Valdemar 05 - [Vows & Honor 02] - Oathbreakers (7 page)

:On your best behavior, mindmate,:
Warrl said. For once his mindvoice sounded dead serious.
:This is the camp of the Lord Commander.:

Before Tarma had a chance to react, Idra was ushering her past a pair of massive sentries and into the interior of a tent big enough to hold a half dozen of the Hawks' little two-man bivouacs.

Tarma blinked in the light and warmth, and felt her muscles going to jelly in the pleasant heat. Mage-lights everywhere, and
a jesto-vath
that made Kethry's look like a simple shieldspell.

Other than that, though, the tent was as plain as Idra‘s, divided, as hers was, into a front and back half. In the front half was a table, some chairs and document-boxes, a rack of wine bottles. The curtain dividing it was half open; on the other side Tarma could see what looked like a chest, some weapons and armor—and a plain camp cot, piled high with thick furs and equally thick blankets.

What I wouldn't give to climb into that right now,
she was thinking, when her attention was pulled away by something more important.

“Leamount, you old warhorse, here's our miracle-maker,” Idra was saying to a lean, grizzled man in half-armor standing by the map-table, but in the shadows, so that Tarma hadn't really noticed him at first. Tarma had seen Lord Leamount once or twice at a distance; she recognized him by his stance and his scarlet surcote with Sursha's rampant grasscat more than anything else, although once he turned in her direction she saw the two signature braids he wore in front of each ear, an affectation he'd picked up among his hillclans. “Lord Leamount, may I present Tarma shena Tale‘sedrin—”

“Lo‘teros, shas tella, Kal'enedral
,
”
he replied, much to Tarma's surprise; bowing, making a fist and placing it over his heart as he bowed.

“Ile se‘var, Yatakar,”
she replied, returning his salute with intense curiosity and sharpened interest.
“Ge vede sa'kela Shin‘a'in.”

“Only a smattering, I fear. I learned it mostly in self-defense—” He grinned, and Tarma found herself grinning back. “—to keep from getting culls pushed off on me by your fellow clansmen.”

“Ah, well—come to me, and you'll get the kind of horses the Hawks mount.”

“I'll do that. Idra has high praise for you, the
kyree,
and your
she‘enedra,
Swordsworn,” he said, meeting her intensely ice-blue eyes as few others had been able. “I could only wish I had a few more of your kind with us. So—the bird returned; that told us there
was
a path through. But what's the track like?”

Somehow Tarma wasn't overly surprised that he came directly to the point. “Bad,” she said shortly, as Idra spread out Jodi's maps over the ones already on the table. “It'll be brutal. The only mounts that are going to be able to negotiate that terrain are the Hawks‘.
Maybe
some of the ponies your mountain-clan scouts have could make it, but they'd be fair useless on the other side of those hills. No running ability, and on Kelcrag's side of the pass, that's what they'll need. Anything else would break a leg on that track, or break the path down past using.”

“Terrain?”

“Big hills, baby mountains, doesn't much matter. Shale most of the way through, and sandstone. Bad footing.”

“Huh.” He chewed a corner of his mustache and brooded over Jodi's tracings. “That lets out plan one, then. Idra—seems it's going to be up to you.”

“Hah—up to me, my rump! If you can't get old Shoveral to move his big fat arse in time, you'll get us slaughtered—”

Tarma glanced up out of the corner of her eye, alarmed at those words, only to see Idra grinning like Warrl with a particularly juicy bone.

“Shoveral knows damned well he's my hidden card; he'll move when he needs to—now, Sword- sworn, how long do you reckon it will take all the Hawks to get from here—” His finger stabbed down at the location of their camp. “—to here?”

The second place he indicated was a spot about a candlemark's slow ride from the rear of Kelcrag's lines. As Tarma had figured—striking distance. “About two days, altogether.”

“Huhn. Say you got to trail's start at dawn by riding half the night. Think you could get that lot of yours up over that trail, make trail's end by dark, camp cold for a bit of rest, then be within this strike distance by, say, midmorning?”

“No problem. Damn well better have the rest though. Horses'll need it or we won't be able to count on ‘em.”

“Idra, how do we keep the movement secret?”

Idra thought about that a while. “Loan me those hillclan levies and their bivouac; they're honest enough to guard our camp. We'll move out in groups of about twenty; you move in an equal number of the clansmen. Camp stays full to the naked eye—Kelcrag can't tell one merc from another, no more can his magickers. The people that could tell the difference between them and us won't be able to see what's going on.”

“Hah!” He smacked his fist down into his palm. “Good; let me send for Shoveral. We'll plan this out with just the three of us—four, counting the Kal‘enedral. Fewer that know, fewer can leak.”

The Lord Commander sent one of his pages out after Lord Shoveral, then he and Idra began planning in earnest. From time to time he snapped out a question at Tarma; how far, how many, what about this or that—she answered as best she could, but she was tired, far more weary than she had guessed. She found her tongue feeling oddly clumsy, and she had to think hard about each word before she could get it out.

Finally Leamount and Idra began a low-voiced colloquy she didn't bother to listen to; she just hung on to the edge of the table and tried enforcing her alertness with Kal‘enedral discipline exercises. They didn't work overly well; she was on her last wind, for certain.

Leamount caught Tarma's wavering attention. The maps on the table were beginning to go foggy to her eyes. “Swordsworn,” he said, looking a little concerned, “you look half dead, but we may need you; what say you go bed down over there in the corner—” He nodded in the direction of his own cot. “If there's a point you need to clarify for us, we'll give you a shake.” He raised his voice. “Jons—”

One of the two sentries poked his head in through the tent flap. “Sir?”

