Through Wolf's Eyes (74 page)

"Which is this to be?"

"I wish I knew," he said. "I bet King Tedric wishes that he knew, too."

"Is there any way to make the war end without many battles?"

"Never start," Derian said, then regretted the
flippancy in his tone. "I take that back. If that quick wisdom was true
our country and Bright Bay would not have been spatting these hundred
years and more. Sometimes a war is needed to clear the enmity as a
thunderstorm clears a late-summer sky—or so they say."

Firekeeper grunted, politely noncommittal about what she thought about this bit of human wisdom.

"The other way wars are won," Derian continued, "is
if one side captures a place or person so important that the other side
will surrender rather than risk their destruction: a king or queen or
perhaps someone like Duke Allister Seagleam, who has taken his queen's
place here. I have heard that in New Kelvin there are buildings so
revered that the
New Kelvinese honor them more highly than any living thing."

"Buildings?"

"So they say," Derian shrugged, "but then New Kelvinese are mad for old things and older customs."

Firekeeper caught her breath in excitement. "Do the Stone-holders have a king here? Where is his sign?"

Derian shook his head. "It's not so easy, Firekeeper.
Stoneholders are ruled by two people, not one, and by a council in
addition. Moreover, none of those august personages are here as far as
I know. They've left Generals Yuci and Grimsel and their troops to
fight the battles for them."

"I don't," Firekeeper admitted, "understand."

"I'm beginning to think," Derian replied, reaching over and squeezing her shoulder, "that neither do I."

W
ITHIN A FEW HOURS
,
a field battle was no longer a thing to be imagined. High in the
concealing branches of a twisted oak on the hilly ground west of Good
Crossing, Firekeeper watched.

She was alone now but for Blind Seer. The wolf was
prowling at the base of the tree trunk, too nervous to sleep, though
the early afternoon was filled with lazy sunlight. Like her, he had
come to care for many of their human friends—to love them as an ersatz
pack—and to see these friends risk their lives so lightly for so little
was maddening.

Derian had gone to his post—to join the raiding party
from which Firekeeper herself had been asked to keep clear. She had
agreed, reluctantly acknowledging the wisdom of King Tedric's
arguments, but at Firekeeper's request, Elation was with Derian,
providing both guard and messenger should their friend come to harm.

Both Elise and Doc were serving in the hospital tents
erected to the rear of the Hawk Haven–Bright Bay lines. Ox was at Earl
Kestrel's side; Race and Valet were with Derian. Sapphire and Jet were
both bearing arms on the field. Even Lady Zorana was pulling a bow
under her brother's command. Various spare nobles had been delegated to
run the
king's messages to the commanders on the field.

Alone of all those she had befriended, Firekeeper had
no place in this war. Her skills with sword and shield, while admirable
for the scant training she had been given, were not good enough for her
to serve in the ranks without being more of a liability to her allies
than to the enemy. Although she was more skilled with a bow, she could
not bring herself to do as Baron Ivon's archers would do—stand in a
line and loose arrows on command, hoping to hit some anonymous figure
on the other side. Slaughter so impersonal made the wolf-woman shiver
and feel sick.

Through the long glass, Firekeeper saw Duke Allister
near the center of Bright Bay and Hawk Haven's allied armies— riding
out among them as chief commander of all those assembled. She wondered
how Duke Allister felt about his tasks and the deaths that would occur
upon his word. She wondered if King Tedric regretted not being out
there himself—he had seemed so very angry when the physicians had
adamantly refused to risk him any nearer to the battlefield than a tent
at the rear of the lines. She wondered if she was even human to so
little understand war.

And troubled by such thoughts, she watched from the
limbs of her towering oak. A thin shrill blast as from a hunting horn
pierced the air. This was followed by a flight of arrows, one coming so
rapidly after the others that the horn call seemed the source of that
black-shafted hail.

Though slim and light in the air, the arrows landed
to deadly effect. Firekeeper cringed as on both sides soldiers crumpled
and screamed. After a few more volleys, archers slung their bows across
their shoulders and lifted their fallen fellows, carrying dead and
wounded alike toward the rear lines. Then she heard the trumpet call
signaling the next movement in the battle.

