“I’ve been riding this road for years,” said Meinyt in a low voice. “Still looks different every time. It’s not just the light, either.”
“Trees grow and change,” suggested Quaeryt.
“More than that.”
Quaeryt had no answer. He just nodded.
Another glass or so passed, when the faintest patter alerted Quaeryt to the incoming volley, and he immediately flattened himself against the mare’s neck.
“From the right!” snapped Meinyt. “First and second squads!”
That didn’t include Quaeryt, but he didn’t see any point in staying on the road, not by himself. Because continuing alone would have made him an even more obvious target, he followed Meinyt across the yards of cleared ground flanking the road and toward the trees, keeping himself low on the mare, while trying to extract the half-staff from its leathers. He almost had it free when he entered the trees. In the predawn gloom, he thought he saw riders ahead, but he wasn’t certain.
He definitely heard another volley of arrows and quarrels, but none touched him or his shields. Just as he congratulated himself on that, a figure appeared ahead and to his left and hurled something at him-a large throwing ax. While his shields did stop the weapon, he could still feel the muted impact.
The astonishment of the hill raider froze him for a moment, long enough for Quaeryt to bring up the staff and catch the man at the juncture of arm and shoulder and fling him from the branch to the ground. Quaeryt kept moving, following Meinyt and keeping low until he heard the sound of the recall horn, when he eased in beside the captain, and the two trotted back to the road, without speaking.
As they cleared the trees, Meinyt turned. “You didn’t have to come with the squads.”
“It seemed like a better idea than staying on the road alone.”
“You might be right on that.”
Quaeryt didn’t think the captain sounded totally convinced.
Another glass passed before there was another horn signal, this one from the front of the column. All in all, after that, two more quick attacks occurred before late midafternoon, when a ranker rode back to inform the captains and undercaptains to ride forward to meet with Major Skarpa.
That meeting didn’t take long, because in little more than a quint Meinyt came riding back to rejoin his company. “We’ll be setting up camp in a meadow about two miles ahead.”
“Won’t they try a night attack?” asked Quaeryt.
“They might, but the meadow’s large enough that they’ll have to leave the trees even to get within bowshot range.”
So we’ll lose sentries.…
“It is war, scholar,” replied the older captain, as if he’d read Quaeryt’s thoughts. “They know the governor’s serious now. It’s not just skirmishes.”
But then, Quaeryt was so tired that he might have actually spoken the words. He did remind himself that he needed to keep his feelings hidden, in the fashion in which he’d had no difficulty in Solis or in the Telaryn Palace. Is there something about the possibility of death in battle that makes men less guarded … or is it just because you’re still not really used to this?
He suspected it was the latter, since few of the officers revealed anything on their faces.
The encampment on Vendrei night was unlike the others, with patrols encircling the large meadow that held the camp site, and a sense of worry among more than a few of the officers. From what Quaeryt could remember, the regiment had halted only slightly beyond a point two-thirds of the way from Boralieu to Waerfyl’s hold, seemingly not all that far from where Quaeryt had been wounded on that first “routine” patrol.
Supper was cold, again, biscuits, cheese, and mutton jerky. This time, Quaeryt forced himself to chew some of the jerky. It wasn’t quite as bad as he recalled, but that might have been because he was hungry … and so exhausted that he was asleep not all that long after full darkness.
Quaeryt was so tired that he wasn’t certain whether he heard first the horn call to arms or the shouts of “Repel attackers!” It took him a moment to pull on his boots and raise his shields, and he had to grope around for his staff.
By the time he was on his feet and fully alert, the attackers had retreated to the woods surrounding the camp site. He glanced skyward, catching sight of the crescent Artiema and the slightly less than half-full Erion It had to be his imagination, but the smaller moon seemed redder, bloodier, than usual.
Imagination, he told himself firmly.
“Pack up and mount up!” ordered Meinyt from somewhere to Quaeryt’s left.
“Now, sir?” asked a figure in the gloom.
“Now! The governor said that it’s not that long until dawn so that we might as well head out. None of you’d sleep anyway.”
Quaeryt had to agree with that. He wouldn’t. Not now.
He returned to where he’d abandoned his blanket and gear, arranged them, and then rolled everything up and put it in his kit bag. He stood carefully and looked around. Most of the others in the company were already heading toward their mounts.
As Quaeryt trailed the rankers toward where the mounts were tethered, his boot slipped. He looked down. Under the boot on his bad leg was a crossbow quarrel. He reached down and retrieved it, bringing it close enough to his face that he could see it better. In the dim light, it appeared similar to the one that had wounded him. He quickly slipped it under the cords with which he’d tied his kit bag to the rear of his saddle. He’d study it later.
81
The sun was well up, although it was barely midmorning, when the hill holders attacked again, this time out of the trees on both sides of the road and into the middle of the column. The column slowed, but kept moving, and before long, Quaeryt saw leather-clad bodies lying alongside the road, more than two score, left where they had fallen, and untouched, except that their weapons had been removed. Since he hadn’t seen anyone loading weapons into the wagons ahead, he suspected that they’d just been strapped to spare or captured mounts. He also thought there were more than a few bodies in the trees flanking the road. Again, he was carrying light shields, because it was going to be a long day.
Just before noon, the column halted near a stream, where company by company, the horses were watered, and the men had a chance to stretch their legs.
“How soon before another attack, do you think?” Quaeryt asked Meinyt.
“Sometime in the next few glasses. Surprised that they weren’t laying for us here.” The captain paused. “Except they would have had to make good time through the woods. The road is faster. If they split their forces…”
“It would be even harder to regroup”
Meinyt nodded.
A glass later, there was another halt, but no signal of any sort of attack, but Quaeryt could see several engineers and one wagon pull onto the shoulder and head forward.
A bridge out? He didn’t recall any bridges on the road ahead.
More than two quints passed before the column began to move again, and Quaeryt rode almost a mille before he came to a section of the road where it appeared that the rebels had dug a trench across the road, almost a yard wide. There were also bodies beside the road there, one of them a Telaryn mount.
After yet another glass, ahead Quaeryt could see the column turning to the right and moving uphill, doubtless through the two pillars that served as “gates” to Waerfyl’s hold proper. Before long, the wagons before Sixth Battalion had lumbered through the natural stone posts, but they only continued for another fifty yards before coming to a halt.