Lady Knight (21 page)

Uniforms. Most of the dead wore uniforms. Kel frowned, and went back along the lines. Sixty-three dead, over thirty-five of them in army maroon. Sergeants, corporals, privates. Soldiers. Some part of her mind stirred, sluggishly, under the weight of her shock. Here was Oluf, who commanded a squad of eight convicts and two corporals. She looked and spotted his corporals: one had been shot, one was missing his right arm and leg. Here was Vidur, whose men were also convicts.

Where was Sergeant Yngvar? His corporals were here, but not Yngvar.

Kel walked the lines of the dead again. Only sixty-three, sixty-four, including Zamiel. No one had found more bodies in the wreckage for some time. She stopped and rubbed her temples, calling the duty roster up before her mind’s eye. Merric had meant to patrol with a convict squad today, Vidur’s squad. Yet Vidur was here - not his corporals, nor his convicts. Yngvar was not here, but his corporals were.

She looked around and found Connac at her elbow. The man was a twenty-year veteran in the royal army. She knew he’d seen all kinds of dreadful things, but this had left him grey-faced, a white line around his tightly shut lips.

“Where are the wounded?” she asked, gripping his arm. “Were they in the infirmary when it burned?”

The man shook his head. “No wounded, Lady Kel,” Connac replied numbly. “Not a one. We looked. Under the barracks, in the cisterns, the garrets. No one at all, and the infirmary was empty.”

No wounded in a camp of nearly five hundred people? Only sixty-four dead, most of them soldiers?

“Have you seen our convicts?” she asked, her dazed mind struggling now to think clearly.

The sergeant shook his head.

Kel looked around, seeing the camp afresh. Her thinking was sluggish. Clearing her mind was like fighting her way to air from under water. Doors and shutters were ripped from buildings, as if the enemy had been hungry children scrambling to crack a nut for the treasure inside. Animals…

“Horses?” she demanded.

Again Connac shook his head.

Where were the survivors? Where were the dead? They hadn’t located even a fifth of Haven’s population. More people had to be alive somewhere. Perhaps the men hadn’t looked hard enough. There would be survivors hidden away.

Kel went to the back wall of the camp and began another search. This time she went through every nook, cranny and cubbyhole. She knew them all. She even checked the secret exit, emerging between the boulders below Haven’s western wall. From a nearby stand of trees some cows gazed at her.

They took the horses and left the cows, she told herself. And the pigs, she added, hearing a squeal from near the river. Meat animals. They left good meat animals behind and not a single living human.

She cut a willow switch with her belt knife and drove the cows towards the gate. Standing below it, she yelled up for men to take charge of them and to round up the pigs. As five men raced down the slope over the boulders, Wyldon came to the gate. “We’ve got Merric!”

4-7 June, 460 HE

Haven and Mastiff

12
RENEGADE

Kel abandoned the cows and ran up the slope, clambering among boulders. At the top she waited to catch her breath. There had been new arrivals while she had searched for even one more survivor. Their horses were troopers’ horses with military saddles and sweat-dark coats, some with long, blood-caked scratches on their hides. Inside the chipped walls she found convicts at last, six of them, the silvery mark blazing through blood and grime on their foreheads. All showed signs of a hard fight. Some wore crude bandages; one corporal sat on the gatehouse bench, one leg straight out in front of him in a crude tree-limb splint.

Kel ran for headquarters. Inside the clerks’ office Sergeant Yngvar lay on a long work table. One of Vidur’s corporals, a sallow, black-whiskered man who had a nasty way with a riding crop, occupied a cot someone had found. Yngvar sported a large black knot on his forehead. He grinned at Kel, revealing broken-off teeth between swollen lips. He pointed to the lump on his skull and said with pride, “Ma always said I had the hardest head south o’ the Vassa.”

Kel rested a hand on Yngvar’s shoulder. “Your mother was wise, and you are fortunate,” she informed him. “And so are we, to get you back only a little dented.”

Yngvar nodded, grim. “Thanks to Sir Merric, milady.”

“Where?” Kel asked.

“Your room,” said Wyldon.

Kel found Neal beside her cot. He occupied a stool, holding on to Merric’s hand as the emerald fire of his magic rolled over his friend. Merric was ghost-white with blood loss. Kel watched, hands clenched, as Neal’s green fire pooled in an ugly stab wound on Merric’s right side and on a long slash down his left thigh.

