The Talented (7 page)

The next three days were
spent repairing houses and digging graves. Adrienne enjoyed the
physical labor of repairing roofs and walls damaged by fire. The
outlaws had set fire to many of the homes and stables to show the
villagers how helpless they were. Adrienne felt good helping to
right those wrongs.

It was the digging of
graves that filled her with helpless rage. That Kyrog could be
located so close to Pelarion and other villages, yet leave those
villages completely defenseless and open to such senseless cruelty
was hard to bear.

Adrienne and Ricco had
just finished digging a new grave when the villagers came to the
graveyard bearing an open coffin. In it lay a fresh-faced girl of
no more than thirteen, her innocent beauty marred only by a scrape
on her cheek. Whatever horror had taken place before her life ended
was not evidenced by more than that scrape on a face gone smooth
and calm with death. Her long black hair had been lovingly washed
and combed, and Adrienne had to force herself to watch as a lid was
nailed to the top of the box and the girl placed into the
ground.

Adrienne could hear the
story of the girl’s life in the wails of the mourners. The girl had
been innocent and brilliantly alive before the raiders had come,
and now she had been brutalized and killed for nothing but
sport.

Adrienne wanted to go back
in time and stop the raiders before they had stolen the life of
that innocent girl. She wanted to comfort the mother who had lost
her daughter in such a horrible way. She could do
neither.

She knew that most people
pictured Almet when they thought of soldiers and fighting. The
constant battling on the border, waxing and waning but never
ceasing, made the threat from Almet obvious. Adrienne herself felt
called to go to the lines and fight the Almetian forces, and knew
that one day she would likely do just that.

But here, in Pelarion, as
she watched dirt cover the box that held the body of the young
girl, Adrienne knew that the enemy was not limited to Almet. The
countryside itself had enough dangers to occupy Samaroan soldiers
for a lifetime.

Ricco came up to her and
lay a comforting hand on her shoulder. “We got here as soon as we
could.”

“
Not soon
enough.”

“
This isn’t a story, and
you are not Almyria. No one expects you to raise the
dead.”

“
Almyria didn’t raise the
dead,” Adrienne said, thinking of the mythical healer. “She got
there in time to save the living.”

When Adrienne and her men
had done what they could to rebuild and restore a sense of safety
to the village, she knew it was time to leave. Though soldiers in
Pelarion would provide safety, they would also be a constant
reminder of what had happened there. They needed to leave and hope
that the losses Pelarion had suffered would heal into a scar
instead of remaining an open wound and festering.

Ricco and the others were
able to laugh on the way home, but Adrienne could not forget the
girl who had died before they could get to her, and Jeral too was
subdued. He had taken his first life, and Adrienne knew that
nothing would ever be quite the same for the young
soldier.

“
Ricco,” she called when
they were a half hour’s ride from Pelarion.

“
Ya?” He trotted his
gelding up next to hers.

“
Lord Neecham’s keep is a
week’s ride from here.”

“
Closer to two,” Ricco
said. “What of it?”

“
I was thinking that Rosch
and I would go there. No one from Pelarion reported to him about
the attack, and it has been awhile since anyone from Kyrog reported
to him in person.”

“
Shouldn’t you talk to
Captain Garrett before you go visit Lord Neecham? He
is
the
captain?”

Adrienne thought for a
minute, and then dismissed the notion. “Neecham should know about
Pelarion,” she insisted. “You can take the men back to Kyrog and
tell the captain what Jeral and I are doing.”

Ricco didn’t look happy
about that. “Thinking of dragging me into the trouble with you? Why
not take me with instead of Rosch; at least I’d be able to postpone
my flogging until
after
we got back.”

“
No one is getting flogged.
Go back to Kyrog. If any lumps need to be taken, I’ll take
them.”

“
I’ll remind you of that
when you get back to Kyrog.”

••••••

The ride from Pelarion to
Red Ridge Keep was interesting for both Adrienne and Jeral.
Whatever Jeral had thought he might feel after the first time he
killed a man, Adrienne knew the reality would be different. It
would take time for Jeral to reconcile causing a death, and the
reality that he would do so again.

“
It gets easier, Jeral,”
Adrienne said.

“
Is that supposed to be a
good thing?” Jeral’s tone was bitter and angry.

“
You chose to be a
soldier,” Adrienne said sharply. “It was not forced upon
you.”

“
I didn’t
think—”

“
You didn’t think killing
someone would feel bad? Did you think it would be easy? I gave you
the skills, but I can’t give you what it takes to be able to take a
life and live with it.”

“
How do you?”

Adrienne stared off down
the road for long enough that Jeral thought she wouldn’t answer,
but finally she sighed and turned her head to look at him. “I was
raised for this. Being a soldier
was
forced upon me. While your
mother was singing you to sleep, I was listening to stories of
battle. While you were shoveling muck from stalls, I was cleaning
blood from armor. I always knew what being a soldier
meant.”

“
How old—”

“
I went to my first camp
when I was four,” Adrienne answered curtly. “That’s how long I’ve
been a soldier.” She kicked her horse to a faster pace, knowing
that was not the question Jeral had asked, but not wanting to
answer.

••••••

“
I was not expecting
visitors from Kyrog.”

“
Excuse us, my lord. I hope
that we are not intruding,” Adrienne replied formally.

Lord Neecham laughed; a
warm, rich sound that seemed a perfect fit for the lord of Red
Ridge. He was a man well into his middle years, but still hale by
all appearances. His wavy black hair, which he wore down to his
shoulders, was receding slightly, and he was closer to having two
chins than one, but his eyes were sharply intelligent, and his
smile seemed genuine. “Of course not. I’ve been meaning to send
someone to Kyrog for weeks now. How is the camp?”

