Green Rider (56 page)

"The arrow," Karigan said. "Give it to me."

The captain looked at it doubtfully for a moment, but complied when she observed Karigan's determined expression. Karigan touched the arrow reluctantly. She could feel the taint of death in it, the torture. Before that taint could seep through her skin, she broke the arrow on her knee.

"What?" Captain Mapstone raised a brow, but when Alton coughed and groaned, she returned her attention to him.

Karigan walked down into the valley among the carnage, across the blood slick grasses. The dead lay in mockery to the beautiful lupine that wavered in a breeze. The Sacoridian dead had been separated from the groundmites. She detached herself from the gore, and searched for those impaled by black arrows. When she found the arrows, she broke them.

When she dropped the remnants of the last arrow to the ground, she found herself by King Zachary. He knelt amidst the Sacoridian dead, his people, and sobbed into his hand. The other hung at an awkward angle at his side as if his arm had been broken. Nearby, six white corpses lay in a row, including the smiling terrier, Finder.

She looked away, not wishing to intrude on his grief, and walked to where Condor stood at the edge of the battlefield, his head hanging low. Karigan stumbled over a groundmite shield emblazoned with a dead, black tree. What it could portend, she did not know, and was too tired to think about it.

THE NEXT MOVE

Karigan jerked awake with a cry. The sun had moved its way over the west ridge, angling deep shadows across the waving grasses and lupine of the valley of the Lost Lake, which had once been the Mirror of the Moon,
Indura Luin
. Ravens circled in the sky, waiting to alight on the battlefield; waiting to see what scraps of gore they could feed on. The encroaching shadows chilled Karigan and she shivered.

"You all right?" Captain Mapstone sat next to her, huddled beneath her shortcoat which was draped over her shoulders.

Karigan sat up and nodded. She had been overcome by a great weariness not long after Horse Marshal Martel's fifty light horse had trotted into the valley, all shining helms and breast plates, the horses held in perfect formation. Their display of decorum would have impressed any parade spectator.

However, when the soldiers saw the black smoke pluming from the pyre, flames licking the corpses of ground-mites, and when they saw the wounded, their decorum faltered. Eyes popped open, oaths were sworn, some made the sign of the half moon, and others simply stopped in their tracks.

Feeble from blood loss and hard pressed to even stand, Captain Mapstone had limped up to the horse marshal and shouted, "Get off those horses and help us!" She must have sounded half crazed to them, but she had sounded just the way Karigan felt. She wanted to shout and scream, too.

The cavalry soldiers practically fell over one another to make themselves useful. A mender among them set the king's broken arm and attended the wounded. The soldiers began the grisly task of caring for the dead.

Common soldiers and nobles alike were laid out side by side. "They were all warriors of Sacoridia today," the king said. "As such, they were all equals, and heroes all."

Karigan had set to work to help the soldiers build a cairn over the dead, but as she bent to pick up a rock, she was assailed by dizziness and her knees buckled. That was when she must have taken the nap.

"No… I passed out, didn't I?"

Captain Mapstone nodded. "Whatever it was you did on the ridge today to that… Eletian, it must have sapped your strength."

Karigan rubbed her temples to stave off a ferocious headache. "Some ending to a perfectly good picnic."

The captain tugged her shortcoat more snugly about her. "The king lives. I would not say that was a bad ending."

Some distance away, King Zachary spoke with the horse marshal. His broken arm was splinted and bound securely to his chest, but he was quite alive.

"If you hadn't come when you did…" Karigan began.

"The king would be dead?" The captain cocked her head as if considering. "Perhaps. Perhaps not. One cannot predict other outcomes so easily."

"You cracked the code in F'ryan Coblebay's letter?"

"Yes." Captain Mapstone went on to explain how she and two other Riders had worked for many hours to find the hidden message. "It told of an Eletian who could not be trusted, and that the king's brother would take the throne by force. The attempt on the king was to coincide with his annual hunt. When we learned Shawdell was missing after the king had left with his party, we became concerned. More than concerned, in fact. A Rider reported seeing a band of groundmites in this area."

Captain Mapstone gazed sadly at the few Riders left alive. Two tended three wounded, including Alton D'Yer. The rest were disappearing beneath the stone cairn being raised by the cavalry soldiers. She cradled a dented silver horn in her lap. "I wish we could have come sooner."

Karigan winced. "If I had given you the letter sooner—"

The captain reached over and patted her on the knee. "I don't think any of us would have suspected the letter was more than it seemed—an expression of love from F'ryan Coblebay to one he cared about tremendously. Much in that letter was genuine. Perhaps F'ryan knew Lady Estora would find it strange and bring it to one of us. It seems he knew he wouldn't make it back to Sacor City himself."

"Why was it in code?" Karigan asked.

"It revealed Beryl Spencer. It was also a form of misdirection, I believe, in case F'ryan was ever captured. It would survive in its seeming irrelevance, and the false message would be of equal unimportance because the information was old. Unfortunately, it did not help F'ryan in the end."