“Stir up my squire, would you? Have him find something for this starving warrior to eat and drink.”

Tarma had stumbled to the other side of the tent and was already collapsing onto the cot, her weariness washing her under with a vengeance. The blankets felt as welcoming and warm as they looked, and she curled up in them without another thought, feeling Warrl heaving himself up to his usual position at her feet. As the tent and the voices faded, while the wave of exhaustion carried her into slumber, she heard Idra chuckling.

“You might as well not bother Jons,” the Captain told Leamount, just before sleep shut Tarma's ears. “I don't think she cares.”

K
ethry shifted her weight over her mount's shoulders, half-standing in her stirrups to ease Hellsbane's balance as the mare scrambled up the treacherous shale of another slope. They were slightly more than halfway across the hills; it was cold and damp and the lowering gray clouds looked close enough to touch, but at least it wasn't raining again. She wasn't too cold; under her wool cloak she wore her woolen sorceress' robe, the unornamented buff color showing her school was White Winds, and under
that,
woolen breeches, woolen leggings, and the leather armor Tarma had insisted she don. The only time she was uncomfortable was when the wind cut in behind the hood of the robe.

She was a member of the last party to leave the camp and make the crossing; they'd left their wounded to the care of Leamount's hillclansmen and his own personal Healer. Tresti, the Healer-Priest, had been in the second party to slip away from the camp, riding by the side of her beloved Sewen. Oreden and Jiles, the two hedge-mages, had gone two groups later; The herbalist Rethaire and his two young apprentices had left next. Kethry had stayed to the very last, her superior abilities at sensing mage-probes making her the logical choice to deflect any attempts at spying until the full exchange of personnel was complete.

She felt a little at a loss without her partner riding at her left. Tarma had preceded her more than half a day ago, leaving before midnight, as the guide with Idra and the first group. Of all the party that had made the first crossing, only Jodi had remained to ride with the tailguard group.

Jodi was somewhere behind them, checking on the backtrail. That was not as comforting to Kethry as it should have been. Kethry
knew
her fears were groundless, that the frail appearance of the scout belied a tough interior—but—

As if the thought had summoned her, a gray shadow slipped up upon Kethry's right, with so little noise it might have been a shadow in truth. Hellsbane had been joined by a second gray mare so similar in appearance that only an expert could have told that one was a Shin‘a'in full-blood battlesteed and the other was not.

That lack of sound was one clue—there was mountain-pony in Lightfoot's background, somewhere. Jodi's beast moved as silently as a wild goat on this shifting surface, so quietly that the scout and her mount raised the hackles on anyone who didn't know them.

Jodi wore her habitual garb of gray leather; with her pale hair and pale eyes and ghost-gray horse, she looked unnervingly like an apparition of Lady Death herself, or some mist-spirit conjured out of the patches of fog that shrouded these hills, as fragile and insubstantial as a thing of shadow and air; and once again Kethry had a twinge of misgiving.

“Any sign of probing?” the scout asked in a neutral voice.

Kethry shook her head. “None. I think we may have gotten away with it.”

Jodi sighed. “Don't count your coins before they're in the coffer. There's a reason why
we
are running tail, lady, and it's not just to do with magery, though that's a good share of it.”

The scout cast a doubtful look at Kethry—and for the first time Kethry realized that the woman had serious qualms about
her
abilities to handle this mission, if it came to something other than a simple trek on treacherous ground.

Kethry didn't bother to hide an ironic grin.

Jodi noted it, and cocked her head to one side, moving easily with her horse. Her saddle was hardly more than a light pad of leather; it didn't even creak when she shifted, unconsciously echoing the movements of her mare. “Something funny, lady?”

“Very. I think we've been thinking exactly the same things—about each other.”

Jodi's answering slow grin proved that Kethry hadn't been wrong. “Ha. And we should know better, shouldn't we? It's a pity we didn't know each other well enough to trust without thinking and worrying—especially since neither of us look like fighters. But we should have figured that Idra knows what she's doing; neither of us are hothouse plants —or we wouldn't be Hawks.”

“Exactly. So—give me the reasons this particular lot is riding tail; maybe I can do something about preventing a problem.”

“Right enough—one—” The scout freed her right hand from the reins to hold up a solemn finger. “—is the trail. Shale shifts, cracks. We're riding after all the rest, and we'll be making the last few furlongs in early evening gloom. This path has been getting some hard usage, more than it usually gets. If the trail is likely to give, it'll give under us. You'll notice we're all of us the best riders, and the ones with the best horses in the Hawks.”

Kethry considered this, as Hellsbane topped the hill and picked her cautious way down the sloping trail. “Hmm-hmm. All right, can we halt at the next ridge? There's a very tiny bit of magery I can work that might help us out with that.”

Jodi pursed her lips. “Is that wise?”

Kethry nodded, slowly. “It's a very low-level piece of earth- witchery; something even a shepherd wisewoman might well know. I don't think any of Kelcrag's mages is likely to take note of it—assuming they can even see it, and I doubt they will. It's witchery, not sorcery, and Kelcrag's magickers are all courtly mages, greater and lesser.
My
school is more eclectic; we use whatever comes to hand, and that can be damned useful—somebody looking for High Magick probably won't see Low, or think it's worth investigating. After all, what does Kelcrag need to fear from a peasant granny?”

Jodi considered that for a moment, her head held slightly to one side. “Tell me, why is it that Jiles and Oreden have gotten so much better since you've been with us?”