From the flanks rode out the cavalry. Mounted on a
dark sorrel far heavier than familiar Coal, Earl Kestrel led the right
wing onto the field. Riding slightly behind him on a bald-faced
chestnut selected more for strength than for beauty or grace was Ox.
The big man bore the Kestrel banner in one hand and a sword in the
other.

Ox has no shield,
Firekeeper thought anxiously.
No shield but the speed and skill with which he wields his sword. Yet I could swear that he is laughing and urging the others on
.

Her gaze turned then to the other flank, where a
woman she had met only in passing led the left flank of the cavalry
charge. This was the Duchess Merlin, a woman young for her
position—barely twenty-four. Her grandfather and father had both died
in their forties.

There had been those who had argued that House
True-heart would do better with an older, steadier person at its head
to help young Grace learn her way about her responsibilities—among
those had been Zorana Archer, who had nominated her husband, Aksel
Trueheart, the duchess's uncle. Grace, however, had been twenty-two
when her father died and so was legally eligible to take her place
among the heads of the Great Houses.

Many had expressed surprise when Duchess Merlin had
arrived personally leading the reinforcements raised from those who
usually patrolled her lands. Derian had reported that the king had said
that the young duchess needed to prove herself and that she fully
understood the risk she was taking. On her arrival Duchess Merlin had
presented the king with a document not unlike the king's own will,
naming a regent for her year-old son should she die on the field.

And how many others,
Firekeeper mused, watching the slender duchess on her sturdy dapple grey charge into the opposing line of mounted soldiers,
are
out there fighting not because they believe in preserving Bright Bay's
territory from Stonehold, but because they have something to prove?
Surely Sapphire Shield fights to earn glory rather than for Bright Bay.
And perhaps Jet hopes that valor in battle may remove the ignominy of
his behavior on the night of the brothels.

When Sapphire Shield had requested to join Earl
Kestrel's company, the earl had welcomed her, not so much, Firekeeper
knew, for her skill—though Sapphire rode as well as many of the cavalry
troops—but because the soldiers loved her for appearing like a figure
out of legend: for the blue steed she rode, for her dyed and enameled
armor.

Sapphire's renunciation of the stone that had glowed
so long on her brow had done nothing to lessen the tales growing up
around her. Though two days had passed, the skin where the headband had
rested for so long remained as white as new-fallen snow. Already some
whispered that Sapphire had battled evil sorcery and won.

And yet, even those who shiver deliciously at the tales don't believe them, not deep inside. How strange.

The infantry waded into the gaps left by the clash of
cavalry. Here was where Rolfston Redbriar fought and here was where he
died, slain by a practiced sword slash from a grim-faced woman with a
dogwood blossom painted above the triple chevronels on her shield.
Neither Sapphire nor Jet, each elsewhere on the field, knew that they
were now fatherless.

Melina was right when she told Rolfston Redbriar
not to be a fool and join the battle, but he would have nothing of her
wisdom—not when Ivon Archer fights both as an archer and then on foot.
I wonder if somehow Lady Melina will turn even this tragedy to enhance
her reputation.

In the infantry was where many other people
Firekeeper had met were fighting: men and women with whom she had
tossed dice or who had proven their courage by stroking Blind Seer's
head. It bothered her that she could not tell one from another even
with the long glass. Helmets and armor, combined with shields held to
protect vital spots, turned each figure into a blood- and dirt-smeared
variation on the rest.

Firekeeper found herself watching the cavalry instead, for horses were distinct where humans were not.

She watched, fingernails digging trenches in her
palms, as Earl Kestrel's sorrel was belly-wounded and tumbled screaming
to the ground. Had Ox not been near to lift the body from his earl,
Norvin Norwood, too, would have died there. As it was, Earl Kestrel
struggled to his feet and eschewed his own safety to cut his horse's
throat before turning to face those who saw an unseated cavalry officer
as fair game.

