"Stala." I caught her up, armor and all, and swung her around.
"Put me down, boy," she said, though I could tell she was pleased. "I'd hoped that old Axiel would have better sense than to allow you to play soldier down here."
I set her down. "He didn't have much say in it."
"You've lost some weight."
I shrugged, and Tosten said, "Oranstonians don't like selling supplies to Shavigmen. Last time Northlanders were down here, we did a fair job of alienating the villagers."
I guess Stala hadn't noticed him when she'd approached, because her jaw dropped and she said, "Tosten?" in a small voice.
He hugged her self-consciously and stood a little awkwardly when her arms tightened fiercely rather than releasing him. At last she stood back and looked him over.
"I have all my fingers and toes, Aunt Stala," he complained mildly.
"So you really did squirrel him away someplace?" Stala didn't look away from Tosten as she spoke.
"He needed to get away, someplace safe." I said. Not even to her would I tell Tosten's secret, though the memory of his blood lying between him and me like some pool of awful truth was as clear in my mind as if it had been a moment ago.
"I'm hungry," Oreg said. "I wonder if there's anything we can scrounge to eat."
At supper, I sat at the high table with Haverness, Alizon, and Beckram. The rest of my troop ate with Stala and the Blue Guard. Haverness set a fine meal, and not the least of its attractions was his daughter. Oh, there were sweet maids aplenty here, many of them daughters and wives of Oranstonian nobles, sent here for safekeeping. One beauty with flaming hair cascading in waves down her back stole shy glances my way and then blushed when I nodded at her. But it was Haverness's daughter who caught my full attention.
Tisala was more akin to my aunt Stala than to the prettily clothed maidens. Curly dark hair trimmed short as a man's covered her well-shaped head. Her face wasn't pretty. She shared her nose, a slim, too-long blade, with her father along with his square build and tall frame. Her hands were swordsman's hands and bore the scars of someone well used to fighting, and for all that, she wore a woman's confining gown with grace.
I remembered hearing that Haverness left his lands in his daughter's hands while he was at court, but I hadn't expected that she would be more than an administrator. She hadn't gotten those scars arguing with clerks.
Once the course had been served, she looked me over and said, "What's an idiot doing in the middle of a war?"
I smirked at her, liking her instantly. "It takes an idiot to get into the middle of a war," I pointed out. "Especially when it's not even on my own lands." I glanced around and noticed Bastilla watching me, an odd look in her eye. When I nodded to her, she turned her attention back to her food.
Haverness snorted. "You see why I never took her to court."
"My father wouldn't have taken me if he'd been given a choice," I said. "Have you had a chance to look at the villages the Vorsag have hit?"
He nodded, sobering. "Every village had a temple to Meron. That's not really surprising, since almost every village has some sort of temple. But—" He pointed his knife at me. " — all the ones that were hit had some object of real power. I've spoken to my mage and my priest, and they are putting together a list of other villages that fit your conditions."
We ate for a while: real food, hot and well seasoned. As we waited for the next course, Haverness said, "I'm going to send out armed parties to each of the villages on the list, keeping the larger forces here at Callis until I can pinpoint where the bastards are. They've got a base in Oranstone; they're too deep in country for anything else."
I grunted and finished swallowing a piece of duck. "My troop has come this far, we might as well be of use. Give us one of your villages."
"I hoped you'd say that. I don't have an unlimited number of trained men, and just the one wizard. Most of the men I brought from Estian are readying their own estates to face a Vorsagian invasion."
"Uhm," I ate another small piece of duck. "You'll forgive my question, but isn't building up armies on such scale illegal?"
"Demons take Jakoven, and his laws," said Haverness heavily. It had taken a lot, I saw, for him to break his oaths of loyalty, but Jakoven's refusal to rescue Oranstone had done it. Jakoven had, in fact, broken his oath first.
"By the time the king can do anything about it," Alizon said, "we'll have driven the Kingdoms' enemy out of Oranstone, and he'll have nothing to do but congratulate these men for saving his throne. If he prosecutes, he'll have the nobles of all the lands against him—and he's just smart enough to know that."
I nodded. "Especially since you'll tell him so."
"Exactly, so," murmured Alizon sweetly.
"You look like you stayed up and celebrated last night," said a raspy woman's voice, frigid with disapproval.
I opened one eye and looked first at Haverness's daughter, who stared down her long nose at me, then around the empty tent and attempted to remember what I'd been celebrating last night.
"Your men are up and at practice already. The small man who seemed to be in command told me I could find you here. My father has a village for us to go to."
I hadn't been carousing, but Stala and I had talked late into the night about Erdrick's death and Oranstonian politics. My body was trying to insist that it needed a few more minutes to recover, but it didn't appear that Tisala was going to let me rest. I rolled stiffly to my feet, bent and touched my toes a time or two to stretch. "Oranstonians have confounded long names, and they never shorten them," I said to distract her from my condition. "I suppose I could call you to Tissa or Lally."
"Not if you want to keep your tongue," she tossed back. I thought I caught a glimpse of a dimple, but her voice was serious.
"You look stupid," commented Tisala, riding beside me. I learned Haverness's definition of small was an order of magnitude larger than mine. In addition to my troop's seven, Haverness had sent his daughter and her fifty sworn men.
"Stupid," she said again, shaking her head.
I thought about crossing my eyes and drooling at her, but she didn't need any encouragement from me to continue.
"I think it's the eyes. No one expects brilliance out of a man with eyelashes like that." Her disapproval was plain.
I wondered what she thought I should have done about my eyelashes.
"Thank you," I murmured. "But I thought it was the color, myself." She had brown eyes, too. I wondered if she'd catch the insult.
"Maybe it's your size," she went on, turning her face to scrutinize the forest around us, but not before I caught sight of a betraying dimple.
"Large means stupid?" I relaxed in enjoyment as I realized she was teasing me. It gave me something to wonder about instead of dead cousins and the aching eyes from too little sleep.
"Everyone expects big people to be slow and stolid," she said. I didn't see any tension in her, but her thin, narrow-hipped war stallion arched his neck and sidled. If the stallion weighed half what Pansy did, I'd have been surprised. On its back, Tisala did look oversized. Funny I hadn't really thought about her height, but she was as tall as her father, who was accounted a tall man, though not nearly as tall as I. For a woman, being as tall as a man was no light thing.
"Slow, eh? And stolid?" I asked.
She must have heard the comprehension in my voice because her chin tilted up and her formidable brows lowered.
I grinned. "It would help if you had a real horse, rather than a skinny, cow-hocked pony." He wasn't cow-hocked much, just enough to make her sensitive—and steer our teasing to a place less painful for her.