Like a flock of starlings, the whole line of Vardariotes turned all together and rode away, leaving the pages-exhilarated and terrified-to follow. Zac bellowed for them in his version of Morean.
He rode over to the tree. The Megas Dukas was no doubt under the brightly coloured shields. Another warden lay there, too, his body sliced neatly in half by sorcery and both sides cauterized. A third lay pinned, badly wounded, under the branches of the trees. Some sand and a gilded beak suggested the ruin of a fourth.
“Hey! Captain!” Zac called. “Hey! We’re here!” He edged closer to the tree.
Eerily, like something really bad on the steppes, the voice came straight into his head.
Be sure, Zac. When I drop these wards, I’m going to have nothing left.
Zac didn’t like the voice in his head at all. “Can we leave you? To make sure? No fucking idea what happened to the east.”
Hurry, said the voice.
Ser Gavin had scarcely been engaged in the fighting, but he was sorely tested in the aftermath. Aware-as they were all aware-that the captain was down and so was the chaplain, Ser Gavin had to comprehend the scale of the fight, covering as it had, three different venues spread over almost half a league of ground, and then isolate and secure his three widely spread parties.
He insisted that they be secured first, before any acts of mercy or rescue began. The downed captain, surrounded in his aethereal shells, he left to Count Zac. The chaplain’s body-dead or dying-he put in the charge of Ser Francis Atcourt and the squires, and the drowned wagon and the family he left to young di Laternum, who was suddenly thrust into command, with the sun setting in the west and children sinking in the mud and an unknown enemy moving in the woods to the west. Cully stepped up to the young man-at-arm’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.
Ser Gavin rode briskly up and down the road in the fading light. His second time past the squires, he took Toby off the watch and ordered him to take his riding horse, ride his charger, and try to fetch help.
Toby glanced west, gulped, and nodded.
No questions were asked. Every man and woman present knew how dangerous their situation was.
Ser Gavin knew what his brother would do next. The immediate crisis was past. It was time to plan.
He ticked off the points on his armoured gauntlets.
First, gather all his people in one place. Nothing along the road was particularly defensible. But in one place, with a couple of fires and a deception or two, they’d have a chance.
Horses. The horses would have to be picketed. There was no forage and none closer than the swamp.
He rode back to di Laternum, who had the goodwife out of the water and had, himself, waded into the mud and retrieved the mangled corpse of one of her children. The other was, of course, gone. Cully had an arrow on every string-and had the wagon out of the water, for which incredible engineering feat No Head received Gavin’s terse and hurried thanks. Two horses from the wagon team were coyote food, and two were exhausted but alive.
The goodwife, a solid woman who had seen many defeats, was sunk in her grief. Ser Gavin rode up to her-at a loss. She knelt in the road next to the appallingly small bundle that was her dead second daughter.
“I made her,” she said. “I made ’em all, and I sweated blood, and I love ’em. Oh, blessed Virgin, why?” She looked up at the knight. “You came to rescue us?”
Ser Gavin had seen enough grief to know the anger was a part of it.
“Into the wagon,” he said gruffly. “We’ll mourn tomorrow. Tonight, we live.”
“I’m not-” the woman said, but whatever she was not, her eldest daughter took her elbow and moved her to the wagon.
“But Jenna! We can’t leave Jenna to get ate!” she wailed.
Her eldest son, without even a flirtation with hesitation, scooped up the bloody linen shawl that held his sister’s corporeal remains and carried it-tenderly-to the wagon.
Cuddy had the heads of both horses. They were weak and twitchy and deeply scared.
Ser Gavin reined in.
Cuddy waved him off. “I’m gonna walk with ’em.”
“We’re going back,” Ser Gavin said. “For the captain.”
“Course we are,” Cuddy said.
“Amen to that,” No Head agreed.
Gavin wanted to gallop down the road. There were ten minutes of useful light left, and something was making noise north of the marsh.
It made him want to cry, deep inside, that he was learning to lead men from his brother-the brother whose effeminacy he’d mocked throughout his youth. But he took the time to turn his horse and clap a hand on di Laternum’s arm as the wagon began to move. “Well done,” he said.
The Etruscan boy-he looked like a boy now, with dark circles under haunted eyes-shrugged. “I scarcely did a thing, my lord,” he said. “Cully…”
Ser Gavin managed a hard smile. “Listen to Cully. But think for yourself, too.” He gave the boy a crisp and very real salute, hand to his visor, and cantered off east to find his brother. He still didn’t know if his wonderful, terrible brother was alive or dead.
And only now could he let himself wonder.
Zac had a cordon around the tree, and he’d found the shaman’s feather cloak and the pieces of his axe.
Feeling almost foolish, he said aloud, “Darkness is close. You’re safe for the moment. I have people all around you.” He shrugged, talking to a rainbow. “Your brother has taken command.”
Good. When I let go, the pain may knock me out. There’s some better than remote chance I’ll just die. I’ve made a stupid mistake and I’m out of ops.
Count Zac crossed himself and touched an amulet.
The rainbow of light shimmered and went out. The woods were suddenly darker.
The captain screamed.
When Gavin had the archers-when the knights and squires were together, and the wagon was parked over Father Arnaud, who hadn’t moved-he led every spare man to try and save his brother.
Who was still alive, as could be told from his screams.
It took an hour of torch-lit axe-work to clear enough of the trunk to allow them to make the right effort, and the constant movement of large animals or enemies out in the darkness did nothing to improve Ser Gavin’s sense of urgency.
But he pretended to be calm, and twice, he told archers to take their time.
The steppe woman, Kriax, volunteered to go into the darkness and watch. She slipped from her pony and vanished into the haze at the edge of the torchlight.
“She has cut many throats at home,” Zac said with a shrug. “That’s why she’s here.”
It took ten men and a woman to move the tree. By the time they levered the section of trunk off his brother’s legs, the stars were out in the sky above.
Ser Gavin calculated constantly. Assume that the company is camped a league from where we left them. That’s four leagues from here. An hour for Toby to find them, if something doesn’t eat him. An hour back, and half an hour to raise the force to get it done right.
I should never have sent him alone. I should have gone myself. Or sent Nell and Cully with him to get the message through.
But a wyvern would eat all three of them.
I’ve heard wyverns are blind at night. And that they can see in the dark.
I hate this. Is this what he does every day? What Pater does? Decide people’s lives?
Ser Gavin sat on his war horse, still in full harness, his shoulders straight, and pretended to be a tower of strength and leadership. Like all commanders, everywhere.
When the pole star rose, the archers sung a quiet night prayer and everyone joined in, even Cuddy, who was notorious for his blasphemy. When the prayer was done, Kriax slipped into the fire circle and tossed a toothy head on the fire. She had a grim smile, and Zac had to bandage both her arms, which had been savaged. She never so much as grunted. The squires watched her with something very like worship.