Prince Newell, mounted on a rust-colored steed
splashed with white on legs and face, rescued Earl Kestrel by dashing
close enough to shield-bash the soldier who was raising his
sword to strike, though this left Newell himself vulnerable.

Ox tended to the soldier who would have stabbed
Newell, receiving in return an ugly slash that laid open one side of
his jaw. Ignoring the red rain that came forth, he beat his way back to
the little earl's side, finally shoving him into the saddle of his own
sturdy chestnut. Then, scooping up the banner pole, Ox raised the
Kestrel crest so that the earl's troop would take heart from the
knowledge that their commander was safe.

Once unremarkable, now the little scrap of land was
watered with blood, mostly in trickles and dribbles but sometimes in
terrible gouts where soldiers or steeds had been mortally wounded. The
hot, coppery stink came even to where Firekeeper sat and soon she
thought she could bear no more. Yet she remained anchored to her perch,
held by a fierce desire not to cheapen the sacrifice of those who were
fighting by hiding like a rabbit.

So she was there to see when Duke Allister's aide, a
man she vaguely recalled as Lord Tench, was slain by an arrow meant for
the duke.

Duke Allister's group was mostly afoot now—perhaps to
make the duke less visible. Had Allister Seagleam not turned to answer
some request from a bloodied retainer, had Tench not moved to listen to
what was being said, the arrow might have landed unnoticed in dirt
already churned by many feet, already littered with countless arrows
from earlier attacks. But the arrow hit Tench squarely in the back, a
mortal wound that left the others in his vicinity scattering for cover.
And Firekeeper was down from her sheltering oak before Tench hit the
ground.

"That arrow could only have come from near here,"
she cried to Blind Seer.
"That
was no chance shot! Let us find the archer. I have no love for those
who kill brave soldiers from a distance and from cover."

Blind Seer gaped his fanged jaws in a vicious smile.
"I
am with you, Little Two-legs, but the smells of blood and sweat and
fear thicken the air. I cannot find this archer by scent alone. Use
your knowledge of the archer's craft and find him for us."

And Firekeeper nodded, calling to mind every trace
and trick for use of the bow that Race Forester had taught her. Her
teacher's skill had been honed by the need to live by his hunting and
her enthusiasm for his lessons had been avid; otherwise she might not
have found the place from which the assassin's arrow had been shot. But
having all her life— at least her life as she remembered it—needed to
survive by dint of quickness and cleverness, Firekeeper remembered
precisely the path of that arrow as it had streaked through the fair
sky.

"It is not so unlike finding the lark's nest by recalling how she darts into the sky from cover,"
she said to Blind Seer, mentally tracing the arrow's path.
"We
will find the archer there in that clump of maples—ahead a bit, closer
to the battlefield. Doubtless he has hidden in the tree boughs as I did
here."

"The ground between is opener than I like,"
the wolf replied, already lowering himself to slink close to the earth as the pack would when stalking a herd of elk.
"I mislike how your tall two-legged shape will stand out."

The feral woman stroked his thick ruff.
"There is
no avoiding that risk. We can only hope this archer's thoughts are for
his prey alone. Keep to what cover you can, dearest one. Remember his
skill with the bow!"

Together they left their shelter. Blind Seer, belly
so close to the earth that the stubble groomed his fur, took the most
direct line, but Firekeeper dropped back to approach the clump of
maples from behind. Once in the open, she ran like a deer or a wolf—for
one was much the same in short bursts; it must be for the one to live
by hunting the other. And it was doubtful that even if the archer in
his lofty blind had seen her he would have been able to fit arrow to
string in time to take aim.

Despite having more ground to cover, Firekeeper
arrived slightly before the wolf. No scent betrayed the archer, but the
scuffed bark of the largest tree in the clump testified to his
presence. Blind Seer crouched below as she leapt onto the tree trunk,
scrabbling upward like a squirrel, her bare feet
finding purchase where most climbers would have found none.

"If he jumps down,"
Firekeeper called to her companion,
"catch
him, but leave the killing to me. I liked not how the humans looked at
you in fear when you killed the one who would have slain Sapphire in
the town that night."