The snow-covered training-ground was silent and looked curiously unused as she rode past; she thought perhaps all the new recruits were eating dinner, but when she dismounted and brought the mare into the darkened, redolent stables, and saw how few horses there were there, she realized that, for the first time in her knowledge, there were no new recruits.
Evidently, since the Skybolts weren’t going to be there to train them, the riders recruited and rough-trained during the summer months had been sent down south to join the rest of the Company.
Which meant that in order to take any kind of job in the normal fighting season, what was left of the Company would have to accept green recruits or free-lancers who’d never been with a Company before, and put them right into the front lines with the rest.
That was just more evidence of the kind of shortsighted thinking Ardana had been displaying all along. While it was true that the Skybolts had only accepted seasoned fighters, without proper drilling and practice, new recruits were twice as likely to die as old hands. And that was in a nonspecialist Company; in a Company of skirmishers, Kero wouldn’t have given a new recruit a rat’s chance of surviving the first fight.
But that certainly explained where all the new faces had come from while she’d been across the Karsite border. And it would give Ardana a fine excuse for why the casualty figures were so high if the Guild made inquiries.
She left Hellsbane under saddle; just backed her into the nearest empty stall and gave her a good feed, then went off to the empty barracks to retrieve her gear.
There wasn’t much of it, but there were warm winter clothes to replace her threadbare garments, some weaponry to replace things lost or left behind. And as for the personal gear, every little bit would help. She’d undoubtedly have to sell the semiprecious gems she’d stored to carve into little figurines this winter. The carving equipment itself wasn’t worth much, and didn’t take up a great deal of room; she’d keep it a while, on the chance that she would one day be able to carve again.
The barracks were dark, with most of the windows shuttered. Her footsteps echoed hollowly and her breath showed white in the gloom, telling her that the place hadn’t been heated at all this winter.
Somehow the very emptiness oppressed her more than the entire trip back. Maybe it had something to do with actually seeing the place that should have been full of people standing deserted.
She didn’t bother with pulling off her worn gloves or cloak; it was too cold. She had no intention of sleeping here; if she found herself with enough breathing space, she’d draw on the little credit she had at the Woolly Ram and spend the night there. She felt her way across the building and climbed the creaking stairs to the veterans’ floor, and sought her own little niche in the barracks.
Cold penetrated her cloak, and depression weighed heavily on her shoulders. She threw open the shutter to get the last of the light. Beside her bare bunk was her armor-stand with her spare suit of chain, which could be sold easily enough. At the foot of the bunk was the locked chest where she kept the smaller objects she didn’t want to carry with her on campaign, and under the bunk was the clothespress that held the rest of her wardrobe.
Winter clothing, all of it, and she bundled it all up and bound it into a pack with a spare blanket. She unlocked the chest and looted it just as thoroughly, though there was considerably less in it. Knives, her jewel-carving supplies, a couple of pieces she’d finished, various odds and ends. Some were too bulky to take with her; some impractical. It was only after she’d made it all up into packs that she saw the letter lying on the shelf above her bed, with the odd bits and carvings she’d picked up over the years, the sentimental things she could not take with her.
Who would send me a letter? My brother? But the seal was unfamiliar, and the handwriting on the outside none she’d seen before. She picked the folded parchment up, her hands trembling for no reason that she could think of, and opened it, breaking the strange blue-and-silver seal.
It contained two pieces of paper. The first was a simple note of two lines and a name.
:I kept the letter of our agreement, but you can’t fault me for arranging the terms to suit myself,” it read. “If you want to redeem this, you’ll have to come here, and you’ll have to see me.”
And it was signed, simply, “Eldan.”
The other paper was a draft, in Valdemaran scrip, for the amount of the Herald’s ransom. She would have to go to Valdemar in person to cash it in.
More specifically, she would have to go to the capital of Haven, as the draft had been written on a Crown account there. And it had to be countersigned by the issuer, which in this case was Eldan himself.
To claim her reward, she would have to confront him on his own ground, and deal with him and all her tangled feelings about him.
It was a bitter sort of salvation he offered. If she went to him, to Valdemar, her troubles would be over, temporarily at least. She would have ready cash to tide her over until she managed to land a free-lance position. She might even be able to get a position within Valdemar. Surely they needed bodyguards, personal guards, and caravan guards even there.
But if she went, Eldan would undoubtedly try to persuade her to stay with him, perhaps even teaching at that Collegium of his as he had suggested. And right now she had no better prospects than to give in to that persuasion. But if she did give in, she’d be right back in the situation she had fled from in the first place, first from Lordan’s keeping, then from his. The idea of being completely dependent on someone else made her feel as if she was being stifled. If she did that, she wouldn’t have proved anything, not even to herself.
But she’d be with the one man she’d ever been able to love, to give herself completely to, heart and mind and soul—because he had given himself to her in the same way.
She stood there, staring at the blank wall above the shelf, unaware that she had crushed both papers in her hand until a clamor from beyond the gates of the stockade woke her out of her trance.
There was no mistaking that kind of noise; friendly shouts, whinnies, someone pounding on the gate. All the sounds indicating a crowd of riders wanted entrance.
She stuffed the papers into her belt-pouch hastily. She could decide what to do about them later. Right now she needed to get out of there and quickly. Ardana’s messengers must have been right behind me, she thought, shutting out panic. I have to get to the Guild before they throw me in detention!
She had no doubt that Ardana would court-martial her if the Captain ever got her hands on her. If Ardana had her way, Kero would never even see a Guild Arbitrator.
She grabbed up her packs and bolted down the stairs just as she heard, from the open window behind her, the sound of the great gates being forced open, groaning against the load of snow pressed up against them.
She thought about her possible exits as she ran down the stairs and out the side door of the barracks. There was a back postern-gate that self-locked right behind the barracks. Kero waited for a moment until she was certain that no one was in a position to see her, then dashed across the open space between the buildings into the stables. She fumbled open the stall door and grabbed Hells-bane’s reins to lead her out. Now she heard people and horses milling around just inside the gates; at least twenty if not more. It would take them a few more moments to get organized, then they would have to explain their mission to the guard and the guard would have to remember what direction she’d taken.