By the Sword (31 page)

The four scouts turned their horses' heads and went back the way they'd come in, following the pounded-dirt track between hacked-off patches of scrubby brush. Behind them the sergeant finally regained his voice, and began using it.

The four Companies Menmellith's Council had hired for “bandit eradication” had bivouacked in a canyon, but not a blind one; there were at least four ways into the area that Kero knew of, and she had no doubt the twins knew a couple more. The “back way,” which was the other, nominally traveled, route in, took them over some rough ground, but their horses could handle it; they were all Shin‘a'in-bred.

A few furlongs along the scrub-lined dirt trail (which steady commerce over the past few days had pounded into the soil), the human track was bisected by a game trail that led off through the weather-beaten bushes and tired, stunted oaks. That “back way” was good for a goat or a mountain-deer, but not terribly attractive to humans afoot or humans with horses, which made it unlikely that they'd run into any more delays getting back to camp.

In fact, the back way was so quiet there was still wild-life living along it. Birds flew out of the trees as they passed, and a covey of quail watched from beneath the shelter of a thorn-bush. “Gods,” Shallan said, thumping her horse again as he shied at a rabbit bolting across their path. “Gods. Green recruits. Thanks be to Saint Keshal that Lerryn won't put green ‘uns in the field.”

“Could be worse,” Tre observed. “Could be levied troops from Menmellith and Rethwellan out here.”

Shallan groaned, but Kero shook her head. “Menmellith, maybe, but not Rethwellan. Rethwellan won't even
officially
be our hire. Officially, they've ‘loaned' the Council the cash to pay for us. Got that from a letter.” She didn't say from whom. Everyone in the Skybolts knew about her friendship with Daren—and knew equally well that she wouldn't trade on it. But she could, and would, pass along any information he happened to drop, whether by accident or design.

“Oh?” Shallan and the other two looked studiously indifferent, which told Kero they hadn't heard this particular tidbit of gossip. “Why's that?”

“Simple enough.
We
all know that Karse is funding these ‘bandits'—assuming they aren't already part of the Karsite army. But outside of these Borders?” Kero shrugged. “Anyway, that's why it's us, and why Rethwellan's out of it. We're not official units of any army. Whatever we do, it can't cause a diplomatic incident.
And
if we happen to get carried away, and it turns out that the subsequent bodies
were
part of the Karsite army, well, Karse has violated the Code so many times that the Guild not only wouldn't fine the offenders, they
might
even be rewarded. Unofficially, of course.”

“Of course,” Tre agreed brightly. Kero looked back over her shoulder. The identical smiles on both twins' faces could only be described as “bloodthirsty.”

Or maybe it was just greed. It wasn't too often that a bonded Company had free rein to loot, but that's exactly what the Menmellith Council—their putative employers—had given them. Not that Kero blamed them. Probably half of what was in the possession of the “bandits” had belonged to folk hereabouts first. If anybody got it, the locals would rather it was friends than enemies.

Rethwellan had granted Menmellith client-state status and semi-autonomy shortly after Daren had been born.
Supposedly
this was a kind of thanks-offering for the birth of a third son; in actuality, now that she'd seen the state with her own eyes, Kero suspected that the King had seized on the first available excuse to liberate his land from a considerable drain on the royal coffers. Menmellith was mostly mountain, hellishly hard to travel in, constantly raided by Karsite “bandits,” and probably impossible to govern or tax effectively.
Now
it was governed by its own fractious, taciturn folk, served as a buffer between Karse and the lusher lands of Rethwellan, and the King need only hire the occasional merc Company to clean things out now and again, instead of being forced to keep a detachment of the army there on permanent duty.

“We're fairly useless at the moment, you know,” Shallan said, as her horse picked its way daintily across a dry streambed that formed part of the trail. “They're just sending the scouting parties out to make sure everything's still where it's supposed to be.”

“I know,” Kero sighed. If there was one thing she'd learned with the Skybolts, it was that warfare consisted mostly of waiting. “I'm not even supposed to report to anyone unless we
do
see something odd. I suppose it wouldn't be so damned bad if we could see something going on, but the bastards are
not
coming out of that canyon.”

