King's Shield (68 page)

She pressed her hands against her face. “I should have thought of that.”

Lnand was quite ready to remind Han of her mistakes if she strutted, but a Han standing there looking sad and anxious made her sad and anxious.

“No one else thought of it.” Lnand lifted a pack that had contained the flour for their pan biscuits, and dropped it with a squelch. “So we learned something. We better separate out anything that will rot, and pack up the rest extra tight.”

“Yes.”

They tried squeezing into the bedrolls. That didn’t work because people got tangled up, and shoving fights started. So Lnand said they’d be cheese-breads, that is, open a bedroll and have several people lie in a row, like cheese on a bread slice, and then pull another bedroll like a blanket over them.

That worked much better, especially as everyone drew inward into a puppy pile for warmth when the cold turned bitter.

The next day they set out again, but a terrible storm boiled up overhead, this one much worse than the last. Hail and then sleet began to fall. When lightning struck not a hundred paces away, not just the smalls began wailing.

Hal ran ahead, but shortly came running back. “I found a cave!”

This was more of a crevice than a cave. They crammed in. It was narrow, and had a very smelly nest in it. They wrapped up tight, and as soon as they were fed cold, damp journey bread slathered with honey and crumbly cheese, the smalls all fell asleep where they dropped.

The others sat shoulder to shoulder, too weary to move. Han fell asleep without meaning to. She woke suddenly to a thunderbolt that sounded directly overhead. She wondered wearily where she was. White needle sleet hissed just past the cave opening. Her toes and fingers ached.

Lnand blocked the watery weak light, nothing more than a silhouette in the gloom. “Rain’s gotten into everything.” She held up a sack. “All the journey bread except the ones in the closeweave packs are moldy.”

“How many breads do we have?” Han asked.

“Just those two. The eights all unwrapped theirs, I think to pinch pieces while they were walking. They shoved the food in with their dirty clothes, it all smells bad.”

Lnand sounded so tired she wasn’t even strutting.

Han knew she should have caught the boys at it, but at the end of the hike she’d just been putting one foot in front of another as she carried a small on her back, and she’d only watched the ground.

So she didn’t even look at the guilty boys. “This crack is narrow, and there’s all that rain. How about this. We’ll post a watch, and squeeze in beyond the nest thing, and light the Fire Stick. We’ll boil the rice and beans together. I don’t care if they’re soggy, they have to cook in water, right? We’ll set the bucket—”

“Billykid says they lost it. On one of the bridges.”

This time Han jerked around to glare at the eights all clumped together. She was about to ask who’d been careless, but she could tell from their faces no one was going to snitch. And anyway, what could she do?

“Do we have a pan?”

“
I
brought one.”

Han decided Lnand’s braggy tone was a relief—it meant maybe things would someday go back to normal. “Make the beans and rice. We’ll have to figure out some way to carry it. We’ll be careful with the food. When we have to, we’ll do half rations and promise them rewards. And if we have to, half of that. But as soon as the lightning stops, we’re going on.”

“Where? It’s just going to get colder up here.”

“I know. We’ll just have to go back down. Here’s an idea. Let’s leave a whole lot of the bad stuff in this place. So if the Idayagans find it, they’ll think we went up even higher. Who wants to plant clues leading up the path farther?”

“I will.” Hal hugged his skinny knees against him. “I know how to make a false trail.”

Han thumped him on the shoulder, and he smiled a little. “We’ll get hot food made while you do that. We’ll eat and sleep. And if the lightning isn’t hitting the ground tomorrow, we’ll go back down toward the pass, but zigzag.”

“And move every time it rains?”

“And move every time it rains.”

 

 

 

Night fell suddenly in the mountains.

Nowhere were fires lit. The Venn sat in their rows, on signal, as they had been doing. Talkar’s scouts returned at midnight to report that the top of the pass lay two days’ march ahead, no sign of any enemy.

Just before sunset Noddy’s and Hawkeye’s scouts returned with the news that the top of the pass lay two bends ahead.

For the first time, the Marlovans camped instead of rolling drearily upward, changing horses four times a night. They had saddle-slept, others creeping into the wagons until the animals slowed, to be summarily turfed out. Many had put on a grim burst of speed, just to drop onto a rock and snore until the rest caught up.

Food was passed out, horses unhitched and cared for, then exhausted men and animals slept, the wagons with six and eight crammed in.

Up on the mountain above the pass, Inda and his party stopped on the trail as soon as the last of the light vanished. No one wanted to fall down the side of a cliff, so they settled with their backs to a broad stretch of rock, looking out at the jagged mountaintops blocking the lower reaches of the canopy of stars.

