Lady Knight (12 page)

Boys and girls nodded with considerably more enthusiasm than had the adults.

Silver flashed in the sky overhead. Kel looked up. Stormwings glided over Haven, bound for the dead who lay on the valley floor. She flexed her hands into fists. It didn’t matter that only Scanran dead lay out there. They had fought as their own nobles ordered; these deserved better than the treatment that Stormwings would give them.

“Now,” Kel said, bracing herself for a fight, “I need a burial detail to go out with me.”

“Leave ‘em t’rot!” cried a man. Others added their approval.

Kel put her hands on her hips and waited until they were quiet. “Then, sir, you shall plough the section where the bodies are, two days hence,” she said mildly. “The feel of a plough as it hits rotting flesh and bone must be - interesting.”

Some of her audience turned green.

“Rotten bodies means sickness in the water and the ground,” Kel said more crisply. “We won’t have it. Burial detail volunteers can report to me. If no one volunteers, I will choose some.” She looked them over and decided the news that they would also need to fill out work lists could wait. “That’s it. Burial volunteers, let’s get moving.”

Kel wiped her hands on her napkin yet again as the cooks took the last supper dishes from the headquarters common room. For the first time she wished that she had perfume. The odour of Stormwings and death seemed to cling to her, despite a pre-supper wash and a change of clothes.

As the last cook left with the last dish, she made herself put the napkin down, and observed her companions. Merric, Dom and the sergeants all had a goblet of wine before them. The mages - Baird, Numair, Neal - had similar goblets, but theirs were filled with apple juice, as was Kel’s. Baird and Neal looked fresher than she had expected after an afternoon spent keeping the soldier with the hole in his heart comfortable as they tended the wounded. Still, she had to remember that they couldn’t be allowed to overwork.

Assistants, Kel thought, watching the two healers. There are two midwives in the Goatstrack company. Maybe the new people have a healer or three. Lord Wyldon’s gift of clerks had made her realize that people didn’t have to do each and every thing themselves. “Why weren’t we taught about clerks?” she heard herself ask. She made a face as the men grinned.

“Regular knights don’t need ‘em,” Merric said, sipping his wine.

“It’s true,” Dom added. “You only really need clerks at company level. Till then, you do your own paperwork.” He grimaced as the others laughed. “Kel, you know I’ve got my orders, right?” he asked, meeting Kel’s eyes with his very blue ones.

I’m going to miss looking at him, she thought. And I’m going to miss his help. Dom always backs me up. “Yes, Lord Raoul wrote to me,” she replied. To the others she explained, “Dom’s squad’s to report back to Fort Steadfast. War’s officially declared.”

“If you hadn’t said so, however would we guess?” drawled Neal. “Oh, wait, now I remember - I saw dead Scanrans lying about somewhere.”

“They were more interesting when they were alive,” Merric told him grimly.

“I’ll take your word for it, thanks all the same.” Neal raised his cup in a silent toast.

Kel looked at Numair. “Master Numair, you said you’ve other messages to give?”

The mage drew a circle at the centre of the table with a quill, then etched signs along its sparkling edge. When he snapped his fingers, an image sprang to life within the circle, standing a foot tall. Kel grimaced. It was a killing device.

“In addition to the two killed here today, nineteen of these things have been reported in the country between the City of the Gods and Seabeth,” Numair said quietly. “Nineteen that we are sure of. Villagers near Sigis Hold caught one in the kind of pit they use to trap bears, then shovelled it full of oil, hay and coal and burned it until it half melted. None of the others have been taken, well, ‘alive’ is the best term. But we finally know more about who is creating them.” He sighed and rubbed his temples. “The City of the Gods expelled a mage student, Blayce Younger of Galla, six years ago. The charges were necromancy, particularly the enslavement of the spirits of the dead. It seems he has an aptitude for it.”

“So he uses his aptitude to kill children,” Kel whispered through numb lips. “He murders them and uses their spirits to fuel the killing devices.” Around the table everyone but Numair and Kel drew the sign against evil - an X with a straight line through it: a six-pointed star - on his chest. It isn’t going to do you any good, Kel thought, watching them. And Master Numair knows it, too.

“You sound sure,” Numair said, his long, dark eyes sharp as he looked at Kel.

