Valour and Victory (35 page)

Deby’s eyes
flickered. “Did we win?” she croaked.

“Yes we
did.”

“Good. It
wasn’t for nothing then.”

“No it wasn’t,”
confirmed Niaill.

She began to
groan, heart-rending groans of indescribable loss.

“Let go Deby.
Join Alfei in the blue pastures. He’s waiting for you. If you hurry
you can go together.”

“Nice,” she
whispered and took a breath out.

Niaill waited
for the struggling breath in.

It never
came.

Her face stared
up, unseeing. Niaill closed her eyes. He picked her body up and
carried it over to where Alfei lay. He laid her on top and he stood
silent and unmoving as he looked round at what the Lind called
‘after-battle’.

What a bloody
waste.

He felt the
mental nudge that was Taraya and looked over to where she lay,
licking at the wound in her leg. She looked up and her face was
full of pity. The Lind could not cry tears but her eyes were moist
with emotion.

During that
last quarter bell of the battle, Niaill had thought it all over.
The kohorts had been breaking through all along the ridge. That had
been when Taraya’s leg had been bitten and the two of them had
crashed to the ground in a tangle, the Larg warrior, his teeth
embedded in her leg, tugging and worrying at it.

He had believed
then that both his and Taraya’s deaths were only a heartbeat away
but the Larg had let go and had raised his blood-dripping head to
the sky with an anguished howl. He had sprung away.

The Dglai had
turned on the Larg lin and eln in time to save him and Taraya but
not in time to save Deby, Alfei and a good many other vadeln-pairs
of the First Ryzck.

: Taraya, can
you hear Teriyei? Is Nadala safe? :

: Wounded
but they will be fine :
she answered after a moment.

Then, standing
amongst the dead and the dying, he heard it, the lament sung by
every Lind after a battle, the saddest song Niaill would ever
hear.

Tears fell and
he and Taraya joined in the lament for Deby, Alfei and all the
hundreds of others who were no longer alive, who would never walk
through the lian and the nadlian again.

‘
No more
shalt thee run, hunt and play,

Under the soft
warm sun of day.

He who has
died, he has gone away,

She who has
fallen, she can not stay.

Midst trees
tall,

We mourn thee
all.

Midst mountains
high,

We for thee
sigh,

Midst rivers
fast,

We sing of
seasons past.

Midst valleys
deep,

We thy memory
keep.

Midst meadows
bare,

Thy deaths we
will share.

He who has died
has gone away,

She who has
fallen can not stay.

Be still, mine
rtathen.’

* * * * *

Danal

“So what do we
do now?” asked Grainne.

“I suppose we
return to the
Electra
, pick up Philip and the others,” he
answered without much interest. Nothing interested him any
more.

“Then?” pressed
Grainne, shaking him.

“Then?”

“There is the
little matter of the promise you made to Padrig,” she said, her
voice sharp, “remember, a place to live where we can be free?”

“I hadn’t
forgotten,” Danal said with a little more interest in his voice. “I
think we shall go to Duchesne, yes, that would be best. You can all
take ship from there.”

“Take
ship?”

“I don’t reckon
you’ll want to stay here in Murdoch. From Port Duchesne you can be
taken to anywhere in the north. Vadath would welcome you and there
are the islands, plenty of them are still uninhabited.”

“It’s not for
me to decide,” said Grainne. “Padrig and the others elders will
choose for themselves, not me.”

“Them, not
me?”

“I’m not going
with them.”

“Where are you
going?”

“With you and
Asya. I want to see the world. I don’t want to just settle on one
of the islands and stay there my whole life. I’ve been talking to
Asya. She says I can.”

“She did, did
she?”

Grainne nodded.
“She says it will be good for you if I tag along for a while, so
that’s okay, isn’t it?” She waited anxiously for his reply.

His answer was
important to her but Danal had a suspicion that if he said no then
she would come along anyway.

“Inalei says I
can ride him,” she added.

Now there was
the rub, as Danal realised. Asya and Inalei had been sharing paw
space for a while now and Asya had declared that very morning that
she and Inalei were now eln.

