Lady Knight (18 page)

Merric’s face lit as the sergeants bowed. “Is that so?” he cried. “Welcome, both of you, welcome indeed! We need all the help we can get. Were you stationed at Fort Mastiff long?”

“Went in there with Lord Wyldon,” said Kortus, who seemed to be the more talkative of the pair. “Stayed with him at Giantkiller last year. It’s an honour to meet you, milord.”

“Kel, do you mind if I introduce the sergeants to their counterparts?” Merric asked. “I’m sure they’ll want to settle in.”

Kel smiled, pleased that the new troops were so welcome to her year-mate. She knew how he worried about guarding Haven with only forty men-at-arms, twenty of them convicts whose experience, until recently, was not gained on a battlefield. “Of course. Sergeants, we’ll run into one another often,” she assured them. “In the meantime, I leave you in Sir Merric’s hands.”

As the three men left, Kel heard Merric say, “Now, I handle the patrols outside the walls, but the lady knight governs all that’s inside, and I take her orders in a fight. Don’t look to this place as a restful one - you’ll see combat here.”

Kel turned, to find Saefas and Fanche behind her. “I heard Master Valestone tried to get elected headman,” she remarked.

“He seems frustrated, poor fellow,” Saefas replied, with his easy smile. Kel had ordered the refugees to stop bowing when they talked to her, or everyone would get worn out quickly. “He wants to be a leader even if he isn’t one.”

“We should set the young folk to making kites,” added Fanche. “Someone ought to have fun, as much wind as he blows.” She eyed Kel. “Good to see we’ve more warriors. I believe I’ll keep practising my weapons, though.”

Kel grinned. “As will I.”

Fanche nodded. “If you weren’t a noble, I’d call you a sensible girl. You’ve commoner blood, that’s the only answer.”

She walked away, hands under her patched apron.

“Fanche missed you desperately, Lady Knight,” Saefas assured Kel. “She just hasn’t got the proper words.”

“You are a flatterer, Master Saefas,” Kel informed him.

“So she tells me, all the time,” admitted Saefas, his eyes mischievous. “What do you think? Will I win her in the end?”

Kel looked at him. “She will make your life a misery,” she told the man.

Saefas grinned. “That’s what I hope for.” He left to see if he could help with the wagons.

Kel looked around, at the smoke, the dirty children underfoot, the ground churned by horses’ hooves, the raw buildings and the chickens that pecked everywhere. Home again, she thought, and walked to headquarters.

With Numair gone, Kel went back to eating in the camp’s mess hall. That first night she sat among the newcomers, who had not yet worked out cooking arrangements in their new home. They were quiet around Kel, watching her from the corners of their eyes as she worked her way through roast boar with mushroom gravy, noodles and wild greens. It was from the other tables that Kel heard snatches of whispered talk.

“…have replaced her with a real knight…”

“Saefas says she’s a good head on her.”

“Saefas? You take his judgement? Mithros’s beard, look at what he’s courting!”

” - how many more are going to be sent here?”

“I’m off. Training first thing tomorrow. Sergeant Oluf says I’ve a knack for the spear.”

Kel glanced at this speaker. It was a woman from Riversedge, so tiny she didn’t look as if she could even hold a spear up. Just shows you can’t judge us females by our size, she thought with a smile.

Kel had planned to return to headquarters after supper. There was news to tell Merric and her sergeants, news she didn’t want spread all over camp. Still, there were the newcomers who hadn’t eaten in the mess hall to consider. They ought to see her so they’d know who to complain to. She trudged towards their barracks, listening to the sounds of a peaceful summer evening: someone playing a recorder, the clatter of pans, girls skipping. Jump and the pack of camp dogs trotted around her; the sparrows had gone to bed.

Shouts reached her ears. They came from the two barracks given to those from Hanaford and Jonajin. Kel picked up her pace. “Let me handle this,” she ordered the dogs as they reached the edge of a noisy crowd.

There were times for polite entrances: this was not one of them. Kel shoved and elbowed her way through the crowd. She managed not to voice the famed provost-officer’s weary order: “Move on, nothing to see here, nothing to see.”

At last Kel emerged into the open ground around a barracks cookfire. Two young men, both larger than Kel, punched, kicked and rolled on the ground, trying to rip one another apart.