“I was there when three of the things were killed,” she reminded him. “The white vapours that come out of their heads? They have the voices of children.” I don’t have to mention the Chamber now, she thought with some relief. They know who’s doing it, they have his name, and that’s the only useful thing I know. So I’m not doing harm to their search for him, by not speaking up.

“He could use any spirit,” Baird pointed out, his mouth twisted in disgust. “I wager he uses those of captive foreigners so Maggur will ignore, and make his own people ignore, what this Blayce does.” He drained his apple juice. Neal refilled his cup. “It disgusts me,” whispered Baird, “what people allow, if they think those who commit vile acts can help them to achieve some goal.”

Numair snapped his fingers and the device at the centre of the table vanished. He reached over and rubbed a hand over the glittering circle, retrieving its power. “All this means that refugee camps are just storehouses of fuel for Blayce. We’ve sent a request south for wagons to take every refugee out of reach of the border,” he said. “I think I’ve explained things in frank enough terms that even the Council of Lords and the Council of Commons will see there’s no choice. They’ll vote us the funds and find the land to house them. His majesty says he won’t let the councils adjourn for the summer until they do. Until then, we’ll have to manage as best we can.”

“But we know who’s responsible,” Merric pointed out. “And these devices could change the course of this war. Surely we ought to be sending teams of assassins to settle this Blayce.”

“Do we know where he is?” asked Dom. “There’s an awful lot of Scanra out there, and most of it’s straight up and down.”

Numair shook his head. “All we know is that he’s not in the capital at Hamrkeng. Our spies searched the place from cellar to attic. He’s not with King Maggur.”

“And anyone who might know is too scared to talk,” murmured Neal.

“That’s the size of it,” Numair admitted. “We’ll continue to search, and to bolster the defences of the camps. At least Haven can look to someone who’s killed three devices.” He nodded at Kel.

“With lots of help,” she reminded him automatically.

All of them sat, eyes sombre, arms crossed over their chests or cupped around their goblets.

I needed to know where Blayce was so I could find him before I got tied down here, Kel thought ferociously at the distant Chamber of the Ordeal. But you wouldn’t tell me. You aren’t of my time. Now I have to defend these people from his creations, and with what? Scant magic, forty soldiers, half of them convicts, and a bunch of civilians used to hunting and shooing wolves from their flocks. Curse your stone heart.

“Stones,” she said aloud. Everyone looked at her. “Let’s start moving stones to the base of the raised ground here, start piling them up. It’s easy to climb earth,” she explained as Neal opened his mouth to argue. “Didn’t we see that today? And then they just claw their way up wood. Stones at least make a smooth, rounded surface. The killing devices’ claws will slip on stone.” Neal closed his mouth. Seeing that the men continued to stare at her, Kel went on, “That’s how the Yamanis build their castles. They cover everything from the wall straight down below the moat in stone. We can’t cut it flat, maybe, but we can make the climb up these heights much harder.”

“Wyldon made a good choice when he put you in command here,” Duke Baird said with a tired smile. “He knows you have a fresh way of looking at things.”

Kel glanced at Merric. She knew her being in command here was a sore point with him, though her job was the refugees and his was the patrols and command of the soldiers outside Haven’s walls. Merric smiled crookedly, raised his goblet to her in a mocking toast, and finished its contents.

“I can help,” Numair said abruptly. “I can provide large rocks more quickly than muscle and oxen can do it, at least.”

“Not the Sorcerer’s Dance!” cried Neal. “That one is so old it creaks!”

“The spell may creak as much as it likes, if it works,” Numair replied calmly. “What would you use?”

They began to argue magic. Dom and Merric stood with groans; Kel did likewise. If the mages even noticed they were leaving, they gave no sign of it.

Kel promised Dom she would see him and the squad off in the morning, and bade Merric goodnight. Then she looked at the extra clump of shadow by the rear door. “Tobe?”

He stepped into the light of the few cressets on the walls. “He said Blayce. Is that your Blayce, lady? The one as makes you talk in your sleep?”

Kel sighed. “Yes, it is.”

Tobe shook his head. “No wonder you’ve got nightmares.”

“If you’d sleep in a room of your own, upstairs, you wouldn’t hear them,” Kel pointed out. This was an old discussion between them at this point. Tobe refused to trade his pallet by her hearth for a real bed and room. “And what are you doing, eavesdropping here?” she wanted to know. “That was a closed-door meeting. No listening allowed.”

