Jeratt snorted. “We aren’t going to stay here and make a career out of kicking Thagol.”
Their plan was to make short, sharp strikes in this part of the kingdom then slip away back home, let Thagol puzzle over things here for a while, then take up their campaign against his Knights from Lightning Falls. Jeratt had traveled back there twice, speaking to Elder, speaking with Ayensha, Bueren Rose, and the others.
“Right,” Kerian said, “but they have to live here. I’m talking about setting down roots. Let’s kick Thagol a few more times before we leave. Let him know trouble is brewing.”
Jeratt nodded slowly in agreement, the grudging expression on his face saying he wondered just who was in charge sometimes, him or her.
She slapped her knee and looked around hungrily. “What’s to eat?”
Jeratt laughed. “Used to be cheese and bread. Not much more now than a heel and a rind. Gotta get a better belly, Kerian.” He jerked his chin at Ander. “You too, youngster. You’re gonna see worse than you saw today. You’ll do worse, too. Might as well not do it hungry, eh?”
Too late to hunt, too late to fish, Kerian and Ander went to sleep hungry. It surprised her, waking in the middle of the night to the sound of Jeratt tending the fire, that she could sleep at all. She glanced at Ander and saw him staring at the leafy canopy, eyes wide and nervous. He slid a glance her way. She saw him shudder and reach for the scabbarded sword lying near to his hand. They all had new weapons tins day, looted from corpses. Ander’s fingers didn’t cringe to touch the pommel of a dead Knight’s weapon.
In the morning, without consulting Jeratt, she told Ander to slip quietly through the forest first to Felan’s farm and then Bayel’s. “Tell them we know there was at least one collaborator among the elves here, that there might well be more. Tell them everything we discussed last night, offer them the honest choice-back out now, stay as they have been, or come to fight.”
Ander nodded, eager to undertake the mission. Jeratt watched the two, eyes narrow, expression hard and unreadable.
“After you do that, don’t come back hem” She slipped a finger into the neck of her shirt and hooked the slender gold chain that held two halves of the king’s ring. In a quick gesture, she removed one half and put it into Ander’s hand. “Now, before you leave, speak with Jeratt-”
Jeratt, glaring at her now.
“-and he will tell you how to get to Lightning Falls. You must go carefully, because you’re returning to the area where Knights have been searching for me and very likely now they are also searching for you. When you come near Lightning Falls, you will be challenged by folk who look like”-she laughed “-who look like us. They’re outlaws like us, but answer the challenge humbly and quickly, no arrogance with these folk. Tell them you are from Jeratt and me, be quick, and show my ring. Tell whoever challenges you that seek a woman named simply ‘Elder,’ and tell her all that has happened here.”
Ander took it all in silently, his eyes on her, lighting in excitement for the mission, shadowing in sadness for having to leave.
“After you tell her that, Ander, tell her Jeratt and I will be home before winter. Tell her things are changing in the kingdom now.”
“I’ll do it all, Kerian. I promise. Just the way you tell me.”
“And you won’t come back. The risk that you’d be followed isn’t great, but it’s a chance we can’t take.”
Reluctantly, he agreed.
“You’re a fool,” Jeratt growled when the boy was gone. “You’re reckless. It’s wrong to send the boy so far alone, with such a mission. He’ll be lucky no one kills him before he gets to the falls. By all the gone gods, you’re a fool, Kerian!”
She flared, hot and high and sudden. “Don’t ever call me that again!”
He didn’t step back; in the sudden silence of the forest, Jeratt held his ground, his face set and stubborn.
“You think you’re not bein’ foolish? Y’think the boy didn’t just turn to fire for you? Kerian, he’s in love with ya. He’ll do anything you tell him, and he won’t be thinkin’ about anyone else but you.” Jeratt shook his head, then spat. “That will get someone killed someday.”
“Getting prescient, like Elder, are you?”
“Wonder why I say you’re a fool, do you?”
She flared again, he laughed at that and tapped his chest.
“I have a year or two more on me than you, Kerian. I haven’t lived in gilded palaces; I’ve lived in the hard world, the place where people die of stupidity, their own or someone else’s. Happens all the time, and I ain’t no seer, I just pay attention to what I see.”
The falling fire lay between them, yet they might have been standing toe to toe.
Coldly, Kerian said, “You are welcome to your opinion, Jeratt. I don’t know if you’re right or wrong about Ander, and I can’t undo a boy’s heart, but I can use him where he can do the best work. He’ll let the others know what we’re doing, let them know to be ready for our return. And hell be away from me for a while.”
Jeratt’s stance relaxed, his expression softened. “Y’did what y’could, I’ll grant it.” He stood in grudging silence for a moment longer. “The plan isn’t all that foolish. I’ll grant it, too.”
“But-?”
He met her eyes. “But y’ should have sent him on a long time ago.”
By her silence, she agreed.
Between them embers breathed faintly. “I’ll not name you ‘fool’ again, but I might be sayin’ one day or another that y’could think something through a little harder. You have a good, keen mind, Kerian. Sharp as a dagger and bright You learn, and that quickly.”
“But girl,” he continued, and she heard the affection in the naming, “y’came out of your king’s palace and walked into the forest with no idea but to find a brother who didn’t have the good sense to be happy about it. Now you’re puttin’ together a plan your king doesn’t know he can dream of. Y’like to leap at the bright idea. Maybe that’s good, but a lot of the time, it isn’t.”
Kerian kicked at the dirt, sending a fine spray of it onto the embers. Jeratt did the same. Between them, they smothered the fire. The half-elf winked.
“Well, even when I think you’re bein’, uh, not too sensible, I’m with you, Kerianseray of Qualinesti. I like the flash of your steel.”
Jeratt liked the flash of Kerian’s steel, and Lord Eamutt Thagol learned to hate it. Through the end of summer and into the beginning of a late-coming autumn, he found himself having to increase the size of the escort of Knights who accompanied tribute wagons to Acris. What had seemed to be isolated incidents of brigandage began to look like more than that Lone wagons, no matter the number of Knights, were raided with increasing frequence and efficiency, and survivors reported that they were struck by growing bands of elves who fought by no rules any Knight or soldier knew, who seemed to reinvent their tactics daily. Soon he sent to Qualinost for more draconians with the trains that went on to the capital.
Through the summer of hot days and steamy nights, the outlaws became four, and then five and then more. Bayel and Felan left their farms and joined them, and so did others from the dales, men and women who wanted to strike a blow. They never ran as a solid or identifiable group. Sometimes they were eight, nine, ten at a time. After a raid the dalemen would fade away, back to their lives as peaceable citizens of a bleeding kingdom. They came at call, they left when the work was done, and each knew the danger of collaborators, the invisible enemy. Each knew he must not speak with anyone who was not part of the group.