“Can't say as I blame them,” Gies said laconically. “ ‘F I'd got m'self trapped in a blind canyon, wouldn't be comin' out either. They c'n hold us off long as the food‘n'water last, an' we just might get bored an' go away.”

Shallan laughed; not a sound of amusement, it was a particularly ugly laugh. “Between them, the Wolflings and the Bastards are likely to make things real uncomfortable for them in there. Then when they pop out,
we'll
be waiting. And so will the Earthshakers.”

Kero preferred not to think too much about that. It was going to cost the two Companies of foot quite a bit in blood to shake the “bandits” out of their lair. By contrast, the Company of heavy cavalry and the Skybolts' skirmishers had it easy, if dull.

But when the “bandits” did emerge, they'd be like any desperate and cornered creatures, and Shallan was likely to get a bellyful of fighting.

But it wouldn't profit anyone to say that out loud, so Kero held her peace, and kept her eyes on the uncertain trail. The last thing she needed to do would be to lame Hellsbane.

 

“Stand,” Kero told Hellsbane. The gray stamped restlessly once more, but then obeyed with no other sign of rebellion. Kero tapped her right foreleg, and the warsteed lifted the massive hoof and set it in Kero's waiting hands.

She pulled the hoofpick out of her belt, and began cleaning the packed muck out of it with studious care. There was a lot of gravel around here, and Kero did not intend to find herself with a lamed horse because of a moment's carelessness. Shallan had already lost the use of her remount that way.

“I could really get to hate Menmellith,” she told Hellsbane conversationally. The gray flicked her ears back with every evidence of intelligent interest. “I can see why Jad let them hare off and become a client-state. There's nothing here but sheep, rocks, and bone-headed shepherds. Certainly nothing worth keeping. Why Karse keeps trying to invade them, I'll never know.” She thought for a moment, then added, “Unless it's just one more example of how crazy the Karsites are.”

She finished with the right forehoof, and moved back to the hind.
“Stand,”
she repeated, with a little more force this time, as some noise from the next camp over made Hellsbane roll her eyes and fidget. She straightened long enough to see what all the fuss was.

A small forest of poles was marching straight for the picket lines, and horses up and down the line were starting to stamp and look nervous.

Blessed Agnira—pikemen again? That's Joffrey's Wolflings! What fool sent pikemen to drill next to picketed horses? Don't they know how much battle-trained horses hate pikes? They're going to have the whole line spooked in a minute!
She was just about to head them off, by intercepting them and launching into a powerful flood of abuse, when someone beat her to it.

“
Alt
,
damn yer ‘ides! I said
right
march, not bleedin' left!”

The line came to an abrupt and picture-perfect halt. The Wolfling's pike-sergeant strode around the back of the (now stationary) formation, face red as a sunset, veins bulging out on his forehead. “Jecrena's bleedin'
arse,
” he bellowed, “ye'd think ye was a lot o' plowboys, not perfeshnal
so
jers!” From there his tirade went into extreme sexual and scatological detail as to the habits and probable ancestry of his charges. Kero leaned against Hellsbane's rump, listening in astonished admiration. His language was colorful, original, and quite entertaining. She'd been with the Skybolts for quite a few years now, and had never quite heard anything like it.

I should be taking notes,
she thought, watching the sergeant get his men turned back in the right direction. The horses were definitely calming down, now that the pikes were going the
other
way.
You never hear anything like that around our camp.

But that was at least in part because horseback skirmishers didn't drill the way pike and line swordsmen did. No sergeants, for one thing.

Kero went back to Hellsbane's hooves, glad to have thought of
something
to do.
“There's a lot of waiting involved in warfare, ”
Tarma had said many times over. Kero had never quite believed her at the time.

She did now.

Well, it could be worse,
she consoled herself.
We could have Rethwellan regulars with us. Then every merc in the Companies would be getting the long-nosed look when he dared poke his head out of camp. What in hell is it that makes every conscript farmboy who can't tell his brain from his backside and wouldn't know what three quarters of the Code meant think he's morally superior to a merc?

