Explosions
Chapter Seven — Explosions
October
The burials took place in bright sunshine and cold, still air, couples sharing a grave and soldiers side-by -side with farmers. The plots had been dug in a row next to the mass grave, beyond its edging of burned timbers, and as the first New Hope burials Kel could set her own precedents. Lacking any priest she led the ceremony, and at each grave had grieving kin and comrades speak of the lives that had been lived. The widow Jarna, sufficiently recovered in her wits to attend, could only sob, but six orphans recalled their parents' care and gruffly emotional soldiers friends' bravery and foibles. For Crener Kel spoke of his cheerful admission of the rams he'd rustled and lamb he'd eaten. When all had spoken who would, she named all eight dead not as refugees of Tirrsmont or convicts and soldiers of the realm but as men and women of New Hope, and invoked the Black God's peace for them all, his words rising to her lips with a careful twist and silent prayer.
"They died in our service and I pray they shall find their deaths their grace, and his mercy infinite. So mote it be."
"So mote it be."
To everyone's surprise save hers chimes rang and wind soughed in stillness. People glanced at one another but she led them away without a word, only speaking again as they reached the picketed horses to send everyone briskly about their work. The children who'd come she saw back to New Hope herself with Neal, Seaver, and men of Crener's, Varlan's, Wallan's, and Pevis's squads.
Olleric's squad, who'd drawn the unenviable duty of burning the tauroses, reported in late afternoon, faces white. The job was done—mostly, for something had been at the corpses.
"The heads was missin', Lady Kel."
Kel blinked. Olleric was a sensible, experienced man. "Missing?"
"Cut clean off, and gone. It looked like single blows."
"You'd need an axe or a good sword for that sort of thing."
"Or a steel wing, maybe. The bodies wasn't messed with otherwise, but there was a stormwing smell to 'em."
What stormwings might want with tauros heads Kel couldn't imagine and had no wish to try; nor could she summon pity for dead immortals and important matters beckoned, so she shoved the puzzle to the back of her mind, thanked Olleric, and dismissed his squad to the bathhouse.
She had used the delay in the burials while Neal worked with Jarna to have quiet conversations with Varlan, getting his version of what had happened, and subsequently with Ersen, Brodhelm, Merric, Uinse, Jacut, Fanche, and Saefas. On the evening of the funerals she stood after the meal and ordered everyone to assemble on the green. The weather had begun to turn, fitful wind promising rain; coats were drawn tight, and Kel stood on a plinth she'd had the
carpenters make by the flagpole. She hadn't demanded immortals come but the basilisks and ogres were there.
"This is going to sound cold, and I'm sorry for that, but it matters. You all know Crener, Wallan, and Pevis died, and Varlan and I didn't." She saw puzzled looks. "What you don't know is that Varlan and I were wearing our griffin-bands, and those who died weren't. They'd complained the feathers itched under their helmets, and either not sewn them in as ordered or taken them out again."
Heads dropped. She knew her voice was flat, the rebuke too blunt, but couldn't find the mode; the lie about her survival was a sick feeling.
"No, it's not that simple. A griffin-band won't save anyone from anything by itself. But yes, it is that simple. There was a mage spewing illusions that didn't fool me or Varlan, but fooled our dead. And I noticed something else, because while I was indecent after the attack and cloaked by Quenuresh, men there weren't looking at a naked woman—so I wonder how many of them had their griffin-bands on too." She focused on the soldiers, her gaze raking them. Maybe some on the hill had had their bands on, but if so they weren't saying. "It was in my standing orders. It still is, and they will be obeyed. Griffin-bands are added to weekly inspections, and anyone missing one is on latrines for a week. Any sentry or guard without one on duty anywhere is on latrines for
a year."
She didn't pause despite the shock in their faces.
"Civilians, wear bands when you're outside the walls. There are plenty and more are being made. My stash of feathers is nearly gone but we should have more from the winter moult soon. Keep the bands with you, get used to wearing them. Children too, all ages. Sir Neal, Sir Merric, Sir Seaver, and the Company Eight mages will hold classes in the evenings, starting tomorrow, on how to deal with it if you can see reality and others are seeing illusion. I expect to see everyone there. New Hope will not lose one more life we needn't lose."
She paused, breath steaming, seeing unease at her harsh voice.
"We all know, most of us twice over, what it is to lose people to enemy mages doing something we didn't expect. And that mage who hid the tauroses until they were only feet away won't have been the only one King Maggot has. We'll see more, and maybe they'll kill more of us. But they won't do it just because they can chuck some illusion at us."
Another breath, her mind and voice very cold.
"And there's one more thing. I hear there's talk about Quenuresh being there but not helping, so know this, all of you. She came at a run as soon as she heard the horn. She killed the last tauros when it had me down. She knew Jarna was alive and guided soldiers to her. And she saved more than my life and modesty—she helped save Peachblossom, and if I hear one word slandering her courage or integrity I will make that person eat their lies whether it takes words or fists or steel." She made one try at a better note to end on. "I know she's frightening, and no beauty. But so am I, and she was true to her word in our need. To go on doubting her isn't caution, but shame, and I won't have it. That's all."
She stepped down and walked away to her rooms accompanied only by an anxious Tobe, stealing sidelong glances. The soldiers had it coming, and not even Merric or Uinse, who knew what a vital difference a griffin-band could make, had enforced her order; nor Brodhelm, though he'd not make such a mistake again after their private meeting. But whether she had authority to order civilians to wear anything was debatable, and she'd carry that if it meant one fewer trip to Haven. But she knew she should have been able to handle it better, less abrasively, and regretted
that as distantly as the warmth and ease she couldn't summon. When she got to her room Tobe followed her in, face twisting.
"Are you angry with me? I don't always wear my band but I will, I promise."
This at least she could hope to do right and sat, enfolding him in her hug. The pressure against her side and unfeeling breast was a balm.
"No, Tobe, I'm not angry with you. I'm angry with myself, really, for not having realised so many soldiers weren't obeying my order. I wanted to shake them up so they wear them from now on, always, and no more forget than you'd leave Peachblossom or Hoshi all lathered to play."
"You sounded really hard and cold." His voice was small against her shoulder. "I've never heard you like that."
"I'm sorry, Tobe. I … it was pretty hard on me, the other day. And then Peachblossom …" She bit her lip. "I know it's hard on you too."
"He's alright. I've rubbed him down every morning and evening, and Zerhalm sees him every few hours. He's standing better on the leg now."
"That's good." She hadn't known of Zerhalm's continuing care and was filled with gratitude to the Scanran, "But he has to retire, you know? I won't be able to ride him into battle again, or to joust. And I won't be able to ride him at all in armour." A thought she'd been holding off crystallised and she eased back, searching the boy's face. "Actually, Tobe, you're the person who should ride him, when he can walk more easily. Daine said we should give it at least two weeks, though."
The Wildmage had left the day after the attack for Northwatch, to explain more to Vanget about divine rules governing chaos creatures. She'd told Kel something of how she knew about them, leaving her friend bemused but with a vision of Kitten loudly scolding Lord Mithros that was a glowing coal of comfort amid the darkness in her head.
"Me?" Tobe's eyes were round.
"You. No -one else can ride him anyway, and he'll need more than pasture to be happy." She tried to think it through. "I wonder … Going up and down the roadway's not going to be easy for him, for a while. We could build a little stable in the corral for him. It'll be too cold in winter, but he might get six weeks down there. Do you think he'd like that?"
