Thawed Fortunes (27 page)

By the Powers, what can he possibly want?
Does he honestly think the Guard will let him get away with
heckling me now like he used to?

Se'ath sat in silence for several seconds,
long enough for Va'del to realize that the candidate looked
different than he remembered, almost as if he'd subtly changed
since Va'del had last really examined him.

The silence grew to the point of
ridiculousness, and Va'del's exhaustion made him speak when he
otherwise would have been content to wait the other young man out.
"Did you need something, candidate?"

"Yes, Guadel. I've come to request
reassignment back to Vladir's castle. I shouldn't be here." There
wasn't anything Se'ath could have possibly said that would have
surprised Va'del more than that simple statement. It had always
seemed that Se'ath would die before allowing anyone to believe him
a coward.

"Before I approve or deny your request, would
you like to tell me why you feel justified in deserting your
brothers when they are engaged in one of the most important
conflicts of our history?"

The words seemed to come out of Va'del of
their own accord, the things he would have expected Va'ma or Garth
to say, not the kinds of things he was capable of thinking of.

Peters reappeared with a bowl of steaming
food while Se'ath seemed to be considering how best to respond.

"Guadel Vi'en said I was to stay and ensure
that you finished the bowl, sir."

The anger that Va'del would have otherwise
felt at his wife's high-handed ways was short-circuited by his
returning hunger, so rather than saying something biting that
Peters didn't deserve, Va'del merely nodded his thanks, waiting
until the guardsman had backed far enough away to give illusion of
privacy before turning back to Se'ath.

"Sir, I'm a coward, and as such my presence
is risking the mission."

When Va'del didn't respond, Se'ath finally
elaborated. "When the bag'ligs attacked, I froze up. All around me
people were clearing their weapons and running back down the
column. When it finally registered that we were under attack, I
turned and drew my weapons, but I didn't move. My fear was so
strong that I just sat there while those animals nearly swarmed you
over."

For a moment, Va'del's mind was still unable
to fully process what he was hearing, the defeated demeanor of the
young man before him was so completely at odds with the egotistical
boy who'd thought Be'ter could do no wrong. Luckily, Se'ath wasn't
finished.

"I tried to tell myself that I was just
surprised, that things happened too quickly for me to respond.
After the ambush I couldn't keep lying. We were all sitting there,
and I was so scared that Va'ma would command us to attack, and that
we would all be killed. I was shaking."

Va'del took a deep breath and mentally
reached out, hoping to find more wisdom, and instead thinking of
the legends that he'd heard from the time he was small, the ones
that made Guadel sound like heroes, not the ones that made them
sound like monsters.

"Feeling fear doesn't make you a coward. I
rather expect that even Tor'h must have occasionally felt some fear
when he thought about the forces arrayed against him. The real
question is whether you're able to master your fear, or whether you
allow it to master you. Are you more afraid of dying, or are you
more afraid of failing those who depend upon you, of committing
treason?"

Se'ath started slightly, going pale at the
end and then looking slightly confused, as if he hadn't ever
thought of things in that way before, but was unwilling to withdraw
his assertion that he was a coward. Va'del gave the candidate
another few seconds to respond and then shook his head.

"Denied. You'll continue on with us because
we'll need every able fighter we can get if we're to succeed. You
have a duty to master that fear and serve the People."

Peters reappeared at Va'del's side as Se'ath
walked away in a daze. "Begging your pardon, sir, but I happened to
overhear the candidate's concerns. Now that he's heard the standard
reassurances do you want me to have one of the old hands keep an
eye on him?"

Va'del paused between mouthfuls of stew.
"There's a standard answer? I didn't even know it was a common
problem. I suppose it would be best to have someone watch over
him."

It seemed for a moment that Peters was
weighing Va'del with his eyes. "If you didn't know that was the
answer that's been handed to scared soldiers since the Powers first
armed mankind to fight their battles in proxy, why did you tell him
what you did, sir?"