Kel sized the matter up quickly. One of the brawlers she recognized as an Anak’s Eyrie headache, a handsome fellow who doled romance out to as many women as possible, whether or not they had a partner already. The other brawler she didn’t know; neither did she recognize the young woman who stood closest to the fight, but she knew what this was just the same. Rather than choose one or the other and put an end to the problem, this girl had let them go at it with their fists, to prove she was desirable. It was in the way she stood, hugging herself, her brown eyes avid, as the men lurched to their feet.

Kel had seen enough. As the brawlers grabbed each other in bear hugs, she strode in. They were big, strong fellows, but she was trained to combat, and she’d spent eight years strengthening her arms and learning the right time and place to attack. She grabbed both men by the hair and slammed their foreheads together. The watchers gasped with awe.

The men released each other. Kel hauled them apart without letting go of their hair. They were dazed, but that faded quickly. They tried to grab each other.

“Well, they say the front part of the head is the hardest,” Kel remarked to no one in particular. She smashed her captives’ heads together a second time.

Now they staggered. Her grip seemed to be the only thing that kept them upright. One of them flailed at her arm. Kel shook him briskly, as a terrier might shake a rat.

“This saddens me,” she informed the brawlers. “It does. Grown men brawling like apprentices. Now, here’s what you may do for me. Promise to be good lads and go to your beds, and I won’t remember your names later.” She turned their heads so they looked at her. Both sported black eyes and swollen mouths. The Anak’s Eyrie man bled from a bite on his ear; the newcomer had a broken nose. “On second thought, if you promise to be good, I’ll let you visit Sir Nealan. I won’t even ask him to make sure the healing stings so you’ll remember all this. Would you like that?”

Kel’s voice was soft and reasonable. The look she gave them was anything but. She’d never beaten anyone and doubted that she would, but these two didn’t know that. No doubt it was wicked of her to play on their fear of being flogged - it was a punishment favoured by many nobles - but she had decided she would take what she could get in the way of good behaviour, never mind why it was given.

The newcomer nodded agreement first. The Anak’s Eyrie troublemaker required another shake before he too nodded.

“Clasp hands on it, like good lads,” Kel told them.

Both men hesitated, then exchanged handshakes. Kel let go, and they lurched off towards the infirmary.

The young woman who had set this in motion tried to melt back into the crowd. The row of women behind her refused to let her by. She glanced at Kel, who beckoned with one finger.

“A word, if you please, Mistress - ?” Kel let the question hang in the air.

The young woman looked down at her patched skirt. “Peliwin Archer, if it please my lady.”

Kel folded her arms. “Mistress Peliwin, on the coast there is a way of doing things. If two men declare an interest in a woman, it’s her duty to announce which she prefers, if she does prefer one. Then the second lover takes his leave. If he does not, the woman may bring him to the court of the Great Goddess for refusing to accept her right to choose. Does this custom not apply here?”

“It does.” The speaker was a big, black-haired woman with sunken dark eyes and arms as muscled as a smith’s. “It applies throughout the realm. It’s how I got rid of my first husband and got another to suit me.”

The other women nodded or murmured in agreement.

Kel looked at Peliwin. “Why did you not declare your choice, mistress?” she asked.

Peliwin twisted back and forth like a child who wished to leave. “I couldn’t decide, lady knight,” she muttered.

“Then the custom is that you ask both to stand back until you do,” Kel reminded her. “Instead, we now have two fellows at the healer’s who might be called on to defend this place. I think you need time to decide what is truly important here at Haven, and what only serves your vanity. I give you that time. Tomorrow morning you report for a week’s latrine cleaning duty.”

Peliwin yelped, finally meeting Kel’s eyes. “That’s not fair! You can’t expect - “

Kel interrupted, “I can and I do. At the end of that week, you will state your preference and that will be the last I hear of this, Mistress Peliwin. I’ll have no troublemakers here, understand?”

The young woman was still gasping in horror, hands over her mouth.

“Good evening to you, mistresses, masters,” Kel said to the onlookers. They knew they were dismissed: the men bowed, the women curtsied, and the gathering broke up.

Kel wandered between the barracks, nodding to those whose faces she recognized. Two women approached her. Were they coming to praise her handling of the brawl, or to welcome her back?

“Lady knight, you have got to tell this clay-brained besom that if she can’t keep her bratlings from strewing my wash over half the camp - ” one began.

