Deeds of Honor (10 page)

"Sergeant?" Ganeth, the watch-first, spoke at once; he was huddled by the fire; it hissed when a bead of sleet hit it.

"We'll need to move tomorrow," Vardan said, wondering as she said it if that would be possible. If the sleet turned to heavy snow, if the clouds hid both the sun and Torre's Necklace by night, they could be lost in the forest. She was no ranger, to feel the taig and its guidance. The maps she'd had burned with the camp. "Unless it snows," she added, sighing. "I'll take over, Ganeth. Go in and wake sentries; I'll tell the others they're off-watch."

Flurries of sleet and snow alternated the rest of the night; at dawn the ground was powdered white. The troops looked better for sleep and food and cleanliness. They made breakfast smartly, straightened the campsite, and looked to Vardan as if they expected her to know what to do next.

Three hands of them, and herself. What could three hands do best?

The winterwards sentry hooted the alarm, as near to an owl's call as he could. In that instant Vardan knew one thing they could do: kill Pargunese who did not outnumber them. She signaled in Halveric hand-talk; her troops arranged themselves and moved out.

The Pargunese they saw skulking through the forest looked as desperate as she had felt the day before. Four hands of them, half with pikes and half with crossbows. They stopped every few steps; they muttered in Pargunese, pointing this way and that.

They were lost, that was clear, and they did not agree on something—direction? Intention? They did not seem to expect an attack—or had no discipline, which she did not believe, having seen the Pargunese marching.

Vardan's troops let them come closer...closer. Then three ravens flew from a tree with loud cries, and the Pargunese looked upward. Vardan signaled. Her five archers took five of the Pargunese crossbowmen, two from one side, three from the other. The other crossbowmen bent to span their bows, but too late—five more arrows and they were all down, wounded at least. The pikes, five ahead and five behind, drew quickly into a circle, pikes out, but were too few, and on uneven ground. The Halverics stepped forward, swords drawn. The Pargunese yelled—for help? Curses?—and again the Halveric archers drew, shot, drew, and shot again. At that range, the Pargunese armor—whatever it was under their winter cloaks—did not protect them, and they fell, dead or wounded, the pikes clattering to the ground.

Vardan watched as her troops finished them, collected the weapons and stripped the corpses. Twenty warm woolen cloaks, heavy knitted tunics, woolen trousers, boots, gloves, helmets...her own people would not go cold now. And they had ornaments—earrings, neck-rings, arm-rings, all in designs Vardan had not seen except on a ship-captain in Immerdzan. Her people glanced back. "Go ahead," she said. "They owe us."

The Pargunese had carried packs as well, stuffed with hard rounds of bread, dried fish, dried meat, unfamiliar hard orange cheeses, and small stone jars of something that stank like rotting fish. Besides pikes they had short swords with a different shape of blade from the Halveric swords, and some had small axes strapped to their packs.

"Take it all back to the ranger shelter," Vardan said. "We can leave something for the rangers, after all."

By the time they had done that, and hauled the Pargunese corpses farther away, snow was falling again and daylight was almost gone. That second night in the ranger shelter felt very different; meeting and killing the Pargunese meant that being where they were had a purpose. The next morning, snow flurries made Vardan decide to stay where they were another day rather than risk being lost.

Instead, they sorted through everything they'd taken from the Pargunese. Everyone now had warm clothes and cloak as well as a pack to carry supplies. They repacked the cloaks borrowed from the rangers and stacked the extra Pargunese clothes beside them. The Pargunese food seemed wholesome enough, except for the stinking goo in the stone jars. She made sure the ornaments were shared out fairly—they'd all earned the loot—and for herself took an arm-ring and a neck-ring. Though it was against Halveric rules to wear anything but the oath-ring on duty, Vardan decided this was a special case.

Around midday, the sentry on the sunsetting side brought in a hand of Halverics from farther upstream. Vardan recognized them as part of those who had been stationed at Riverwash.

"It's gone, Sergeant," their leader said. "Some kind of magical fire. The captain had sent two tensquads of us out to back up the Royal Archers downstream, where the first landings were. We was coming back, when we saw it glaring in the sky, and then it went hurtling past—we saw Riverwash burn."