Tobe did, and when asked Peachblossom agreed it would be better than a stall with no view. He was subdued, perhaps from pain, but also at having let Kel down. She and Tobe spent a long time with her arms round the gelding's neck and his around her waist, and a few days later, with demands of harvest slackening, she gave orders. Limestone blocks from the passageway to the lookout post made a snug building with room for three or four horses, and after petrifying the roof-shingles Amiir'aan (with help from St'aara) set warmth in a half-dozen blocks placed round the inside, a spell he could renew every few days. Thereafter the now slow and awkward gelding could usually be seen in the field outside the corral, exercising his leg with or without Tobe's help and the encouragement of Jump or the sparrows. His continuing docility told Kel he was still in pain, and she quietly added to the gateguards' duties each dawn and dusk the despatch of pairs— no-one went anywhere outside alone—to open and close the locking iron gate the smiths had made for the gap in the corral wall.
Her speech had other repercussions, good and bad. Discipline tautened and her orders
were obeyed, but the harshness she'd shown and the coldness she couldn't keep from voice and manner because all her warmth was walled away, as untouchable as the pain behind glass, leached happiness from those around her. No-one bantered with her any more, and if the faces that obeyed lost no respect—quite the contrary—they no longer showed many smiles. They even tried to be openly warm to Quenuresh, when the spidren came to provide another batch of webbing and stayed to talk to St'aara and Kuriaju, but the best Kel could manage was grave thanks.
She was worrying people, she knew, especially her friends, and Neal was getting harder to fend off, but gave her the wrong opening one night at evening meal when her silence led him to broach the subject with too many ears about even if she'd wanted to discuss it. She cut him off, seeing the hurt in his eyes, and when they'd finished eating took him outside to the kitchen garden while there was no-one to hear.
"Neal, I know you mean well but if I won't discuss it with you in private why ever would you think I'll discuss it in the messhall?"
He swallowed hurt and tried to be healerly. "Kel, you have to talk about it sometime. It's killing you."
"No, Neal, it isn't, any more. It killed me at the time. Now it's just what I have to live with." He jerked in shock. "And what would you like me to say anyway? That I got myself raped to death in an open field, and yes, it hurt more than anything in life ever did or could? That the Black God had his very odd daughter heal me and sent me back because the tauroses broke some divine rule, but not anyone else who died on their horns or pizzles, sorry, Jarna, I don't know why? That I've new scars to add to my ugly collection? Neal, I am exactly as gods arranged for me to be, and so are our dead, and until I get the chance of dying again and getting it right second time, none of that's going to change. So leave it, please. It's just one more thing I can't do."
He was white but held his ground, shaking slightly, though whether with grief or rage, and if so at whom or what, Kel couldn't tell and found she didn't much care; or couldn't.
"Kel, say every word of that's true, though I don't believe the gods wanted anyone dead or you crippled like this—and you are, as much as Peachblossom—I still tell you you have got to talk about it with someone. If not me, then Yuki, or Fanche." He gestured helplessly. "Peliwin Archer, even. She knows what it means to be raped, by a man anyway. Or one of the gods, in private prayer, if no mortal will do. Kept inside you it's poison, and it has to be drained. You agreed it was true for the children having nightmares after we got them back from Stenmun and Blayce. Why think it isn't true for you?"
"I'm not a child any more, it lasted for a few minutes, not days on end, and I was three-quarters unconscious before it even started. There's no-one I want to talk to about it. Certainly not Peliwin, who wants only to forget her ordeal, and especially not any gods, who doubtless all saw it anyway. I'm sorry, Neal, but like Peachblossom I'm as healed as I'm ever likely to be." Pain rolled within her. "I'm sorry it makes my temper uncertain. I'm trying to learn to live with the memories, but it'll take me a while."
Neal looked entirely miserable but something flared in his eyes. "Kel, you don't lose your temper at all. I'd welcome it if you did. So would almost everyone, I think—it'd be a sign you were feeling something. You say you're sorry, Mithros knows what for, but you don't sound sorry or angry or anything, just a long way away."
"A lot of me is, Neal. I think some of me didn't make it back from the Peaceful Realms or wherever that greyness was. Or maybe it's like the pain old soldiers say they feel in limbs they've lost, except what I'm missing is in my mind." And inside my body. "Please, just leave it. There's nothing you or anyone can do or say that'll change anything."
She walked away and he subsequently obeyed her, though misery never left his eyes and the darkening of his joy with Yuki tore at her heart behind its glass. Prompted or on her own account, Yuki tried to get her to talk, but though Kel was gentler than with Neal she was equally adamant. Whatever the loving sex of a married couple might be it wasn't related to what she'd experienced any more than Vinson's lecherous brutality, and knowing Yuki desired to be with child Kel wouldn't have spoken of such a topic to her even if she'd had anything to say. Fanche she also rebuffed, as politely as she could, turning the conversation instead to Jarna, who had at last had some account of what she'd seen coaxed from her by Fanche and Saefas.
As Kel had suspected, the attack had come out of the blue—or mud-brown—with no-one aware enemies were near until the farmer closest to the woodeaves had been gored. Another tauros must have already been close to Wallan and gored him as he blew the horn, hurling him down the hill to land where Kel had seen him. How Jarna had survived she didn't know, but she'd frozen in shock under her husband's gutted corpse, drenched in his blood; Kel could only assume the tauros that killed him had been the one taken down by Pevis's spear, and that she with poor Crener and Varlan had then been distraction enough. Grimly, she revised her standing orders with Brodhelm, Merric, and Uinse: parties working near woodeaves or dead ground would have spearmen looking outwards under griffin-bands, and there'd be more regular training in spearwork, sweeping with the leaf-blades as if they were glaives, not just stabbing and risking getting the point caught, as Pevis had. She made a note to get more glaives, which women among work parties could use more effectively, but that would take time.
"Slings!" Merric sat up sharply. "Like goatherds use. There's stones enough for everyone to have a few in their pockets, and a sling folds up small. Easy to make, too. But if you can stop a bear with a good slingshot, it ought to give even a tauros a headache if you hit it between the eyes."
"Are they that good?" Seaver was doubtful. "I've seen lads drive off a fox, but never a bear, and it ran from fright when they missed it."
"They can be, Seaver. There's a boy at Hollyrose who can hit a mark every time at fifty yards, hard enough to gouge a treetrunk, and he doesn't do badly at greater distances. He can hit the pond from a thousand feet, most times, when he really winds up. It's about fifty foot across. I know that's no use against a tauros—but a dozen stones dropping at five or eight hundred feet might do damage to a charging group, and at closer ranges it's got to be better than nothing. At least it could buy time for people to run and reinforcements to come."
Kel felt some enthusiasm. "Good thinking. We'll have sling classes."
The experiment during the next evening's regular practice session, with a trio of goatherding lads among the refugees who claimed ability, attracted much attention and the speed at which stones flew, with fair accuracy over shorter ranges, was impressive enough to ensure plenty of volunteers to learn. Kel soon came to enjoy slingwork, liking the way you had to cock your wrist and when you got it right the sharp increase in accuracy that was possible as well as the odd purity of the notes amid the whirring noise before you released. When the best among them found themselves issued with spidren-web slings made by Quenuresh during her next visit, and discovered the elasticity of the webbing increased speed and power, competition to improve redoubled.