“You’ve been nattering at my children since we moved in,” the other woman interrupted. “Lady knight, it’s enough to drive you mad, the way she goes on!”

Kel quieted them and sorted out the quarrel. She resumed her walk to headquarters, but it took longer than it should have: other refugees asked her for news of the war, to settle a dispute over a litter of kittens, to learn the truth of a rumour that the crops sown in the newly ploughed fields were to go entirely to the Goatstrack refugees. Someone else wanted to know why the newcomers had the barracks closest to the cookhouse. One of the cooks came to report that a keg of Haven’s supply of mead was missing. By the time Kel made it to the headquarters meeting room, she had a headache. She found Neal, the chief clerk Zamiel and Merric already at work, mugs of tea at their elbows. Kel dropped on to a vacant chair and rested her head on her hands. Zamiel pushed a stack of reports at her.

“Tonight I will name Lord Wyldon in my prayers,” she muttered rebelliously. “Tonight and every night until I am freed of this gods-cursed reeky armpit ratsbane camp.”

“You notice she didn’t mention to whom those prayers might be addressed,” Neal remarked. Zamiel sniffed and sipped his tea.

Merric nodded, checking duty rosters for the soldiers. “Given the rest of her statement, I believe they won’t be addressed to any gods of happiness.”

“What’s the matter, love?” Neal asked, pouring a mug of tea for Kel. He watched her rub her temples for a moment, then added drops from a vial he carried in a pouch on his belt. “Did they wear you out with their exuberant welcome?”

“I broke up a brawl, sorted out a few quarrels - why in Mithros’s name do they keep coming to me?” she demanded.

“Because they trust you,” Neal told her. “They look up to you.”

“They know you’ll be fair,” added Zamiel. All three nobles looked at him. While extremely competent, Zamiel seldom offered opinions.

“I hear them talk,” the clerk explained. “I think they believe it’s impossible for anyone to write and listen at the same time.” To Kel he said, “They missed you.”

“They surely did,” Merric told her. “I’d ask if they wanted help with something, and they’d say they’d wait for you to come back.” He grinned. “Frankly, I was glad of it.”

“Oh,” Kel replied, her cheeks warm. She wasn’t sure that she deserved such praise, not when she barely knew what she did. Changing the subject before she heard more unsettling remarks, she asked Neal, “What did you just put in my tea?”

“Something for your headache,” Neal said.

“It’s very good, and very fast,” Zamiel added. “I recommend it.”

Kel looked at Neal and sighed. “Thank you. I never had so many headaches before I came here.” She picked up the mug and sipped. Almost instantly she felt her neck and shoulder muscles loosen; the throbbing in her skull eased.

“Kel, don’t let these commoners impose on you so much, not if it makes you weary,” Merric said, taking a drink of his own tea. “Tell them to clean up their own messes. You’re too easy-going. You have to keep a proper distance, or they’ll climb all over you.”

Kel and Neal exchanged looks again; Zamiel’s expression was carefully blank. Merric’s views were common. Kel and Neal didn’t share them.

“I have a suggestion,” Neal offered. “It won’t solve every problem, but fewer will get as far as you.”

“Please, anything,” Kel begged.

“Make each building elect two council members, a man and a woman. Have that council sit in judgement of quarrels,” he suggested, leaning back in his chair.

“Appoint one of the smarter soldiers - your ex-bandit friend Gil, say, or Sergeant Yngvar - as witness. If a vote gets tied, his is the vote that decides the matter. Change the witness every two weeks. That keeps the soldier from getting tired or getting so friendly with individuals that it might affect his vote.”

Kel sat up. She loved this plan! “Neal, you’re brilliant!” she exclaimed.

Neal grinned. “I know that.”

“So what’s the news from Steadfast?” Merric wanted to know. “I keep asking, but Sir Meathead says we should hear it from you.”

Kel’s good mood faded. “Tobe!” she cried. The door opened.

Tobe stuck his head in. “Lady?”

“I need all of the sergeants who aren’t on duty in here,” Kel said. “Get them, please?”

“It’s that important?” asked Merric. “You know how hot it gets in here when there’s a crowd.”

“It’s that important,” Kel replied grimly. “Giantkiller has fallen. I’ll tell the rest when the others are here. It’s not a report I want to give more than once.”