Forest For The Trees (Book 3) (16 page)

“Will be joining with them,

“Down in the depths of the hells where,

“They will sing an eternal Chorus of,

“Dam-na-tion.”

It raised the hairs on Marik’s neck.  Cork could leap
forth with the spookiest intonations when he wished.  Once before his earnest
‘quoting’, which he’d probably spun out from whole cloth, had stuck in Marik’s
head and refused to leave him be.  That had been on this same subject, with
Cork insisting the monstrous beasts the black soldiers controlled were actually
demons in Vernilock’s service, in charge of overseeing a sinner’s eternal
torture.

When Cork started a new verse, this one describing in
lyric form what happened when a beast got its teeth into a man, Marik abruptly
realized what the damnable man was doing.  These were the men who likely would
be key elements against the invaders when the fighting resumed!

“Hey!”

Heads shifted to face the intruder.  Marik, conscious
of his senior position in the Fourth Unit to Cork although they were both
simple frontline fighters, changed his instinctual movement of fists balled
against his hips to a non-committal crossing of arms over chest.  Cork’s
fingers slowed before they altered the tune to simple strumming.

“Oh, Marik!  Damn, I guessed wrong.”

“Wrong?  Tell me what that’s supposed to mean.”  Marik
spoke to his fellow mercenary over the squatting men, ignoring the green crop.

“It’s just that everyone was wondering where you’d
gotten off to.  Now I owe Talbot a quarter-silver.”

Exactly what fate Cork might have placed his faith in,
and coin on, Marik ignored for the present.  Although he already knew perfectly
well, he asked, “What were you singing a moment ago?  I don’t believe I know
that one.”

Cork ran off several quick plucks on the strings.  “I
put it together personally,” the man replied, pride filling his voice.  “I’ve
always been good at it.  In fact, a song I thought up once got so popular in my
hometown, they still sing it every Summerdawn!  It all depends on the
differences between the chords leading from the last notes in the first riffs
and the first notes in the following stanzas.  Once you’ve got the timing—”

“Fine!”  Marik barked the word forcefully, knowing
that Cork responded to little short of a cliff collapsing nearby if he got into
his stride.  “That’s fine!  But was that about the mon—uh, the beasts?”

“Sure is!  Captain Trask has been asking us to tell
the trainees everything we can about the demons we fought.”

“They aren’t demons.”

Cork raised one eyebrow in a deliberate show of
skepticism.

“They aren’t demons, Cork!  Or Devils, or any sort of
hell-creature.  Only animals the black soldiers harnessed.”

“Animals.  Right.”  The man’s face belied the words,
telling the recruits that they should know which of them knew better.

“You can’t kill a demon with a sword,” Marik insisted,
wondering, as he pulled the words from the air, if they held any truth.  “A
sword wouldn’t so much as scratch them.  Or a crossbow either.  You know well
enough that the beasts we fought can be killed.  It takes a little more effort
than killing an ordinary foe, that’s all.”

“Yeah, if you’re used to fighting bears and knights,
maybe.”

Marik wanted to slap the man for being so obstinate in
front of the green fighters.  “Where is Trask anyway?  I need to speak with
him.  And Dietrik.”

“The captain usually wanders all over the place.  Keep
moving and you’ll run into him sooner or later.  We’re camped on the other side
of the kitchen building.”  A gesture with the guitar neck pointed the way. 
When Marik started in that direction, Cork resumed talking to his clique. 
“See?  Listen to me.  I’ll teach you everything you need to know.  You can’t
afford to go into denial once you’re face-to-face with the nightmares.”

Annoyance swelled behind Marik’s breast.  Over his
departing shoulder, he tossed back, “By the way, Cork.  You’d better ask
Lieutenant Fraser if the re-evaluations are still going to be held.  I know you
survived the winter, but if you haven’t improved your swordwork, you still
might be kicked out of the band.”

He refrained from looking backward to see what effect
his words might have wrought.

