Lady Knight (19 page)

Merric and Zamiel, their faces ashen with shock, sketched the Sign on their shirt-fronts.

The next morning Kel returned to her routine: glaive practice with Tobe and his friends doing spear exercises beside her, breakfast, then archery practice on the river bank. Afterwards she was about to return to Haven with her archers when a ploughman on his way out of the fort approached her.

“They’ve got you listed for kitchen clean-up. A big lass like you’s wasted on scrubbing pots,” he informed her. “D’ye know how to plough?” Kel shook her head. “Then it’s past time you learned,” the man informed her. “That idyit Edort went and sprained his ankle. Whilst he’s getting coddled by Grandma Nealan we could have more acres done.”

Kel met the ploughman’s eyes. He was a stocky older man, black-eyed, his hair silvery, his moustache salt and pepper. Like the other refugees he looked as if he’d seen better days, but there was an imp of spirit in his eyes. “You do understand I’ve never ploughed in my life, Master -“

“Just Adner, no ‘master’ in me,” he retorted. “And if you keep that attitude you’ll never learn. Carry on, yens,” he ordered Kel’s archers, using northern slang for “you people”. “I’ll give ‘er back to yez unbroke.” He took Kel by the arm and steered her towards the fields being readied for planting.

“But that’s the lady knight!” cried one of Kel’s archers, shocked. “You can’t just carry her off!”

“I can unless one of yez will plough in her stead,” he called over his shoulder. Kel waved the archers on. They were bakers, laundresses and carpenters, all with their own work to do. It was vital to get as many acres ploughed and seeded as they could, as soon as they could. They needed all the extra food they could produce.

Trudging along with the men and women who managed ploughs and animals with easy familiarity, Kel was glad to see something familiar to her: bows, quivers of arrows and staves. Adner bore a crossbow that must have been his: longbows were easier and cheaper to make in the north, so few people outside the army used crossbows. She wondered what kind of shot Adner was. Maybe he would shoot against her some evening when they had the time.

At last they reached the ground beside the acres that were ploughed while she was away. Adner chose an ox for her and showed her how to hitch him to a plough. “You’ll pick it up,” he assured Kel, indicating the strip of ground that was hers. “There’s some good dirt here. Toss what rocks y’hit over aside the river, not on to ground we’ve yet to plough.” He looked Kel over as she gathered the reins in her hands. “I’m workin’ that strip there. I’ll keep an eye on yez.”

Kel nodded and faced the ox’s rump. I ride Peachblossom, she thought. An ox will be no trouble at all.

The ploughing should be easy enough. She’d watched ploughmen and ploughwomen all her life. All she had to do was flap the reins now and then, keep the plough moving in a straight line, and turn the thing at the end of the strip.

“Easy as pie,” she said, and flapped the reins gently against the ox’s back. “Come on, big fellow,” she called, softly, so the others couldn’t hear. “Let’s bustle a bit.”

The ox didn’t wish to bustle. He was more interested in the grass. Kel flapped the reins harder, then harder still. She thought she heard snickers from the others, but when she looked at them, they were in motion, calling encouragement to their own horses or oxen. It took Jump and five sparrows to get Kel’s beast going.

When he did plod forward, it was not in a straight line. He veered as Kel fought both reins and plough to straighten the ox’s course. She stepped three times in lumps of fresh dung she was sure the ox had left for her on purpose. At the end of the furrow she wrestled the plough and ox around to prepare for her second furrow. The evidence of her long, sweaty labour was a meandering furrow that stretched the width of the field.

She looked at the others’ results. Their furrows were straight. They’d ploughed more of them, too.

“If they can do it, we can,” she said grimly. This time she set the ox forward by thrusting the plough through the ground towards his rump. The ox looked round, startled by the sudden slackness in his reins. He saw the approaching threat to his tail, and ambled ahead, away from both plough and Kel. Finally, Kel’s animals, who seemed to have learned a great deal from their time with Daine, made their own choice to help. Each time the ox tried to swerve left, Jump leaped up beside his left eye, startling him back to a straighter course. If he tried to swerve right, the sparrows fluttered around his right eye until the ox straightened his path again.