It was a hazardous business and there were accidents—nasty gashes and bruises, a broken nose and cheekbone as well as some permanently dislodged teeth. Neal and Morri complained about needless traffic to the infirmary, and Kel put Connac in charge of training-ground discipline with dire threats of feeding to the pigs anyone who disagreed. One sow was sporting a bruised flank from the previous evening and her well-timed squeal of agreement brought general laughter
that Kel joined in her own surprise. It was the first emotion she'd shared since the attack, and people noticed, offering smiles as they got back to whirling and shooting more carefully.
That night Kel found herself woken by Tobe's frantic shaking from a nightmare of memory, in which she wasn't remotely unconscious and everything happened again, slowly and unstoppably. Her scream had brought him running to find her rigid in her bed, face transfigured with pain and bathed in sweat; her nightshirt was drenched. Stumbling to her privy she was vilely sick, and after she'd wiped herself down and donned a clean nightshirt with leggings for warmth it took her a long time to calm Tobe, trying to reassure him nightmares faded. She knew they weren't Lord Gainel's doing—the experiences needed no sending—but certainties crumbled when Tobe asked in a small voice if the Hag was like the Nothing Man, and at her shocked denial told her she'd been cursing the god's daughter when he'd found her. After finally getting him to bed with hot milk and an equally disturbed Jump for company, she lit a fire and sat for a long time staring into the flames. Next day she went to see Neal, shutting the door to his office behind her and asking him to seal the room magically. When he had she sat and met his gaze.
"You were right. I'm sorry. I'm having nightmares I can't deal with, and it has to stop, for Tobe's sake. I can't talk to anyone here, Neal. I'm sorry. But I've thought of someone I could talk to, a woman who knows about gods and violence both, and me. Will you ask Lady Alanna if she can come? Or I'll go to her at Frasrlund."
Neal smacked his head. "I'm an idiot, Kel. I should have thought of her." He thought a moment. "I'm pretty sure she's heading to Corus for Midwinter, so she'll be leaving by full moon after Samhain, or before if snow starts. That's five weeks. And we have to head south not much later, so I'll ask her to ride south with us."
"That makes sense. I can hold on that long."
"Do you want something to make you sleep?"
"No. They aren't dreams, Neal—they're memories. Waking up is my only refuge—they're still in my head but awake I can push them away. To be held in sleep …" She shivered.
"Alright. I didn't think you'd accept. But something to hope for should help a bit."
It did, but not much. More useful was a visit to Lord Gainel's shrine in the deepening cold of a night watch, after she'd struggled awake from under the tauros yet again. Over a cone of incense she whispered prayer that the Dream King let her wake as soon as memory began to claim her from sleep. There was no answer but as she crouched, letting her mind drift with swirls of breath, she felt comforted and thereafter did seem to wake more swiftly from her recurrent helplessness on the afternoon hillside. Broken sleep left her increasingly tired and having to watch the temper Neal said she never lost, but she got an astonishing amount of work done, and for the first time since coming north caught up with reading and letters owed her family.
They were determinedly busy with minutiae of life at New Hope and the royal and divine visits. She did mention that they'd taken casualties from a Scanran raid in September, but said nothing of her own losses. She didn't think her mother would be fooled by such evasion but at least she'd managed something normal, and her feelings for the fort—little town, really—she found herself running were genuine, however all emotions remained muted. When she managed a fairly cheerful letter to her always disapproving Seabeth-and-Seajen grandmother, about the dedication ceremonies and the pickling skills Yuki was teaching the cooks, and fell dreamlessly asleep at her desk for several hours one rainy evening over an absurd Gallan romance she'd borrowed from Neal, waking with a stiff neck and numb arm, she thought she'd started on a slow road back.
The ides of October were enlivened by three unexpected visits. The first, unwelcome one, the day before full moon, began when Kel was called from lunch by Sergeant Ersen, on gatehouse duty, because a small group of riders had paused on the stone bridge over the Greenwoods, pointing and gesticulating, before approaching the moatbridge. Standing under the lintel Kel focused her spyglass and Ersen saw her lips whiten.
"You know them, Lady Kel?"
"It's Tirrsmont and his son." Ersen hissed as Kel snapped the spyglass shut. "I don't know what they want but unless they've orders from Lord Wyldon or General Vanget they're not coming in. Send for Brodhelm and Uinse, please, and Fanche and Saefas."
"At once, my Lady."
They were assembled behind her outside the gate by the time the horsemen approached. A thin-faced man in a dirty chainmail byrnie with a Tirrsmont captain's badge and leather leggings rode in front of his Lord, overweight as ever and wrapped in heavy furs; Sir Voelden, also bulging in armour, flanked his father, while a dozen men-at-arms rode behind them, haubergeons as ill-kept as their captain's byrnie. Negotiating the sharp turn the captain looked up.
"Make way for his Lordship, you fools. Clear the road now."
Kel didn't budge and felt Brodhelm tense. "Not until I know his business, captain. And I suggest you learn manners fast."
His eyes bulged and she saw his legs tense to spur his horse forward but Tirrsmont barked and he awkwardly backed, seething resentment but letting the noble forward. The lord's beaky nose didn't match his bulging cheeks and chins, and he looked at her coldly over it.
"You are the so-called Lady Knight Cavall was stupid enough to put in charge here?"
Kel neither nodded nor bowed. "Lady Knight Keladry of Mindelan, Commander. And you are?"
His cheeks bulged. "Don't be impertinent, girl. You know who I am." "We have never met."
Sir Voelden brought his stallion up beside his father's, sneering. "You know me well enough, wench. Stop this idiot charade and let us in. We've business to deal with."
Kel looked at him, Yamani mask tightly in place, and kept her voice level. "I know you, Voelden of Tirrsmont, for a man who fouled the field of honour with attempted murder."
He flushed. "It was an accident."
"Really? Swear that by gods' oath and I'll believe you." His eyes dropped: it had been no accident and whoever swore a false gods' oath, or broke one truly made, would find blood boiling in their veins. She felt like spitting but that was Quinden's style. "This is your father?"
"Of course it is." Voelden's voice was truculent.
"So." She looked at the older man. "What business do you claim here, Tirrsmont?"
His face darkened at her lack of deference, but however his ancestors might be in the Book of Silver and hers only recently in the Book of Copper she was noble, and more importantly a knight commander to whom he'd shown no respect at all.
"This is my land, Mindelan, and you and these shirkers you coddle are here on my sufferance. I'll ha—"
That was a claim she could not let stand for a moment. "By what right do you claim this land? Your boundary is the first ridge west of your castle."
"This valley has always been mine. I had men surveying here before the war started, and
—"
"It is not yours. This is an army fort under military jurisdiction, so I ask again, what is your business here?"
He glared furiously, his voice tight. "It will be mine soon. You have men from Tirrsmont here. Miners. I require their labour. Order them to assemble. Their chits and brats can stay."
So that was it—his coffers must be feeling the drain of unmined silver as well as lost tithes from people he hadn't bothered to defend and refused to succour. And knowing well what all the surviving Tirrsmonters in her care had to say about their former lord, she also knew what custom, law, and army regulations each said.
"You are mistaken. All civilians here have been driven from their homes by the enemy and denied succour by their former lords. Liege-oaths, if ever sworn, are void." Not that he'd have bothered with such formalities for commoners. "You have no claim on them, nor on this land. And if you desire army work parties to assist you elsewhere you must apply to my Lord of Cavall at Mastiff."
Tirrsmont had refused to take more refugees from his own or anyone's lands. In any case the silver mines were closed with reason.
"I've no time for that nonsense, Mindelan. They're needed and they're mine!" His voice rose. "I know what you're about, you harlot, setting yourself up on my lands to whore with Cavall for a fief of your own. Well, you'll not have what's mine."
