or scabbed, and most of them led extra horses with empty saddles, sometimes three or four in a string. Not booty, for most of the animals were decked in Roknari-style gear. Some might be remounts. Not all. The baggage train that limped up behind them all was strangely scant.

  If the baggage train marked the end of their company, and there was no sign of Foix or dy Cabon among the prisoners … Ista permitted herself a shiver of hope. Even if the clerks counting horses counted men as well, and noted the two empty saddles, by the time they circled back to search, Foix would surely have moved the divine and himself to better cover. If Foix was as quietly sly on his feet as he was with his tongue—if the bear-demon had not put his mind in too much disarray—if the Jokonans had not simply slain them and left their bodies by the roadside …

  One thing was certain. These Jokonans were not men moving to some secret attack. They were fleeing a defeat, by every sign, or some dreadfully costly victory. Running north for home. She was glad for Chalion, but increasingly anxious for herself and Ferda and his men. Tense, exhausted, strained men on the ragged edge of their endurance made worrisome captors.

  The officer came back and directed her to sit by the roadside in the mottled shadow of a small, bent tree, some odd northern species with wide palmate leaves. Foix’s bags yielded a purse of gold that cheered the prince’s clerks, and the officers eyed her with a shade more respect, or at least, calculation. They pulled apart the baggage from the captured mules, as well. Ista turned her face away and declined to notice the soldiers raucously playing about with her clothing. The officer inquired more closely into her relationship with the provincar of Baocia, and Ista trotted out Sera dy Ajelo’s imaginary family tree. He seemed anxious to ascertain that the wealthy provincar would actually deliver a ransom for her.

  “Oh, yes,” said Ista distantly. “He will come in person, I expect.” With ten thousand swordsmen at his back, five thousand archers, and the Marshal dy Palliar’s cavalry as well. It occurred to her that if she did not want men to die for her, she’d gone about it in exactly the wrong way. But no. There might yet be chances to escape, or be traded out at a tiny fraction of her real worth, if her incognito held. Liss … had Liss made it away? No soldiers had yet returned along the track dragging her resisting behind them, nor as a limp corpse tossed over a saddle.

  The officers argued over the maps, while the men and animals rested in what shade could be found, and the flies buzzed around them. The Ibran-speaking officer brought her water in a rather noisome skin bag, and she hesitated, licked dusty cracked lips, and drank. It was fairly fresh, at least. She indicated he should take it to Ferda and his troop, and he did. At length, she was put back up on her own horse, with her hands lashed to the pommel, the horse in turn roped with several others following the baggage train. Ferda’s men were towed in a like line, but farther forward, surrounded by more armed soldiers. The advance scouts were redeployed, and the column started north once more.

  Ista stared around at her fellow prisoners, tied to horses as she was. They were oddly few in number, some dozen debilitated men and women, and no children at all. Another older woman rode near her, jerked along in another string of tired horses. Her clothes, though filthy, were finely made and elaborately decorated—clearly no common woman, but someone whose family might offer a rich ransom. Ista leaned toward her. “Where do these soldiers come from? Besides Jokona.”

  “Some Roknari hell, I think,” said the woman.

  “No, that would be their destination,” murmured Ista back.

  A sour smile lifted one corner of the woman’s mouth; good, she was not shocked stupid, then. Or at least, not anymore. “I do pray so, hourly. They took me in the town of Rauma, in Ibra.”

  “Ibra!” Ista glanced leftward at the mountain range rising in the distance. They must have scrambled out of Ibra over some little-used pass, and dropped down into Chalion to cut north for home. And the pursuit must have been fiery, to drive them to such a desperate ploy. “No wonder they seemed to have fallen from the sky.”

  “Where in Chalion are we?”

  “The province of Tolnoxo. These raiders still have over a hundred miles to go to safety, across the rest of Tolnoxo and all of Caribastos, before they reach the border of Jokona. If they can.” She hesitated. “I have hopes that they have lost their secrecy. I think some of my party escaped.”

