Echoes of Betrayal (16 page)

Beclan knew he should not feel sorry for himself—he was too old for that and a royal besides—but he did feel sorry for himself. Here he was, in a filthy stinking hut, with only trail rations to eat and nothing to sleep on but dirt and sheep dung, while other people—other squires, even barons’ squires—lounged in houses that didn’t leak, warmed by fires that didn’t smoke, eating real food hot from kitchens, looking forward to sleeping in warm beds and putting on clean clothes in the morning. His brother Rothlin and the king were probably having a jolly evening with their friends. When he finally slept, he had bad dreams he did not quite remember when he woke, but their dark mood stayed with him.

In the morning, the snow had stopped, though it lay deep on what had been their trail.

“We’ll make Deerhollow by nightfall, sir, no doubt,” the sergeant said. He looked entirely too cheerful, Beclan thought.

“I mistook which side of the trail,” Beclan said.

“Easy to miss in the storm, sir,” the sergeant said. “Now the snow’s stopped, shouldn’t be a bad day if it doesn’t start again.”

The sky was still covered with furrowed clouds, but higher and a different gray than the day before. Beclan’s horse kicked out a couple of times, then settled to a steady pace in the knee-deep snow. Deerhollow, with the promise of real fires and better quarters, straddled both sides of the trail, so there was no missing it when they came near.

He was the more astonished to see a man he recognized as one of the grooms at the steading come out of one cottage.

“Squire Beclan!” he called, staggering and slipping in the snow as he hurried forward. He waved a message tube. “The Duke says you must hurry. She’s gone—she needs you.”

Beclan stared. “What?”

“She says it’s war, Pargun invading Lyonya—”

Beclan threw himself off his horse. “Let me see!” His fingers, stiff with cold, fumbled at the ties that held the tube closed; he finally got
it open and tipped out the curl of paper. Dorrin’s handwriting was clear, and her orders plain:

The seal looked the same as every other time he’d seen it.

Though it was cold, Beclan felt as if fire tingled in his veins. He had never felt so alive in his life. War. Here. Now. His chance to show what he could do, his chance for glory. Was this what the king had felt that night when he first learned of Verrakaien treason?

And … was this another Verrakaien treason?

He handed the paper to his sergeant. “Do you think this is the Duke’s writing and signature?”

“Yes, no doubt at all. Why?”

Beclan chewed his lip for a moment. “I must be sure,” he said. “I must not raise a troop if this is some enemy’s plot … I mean, there was no hint of this when we left.”

“Enemies don’t give warning, sir, when they mean to attack. The Pargunese would not stand on the farther shore and say please.”

“Very well, then.” Beclan looked around. This village, as he knew from having passed through before, had only three able-bodied men of fighting age, thirteen having fallen or been crippled in the attack on Phelan. He pulled out the village roll from his saddlebag and called the names. No one answered.

“That Dunnon, he’s away,” the groom said. “Left at daybreak, he did, on account of some boy come in with word of sheep straying.”

“Did you tell them what the Duke said?” the sergeant asked.

“Well, o’ course I did,” the groom said. “I mean, they wondered who I was and why, and I had to say.”

“You’ll not find a one of them, sir,” the sergeant said quietly to Beclan. “They’ll be hiding out somewhere they know and we don’t. We could spend days and not find them. Best we go on.”

“But—they’re bound to serve. And the Duke told me to muster them.”

“Sir, think a little. Three men trying to do the work of sixteen so their families will live through the winter. They’ve got no reason to love Dukes of Verrakai out here. The Duke doesn’t expect you to make bullocks of calves overnight. Bring what you can, any who come willingly, and leave the rest. If the war goes bad … well, it hasn’t yet.”

It made sense; Beclan, looking around, could see no sign of healthy men lurking about. But it was sense he did not want to see; he had a responsibility to the Duke, and he would look better if he came in with fifty or even a hundred than making excuses why he had so few.

“We could make it to Thistlemead today if we get on,” the sergeant said.