Kel's head was spinning with his words. She could hear Brodhelm's sharply drawn breath beside her and distant exclamations of anger, but her own voice stayed even though her gaze was hard.
"Think what you like about me, Tirrsmont, though I'd be careful what you say of my Lord of Cavall. His lance is heavier than mine, and he does not suffer calumny idly. Nothing here is yours, neither land nor people, and you have no claim on any of it. Nor are you welcome here, prating of rights over people you abandoned." His face was purple and Voelden's the same, but Kel had had more than enough of parasitic lords. "Your request for labour is denied with cause. Your silver mines were closed last year because you would not protect them, by order of my Lord of Goldenlake, confirmed by General Vanget, and you have no authority to reopen them or detail miners. Seek it at Northwatch, if you will, but you'll get short shrift."
While they'd been speaking Brodhelm's and Uinse's soldiers had filled the gate behind her; others reinforced alures and gatehouse roof, staring with hostile eyes. Opening his mouth to
retort Tirrsmont became aware of them, eyes sweeping around and face tightening with rage. He stared at her for a long moment.
"You will regret this, Mindelan. Your whoring is common knowledge and it is long past time you were put in your place."
"Your son said much the same before I knocked him off his horse and rested my blade on his nose. Now get you gone before I knock you from yours and do the same."
It wasn't pretty or quiet but they did go, father and son jostling their men dangerously and clattering down the roadway as the slovenly troops recovered themselves and turned to follow. The captain shot Kel a furious look as derisory insults came from the alures, and Kel shouted for silence, voice cracking.
"They're not worth your thought, people, and time's wasting. Back to work, now. The show's over."
Turning, she saw worry in Fanche's and Saefas's eyes, and the sturdy woman she'd come to rely on put a hand anxiously on her arm.
"Can he claim overlordship here, my Lady?"
Kel shook her head. "Not unless his fief-grant is formally extended, and I don't think that'll be happening. Lord Wyldon and General Vanget would certainly oppose him while the war continues."
"And after?" Saefas's mouth turned down.
She shrugged. "Maybe. I don't think any request of his would be looked on very kindly, though. The King's no happier than Lord Wyldon with the way he's behaved."
She left them muttering and went to her office to think. She hadn't allowed sexual insults to bother her since her first page-year, before she'd even known what it was to think of a man with desire, and to her surprise discovered experience of rape hadn't changed that. The irony of insistent accusations that she'd slept her way to knighthood and command when she'd finally lost her virginity only to fatal immortal force was bleak, and part of her hoped the Hag was entertained, but words Tirrsmont clearly thought deadly truths were just sour wind. But the accusation that she was acting to build a fief to claim for herself shook her badly. If she thought about it coldly New Hope was already the match of many fiefs, with more than seven hundred souls—though Brodhelm's men belonged elsewhere—and a fortified position few even of the oldest and wealthiest could match. But to her it was a safehold for refugees, who planted and sweated to feed themselves not to tithe of their labour to anyone, let alone a man who'd abandoned them. When she spoke by spellmirror to Wyldon that evening, apologetically explaining what had happened, his expression became thunderous.
"He said that I … that you … Gods, I'll have his head if he says that to my face." Abruptly he flushed as red as she'd ever seen him and wouldn't look at her. "Keladry, I'm so sorry he should speak to you in such a manner after …"
His voice trailed away and she contemplated him gravely, suddenly wondering how he was coping with his unshared knowledge of what had happened to her, and a determination rose in her that neither gods nor tauroses would take this friendship from her with everything else.
"After I was raped by a beast? Wyldon, look at me." Face still flushed he jerked up his head. "It's of no account, truly." And in itself it wasn't, she realised, nightmares notwithstanding;
what she grieved wasn't involuntary chastity but wholeness, the woman who'd been able to think of dedicating herself to the goddess with a salt of self-mockery. "Would you hesitate to mention combat to a veteran who'd once been wounded? This is no different. Please don't make it so."
He drew a breath, eyes gleaming as they came back to her. "As you wish, Keladry. You are worth a thousand of him."
"That's not hard." Her voice sounded normal but she could feel the flush his compliments always provoked. "In any case, I didn't interrupt you because he was insulting. It's what he said about New Hope as a fief, and the claims he tried to make. I checked the maps afterwards but I was right—his boundary's two ridges east of here. What's going on?"
Wyldon sighed. "There's been a lot of talk about New Hope. Inevitably. It's an astonishing place, and you've done wonders with it, literally. The fact that it's now the strongest fortification between Northwatch and Frasrlund is enough to have all sorts casting envious eyes, and the Crown Prince's report on that dedication has put your name on everyone's lips. Again. Sir Myles warned me last week that a number of younger sons have begun to agitate for it to be formally chartered and granted. I was going to tell you when you next reported, not that it's an army matter. But I hadn't anticipated Tirrsmont making a claim. I should have—he's always been as greedy as he is uncaring of liegers."
Kel found herself furious. "How do I stop him? And these pewling sons, whoever they are? No-one's just walking in and claiming my people."
His eyebrows rose at her tone but his voice was suddenly bland. "The easiest way by far, Keladry, would be to claim it yourself." She felt blood drain from her face but he went on remorselessly. "You call them your people, as any commander might, and they are—all of them, not just the convict soldiers and Brodhelm's men, but what, four hundred and odd souls. And ogres and basilisks. If you petition the Council, with their support as well as Vanget's and mine, Goldenlake's, the Lioness's …"
She stared. "I can't do that!"
"Why not? A year ago the Greenwoods valley was wilderness. Now it has a superb citadel and a thriving population, as well as the goodwill of eight gods. There is a case that it become a fief—keeping it a 'refugee fort' is absurd—and only one person who clearly deserves to be its overlord. Overlady, rather."
Mithros knew what colour her cheeks were by now. "But I wasn't—"
"Of course you weren't. You've never sought any reward for yourself beyond the right to try for knighthood. But gods know you've succeeded magnificently in all you've attempted. This is a logical step, entirely traditional." A smile ghosted onto his face. "It's deeply appropriate, actually, and if the King didn't leap at it I'd be very surprised. And the Council. The absence of any proper reward for you has been arousing comment, and those civilian purses the Prince gave out fuelled rather than dampened speculation."
"Wyldon, I cannot do such a thing. We're in the middle of a war! Maybe New Hope should become a fief but this is no time to be playing for rank or money."
"Isn't it? History disagrees, I think. But if that's truly how you feel, ask the Council to put the question out of bounds until Maggur's dead or vanquished and we have a proper treaty. It wouldn't be as popular but I doubt they'd refuse your request."
Her mind whirled. "That I could do. I just don't want Tirrsmont or anyone else bullying in
here and sending people he's abandoned once into further hazard so he can get fatter yet."
"Quite right." His smile broadened. "Did you really tell him to get himself gone before you unhorsed him?"
Her flush was back but she didn't drop her eyes. "I'm afraid I did. It was Voelden sitting there—"
"Oh I'm not objecting. He'd earned a mortal challenge, never mind a controlled retort. And I've told you before not to doubt your authority so much—even if he'd been courteous he's so far outside his rights he hasn't a leg to stand on."
"Thank you." She swallowed. "Can you advise me about petitioning the Council?"