  The woman’s eyes flared hot, briefly. “Good.” She added after a little, “They fell upon Rauma at dawn, by surprise. It was well planned—they must have swung wide around some dozen better-prepared towns closer to the border. I had brought my daughters into town to make offerings at the Daughter’s altar, for my eldest was—pray the goddess, still is—to be married. The Jokonans were more interested in booty than rapine and destruction, at first. They left the rest of the temple alone, though they held all they’d caught there at sword’s point. But then they delayed their withdrawal to pull down the Bastard’s Tower, and to torment the poor divine who had it in her charge.” The woman grimaced. “They caught her still in her white robes; there was no chance to hide her. They slew her husband, when he tried to defend her.”

  For a woman devoted to the fifth god, the Quadrenes would also start with the thumbs and tongue. Then rape, most likely, prolonged and vicious.

  “They burned her in her god’s tower, in the end.” The woman sighed. “It seemed almost a mercy by then. But their blasphemy cost them all they’d gained, for the march of Rauma’s troops came upon them while they were still in the town. The Son give him strength for his sword arm! He had no mercy upon them, for the divine had been his half sister. He had got her the benefice, I suppose, to keep her in comfort.”

  Ista hissed sympathy through her teeth.

  “My daughters escaped in the chaos … I think. Perhaps the Mother heard my prayers, for in my terror I did offer myself in exchange for them. But I was thrown upon a horse and carried off by these raiders who broke and retreated, for they could guess by my clothes and jewels I would profit them.”

  She bore no jewels now, naturally.

  “Their greed bought me some consideration, although they used my maid … hideously. I think she is still alive, though. They abandoned all their lesser prisoners in the wilderness, because they were slowing them on the climb. If they all stayed together, and did not panic, they may have helped each other to rescue by now. I hope … I hope they carried the wounded.”

  Ista nodded understanding. She wondered what Prince Sordso of Jokona could possibly be about, permitting—no, dispatching—this raid. It seemed more a probe than the first wave of an invasion. Perhaps it had been intended merely to stir up North Ibra, tie down the old roya’s troops in a broad defense, and so prevent them from being sent in support of Chalion in the autumn campaign against Visping? If so, the strategy had been a little too swiftly successful. Although these men might have been an intentional sacrifice without even knowing it …

  The not-too-badly wounded also rode with the baggage train. The severely wounded, Ista supposed, had been left along the route to the dubious mercy of the column’s recent victims. One man caught Ista’s eye. He was an older officer, very senior judging by his clothing and gear. He bore no bandage or visible wound, but he rode along tied to his saddle like a prisoner, slack-faced and moaning, his braids tumbled down. His mumbled words were not intelligible even in Roknari, Ista judged. Had he suffered a blow to the head, perhaps? His drooling disturbed her, and his noises set her teeth on edge
; she was secretly relieved when the baggage train shuffled its order and he was led farther from her.

  A few miles up the road they came upon the men who’d been sent in pursuit of Liss, both riding one stumbling horse, leading the second one lamed. They were greeted with inventive Roknari cursing and cuffs from their furious commander; both ruined horses were turned loose and replaced with two of the many spares. Ista concealed a grim smile. More consulting of Ferda’s maps followed, and more scouts were dispatched. The column lumbered on.

  An hour later they came to the hamlet where Ista’s party had planned to turn east and take the road to Maradi. It was wholly abandoned, not a person to be found, nor any animal but a few stray chickens, cats, and rabbits. Liss made it this far, it seems, Ista thought with satisfaction. The Jokonans ransacked it quickly, taking what food and fodder they could find, argued about setting it afire, made more debate over the maps, and finally hastened north on the dwindling continuation of their road. Prudence and discipline still held, if tenuously, for they left the hamlet standing behind them, with no rising column of black smoke, visible for miles, to mark their passing. The sun fell behind the mountains.

