War Maid's Choice-ARC (35 page)

Leeana swallowed hard, looking back into her mother’s face for a moment, and then nodded.

“Well,” she said in a more normal voice, “I’ll try not to follow in his footsteps—in that regard, at least. But it’s wonderful to see you, too.” She gave Hanatha’s arms a brief squeeze, then stepped back. “Your letters are wonderful, but it’s just—”

She broke off and shrugged, and it was Hanatha’s turn to nod.

“I know,” she agreed. “I know. But you’re here now, and that’s what really matters.” She looked past Leeana to where Sharlassa stood just inside the door, smiling at them both. “Somehow I have the feeling someone is playing truant again,” the baroness observed, raising one forefinger in an admonishing gesture. “Under the circumstances, however, I’m inclined to let it pass...this time.”

“Thank you, Milady,” Sharlassa replied meekly...and dimpled.

“Well, since you are playing truant, and since we have a guest, why don’t you ask someone to send up a light tea for the three of us?”

“Of course, Milady,” Sharlassa agreed, turning back towards the door, and Hanatha waved her daughter towards the window seat along the solarium’s western wall.

Leeana started to stoop and pick up her saddle bags, but Hanatha shook her head.

“Time enough for that later,” she said, shooing her daughter towards the window seat. “I don’t doubt that war maid code of yours is going to demand you carry them to your chamber yourself instead of relying upon the labor of some hapless servant like a properly decadent aristocrat, but there’s no rush. Besides, much as I’ve come to love Sharlassa, the girl is unnaturally neat.” She shook her head. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed having a proper teenager’s clutter around the place!”

“Was I really that bad?” Leeana smiled. “I
tried
to keep it out of your sight in my room, you know.”

“Yes, you
were
that bad,” Hanatha said firmly.

She settled into a comfortable chair, facing the window seat, and studied her daughter intently for several seconds. Then she nodded.

“It suits you,” she said simply.

“I beg your pardon?” Leeana arched an eyebrow, and her mother snorted.

“Leeana, I practically had to rope and tie you to get you into a gown before you ran off to the war maids. And while it’s probably highly improper of me to say this, I always actually sympathized with you a lot more than you knew. But this”—a wave of her hand gestured at Leeana’s trousers, shirt, and doublet—“suits you far better. And at least it’s not as scandalous as that chari and yathu—if I got it right—of yours!”

The words could have been biting, but instead they were almost teasing, and Hanatha’s eyes flickered with what certainly looked like genuine amusement.

“I hope they aren’t
too
scandalous for you, Mother,” Leeana said after a moment in a rather more serious tone, and Hanatha shrugged.

“I won’t pretend I wouldn’t really rather not have you showing your belly button to all the world, my dear,” she said dryly. “And it would probably be as well for me to keep my opinion of other aspects of traditional war maid attire to myself, as well. For that matter, I strongly suspect you never want to hear your
father’s
reaction to the first time he ever saw you in it.”

She rolled her eyes, but then her expression sobered.

“Nonetheless, Leeana, it’s part of who you are and who you’ve become, and I expect you to wear those scandalous, overly revealing, appalling garments with style, grace, and composure.” She squared her shoulders, resting her folded hands atop the cane braced upright before her. “I doubt you can truly understand, even now, how terribly it hurt when you ran away to the war maids, but most of that hurt of mine was about what I knew it was going to cost you. No mother wants to see her daughter pay that kind of price, especially for something which was never her fault in the first place. But what it’s taken me quite a long time to fully understand from your letters and those fleeting visits of yours is how much you’ve
gained
from it. You were always a falcon fighting its jesses, even when you didn’t know it yourself. Now you’re free to fly, and I want you to fly high, love. Stretch those wings and soar.”

Leeana looked back at her, then swallowed hard.

“Thank you, Mother,” she half-whispered.

“You’re welcome. Although, judging from your track record, you probably really don’t need a great deal of encouragement. I wouldn’t precisely want to call you
headstrong
, of course—although, now that I think about it, I can’t come up with a more appropriate adjective—but I have this strange suspicion that a young woman who ran away to become a war maid at fourteen isn’t very likely to start settling for anyone else’s foolish restrictions at this late date. In fact, you’re extraordinarily like your father in that respect. Although it’s to be hoped you’re at least a
little
smarter.”

