By the Sword (63 page)

So, for the most part, the people of Valdemar came out to see these hired fighters—hired to fight on
their
side—and came away comforted. These were tough, seasoned veterans, on fast, slim horses like these farmers had never seen before—but they smiled at children, offered bits of candy, and let toddlers ride on a led horse. They had faced mages and won. When someone managed to find a Skybolt who knew either trade-tongue or had a sketchy grasp of Valdemaran, and managed to ask through the medium of painfully slow pantomime about fighting against mages, the answer always surprised the the questioner, for it was invariably a shrug, and a reply of, “they die.”

Kero finally reduced it to a few simple sentences she had the officers teach the troops. “Tell them ‘mages are human. They bleed if you cut them, die if you strike them right. They need to eat, and they get tired if they work magic for too long. And there are things to stop them and things their magic can't work on—' ” And then would follow the list of all the little tricks every Guild mere knew; salt and herbs, holy talismans, disrupting the mage's concentration, spellbreaking by interfering with the components, sneaking up and taking the mage from behind, even overwhelming the mage with a rush of arrows or bodies so that he couldn't counter every one before he was taken down.

These farmer-folk and tradesmen, crafters and herders, were ordinary people. They'd heard all the old tales, and nothing they heard gave them any confidence that
they
could do anything to protect themselves. The power of a mage seemed enormous and unstoppable, like a thunderstorm. To be told, by those who had faced them and won, that mages were just another kind of fighter, with weapons that determination could counter, gave the common people courage they hadn't had before, and a new trust in these foreign soldiers.

All of which was all to the good, so far as Kero was concerned.
A friendly civilian populace is the best ally a merc can have;
that was one of Tarma's maxims—and Ardana had certainly proved what kind of enemy an
unfriendly
civilian populace could become, down in Seejay. The Skybolts knew the maxim, and the drill, and even here, where half of them didn't even know the language well enough to ask for the jakes, they were leaving allies on the road behind them.

This kind of behavior was so ingrained in Kero and her troops that when Heralds Talia and Dirk rode in, about a week out of Haven, Kero was more than a little surprised by the broad grin of approval the latter sported.

They arrived just after camp had been set up, and Kero was huddling over her brazier. The wind was particularly bitter, and seemed to find every weak point in the tent; the walls alternately flapped and belled, and Kero was hoping to get her cold bones into her bed where she at least had a chance of getting them warm. She'd been expecting the arrival of an escort at any point, so when a runner brought her word of the Heralds' arrival, she grumbled a little, threw a little more charcoal on the brazier, kicked loose belongings under the cot, and went back to trying to soak up a bit more heat until her orderly brought them to the tent, both of them muffled up in thick white cloaks, like walking snowdrifts.

But when they entered and Kero invited them to join her in hot tea, Dirk's open friendliness came as something of a shock. Back in Rethwellan both the Heralds had been close-mouthed, but Dirk had been practically mute, with an overtone of suspicion. Now he acted like she was a long-lost cousin, his homely face made handsome by his genuine smile.

Now what on earth caused that?
she wondered. They made some small talk, and as soon as the tea arrived, Kero asked, cautiously, “So, now that we're within a week of Haven, how do your Queen and her Lord Marshal feel about our arrival? Is there anything we should expect?”

Dirk laughed, and shook his head. “If you're expecting a cool reception, you aren't going to get it, Captain. You and your Skybolts have handled yourselves exceptionally well on the march up; she's very pleased with your diplomacy and restraint and—”

“Diplomacy?” Kero said, too annoyed to be polite. “Restraint? What did she think we were going to do, ride down little children, rape the sheep, and wreck the taverns?”

“Well—” Dirk looked embarrassed.

That's exactly what they expected. Which we knew, really.
“Herald, we are professionals,” she said tiredly. “We fight for a living. This does not make us animals. In fact, on the whole, I think you'll find that my troopers, male and female, are less likely to cause trouble in a town than your average lot of spoiled-rotten highborn brats.”