"Two tensquads of you—where are the others?"

"Not far behind us—three are wounded. We were trailing some Pargunese. Found some nekkid bodies—"

"We killed them yesterday." Two tensquads plus her own made nearly four—enough to do something with. "One of you go back—tell them to hurry up here—there's a big force of Pargunese sunrising of us, headed for Chaya. Rangers are harrying them—we can help."

In the afternoon the snow stopped, though wind continued to moan in the trees. A line of hard blue showed to the north. With the other Halverics there, the little shelter was far too small, but Vardan felt much happier. After two meals and a rest, with starshine lighting the snow, Vardan decided it was time to go. The wounded swore they could keep up; she sensed their need to be with their comrades. Her sixteen used the Pargunese packs; all of them took as much food as they could stuff into them, and long before the turn of night they were on their way, scouts out ahead, behind, to either side. More than three tensquads felt like much more than a little less than two.

* * * *

By dawn they had reached the fire's track, now dusted white with snow over the ash and showing no sign of travelers. The snow-capped body of a dead horse, and other lumps that might be corpses lay here and there. But even as Vardan wondered how far ahead the Pargunese were, a ranger stood up from a tangle of half-burnt branches and roots.

"You've come back," he said to Vardan. "We thought perhaps you'd gone straight to Chaya."

"I didn't know the way," Vardan said.

"They're moving slowly," the ranger said, heading south along the fire track as if he knew they would follow. "We're able to do that much, and we've killed a fair number, though we can't stop them...I thought you had only three hands of troops."

"Found more," Vardan said. "So—we can catch them?"

"Oh, yes. And it's safe to walk out here—smoother—until we're closer to them. All we have to worry about is their horses, and that not much. How many bows have you?"

"Five hands of longbows," Vardan said. "Trained to volley fire, battlefield style." She looked aside at the forest walls. "Any chance they'll set an ambush?"

"We keep them too busy," the ranger said. He gestured to the mounds under the snow. "We haven't counted, but they're not as big as they were."

"We took two tensquads, back there," Vardan said. "Half pikes, half crossbows. We left the pikes at your camp, but you see that some of our troops have crossbows now."

"Slow," the ranger said. "But a good range, I'll grant."

To the side, in the woods, someone moved; Vardan caught the movement from the corner of her eye; the ranger stopped and lifted a hand.

"They're not far ahead," he said. "Will you join us on the flank or try to attack their rear? Half the horses are there."

Vardan looked around. On the open track, horses could move faster on the ash and snow than her troops...and yet an unexpected volley... "Do they have a rear guard? Alert, I mean?"

"Yes, but they're tired. And hungry, I think. We haven't let them sleep easy."

"Two days ago they returned volley for volley—do they still?"

"We don't shoot by volley...we pick them off one at a time. But they seem to be conserving their bolts now."

Vardan sent the wounded off to the woods, and directed the rest to advance in file up either side of the track. Ahead, the track lifted gently over a rise; the enemy, the ranger reported, was just the other side.

At the rear of the Pargunese formation, half the horsemen faced backward. The formation was definitely smaller than what she had seen before, but too close to bring her troops into view without risking a deadly charge. She blinked, trying to calculate the distances. Captain Talgan had had some arrangement of sticks and string he used for that. She crawled backward down the slope and described what she'd seen to her troops and the three rangers.

"You want a dropping volley from back here, out of sight? How far is it, Sergeant?"

"A hundred full paces, about," she said. She sketched it in the snow. "You can clear the rise; they won't know it's coming and it should fall among them. Shoot from here, two volleys, then run straight for the woods, well out of sight—beyond volley-range from this scar—because any horseman you don't dismount or kill will be coming this way fast. They'll see the tracks we made, but—" She turned. Behind them, the rangers were already brushing away the tracks into what looked like windblown streaks.

Thirty arrows flew up together, hanging visibly in the air, and then dropped out of sight. Another thirty followed. Vardan made sure all her people were back into cover...and sure enough, ten horsemen came galloping over the rise; they reined in when they saw nothing but the empty stretch of snow ahead of them.