By the time Kel reached the end of her second, meandering, furrow, she had begun to think longingly of latrine duty. She stopped for a ladleful of water, envying the way Adner and the others moved steadily across the ground, making furrows as neat as razor-cuts, turning up rich black earth.

Her fingers twinged as she took up the reins again. Kel looked for the source and found, to her horror, that she was developing a blister.

A blister! she thought, cross. These reins were nothing like the ones she used in riding. As if I were some lily-handed noble, good only for poems and dancing! She smacked the ox with the reins more firmly than she had before. The ox looked back at her, startled. Something in the way Kel scowled at him seemed to convince him that she would accept nothing but motion.

Kel was turning him a third time when sparrows darted out of the woods thirty yards ahead, cheeping the alarm. Seconds later came horn calls. Merric had sighted the enemy in the woods. The sparrows flew straight at Kel. All but one dropped to the ground and nibbled grass seeds. The one was a bird Kel recognized, the male she called Duck because his lack of a tail gave him a duck-shaped behind. He hovered before her.

“How many?” Kel asked, and stretched her hand out, palm-down. Duck stooped to tap her hand three times before he lit on the plough. “Fifteen, is it?” Kel murmured. She listened to horn calls as she trotted back to the spot where her glaive leaned against the water-cart. Merric had the Scanrans on the run. He wanted soldiers from Haven to strike the enemy as he drove them towards the river. Unless he’d lost men, his strength was at eleven, counting his own sword, against fifteen Scanrans. Haven’s soldiers might not reach the field before the enemy came into sight. She had an opportunity here, if she cared to risk it.

Kel looked at her companions: they were trying to unhitch their ploughs. She held up a hand palm-out, the “wait” signal, and walked over to them.

“Get your bows; prepare to shoot,” she called, her voice no louder than necessary. In the distance she heard the sounds of battle approaching. “They’ll come out of the north woods. Turn side on to them so they won’t see your bows. As soon as you have a clean shot at one, in your range, take it. Try not to shoot our soldiers. Lord Wyldon won’t give me any more.”

Adner grinned wolfishly as he stood clear of his plough. His stance was easy, his crossbow held down along his side. It was already cocked with a bolt in the notch. Unlike longbows, whose strings went loose if the bow was kept strung for too long, crossbows could be readied to shoot and set aside until needed.

The other workers, women and men, didn’t share his comfortable readiness. Some fumbled as they strung their bows; one dropped an arrow. Kel didn’t even try to reach her bow. If these people could help Merric’s soldiers without her assistance, it would be a victory everyone in Haven would celebrate.

She saw movement among the trees. The sound of men’s shouts and the crash of running horses announced the arrival of the fight. Out of the woods burst eight or nine men in Scanran dress: rough reddish tunics and strapped-on leggings. One of them went down, an arrow in his back. Then came Merric and his squad, ducking to avoid the last branches of the trees, swords unsheathed.

Once the Scanrans reached the open field, they ran for all they were worth. They raced straight towards a handful of civilians who were too terrified to run for the shelter of the fort.

Wait for it, Kel thought. Her farmers had to decide the timing for themselves. To her left she heard Haven’s gate open and the thud of racing horses. Rescue would arrive in a moment if her people froze.

Adner’s muscled arm swung up. He braced his crossbow against his shoulder. He shot almost as soon as he levelled the weapon, hardly stopping to aim. A Scanran went down with a bolt in his throat. Adner bent to cock and load the crossbow again.

Two farmers’ arrows struck a Scanran; another arrow from Merric’s soldiers brought down a second man. A Scanran stumbled and dropped, a civilian arrow above his knee. A slight, weathered older woman shot the enemy’s biggest man in the chest. He spun with a cry and was shot in the back by Adner.

Merric’s archers killed two more Scanrans; a farmer shot the last. Merric rode up to Kel, sweeping his helmet from his sweat-soaked, flame-red hair. “Sorry to interrupt the ploughing,” he said, ablaze with combat fever. “If I’d known your lot would do the heavy work, I’d have continued on patrol.” He looked at the farmers and grinned. “Nice to know you can do it without us, eh?” he asked them.

