By the Sword (48 page)

But the mare would follow wherever Kero led; such was her training and breeding, and the trust they had built together. Kero had to pull the packs off and pitch them into drifts beside the gate to get her through, but the mare gave no trouble with squeezing through the gate, even though the saddle scraped on the stockade walls on either side of her.

The counter-weighted gate swung shut behind her horse's tail, and the lock clicked. Hellsbane flicked her ears at the sound and whickered nervously.

Kero pulled the packs out of the snow and swung them back up behind the saddle, fastening them as best she could to the lean packs that were already there.

She mounted as soon as the packs were in place; every heartbeat counted at this point.
I had no idea they were so close behind me, she thought worriedly. I know we didn't make the best time, because we had to keep back-tracking to avoid the towns—and I know Hellsbane wasn't in the best shape, either, but I thought we were farther ahead of them than that.

There was another possibility as well. If Ardana had wanted her badly enough to mount up the freshest horses and the best riders in the Company to go after her, with enough money to permit them to change horses at every posting-house, they could have caught up with her quite easily. And that made getting to a town with a strong representation of the Mercenary's Guild all the more important.

Even if it meant riding all night.

 

It had meant more than riding all night, it had meant riding past dawn. Kero had never known a person could be so tired, so deep-down exhausted, and still be standing. She stifled a yawn as she recited her story for the third time before the representatives of the Guild.

Each time, she had faced a different set of people. The first time was right after she'd come through the city gates. She wanted bed and food, but with Ardana's flunkies out there looking for her, she knew she didn't dare stop for either.

She'd breathed a whole lot easier after she passed the door of the Guild, a sturdy stone edifice that didn't look a great deal different from the Guildhall of any other Guild. Once inside, she asked for directions to the Arbitrators. She had been sent up a flight of worn wooden stairs to a tiny office, where she'd told a shortened version to a stone-faced secretary of some kind.

He gave her a chair when she'd finished, and went off somewhere. When he came back, his stonelike demeanor had thawed a little, and he took her to another office. That was where she had told the story a second time, to a much friendlier and sympathetic official—one who seemed to strive to make her feel comfortable, and to convince her that she could trust him. She did—but mostly because she was convinced she was in the right, and she was only trying to protect herself and her standing within the Guild. She could see how someone with a falsified tale could easily get himself in deep trouble with this man; he had asked many careful questions, all designed to make her incriminate herself or uncover flaws in her story that would reveal it to be a fabrication.

That had taken the better part of the morning, and she was dizzy with fatigue when he was finished with her. She didn't try to touch his thoughts, but she had a very real sense that everything he said was part of a carefully prepared script, and that he wasn't about to deviate from it except in the most extreme circumstances.

She couldn't help but wonder how many cases the Arbitrators saw that never got beyond this man. Probably quite a few, judging by his reactions to her. Although he didn't actually say anything that (probably) fell outside his prepared speeches, she got the distinct impression that he was warming to her—outside of the “hail-fellow-well-met” facade he presented.

Once again she was sent off to wait, this time in a little room with three other people, all as silent as she, and two of them looking considerably more harried. The third was black and blue, with splints on one arm. She got the feeling that this man was desperate, under the fog of his pain-killers. If the Arbitrators denied him his perceived justice, he might well do something, something excessive.

He was the first called, and she didn't see him again. Evidently, petitioners did not leave by the same door they came in, because the other petitioner was called a few moments later, and when Kero was summoned into the room, there was no sign of either of them.

She found herself in a large, well-lit, barren room, empty of everything except a long table with three chairs behind it. In those chairs sat the Arbitrators, two men and a woman, all three of them the very image of the perfect soldier. All three sat as erect as if this was a parade ground, all three wore identical long-sleeved tunics of brown leather, and all three wore their graying hair close-cropped.

This third and final time she recited her entire story to the panel of three Guild Arbitrators, who all remained as impassive and unemotional as statues. She thought that was probably a good sign. This town of Selina was completely outside Ardana's immediate reach, and had a strong town council of its own. And the administrative branch of the Guild here was well known for fair play. Their completely impartial attitudes let her know they would be weighing not only everything she said, but how she said it.

By now she was exhausted, and she greatly envied Hellsbane, safely and warmly installed in the Guild stables, fed and groomed and probably now asleep.

She tried to tell things simply and clearly, with as little emotional weight as possible; tried to act as impassive and neutral as her judges seemed to be. But she heard herself slurring words as if she was drunk; and so she was, but with weariness, not wine.

It wasn't hard to sound impassive after all. As she did her best to make sure she kept all her facts straight, she discovered that right at this moment she didn't care much about anything; all she was really aware of was her acute need to sleep and the hollow emptiness of her stomach. Too late, she thought perhaps that her approach was all wrong; maybe she should have been passionate and full of righteous anger—maybe she wasn't convincing them. Maybe they read her stoicism as the facade of someone who was making everything up.

But it was too late to change now, and besides, she was too tired. It was all she could do to keep her narrative clear, and answer their questions with some semblance of intelligence.

Finally she came to the end of her story, and the Arbitrators came to the end of their questions.

They sent her out through a second door on the opposite side of the room, where she found a small chamber identical to the one she'd waited in before her “audience.”

It was a tiny, windowless box of a room, stuffy, and airless. There were three chairs, all empty, all equally uncomfortable, which was just as well. She wouldn't have been able to resist the implied comfort of a padded chair, and once settled into something like that, she'd have fallen asleep for certain.

She took her seat to await their decision in the middle of the three chairs, a high-backed, unyielding piece, so tired that only the deep ache of hunger kept her awake.

