“Always has to ham it up,” One-Eye grumbled. Goblin did a jig.
The patrol swept forward. The women at the spring screamed and scattered. Wolves jumping into a sheepfold, I thought. We ran hard. My pack hammered my kidneys. After two hundred yards I was stumbling over my bow. Younger men began passing me.
I reached the gate unable to whip a grandmother. Lucky for me, the grandmas were goofing off. The men swept through the town. There was no resistance.
We who were to tackle Feather and Journey hastened to the tiny citadel. That was no better defended. The Lieutenant and I followed One-Eye, Silent, and Goblin inside.
We encountered no resistance below the top level. There, incredibly, the newlyweds were still entangled in sleep. One-Eye brushed their guards aside with a terrifying illusion. Goblin and Silent shattered the door to the lovenest.
We stormed inside. Even sleepy, baffled, and frightened, they were feisty. They bruised several of us good before we got gags into their mouths and bonds onto their wrists.
The Lieutenant told them, “We’re supposed to bring you back alive. That don’t mean we can’t hurt you some. Come quiet, do what you’re told, and you’ll be all right.” I halfway expected him to sneer, twirl the end of his mustache, and punctuate with evil laughter. He was clowning, assuming the villain’s role the Rebel insists we play.
Feather and Journey would give us all the trouble they could. They knew the Lady hadn’t sent us to bring them round for tea.
Halfway back to friendly territory. On our bellies on a hilltop, studying an enemy encampment. “Big,” I said. “Twenty-five, thirty thousand men.” It was one of six such camps on an arc bending north and west of Charm.
“They sit on their hands much longer, they’re in trouble,” the Lieutenant said.
They should have attacked immediately after the Stair of Tear. But the loss of Harden, Sidle, Moth, and Linger had set lesser captains to squabbling over supreme command. The Rebel offensive had stalled. The Lady had regained her balance.
Her patrols-in-force now harassed Rebel foragers, exterminated collaborators, scouted, destroyed everything the enemy might find useful. Despite vastly superior numbers, the Rebel’s stance was becoming defensive. Every day in camp sapped his psychological momentum.
Two months ago our morale was lower than a snake’s butt. Now it was on the rebound. If we made it back it would soar. Our coup would stun the Rebel movement.
If we made it back.
We lay motionless upon steep lichened limestone and dead leaves. The creek below chuckled at our predicament. Shadows of naked trees stippled us. Low-grade spells by One-Eye and his cohorts further camouflaged us. The smell of fear and of sweaty horses taunted my nostrils. From the road above came the voices of Rebel cavalrymen. I could not understand their tongue. They were arguing, though.
Scattered with undisturbed leaves and twigs, the road had looked unpatrolled. Weariness had overcome our caution. We had decided to follow it. Then we had rounded a turn and found ourselves facing a Rebel patrol across the meadowed valley into which the creek below flowed.
They were cursing our disappearance. Several dismounted and urinated down the bank...
Feather started thrashing.
Damn! I screamed inside. Damn! Damn! I knew it!
The Rebels yammered and lined the edge of the road.
I smacked the woman’s temple. Goblin clipped her from the other side. Quick-thinking Silent wove nets of spell with tentacle-limber fingers dancing close to his chest.
A ragged bush shivered. A fat old badger waddle-ran down the bank and crossed the creek, vanishing into a dense stand of poplars.
Cursing, the Rebels threw rocks. They clattered like dropped stoneware as they skipped off boulders in the streambed. The soldiers stamped around telling one another we had to be nearby. We could not have gotten much farther on foot. Logic might undo the best efforts of our wizards.
I was scared with a knee-knocking, hand-shaking, gut-emptying kind of fear. It had built steadily, through too many narrow escapes. Superstition told me my odds were getting too long.
So much for that earlier gust of refreshed morale. The unreasoning fear betrayed it for the illusion it was. Beneath its patina I retained the defeatist attitude brought down from the Stair of Tear. My war was over and lost. All I wanted to do was run.
Journey showed signs of getting frisky too. My glare was fierce. He subsided.
A breeze stirred the dead leaves. The sweat on my body chilled. My fear cooled somewhat.
The patrol remounted. Still fussing, they rode on up the road. I watched them come into sight where the way curled eastward with the canyon. They wore scarlet tabards over good link mail. Their helmets and arms were of excellent quality. The Rebel was getting prosperous. They had started out as a rabble armed with tools.
“We could have taken them,” someone said.
“Stupid!” the Lieutenant snapped. “Right now they aren’t sure who they saw. If we fought, they would know.”
We did not need the Rebel getting a line on us this close to home. There was no room for maneuvering.
The man who had spoken was one of the stragglers we had accumulated during the long retreat. “Brother, you better learn one thing if you want to stick with us. You fight when there ain’t no other choice. Some of us would have gotten hurt too, you know.”
He grunted.
“They’re out of sight,” the Lieutenant said. “Let’s move.” He took the point, headed for the rugged hills beyond the meadow. I groaned. More crosscountry.
My every muscle ached already. Exhaustion threatened to betray me. Man was not meant for endless dawn to dusk marching with sixty pounds on his back.
“Damned fast thinking back there,” I told Silent.
He accepted praise with a shrug, saying nothing. As always.
A cry from the rear. “They’re coming back.”
We sprawled on the flank of a grassy hill. The Tower rose above the horizon due south. That basaltic cube was intimidating even from ten miles away-and implausible in its setting. Emotion demanded a surround of fiery waste, or at best a land perpetually locked in winter. Instead, this country was a vast green pasture, gentle hills with small farms dotting their southern hips. Trees lined the deep, slow brooks snaking between.
Nearer the Tower the land became less pastoral, but never reflected the gloom Rebel propagandists placed around the Lady’s stronghold. No brimstone and barren, broken plains. No bizarre, evil creatures strutting over scattered human bones. No dark clouds ever rolling and grumbling in the sky.
The Lieutenant said, “No patrols in sight. Croaker, One-Eye, do your stuff.”
I strung my bow. Goblin brought three prepared arrows. Each had a malleable blue ball at its head. One-Eye sprinkled one with grey dust, passed it to me. I aimed at the sun, let fly.
Blue fire too bright to view flared and sank into the valley below. Then a second, and a third. The fireballs dropped in a neat column, appearing to drift down more than fall.
“Now we wait,” Goblin squeaked, and threw himself down in the tall grass.
“And hope our friends arrive first.” Any nearby Rebel surely would investigate the signal. Yet we had to call for help. We could not penetrate the Rebel cordon unnoticed.
“Get down!” the Lieutenant snapped. The grass was tall enough to conceal a supine figure. “Third squad, take me watch.”
Men grumbled and claimed it was another squad’s turn. But they took sentinel positions with that minimal, obligatory complaint. Their mood was bright. Hadn’t we lost those: fools back in the hills? What could stop us now?
I made a pillow of my pack and watched cumulus mountains drift over in stately legions. It was a gorgeous, crisp, springlike day.
My gaze dropped to the Tower. My mood darkened. The pace would pick up. The capture of Feather and Journey would spur the Rebel into action. Surrender secrets those two would. There was no way to hide or lie when the Lady asked a question.