“Next time leave us a few more,” the older woman informed him, coiling her bowstring. “We need the practice.”

From the walls of Haven they heard the sound of cheers.

6 May-3 June, 460 HE

Haven and Mastiff

11
SHATTERED SANCTUARY

About fifty of the enemy attacked from the east three days later. Sparrows got word to Kel, who had taken her young spear trainees to the river bank. They raced back into Haven. Sergeant Yngvar took out two squads to support Merric’s patrol. While those squads fought the enemy - a mixed force with more foot soldiers than horsemen - on open ground, civilian archers held off twenty more Scanrans who tried to clamber over the boulders and up Haven’s west wall. Idrius Valestone was a cool head in that fight, calming the civilians around him so they could steadily aim, shoot and put fresh arrows to the string without giving way to fright.

When she guessed the enemy would break with a little extra push, Kel led a fourth mounted squad to the battle. What was left of the main body of attackers fled. There was no one alive to flee among those who had tried Idrius and the archers on the western wall.

As the refugees piled and burned the Scanran dead, Stormwings circled above, jeering at them. More than one archer tried to shoot them down, without success. The creatures were nimble on the wing, easily dodging all the arrows that came their way.

Two days later couriers rode in from Northwatch to deliver reports to Kel before they pressed on to Fort Mastiff. Vanget’s words, set on paper in a clerk’s polished writing, were as blunt as ever. Giantkiller was being rebuilt. Until it was finished, the workers and soldiers lived in abandoned mines in the hills between the old Giantkiller and Haven. Vanget also wrote that King Maggur’s army had lost two pitched battles, one to Vanget, one to Lord Raoul and the King’s Own. It was good to read about victories, particularly after Vanget also wrote that the sieges of Frasrlund and the City of the Gods remained firmly in place.

“Write a notice for our people about the battles won,” Kel told the clerks. “If folk ask for word on the sieges, just say that there’s no change.”

Five days after the couriers’ visit, eighty-five more refugees came in from the south in time to join in the elections for the civilian council. Kel, who had looked forward to a decrease in civilian complaints, discovered instead that she now had a clump of angry, quarrelsome people in the shape of the elected council to seek her out day after day. Sorting their arguments out led to such long, late discussions that Kel had to wonder if it had taken as long to arrange Prince Roald’s betrothal to Princess Shinkokami.

“This was your idea,” she accused Neal as the council left headquarters one night.

“It seemed like a good one at the time,” he replied, yawning.

“For two copper bits I’d toss the whole mess into your lap,” she threatened.

Merric, reviewing supply sheets, commented in unison with Neal, “And let you miss such fun?”

Kel scowled at them and went to bed.

With the arrival of still more working hands, Kel found herself eased off the work rosters. Tobe, Loesia and Gydo explained that Haven’s residents thought it was beneath their commander’s dignity to scrub pots and cut up wood, especially now that there were so many who were used to the work. “I was getting better at sowing,” Kel protested, wondering what she had done to make them think she had dignity. The youngsters only grinned and shook their heads.

With fewer chores, Kel worked more as a weapons trainer. There she was welcomed. The more trainers they had, the more civilians received individual attention. The rate of their improvement climbed. Kel took pride in the growing skill of Haven’s students, young and old. They were eager to learn self-defence. As their training progressed, they walked less like victims and more like people proud of their skills with staff, bow, spear and sling.

Kel also worked with the animals and humans together, settling on signals everyone could use. The humans had to learn what a dog’s circling, a bird’s string of peeps, and a cat’s sharpening her claws in the dirt meant. The animals had to learn what humans meant even when they spoke with different accents. She did her best to keep things simple, with signs for “friend”, “foe”, “not sure”, the directions of the compass and the ways different animals could count the number of visitors. The animals learned so quickly that some people would have spent all day talking to them if they could. Other men and women were nervous, though they insisted on staying to learn all the signals. “The starving can’t choose what tools to harvest with,” Sergeant Vidur commented. “Even when it seems plain unnatural.”

Four days before Kel and Neal were due for their next visit to Mastiff, a raiding party of sixteen mounted Scanrans tried their luck on Haven. They were dead before any soldiers reached them. Civilian workers placing stones on the height above the boulders shot the enemy off their mounts with arrows, then finished them with pickaxes, staves and even the rocks they carried.