  Dusk was thickening when the column turned off the easier but dangerously open road and began scrambling up what would in any other season have been a dry wash. A stream gurgled down the middle of it now. After a couple of miles, they turned to the north again, making their way through brush to an area denser with trees and cover. Ista wondered how futile an attempt at concealment it would prove—they’d left enough hoof marks, broken vegetation, and dung in their wake that even she could have tracked them.

  The Jokonans made camp in a shaded dell, lighting only a few fires, and those just long enough to sear their stolen chickens. But they had to give their horses time to eat their looted fodder and grain, and regain strength. The half-dozen women prisoners were put together, given bedrolls no worse than the Jokonans themselves used—probably the same. Their food was also no worse than what their captors ate. In any case, it did not seem to be grilled cat. Ista wondered if she was sleeping in a dead man’s bedding, and what dreams it would bring her.

  Something useful would be a nice change. It wasn’t quite a prayer. But no prophetic dreams, and few of the usual kind, came to her as she tossed, dozing badly and waking with a start at odd noises, or when one of the other women started sobbing in her blankets, inadequately muffled.

  One of the injured Jokonans died in the night, apparently from a fever brought on by his wounds. His burial in the dawn was hasty and lacking in ceremony, but the Brother in His mercy took up his soul nonetheless, Ista thought; or at least, she felt no distraught ghost as she passed the sad shallow scraping in the soil. Her son Teidez had died of an infected wound. She watched for a moment when no Jokonan eyes were on her, and covertly made the Quadrene sign of blessing toward the gravesite, for whatever comfort it might bring to a dead boy lost in a foreign land.

  The column did not return to the road, but pushed on north through the hilly wilderness. Necessarily, they went more slowly, and she could feel her captors growing more tense with every passing hour.

  The mountains to their left dwindled; at some point toward evening, they crossed the unmarked boundary into the province of Caribastos. The wilderness grew patchy, forcing detours that swung wide and secretly around walled towns and villages. Streams grew fewer. The Jokonans stopped early to camp by such a brook, and to rest their horses. As a Chalionese border province with the Five Princedoms, Caribastos was better armed, its fortresses in better repair, and its people more alert for the endemic warfare. The Jokonan column would likely try to cross it under the cover of darkness. Three more marches, Ista estimated.

  The valuable captive women were again set aside under the trees, brought food, left alone. Until the Ibran-speaking officer, flanked by two of his seniors, approached them in the level light of sunset. He had some papers in his hand, and an intent, disturbed expression on his face. He stopped before Ista, sitting on a log with her back to a tree. She kept silence, making him speak first.

  “Greetings, Sera.” He gave the title an odd emphasis in his mouth. Without another word, he handed her the papers.

  It was a letter, half-finished, rumpled from a sojourn in a saddlebag. The handwriting was Foix’s, strong and square. Ista’s heart sank even before she read the salutation. It was addressed to Chancellor dy Cazaril, in Cardegoss. After a respectful and unmistakable listing of the great courtier’s offices and ranks, it began:

  “My Dearest Lord:

  “I continue my report as I may. We have left Casilchas behind and come at length to Vinyasca: there is to be a festival here tomorrow. I was glad to be shut of Casilchas. Learned dy Cabon has no notion of proper secrecy or even discretion. By the time he was done blundering about, half the town knew full well that Sera dy Alejo was the dowager royina, and came to court her, which I think did not please her much.

  “Upon further observation, I am coming to agree with you; Royina Ista is not mad in any usual sense, though there are times when she makes me feel very strange and foolish, as though she sees or senses or knows things I do not. She still spends long periods in silence, somewhere far off in her sad thoughts. I do not know why I ever thought women chattered. It would be some relief if she would talk more. As for whether her pilgrimage is the result of some god-driven impulse, as you feared after your long prayers in Cardegoss, I still cannot tell. But then, I rode beside towering miracles with you for weeks and never knew, so that shows nothing.

