Elizabeth Moon - Oath of Gold

Selfer grinned and flushed. “At least we didn’t get a thaw on that bad stretch,” he said. “I was worried, when it turned foggy.”

“You see, Selfer,” said Dorrin, “all those things you must worry about if you’re a captain? Do you still want it?”

He nodded, shyly. “Yes, Captain, I do. The more I do, the more I like it.”

Dorrin grinned at Paks. “He’s been acting as junior captain to Arcolin and me both this past year—and he’s good.” Selfer turned even redder; Paks remembered when she used to blush like that, and wondered how long it had been. She looked back along the cohort, at faces she knew almost as well as those in Arcolin’s cohort. All at once she felt like racing the red horse along the road and singing. They were six days behind the king’s party. They asked word at every grange, and at each the news was good: they had passed without trouble. Curious eyes followed them; Phelan’s colors had not marched that way before. Paks saw the worried glances. Dorrin carried a royal pass, which she showed in every town, but the local farmers were clearly uncertain. That night the cohort stayed in Blackhedge, sleeping a few hours in safety, but they were on the road again before daybreak. The towns rolled past. Now they said the king had passed only five days before. At Piery, they heard that his party had stayed over a day, because some of the Royal Guard mounts were lame. Dorrin muttered a curse, and Paks laughed, pointing out that they could catch them sooner. They had left three mornings ago.

That night they pressed on, passing the grange at Dorton in the falling dark, and camping in a rough pasture far from any village. Paks would have ridden on after only a few hours sleep, but felt she should stay with the cohort. She had spoken to most of them, uncomfortable only with Natzlin, who did not ask about Barranyi. Paks did not tell her. The next day the red horse pulled away from the road; Paks thought she remembered that the Honnorgat made a wide bend. Paks urged Dorrin to leave the road. The captain’s face creased in a frown.

“I’m worried about causing trouble,” she said. “My pass is for the road to Harway, on the border—unless we’re attacked, I can’t justify leaving it.”

“We won’t be attacked,” said Paks. “Not yet—but we can save several hours, at least, by cutting the bend.”

“Can you tell if the king is in need?”

Paks shook her head. “I do not know if I could tell—and I feel nothing now but an urge to hurry. It may be that he will be in need.”

“Paks—are the gods telling you to leave the road? Is it that sure?”

“If I were riding alone, Captain, I would go across country. If you cannot go that way, perhaps I should leave you now and go on. But I never expected to be here at all—and certainly not with a cohort behind me—so I cannot give you orders.”

Dorrin gnawed her lip. Everyone waited a for her decision. Selfer opened his mouth and closed it again, catching Paks’s eye. Then she sat back on her horse, easing her back, and sighed. “Well—wars aren’t won by coming late to the battle.” She grinned at Paks. “I hope, Gird’s paladin, that your saint will cover us while we follow you. I would hate to raise new enemies for the king by this.”

“Captain, the gods have led me into peril, but not without cause.”

“So be it. We’ll take your way.”

Paks led them over fallow fields and through woods, the red horse moving as quickly on rough ground as on the road. No one challenged them; in fact, the country seemed empty under a cold sun. They met the road again at Swiftin. Here the yeoman-marshal said the the king’s party had passed only the day before. They paused to feed and rest the horses before they left. Again they rode most of the night, sleeping beside their horses for a few hours in turn. Dorrin seemed almost as anxious as Paks to catch the king’s party. A thin cold drizzle began late in the night; Paks pulled her cloak over her mail when she mounted.

By dawn the drizzle had turned to sleet, and then fine snow. Sometime later, it ceased. The clouds blew away to the east, and the sun blazed on the fresh snowfall. Paks decided to scout ahead of the cohort. The red horse cantered steadily onward, flinging up sprays of glittering snow. She passed through one village too small for a grange, then came to a larger town. She barely remembered passing through it in a hurry on the way to Vérella. The Marshal stared at her when she gave her name, but said the king’s party was only an hour or so ahead; they had stopped there overnight. They had had no trouble so far, he said. Paks explained about the cohort following her; his eyebrows shot up his forehead.

“You’re bringing Phelan’s soldiers through here? Through Verrakai lands?”

Paks had known that the Verrakaien held lands in the east end of Tsaia, but not precisely where. “His captain has a royal pass,” she said slowly. “Signed by the crown prince himself—”

The Marshal snorted. “For all the good that’ll do. Gird grant they don’t notice—though I don’t suppose they’ll miss a cohort of Phelan’s troops. Why did he do something like that?”

Paks controlled her temper. “He expected trouble,” she said crisply. “He wanted his own troops—trained as he knew—in case of it.”

“Well, he’ll get trouble enough, stirring an ant’s nest with a stick. Why couldn’t he ride peacefully to his kingdom without all this pomp?”

Paks looked at him. She knew that Marshals varied in ability and personality, but she did not like his sour, half-defeated expression.

“Sir Marshal,” she said, “surely High Marshal Seklis told you that evil powers had already attacked the king—he had no chance to go peacefully.”

“Seklis!” The Marshal spat. “It’s easy for him—living in Vérella, at court and all. He won’t have to keep a broken grange together out here—who’s going to help me, when half my yeomen are taken by something in the forest?”

“Gird,” said Paks quietly, but with force enough to change his expression. “Tell me your problem, Marshal, and we’ll see what can be done. Your yeomen have been taken?”

He glowered at her, but answered straightly enough. “They disappear. We search, and find nothing. I’ve told them back at Vérella, again and again. There’s something out there, and I can’t find it. But they don’t listen.”

Paks nodded, and he went on.

“Then they tell me to keep watch for Phelan—that he’ll be coming through and may need help—that fox! And now I understand he’s supposed to be a king, or something. In Lyonya, of all places: just what we need, a mercenary king next door, when it’s all I can do to keep things quiet as it is.”

“I think, Marshal, that you’ve kept things too quiet.” Paks sat back in her saddle and watched him. He flushed, but still met her eye. “Gird did not value quietness over right.”

“Gird is not here,” muttered the Marshal. “No—I know they say you’re a paladin, but it’s not the same as being here, year after year, with the yeomen more frightened, more reluctant—”

“Well,” said Paks, “you don’t have to stay here. Come along and see what we’re talking about.” He shook his head. Her voice sharpened. “Marshal, you can’t hide forever. I suspect we’re about to have as splendid a battle as you’ve ever seen—don’t you think your yeomen will expect their Marshal to be in it?”

“They won’t care.”

“I do.” Paks straightened, and called her light for the first time since Vérella. He stepped back, startled. She saw faces turn toward her, in the town square, and reined the red horse into the middle of it. Children scurried in and out of doorways; faces appeared at windows. “What’s this town?” she asked the Marshal, who had followed her slowly into the square.