Tobe gave Kel his best “don’t you know anything?” look. “I’m in service, lady,” he said patiently. “When you’re in service, you have to eavesdrop. Elsewise your masters get up to things and you get took by surprise.”

Kel had begun to recognize the signs of another conversation she could not win. She switched tactics. “You should be in bed,” she informed him.

“So should you,” he retorted. “But them scribblers is still up and working, and they asked me to say, they’re wishful of seeing you. Do I tell ‘em to stuff their wishfulness?”

Kel rubbed her eyes. “No, I’ll see them,” she replied. “Off to bed, Tobe.”

He vanished into her rooms. Kel walked into the clerks’ office. They were all working, but when they saw her, they scrambled to their feet and bowed.

“What may I do for you?” Kel asked.

“We hope to take just a little of your time, if you please, lady knight,” replied the head clerk Zamiel. “We have suggestions which may ease everyone’s lot.”

Kel bit her lip. Hadn’t her day been long enough?

A sigh escaped her. Wyldon had trusted her to do this task - all of it - properly. She returned the clerks’ bows. “I am at your service,” she told them.

7
TIRRSMONT REFUGEES

When Kel left headquarters the next morning, she found the camp shrouded in fog. The sound of a recorder wound its way through the veils of mist, an aimless song that raised goosebumps on her skin. She traced it to the wall that looked to the western mountains. Numair stood on the ramparts, the soldiers at his sides moving away from him. The mage played the tune on a slender, hand-carved recorder.

She knew better than to interrupt a mage at work. Instead, she did her glaive practice, trying to ignore the piping, and walked around the camp before she entered the headquarters meeting room. A sleepy cook was setting bread, cheese, honey and butter on the table. “We appreciate your letting him eat here, Lady Kel,” he told her with a yawn. “Do you hear him? Mages.” About to spit on the floor to express his opinion, he caught Kel’s eye and thought the better of it.

“Even when he is trying to protect you?” she asked mildly.

“Especially then,” the man said with feeling. “They save their scariest tricks for when they want to help folk.” He bowed and went to fetch the rest of breakfast.

She saw Dom’s squad and Merric’s patrol on their way, then returned to the mess hall to discuss mundane things like work rosters with the newly arrived refugees. Once the fog burned off, she took weapons groups - one bow, one staff - outside the gate for practice. First she assigned one soldier and one experienced civilian as teachers to each group, then she worked in the ranks, keeping her own skills warm.

Back in Haven after training, she broke up three fights, two among children, one between two women over who was first in the latrine line. It was the magic thickening the air that made people edgy, Kel knew. She had just sorted out an argument between carpenters when she felt the physical effects of Numair’s work. The ground began to quiver under her feet.

Stones, she thought, awed. I should have guessed there would be a lot of them. The sparrows came, shrieking, to whirl around Kel’s head. They settled on every part of her they could find. Kel saw a white streak that was Jump scrambling into headquarters. Tobe, normally dauntless, wasn’t far behind him.

Kel made herself walk calmly and confidently through camp, stopping often to assure everyone this was no earthquake but a protection spell. When she climbed to the rampart on the west wall, Baird and Neal were already there. In the distance, Numair walked, playing the recorder like a demented piper, leading a swarm of boulders, many taller than he was. “Is this one of those black-robe mage things?” she asked Neal and his father as they looked on.

“Even child mages can learn the Sorcerer’s Dance,” Neal replied scornfully. “An idiot couldn’t get it wrong.”

“It’s the magnitude that has you acting like a bear with a burr under his tail,” Baird replied gently. “If you or I worked the Dance, we could move logs, or a handful of wagons, for a mile or two. Numair called boulders from ten miles away.”

“Show-off,” grumbled Neal.

The duke leaned against the wall, his eyes on the sight below. “Numair told me once he has to blow on a candle flame to put it out,” he said. “If he uses his Gift, the candle explodes. We have shaped our power to cut single veins if we must. Numair has to do big projects or nothing. You might show more tolerance.”

Kel left father and son to it, shaking her head, and retreated to the mess hall. She was able to eat very little of her lunch as person after person, civilian and soldier, came to hear from her that this rumbling was neither an attack nor a natural disaster. She finally gave up on eating and took a group of slingers out to practise in the meadow across the bridge.