The outnumbered soldiers were the general’s men by their colors: pine green and white. There were only six left, and two of those were badly wounded. A horse stumbled and went down with a spear in its belly. Lord Hargrim himself directed his men as they moved to encircle the last survivors.
At once, five of the general’s soldiers charged with shrieks and shouts while the sixth drove his horse into the water and flung himself into the current to swim. It took a while for the Forlanger archers to loose arrows because the last of the general’s soldiers had spread out, killing themselves by disrupting the Forlanger line for just long enough that the swimming man could get out of range.
Shouting curses down on their enemy, they too fell to lie bleeding at the feet of the Forlangers. The riderless horse made it across the river and stumbled up the bank, then headed straight for the other horses as for home.
“Follow him!” shouted the lord. “He must not get away.”
A half-dozen Forlanger men were left behind to pick through the survivors, kill any who still breathed, and drag away their own wounded.
She turned her back on the slaughter and walked as quickly as she could, shaking, afraid at every sound, sure they would come galloping up behind her and lop off her head. But the ash tree with its half hidden blaze was still standing, and she cut into the forest and was well into the trees when she heard horses pass on the road. Her heart pounded so hard that she walked without tiring until at length she caught up with the carters.
The older man nodded to acknowledge her.
She said, “Your pardon, but might I walk with you the rest of the way? Seeing that blood-soaked bridge has taken ten years off my life.”
“I pay no mind to the fights the king’s men have among themselves,” he said, “and nor should you. Not as long as they do not bother us. Why your haste to reach the King’s City? You should just go home.”
“I’m off to visit my daughter in the city, for she is to have her lie-in soon. Her first child. And while I do not like to speak ill of any woman, I must say that her husband’s mother does not treat her in a generous way. Rather she lets my daughter do all the work while she sits in a chair and gives orders.”
He was a chatty man, happy to talk about his own wife’s mother and how she had been a scold unlike his own dear mother, both now long passed. He was just friendly enough that she did not mention she was a widow, and his younger kinsmen were polite but preoccupied at having seen slaughter done right before their eyes.
The path led upriver for about a league to a small bridge she would never have known existed but for the carters. A watchman at the bridge demanded the penny toll, and she handed over the coin the lord had thrown at her.
There was a party of Forlangers guarding the bridge on the far bank, but after they searched the carts for smuggled men, they let the wagoners pass and her with them, for no one paid her any mind in her worn shawl and with her worn face.
So she came to the city gates just as dusk was coming down, later than she had hoped. She knew well how to make a dry nest in the forest whatever the weather, but how to find a place to sleep in the city seemed a fearful mystery. The place was so crowded and so stony and so loud, and it stank.
She made her way to the river bank’s stony shore. There, the last laundresses were heaping their baskets with damp cloth to haul back to their households.
“My pardon, good dames, but I’m wondering if you know where I can find my cousin’s sister. She is laundress to the king’s sister, so they tell me. I walked here from the village to let her know that her brother is gravely ill.”
They laughed at her country accent and her ignorance.
“The king’s sister’s laundry is done indoors in great vats with boiling water, not out on these cold rocks,” said the youngest of them, who was almost as pregnant as Mari. “Those women don’t talk to us. You have to go round to the Dowager House beside the King’s Palace. The king’s mother has been dead these five years, so the sister has set up housekeeping there. And a good thing, too.”
“Shhh,” said the other women, and many of them hurried away.
“Why do you say so?” asked Anna, watching the others vanish into the twilight. Smoke made the air hazy. Everything tasted of ash and rubbish and shit.
“My pardon, I didn’t mean to say it,” said the girl. “It’s dangerous to speak of the troubles in the court. You know how it is.”
“I am up from the country. We hear no gossip there.”
“Better if I say nothing,” said the girl as she shifted the basket awkwardly around her huge belly.
“Let me help you,” said Anna, taking the girl’s basket. “It is a shame for you to carry such a heavy load so near your time.”
The girl smiled gratefully and started walking. “The work must be done. Where are you from, Mistress?”
“Just a small village, no place you’ll have ever heard of. By the forest.”
“Isn’t the forest full of wolves?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Aren’t you scared all the time that they’ll come and eat you?”
“Wolves are no different than men. They hunt the weak. But maybe in one way they are kinder. They only kill what they eat.”
The girl had a wan face, and hearing these words she looked more tired than ever.
“Here now,” said Anna, regarding her sadly, for it seemed a terrible burden to be so young and look so weary. “If you’ll tell me how to find the Dowager’s House, then I will teach you some bird calls. Like this.”
She trilled like a lark, and the girl laughed, so entirely delighted that she looked like a child on festival morning waiting for a treat of honey.
“If you’ll carry the basket I’ll walk you there. It’s not so far from where I work and live.”
“Do you wash all this laundry for a family?”
“That I do, Mistress. I’m lucky to have the work with a respectable tailor and his household. The lady of the house has said she will let me keep my baby in the kitchen during the day as long as I keep up my work.” She named a name that she clearly thought would impress Anna, but Anna had to admit she had no knowledge of this well-known tailor and how he had once made a coat for the king’s sister’s chatelaine’s brother. Anna’s ignorance made the girl laugh even more. Anna was glad to see her cheerful.
So they walked along cobblestone streets as Anna taught her the capped owl’s hoot and the periwinkle’s chitter and the nightlark’s sad mournful whistling ‘sweet! sweet!’ until some man shouted from a closed house “Shut that noise!” They giggled, and in good charity with each other reached a wide square on which rose the Dowager House, with stone columns making a monumental porch along the front and a walled garden with trees in the back.
The girl checked Anna with an elbow, keeping her to the shadows. “There are soldiers on guard,” she said, bitterness staining her tone to make it dark and angry. “Those are not the king’s men. They belong to the Forlanger lord. He has people watching the Dowager House. He licks the king’s boots, so I wonder what he fears from the king’s sister.”
Anna knew what he feared, but she said nothing.
The girl took her hand, anger loosening her tongue. “My man soldiers with General Olivar’s company, a foot soldier. That is why I do not like the Forlangers. I thought they were to be back by now. He and I are to be wed next month.”
The words took Anna like a blow to the heart, reminding her of Olef’s last day, of his last words, of his last breath. Of how the Forlangers had been responsible, of how they took their war against General Olivar to the back roads and the isolated places where their actions would remain hidden from the king.
She thought of the market hall, and how folk from all around came there on market day. Now that he could no longer push a plough, her brother Joen had been able to set up a stall selling garden produce that his wife and children tended, together with rope he braided from hemp. What went on in the king’s court she did not know, but if the general trusted the king’s sister, then the king’s sister it must be.