Captain Mapstone gazed at the horn in her lap. "We cannot dwell on what might have been. Don't blame yourself, Karigan, about not getting the real message to us sooner. You were right before. You are not a Green Rider, at least not a trained Green Rider and we—I was at fault to assume you would know how things worked. If it helps, let me say that you, more than anyone else, helped save the king today."

"Thank you," Karigan whispered.

"I'm not sure you are the one who should be doing the thanking." The captain's hand slipped unconsciously to the bandage that bound her head wound. "We owe you much. Even the dead do." She held out her other hand and it gleamed with gold. Gold flying horse brooches.

Karigan was astonished. "You took them? You took them from—?"

"From the dead? Yes. Like Joy's brooch you brought back to us, they always find their way home. These brooches are , curious things. More curious than you know. New Riders will be called to the service, and they will wear these same brooches. With the brooches they will discover new talents and use them. When they retire from the service, or die, the brooch will call out to someone new. It has always been this way."

"But I wasn't called," Karigan said.

"Are you so sure?" The captain smiled. "The calling to become a Rider comes in a variety of ways. Perhaps you are right about it being the situation: F'ryan's dying, you being right there." She shrugged. "Their qualities are peculiar. They seem to attract strange adventures and extraordinary people to the wearer. Some believe it is just the nature of the job, of being a king's messenger, yet others believe it is the magic."

Karigan touched her brooch. It felt like cold metal, that was all, yet she knew what it was capable of. "What do you believe?"

"What do I believe? I believe in all kinds of possibilities. But as far as the brooches go, it is the rare moment that life has been dull for me since I first pinned one on some twenty years ago."

The captain unfolded her legs, and in what looked like an agonizing movement that shone clearly in her taut features, she stood up. She covered the pain with another smile, but Karigan could see it in her eyes.

"Come," Captain Mapstone said, "and we will find out what happens next."

Karigan raised herself from the sweet grasses and followed in the tracks of the captain who limped on ahead.
You, more than anyone, helped save the king today
, the captain had said. Karigan had tossed a bunchberry petal to the breeze. It was supposed to bring a friend in need, and though she had thought so at the time, the arrival of the Green Riders had not been the result of the bunchberry petal. Did the bunchberry petals lose their efficacy after a certain amount of time?

She no sooner asked herself the question when something small and white, like a snowflake, drifted out of the sky. She held her hand out and the bunchberry petal settled on her palm.

How do I interpret this? Am I my own friend in need? I can depend on myself
? She blew it off her palm, smiling for the first time in hours.

She could depend on herself, yet hadn't she been surrounded by friends the entire time? Friends who had helped her along in her journey or who tried to protect her? Where would she be without them?

She paused and called out to the captain. "I'll join you in a moment."

Captain Mapstone nodded, and Karigan walked over to where the wounded rested. Among them, huddled in a coarse blanket, slept Alton D'Yer. In the dusk his expression was one of peace without a hint of the day's strivings; no sign of pain or worry; simply the release of sleep, and with it, a certain innocence.

Karigan shuddered to think of what black arrows might have done to this young man. She had seen it all too vividly, too many times. First F'ryan Coblebay, then Joy Overway, and those who died today. It was not simply death, but a twisted, dark, and tortured path. What made Alton different from the others was that she had grown to know him, while the others had been strangers. With Alton, she could put a face with a name; a face that was alive with laughter and dreams and the future.

She knelt beside him, and when he shifted in his sleep, she adjusted the blanket about his shoulders.

Today he had stood between her and black arrows. Her fingers brushed his cheek and she felt the warmth of him.

"Thank you, Alton," she whispered. "I only hope I'm worthy of what you did for me today. You are a true friend." And perhaps more than a friend, but confusion fluttered in her heart at the thought.

She made sure he rested as comfortably as possible on the ground where he slept, the regular rise and fall of his chest reassuring. She left him reluctantly and joined the able-bodied survivors of the ambush who sat in a circle in the waning sun. Among them were Horse Marshal Martel, a couple of his officers, and Beryl Spencer.

It was as if the king and his followers had become primitive hunters, back to the dark days before Sacoridia was what it had become, when folk sat in council on the rough ground, and told the news of the lands in stories by a fire.

"I've posted sentries should any of the enemy decide to return." Horse Marshal Martel sat very erect in his short-coat of deep navy, a red sash knotted at his waist. Silver buttons and a gorget about his neck gleamed in the dwindling light. His gold marshal's shoulder cords, and the red-plumed helmet placed carefully in the grass beside him, made him an impeccably well turned out officer, though he had discarded his breast plate earlier. Even the formal uniform of the Green Riders did not compare to his field uniform. "We should make camp for the night."

"It sounds sensible," King Zachary said. "It would be preferable not to move the wounded tonight, at least not far, and I think most of us are deeply tired. However, I am concerned about what my brother is up to."

"You should be, Excellency," Beryl Spencer said. "He planned to march on your castle with more than twice what you have garrisoned there."