  “The Daughter’s festival should be a welcome diversion from my worries. I will continue this tomorrow.”

  The next day’s date followed, and the neat writing recommenced.

  “The festival went well”—there followed two paragraphs of droll description. “Dy Cabon has gone off to get very drunk. He says it is to blot out bad dreams, though I think it is more likely to induce them. Ferda is not best pleased with him, but the divine has had closer to do with Royina Ista than any of us, so perhaps he needs it. At first I thought him a fat nervous idiot, as I wrote you before, but now I begin to wonder if the idiot may not be me.

  “I will write more on this head at our next stop, which is to be some dire hamlet in the hills where some saint came from. I’d be from there, too, if I had the choice. I should be able to dispatch this letter securely from the Daughter’s house in Maradi, if we turn that way. I will try to suggest it. I do not think we should venture any farther north, and I have run out of things to read.”

  The letter broke off there, with half a page left to fill. Foix had evidently been too shaken to add a report on the bear before the Jokonans had overtaken them next day.

  Ista looked up. One Jokonan, dark-haired and younger, was watching her with a delighted, avaricious smile. The older, shorter one, who wore a green baldric more heavily encrusted with gold and who she thought was the expedition’s commander, or at any rate surviving senior officer, frowned more thoughtfully. She read wider strategic considerations in his eyes, far more disturbing than mere greed. The Ibran-speaking officer looked apprehensive.

  She made one more effort to clutch her torn incognito to her, futile as it seemed. She held out the paper in an indifferent hand. “What is this to me?”

  Her translator took it back. “Indeed. Royina.” He favored her with a bow in the Roknari court style, right hand sweeping down before him, thumb tucked in the palm: one part irony, one part wariness.

  The commander said in Roknari, So, this is Royina Iselle’s infamous mad mother, truly?

  It seems so, my lord.

  The largesse of the gods has fallen upon us, said the dark-haired one in a voice that vibrated with excitement. He made the Quadrene four-point sign of blessing, touching forehead, navel, groin, and heart, his thumb carefully folded inward. In one lucky blow, all of our pains are repaid and our fortunes are made.

  I thought they kept her locked up in a castle. How is it they were so careless a
s to let her out to wander about on the roads like this? said the commander.

  Her guard could not have anticipated us here. We did not anticipate us here, the dark-haired one said.

  The commander frowned at the letter, though it was plain he could not read more than one word in three of it without the help of his officer. This spy of their chancellor babbles too carelessly of the gods. It is impious.

  And it worries you. Good, Ista thought. It was hard to think of Foix as a spy. Although her estimate of his subtlety and wits rose another notch, for he’d not let fall the least hint of his mandate to report upon her. It made perfect sense in retrospect, of course. If he had been writing to anyone in the world but Lord dy Cazaril, it would have offended Ista deeply, but all of Chalion was in the chancellor’s charge—and her own debt to the man was as boundless as the sea.

  The commander cleared his throat, and continued to Ista in heavily accented Ibran, “You think you are god-touched, mad queen?”

  Ista, sitting very still, allowed her lips to curve up just a trifle, enigmatic. “If you were god-touched, you would not have to ask. You would know the answer.”

  He jerked back, eyes narrowing. “Blasphemous Quintarian.”

  She gave him her best impassive stare. “Inquire of your god. I promise you shall meet Him soon. His mark is on your brow, and His arms are open to receive you.”

  The dark-haired one made a noise of inquiry; the Ibran-speaking officer translated her cool remark, an arrow shot at random from Ista’s point of view. Although it hardly needed communion with the gods to make that prophecy, given the Jokonan raiders’ precarious situation. The commander’s lips thinned still more, but he made no further attempt to cross words with her. He at least seemed to grasp how much more perilous his retreat had grown due to her presence here as a prisoner. Liss’s escape had been a greater disaster than he’d first guessed.