Merric saw Kel and smiled thinly. “Thirty of them. They caught us at the southern part of the sweep. Not that we chased thirty, mind. The sparrows fetched us - I should have waited for their count, they’ve got so good at counting, but we saw only seven, so we followed. I swear the sparrows called us ten kinds of idiot when we did it. Stupid thing…”

“How were you to know more would be waiting?” Kel demanded softly, crouching on Merric’s free side.

“You would have been suspicious,” Merric said. “You’d've waited for the sparrows.”

“Neither of us can know that,” Kel told her friend. “I might have done the same thing. So stop torturing yourself. What next?”

Merric grimaced. “We heard the horn calls from the fort just when they ambushed us. We tried to get past, go back to Haven, but there were too many. They drove us south, but then they broke off - I think they heard one of their own horn calls. They weren’t really interested in a fight, Kel. Just - getting us away from Haven. As it was, we lost two men - Leithan and Qafi, that Bazhir convict. Fought like a wolf, he did, kept me from being cut in two.” He was sweating. “Kel, I’m sorry. We should have been more careful. How many dead?” His hands clenched the sheets. “How many?”

“We don’t know,” Kel replied honestly. Leithan had been a city street robber, Qafi a horse thief, both hard fighters. They had done good work for Haven in other attacks. “We’re still looking.”

Neal raised his head. “Look, if you can’t hush - “

“Save your strength, Queenscove,” Wyldon ordered from the door. “Get him so he can be moved without hurt, but we’ve other wounded. Mastiffs healers can finish up once we get there.”

Neal looked up, green eyes blazing, and opened his mouth to argue. Kel scowled at him. Neal dosed his lips without a sound.

“My lord, I’d like to search the area for survivors,” Kel said. “I’m hoping they used the tunnel to get out.”

Wyldon looked at her. She saw that he thought it was unlikely, but he kept it to himself. “Take three squads. Be wary, Mindelan.”

“Merric’s fine for now,” Neal said, the green fire of his Gift fading. “He can be moved safely.”

“Too contrary to get yourself properly killed,” said Kel to her redheaded friend.

Merric smiled. His eyelids drooped; he’d be asleep in a moment. “Sorry I let you down,” he whispered. His eyes closed.

“You didn’t -” Neal and Wyldon said at the same time. Both looked horrified at having the same thought as the other.

“I know,” Kel said. She went to gather the squads she would need, Connac’s and two of Captain Toilet’s.

“Mindelan,” Wyldon called.

Kel turned to see what further orders he had.

“Round up any animals - cows, sheep, pigs, and so on,” he told her. “We’re not so oversupplied we can leave them for anyone to take.”

Kel had been thinking the same thing. “Yes, my lord,” she said.

She was positive they would find people in the woods around Haven. The refugees knew the area as well as she did. Given warning, they could have fled. She led the troopers on a search, using the spiral pattern they followed on Haven’s patrols. They were a mile out, having found signs of people only where the enemy had lured Merric away from Haven, when they heard horn calls demanding their immediate return.

Wyldon, Captain Toilet and five mounted squads were riding down the road from the gate as Kel and her soldiers arrived with the livestock they had found in their search. Toilet and his men crossed the bridge as Wyldon stopped to talk with Kel. “Courier rode in from Company Eight,” he said tersely. “Scanrans left a trap on the Giantkiller road - four killing devices. Our mages are holding them, but they need help. Get those animals inside your walls and put men to gravedigging, but close by, understand?” Kel nodded. Wyldon ordered, “Wait here until I send word, Mindelan.” He galloped on to catch up with Toilet’s force.

“Get them in,” Kel ordered her sergeants. “Try to pen them somehow. I’ll be along in a moment.”

The soldiers obeyed, urging the cows, pigs, sheep and goats they’d found up the inclined road, helped by the camp dogs. Kel stared at the troops heading to the rescue of Company Eight, her thoughts bitter. The army had mages who could actually hold the killing devices - not kill them, perhaps, but hold them. Stop them from advancing. Company Eight had mages to hold four killing devices at once. Haven was forced to rely on metal and hemp nets, pickaxes and local hedgewitch.es who struggled with unfamiliar spells and runes. Haven’s mages struggled, and their efforts left only blackened outlines of killing devices next to their own mangled bodies, while one company held four of the things.