Hanatha’s last sentence came out with a certain tartness, and Leeana’s eyebrows rose.

“I know that tone, Mother,” she said, settling back in the window seat as Sharlassa came back from her errand and sat facing her and Hanatha both. “I admit it’s been a while since I’ve heard it, but I
do
know it. So what is it that Father’s been up to that you didn’t include in your letters?”

Chapter Sixteen

Chemalka wasn’t cooperating, Sir Trianal Bowmaster reflected. Or not yet, at least, he amended. There was still time for Her to straighten this mess out, and he sent an urgent mental appeal to Her to get on with it. Who knew? It might even do some good, despite Her well-earned reputation for completely ignoring the requests of mere mortals.

The thought was rather less amusing than it might have been, and the night-black stallion under him stamped one rear hoof as it caught its rider’s mood. The warhorse blew heavily, tossing its head, and Trianal shook his own head mentally. Anyone who knew Windy (otherwise known as Nightwind Blowing) well wouldn’t have any problem reading his rider’s mood from the stallion’s body language. Not that it was very likely Trianal was the only one thinking what he was thinking at the moment.

“Never did like fog, Milord,” Sir Yarran Battlecrow said conversationally. Trianal turned his head, and the older knight smiled crookedly at him. “Seems like you and I have been here before, doesn’t it, Milord?”

“I was just thinking that myself,” Trianal admitted, remembering the very first battle he’d ever commanded...and how comforting Sir Yarran had been to him that time, too. Windy had been under his saddle that time, as well, now that he thought about it. “But at least there’s no damned swamp for them to be hiding in!”

“Don’t know as how fog’s that much of an improvement,” Sir Yarran said philosophically, easing himself in the saddle and glancing back over his shoulder at the waiting light cavalry. “Leastwise, it wouldn’t be if we were the ones who had to go in after the bastards.”

“I’d just as soon
no one
had to go in after them blind,” Trianal said a bit testily. “And in visibility like this, we
are
going to have to go in amongst them if everything goes according to plan. Won’t
that
be fun?”

Sir Yarran made a sound of unhappy agreement and craned his neck, peering up in hopes of discovering that the sun had suddenly decided to rise in the heavens and burn away the ground fog. Instead, all he saw was more fog—cold, damp, thick...and thoroughly unseasonable.

He lowered his gaze to the dripping branches of the scrub trees among which the members of Trianal’s command group had parked themselves. They were farther out in front of the main body than Sir Yarran really liked. In fact, it made his spine itch uncomfortably, although his concern was far more about something happening to Trianal than it was about anything happening to him personally. And, under normal circumstances and against another foe, he wouldn’t have been worried as much about Trianal as he was, either. But ghouls were blindingly, incredibly fast, and despite their size, the damned things moved like ghosts. Then there was that keen sense of smell of theirs. It was said a ghoul could sniff out spilled blood more than a league away. Yarrow found that difficult to believe, yet he was prepared to admit their sense of smell matched that of the finest hunting hound he’d ever seen. Which meant it was entirely possible one of them had already scented the Sothōii’s presence, in which case the gods only knew how many of them might be flitting around in the mist just out of sight right this moment. And if one of them took it into whatever passed for a ghoul’s mind to launch an attack on the cavalry force’s youthful commander...

Stop that
, he told himself firmly.
It’s not going to happen. And even if it does, there isn’t much you can do about it unless you want the lad to go hide somewhere in the rear ranks, and you know how well
that
suggestion would work!

“’Fraid you’re probably right about the bows in this stuff, Milord,” he said glumly, after a moment. “Still and all, it’ll take their javelins out of it, too.”

“You
are
determined to find a bright side, aren’t you?” Trianal’s tone was sour, but he gave Sir Yarran a smile to go with it. Then he sobered and turned to one of his aides. “Head back along the column, Garthian. Tell them it’s going to be lance and saber, not bows. And”—he held up a restraining hand as the courier started to turn his horse’s head back towards the rear—“tell them anyone I see charging ahead without somebody to cover his flanks is going to wish he’d never been born...assuming he survives long enough for me to rip his head off, at any rate. Clear?”