Va'del finished up his food as a delaying
tactic, never truly comfortable analyzing his own motivations. "I
suppose I told him that because it is what he needed to hear, that
and I expect that is how normal people work."

"You weren't scared then when you faced off
against those bandits?" Peters asked as he accepted Va'del's empty
bowl.

"I think I was a little frightened when we
first tracked them, but any fear for myself was outweighed by the
fear that Jain would die. I was really more scared of that than I
was of dying myself."

"What about after that?"

"By the time I actually faced off with them
all, I knew she was alive, so mostly I was just furious that they'd
come and endangered the only person to love me since my parents had
died. When you are that angry, there isn't room for any other
emotions."

Va'del couldn't read the meaning in Peters'
gaze as the other man nodded and walked away, couldn't tell if he'd
passed some test, or failed to measure up against the exacting
tradition of the Guadel.

More likely the latter. The obvious concern
no doubt being what happens when it is just me and my fear with no
anger to buffer me. In my own way I'm just as untried as
Se'ath.

Lost in thought as he was, Va'del didn't
notice when Vi'en arrived to check his wound. Fortunately he lapsed
into sleep both before she could launch into the tongue-lashing
she'd no doubt been saving up, and before his thoughts could darken
any further.

##

Va'del gingerly crawled up to the top of the
hill and pulled out the looking-glass that Si'mon had pressed into
his hands before he'd left the castle.

Shading the metal with his hand to avoid
having the sun reflect off of it, the sub-Guadel carefully scanned
the camp and then handed the glass over to Peters.

"Now that we're here, what do we do?"

The grizzled guardsman paused for a second to
send Va'del a look that seemed to say the commander of a force was
the last one who was supposed to admit to uncertainty, and then
resumed his slow scan of the enemy camp.

Va'del took the hint, closing his mouth and
letting the part of his mind that wasn't overcome by worry for
Jain, or exhaustion from his wounds, sort through options. The
sentries around the perimeter would have to be killed or bypassed,
but there were a couple who were more widely spaced than they ought
to have been.

If those two were taken out, there'd be a
hole big enough to move however many people they needed to without
detection. That only left the problem of getting all of the
Daughters and then making sure there was a way to stop the Baron's
army from following all the way back to the castle.

For a little while, the pain and worry faded
to the background, and Va'del felt a plan begin to form as he
cataloged the strengths and weaknesses of the encampment. Peters
handed the spyglass back and listened intently as Va'del explained
what he wanted done. The guardsmen suggested a couple of subtle
changes, and one particularly nasty trick that Va'del very much
liked, and then they were done.

Briefing the rest of the group took less than
a cycle, and if the plan strained their available manpower to the
absolute limit, it also provided the best chance of survival for
not only them, but also the people they'd left back at the
castle.

As darkness lengthened and settled in on the
camp, Va'del found the anticipation made it hard to want to sleep,
but he carefully lowered himself down onto his bedroll, both
because he wanted to set a good example for his men, and because he
knew how profoundly he was going to need the sleep once they
started moving.

It seemed that he'd only been sleeping for a
few moments when one of the men he'd detailed for the second watch
shook him awake. Va'del nodded his thanks, barely visible as it was
in the starlight, and carefully rolled out of his blankets. He was
sore still, but the pain wasn't as bad as before. Fighting was
still going to be tricky, but it was now doable, and the ride back
to the castle might even be survivable.

Peters came by to tell him that he'd checked
with each of the men to ensure that they understood their roles,
and then it was time to start.

A quick look back at the camp as he left
allowed him a glimpse of Vi'en standing with her arms crossed
disapprovingly.

Va'del and Peters crept towards the two
sentries they'd decided on removing, doing their best to move
silently in the unfamiliar terrain. Every twig that creaked in
protest of their steps seemed as loud as an avalanche, but neither
of the sentries moved, so they continued on, hoping the entire time
that they hadn't been heard.

