“And my mom is Luanne Larsson,” the glider pilot went on gloomily. “Who is going to have an absolute cow when she hears I crashed and got banged up. She didn’t want me to be a pilot.”
“Instead of a lancer so shiny in armor and all?” Talyn asked innocently. “Your mother being Horsemistress of the Bearkillers.”
That got him a scowl from Alyssa and a laugh from Caillech; the Bearkiller woman was obviously much too slight for fighting in plate armor on horseback, though quick and very strong for her size. The briefings said the Bearkiller elite force were most of them cavalry, as good as the knights of the Portland Protective Association and more versatile and better disciplined. They called them the A-List.
“Mom thought I’d be more useful to the war effort helping with the remount program. But I took the Gunpowder Day barrel-riding cup,” Alyssa snapped. “And the mounted archery prize for the under-eighteens, one year. I could have made cavalry scout, easy. I just. . like flying.”
Being a shrimp wasn’t a handicap for a glider pilot, of course; the opposite, if anything. Cole was a bit above medium-sized. He’d asked about pilot training himself when he turned eighteen back just before the war started, in the old General’s day, and had been told that the only way to make the weight limit would be to amputate both his legs above the knee. Or his head.
“And if I was stuck-up, would I hang out with lowlifes like you two?” Alyssa said.
“Ah, it’s the bonny long curling golden locks, the lassies can’t resist ’em,” Talyn said.
He took off his Scots bonnet for a moment to run a hand over his shaven head and waggle the ordinary brown pigtail at the back.
“Beating them off with sticks I am three days in four, a trial and a troublement and a weariness.”
The women looked at each other and mock-kicked in unison towards the bowman’s backside. Cole stepped unobtrusively forward to let Alyssa steady herself against his shoulder. Having an arm in a sling interfered with your balance; he remembered that from his own experience with cracked bones.
“Wait ’til we get back,” Caillech said. “I’ll punish you good and proper then.”
“Something to look forward to! Or I might be the one making you beg for mercy, eh?”
Caillech laughed and winked. Cole reflected gloomily that all he had to look forward to now was a POW camp. He supposed it was easier to be cheerful when your side was winning. Talyn might be a friendly sort, but he didn’t relax his vigilance one iota; neither did his companion, or their dogs, and Alyssa was keeping an eye peeled too. Cole hadn’t given any parole, so he kept his eyes open without being too conspicuous about it, and-
I am a skilled wilderness scout. It says so right there in my paybook that they took away from me after I fell asleep.
That meant he could expertly evaluate his chances of making a break, and the probability of getting anything but an arrow in the back and/or two sets of really large fangs ripping bleeding chunks out of his ass were somewhere between absolutely nothing and fucking zip right now.
And the fact that I’m feeling a little relieved at that analysis is neither here nor there. Or that I don’t want to be the last man to die in a lost war.
Surrendering on your own was risky-everyone knew that even if both sides were playing by the official rules you were as likely as not to be finished off if you just put up your hands one-on-one at the point of the spear. When the other guy’s blood was up or he’d just lost a buddy rules were a thin way to avoid becoming another anonymous body.
But Cole had made it past that stage, and the grapevine, as opposed to official propaganda, said the enemy treated POWs pretty well. Better than his own side did, these days. He was prepared to risk his life for the mission. But there was a distinct difference between a hero’s honored grave and a hole in the dirt for a damned fool.
Mrs. Salander hadn’t raised any fools.
“Ah. . OK if I ask a question?” he said.
The three looked at each other. “Ask away,” Talyn said. “I won’t promise to answer, mind.”
“That lady with the staff. . she’s a witch, right?”
Unexpectedly they all laughed. “They’re all witches, Cole,” Alyssa said.
“That we are,” Caillech said, striking a mock-spooky pose and making passes through the air for a moment with her free hand. “My other horse is a broomstick!”
He absently noted that Alyssa had used his first name instead of private or soldier or Salander or combinations thereof; evidently shaking hands made it all right. He shook his head.
“You know what I mean. That lady with the braids and the staff did something to me, didn’t she?”
“Meadhbh Beauregard Mackenzie is a priestess of the triple cords and the first degree, right enough,” Talyn said, more solemnly than his usual bantering tone. “But for the most part she’s our healer back in Dun Tàirneanach. That’s her trade.”
“Doctor at home, field medic with the levy,” Alyssa amplified.
“She said she felt the need to come along on this patrol,” Talyn said. “She’s a fiosaiche as well-”
“Seer,” Alyssa said, or translated. “Prophet, sorta. Irritating, all those odd words, aren’t they?”
“Says the sisu lady. And the kettle cried out awa’ with yer grimy arse to the pot,” Talyn said pointedly, then continued: “Meadhbh is a fiosache of note, and it’s bad luck to disregard the feelings that come to such. And she found you, right enough!”
“She didn’t just find me.”
Caillech nodded. “She cast a slumber on you,” she said. “I’ve heard of such things-Lady Juniper, the Mackenzie, the Chief herself herself, did it to a whole warband of your folk two years ago. There was a High Seeker of the CUT with them.”
Cole had heard rumors about that; he’d figured it was a cover story for a defection. There had been a lot of those, especially recently.
But maybe not. .
“But I’ve never seen such with my own eyes,” the Clanswoman said. “It was. . just a wee bit alarming.”
“Yah think?” Cole said with feeling.
“And not in the usual run of things at all, at all,” Talyn said.
Caillech nodded again, her face absolutely serious for a moment.
“It would recoil on the doer, so, unless there was a. . a provocation of the same sort,” she said. “So that it was in self-defense, you see? Even then it’s not something to be done lightly. When a fiosaiche. . a seeress or a priestess. . calls upon the Powers, then They’re all too likely to answer. . but you’re never quite sure how, for They are greater and other than we and Their minds are not as ours. Whether the glass bottle hits the iron cauldron, or the cauldron hits the bottle, it’s often bad news for the bottle. Hence not something to be done lightly.”
“Best not speak too much of it now,” Talyn said warningly, and made a sign in the air.
Yeah. It’s creepy.
The walk took most of the day and by the end of it they were treating him like an old friend-albeit one they were ready to shoot on the instant if he tried to run or make trouble, and one they never let into a position where he might seize a hostage. Which was flattering, if you looked at it right.
The sun was sinking behind the white peaks to the west before the first challenge came from behind a rock. Well-camouflaged sentries passed them through to a camp not far from a mountain lake. The heart of it was a long sloping flower-starred meadow of twenty or thirty acres that dropped off even more steeply southward.