Lind mated for
life and Danal was delighted for them both. He had lost his love
but he was glad that Asya and Inalei would get their chance of
happiness.

Inalei would
not want to leave Asya for any length of time and if he had
volunteered to take Grainne to Vadath then he did not have any
choice in the matter. In fact, Danal was rather pleased, in a
distant sort of way that Grainne would be with them during the
journey home.

He gathered
himself together.

“That’s settled
then,” he told her and her thin face broke into a smile. “You come
with us to Vadath and then we’ll see. You never know, you might get
chosen by one of the Lind and join the Vada yourself.”

“I don’t think
so,” was her enigmatic reply as she smiled a slow, secret smile.
Danal didn’t see it, he was looking to the south again.

* * * * *

Rilla and
Zilla

Rilla
approached the severe looking Garda nurse who looked up as she
entered the tent. The woman was sitting at a desk and had what
Rilla could only describe not as a mountain but as a mountain range
of paperwork in front of her.

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

Her voice was
forbidding, severe and she regarded Rilla and her battle-stained
uniform with what Rilla interpreted as disapproval.

Rilla was wrong
in her assumption and Zilla could have told her that Sister
Harrisdochter had a heart of gold under her forbidding
exterior.

Rilla gulped,
this was almost as bad as the fighting and she still had to speak
to Zilla about Hilla’s death.

“What do you
want Cadet?” the woman said, her eyes softening a little as she
recognised the distress in Rilla’s face. “I am a busy woman. Are
you wounded?”

“No Ma’am,”
answered Rilla. “I need to … need to …” Rilla tried to gather
together her dissipating courage and failed.

“Well, what is
it?” Sister Harrisdochter asked in a gentle voice, realising that
the young woman standing in front of her was losing her self
control. “Are you trying to trace one of the wounded?”

Rilla pulled
herself together.

“I need to
speak to Nurse Volunteer Zilla Talansdochter.”

“I see.” Sister
Harrisdochter looked over at the rota. “Well, Nurse Talansdochter
is working at present. Do you have to speak to her now?”

“I think I do
Ma’am.”

“Will you tell
me what it is about? I can’t just pull her from her ward for any
little thing. We’re very short staffed.”

“I am her
sister.”

“I understand.
You wish to tell her that you have made it through the battle do
you? Well, I can tell her that and will do so when she comes off
duty, which won’t be for some time.”

“Yes, no,
that’s not all,” floundered poor Rilla, who was finding it
difficult to put the awful news into words in front of a stranger.
The hurt was too new and raw.

“There is more?
Tell me.” Sister Harrisdochter put down her pen.

Rilla took a
gulp of air.

“Hilla, Zilla
and me, are, were, triplets. I’m the middle one, Zilla’s the
youngest.”

“Were?”

“Hilla was with
the Garda and now she’s dead.”

“You wish to
tell her yourself.” It was a statement and not a question.

Rilla nodded,
“and that’s not even it all. Our brother Zak is dead too. I’ve just
found out and I came straight here. I don’t … I don’t know how to
tell her.” She burst into tears.

Sister
Harrisdochter let her cry herself out, leading her towards an empty
chair and pushing her unresisting body down into it. She handed
Rilla her own mug of sweetened kala.

“Drink it all
up there’s a good girl,” she commanded, waiting until Rilla had
gulped it down before uttering another word. Sister Harrisdochter
was by now very experienced in this sort of thing.

“You sit there
pet,” she said, taking the empty mug and patting Rilla on the
shoulder, “while I go and fetch your sister.”

“But that’s not
all Ma’am, Hilla and Zak, well, that’s bad enough. I sort of
expected that they might not make it. We were all there on the
right wing you see.”

The Sister
nodded. The right wing had experienced the heaviest casualties of
all. She wondered how this slip of a girl had managed to get
through almost unscathed.

“Tell me.”

“I’ve been
hearing rumours Ma’am, about our older sister Tala. I’ve heard that
she was involved with the destruction of the Dglai’s big space
ship. The rumours are saying that she’s dead too.”