Tau sat above the others on a rock, paper aimed westward to catch the last faint gleams of twilight, and wrote:

On the other side of the pass, Cama’s men, filthy and stinking despite regular dousings of rain, marched across a plateau under starlight; most of them had long since resorted to bare feet. They were beyond exhaustion and into exhilaration. Cama strode at their head, seemingly tireless, singing one war ballad after another in his low, raspy voice. On the south side of the lake, Cherry-Stripe’s men were scrambling as fast as they could force themselves. Cherry-Stripe no longer thought about Inda, the plans, or the future. His entire life was focused on one thing: making sure Cama didn’t beat him to the pass.

By midnight, with one last snow-pale peak between them and the pass, Cama’s men were too tired to sing, but they could hum, and hum they did, until teeth and bones resonated. Over and over the “Hymn to the Beginning,” a beat on each step, a hum that only ceased when Cama held up a fist and the Runners took out their meal and passed it down hand-to-hand.

Both armies chewed the heavy, sweet-stale journey bread whose recipes shared the same origin, generations before; the only material differences were the Marlovan addition of rye and raisins as opposed to the Venn tradition of honey and nuts.

 

 

 

Signi stirred, waking to a dry mouth, her head pounding. It took her a long time to sit up. Grateful for the soft summer air, she contemplated the stairs on the other side of the tower.
Come, Signi, come. Twelve steps at most.

She tried to stand, fell to her knees, crawled forward, then rested her damp forehead against her trembling wrists. Then again. Rest. Again.

The stars had wheeled halfway across the sky before she reached the stairs leading down to the first landing. Then it was easier to descend on hands and knees, seeking each step out with her toes, resting, then easing herself down. Step. By. Step.

But she made it. The door to the top room was open as it had been left. Though her knees had begun to bruise and her palms to ache, she crawled inside. The room was plain, empty but for a narrow bed: here, they said, the young king had slept so that he might have nearer access to the archive below.

She reached the bunk, fell in, and sank into slumber.

Rain slanted down from mast-scraping clouds when the lookout shouted, “Sail hai!”

Gillor rode the northernmost station closest to the island of Geranda, a very faint line on the horizon just off the beam. She waved to the flag hand to let the rest of the fleet know they’d spotted someone, then climbed up the foremast herself.

She’d just snapped her glass out when someone yelled, “Them walleyed masts . . . It’s gotta be
Blue
!”

A wash of rain blew on, leaving sharp and clear the slightly forward-leaning foremast and straight mainmast. Gillor smacked the glass to. “That’s
Blue Star,
” she said. “We must be clearing the rain now. They have to be able to see us.”

Sails frantically jerked up on the distant ship.

“Thinks we’re Scarf’s
Princess,
” Gillor said, sneering on the word
princess.
Some of the crew laughed—the sneer had become habit.

“Wait! Wait, wait, they’re haulin’ round.”

“Heh.” Imagine calling a pirate ship
Princess
! Gillor liked the fancy work all over her new command just fine, but she’d gotten rid of that ridiculous figurehead with the crown, leaving just the rail scrollwork and nice, clean hull planking.
Death
and
Cocodu
and
Sable
didn’t have figure-heads, so she wouldn’t have one either, though she would have liked something with crossed swords.

“He’s raising a signal,” the flag hand yelled. “Free traders’ flag below the parley.”

“Run the same,” Gillor yelled as she lowered herself to the masthead. “Signal the rest of the fleet. See if Fox wants to talk to ’em himself or what.” And she slid down to the deck.

The
Death
signaled back for her to close with the newcomer, so she did, smiling when she recognized Captain Fangras, grayer but otherwise much the same as she remembered from the old days in Freeport Harbor, as he clambered aboard.

“Captain Fangras,” she said in welcome as he flicked his fingers in salute to the captain’s deck. He was an independent-turned-privateer who’d given Inda’s marine band a cruise when they were just starting out. “I’ve got something to drink in the cabin.”

Fangras’ lips pursed appreciatively. “I take it Elgar got rid of Scarf, and a better job I never heard of, save Marshig being shoved back to Nightland with the soul-eaters, where he belonged.” He jerked his thumb aft, where the new name was painted on the stern, and said in a lower voice, “
Rapier
? Are you by chance a Fal?”

She crossed her arms. “What makes you say that?”

Fangras turned a laugh into a cough. “Pirate fighting, du eling weapon, Fal, it seemed to fit together.”

It fit together if you knew that rapiers were the required weapon for duels in Fal. “You from there?” she asked, ready for that sense of kinship that comes of unexpected encounters with countrymen, even far from the home you will never see again.

“No! That is to say, yes, but I don’t think of myself as any Fal, not for thirty years!” His hands went out. “I left to get away from them and their everlasting quarrels. Now, was that the
Wind’s Kiss
out there beyond Elgar’s
Death
? We’d heard that that sorry crew’d turned outright pirate after Sarendan revoked the letters of marque ’gainst Khanerenth. Mistake, if you ask me.”