Heroes' Reward (22 page)

Some of
Gifford’s soldiers also found themselves sprayed with blood and bone. Others
merely saw where it came from, and that was enough to make them freeze. For
some, the distraction was fatal.

Unfortunately,
it distracted our soldiers, too, and they suffered for it.

The odd
unnatural cloud blinked out of the sky.

People on both
sides broke and ran, but not everyone. Not all at once. Some ignored what was
going on around them and kept on fighting. Sometimes one of their colleagues
pulled on them, urging them to back away. Sometimes they were left behind.

It wasn’t a
quick parting, everyone sliding in the water and mud, many falling completely.
People dropped their swords and didn’t bother to retrieve them.

Our Pairs ran,
too. It would have been suicidal for us to stand there by ourselves.

But running back
meant running around bodies. I was appalled at how many. My struggles with
Gifford’s Pairs had kept me blind to just how much distruction was going on
beyond our immediate environment.

Taro and I
noticed that some of our people were finding colleagues who weren’t dead,
helping them to their feet or outright carrying them.

So Taro and I
looked as we ran, immediately finding a slight young man who was still
breathing. We propped him up between us and struggled to take him off the
field. He was aware enough to help us a bit by moving his feet.

We brought him
to the healers’ tent and went back out to look for more survivors.

Some of
Gifford’s people were doing the same, collecting their wounded and dying and
carrying them off in the opposite direction. There was no threatening behaviour
between the two groups. This baffled me. Just moments ago, we were trying to
kill each other. Now we were ignoring each other. How did this make sense?

I was so cold.

The next
survivor we found was one of Fiona’s people. Blacksmith Iyo Reen. There was
blood all over him and he was gurgling. “Moving you will hurt,” Taro warned
him. “But we’ll get you there as quickly as we can.”

Reen grabbed
Taro’s wrist.

And then he
died. Right in front of us, his hand falling to his side, into the mud.

He was there
because of us. Fiona had sent him – or convinced him to come – because of us.
This was our fault.

“I’m sorry,” I
whispered to him.

But we couldn’t
linger. There were more people alive who needed to be moved. We pushed through
our fatigue and searched for them. We laid our fifth survivor inside the
healers’ tent and turned to the entrance to get another. Just then, Browne
stepped up to us and put a hand on Taro’s arm. “You can do more good here,” she
told him. “Anyone can carry the wounded back in.”

Taro nodded.
There were two dozen healers, but that wasn’t nearly enough.

“But I need to
speak with Shield Mallorough for a moment.”

“Of course.”
Taro moved among the victims and knelt beside a middle-aged man, assuming a
smile.

Browne leaned
close. “What in Zaire’s name happened to those Pairs?”

Feeling sick at
the visions rising up in my mind, I told her.

She stared at
me, shocked. “Was that a cast?”

“No. It’s
something I can do as a Shield.”

“How did you do
it?”

“I’m not talking
about it,” I said sharply.

Still, she
persisted. “Can other Shields do it?”

“I’ve never been
told of anyone else doing it.”

“How did you
learn how to do it?”

“I just figured
it out.”

“So now that
Gifford’s Pairs have seen it, some of them might figure it out, too? And use it
in the next clash?”

Air whooshed
right out of my chest. I bent over, hands on my knees, trying to breathe.

I’d created
something horrible and shown it to other people. Our Sources could start
disintegrating into showers of blood. And at any time they channelled, not just
during clashes.

I never wanted
to be responsible for anything ever again.

I felt hands on
my shoulders. “What did you say to her?” Taro demanded of Browne in a low
voice.

“Not her fault,”
I gasped. “It’s me. It’s just …. Oh, gods.”

“I’m sorry,”
Browne said, sounding uncharacteristically diffident. “I was just asking her …
I didn’t mean to ….”

“Didn’t mean to
what?” Taro snapped.

“It’s not her
fault,” I insisted.

“I’m sorry,”
Browne repeated.

Taro squeezed my
shoulders, prompting me to stand straight. “We’re going,” he told Browne in a
sharp voice.

“They need you,”
I protested weakly.

“That’s what the
healers are for.”

That struck me
as really, really cold, and not like Taro at all. He ignored my faint
objections and guided me from the healers’ tent to ours. Once we were there, he
urged me to sit down.

“What happened?”

I opened my
mouth to answer and a wail came out instead of words. I disintegrated into
tears and sobs. Hard, deep sobs. I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe.

Taro didn’t ask
me why I was upset because he wasn’t stupid. There were a thousand things to be
upset about. I put my head in his lap and he smoothed back my hair. He didn’t
insult me by saying everything was all right. I appreciated that.