“Yes, Sergeant, I hear you,” Beclan said. “Fine, then. Come with us,” he said to the groom. “I suppose you told everyone along the way what the Duke said.”

“Well … o’ course I did. Didn’t see nothing wrong with it.” The groom looked worried now. Beclan was glad of that. The man should have known not to tell the Duke’s business to everyone. Half the muster might be running into the woods as soon as they heard his troop approaching. Though maybe, closer in, the villagers who had actually met the Duke would be more loyal.

At Thistlemead, four men stood by the way as Beclan’s troop rode in. “There should be six,” Beclan said, consulting the muster roll. Not to his surprise, one was reported too sick to rise from his bed and produced hacking coughs when Beclan went into his smoky little hut. The other simply wasn’t there.

“A bad time of year,” the sergeant said. “I would say four out of six, this season, with the fever going round, shows this village well, sir.” His expression dared Beclan to say anything critical.

The men had no mounts and hardly any equipment. Beclan considered the difficulty of transporting twenty men on sixteen horses and one pack mule through fresh snow. He looked at the sergeant,
who looked back. “We’ll need to—” he began, and started to swing a leg over the saddle.

“No sir,” the sergeant said. “You’re breaking trail, sir.” He turned to the troop. “You four,” he said. “Time to stretch your legs. Let these men ride a bit.”

The men looked alarmed; Beclan wondered if they’d ever been on a horse, but remembering what the Duke had said about sergeants, he kept quiet and put his foot back in the stirrup. Soon they were on their way, and every so often the sergeant changed out another four to walk.

That hadn’t gone so badly, Beclan thought, but at the next two villages, none of those on the muster roll showed up. Beclan could just imagine himself reporting to the Duke with a mere four.

He called the sergeant aside. “The groom’s put the fright into all the places he visited, just as you said. But he followed our route out from the steading. What if we go back north another way? There’s that trail Daryan was sent on, west of Kindle and Oakmotte, seven or eight vills along it. They won’t be expecting us. It shouldn’t take us any longer than going by that more eastern route, and it’s farther from the border with Lyonya, so if the Pargunese do break through, we’re more likely to evade them.”

“That’s good thinking, sir, except the Duke said come directly. She knows what your route was on this trip; if she needs you, that’s where she’ll expect to find you.”

“But she’s gone to Harway. What she needs are reinforcements—and I don’t see us getting them on the route the groom took, do you?”

“No, sir, I don’t. But sir, with all due respect, you’re the king’s cousin. The Duke wants reinforcements, but she wants you safe even more. We know what’s on the route we came out, and the groom followed. We don’t know what’s on this other trail.”

Beclan’s frustration of the past few days nearly overwhelmed him, but he fought it down. “If it was safe enough for the Duke to assign Daryan to it, it’s surely safe enough for me—for us. And it’s farther from the border, so the Pargunese are less likely to have come that far if they did cross the border.”

“Sir … with respect … it’s always best to let senior command know where you are.”

“We can send the groom back to Verrakai Steading and on to Harway,” Beclan said. “But we’ll be there before he is.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. Beclan could tell he didn’t approve, but after all … the Duke had put him in charge. And he had twenty-four soldiers and himself, twenty of them armed.

Two days later, the next villages had yielded a total of twenty-three men. They had no arms or horses, but they were able-bodied, and each had a sack of food for the journey. They were also slow, since it was no longer feasible to switch off horses with only twenty horses and forty-two men. Besides, they needed the extra pack animals.

“We could split them off,” Beclan said to the sergeant at one of the rest breaks. “You could take them, with an escort, and I could go on to the villages.”

“No, sir,” the sergeant said. “With all respect, sir, the Duke charged me to stay with you, as she did one of us with each squire. Your life and limb are my responsibility.”

“But I’m not a child,” Beclan said. He knew the moment he’d said it that it was a childish thing to say; he hated himself for that hint of whine.

“No, sir, but you’re not Duke Verrakai, neither, and it’s to her I’ve pledged my oath. She bade me obey your orders up to a point, and leaving you to take another route by yourself is that point. Where you go, sir, I follow.”