They were only about twenty feet from the
first enemy now, and Va'del was starting to worry when it finally
happened. Vi'en crashed into his mind with all of the subtlety of a
blacksmith's hammer, almost driving him to the ground with the
force of the mental impact. The experience was even worse than
before, it was as if Vi'en had become even less understanding,
shredding through his very being as though intent on destroying
everything she found lacking.

Va'del wanted to fight her off, but he forced
down his defenses with an effort that nearly brought a groan to his
lips. Vi'en seemed to bustle from one place to another, her mental
fingers rifling through his being without exercising any care to
make sure that nothing of herself was left behind. Va'del tried to
tell himself it was his imagination, but he couldn't escape feeling
that her presence remained in his mind as she moved on to different
parts, an oily residue that coated every surface.

Only the fact that he was only moments away
from rescuing Jain gave Va'del enough strength to refrain from
throwing the self-satisfied creature out of his mind.

The link finally clicked, and Va'del felt
power and grace fill his body. Suddenly, crawling towards the first
sentry was an effortless task, and he covered the remaining
distance silently, popping up at the last second to cover the man's
mouth with his hand as his captured dagger found its target and
ended the threat of the man crying out.

The second sentry was more alert, and started
turning when Va'del was still ten feet away. In a single lunge, the
sub-Guadel covered the distance between them and killed the man
before he could do more than gasp.

Adrenaline flowed through his body like a
drug, tempered only by the bitter taste of killing, but Va'del
ignored both feelings, forcing himself to sit motionless while
first Peters and then the rest of the advance group arrived.

Va'del waved the majority of his men into the
camp, and then pushed Vi'en nearly out of his mind and made himself
wait for five minutes as they entered the camp in ones and
twos.

As he neared the end of his count, a questing
hand at his side came away wet with blood, but either something
Vi'en was doing, or the excitement coursing through his body, was
blocking any feeling of pain. Putting the reopened wound out of his
mind, Va'del let Vi'en fully back into his mind. Once the link had
clicked back into place, Va'del led Peters and another guardsman,
whose name he hadn't had time to learn, out into the camp.

The knights Va'del had watched from the hill
were a greatly varied group. The only common denominators he'd been
able to see among them were their armor, and the ever-present red
cloaks that looked almost black once the sun went down. The rest of
the men were even more disparate in their appearance, many lacking
even a cloak, and Va'del hoped that his men, moving in such small
groups, wearing cloaks from the castle's meager stores, would be
able to make their way through the camp unchallenged.

Just move like you belong here. Not too
quickly, but like you are headed somewhere with a purpose.

Incredibly, the bluff worked, and Va'del
suppressed a sigh of relief as they reached the tent that he hoped
held Jain and the others. There'd been few women moving about the
camp, and none of them had been the Daughters, so it followed that
the girls had to be in a tent. The other two tents of sufficient
size were much bigger and richer in construction, which logically
indicated they belonged to Vladir and Kra'ven.

Again Va'del briefly considered trying to
assassinate the Baron, but once more discarded the idea as being
too risky. There wasn't any sure way to know which tent belonged to
which man, and Kra'ven was all too likely to have a magical means
of ensuring he wasn't taken by surprise. If Va'del guessed wrong
about which tent contained the Baron, the camp would be alerted and
there'd be no chance of freeing the Daughters.

Vi'en had argued for an assassination, saying
that doing so would cause the army to fall apart and eliminate the
need to fight them later, but she had reluctantly admitted that
while she didn't necessarily know how to set the kind of early
warning system Va'del was worried about, that didn't mean it wasn't
possible.

And if she's wrong and we are caught, our
sisters back at the castle die. Having the army fall apart after
we've been killed won't save them from a fatal withdrawal process
when the drugs run out.

The pair of guards outside the tent looked
over at Va'del and his companions as they approached. The more
distant guard examined them only casually, but the closer man
scanned the approaching group carefully, and then looked back at
Peters in surprise.