That night the refugees celebrated loud and long. They had fought for themselves and won! Kel didn’t mind if they made noise about it, but she did wonder if, with the enemy close enough for one attack, she ought to put off her trip.

“Don’t do that, lady,” Tobe protested when she mentioned it to him. “Maybe himself will give you more soldiers. We’ll be fine.”

“We?” Kel asked. “Weren’t you planning to go with me?”

Tobe grinned. “I guess, if you go away, you’re prolly comin’back.”

This was the nicest thing she’d heard in days. Kel couldn’t help it: she leaned down and kissed her young henchman on the forehead. “Thank you,” she whispered.

He looked up at her with suspicion. “Are you goin’ t’act like a girl now?” he demanded.

“No,” Kel said, trying not to giggle - something that really would have frightened him. “It won’t happen again.”

When she broached a delay in her trip to the headquarters meeting room, Neal made a face. “I do need fresh supplies of the herbs that don’t grow locally,” he reminded her.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Merric said, covering a yawn. “You trained them to fight - how will it look if you show you won’t leave them for two days? Even with you taking a squad, I’m not staying inside the walls this time. We’ve got four squads, and your fighting farmers. Cut them off your apron strings, Mother.”

“He’s right,” Neal said. “They’ll think you don’t have faith in them. We need supplies, and you know the Stump wants our personal reports.”

Zamiel looked up from his work. “They take confidence in what they can do from the confidence you show in them, milady,” the clerk informed her. He smiled crookedly. “So do I. Give us a bit more confidence, and keep to your schedule. We can hold our own, should the enemy visit.”

Kel knew they were right. She did no one any favours by acting as if they couldn’t manage without her. Four days later, at dawn, she and Neal, accompanied by Jump, a fistful of sparrows and Sergeant Connac’s squad, rode to Fort Mastiff. Peachblossom came this time, as did Neal’s and Merric’s warhorses. Haven’s smiths could shoe all kinds of mounts for commoners, but they feared the warhorses. Mastiffs smiths could handle them, and Peachblossom had thrown a shoe. The knights decided it would be good to have all three warhorses checked.

“Don’t skip practice,” Kel warned Tobe, Gydo and Loesia as she prepared to ride out. “Loey, mind your footing on the long side cut. Tobe, practise that middle hold - a straight line - “

Tobe rolled his eyes. “Aye, milady mother,” he said, every inch an exasperated male. Then he coloured. “Meanin’ no dis - “

“And eat your vegetables,” Kel told him with a grin. She was flattered that Tobe might call her mother, even in jest.

“Me’n Gydo, we’ll watch ‘im, milady,” promised Loesia. “Safe journey.”

Kel nodded to them and clucked to Hoshi, leading their small group out of Haven’s gate.

Owen was as delighted as ever to see them. He and his civilian friend Rengar made them comfortable as Wyldon read Kel’s sheaf of reports. Afterwards the two boys waited on them at table as they took their evening meal with Lord Wyldon and his officers. Most of the talk was about the war, news from the City of the Gods and Frasrlund. The City of the Gods, with its concentration of mages, was proving costly to King Maggur, and the Tortallan navy had come to attack the Scanran ships that blocked Frasrlund’s harbour. If Blayce had been found, word had not yet reached Mastiff.

So the war progresses without you, Kel told herself grumpily as she got ready for bed. And you’re no closer to Blayce than ever.

Horses raced up the inclined road to Haven. Kel, frightened, looked for her weapons, but she was naked. She opened her eyes inside Mastiffs guest quarters. She’d been dreaming.

If it was only a dream, why did the horses’ hooves continue to thunder?

She jumped for the door and yanked it open. A soldier lurched in, hand still raised to pound again. “Lady knight, see my lord at headquarters.”

Kel stuffed her nightshirt into her breeches and pulled on her boots, leaving her stockings aside for the moment. She didn’t bother to comb her hair or clean her teeth; she just rattled down the stairs of the guest barracks. Jump was at her heels as she dashed to headquarters. Neal, Sergeant Connac and seven other men, all dressed much as she was, fell into step with her. They raced into Wyldon’s office and halted, trying to catch their breaths.

