King's Shield (58 page)

“Let’s get just a little closer.” Han crouched low, instinct tightening the back of her neck. “Maybe the torches aren’t visible from this part of the landslide. We never had a chance to check before they sent us away.”

Gdir flicked her hand open. The three younger children crouched down.
They’re following her orders now,
Han thought.

“I think you need to mud up,” Han whispered.

Gdir shuddered. But she’d stalked long enough to know that pale faces showed up if you knew how to look. “If we see anyone.”

“But that might be too—”

Late.
At that moment a tall, horn-helmed sentry walked slowly out from the west tower arch on the castle wall and made his way northward.

He was on the other side of the castle from the children, moving away. The children stared in horror at the castle.

The moon shone down from overhead, just enough light for them to comprehend that the Venn had taken control of the castle. The children could make out sentries on the north wall of the castle, where the gates were.

“Did they take our parents prisoner?” Han whispered.

Gdir said, “Where would they put them? The garrison lockup only has two beds in each cell—”

“Four cells—”

“—then they must be down in the old dungeon, but they’d have to move everything around—”

“But remember, they already moved things, when we helped make those mazes.”

Tlennen pointed his wet thumb. “Why are all the guards at the front?”

“They must expect attack from the sea,” Han said slowly. “They must think nobody will come from the pass. Because they have all those marchers.”

Han looked Gdir’s way for corroboration, but Gdir was staring intently up at the top of the landslide. She pointed with her bow, and the others saw the line of pale faces all the way up at Twisted Pine Path, adjacent to where Flash and Keth had stood to start the avalanche.

The line spotted Gdir’s pale face. They halted.

“They’re sneaking up on the castle,” Gdir said, sucking in a happy breath. “It’s got to be
our
people!”

Han got a single heartbeat of joy before she had to say, “No. Ours’d be in mud. They wouldn’t be standing up like that, making targets.”

“They’re attacking the castle.” Gdir shivered with excitement. Everything was going to be all right! “We can help them! We can tell them how we’d do it!”

“I think we better hide,” Han ordered, still crouched low.

But Gdir was already running. Her brother and cousins launched after her.

Gdir waved her bow, which she hadn’t strung yet. “We can help,” she called in Marlovan, and then in Iascan, “We can help—”

The attackers talked in Idayagan, too fast for Han to catch the words, or maybe it was the words themselves she didn’t know.

The voices were angry. One carried on the summer air all the way to Han: “No, they won’t,” and then in the children’s own language, accented but clear, “Little Marlovan shits!”

Twang!
None of the four children saw the arrow until it smacked Gdir’s chest, not twenty-five paces from the speaker.

Han’s eyes swam with weird spots. But she could see—would forever see—Gdir’s body twist around, her hands going to the arrow, just before she crumpled up.

Tlennen began to screech, high, breathless, shrill.

Hiss! Zip!
More arrows, at least a dozen, and before Han’s horrified eyes the other three children jerked then fell, Tlennen with four or five arrows in him.

Some of the Idayagans missed—one arrow landed within arm’s reach of Han. She tensed, not sure whether to yell, to fight, to freeze.

From inside the castle a horn blatted. It was answered by another. Mounted Venn emerged from the back of the castle, carrying torches, and rode toward the landslide. The Idayagans had scattered, some running straight back up to Twisted Pine, others toward the far side of the landslide and out of sight.

Han backed all the way down the southernmost edge of the landslide as the Venn horses plunged in pursuit of the Idayagans, perhaps five hundred long paces away, racing at an angle away from her.

She remembered orders. She remembered the cave. She kept backing away, low as a turtle, until she reached the gulley between the avalanche and the ridge. Shivering with fear, terror, shock, she darted from bush to bush, pausing just once to look back.

There were the four small bodies, just barely visible on this side of the landslide, hidden from the castle. Memory was cruel, forcing her to see them fall—the small things—Gdir’s jerk, Tlennen’s little fingers scrabbling, and she bent over a bush and vomited.