Dirk flushed, a deep crimson. “All we have to go on are stories—”

“Yes, well, you should hear some of the stories down south about Shin‘a'in in warsteeds, or Heralds. The latter are demons and the former are basically ugly Companions,” she said, mustering up a frank smile. “Now, one man's demon is another man's angel, and since the lads calling you lot ‘demonic' were thieves and scum that would rather do anything than work, I'll withhold my judgment on that. But I ride a warsteed, and while she's a
very
intelligent beast, specially bred for what she does, she's nothing like a Companion. So—”

“So we shouldn't have been so quick to give credence to stories,” Talia chuckled, bending a little closer to the fire. “A well-deserved rebuke. But I have to tell you, Captain, that I think we were rightfully surprised at the way you've made friends for yourselves coming up the road. We were expecting to have to do a lot of calming of nerves on your behalf; our people aren't used to the concept of mercenaries, and what they know about them is mostly bad. But you've done all our work for us.”

Kero shrugged, secretly pleased, and put another scoop of charcoal on the fire. “Well, one of my Clanmother's Shin‘a'in sayings is, ‘A slighted friend is more dangerous than an enemy.' We try to operate by that in friendly territory, and really, it isn't that hard unless the people really have a bad attitude toward mercs in general. In fact, there was only one problem I had—and it seems to be in the family tradition—”

“Oh?” Dirk said, he and Talia both looking puzzled.

She sighed. “All their lives, my grandmother and her
she‘enedra
were plagued by the songs of a particular minstrel. The things he told about them were half-true at best, and led to all kinds of problems about what people expected from them. Well, when I was young and foolish and very full of—myself—someone wrote a song about
me.
It's called ‘Kerowyn's Ride,' and to my utter disgust, it seems to have penetrated language barriers.”

Dirk looked as if he was having a hard time keeping from laughing. So did Talia. “I know the song,” the woman said, her face full of mirth. “In fact, I've sung it.”

“I was afraid of that. Do I dare hope no one in your Court knows it's about me?”

Talia smiled. “As far as I know, they don't. But it's a very popular song.”

Kerowyn sipped her tea, wondering for a moment if there was anyone in the world who
hadn't
heard the song. “My troopers are ridiculously proud of that, and I can't get them to stop telling people that I'm
that
Kerowyn. And as soon as your villagers would find that out, I'd wind up having to listen to whatever unholy rendition of it someone had come up with in
this
village. And I don't even
like
most music,” she concluded plaintively.

Dirk was red-faced with the effort of holding in laughter. Kero glowered at him, but that only seemed to make it worse.
“You
should have had to sit through some of those performances,” she growled. “The Revenie Temple children's choir, the oldest fart in Thornton accompanying himself on hurdy-gurdy, a pair of religious sopranos who seemed to think the thing was a dialogue between the Crone and the Maiden—and at least a dozen would-be Bards with out-of-tune harps. Minstrels. I'd like to strangle the entire breed.”

That did it; Dirk couldn't restrain himself any longer. He excused himself in a choking voice, and fled outside. Once there, his bellows of laughter were just as clear as they would have been if he'd been inside the tent's four walls.

“Oh, well,” Kero said with resignation. “At least he didn't laugh in my face.”

Talia was a little better at controlling herself. “I can see where it would get tiresome, especially if you don't care for music.”

“I don't like vocal music,” Kero explained forlornly. “And the reason I don't like it is because every damn fool that can tell one note from another thinks he rates right up there with Master Bards. I have perfect pitch, Herald—nothing else,
I
certainly am no performer—but I do have perfect pitch, and my relative pitch is just as good. Out-of-tune amateurs make my skin crawl, like fingernails on slate. And it's no great benefit to have had a song written about you, either—just you wait, one of these days it'll happen to you, and then that tall fellow out there won't find it so funny to hear it every night for a fortnight straight, and only once in all that time will it be sung well.”

“You're right, Captain,” Dirk said contritely from the door flap. “I apologize. But I wish you could have seen your own expression.”

