The bodyguard felt it, too. He turned, stalking over to Crel and drawing his dagger. Crel braced himself, but the bodyguard, jabbed his spear in the ground, took hold of the rope, and sawed through it with half a dozen quick strokes. Crel tottered and almost fell against him.
The bodyguard hoisted him over a shoulder and took up his spear again. He glared around him and said, “We’re going now. If you try to follow, be careful who walks beside you.” Then he turned and strode away into the woods.
There was a collective intake of breath, of leaning forward, of waiting for an order—but every man glanced at those beside him again, then turned to the captain.
The captain glared darkly after the two men of the Scarlet Company but said nothing.. After a little while, he turned and stalked back to his tent.
The men relaxed, began to talk to one another in hushed tones, to mill about. Gar gazed about him, seeming blank and confused, but listening intently for any mention of the Scarlet Company, anyone thinking it was his duty to draw a dagger.
He heard no one. The bluff had worked.
Of course, the bodyguard hadn’t known it was a bluff.
Alea absorbed it all, dazed. Finally she thought, Gar, what are we doing here?
I’ve been wondering that myself, Gar answered. I’ll meet you tonight and we can talk it over face to face.
Meet me? How? You’re a soldier!
Men are beginning to leave already, Gar told her, just packing up their gear and walking off into the forest. Nobody seems to care about stopping them.
Without General Malachi, the whole army is falling apart, Alea thought, still numb.
Certainly after Ivack tried to hold it together. No one wants to be the third-time charm. I can certainly walk away after dark. Where shall we rendezvous?
I’m at the Inn of the North Star, Alea told him. Let me know when you get here and I’ll come out to meet you in the common room.
She had a few hours before he came, though. Dazed, Alea made her way down to the river, then followed it upstream, stopping frequently to stare at the water as though it could reveal the mysteries of human greed and cruelty—or at least swallow them and let them dissolve. Then she walked again, letting the sound of the running water lull her, soothe her spirit. When the brook ran in among the trees, she accepted the shade and the murmuring of the leaves as balm. She knelt on a rock and dipped a hand in the stream, letting it run through her fingers. At last she stood up with a sigh—and saw Evanescent.
“You meant it, didn’t you?” With no one nearby to hear, she could speak her thoughts aloud. “That you are the Scarlet Company.”
Us, and all of you, Evanescent replied, even you newly come, for it seems you have joined them now.
“Why not?” Alea demanded, somewhat irked. “They’re the only ones doing anything to cleanse this planet of the evil ones!”
So say many, but not until they have encountered that evil themselves, Evanescent replied. We remind them, that is all—remind them of evil, and of their dedication to their fellows.
Alea frowned. “You mean you’re the ones who keep the men and women of the Scarlet Company from trying to use it as a tool to gain power and riches for themselves?”
When there are no evil and greedy men prowling the land, Evanescent explained, people can grow complacent and forget their zeal for others’ freedom, forget there is something greater than themselves, greater than any one human being or even any one family. An encounter with a strange and powerful being reminds them and renews their devotion.
“You scare them back into line,” Alea interpreted. Or overawe them and make them rededicate themselves, Evanescent said, for surely if beings of such power as our kind can forgo glory and dominion in search of a greater good, smaller and weaker beings such as people can do so, too.
“You put the fear of the gods in them.”
The awe, perhaps. Fear is the smallest part of that. Then they forget us, but the zeal remains.
“Neatly done,” Alea said with a cynical smile, “to forget you but remember your impact. What do you gain from it, though?”
A reason for living, mortal woman, the alien native replied, for we may be of different kinds and birthed by different worlds, but we are both living souls, and the welfare of one is the welfare of All—and that All overawes even we of fur and teeth, for we are also of mind and soul.
“And therefore dedicated to the goodness of all,” Alea said thoughtfully. “What do you do with those who seek to exploit and hurt their fellows, though?”
Why should we do anything? Evanescent returned. You have seen, through your mate’s eyes. The human folk will sooner or later go to the Scarlet Company, who shall train them to turn on the tyrants.
“But they can’t always be successful,” Alea objected. “Even Malachi stopped the first three assassins. And I somehow doubt that only one man in a hundred years will try to gain power.”
There are many, Evanescent admitted, but most are careless and wander in the forest alone.
Alea shuddered.
Even them we do not eat, Evanescent told her, the tone a rebuke. We bury them deeply, after the fashion of your kind—and their deaths are quick and sudden; many do not even know they have died.
“But the careful ones,” Alea inferred, “they become like General Malachi.”
Always they raise up enough hatred so that some think it worth their lives to kill them, Evanescent assured her. If they survive that, though, they grow careless sooner or later, restive at the prison of their bodyguards, and go wandering where they should not.
“And never come back.” Alea shivered. “Tell me—if they do not think to go wandering alone, do you help the idea into their minds?”
We have not had to yet, Evanescent said, with a tone of finality.
Alea knew she would gain no more information from the huge beast. Instead she said, “I would rather not forget this meeting. You’re a remarkable creature and have given me an amazing experience.”
You shall remember when you have left this planet, Evanescent promised.
A bird trilled overhead, pouring out such a volume of liquid notes that Alea had to look up, heart filled with the exaltation of the beauty of the music. Then the bird finished and she looked down with regret at the maze of leaves and trunks opposite her. It was tempting to go wandering, to lose herself in the emptiness and solitude of that foliage and forget humanity with its striving and cheating and vanity for a while—but Gar would be coming to the inn and she had to meet him there. With a sigh of regret and a head filled with the chaotic events of the day, but a heart curiously soothed and light, she turned to follow the river back into town.
Gar came in the evening when the common room was still full, men and women chatting and laughing as they finished their ale. A few had risen and gone home. The fire was burning low and the evening was winding down.
Alea surveyed them with exasperation. The fools! They had no idea how close they had come to disaster—and they didn’t care. Didn’t care about the gallant young man who had saved them, either, or the savage beating he’d taken.