Kel’s hands shook, her rage was so intense. Companies. That was another thing. Wyldon had companies at his disposal. So did Raoul; so did General Vanget. Haven had been granted six squads, four if she was at Mastiff to report to Wyldon and Merric was out on patrol. Six squads and over five hundred civilians with scant combat training… They had been left out here, in harm’s way, and harm had come calling.

In quiet moments Kel knew the shape of the war, the way Tortallans were forced to protect a lengthy border through forests and on mountains. When they met the enemy in force, they beat him resoundingly, but such battles were few. As head of their defences Vanget did his best. The whole realm was in danger, not just a camp of homeless people. Vanget’s first priority was the use of his armies to defend strategic sites. Those armies could only be so many places at once.

This was not a quiet moment. Kel didn’t care about the large tapestry, about thousands of miles of border to protect, two cities under siege, the movement of armies, raiding parties, and ships at sea. She hadn’t even been here to defend Haven with her own body. She had been at Mastiff, reporting like a good little clerk and gathering what supplies could be spared by those who did serious fighting.

Jaws clenched, she rode back to what was left of her command. There she chose the ground for the graves, then helped the men to find any shovels that had not burned and make new ones. The graves would have to be common. She doubted that Lord Wyldon would stay here long enough for her to dig individual ones. The ground she picked belonged to Haven itself. She marked off four large pits around the flagpole. It stood untouched, its banners flapping. Their sound was a slap to Kel, another reminder that she had failed her people.

During breaks in digging she continued to search. Surely someone had escaped and was hidden somewhere, in the heaps of burned furnishings, in a hidey-hole under or behind the buildings. She couldn’t believe all they had was sixty-four dead.

At mid-afternoon Wyldon sent a messenger to summon Kel and Neal to meet him at the intersection with the Giantkiller road, with instructions to bring Merric and the other wounded. He also wanted four of the squads that he’d left with Kel. Neal growled curses at people who thought to ride with half-healed men and showed the soldiers how to rig stretchers that could be hung between two mounts. Merric, Sergeant Yngvar and two corporals were loaded on to the stretchers and carried down the Haven road. The procession crossed the river and rode to join Wyldon, Toilet, half of Sixth Company and what remained of Eighth Company.

“It was a trap,” Wyldon confirmed. “Four of the monsters, no humans. The mages had to melt them completely to stop them. Eighth Company got badly chewed up before the spells took hold. Queenscove…” His voice trailed off as he stared into the distance.

Neal waited silently until he realized that Wyldon was thinking of something else. “Excuse me, Lord Wyldon - you had orders for me?”

Wyldon looked at him with a frown. “I did? Yes, of course. You’re the strongest healer in the district. You must check each man as we ride.”

He stared at the Giantkiller road to the east, his eyes bleak. Stormwings followed it already, knowing they would find Eighth Company’s dead in the hills. “The refugees are gone, long gone,” Wyldon said crisply. “The devices slowed us down long enough for the trail to go cold. I can’t waste more time searching when they’re across the Vassa by now.”

“But sir,” Kel began, her mouth dry, “we haven’t found but a tenth - “

“We have other problems, Mindelan,” snapped Wyldon. “Maggur’s got that cursed pattern, remember? Two or three attacks at once. I want us in Mastiff before he strikes, if he hasn’t already. And there are other factors, vital ones - I can’t explain them right now. Here are your orders: I leave you Sergeants Connac and Hevlor. Finish up, bury your dead. Ride to Mastiff at first light. You’ll be reassigned. Bring those farm animals and keep your eyes and ears open. If Mastiff is besieged, report to Lord Raoul at Steadfast. Do not engage the enemy at Mastiff. Understood?”

“But my lord, if the refugees are still alive - ” Kel pleaded.

Wyldon cut her off, his dark eyes hard. “We have bigger problems to concern us, Mindelan. You have your orders. Bury the dead and get your troops to Mastiff.” He signalled the captains at the front of the column of soldiers. They set out. The squads from Sixth Company who had followed Kel until now fell in with their comrades.

She’d thought Neal would protest, given Neal’s inability ever to keep his mouth shut, but one of the wounded from Eighth Company started to bleed through his bandages. Neal went to look at him. Merric passed her on his stretcher, hung between two troopers. “Take care. I’ll see you at Mastiff!” he called to Kel.

Kel and Hoshi stayed at the side of the road. Jump and the camp dogs sat at their feet; the sparrows hopped on the ground, eating grass seeds. They’ve given up, her mind whispered over and over. Wyldon has given up.