Around the building Cork had gestured to he found the
campaign tents that belonged to the army.  Assigned to the mercenaries for the
duration they served alongside the soldiers, each compact canvas pocket slept
four.  Marik and Dietrik currently shared their tent with Chiksan and Talbot
since decamping from the Southern Road.  The task of carrying the bedamned
heavy bundle in addition to his personal pack alternated according to who lost
the straw-pull each morning.  Toward the end, Talbot had been making his suspicions
plain that the pull might be rigged, seeing as he ended up hauling it as much
as the other three combined.

The tents were abandoned.  Marik easily found his,
owing to the minor tear in the flap down by the corner.  Dietrik’s pack, as
familiar as his own, sat in one corner beside his.  He briefly checked his pack
before returning to the search, carrying only his sword.

Aside from Cork’s small group, the recruits were all
active at various efforts.  The field, surrounded by trees yet still large
enough to make Marik think it could easily hold Kingshome, had been divided
into roughly a dozen areas.  Most were still thick with wild grasses or weeds,
though one looked so churned that a plow must have been at work on it.

As a training facility, Marik gave it low marks. 
Kingshome’s variety of terrain had no counterpart here.

Solitary men were rare.  Groups were moving according
to differing priorities in every open stretch.  Some were in lines, each man
holding a sword, matching the movements of a lone figure who led them through
fighting drills.  Others were divided, their halves engaging each other in mock
battles.  A larger group jogged with heavy packs on their backs around the
tree-lined perimeter.

Not one mercenary joined them.  Marik quickly found
the Fourth Unit scattered at leisure around roughhewn logs forming the crude
lookout tower’s base.  He would have seen them before except a building had
blocked his view of the spot from where he entered the camp.  Wyman looked back
at him noncommittally, his coin following a ceaseless arc from his thumbnail
through the air.  Young Churt glared, crossbow leaning on his knee, his own
coin rolling across his knuckles with far greater alacrity than Marik had yet
seen him manage.

While Marik’s eyes picked through the other men, a
punch against his left shoulder blade made him spin.

“Damn it, Dietrik!  That actually hurt!”

Dietrik matched the younger archer’s forceful
expression.  “Too bad for me, then, mate.  I was hoping to bludge on you until
you got the point.”

Marik scowled.  “Don’t blame me for things that aren’t
my fault!  I didn’t expect to be gone so long.”

“I can imagine.  No word at all, and you off with your
punchbunny for days while we wonder if you were tossed into a jail cell.”

“Punch…I wasn’t with Ilona!”

“No?”  Dietrik sounded extremely skeptical.

“I don’t even know if she’s returned to Thoenar yet! 
I haven’t had a chance to check.”

“What in perdition have you been about then?  Trask
has refused to say word one, if he knows anything about it in the first place. 
If you weren’t playing foxes and foxholes with your lady, then tell me where
you got off to.  Sloan is about as informative as a stone, Kineta doesn’t want
to talk about men outside her unit and Fraser about bit my nose off!”

“Relax, Dietrik.  We’re still in this together.”

His friend’s tone caught Marik off guard…except he
knew the source behind it.  Dietrik’s confidence had been shaken badly during
the last season.  At one time, or one time only that Marik knew of, Dietrik had
seriously considered quitting the band, leaving to find safer employment.  He
would never admit to such, but Marik believed Dietrik had no desire to stay in
the band if he were going to do it solo.  A close friend’s presence would have
a significant effect on the decision whether to continue over the rough course
or not.

Dietrik had retained his professional bearing,
cloaking any worry he might have felt under the sterner attitude he’d adopted
since their time in the Rovasii.  “Well?” he demanded when Marik remained in his
silent thoughts.  “I am not your bloody mother, but as your best mate, I
deserve to know when you plan to hare off for a few days’ lark and leave me
juggling green army fish pestering me for a thousand details.  Especially when
they all want to know about you.”

“Me?”

“Cork has been spread tales left and right, as usual. 
And he is not the only chap doing it.”