And when I’d
cried myself out, I lay there and breathed and listened to the activity going
on around our tent.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Everyone spent
the next two days waiting for the Emperor to attack. We couldn’t move with all
of our injured. There were over two hundred of them, and we simply didn’t have
the means. I suspected no one had been able to anticipate the level of damage
one short clash could wreak. I certainly hadn’t.

Besides, we had
just over a hundred people to bury.

At least it had
stopped raining.

Between the
almost disrespectfully brief funerals, the soldiers performed drills. The
casters practised their spells under the leadership of Murdoch. Devereaux
worked with the Pairs. Taro and I spent most of our time with Browne in the
healers’ tent, so he could ease the pain of Browne’s patients. One of the benefits
of his work was that it slackened the demand for soothing medicines that needed
to be carefully rationed.

At night, people
who could sleep at all seemed to have a lot of nightmares. I could hear them
crying out.

I didn’t sleep
much, either, but it was if I’d gotten used to it. I had developed the habit of
rising much earlier in the morning than had been my custom throughout my life.
Not as early as Taro. He had always – almost always – woken up earlier than I,
and he continued to do so. Sometimes I had the ridiculous idea that it was some
kind of competition.

On the third
morning, I woke while it was still dark, and Taro was gone. I went to the mess
tent where there was always coffee on the stove, though at differing levels of
awful. At that point of the morning, it always tasted foul, bitter and grainy,
but it was coffee, and I was awake.

And I wasn’t
alone for long. Just as I sat at one of the tiny tables, a young soldier walked
in and poured himself a cup of tea. He then shocked me by joining me. “Shield,”
he greeted me rather shortly.

He wasn’t
wearing any frogging. “Good morning, private. I’m happy to see you well.”

He looked
surprised. “You know who I am?”

Now I was
embarrassed to admit I didn’t. “There were so many killed and wounded. It’s a
relief to see someone whole.”

He stared down
into his mug. “It’s nothing like they say in the history books,” he muttered.

There had been
nothing like this massive clash of forces in our past, but I knew what he
meant. Titleholders had fought each other over land and influence, and the
winners had written epic tales about how noble their actions had been.

“It seems to me
nothing ever is,” I responded. “I wonder why people bother writing history at
all, if they’re not going to tell the truth.”

“To convince everyone
they aren’t bastards.”

“After they’ve
died. Who cares what anyone thinks of you after you’re dead?”

The young man
smiled wryly. “Just about everyone, I’d think. Maybe you don’t know people all
that well.”

“I’ve been told
that a lot.”

“Maybe it’s because
you’re a Shield.”

“I’ve been told
that a lot, too.”

He chuckled
quietly.

“What’s your
name?”

“Glazier – ” He
abruptly stopped speaking, and then resumed. “Private Dalin Sawrap. I’m from
Pale Arc.”

“That’s a remote
area.” They probably would have been able to keep their heads down and be
ignored through this whole mess.

The private
seemed to read my thoughts. “Pale Arc is a poor area,” he explained. “That
never seemed to matter to the Triple S. Throughout the years, all of the Pairs
they sent were decent sorts. Some more likeable than others, of course, and
some clearly weren’t enamoured with life somewhere so small and isolated, but
they all did their job well and treated us with respect.”

“That is no more
than what is expected of all Pairs,” I said. Though I had certainly seen enough
to know that not all Pairs lived up to their responsibilities, or even the
standards of common decency.

The private
didn’t speak to that, merely taking another sip of tea. “And then one day,
without warning, Imperial Guards showed up and ordered our Pair to go to a
different settlement, saying they were more needed there. A larger, wealthier
settlement. The Guards hadn’t brought a replacement Pair, but they sent our
Pair away immediately. While we waited for a new Pair to come, a hurricane
nearly destroyed our village and killed over twenty people.”

I felt sick.

“The Pair tried
to refuse to go. They said only the Triple S could assign their posts, and that
they couldn’t relinquish their responsibilities without others being there to
assume them. But the Guards threatened to execute them for treason right then
and there. We didn’t have anyone who could challenge their claim, so ….” He
trailed off.

“The Pair had to
go,” I said.

“Yes. And then
the Guards left, after posting a list of new laws. Some of the laws didn’t make
any sense. Some seemed to change old customs just for the sake of changing
them. We realised the Emperor had no respect for anything that mattered to us.”

“And yet you
came here,” I said. “It must have been difficult to leave home after such
destruction. To come so far.”

“Someone has to
stand up to the Emperor. The Triple S is. We all know that. We couldn’t let you
do it alone.”

I didn’t know
what to say. I rarely did when emotions were strong.

Another private
– another person far too young to be there – ducked her head into the tent, her
gaze alighting on me. “The Commissioner would like to speak to you, Shield
Mallorough,” she said. “He’s in his tent.”

