By the Sword (62 page)

Hellsbane's eyes were half-closed; Kero suspected she was dozing. Although the road was churned-up muck, it wasn't really too bad, since it was too warm for the stuff to freeze before the hooves of the tailmost horse went through it. Later though, it would be bad.

Let her doze,
Kero thought, settling.
This is the easy part. Anything from here on is gong to be worse.

Snow swirled around Hellsbane's hocks, as the wind made Kero's feet ache with cold. Kerowyn huddled as much of herself inside her cloak as she could, and kept her face set in a reasonable approximation of a pleasant expression.

She would not dismount until her tent was set up. Her tent would not be set up until the rest of the camp was in order. The troops could look up from their own camp tasks at any time, and see her, still in the saddle, still out in the weather, for as long as it took for all of them to have their shelters put together.

Wonderful discoveries, these little dome-shaped, felt-lined tents. The wind just went around them; they never blew over, or collapsed, and instead of needing rigid tent-poles, you only needed to find a willow-grove, and cut eight of the flexible branches to thread through the eight channels sewn into the tents. You wouldn't even damage the trees; willows actually responded well to being cut back, and the Company had passed groves they'd trimmed in the past, whose trees were more luxuriant than before they'd been cut.

The hard part, especially in midwinter, was pounding the eight tent stakes into the rock-hard ground to pin the tents in place. Without those eight stakes, the tents could and had blown away, like down puffs on the wind. That was what took time, lots of time, and each pair of troopers was sweating long before the stakes were secure.

And meanwhile, the Captain got to sit on her horse and look impressive, while in reality she wanted to thump every one of her troopers who looked up at her for taking even a half-breath to do so, forcing her to be out in the cold that much longer. She'd
rather
have been pounding stakes herself; she used to help with setup, before she realized that helping could be construed as a sign of favoritism. Then she set up her own tent, before her own orderlies told her in distress that it wasn't “appropriate.”

So she sat, like a guardian-statue, turning into a giant icicle, a sodden pile of wet leather, or a well-broiled piece of jerky, as the season determined.

The sun just touched the horizon, glaring an angry red beneath the low-hanging clouds. No snow—yet. It was on the way; Kero knew snow-scent when she caught it.

A wonderful aroma of roasting meat wafted on the icy breeze, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. In that much, at least, being Captain had its privileges. When she finally
could
crawl down off Hellsbane's back, her tent would be waiting, warmed by a clever charcoal brazier no larger than a dish, and her dinner would be sitting beside it. She sniffed again, and identified the scent as pork.

Good. The past three weeks it's been mutton, and I'm beginning to dislike the sight of sheep.
Then she had to smile; when she'd last been this far north, she'd have sold her soul for a slice of mutton. In fact, most merc Companies would be making do with what they'd brought in the way of dried meat, eked out with anything the scouts brought in. This business of buying fresh food every time they halted had its advantages. Given the opportunity of making twice an animal's normal price, in midwinter when there was no possibility of other money coming in, most farmers and herders could manage to find an extra male, or a female past bearing. Just before they'd gotten into the Comb, in fact, they'd found a fellow with a herd of half-wild, woolly cattle who had been overjoyed to part with a pair of troublemaking beasts at the price the quartermaster had offered.

“Them's mean ‘uns,” he'd said laconically, as he delivered the hobbled, bellowing, head-tossing creatures to the cooks. The smile on his face when he accepted a slice of roast, and the tale her quartermaster told later of putting the cattle down, convinced her that they had done the man a favor.

The last tent went up, and Geyr, currently in charge of the crew digging the jakes, hove into view from the other side of the camp, and waved his hand. Kero sighed with relief, and dismounted.

Slowly. She was having a hard time feeling her feet. Hellsbane let out a tremendous sigh as Kero pulled her left foot out of the stirrup and the youngster assigned as the officer's groom came trotting up with his mittened hands tucked up into his armpits. He took the reins shyly from Kero, and led the mare off to the picket lines at a fast walk.

Kero made her way toward her tent at a
slow
walk; first of all, it wouldn't do for the troops to see the Captain scurrying for her tent like any green recruit on her first winter campaign. And second, she didn't trust her footing when she couldn't feel anything out of her feet but cold and pain.

The command tent was easily three times the size of the others, but that was because the troops' tents only had to hold two fighters and their belongings. Hers had to hold the map-table, and take several people standing up inside it, besides. That was the disadvantage of the little dome-shaped tents, and the reason she had a separate packhorse for her own traditional tent.

Her orderly held the tent flap open just enough for her to squeeze inside without letting too much of the precious heat out. And the first thing she did, once in the privacy of her quarters, was peel her boots off and stick her half-frozen, white feet into the sheepskin slippers he'd left warming beside the brazier for her.

As life returned to her extremities, she thanked the gods that she had made it through another day on the march without losing something to frostbite.

“There has to be a way to keep your feet from turning into chunks of ice the moment the wind picks up,” she said crossly to her orderly. “It's fine when there's no wind; the horse keeps your feet warm enough—but once there's a wind, you might as well be barefoot.”

Her orderly, a wiry little fellow from the very mountains they'd just crossed, frowned a little. “ ‘Tis them boots, Cap'n,” he said solemnly. “ ‘Tis nothin' betwixt the foot an' the wind but a thin bit'a leather. ‘Tis not what we do.”

She took an experimental sip of the contents of her wooden mug. It was tea tonight, which was fine. She hadn't had any more of those dreams of Eldan since crossing the Comb, which left her with mixed feelings, indeed, and wine was not what she wanted tonight, even mulled. She didn't want to go all maudlin in her cups, mourning the loss of those illusionary lovemaking sessions.