“As crystal, Milord!” Garthian replied with a broad smile.

“Then go. And keep your voice down while you’re passing the word.”

“Aye, Sir!” Garthian slapped his chest in acknowledgment, turned his horse, and went briskly cantering back along the mounted column.

“Think Yurgazh and Sir Vaijon will hold to the schedule, Milord?” Yarran asked more quietly as the spattering thud of muddy hoof beats faded.

“I’m sure they will,” Tellian replied. “Trust me, Yarran,” he turned and looked into his henchman’s eyes levelly, “one thing they
aren’t
going to do is leave us hanging out here in the fog by ourselves.”

* * *

“Don’t suppose you could have a word with Scale Balancer about this fog, Sir Vaijon?” Yurgazh Charkson grumbled, waving one hand in front of his face like a man trying to brush away a fly. It made him look a little silly, Vaijon thought, not that he intended to say anything about it.

“I’m afraid weather is Chemalka’s jurisdiction, not Tomanāk’s,” he replied.

“Pity,” the Bloody Sword general half-grunted. He started to add something more—probably something fairly biting, Vaijon thought—but he stopped himself, and the champion smiled crookedly.

Yurgazh was one of the hradani who still had remarkably little use for any gods, Light or Dark, Vaijon reflected. From what he’d learned of the hradani’s struggle to survive for the last twelve centuries, Vaijon couldn’t really blame them for holding to the opinion that no gods had done them any favors during the process. Tomanāk had always had a certain grudging acceptance among them as the one God of Light a warrior could truly respect, although (much as it dismayed him to admit it) Krashnark had enjoyed almost as much respect. The balance had tipped in Tomanāk’s favor when He revealed the truth about the Rage to all hradani through Bahzell, but it probably would have been demanding a bit too much to have expected all hradani everywhere to immediately embrace the Gods of Light after so many centuries.

Not that he could disagree with Yurgazh’s fervent desire that
some
god would take it upon himself or herself to dispel the unexpected fog. If there’d been some way to get word to Trianal, Vaijon would have been tempted to suggest they call off the attack entirely until the weather had cleared. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any way to get word to the Sothōii—not without risking having any courier go astray and probably ride smack into the enemy, in this fog—which meant they were committed.

And wasn’t that going to be fun?

Ghouls were nothing anyone in his right mind, even a hradani, wanted to engage in hand-to-hand combat. They were constructs from the Wizard Wars which had doomed Kontovar, and no one seemed to know how any of them had made the journey to Norfressa. They weren’t the only...less than desirable echoes of the Fall which had washed up in Norfressa, unfortunately. In fact, until very recently, no Sothōii had made much of a distinction between ghouls and hradani, and in some ways—especially considering the way in which arcanely enslaved hradani had served as the Carnadosans’ shock troops during the Wizard Wars—it wasn’t that hard to understand. But even the Sothōii at their worst had recognized that ghouls were far more dangerous than the hradani, and not simply because they had even more objectionable personal habits.

Unlike hradani, with their low fertility rates, ghouls had been specifically designed to reproduce quickly and mature rapidly, which meant even a relatively small infestation of them could grow to frightening size with dismaying speed. They weren’t precisely what anyone might call fastidious eaters, either, and any given band or village of ghouls had no friends, even among their fellow ghouls.

Physically, ghouls resembled trolls. They were a bit shorter—few of them stood much over eight and a half feet in height—and more lightly built, but their frames were deceptively powerful and their reflexes were unbelievably swift. According to Wencit of Rūm, who certainly ought to know, that speed had been arcanely engineered into them along with their reproduction rate, and they paid for it with ravenous appetites and shortened lifespans. It was unusual for any ghoul to attain as much as forty years of age, and most of them died before they were thirty-five, which was no more than half the lifespan of a troll. They were almost as hard to kill as a troll, though, and like trolls, they recovered with almost unbelievable speed from any wound which didn’t kill them outright. Indeed, they healed much faster even than hradani; it wasn’t unheard of for a troll’s or a ghoul’s blood-spouting wound to close itself and actually begin healing in the course of the same battle in which it had been inflicted. The only way to be certain of killing one of them was to take its head; otherwise, what a warrior might have been certain was a corpse was all too likely to recover and rip
his
head off from behind.