I smiled at
Sawrap as I left the table and washed my mug of its awful grounds before going
to the Commissioner’s tent, where the Commissioner, Taro, and Browne were
waiting. “Fair morning,” I said.

“Fair morning,”
the Commissioner responded abruptly. “I understand you can change the weather.”

Well, that was
unexpected. “Not reliably,” I stammered.

“From what I
understand, that’s more than anyone else can do.”

“Perhaps.”

“We’re thinking
some snow would be handy.”

Handy?
“Even the Emperor is too smart to order a fight in winter
conditions.”

“Exactly. The
idea is to encourage their personnel to bundle up and stay close to their
fires. Hopefully it will cut down on their patrols. They’ll think we won’t be
moving, either, so they won’t expect us to attack.”

I wasn’t liking
this. “But we will.”

“We’re going to
make some of our soldiers unseeable. They will infiltrate Gifford’s camp and
kill as many people as they can as quickly as they can, and then run back.
Hopefully, their actions will cause panic and confusion among Gifford’s ranks.”

“Kill,” I said.

“Or injure.”

“While they’re
asleep.”

“Aye.”

“So we’ve given
up on honour entirely.” Perhaps that was a foolish thing to say, killing people
was never honourable, but this seemed even worse than facing off on a field.

The
Commissioner’s expression became impatient. “We can’t afford honour.”

This was just
getting worse and worse. I felt filthy. Not on my skin. More inside my chest,
where soap couldn’t reach.

But I wasn’t the
one with the mind to make or dispute decisions of such scope. “I’ve never
created snow. Will fog do?”

“We’d prefer
snow,” the Commissioner said shortly.

He’d prefer
snow. It sounded like he was ordering wine in a tavern.

“I can’t promise
snow,” I said, getting a little irritated myself. “I’ve done fog. The last time
I fiddled with the weather without knowing what I was doing, people died. It’s
why Lady Westsea is a widow.”

After a moment,
the Commissioner nodded. “We will trust you on this matter, of course.”

How magnanimous
of him. “I’ll need to practise.”

“You have the
rest of the day.”

“I’ll need more
time than that,” I protested.

He shook his
head. “We’re sending out our people tonight. We can’t stall any longer.”

So no pressure.
“I need access to the casting stores.”

“You’ll be given
whatever’s necessary.”

If we had it.

I needed five
candles, fresh mint, two wooden fans, and cool water.

There was no
mint anywhere in the camp, fresh or dried. Browne recommended dried deonsin
moss, stating they were in the same plant family. I was at a disadvantage right
from the beginning.

Browne, Taro,
and I retreated to the casting tent. Browne wanted to observe my cast, and I
needed Taro to channel so that, through him, I could manipulate the subtle
forces that allowed me to shape the weather. I believed this was why regular
casters couldn’t change the weather. They needed a Source to give them access,
and most didn’t have one.

I was working
purely from memory, which meant I got it wrong the first time. But I was a
little better the second time, then the third, and after four attempts the
elements of the cast settled into place, and fog surrounded us.

I could hear
exclamations and swearing from outside the tent.

The fog felt
wrong
,
as it hadn’t when I’d performed the cast in Flown Raven. It made my stomach
want to flip over. Harshly unpleasant.

I stopped the
spell. The fog disappeared almost immediately. “That’s not long enough.”

“You’ll just
have to keep repeating the cast,” Browne suggested.

“The soldiers
will need to get to Gifford’s camp, kill as many people as they can, and then
get back. I don’t think I’ll be able to keep the cast going that long. Not this
cast.”

“How are you
doing?” Browne asked Taro.

“Fine,” Taro
answered. “I’ve got the easy part.”

“Wait a moment.”
Browne left the tent.

I rubbed my
eyes.

“I wish you
didn’t have to do this,” Taro said, tucking a lock of my hair behind my ear.

I sighed. “No
one should have to do anything like this.”

Browne returned
with a small sack in hand. “Kyrra powder,” she announced.

Gah. Kyrra
powder was used by healers when they needed to spend hours with patients
without sleep. It focused the mind and gave the user superior endurance. I’d
used it before, and it worked, but the after effects were nasty: piercing
headaches, stomach cramps, and intense nausea.

“Just a little
for now,” Browne suggested. “Just to see if it works with the cast. If it does,
you’ll need a bigger dose tonight.”

Another
unfortunate characteristic of the powder: it had to be eaten, and it tasted
vile. Bitter.

I felt its power
immediately, and I easily maintained the cast for a considerable length of time
without tiring. I could have worked longer, but I didn’t want to expend any
more effort than necessary before the night.

But I had become
confident I could perform the cast.

I would be well
able to help our soldiers kill people in their sleep.

I was so proud.