"Of course." He thought, rubbing his forehead. "Send His Grace of Naxen notice of intent at once, copying Vanget and me. And get depositions from your people—civilians—about how they came to be there, and whose lordship they would welcome." He held up a hand as her mouth opened. "Yes, they'll name you, but you needn't say that, just enter the whole lot into evidence to show none will welcome anyone else. Get immortals' testimonies too, if they're willing—remind everyone that taking on New Hope means taking on Quenuresh under solemn treaty already honoured in blood. And let your parents know. They have wide connections these days. I'll talk to Vanget, and Goldenlake." He looked a query. "I gather the Lioness is coming to you before heading south?"
"Yes. Neal arranged it. He … I need to talk to her, about … something the Black God said to me. Something personal."
"Of course." He didn't indulge his obvious curiosity at her mention of the god and she was unspeakably grateful for his courtesy. "I imagine there's much you might wish to talk to her about, and Mithros knows she's been wanting to see you since the summer. Frasrlund's been quiet so she'll be on her way soon, I'd think."
They parted with easier talk of what was happening along the front, minor skirmishes with small war parties and one more serious incursion to the east that Vanget's companies had repelled. Kel went to bed with more on her mind than memories and for once slept well, waking early but refreshed. An hour of pattern dances left her feeling restored, and a cautious meeting with Fanche after breakfast set collection of testimonies rolling. The immortals she talked to herself, needing her Yamani mask when all said flatly they'd accept no-one else's authority, Quenuresh adding that her treaty with the King specified residence in the Greenwoods valley under Kel's command at New Hope.
The second, equally unwelcome mid-month visitors were a Scanran raiding group, who started a fearful scramble for safety by a large firewood party, taking advantage of a sunny day to comb the increasingly bare woods of the southern end of the valley; but the raiders took so many casualties from the slings and arrows of the woodgatherers and their guards that they started retreating even before reinforcements arrived. Five Scanrans died, at least two from slingshots that unhorsed them as they charged, in return for one guard from Olleric's squad—leaving everyone grimly pleased. That evening Kel gave generous praise all round and there was a better atmosphere than there'd been since before the tauros attack.
The third visit, altogether more entertaining if equally alarming, began when a small body of armed riders clattered over the bridges and up the roadway at a canter. Kel was waiting, duty squad behind her and men thickening on the alures, but with surprised pleasure recognised Keiichi noh Daiomoru with another blade-faced Yamani she didn't know and a squad of the Own as escort. Sending a soldier at the run for Yuki and Neal she welcomed them in proper Yamani
mode, bowing with hands on thighs and leading them personally through the gatehouse where both spoke their names and declared goodwill; the blade-faced man called himself Takemahou and the name tugged at Kel's memory. By the time their horses had been led to the stables and the Ownsmen consigned to Brodhelm's care, Yuki was jogging up from the main level in one of the Tortallan dresses she wore in the kitchens, Neal behind her. Her eyes were bright as she saw her brother but when they took in the other Yamani they widened and she slowed; her bow was much deeper than Kel's had been, in the mode to a great lord. Eyeing him warily Kel waited for Keiichi formally to introduce his companion.
"Lady Knight Commander, Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Shinkokami told you, I believe, that my Imperial Master has expressed His interest in the manner of living with spidrens you are pioneering, and requests you permit an observer of your experiment?"
"She did, Keiichi-sama, and it will be my honour to welcome any servant of His Imperial Majesty's to New Hope."
"Allow me then to present to you Takemahou-sensei, who comes as I do on our Imperial Master's command."
Sensei—the name clicked. Kel bowed again, matching Yuki. She had heard of this man: his magename meant 'mountain magic' and he had once—it was fervently told—persuaded a lavaflow to detour round a town. Numair said it must have been a very small lavaflow, but still. More to the point, he stood very high among Yamani mages and served the Emperor alone. Kel switched to Yamani in what she devoutly hoped was the right mode.
"Takemahou-sensei, it is our honour that you visit us."
"On the contrary, Lady Knight, the honour is mine to come where Lord Sakuyo laughed. I have heard most remarkable tales of you and of New Hope from Keiichi-san and Her Royal Highness, and already I can see they were but shadows of the truth."
The excruciatingly polite ritual proceeded. Yuki was plainly embarrassed by her Tortallan dress and lacked a fan to hide her face but Kel introduced her ruthlessly with an equally flustered Neal, to Keiichi's well-concealed amusement, and got the unexpected visitors first to guestrooms and then to lunch. The still glowing pillars and savour of the food provoked a spate of questions about divine blessings, with the whole business of the dedications. The mage was unfailingly polite, in Yamani and accented Tortallan, but like Numair wanted the oddest details. When he broached the topic of Lord Sakuyo's laugh Kel had Neal and Yuki add their accounts, collared Seaver for his, and eventually, in desperation, hauled Takemahou off to see the shrines himself.
After peering at each statue, lingering on Lord Sakuyo, the mage touched his fingers to his eyes, muttering. His yelp took everyone by surprise but Kel managed to catch him as he stumbled backwards, eyes watering before he could gasp cancellation of whatever he'd done to enhance his vision. She saw Neal and Seaver suppress laughs while Keiichi's eyes brightened, but kept amusement out of her voice as she set him upright, enquiring blandly if something disturbed him.
Eyes still streaming he drew himself up. "Blessed Keladry-sama, on the second plane these shrines blaze godlight, Lord Sakuyo's most of all. I am honoured by his laugh, I think." He murmured again, touching his eyes quickly and snapping them shut before opening them again and giving her a much deeper bow than at the gatehouse. "You too are awash with godlight, my Lady, as no mortal I have ever seen."
Given the state of her flesh Kel wasn't surprised, though the high Yamani honorific had been unexpected, and she found herself liking the man—he might be mage-prickly and demanding but he learned fast and could laugh at himself. Inspired, she laid a hand gently on his
arm and quoted one of Kumo's verses spoken at Sakuyo's great April festival.
"Even thunder stills / to hear Him ease His lungs." She stayed in Yamani, dropping into the mode of instruction. "Takemahou-sensei, we are all supplicants, commanding none but ourselves. That the gods' purposes are greater than any understand is plain, and they attend us for their own reasons. But in so far as we are favoured it is in our desperation and need, not any imagined greatness. Please, walk freely among us today and ask as you will of what happened here. Tomorrow I will take you to meet Quenuresh."
Eyes glittering appreciation, as were Yuki's and Keiichi's, he bowed again and let her get back to her work, Neal and Yuki accompanying her and Keiichi catching them up on the green to clap her resoundingly on the shoulder.
"Keladry-sensei, that was entirely splendid."
"I'm no sensei, Keiichi-sama."
"Oh but you are. Forgive contradiction, but besides becoming one of Sakuyo's Blessed you have just dealt with a difficult man better than anyone I've ever seen save His Majesty. If that is not mastery, what is?"
Kel gave him a straight look. "Lord Sakuyo's favour, merely." "No merely about it."
She'd never yet won an argument with Keiichi that she could remember, so after a brief discussion about the tokens of Blessedness he assured her would be sent as soon as may be, the sudden demand for so many having taken even His Imperial Majesty by surprise, she left him to his reunion with Yuki. The refugees to whom Master Takemahou (as he introduced himself in Tortallan) spoke during the afternoon seemed flattered that someone should come from Yaman to learn how they were doing something, and when Kel wore her kimonos that evening—in his honour and to make amends to Yuki for having presented her in a working dress—there was good cheer. It was the first finery Kel had worn since the attack, and though pulling on the undershift she'd looked sadly at her unfeeling breast it was a pleasure in a remote way to feel skirts swish, and know she looked as well as she ever did.
