Part 20 (2/2)

”He heard of a late autumn raid on Carmine Tower. He thought two squads would be enough to capture the raiders. One man made it back.” Myles rubbed his eyes. ”He said Glaisdan misinterpreted trail signs and took them into the middle of a three-clan war party.”

Kel and Flyndan made the sign against evil on their chests.

Raoul glanced down. His big hands clenched and unclenched. Then he looked at his king. ”I told you he wasn't fit for a field command.”

King Jonathan slumped. ”You were right. I let my temper get the better of me, and now twenty men are dead. I'm sorry, Raoul. I think you know how sorry I am.”

Raoul nodded. ”I do know.”

Kel struggled with pity. It was such a costly mistake.

The king got to his feet. ”You'll go north with the first thaw, along with five Rider Groups. Try not to get killed.” He looked at Kel, Flyndan, and Raoul. ”I need all of you.”

”I need every prisoner you can take,” Myles told Raoul once the king had gone. ”We don't know enough. My spies are with the clans, not the armies. We're getting wild reports of strange machines - metal beasts and walking stones. None of ours who are still alive have seen them. I need something definite.” He pa.s.sed a doc.u.ment dripping ribbons and seals to Flyndan. ”Another thousand crowns have been deposited in your treasury for supplies.” To Kel he said, ”Thank you for the tea - and good luck.”

When the door closed behind Myles, Raoul rested his face in his hands. ”That fathead Glaisdan,” he said, his voice m.u.f.fled. ”He kept telling me that one Tortallan horseman was the equal of ten northern savages.”

”Maybe they are,” said Flyndan dourly. ”It s the eleventh savage that gets you.”

They were traveling again, but the difference made Kel edgy and eager. The men called war ”going to see the kraken.” Krakens were sea-monsters so rare and powerful that none of the few who'd survived an encounter with one forgot the experience, just as n.o.body forgot his first encounter with war.

”We learn more of ourselves, seeing the kraken, than we can learn in ten years at home,” Qasim said over that first campfire on the Great Road North.

”Speak for your own home,” Lerant quipped. ”My aunt Deliah was a kraken.” The men chuckled.

”Only two arms,” Dom insisted, mouth full. That raised a laugh.

”But you've all done battle,” Kel said as the mood turned quiet again.

”So have you,” Dom pointed out. ”Maresgift's bandits - ”

”Housekeeping,” Kel replied.

”That time in the hills,” Dom said.

”What time in the hills?” someone demanded.

”Or when the spidrens attacked our hunting party from the rear,” added Qasim. ”If that wasn't the kraken, what was it?”

Kel smiled crookedly. ”That was one of my friends losing his head because spidrens killed his father,” she explained.

”And the hill bandits?” Dom repeated.

”An unpleasant surprise,” Kel said.

”Well, by the time you walk into the Chamber of the Ordeal, you'll have seen the kraken by anybody's terms,” Lerant told her. ”And then you'll know.”

Then I'll know, thought Kel, rubbing Jump's chest. I'll know if I can keep my head in war.

After a day at Northwatch with General Vanget, Raoul and Flyndan led Third Company to the meadow that was to be their northern home. It was between the fiefdoms of Trebond and Carmine Tower, meant to serve as a plug for this hole in the border defenses.

Their first task was to build a permanent camp. Out of the supplies they had brought in wagons came shovels, cutting tools, and nails. Men cut down trees and turned the trunks into pointed logs, fitting them into ten-foot-wide sections. Others dug a broad ditch in the shape of a square, building up one side with the dirt they'd moved. In that side they dug a trench. The ground was sloppy and loose: early April was half-winter this far north.

At last they raised the stockade walls in the trench atop the large ditch and filled in the gaps. A crew planted sharpened logs in the outer edge of the ditch, to stop horses if not humans. When they were able to withdraw behind their wall and close the gate, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. No one liked sleeping in the open when the enemy might be close.

Work did not stop with the wall and ditch enclosures. Healers directed the placement of latrines inside the fort and helped build sheds for them. Carpenters set up the wooden skeletons of an infirmary, a mess hall and kitchen, and a corral. Raoul and Flyndan helped with every job, getting as dirty as everyone else.