Whatever was wrong with me is cured, she though resolutely. I should be thankful. I'm back to being myself. But—come to think of it, Need's been as silent as a stone,
she realized, with a moment of alarm.
Nothing. Not even a “feel” at the back of my mind. She might just as well be ordinary metal!

I'll deal with it, that's what. It's too late to turn back now. Think about something else.
“Enlighten me, Holard. What do your people do?”

“Sheepskin boots, Cap‘n,” he replied promptly, “An' wool socks, double pairs. Only trouble is, 'tis bulky, an' has no heel. We don't use stirrups, ye ken.”

She shook her head. “That won't do, not for us. I guess I'll just have to suffer—”

At that moment, the guard outside her tent knocked his dagger hilt against the pole supporting the door canopy, and let someone in with a swirl of snow.

Quenten, and Kero had a feeling she wasn't going to like what he was about to say the moment he came fully into the light from her lantern. He was haggard and nervous, two states she'd never seen Quenten in—and the mages had been conspicuous by their absence since they'd crossed the Comb. There was something up, and whatever it was, it was coming to her now because they couldn't handle it themselves.

“Captain,” said Quenten, and his voice cracked on the second syllable. She waited for him to try again. “Captain,” he repeated, with a little more success this time. “We have a problem....”

“I'd already gathered that, Quenten, since you look like a day-old corpse, and I haven't seen so much as a mage's sleeve for a fortnight. Is it just you, or do all the mages look like you?”

“All of us,” Quenten replied unhappily. “We'd like permission to turn back, Captain. It isn't you, or the Company, or the job. We think it's Valdemar itself. There's something strange going on here, and it's driving us mad.”

He waited for a moment, obviously to see if she believed him. She just nodded. “Go on,” she told him, figuring she was about to have her little puzzle of mages and Valdemar solved, at least in part.

“I remembered what you told me, about how the Heralds seemed surprised by magic, and you never heard of a mage up in Valdemar. I thought maybe it was coincidence or something.” His hands twisted the hem of his sleeve nervously. “Well, it isn't. The moment we got across the border, we all felt something.”

“What?” she asked, impatiently. “What is it? If there's something around that's costing me the use of my mages, I want to know about it.”

Quenten ground his teeth in frustration. “I don't
know, ”
he said, around a clenched jaw. “I really don't know! It was like there was somebody watching us, all the time. At first, it was just an annoyance; we figured there was just some Talented youngling out there, thinking he could spy on us. But we never caught anybody, and after a while, it started getting on our nerves. It was like having somebody staring, staring right at you,
all the time.
It goes on day and night, waking and sleeping, and it's like nothing any of us have ever seen or heard of before. We couldn't get rid of it, we couldn't shield against it, and its been getting worse every day. I can't even sleep anymore. Please, Captain, give us permission to go back. We'll wait for you at winter quarters.”

Now if it had been one of the others who asked that of her, with a nebulous story like that, she'd have suspected fakery, slacking, or at least exaggeration. But it was Quenten, as trustworthy as they came, and not prone to exaggerate anything. And he did look awful.

And if all this was true, even if she kept them, they wouldn't do her any good.
You can't take time to aim when you have to keep ducking, and that's obviously the way they feel right now.

“Are the Healers being affected?” she asked anxiously. “Or is it only you?”

“The Healers are fine, Captain,” Quenten reported, with a certain hangdog expression, as if he felt he was somehow responsible for the mages being singled out.

Then with luck, Need will still be able to Heal me. And with none, she's still a good sword. Besides, a sword probably wouldn't care about being stared at.
“All right,” she said unhappily. “You can go. You go back on noncombatant status, though, and we can't spare anyone to get you back home.”

“That's all right,” Quenten replied, nearly faint with relief. “Once we're across the border we'll be fine. Thank you, Captain. I think if I'd had to go two more days, I'd have killed someone. We've already had to restrain Arnod twice; he tried to run off into the snow last night with nothing on but a shirt.”

“Oh,” Kero replied, wishing that they'd told her about this earlier. Then, it might have been possible to get Quenten to fiddle with Need again, to extend the protections over the mages....

Then again, maybe not. Need never had protected mages from magic. They were all probably better off this way. And besides, Need was silent. Who knew if she was actually working or not?

She told her orderly to go with Quenten and see that the quartermaster gave them what supplies he could.

Something watching you all the time,
she thought, bemused, as she settled down to the remains of her dinner.
Now that I think of it, that is something that would drive you crazy. Especially if you were already unbalanced. Which mages are, a lot of times, and with good reason.

 

Halfway to the Valdemar capital of Haven, it seemed that their purpose and reputation had preceded them. People came out of the towns along the way to watch them pass; reservedly friendly, but cautious, as if they didn't quite know what to expect of a mercenary Company. Kero ordered her troopers to respond to positive overtures, but ignore negative ones. And there were negative responses; old men and women who remembered the Tedrel Wars, and had decided that all mercs were like the Tedrels had been. At least once every time they halted, someone would shout an insult (which more than half the troopers couldn't understand anyway), someone else would half-apologize for “granther,” and Kero or one of her Lieutenants would carefully explain the difference between Guild and non-Guild meres. It got to be so much of a commonplace, that the troops began laying bets on who the troublemaker would be the moment they entered a town. Privately, Kero was relieved that the Tedrel Wars had been so very long ago—years tended to bring forgetfulness, especially in the light of this new enemy. It didn't matter so much anymore that the Karsites had hired fighters calling themselves mercenaries—those hired fighters had been just like the Karsites who hired them; they fought with steel like anyone else, and could be killed with that same steel.
Ancar
had hired mages, about which there were only tales, and every childhood bogeyman came leaping out of the closet to become the adult's worst nightmare.