"I am both," he told her, immediately dropping to the ground to put his eyes on a level with hers. "This is my Ghost-Horse; his name is Kantor."
:Ghost-Horse? Where did she come up with that? I like that a great deal better than "White-Demon" or "Hellhorse,": Kantor said, lowering his nose to touch the hand she stretched out to him.
"Have you really come to take us somewhere safe?" she asked, as he marveled that a child of Karse should ever reach toward a Companion without fear.
"We have—but who told you of all this?" he asked, trying to make sense of the puzzle. "Who told you about Ghost-Horses and White Riders?"
If it was Laika, he was going to have a few choice words with her. That sort of story could have gotten her killed and the other three Heralds exposed.
"Oh, it was Kantis, of course," the child told him blandly, in a tone that put the emphasis on of course. "Kantis has told us about the White Riders forever, and he promised us that some day they would come and take us where there are always good things to eat and a soft bed to sleep in, and no one would make us walk when we're tired, and that we'd all have a mum and a da, though we'd have to share—"
Before he could ask her who Kantis was, much less where he was and how he had come up with this unlikely tale and convinced them it was going to be true, she caught sight of something past his shoulder, and with a squeal of glee, ran off.
He looked around; what she had seen, and what had set the rest of the children running, was the first lot of Heralds and wagons topping the hill, brushed by the scarlet and gold of sunset. And in a moment, he was nothing more than a rock in a flood of children who found a little more energy in their weary bodies to run. They flowed around him like the largest flock of sheep in the world, faces transmuted by hope—and it was all he could do to hold back his tears.
And of course, faced with this oncoming flood of children screaming, not in fear, but with delight, the Heralds and Healers and teamsters reacted just as any decent human beings would—tumbling out of the seats and off their mounts to open their arms and their hearts, to open the boxes and bags of provisions they had brought, to stuff little hands and mouths with food and drink and toss little bodies into wagons padded with blankets, even as more little bodies were helping even littler ones to climb up as well. They couldn't understand what the children were saying, but they didn't need to know to understand what was needed.
And many of them were smiling with tears in their eyes. How could they not? After leaving that grim scene of battle aftermath behind them, how could they not want to ease their own aching hearts with the warmth of a joyful child?
And it was all sorted out in a remarkably short period of time. Those carts that had been drawn by children were fastened to the backs of the wagons. With the children themselves sharing out the provisions in a generous way that made Alberich marvel, everyone got enough to fill his empty belly. The few camp followers who had come with the children rather than fleeing, burdened with abandoned infants, were provided with seats and clean linens for the babies, and in lieu of milk, sugar-water for them to suck to at least stop their crying and ease their hunger. The last of the teamsters, finding no need for their empty wagons, asked permission to go on under guard and see what they could get out of the abandoned camp. After a moment of thought, Alberich gave his permission—although, with unchildlike forethought, the little ones were all carrying loot in their bundles: whatever was small, valuable, and light.
They gave it up to the Heralds without a second thought, and that pained him. Did they think they would have to pay for their rescue?
"No," Laika said, when he asked her that. "No, this is just something that this mysterious Kantis told them to do."
He relayed that information back to the army via Kantor, along with his recommendation that at least a portion of it be kept in trust for the children themselves. That was all he could do about it, but they seemed far more interested in eating and sleeping than in the jewelry and coins they'd lugged along, so he dismissed it from his mind.
As if the One God had decided to ease their way further, the full moon rose before the last light of twilight faded. With the broad track to follow, there was no chance of getting lost, and not much chance that a horse would make a misstep and hurt himself; accordingly there was never even a thought but that they would turn around and head back to the Border.
Bit by bit, as Laika and the other three talked to the older children, a broad picture began to form of what had happened.
One of the first Karsite orphans scooped up by the Tedrels when they first made their alliance and moved into Karse was a boy they all called Kantis. It was he who had somehow concocted the odd "cult" that Laika had noticed among the children—a cult that admitted no adult members, and whose members were sworn to secrecy with a solemn oath that, apparently, not even the boys who were later initiated into the Tedrel lodges ever broke.
Most of the cult that Kantis had created had a very familiar ring to Alberich, for it was virtually identical to the simple forms of Vkandis' rites that he had learned as a child from his mentor Father Kentroch, even to calling the God by the name of Sunlord. But there were more interesting additions....
Kantis had, from the beginning, it seemed, included a kind of redemption story, told whenever times were particularly hard for the children. He told them all that "some day" the Keepers (as he called the Tedrel adults) would abandon them and never return. And on that day, the White Riders and their Ghost-Horses would come for them and take them all away into a new land. This would not be the home of the Sunlord, he had assured those who, out of bitter experience, had feared that this meant they would all have to die. No, this was a very real land, where they would all make families with a shared set of parents, where they would always have enough to eat and a warm, safe place to sleep, and where they would never have to follow the drum again.
The children stolen out of Valdemar only reinforced Kantis' stories, when they identified the White Riders as Heralds.
Somehow, he had impressed upon them the need to keep all of this utterly secret, even more so than the redemption story.
And somehow, he had known the very moment when the Tedrels lost their battle, for even before the remnants of the army came running back to the camp to take what they could carry and flee, he was telling the children that now was the time. He organized them, told them they should get what they wanted and whatever "shiny things" they could find in the adult camp, hide the ponies and donkeys until the last of the adults were gone, and prepare to march north, themselves, as soon as the last of the Keepers fled away.
Which was exactly what they had done. Those camp followers who had not run off with skirts stuffed full of valuables and some protector or alone had been bewildered by the stubborn insistence of the children on their goal, but had gone along with it, seeing no other options before them. Most of them were heartbreakingly young by Alberich's standards, and not yet hardened from "camp follower" to "whore."