Rilla burst
into a fresh bout of racking sobs. Sister Harrisdochter felt
desperately sorry for her if this was true. Three from one family
at one fell swoop.

“It’s only a
rumour. It might not be true.”

“I feel in my
bones that it
is
true,” sobbed Rilla. “Zawlei, he’s my Lind,
he thinks so. I don’t know how I’m going to tell Zilla, I just
don’t. She’s so gentle and I’m afraid the shock will be too much
for her.”

The Sister
didn’t agree with Rilla’s assessment of Zilla’s character but she
said nothing.

“I’ll tell your
sister,” she said at last. “I’ll go get someone to take over her
ward and bring her here to you.”

“Zilla’s got a
ward of her own?” an amazed Rilla stopped crying.

“I told you we
were short staffed,” Sister Harrisdochter said, “and your sister is
a very competent nurse. You sit here and wait. Try to stop crying,
it won’t help Zilla if she finds you like this. Here is a kerchief,
dry your tears. I won’t be long.”

She wasn’t,
leading a pale faced Zilla in a scant half bell later.

To Rilla’s
surprise, but not Sister Harrisdochter’s, Zilla wasn’t crying.

Rilla had
always looked out for Zilla, protected her. Now their roles were
reversed. It was Zilla who took Rilla in her arms, let her sob out
her grief on her shoulder.

Zilla, in this
time of her sister’s need, was the stronger of the two remaining
triplets. Rilla had stared death in the face on the battlefield but
Zilla had been dealing with a string of individual battle
aftermaths for the last three days. Her latent inner strength had
grown and she had learned how to control her grief.

Sister
Harrisdochter nodded to herself and left them to it. She made her
way back to the tent that was Zilla’s ward. As she had told Rilla,
they were very short staffed, a number of medical personnel had
been killed when the Quorko had attacked.

Sister
Harrisdochter would finish Zilla’s shift for her. The paperwork
could wait until later but before the shift was over, Zilla
reappeared, gliding down the ward and smiling at the patients.

Sister
Harrisdochter felt so proud of her she felt she could burst.

* * * * *

Julia and
Niaill

The command
tent was stuffy, for all that there were only four individuals
occupying it.

Julia looked
tired, Niaill thought as he stood in front of her.
About as
tired as I feel.

“You heard that
Davin died of his wounds this morning?” Julia asked. “Razdya
death-wished shortly afterwards.”

“Yes,” he
replied, “we had heard.”

“I would like
you and Taraya to take their place.”

“Us?” exclaimed
Niaill. “I would have thought Brion and Quindya,” his voice tailed
off.

“They wish to
remain with the Fifty-first,” said Julia. “In fact, it is best that
they do. The Fifty-first and the Avuzdel will be working closely
with the Larg over the next months, hunting out the Dglai who
escaped the explosion. Twelve Quorko are unaccounted for. Alyei and
I felt that they should remain with that task and even if they had
not, we feel that they are not really suited to the position of
second in command of the Vada. You and Taraya are.”

: Taraya? :

: We should
accept. It is a great honour :

: It is :

“Very well, we
accept,” Niaill told Julia, who smiled.

“Nadala and
Teriyei can take over the First. They will do well.”

“Will you tell
them or shall we?” asked Niaill.

“You may and do
it now,” she replied and added, “and you have no idea how good it
feels to be addressed as Susa again rather than Susyc. Between you,
me and the gatepost, Alyei and I never want to hear the word Susyc
again for as long as we live.”

“I can
imagine,” said Niaill as he and Taraya took their leave.

* * * * *

Elliot

“The Ducal
House of Cocteau has been almost completely wiped out,” Kellen
Martin Taviston informed his King. “The other houses are not so bad
though all have suffered.”

“Is there an
heir, however distant?” asked Elliot.

Martin Taviston
nodded, “one, Kellene Tamsin, widow of Kellen Dubois. She has a
small son who will be the new Duke Cocteau. You have no less than
four underage dukes to arrange regents for.”

“That’s all I
need,” an exasperated Elliot responded, “half the nobility in the
Kingdom will be arguing about who gets what regency.”