Beclan had no doubt he meant it: Vossik had been a sergeant in the Duke’s Company … he had been a soldier longer than Beclan had been alive, and he had chosen to stay with Dorrin Verrakai. Beclan understood such loyalty, but he still felt annoyed at the slow progress they were making. Somewhere things were happening, and he wasn’t there.

“Well, then, why not send most of them on east to the improved road—you were right; this trail is slower with so many. You and a hand of others can stay with me. That’s surely enough.”

“We could all go east now, sir. We’ve surely got most of the muster that’s left along this route.”

“We could …” Beclan thought about it. He would be coming in with more than he’d left with … but a round fifty would be so much better, a full half-cohort. “But the Duke may need every body we can dig out. I can’t justify holding up all these to slog along on a narrow
trail when I know the need is urgent, but two more villages—if we get but five from each, we’ll be contributing a full half-cohort.”

“I suppose Voln could command these,” the sergeant said. He chewed his mustache. “It’s risky, sir—risky for you. Most of us old-timers will have to go with the larger bunch, be sure none of ’em get the idea to slope off home without you there. At least they’re a day away from their homes. But you promise me, sir, if something does happen and I say go, you will go—no matter what.”

“Is that what the Duke said?” Beclan said.

“Yes, sir, it is. It’s my honor, you see. Your safety.”

Beclan felt a cold chill down his back. As a boy, he’d expected protection from his father’s vassals—adults protected children anyway. But for years he had not thought of anyone literally dying to save him. Yet there the sergeant was, the same unemotional quiet man who had been assigned to him … and he would send Beclan away, to save him, and die holding off pursuit.

Until that moment, he realized, he had not really grasped the commander’s dilemma, though Duke Verrakai had spoken of it to the squires more than once.
We send those who trust us to their deaths
, she’d said.
That is what battlefield command is. When someone gives you an oath, you are responsible for your commands, so think before you command. If you are not able to accept this, you are not fit for it
.

War had come, and the Duke would be doing that now, as she had done before. He must try to do the same. Out of a dry mouth he said, “Well, Sergeant, I so promise. And I also swear not to lead us into trouble—if it comes to us, I cannot stop it.”

“Very well, sir.” The sergeant stared into the snowy woods for a moment, then smiled. “I don’t expect there’s much to worry about after a storm like that the other day.” He gave over command of the muster to Voln, then named the five Verrakai militia who would stay with him and Beclan.

“T’ young lord’s not comin’?” asked one of the men from the last village.

“We’re going to Thornapple and Oakmotte,” Beclan said. “Then on to Harway.”

“But—” the man began.

Two others shushed him; one said, “He’s the king’s cousin; he can do what he wants, Tam.”

Beclan felt a tiny glow of pride that he had not told them and one had recognized him.

He and his smaller escort, all mounted, passed through Oakmotte—no muster there—and were most of the way to Thornapple along the crest of a hill where the snow was not so deep when Beclan heard someone calling for help off to the east. He turned his horse off the trail, into deeper snow.

“Sir, stop—”

“Someone needs help. Didn’t you hear?”

“Yes, sir, I heard a yell. But there’s a war, the Duke says. It might be an enemy.”

“And it might be one of the Duke’s own people in trouble. We have to find out.” He reined in just as his horse lurched, snorted in alarm, and then slipped down the slope, steeper than it had looked under its concealing blanket. “I can’t stop here,” he yelled back up to the others. “He’s sliding.”

The sergeant’s curse was eloquent and complex; Beclan spared a moment to admire it while he tried to help his horse balance. They ended up in a hollow, the horse belly-deep in snow. Beclan looked back up to the trail; they had left an obvious track that looked very difficult indeed, ice patches visible under the disturbed snow. “Sorry,” he said to the horse and to the sergeant. “I’ll see if we can get back up.”

“Leave the horse,” the sergeant said. “You might make it.”

“What about the horse?” Beclan asked. He did not relish the idea of dismounting in snow that deep, and he noticed that the “sir” had disappeared.