Before Marik could begin swearing coherently, an
approaching presence from behind made him spin.  Trask walked with purpose,
pebbles and dirt clots scattering every time his boot toes kicked forward.  He
looked distinctly odd to Marik without the pair of aides who had perpetually
hovered by his shoulders during the war.

Trask lifted a single paper sheet that was folded in
half, hiding its content.  “I received this from the council yesterday
afternoon,” he declared in his typical tone, an inch short of irritation.  “And
I have to say I’ve got questions.”

Marik could guess what Trask had been informed of. 
“Don’t worry, captain.  They don’t mean anything by it.  They only want the
best picture they can get of where they stand.”

“What I find most interesting is that I’ve never
received a single inquiry about any report I’ve delivered.  You want to tell me
what’s been lacking in them?”

“Nothing, as far as I know,” Marik replied quickly. 
Dietrik’s confused expression bounced back and forth between the men.  “Look,
captain…let’s talk, all right?  I don’t like this any better than you, but that
doesn’t change the fact that the king has made up his mind and we’re stuck with
it.”

“Has he?”  Trask barked the sarcastic rejoinder.  “If
the king has decided anything, then it’s news to me.”  He waved the paper as if
warding off flies.  “Let me fill you in on a fact or two.  Most of these men
still haven’t finished the basic training.  Setting up a frontline with them
against the Noliers will be handing the blue bastards the keys to the castle. 
They couldn’t ask for a weaker point to break through.  Not only that, half of
these men joined on the promise of steady pay and meals!  Find one in the
tournament lot willing to lift a shovel and I’ll eat my scabbard.”

“If they are sent anywhere in the next month captain,
it will be toward Tullainia, not Nolier.  As for which recruits are worth the
bother…that’s one of the matters I need to talk to you about.  I need to get
your feel for what they can do, or if they can be relied on.”

“You can rely on them to complain about any effort
more strenuous than lifting a spoon to their lips,” Trask spat.  “But why are
you the jilly asking the questions?”

Dietrik looked as interested in the answer as Trask. 
Marik answered with, “Mostly because I fought the invaders and their beasts
four separate times.”  That left a multitude of related questions unanswered,
yet he wanted to avoid discussing the details in public.  The seneschal’s
admonishments were still weighty in his ears.  To keep the verbal ball rolling,
he continued in the same breath by adding, “How far along in their training are
they?  Do they have any skill with their weapons yet?”

Trask paused, his mouth the tight line Marik
remembered so well, one eye half-closing while he contemplated the mercenary. 
Marik was on the verge of asking the question over in different words when a
response finally came.

“You can’t always count on skill in training to hold
true in the field.  Barracks-monkeys are good at
looking
good.”

“I am aware of that, captain.  But how far…”  He
trailed off to cast his gaze across the open space at the men imitating their
instructor.  “Well, why don’t I go see in person?  Is this their standard
training?”

“Of course it is,” Trask growled.  “What else would
they be doing?  Come on then.  Let’s go and get this farrago over with.”

*        *        *        *        *

Two men in loose trainee uniforms fell panting to the
ground.  The larger clutched his forearm where Marik’s sword had slapped him
hard enough to make his hand spasm.  His blade tumbled away to the side.

Trask blew his silver whistle shaped like a narrow,
hollow reed.  “What in the flaming hells do you call that, Norren?  You pull a
cute stunt like that in real combat and it will be your head!”  He glared at
the entire assembly he had pulled together from six different training groups. 
“It would be all your heads!  I don’t give a ripe shit what the bards say in
their tales!  A sword isn’t a copping plow, so stop swinging it around like you
mean to split the copping ground!”

Behind Trask, the line of six junior officers nodded
sharply to emphasize their superior’s point.

“You still need to come up to scratch,” Dietrik
announced to the group.  He had assumed the role of Marik’s evaluator, saying
everything that needed to be said as the impartial observers Trask had made
them out to be.  If Marik critiqued the men after beating them down, it might
surround him with a perceived air of arrogance, making the recruits resent the
advice as much as their loss.  “The black soldiers would have had you after the
second swing.  The beasts would have got you both in the same move right from
the beginning.”