She sighed; the question wasn't worth losing sleep over. Every merc ever born was a misfit; that's why most of them wound up as mercs in the first place.
Lady knows I'm no exception,
she thought glumly.
Last time I went home, Dierna acted like I was going to eat the baby, and Lordan carried on as if he thought I was planning on stealing the boys, the horses, the sheep, or all three.
Each time she visited, she was more of a stranger, and after the last time, she'd just about made up her mind never to go back again.

My only real friends are here, anyway,
she reflected, picking at a bit of gravel lodged in Hellsbane's left hind hoof. The warsteed switched her bound-up tail restlessly, but didn't object. Kero had remarked once that Hellsbane's behavior was a lot more like a dog's than a horse‘s, and Tarma had only smiled and replied cryptically, “Why do you think we won't let them breed to anything but their own kind?” After that, Kero had taken extra care when spring came around and Hellsbane went into season.

Then she discovered that such care was entirely unneeded. The warsteed was perfectly capable of fending off unwanted advances, and she evidently hadn't yet found the stallion that measured up to her own high standards.

Hooves clean, Kero loitered on the lines, replaiting the gray's tail, and watching the Wolflings drill. Those long pikes were a lot harder to manage than anyone but a fighter could imagine. All in all, it made her grateful to be with the Skybolts.

Twoblades' Company actually began as what Idra's Sunhawks came to be; an entirely mounted force of specialists. In every one of the campaigns Kero had served in up until now they'd been constantly busy; their greatest asset was that they were
versatile
as well as highly mobile. Every one of the Skybolts could double as a scout, and when they weren't on the battlefield, they could ride messenger detail. Not this time, or at least, not now.

There were constant scouting forays, of course, just to make sure that the enemy hadn't found a way out of the trap, but that was the only thing like work going on for the Skybolts. That unwonted leisure was beginning to have an effect on the Company.
Which is why I'm out here, and not in camp.
In general, there were only three pursuits available to a mere when forced into idleness: gambling, drinking, and sex. Kero was too shrewd to be lured into the first, too cautious for the second, and as for the third—

I'm an odd fish in a pond full of odd fish,
she thought, a little sadly.
Between the sword and this so-called Gift of mine....

The Gift was the main reason she didn't drink; when she did, her carefully-wrought shields came down, and the guard came off her tongue. Only
once
had she let that happen; she'd frightened a tavern full of hard-bitten soldiers into sobriety with the things she'd said about them. Only some fancy verbal footwork the next day enabled her to convince them that they'd misheard most of it, and luck had given her the rest. So she didn't drink at all now; at least, not to get drunk and not in company, which set her apart from most of the rest of the Company.

She was terrified of what would happen if they ever
did
find out the truth.
Mercs have too many secrets to appreciate anyone, even someone they trust, to be rummaging around in their minds. Every one of us was driven into this life by something, and most of us don't want anyone else to know what that is. Even me. If anyone ever found out about this “Gift” of mine, I don't know what I'd do.

The sword now—that set her apart in another way. She was Kethry's granddaughter—that was no secret—and by now everyone seemed to have heard the song of “Kerowyn's Ride.” It would have been impossible to hide the fact that she still had the blade; she wore it all the time, and wouldn't take it off (so common gossip had it) if she went to bed with someone. Well, that wasn't quite true-but she'd learned that being too far away from it could be torture.

There'd been a really bad rainy season a couple of years ago; they'd had to cross a flood-swollen river, and Kero's packhorse had gone under. That was before she'd taken to wearing the blade all the time; she'd thought for the crossing that it was safer strapped to the packs. She'd just barely made it onto the riverbank when the pain of the overstrained soul-bond started. The Company Healer had thought it some sort of curse, until she'd gasped out an explanation of just
what
it was she'd lost—between spasms of blinding agony that left her helpless even to speak. The entire Company had gone out into the storm to look for the damned thing and bring it back.