Adrienne shifted her
weight, a rare show of discomfort. “I can give you my
opinions—which are positive—but I was not sent here by Captain
Garrett.”

Neecham’s brow crinkled.
“Is something wrong with Garrett? I got a letter from him not long
ago.”

“
No, sir. Captain Garrett
and the camp are fine. I came here because the village of Pelarion
was attacked a couple of weeks ago. I led the party that cleaned it
up.”

“‘
Cleaned it up.’ That
phrase sounds so tidy for such an unsavory matter.”

“
Lord—”

Lord Neecham held up his
hand. “I have shown a lack of hospitality that would shame my lady
mother were she to see me now.” He grinned boyishly. “I will have
rooms and baths made up for you, Adrienne, and—gah, I didn’t even
get his name.”

“
Jeral Rosch, sir,” Jeral
supplied.

“
Jeral. Jeral. Well then,
Jeral, you and Adrienne can go freshen up and then join me for
supper. We will talk about Pelarion and Kyrog then,
yes?”

“
That sounds wonderful,”
Jeral said brightly.

“
Thank you, my lord,”
Adrienne said with more dignity.

“
I will have servants show
you to your rooms and fetch you back for supper.”

Over a feast of grouse,
roasted antelope, fresh baked bread, and a selection of fruits and
vegetables such as Adrienne had never seen, she and Jeral filled
the lord of Red Ridge Keep in on what had happened to
Pelarion.

“
I did not realize that
there were brigands this close to the keep,” Neecham said, “and
even closer to Kyrog.”

“
I don’t remember them ever
striking so close before,” Adrienne agreed.

“
You have not been at Kyrog
long, not in the grand scheme of things. When my father was a boy,
a large group of raiders—there must have been a hundred at
least—came to the keep direct. The guard here was not so big then,
maybe half the size it is now. They held though, for the three
weeks it took soldiers from Kyrog to get here and save the
keep.

“
I didn’t know
that.”

“
You wouldn’t. Your parents
would not even have been born at the time, and although it was a
terrifying three weeks for those here, the rescue mission to Red
Ridge was not one for the legends of Kyrog. I expect it was a
rather dull affair, all things considered. There is no reason for
it to still be told after such a long time.”

Adrienne did not know what
to say to that, so she said nothing. Jeral had spoken often at the
beginning of the meal, but after repeated kicks from Adrienne, he
had finally stopped speaking out of turn.

“
But that moment, when
Kyrog came to the aid of Red Ridge, was the turning point for that
particular camp,” Lord Neecham reminisced. “It was not nearly so
well-funded then. My great-grandfather, and his father before him,
had always given Kyrog a stipend, but not a fraction of what my
grandfather and father ended up giving. What I give. Kyrog was a
small camp, though well disciplined even before the attack on Red
Ridge, and it relied greatly on trade and payments for services to
stay functioning.”

“
Payments for services?”
Adrienne asked.

Neecham smiled. “When
brigands are plentiful and funding is not, it is not unheard of for
camps that ‘saved’ a village to demand payment of some sort
afterwards.”

“
That happened at Kyrog?”
Adrienne was horrified at the very idea. She could not imagine
asking anyone at Pelarion to pay her after what had just
happened.

“
Yes. Before Red Ridge
began funding the camp, there was no other way to support the
soldiers. Having a camp that was more mercenary than army was
better than having no camp at all, but for a while there was
resentment and even fear between civilians and soldiers. It has
faded now, as memories do, but it was real for a time.”

“
I have never heard any of
this,” Adrienne said. “And all camps did this?” She wondered why
Karse had never told her. Surely someone as interested in history
as he would have known.

“
I can’t know for sure that
every camp had the same practices, but to the best of my knowledge
Kyrog was—if anything—less mercenary than the others.”

“
But it is still kept a
secret,” Adrienne argued, unsettled that the camp she proudly
called hers had such an unsavory history.

“
Not a secret, but not
something that is advertised. People need to trust soldiers, not
fear them. Or worse, consider them on the same level as bandits who
demand ‘protection money’ and attack the villages themselves if
they are not paid.” Neecham took another sip of palm wine. “As
well-funded camps like Kyrog and Roua,” he tipped his head to
Jeral, “grew, the smaller, more mercenary camps disbanded. The
soldiers that remain in Samaro are loyal to the country…or as loyal
as the lords who fund them…and nothing will be gained by stirring
up old memories.”

“
Why do we have separate
armies?” Jeral asked. Evidently Adrienne’s warning kicks had a
limited effectiveness. “Why not just one?”

“
Just one like Almet does?”
Lord Neecham seemed amused. “It is one of the things that I asked
my father about.”

“
And?”

“
And I never got a
satisfactory answer. Almet stayed strong despite the war not coming
to an end. It had strong rulers, and did not splinter.”

“
And Samaro did?” Jeral
asked.

Lord Neecham smiled and
gave a lazy shrug. “King Burin is my sovereign leader,” he said
easily. “Who am I to naysay his rule?”

Adrienne hardly heard the
rest of their conversation. Something they had said had sparked a
memory. She couldn’t place why their conversation would bring up
such a memory, but she remembered suddenly the Old Samaroan text
she had seen in Captain Garrett’s office months ago. In her upset,
she had not wondered why Garrett, who could not read Old Samaroan,
would have the original text out if he had a
translation.

And if he needed to check
something, why wouldn’t he come to her with it? It would hardly be
the first time she had served as a translator when dealing with old
documents.

And why would Captain
Garrett, so stolid and dependable, have in his possession a piece
of writing about necromancers?

“
Adrienne, are you ready
for dessert?”

She snapped back to
reality, wondered briefly how long she had been caught up in her
own world, and nodded. “Yes, my lord, though after this meal I’m
not sure how much room I have left for it.