The trip to see Quenuresh was interesting but not altogether hopeful. Takemahou, filmed in sweat, was extremely polite to the immortal, who listened carefully to his description of the problems on Wangetsushima and shook her head.
"From what you say very young spidrens plague you, unlikely to listen to proposals of peace or be able to act on them. I am old among my kind, counting life in centuries, and long past the urgencies of first mating. Yet if there is an elder among them something might be done." She suggested ways in which contact might be attempted, and taught him a spell to set on a message that should attract any spidren. "Use Old Thak for the messages—all of any maturity know it— and set one of these with them." Extruding a dozen short lengths of web she touched them with forelegs, murmuring, and gave them to him. "If they have a mage of any degree it will be able to contact me—and should any do so, I will tell them how I have fared in Tortall. But—I intend no disrespect—I cannot assure them of your emperor's good faith, for I have no experience of it. You will need to find a Protector of your own, and I doubt there can be two such mortals at one time."
Kel gave the spidren a glare that made her smile but Master Takemahou nodded gravely and assured Quenuresh the need for mutual good faith was understood.
"We desire true peace, not a false lull. The Scanran raids on Wangetsushima have been
bad in recent years also, and all there would welcome a lessened threat from the interior. Only"— he seemed hesitant —"may I ask, Quenuresh-sensei, what we might offer in trade? This cheese is no part of our diet in the Islands, and to many unclean."
Kel almost clapped a hand to her mouth. It was true that many Yamanis felt about cheese and all curdled milk much as most Tortallans felt about slivers of raw fish and strong sake pickles, but the problem that now presented hadn't occurred to her. Quenuresh merely nodded.
"Cheese is a luxury, not a necessity. Meat and milk should be enough, or land to hunt undisturbed. It is competition for mating rights and the need to feed large broods that drives our aggression towards mortals in this realm, and towards one another in the Divine Realms. If that is addressed, it should suffice."
"Will not increase in their numbers then create the same problem again? The islanders' resources are not infinite."
"They may. But if peace can once be achieved, the older spidrens will control their own and allow the population to grow only slowly."
Riding back to New Hope Takemahou was effusive in his thanks and praise, and asked Kel if there were anything he could do for New Hope.
"My Imperial Master would wish it, and I will be happy to do all I may." His voice dropped. "Speaking as a mage, I count myself in your debt for killing Blayce. Necromancy is the vilest magical art."
Kel wondered how long she'd continue to be surprised by the repercussions of her Scanran adventure. "Thank you. Forgive ignorance, Takemahou-sensei, but while I know of course of your great feat with the lavaflow, I do not know what here might best suit your skills."
"I am a warmage—not in your Master Numair's class, but not so far off. I diverted that lavaflow by blasting an overhang on the cliff above into its path, so it ran downhill another way." He gave her what might have been a grin, but in his sharp face was more threat than relaxation. "One does not persuade a lavaflow to do anything politely, however the chroniclers may report it."
Pleased by his saturnine honesty and feeling ideas stir, she risked a return grin though her face was becoming unused to smiling. "I imagine not. But as a warmage far stronger than those here, there is something about which you might advise me."
Her plan for rockfalls above the trail had been defeated by practicality. If the piled rock were sufficient to inflict damage, and its support only a wooden cradle, timberwork had to be so massive neither Forist nor Anner were confident it could be blown with the mageblasts they could make. The basilisks could petrify a slighter construction to give it the necessary strength, but mageblasts then had almost no effect at all. Takemahou, though, saw no problem.
"Certainly, Keladry-sama. I can make mageblasts far more powerful and augment them with a spell to direct force against a specific section of the cradles. Where did you have in mind to set these rockfalls?"
Pulling up she pointed back along the trail, indicating several places, then across the valley to the end of the limestone cliffs, where broken crags ended close to flatland. It wouldn't be as useful as ones above the trail, but if she ever faced a real siege part of the enemy's encampment might be in its path.
Takemahou nodded. "Good choices. And while your admirable moat means you would not desire any rockfall from the glacis, there is an overhang on the fin—there, do you see?—that might be mined to make it fall at command. It is well away from your walls but will offer shelter if the wind is south or west—the kind an enemy might take advantage of."
Kel's grin was more genuine and the next days saw demonstration of a mageblast whose violent crack shattered a heavy spar, building and emplacement of cradles, and the astonishing sight of Master Takemahou climbing three hundred feet up the fin on spidren-web ropes to clamber about the overhang, planting a score of mageblasts in cracks and hollows along its sides and upper edge. He also helped with brute lifting power to put the first, large rocks in each cradle, and Kel was content: each rockfall could be built up over time, and she instituted a standing order that those going in their direction should take a sack of fist-sized stones from the spoil of the steadily lengthening tunnel to the lookout post, set ready in a pile at the side of the gatehouse. A trip on foot with a heavier sack became an excellent threatened punishment as well, supplementing latrine duty and armour scouring, though the children, eyeing her warily when she first made it, soon worked out that as extra guards would be needed if they were sent they were safe enough. In any case there was no difficulty seeing her order obeyed, and day by day she had the satisfaction of seeing another defence that did not rely on trained warriors or sheer numbers take menacing shape.
Master Takemahou also proved himself when a cradle-building party was attacked by a small band of Scanrans, whirling from his work to rip a line of earth up into the faces of the riders, and following with a ball of yellow fire that burned two dismounted men out of existence. She had been standing watch herself, armed with godbow as well as sword and glaive, and another two Scanrans fell to her needlepoints, shots that elicited startled admiration. A fifth died from a slingshot that caught him square in the face, plucking him cleanly off his pony, and the rest retreated at speed back to the woods from which they'd emerged. In the excited cheer following sharp and successful action Kel saw the Yamani thanked and clapped on the back, and liked him all the more for the speed with which shock at such impropriety was hidden by a smile.
He and Keiichi stayed a week, the last two days an indulgence of Yuki more than anything though the effects of the Green Lady's blessing on Yamani dishes had something to do with it. But the Emperor was waiting, so despite driving rain she, Neal, and Yuki found themselves waving fond farewell one dawn. Keiichi had promised to investigate the possibility of shipping glaives from the Imperial Armoury, adding when Kel demurred at the cost that he thought the Emperor would be happy to make an outright gift to the citadel of Sakuyo's Blessed. Alarmed at such threatened generosity Kel had written a long letter Keiichi was carrying to her parents, and as the Ownsmen were lost to sight in the rain she dragged Yuki off for glaive practice in an unused barracks she'd had cleared as a practice court. For an hour they did pattern dances, recalling with rueful humour routines old Naruko had taught them, but Yuki declined to spar and blushed when Kel raised an eyebrow.
"I know I need the practice, Kel, but it has to wait. Until summer in fact." She looked down, then added in a rush, "I've missed my courses. It's a week now, and I'm usually so regular."
It took Kel a second to process before her heart soared. "You're pregnant? Yuki, that's wonderful." She grasped her friend's shoulders and hugged her. "I'm so happy for you. Neal must be over the moon. I can't believe he's kept it quiet."
"He doesn't know yet."
"Why ever not?" Yuki looked down, something Kel couldn't identify in her eyes. "Yuki, what is it?"
"You're not upset, Kel?"
"Of course not. Why should I …" Her voice trailed away as she realised why Yuki might think she would be. She hadn't realised her friend was late, although their cycles were similar and they recognised one another's bad days, partly because she'd been so distant, but also because she'd had no courses since the attack, though not, she knew bitterly, for the same reason. A little calculation told her the child had been conceived close to the time she'd been attacked but she couldn't not be glad for her friends, and if they'd celebrated their wholeness in that way it was no-one's business but their own. "No, Yuki, not in the least. I'm delighted for you both."