That, and the fact that her imagination began to run wild. Being alone like this, with nothing to think about except her performance and possible fate, only made her worry more.

What if they
don't
believe a word
I
said? What if they think
I'm
lying? There had been no way to tell what they were thinking while she was talking; if they hadn't been breathing occasionally, she would have taken them for corpses.
But what possible motive could I have for lying? Ambition? I was promoted under Ardana. Revenge? She never did anything to me directly.
But that might not make any difference. People had mutinied against their leaders with no apparent reason before this. She worried the fear until the edges were frayed, but she couldn't dismiss it. It seemed to be taking forever for the Arbitrators to make their decision.

She got up and paced the floor, hands clasped tightly behind her back, trying to walk softly, but unable to keep her boots quiet against the hard wooden floor.
What if Ardana's flunkies went here first, instead of the winter quarters? What if they told Ardana's version, and the Arbitrators believe her?

It was possible. If they had changed horses, and gone by the trade roads, they could have beaten her here easily.
But she can't argue away the casualty rate. She can't argue away her lack of strategy.

There were plenty of excuses Ardana
could
make for those things, though, and Kero's imagination was quick to supply them. Illness, inexperience, treachery on the part of their allies, unfamiliar territory, a chain of command fundamentally new to their positions....

She had managed to work herself up to such a pitch that when the door opened behind her, she jumped and uttered a muffled (and undignified) squeak of alarm. She was so rattled that she turned and just stood there staring at the newcomer, heart pounding, unable to speak for a moment.

Standing framed in the doorway was her second questioner, the friendly middle-aged man who had cross-examined her so skillfully. He stared at her for a moment, obviously taken aback by her nervous response to the simple act of a door opening behind her.

“I—I'm sorry,” she stammered. “I'm kind of—jumpy. I'm letting my nerves get the better of me.”

He recovered his aplomb, and smiled, and this time she had the feeling it was a genuine smile and not the facade he'd worn for her the first time they'd met. “I'm the one who should apologize,” he said. “I knew very well what you'd been through, and I didn't make allowances for it. I'm lucky all you did was jump—with that poor fellow whose case was heard first, I might have found myself on the floor with a knife at my throat.”

She smiled wanly, and he waved her through the door. “The Arbitrators have decided in your favor, Kerowyn,” he continued, tugging his leather tunic straight with a gesture that seemed to be habit. “But they want you to hear it from them. Even though this is a decision for you, it may not be everything you were hoping for.”

All of the tension drained out of her, leaving her limp and ready to accept just about anything. She obeyed his direction, and found herself back in front of the table, facing the three granite-faced Arbitrators.

Now that she knew they'd decided for her, she looked at them a little more closely. All three of them were older than she'd first thought; old enough to be grandparents, though she had no doubt that any of the three could challenge her at their chosen forms of combat and quite probably beat her. They all had that indefinable air of the professional mercenary; cool, calm, unruffled, and quite able to take on whatever needs doing.

Two men, and one woman; all three had probably worked themselves up from the ranks. She smiled a little to herself. If they had come up from the ranks, they weren't going to appreciate what the Skybolts' Captain had done to her people. Ardana was going to get short shrift from them, if she hadn't already.

The woman spoke; she had the seat on Kero's left, and looked a little older than the other two. “We've decided in your favor, Kerowyn,” she said, her voice surprisingly soft and melodic. “We agree that you had every right and every reason to sever your contract, and that you did so legally.”

That was all she had ever wanted to hear. “Thank you—” she started to say, but the woman interrupted her with an upraised hand.

“Your Captain was and is a fool,” she said, “but there's nothing in the Guild Code preventing fools from being in command, or from getting their people hurt or killed. We aren't in the business of telling Captains how to command; we only deal with violations of the Code. The Guild allows only one kind of retribution for Captains of her sort—the kind you took. Severing contracts neatly and legally until she is in command of nothing. Do you understand me?”

Kero put a lock on her reaction of disappointment and nodded. “What you're saying is pretty much what I'd expected,” she replied, trying not to think of those friends still trapped under Ardana's command until the end of the Company contract. Only then could they sever their relations with her.

Of course, they would have one advantage over Kero. There would be no record of insubordination in their files.

The woman smiled ever so slightly; the barest hint of a curve to her weathered lips. “Unfortunately, no matter what we put in your record, it is unlikely that any bonded Company will ever accept you again. I hope you realized that, if not when you severed, at least when you'd had a chance to think all this out. Mercenaries who sever contracts in the field, even under extreme provocation such as you experienced, tend to be viewed with a jaundiced eye by other commanders. After all, by their way of thinking, if you do it once, what's to stop you from doing it again? To them, it's just another form of desertion under fire.”

Well, that was what I thought, although I'd rather she hadn't said it.
Kero sighed. “I understand that, sir,” she said, rocking a little back and forth to ease her aching feet.

“But I wonder if you really know what that means in terms of the immediate present,” the woman persisted. “This is the lean season. The only places hiring right now are Companies. I understand that you have very little in the way of savings. You are going to find it all but impossible to find work here in Selina, and you won't have the wherewithal to go elsewhere.”

Kero blinked. “But—what about going bonded free-lance?” she asked, wondering what on earth she was missing. “I thought bonded free-lancers were always in demand. All anyone is going to check is whether or not I am bonded—”

“If you can find work,” the woman told her. “You have no experience outside of a Company. This is winter. No caravans, no warfare, no hunting where someone might need a tracker who is also a fighter, no work as a city guard and damned near no bodyguard work. Nothing's moving. No one is going anywhere. I can promise you that there is no work in Selina for someone of your talents.”