Kel was put to limb-lopping and trench-digging, while the sparrows offered commentary and Jump hunted rabbits. ”Don't take any does,” Kel told him while the men joked. ”They've got babies or they'll have them soon. Only take males.” The men stopped laughing when they found that all of Jump's kills were male.

”Why don't they mention hammering and digging and sawing, when they talk about war?” Kel asked Dom over breakfast one morning. ”They never talk about mud in your teeth.”

He laughed. ”If they did, who would be crazy enough to fight?” he asked. ”Pretty girls would look oddly at a fellow if he talked about mud in his teeth, instead of the enemies he killed so they might sleep safe.”

Once their camp was set, local guides took the squads on patrol, familiarizing them with the country they were to defend. There was a lot of it. Most, Kel discovered, was uphill. When the terrain got too bad for horses, they left their mounts to graze under guard and covered the ground on foot.

The patrol area a.s.signed by General Vanget included three villages, part of a river, two roads, silver mines, and a logging camp. One of the villages, Riversedge, was almost big enough to be called a town. Raoul decided that each squad would spend a week there, to add to the local defenders while enjoying soft duty that included baths, shops, and female companions.h.i.+p.

Kel wasn't sure that she would ever get to Riversedge, since Raoul didn't go. With the fort built, she rode along for one of every three patrols. She would have liked to go more often, but Flyndan insisted that as the owner of a spygla.s.s she take duty s.h.i.+fts atop a tall tree on a bluff, serving as lookout.

”I'll override him, if you like,” Raoul had offered her quietly.

Kel shook her head and climbed with grim determination. Her walk down Balor's Needle had broken her fear of heights, but she would never like them. At least her time in the tree was limited by the watch schedule. Several hours after dawn she gladly handed her post and spygla.s.s to someone else.

Soon she discovered what most of Third Company knew: war was boring. They were ready for the Scanrans in April. The Scanrans were not ready for them. There were no reports of enemy activity until May - even then the action took place on the coast. Third Company planted small gardens inside the stockade and a large one outside. Lerant found an orphaned squirrel and raised it as May wore into June. Kel entered a chess tournament and found herself in pitched battle with Osbern for third place as Qasim and Raoul duelled for first. They practiced weapons and horseback riding. Men hunted with dogs and hawks, and fished, in squad strength. Kel celebrated her eighteenth birthday.

One foggy June day the squads commanded by Aiden arid Volorin found the enemy. By the time Raoul brought up five more squads in response to their horn calls, the Scanrans had fled. Five of Third Company were wounded. One was dead.

Kel was ashamed that she had longed for battle.

She'd forgotten that people might die when she chafed at the top of a tree.

Osbern's squad found a Scanran band robbing travelers five days later. This time the enemy left two men dead and three wounded. The wounded were sent to Northwatch to be questioned, nursed to health, and s.h.i.+pped to Sir Myles for more questioning.

Two days later Gildes of Veldine was the first rider in Osbern's squad as they followed a game trail on patrol. He didn't see the danger until his horse walked onto it, breaking through the leafy cover of a wolf pit. Down fell horse and rider onto sharpened stakes.

”Stupid!” growled Osbern, his sergeant, wiping away tears at the funeral pyre. ”I told him, keep your eyes ahead - Scanrans love traps.”

Raoul and Kel were on patrol with a squad when the sparrows, flying as scouts, came in shrieking. Behind them was a Scanran war party, fifteen men armed with swords or double-bladed axes. They plainly thought they outnumbered the Tortallans, but they reckoned without the horses. Peachblossom, trained as a warhorse, trampled a man who tried to pull Kel from the saddle. The man who followed him carried a sword: Kel parried his cut at Peachblossom and ran him through.

Raoul was pressed by two men, one on either side, who kept trying to pull him down as they dodged Drum's hooves. Kel clubbed one with the b.u.t.t of her glaive; she remembered Myles's plea for prisoners. Her hardest battle was to keep Peachblossom from killing her captive. By the time she got her mount under control, the fight was over, the Scanrans gone.

”Is that the kraken?” Kel asked, wiping sweat from her forehead. ”It felt like bandits to me.”

Raoul, dismounting to inspect the fallen, sighed. ”Me too.” He riffled through one man's clothes, grimacing as he shook lice off his hand. ”These aren't much better than bandits.”

”A diversion?” asked the squad's sergeant.

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