Wyldon, also in nightshirt and breeches, sat before the hearth, helping a boy to grasp a heavy mug as the lad drank from it. The boy looked up, searching the faces of the new arrivals. His face was dirty and scratched, his clothes muddy and tattered.

It was fortunate Wyldon gripped the mug. Tobe let go of it and scrambled across the room with a cry of “Lady!” He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her nightshirt.

Kel hugged her boy. Sobs shook his frame, though he refused to make any noise. Soothing him, she looked at Wyldon. That he was here, at night, in such condition, told her what had happened.

Wyldon stood. To the men of his command who’d come with Kel, Neal and Connac he said, “I’ll take Company Eight and Company Six. Battle mages, twenty scouts. Jesslaw.”

“Sir!” Owen said behind Kel. He wore only boots and nightshirt.

“Get me a clerk, and messengers for Northwatch, the garrison near Giantkiller, and Steadfast.”

“Tobe, how long have you been on the road?” Kel asked the muddy head buried against her nightshirt.

“Not th’ road, th’ woods. Since noon,” he said, his voice muffled. “They hit mid-mornin’. The iron mantises, with the knife fingers an’ toes, they climbed over the walls on three sides. Master Zamiel sent me out the hidden tunnel. I left Loey an’ Gydo an’ Meech an’ Saefas - “

“Stop,” Kel ordered softly, her pulse beating in her throat and wrists. She was enraged, but it was a distant feeling, one that made her cold. “You did right, Tobe. You’ve been on the move ever since?”

Once more he nodded against her shirtfront. He trembled from head to toe. As the boy continued, Neal came over to place a green-glowing hand on Tobe’s back. “I had t’go the long way ’round, t’ keep ‘em from catchin’ me,” explained the boy. Though he’d spent weeks trying to speak properly, fright and exhaustion reduced him to talking as he had when Kel first met him. “The sparrows led the way. I heard Sir Merric’s horn calls - they was fightin’, in the east woods. I kep’ low and kep’ movin’. I daren’t try the road, but the sparrows couldn’t go after dark, so they fetched me an owl. Th’ owl brung me here.”

“Aren’t you glad Daine has friends everywhere?” Kel asked gently. Tobe nodded. She looked at Neal. “What’s the matter?” she asked her friend. “He’s cold and clammy.”

“He’s chilled,” replied Neal. “His body’s in shock. He hasn’t drunk enough water, and he hasn’t eaten since breakfast, I’d guess. He needs rest.”

Kel knelt, disentangling herself from Tobe, until she could look her boy in the eye. “I must go to Haven. You stay here,” she told him firmly. “Do as you’re bid.” His chin jutted out mulishly. Kel went on, “You’re no good to me if you’re sick. Obey the healers, eat, drink, sleep. Understand me, Tobe? You did a man’s work today. Now you must still act the man and rest.”

Grudgingly, he nodded. Kel guessed that he knew he couldn’t do anything else right now. His eyelids slid down and jerked up: he was literally falling asleep on his feet. She nodded to Neal, whose hand was still on Tobe’s back. A moment later the boy sagged, truly asleep. Kel caught him and passed him to a healer who’d just arrived.

“Change and arm up, Mindelan, Queenscove,” Wyldon ordered tersely. “Your riding mounts are being saddled.”

Wyldon led their force, leaving Mastiff in the hands of one company, while two more came with him. One company spread through the woods on either side of the road, beating the brush for the enemy, but the Scanrans were long gone. The forest was eerily silent, even after the sun rose. Wild creatures did not like the killing devices, and fled when they were near, taking hours to return to their homes.

The scent of smoke and of Stormwing reached them as they emerged from the trees on to the flat lands where Haven’s fields lay. Kel’s instinct was to kick Hoshi into a gallop, to leave Wyldon and the others behind in her frantic need to see what had become of her people. She bit her lip until it bled as she made herself keep Hoshi at a steady trot in the vanguard of Wyldon’s troops. She knew that what had taken place at Haven was over.