“I'm glad I couldn't. Listen, there's something I need to tell you people about. I didn't mention this before, but I had mages with this troop. Real mages, practicing real magic.” She watched them carefully to see what their reactions to this would be. “Most mere Companies do, if they can afford them, and we can.”

“Had?” Dirk replied, after a long moment of silence. “Does that mean you didn't bring them with you?”

She couldn't read anything from either of them—and this was not the time to try prying into anyone's mind. Especially not a Herald, who might catch her at it. “No,” she said, honestly, “I
tried
to bring them with me, but they were stopped at the Border. By what, they couldn't tell me—only that it felt as if something was watching them, waking and sleeping. It finally got so bad they begged me to send them home before they went mad. That is evidently the reason why you don't have real mages here in Valdemar. Something doesn't want them here, and stares at them until they go away.”

Like the time with Eldan, she was having to fight something to get every word out, and she spoke slowly so that the effort wouldn't be noticed.
It doesn't explain why something around here doesn't want you even knowing about magic, but that's not my problem. As long as it doesn't freeze the words in my throat, I don't care. Need's been awfully quiet, but it really doesn't feel like the sword's being tampered with, it's beginning to feel as if Need doesn't want to draw attention to itself. Which is fine with me. It means she is still working.

The wind howled around the comers of the tent, and Talia pulled her white cloak closer. “It certainly does explain a lot,” she said, slowly. “Though I'm not sure what it means or where it comes from. ”

“It would probably take a very powerful mage to get around something like that,” Dirk put in. “Maybe by somehow disguising his nature?”

Kero shrugged. “You could be right, but other than the fact that I've lost the use of my mages, it really doesn't matter. And if I were you, I wouldn't count on this effect saving Valdemar from mages in the future. My grandmother always said that every spell ever cast could be broken, and if Ancar has a strong enough mage in his back pocket, he can take the thing down altogether. Since I have lost the mages, I'm going to have to talk with more of you Heralds to find out what you can do. I'm pretty certain you can make up for them, but I'll have to know what your limits are. One other thing—you might let the Queen know that having worked pretty closely with all my mages and having watched my grandmother at work, I would say I'm a fair hand at judging mage-powers and what they can and cannot do.”

“That's easily enough done, Captain,” Dirk said, standing up. “Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“No, not until we get to Haven and we can get into a real barracks building and I can get warm again.” Kero remained seated when Dirk waved her down. “Unless you can conjure me up a tent that's tighter than this one. I'm looking forward to meeting Queen Selenay.”

“Well, she's looking forward to meeting you,” Talia said with a smile, as she smiled back over her shoulder. “I think you're going to like each other a great deal.”

 

Queen Selenay was the sister Kero would have chosen if she'd been given the power to make that choice; Kero knew it the moment their eyes met, blue to blue-green. They could easily have been sisters, too; Kero judged herself to be Selenay's senior by no more than two or three years.

“Captain Kerowyn,” the Queen said, rising from behind her desk, and holding out her hand with no formality at all. “I'm very glad to finally meet you, and equally glad that the years have brought you the kind of fortune Eldan said you deserved. Please, sit down.”

The mention of Eldan's name startled her; she swallowed with difficulty, and she searched the Queen's face carefully before accepting her hand. “That could be considered faint praise, your Majesty,” she replied cautiously, as she took a chair. “There's a Shin‘a'in curse considered to be very potent: ‘May you get exactly what you deserve.' ”

Selenay laughed, a velvety laugh with no sign of malice in it. “I'm sure neither of us meant it that way—and I am not ‘your Majesty' among my commanders. On the field, the Lord Marshal ranks me, so I'm just plain 'Selenay.‘ ”

There was nothing in the Queen's appearance to suggest that her statement was either coy or false modesty. She was dressed almost identically to Talia, who now stood at her side, in the uniform Kero had learned was called “Herald's Whites.” Here in Valdemar, it seemed, Heralds dressed all in white, Bards in scarlet, and Healers in green. Kero rather liked that last; it would make finding the Healers much easier in battlefield conditions. On the other hand, on that same battlefield, as she had once pointed out to Eldan, those white uniforms must surely shout “I'm a target! Hit me!”