She collapsed onto the trail next to the bush. The smell of the vomit forced her away, clawing at the back of her throat. And though her head throbbed, she got to her hands and knees, crawling until she could get her feet under her.

Somehow she got back to the cavern. Lnand had lit a lantern, shading it on the side where the children lay sleeping.

“Oogh, what is that stink?” Lnand whispered.

Han did not answer. She found the bucket and dunked her whole head. The water was merciful on her hot, smeared, itchy face, but memory granted no mercy.

She sucked in water then spewed it back out, and the magic fluoresced a brief blue as it snapped away the vile taste in her mouth. She raised her head, breathing hard.

Lnand waited, so still the lantern’s orange tongue of flame reflected in her eyes.

Han had left hating Lnand. There was no room inside her for that now. She fell to her hands and knees, and Lnand stared in shock at the tears tumbling down Han’s face, her contorted mouth.

“She’s dead. Gdir is dead.” Han keened, trying to keep her voice down. But a sob sucked in her chest, and she bent double, rocking as she fought to contain it. “All. Dead.”

“Who did it? Venn?”

“Idayagans.”

Lnand whispered, “Did they see you?”

“No.” Han squeezed her eyes shut. What to do? They’d already broken orders once. And Gdir was dead! No, maybe she was alive. Han caught herself up. Yes, maybe she was alive—she saw a lot of bad shots—she might be hurt—

“I’ve got to go back,” Han said.

Lnand hissed her breath in. She looked back toward the children, and Han knew she was scared. Lnand was far too frightened to hide it.

“You’re coming with me,” Han stated.

“But you said before if something happens—”

“It’s all changed. The Idayagans know about us now. Maybe even the Venn. If Gdir is alive, any of them, the Idayagans might even try to find out where we are.” Han breathed hard, the ideas coming faster. “Yes. If they’re dead, we’ll Disappear them. We won’t just leave them there. I can’t do that.”

“No.” Lnand hunched up. “But I don’t see why I have to go. You’re making me go to be mean.”

“You have to help me against those Idayagans. They are talking right now, I bet anything. I mean the ones who ran away. They’re talking right now, just like we are. ‘Where did those brats come from?’ They called us little shits. ‘Where did the little shits come from? We better find out. Maybe the little shits we filled with arrows are alive. We can drag the bodies away so they can’t Disappear them, and throw them off a cliff.’ ”

Lnand was too shocked to act shocked.

“They might think the Venn saw us, but I don’t think they did. They might be afraid the Venn will find out about the Idayagans from Gdir, if she’s alive. They might think grown-ups of
ours
will come and find out, and come after them.”

Lnand’s mouth turned down. “I wish we had grown-ups.”

“We don’t. It’s us. So wake up . . . oh, Freckles and Dvar. I’ll wake Hal. He’ll have to be in charge here, since he’s not very good with the bow yet.”

Even Hal would agree. There was no insult in that. Boys started with sword when girls started with bow. Usually, they didn’t get bow until they were eight or so. Hal had only been shooting a year—and that maybe twice a week, when the girls shot every single day.

Han and Lnand shook the three nine-year-olds awake and told them what had happened. Freckles and Dvar reacted with disbelief, and then angry determination, catching their mood from Han. Haldred shivered, all bony knots, but turned his thumb up when Han gave him his orders.

Under Han’s sharp order, the girls bound up their hair and covered themselves with mud.

Then in low-running single file they stalked from cave up over the ridge, down to the landspill, and up.

They’d almost reached the four small death-sprawled figures when Lnand poked Han with her bow and pointed upward at Twisted Pine Path.

Han had been right! Figures slunk out from behind the wind-shaped conifer that clung to the broad ledge, and began picking their way down.

The Idayagans were terrible at the stalk. They didn’t wear any helms. A few had mudded their faces, but most hadn’t. They all wore dark clothes, but they faced the moon, and were clear as could be. Marlovans wouldn’t be that stupid.

Han wondered if the Venn saw them, too. She glanced back at the castle, but saw nothing, not even any sentries.

“We have to wait for them to get into range,” Lnand said, which was the second rule on drills.

