Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Captain Dharrehn Cambehl paused to look at his sister, considering the girl he had discovered when he had returned with his company to his father’s city to allow them a time of well-earned leave. Although she wore an ankle-length brown woolen shift with yellow silk tunic beneath out of dclerence to their father’s wishes, she could most often be found in leather and chain mail, armed and armored nearly as well as her brothers, the skill she had somehow acquired clearly in evidence while she trained. Had his shaven head been allowed to sprout, the hair would have been a light brown similar to her now neatly combed tresses, the eyes he inspected her with a pale blue just like her own. Saucy and harmless-looking and nicely well-rounded, he thought, and how few of his men would find fault with that.

“In no manner have you been deprived, Lisah,” he replied after a moment, allowing his approval to be clearly seen by her. “Considering that in conjunction with your weapons skill, my company would soon be decimated were 1 to allow you to join us, and that before any commission was accepted. The number of high noblemen hereabout continue to be as few as they were?”

“They do indeed,” the girl agreed happily, a brief look of annoyance flashing when her left hand failed to find a hilt to

rest on. “For that reason alone have I not been pestered while training at war skills, with our arms masters and also with our brothers when they briefly returned home from the wars. Father will not even consider those who are about; therefore has there been no need of my personally refusing them. And I do no more than rag you, brother, for I have no true wish to join your company. If you would have the truth, I have

already begun to form a company of my own.”

Her brothers were so quick to exclaim in shock that the girl laughed in delight, pleased that the surprise she had planned to give them had not been discovered before she might spring it. Brothers were, at times, worse than fathers, and yet their approval remained important to her.

“Few capable men would be attracted to the banner of an inexperienced girl, Lisah,” her brother Dharrehn protested, overriding the comments of the others. “A company must be led by a man whose leadership qualities and tactical skills

have been well proven, not by one who has seen no more than practice battle.”

“My company will be led by exactly such a man,” the girl agreed, folding her hands before her in pleased comfort that caused even greater agitation in her brothers. “Some three months agone, I made the acquaintance of one Hwarruhn Fredrix, former captain of the Red Horse Company, those who were sent to death for so little reason. You may perhaps have heard of how badly they were done.”

Nods came from all four of her brothers, their upset quieting in the face of unpalatable memories. A year earlier the Red Horse Company had taken hire with Duke Steev of Vincetburk, a man who had had ambitions for expansion unmentioned to the company he had hired. They had been told that they were to guard his borders against rumored attack by the duke’s neighbor, Baron Rhich Djones, an upstart newcomer with few swords and less gold, but great intentions. The baron was to have been unlikely to appear with too great a force, therefore was the single company to have been sufficient to halt him; were their numbers to prove insufficient, however, a rider was to be sent back and the balance of the duke’s forces would quickly ride to their assistance.

The Red Horse Company had established their camp headquarters in the pretty little vale they had been ordered to by the duke, disliking the open position but saying little as they had been told that the duke’s border lay just beyond the gentle swell of land not far ahead of them. It had been deemed best that they not show themselves too ostentatiously, merely patrol the border as a silent, forceful warning against foolishness, and their commission had included a comfortable extra to replace the loot they were unlikely to have the opportunity of securing. All in all the commission had seemed much like a leave with wages, and consideration of the brevity of the hire had kept most of the experienced campaigners of the company from fretting over the possible loss of the company’s fighting edge.

Captain Fredrix had been too old a hand at surviving, however, to allow his men to grow even the least bit sloppy— which surely saved what small number of lives were not lost with the rest. When one of the mounted patrols came haring back with word of the force which marched against them, a force a good deal larger than any they had been told to expect, a rider was sent back for reinforcements and the company was quickly formed up, for all the good it did. The advancing host came on slowly until they had nearly reached the vale, and then they put heel to horseflesh and streamed over the rise and down upon the mere hundreds of the company, cavalry alone far outnumbering the defenders.

Captain Fredrix cursed the obscenely low and open position he was required to defend even as his men spurred forward in answering attack, hoping to down enough of the invaders close enough to the rise to entangle any following gallopers incautious enough to follow at full speed—and to render near useless the enemy’s archers. The two forces came together with the clash of plate and the ring of swords, the fury of shouted curses and the finality of dying screams, and all the while they fought, the Red Horse Company awaited the arrival of the reinforcements they knew would soon be there. The duke’s forces had their field camp no more than a few miles away while they played at maneuvers, and the rider sent would surely bring them as quickly as humanly possible.

Or so most of them died expecting. When relief finally did come and the attacking forces withdrew to regroup against the new threat, Hwarruhn Fredrix let his sword fall to the end of its knot and slumped in his kak a very long while, too exhausted even to fall to the ground. When the ringing in his ears eased and he was able to force his deadened arms to raise his visor, the sight which greeted him took the life from his spirit as well. Dead and dying lay all about, messily hacked corpses and writhing wounded alike, his once proud company mown like summer wheat. Even his banner was down and lost, the flag and the man holding it trampled to mud, and it came at last to the captain to wonder on the length of time it had taken assistance to reach them. He continued to think upon the matter even as he resheathed his sword and forced his achingly stiff body to dismount so that he might see to those of his men who still lived, but it needed the arrival at the duke’s field camp before the truth of the thing was discovered.

The captain and three of his survivors, having at last brought their wounded to the camp doctors, came upon another wounded they had not expected to encounter. It was the boy they had sent to bring the duke’s host to their aid, and they were told by a doctor that his bleeding body had been the first to be brought in, right after the host had marched. He was not expected to live, and most were surprised that he had survived even that long.

It quickly turned out that the boy lived only so that he might speak to his captain a final time, his indominable will refusing to allow his murdered body the surcease it yearned for. Captain Fredrix leaned low with his ear to the boy’s lips for quite some time, and when he straightened, the boy’s spirit at last gone to Wind, his face was a mask of fury. The duke had laughingly told the boy all, for the boy was not to have survived to repeat the tale; at the end of it he had been sworded beneath his armor, in the lower back, by one of those who stood with him in the duke’s presence.