From the far side, Vardan saw an arrow streak toward a horse from the brush—close range, a flat trajectory. The horse screamed, tried to leap away, and fell; the rider just managed to roll clear. Vardan looked at the Halverics to either side of her. Could they take on the Pargunese now? Would the rangers fight with them? And how many rangers were here? Surely the few they'd seen so far weren't all. With enough bows—but the ranger touched her arm.

"Let them go unhindered a little. Your volley did well—fifteen dead at least, and three horses down. We have a surprise for them a little farther on."

When the Pargunese horsemen were once more out of sight, and the column in motion, Vardan called the Halverics together and they moved along a woods trail west of the fire-scar, catching up with and passing the Pargunese column without seeing it. Two rangers accompanied them, one leading and one following, insisting that Vardan didn't need flanking scouts. She insisted she did, but agreed to use them only on their western flank.

"There's a steading ahead...the people have been warned, and are well away with most of their livestock. There's little to loot, but enough to hold them, we think. Especially the ale." He mimed lifting a jug.

Vardan chuckled. "Much of that and they'll want a nap in the barn."

"Indeed. They didn't sleep well last night; we kept them moving."

"How's their discipline?"

"Good. But they may be hungry and they quit shooting volleys in return for our sniping."

Were they short of bolts, or conserving them?

"They don't have a supply train," Vardan said. "The ones we killed had food in their packs."

The ranger grinned. "That's because most of their supplies never made it to shore. Their soldiers rowed across in those big long boats they have, towing smaller ones loaded with supplies, two men in each, one steering, one also rowing. While they were unloading the troops in the boats, and the horses, some of us were taking shots at the soldiers. Eight of us rangers and two fisher lads drifted down from upstream, under reed clumps."

"In the
water
? In
winter
?"

"It's cold, but we'd greased up well with sooty lard, before. That helps. Anyway, our people drifted down to the supply boats while their soldiers fought their way onshore against resistance. Then they cut the ropes that held the little boats to the big ones and if someone aboard stood up to yell for help, they tipped the boat over, man and all."

Vardan imagined floating down that river in the dark, knowing enemy boats were ahead...getting in among them...cutting ropes...

"Only three of ours got to shore where we could help 'em," the ranger said. "I pulled one out, with a gash all down one shoulder, bleeding hard."

Vardan shivered, though she wasn't cold now, at the speed they were moving. At least she wasn't going to die in the Honnorgat like a speared fish.

The farmstead, when they reached it, looked like what it was—a stout house with stone foundation and ground floor, logs above. Clearly people had left in a hurry—a panic, it looked like, with a furl of cloth half unrolled dropped in the fore-yard, a broken dish on one of the steps, a hen-run with the gate open and one hen pecking at spilled grain. The smokehouse trailed a thin coil of blue smoke against the sky and smelled of a winter's worth of hams and sides of bacon, but the hog-pen gate was also open and the tracks showed where a sounder had been driven out.

The fire had passed near enough that an obvious lane led to it from the fire's track, and the forest along the track had been thinned, the underbrush cleared. "We think they'll take the bait," the ranger said. "They'll suspect an ambush, but with food and the possibility of making a safe camp for the night—"

Vardan nodded. "They'll be harder to hit if they're under cover."

"True—but it slows them down. The king must be bringing troops down; if we slow them enough, cut down the size..."

They discussed the best disposition of troops, the best time to strike. Vardan and the Halverics skirted the yard, the barn, the other outbuildings, garden, and fields, at a distance, to avoid leaving obvious tracks in the snow. They settled into the thicker forest; they dared not make a fire, but shared out strips of smoked meat. Vardan set two sentries, and then, with the others, kicked aside snow-covered leaves to make a dry hollow and dozed under her cloak.

The Pargunese arrived before dark—slowly, cautiously, sending a patrol to check out the farmstead. Vardan, wakened by one of the rangers, crept forward to see what they looked like. Hungry, tired soldiers worried about an ambush, she thought, just like those she'd seen often enough on campaign in Aarenis. Not stupid, either—their approach was just what Halveric would have advised.