Her friend looked miserable and anxious, tears filling her eyes. "I'm so sorry, Kel. I feel terrible. We had that conversation about Irnai and having children, and I just waved you goodbye
… and when you came back you looked so awful and Neal was so upset and we … I didn't have my charm on and we'd been going to wait for children until after the war …"
"Hush, Yuki. It's alright." Kel folded her friend in another hug, cursing her woundedness for becoming such a burden on another. She might remain ignorant herself but she'd spent enough time with the Own to know men didn't seek female company after surviving combat merely as a pleasure, and Neal had had to deal with a lot while she had sat absorbed in Peachblossom's injury.
"How can you not mind, Kel? It's so unfair, and we … we …"
"Hush, now." Kel held Yuki while she cried but her own eyes were dry, her feelings more a growing anger without focus than sorrow. "I mind what happened to me, Yuki, but how can I mind the joy of my best and oldest friends? It'd be fair foolish, as Daine would say, eh? Here, dry those tears—you're getting all blotchy."
She produced a spare handkerchief, thinking of the way Owen and the men of Dom's squad had taken to calling her 'Mother'; the irony wasn't lost on her but getting Yuki presentable again and back to Neal was more important. She left them with Neal unsure if he wanted to hug Yuki three more times or just dance around, and already jabbering about many beneficial varieties of tea he would begin to brew at once. Shuddering, not altogether in mockery, Kel left them to their joy with a heart lighter for it but that night her sleep returned her once again to the hillside and Gainel—or her own searing fright and rage—did not wake her until the tauros's flat teeth were closing on her breast. Jerking upright as its bull features dissolved into the darkness of her room she found her hand clamped on the blunt grey dome through her soaking nightshirt. At least godflesh or whatever it was didn't bruise. The thought was black, and if the half-humour of it was oddly comforting it was a long, cold hour before she slept again.
There was still no sign of snow but a gale and a succession of blustery days driving drenching squalls accompanied sharp frosts. The last leaves fell from oaks and alders, and evergreens that thickened in the northern valley stood out, welcome patches of colour among bare wet branches. When the wind did drop at night fog pooled on the valley bottom, and Kel brought a reluctant Peachblossom back to the main stables.
The prevailing winds in the valley, as across northern Tortall, were from west and north, and while the latter could blow wickedly up valley Kel had thought the fin would provide shelter from westerlies. It did cast a substantial rain-shadow but when the winds picked up strong eddies could whip across the green in any direction, dumping sodden leaves or clearing them. Lying
awake during the gale, her shutters rattling, Kel could hear a threnody of thuttering moans and shriller notes as the wind explored stonework and gaps between buildings.
With the break in the weather routine shifted. Fieldwork was reduced to bare maintenance, clearing windblown trash from winter crops and deepening the sough from the moat to the Greenwoods to prevent flooding as flow from the spring rose. Instead people set to work on giving more buildings piped water and remedying deficiencies driving rain exposed—adjusting gutters, improving drainage of kitchen garden and treeplots, and installing extra bolts to still rattling shutters. One window in the barracks Fanche slept in proved a magnet for drafts even heavy sacking could not deter, and in an inspired moment of rage one night she seized a length of old spidren webbing children had been using as a jump-rope and packed it into the most troublesome gap. It was still there in the morning and Fanche quietly found other pieces to pack all four sides of the window as well as the seam of the shutters—and thereafter wind stayed out. Available webbing was soon exhausted but Quenuresh, no more concerned with old webbing than griffins with moulted feathers, was happy to exchange large bundles for an additional round of cheese and the whole of New Hope was shortly much snugger. Brodhelm and one or two sergeants did shake heads at the peculiar appearance it gave barracks and headquarters, but weren't about to refuse such an unexpected boon.
Daily life on the main level became busier, many refugees working in barracks to make and mend, and when some stray bales of spun thread turned up with a convoy of supply wagons two looms were set up. Kel thought hard about a request to use the as yet unfilled barracks, but she'd reminded Vanget in her last report of his promise about a second regular company, and though he'd grumbled they'd soon be on their way. Instead she made a decision she'd been pondering and had the looms put in the cave system, directing everyone's attention to the sheltered spaces that as yet only miners and children used regularly.
The first major chamber had proven too damp for food storage, now organised in offshoot chambers and passages, but one of the larger volumes on the way from that chamber to the high-ceilinged one where basilisks, ogres, and miners continued to extend the spiral passageway proved ideal—level, dry, large enough to work in with ease and for people to gather but not so large basilisk-heated blocks didn't warm it to snugness. Sacking curtains, whitewash on walls and floor, and some benches and chairs soon made it a place people sought out, and the axis of life shifted towards the interior spaces. The first chamber became a place to strip off wet or bulky outer clothing, its level side away from the pool a place for children to run and play when rain and cold made the green a misery. Kel had a chest-high fence built around the pool to prevent accidents, and one of the Hannaford stonemasons began carving the stalagmites into latticed lampholders. The slowly expanding line of lights warned of the pool and were reflected in its surface, while the delicacy of the work, admired by all, exerted a subtle pressure to keep children away when they were rushing about the drier side of the cave.
The resident immortals were also pleased. They had long since made themselves living spaces in corners and adapted small offshoot caves to suit them, deep in the first chamber on the side towards the fin, and that area became known as Immortals' Row, where others didn't go without asking. But it had been a distinct existence from that of the barracks, and the increase in activity all around and cautious rise in the number and frequency of visitors began to map developing friendships and led to story-telling sessions that became a popular evening activity. Beings with centuries of experience had a lot of stories to tell, some hilarious, some entirely baffling; there were also shared experiences of displacement and building New Hope, and conversation discovered interests in common. The children found lessons altered to include basilisk lectures about kinds of rock and what sort of crevices weren't safe to explore, and ogre observations (supplemented by miners) about how to excavate, shore, and brace.
Kel was able to spend time with Tobe and Peachblossom, teaching her son pattern dances
and comforting the fretful gelding. His leg was easier but the muscle might never be wholly restored—probably a good thing, given the weak, patched-up bones but a loss and indignity he resented. After grooming him and Hoshi extensively one evening she was putting Tobe to bed when he named the problem.
"He's bored, Ma, more than anything, and not just because he's stuck in the stable so much. He's the brightest horse I've ever known except Master Numair's Spots and the Wildmage's Cloud. They'd keep him happy because they'd be company. Hoshi's very clever— she always knows what's needed—but Peachblossom's clever like a person."
Kel didn't have to think twice to know he was right. Peachblossom had known Daine longer than Hoshi, and spent far more time at the Palace in her proximity as well as receiving doses of her magic when Kel had first acquired him, to teach him spoken commands and obviate the need for spurring. And while he'd seen little of her in the north before his injury, and Kel didn't think the healing would have smartened him any more, he'd spent a great deal of the last seven months with Tobe, whose horse-magic wasn't remotely in Daine's league but would have kept the gelding on his toes and allowed conversation. Her mind raced and after a moment she hauled a surprised Tobe out of bed, wrapped him in a blanket, and carried him back to the stables.