Han said, “Right.” Gdir would have gotten mad at Lnand for saying something they’d all known since they were six, but Lnand’s shoulders relaxed as soon as Han said
right.

Lnand’s expression was hard to make out because of the mud, but Han could tell she was worried. “Will they come at us in that line? We can’t shoot the first one, all the others will just run away.”

She wants to know if everything we practice is going to work.
Han said, “No. If they’re looking for Gdir and them, they’ll have to spread out. I bet they don’t remember just where they were. They can’t know the landslide like we do.”

Lnand turned her thumb up: that made sense.

“So let’s get into position—first rule—just like in practice.” Han tried to say it the way the arms mistress had. The way Gdir’s mother had. “And when I shoot, and you hear it, everybody shoot as fast as you can. Get square between your targets, lay out your arrows. Just like we were taught.” Han paused, and the two little girls turned up their thumbs. “Lnand, you and me do odds, me left of the line, you right. Freckles, you the left, and Dvar, you the right on evens. Chest, no fancy shots. Now.”

Dvar let a single whimper escape, but when Freckles poked her, she stopped. “Just like practice,” Freckles whispered, and again, no more than a breath, “Just like practice.”

The four girls blended with the dirt- and rock-tumbled slide as they wriggled across the landslide in a line roughly parallel to the spreading Idayagans. They positioned themselves between the enemy and the fallen children, their instinct to guard the latter.

As Han had guessed, the Idayagans had not remembered where they’d left those squalling Marlovan brats. They crossed the landslide, well spread, but moving at the wrong angle. They might even have missed their victims, at least on a first sweep.

Han’s sweaty hands were tightly gripped on her bow, her arrow nocked. She had fixed on a certain rock as the perfect range, and counted the outermost Idayagan’s steps as he moved toward it. He was scarcely visible as an individual, just a looming man-shape, eye sockets black. When he scuffed past her rock, she shot.

Spang!
The noise sounded as loud as the thunderclap days ago. She hesitated a moment, then nocked another arrow as he fell. Lnand’s shot hissed through the air a heartbeat later, and truer than Han’s.
Thump.
Square in the chest.

“Augh!” the man howled.

The rest of the Idayagans stilled into perfect targets, standing upright to look around for danger. Four bows twanged, the nine-year-olds at the same moment, and Lnand and Han with their second shots.

Six down, though the girls did not know if they were dead or just wounded. Several Idayagans returned arrows, though they could not see their targets. When four more arrows zipped back at them from unseen shooters, each hitting at least a limb, the Idayagans began to scatter. The girls were good shots but had little power; the Idayagans were very soon out of range.

And then the Venn horn blew. The girls and Idayagans alike jerked round. From the castle’s back gates rode a war party, a much bigger one this time. They galloped straight for the landslide.

Han waited only long enough to see what angle they came at, then worked her dry mouth. She was terrified she wouldn’t be able to do the cricket chirp that the children used in games for
Center on me!

But it worked—it worked—the other girls, anxious for orders, began crawling toward Han the moment they heard the familiar tongue clicks. When the ground trembled under the horses’ hooves, Han gave the
kek-kek
hawk cry for
lie doggo!
Her voice was too high, she didn’t sound like a hawk at all, but the enemies were making too much noise to pay attention to a faint mewling bird cry. The Venn galloped past at extreme bow shot, chasing the Idayagans, who were scrambling away as fast as they could over the hump of the landslide in an effort to get out of sight. Two or three fell, and slid, causing more dirt and rocks to cascade; a couple of horses floundered in the fresh, unsteady dirt flow.

Venn and Idayagans vanished over the landslide. There was nothing the girls could see, but they all lay flat to the dirt until a horn howled from up high and another horn answered from the castle. The faint tinkle of harness and armor echoed back from the castle’s inner walls as the Venn rode back down and into the castle.

Han and the girls waited until the moon had passed the top of the sky and was beginning its slide down the other way before Han gave a single cricket chirp. Then she counted to fifty, and gave another, and the girls homed on her. They arrived swiftly, Lnand pressing so close her breath was hot on Han’s cheek.