One very odd conversation via Tobe's empathy later a deal was struck, and Peachblossom's stall door pinned open. A flat wooden block on the sliding latch of the stable doors put it within his capacity and Kel gave him the run of the main level, shelf, and terrace while he agreed to walk only, not to bite unless very provoked, and to stale only in straw laid down by the livestock pens. When Neal discovered next day that his equine nemesis was free to wander at will he was so appalled he could barely speak—but that was succeeded by an impassioned recitation of near-fatal injuries he had suffered at the hands—hooves— teeth—of the most savage piece of horseflesh between Vassa and Olorun, the further south being excluded only because he hadn't seen enough of their horses to know if some unimaginably ghastly southern brute might be worse. Knowing Neal had some justification and seeing his performance entrancing Tobe and a growing number of children and adults, Kel left him to it. The big gelding soon became a familiar sight on the main level, accompanied by Jump or the sparrows. His pleasure in exercise and variety was a relief to Kel and he began to make himself useful, making night rounds of the shelf, keeping sentries silent company from below and clopping a hoof warningly or sending Jump to growl at closer quarters if he found them less attentive to duty than he thought proper. Besides amusing him this gave him a renewed sense of purpose, annealing lingering guilt at failing Kel in battle, and the improvement in his deeper spirit was a balm to her own.
She was also pleased, though with more mixed feelings, to learn from a despatch carried by couriers via Steadfast that an attack by wolfships on Mindelan had been more-or-less foiled. Three had come charging in one grey dawn but the naval ships had not been caught napping, and while both had taken casualties and damage, the wolfships had fared far worse, two sunk and one limping away with fewer oarsmen than it needed and boldly carved prow blasted away by a royal warmage. Whether the attack had been planned as retribution for Kel's killing of Blayce and Stenmun no-one was sure—there had been sporadic attacks along the coast throughout late summer and autumn—but her mulling was interrupted by a white-faced Neal, who'd received letters in the same batch. He dropped into the chair in front of her desk, meeting her eyes.
"Dom's been hurt. A Scanran axeman he thought he'd killed and stepped over got his leg and he's lost what father calls a lot of muscle."
Kel's heart had stopped as Neal spoke, or so it seemed, but the fresh sorrow was still behind the glass in her mind. She found herself aware Neal had never known of her feelings, any more than Dom, and the genuine shock and worry she was showing seemed an act that hid her true yet muted distress. Self-dislike burned her.
"Oh Mithros. Poor Dom. How bad is it, Neal?"
"It could have been fatal but they got him to the healers in time to save life and leg. But he's like Peachblossom, Kel. He won't fight again."
"He's leaving the Own?"
"He has to, Kel. Gods."
"What will he do? Do you know?"
"I don't think anyone does, but he's going back to Masbolle." Neal rubbed wet eyes. "Curse it. He loved the Own and never wanted to work at the fief. Now he'll have to, I suppose."
"His leg won't recover? Muscle regrows, surely?
"Not when you're missing a great collop of it. I've seen axe-wounds like that. They always leave weakness. Hurt like anything, too, until the skin regrows, and even then. Gods."
The news brought commiserations from many, remembering Dom's vital part in their rescue and that it was his squad who'd made Kel's Haven command flag, still in use at New Hope. After consultation a letter of condolence and warm wishes for recovery was written by Idrius Valestone in his best hand and signed on a succession of sheets by all surviving Havenites, adults and children alike. To Kel's quiet satisfaction all could now write their names, and the parents their children's, so even toddlers found their fingers inked and touched to paper. Baby Haven, her mark. Adding her own note of commiseration in friendship, with an invitation to visit as soon as he could and small gifts—a book from Neal, a pot of sweet pickle Yuki made, and some sketches of New Hope by a Goatstrack woman with a fair hand—Kel sent the letter to Mastiff for forwarding to Masbolle.
How Kel actually felt was a mystery to her. In one way she didn't think her feelings had changed—were she to dream of any man, or in waking life imagine what it would be to be held and touched by one, it would be Dom; but she hadn't done either since the attack, and didn't suppose she would again. If any sexuality had been left her after losing the physical capacity it was behind glass with her pain and rage. Sometimes she wasn't even sure she missed desire, distracting and embarrassing as it had often seemed, but when she pissed or bathed and felt numb godflesh where once there had been rich sensation she knew Neal had been right. She and Peachblossom had been crippled together.
Any temptation to brood was displaced by a new mystery, or the solution to an older one. One frosty dawn, after a night during which the guards reported odd noises, Kel looked disbelievingly down the roadway through her spyglass and with half-a-dozen men trotted down to a bumpy white mound beyond the moatbridge. Arriving she found she hadn't been mistaken: piled neatly were seven tauros skulls looking as if they'd been boiled. Horns grew from bone plugs and were still attached, as were flat teeth; empty eye sockets stared in all directions.
Wary of traps Kel summoned Forist and Anner as well as Neal and Seaver to probe magically for spells or cruder dangers, but none could sense anything but bone, horn, and ivory. Eventually a baffled Kel had the pile carefully picked apart, and the skulls put into the little space between gatehouse and fin, with the ready bags of rocks for cradles. Were the skulls a cruel stormwing joke or an incomprehensible compliment? Neal dryly suggested it might be stormwing art, until Seaver contended that in that case it should be a known behaviour, which it certainly wasn't; how often did the steel-winged immortals play with other immortals' corpses? No-one could remember an instance of defiled spidren, hurrok, or giant corpses, but most were burned by whoever killed them. Even immortals weren't sure what to make of it, Var'istaan and Kuriaju
denying knowledge of the stormwing eyries near the Dragonlands, never having been to that part of the Divine Realms. Recalling Daine's stories about a stormwing who'd died in the Immortals War, Kel resolved to ask Quenuresh at their next meeting.
The spidren also professed herself baffled, but speculated that the tauroses having been chaos-touched might be relevant—a notion that had occurred to Kel but she couldn't say aloud at New Hope. After sniffing closely, turning skulls in her foremost legs to peer into cavities, Quenuresh did have a firm suggestion as to what Kel should do.
"For whatever reason, Keladry, they are given as a gift, and it would be wise to honour it. They can serve a practical use that may prove more. If you can bear it—and you should—set them along the roadway, at the top, where they may glare warning to respect New Hope, as the Scanran battle standards on your outer walls do."
Kel suspected Quenuresh was holding something back but she said only that such skull warnings were an ancient practice, and at any great crossroads in time such as they were living through echoes of history were not to be scorned. Kel was reluctant, viscerally so, not wanting to be reminded daily—with their broad bony foreheads, flat noses, teeth, and horns the skulls were not much different except in colour from the living tauros she still met most nights. But she had come to think Quenuresh wise as well as kind, so despite her distaste she spent a long hour sitting and looking at them, morbidly wondering which one had raped and killed her and which horn had gored whom. Finding a decision no closer she found Jarna, embroidering in the warm loom-cave, and taking her aside quietly asked what she thought. To her surprise, after a trembling moment the fierce answer supported Quenuresh: let the murdering beasts' bones be set there, seen to be punished as fully as any living thing could be. Though taken aback Kel thought ignoring mortal rage and immortal advice was not sensible for any commander; so the masons set to work, and soon seven skulls stared menacingly down at the roadway immediately below the turn.
When Uinse's men on gate duty promptly named them, in descending order, Chargy, Bargy, Horny, Toothy, Dimwit, Flatnose, and Pizzle she wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, and did neither. Her defensively dry observation that Pizzle seemed odd man out got a shocked laugh from the men, as if she shouldn't be able to say the word, and she retreated wondering how on earth she'd explain it to Wyldon when he next visited and how soon the tale would reach him. She'd have to put it in her next report; and a moment later realised her report was due, for next day was last of the month. Cursing she set about the inventory.
