Deep Water (23 page)

“Don’t you try,” he said. “I’ve been trained as a safeguarder. You haven’t.” He’d meant it as a dismissal of his own skill;
to imply that that skill was nothing special, just an outcome of training, but Flax took it the other way. He nodded solemnly,
even more impressed.

“Can you teach me?”

Could he teach Flax? Well, he
could
 — but whether he
should
was another question.

“We have too far to ride and you have too many other things to learn when we get there,” he said, not wanting to refuse outright.
“Maybe later.”

“Is it a long way?” Flax asked, disappointed but philosophical about it.

“A few days’ ride.”

“Zel told me not to sing for my supper,” he said. “How will we eat?”

“Don’t tell me you always do everything Zel tells you?” Ash said.

Flax grinned and got up. “Not always,” he said. His smile was an invitation to share confidences, but Ash wasn’t in the mood.

“Let’s go to sleep,” Ash said.

Flax nodded and moved to open his tent flap, but paused halfway inside. “You could sing with me,” he said. “There are some
good drinking songs that need two voices.”

Gods, that boy was annoying. “I don’t sing.”

Flax shrugged and disappeared into his tent. Ash lay in his own tent and deliberately didn’t let himself think about the stonecasting
he could not do, which might have paid their way. Instead, he sent his thoughts out to Bramble. Tonight was the Spring Equinox;
whatever journey she was going on would start tonight, he was sure.

“Gods of field and stream, shield your daughter,” he whispered into the night, and felt better for it.

“S
HE LOOKS UNCOMFORTABLE
,” Martine said.

“I daresay she is,” Safred answered, smoothing back a strand of Bramble’s hair.

Bramble lay curled up on her side, twitching slightly. Her black hair shone in the early morning sun, her skin pale, sweat
beading her forehead and making stains on her back and under her armpits. Wherever she was, whatever she was doing, it was
taking a lot of effort.

Every little while they would support her head and tilt water into her mouth. She swallowed reflexively but her eyes stayed
closed. She made no sound, although sometimes she seemed to mouth words. Sometimes she smiled. She did not look like she was
asleep, because there was no relaxation of her muscles. She stayed tensed against — something.

What was happening to her was horrible, worse somehow in daylight.

“She agreed to do it,” Safred reminded Martine, reading her thought, as she so often did. “This was her task, and she knew
it.”

“That doesn’t make it right,” Martine responded.

Cael and Zel were off in the forest, hunting or foraging or perhaps just walking. No doubt Zel was searching for a new flint,
too. They had struck up an odd friendship, speaking little but attending briskly to all the practical things that had to be
done: setting up tents, seeing to the horses, cooking. Martine could see that there was a comfort in doing ordinary, necessary
jobs, but she couldn’t pull herself away from Bramble. She was in danger, Martine was sure. She felt that conviction deep
in her bones, although she had no idea what threatened her. Obscurely, she felt that she owed it to Ash, who had risked his
own life to save Bramble’s, to make sure that the girl was all right.

“Is there danger?” she asked Safred abruptly. While it went against the grain to ask someone else instead of the stones, if
you had a prophet handy, you might as well use her.

“There’s always danger.”

“From what?” she demanded and then, remembering the ghost of the girl Ash had killed in Turvite and her warning, she added,
“From whom?”

Safred spread her hands. “I don’t know.” She was embarrassed. “But the Forest has said Bramble will be safe, and we must trust
to that. The gods are guiding her, no doubt.”

As so often with Safred, Martine felt that she meant more than she was saying, that she intended her to feel in need of guidance.
She remembered Bramble’s attitude to Safred, defiant and challenging, and smiled. Perhaps she needed some of Bramble’s defiance
in order to protect her. Perhaps she should trust her own annoyance, and let it guide her.

“It’s the Forest that’s hurting Cael,” she said harshly.

Safred paled. “He’s better this morning.”

“When he comes out of the Forest, he’ll be worse,” Martine predicted. “You should keep him out of the trees.”

She was right. When Cael and Zel emerged, he was leaning on her arm, shaky and pale, but he waved aside Safred’s offer to
try to heal him.

“I’ll last until we’re away from here,” he said. “You can try again then.”

“Stay out of the Forest,” Martine said. “It will do you no good.”

He nodded somberly and then smiled, as if he couldn’t help it. “Caught between flint and striker,” he said, gesturing from
the trees to the lake. “If one doesn’t get me, the other will. But we found a stream a little way back, where we can water
the horses and fill our skins.”

“Don’t trust it,” Martine said. “Check it every time, in case it has the smell of — whatever that was at the other stream.”

Zel nodded. “Hell’ll melt before I trust any stream in this place,” she said. She looked at Bramble. “How’s she?”

“Fighting something,” Martine said. Bramble did, indeed, look as if she were fighting some internal battle, her face tight,
her arms twitching, like a dreamer in a nightmare.

“Protect her, then, if you feel you must. She may be glad of it,” Safred said.

Martine sat down next to Bramble. She doubted that the threat to Bramble would come from the outside, but she loosened the
knife in her belt and the one in her boot and sat with her back to Bramble and the lake, scanning the Forest edge. But although
she tried to put all her attention into her eyes, she was aware of Bramble, twitching slightly behind her, all her muscles
taut as though she wanted to run, far away from here. Martine wanted to run, too. Her body was still keyed up from the ritual,
and she was feeling unsettled and nervy.

She also didn’t want to think about what “destiny” of hers required her to stay in the Last Domain instead of Traveling with
Ash. She had seen many people meet their destiny, and it had mostly been very unpleasant, often deadly. She shrugged. Well,
if it came, it came. Elva was safe, and that was all that mattered. Elva and the baby.

H
E HAD LET
his anger at the Voice doom the town. He should have swallowed the insult and kept her talking, convinced her to surrender
and
then
consult the Lake. Buy some time.

Leof rode back to the camp in a foul mood, angry with himself, Vi, Thegan, even the Lake itself, ignoring the glances Hodge
and the men exchanged behind his back. What was the point of this? Fighting the Ice King’s men when they had attacked the
Domains, that had been
necessary.
This was just politics.

Thegan was overseeing the making of fire arrows, checking that the men didn’t wind so much linen onto the arrowheads that
they would go wildly off course when fired. Leof knew the drill. The arrows would be dipped in oil and lit just before they
were shot into the air to rain down destruction on Baluchston, as they had tried to do to the reed beds. The Lake doesn’t
like fire, he thought. She won’t be pleased about this. At noon, they won’t even be spectacular. The thought gave him a thread
to follow when he spoke to Thegan.

“It’s a shame to fire these things in broad daylight, my lord,” Leof said. “They’re much more frightening at night. Sometimes
you only need one or two before they surrender.”

“So they’re going to fight?” Thegan rested one brown boot on a barrel of oil and gazed sharply at him. The spring sun picked
out the lines on his face, but it flattered him; he looked sharp as well, sharp and ready for action, ready for battle.

“The Voice has gone to ‘consult with the Lake,’ ” Leof said deprecatingly, as though “consult with the Lake” was a euphemism
for something else, something more political. “She says it will take until sunset. I don’t think she — the Voice, I mean — will
let her people be killed. She would surrender before that.”

“So she will surrender as we approach the town.”

“Mmm. If she’s there. She said the consultation had to happen in deep water. That she — and perhaps others, do you think,
my lord? — would be out on the water all day. If we attack when she’s not there —”

“Then she will be spared the sight of her town being put to the flame,” Thegan said briskly. “Order the men up for noon. Tell
them to have their farings early, and to eat lightly. We don’t want them weighed down and sleepy for the fighting.”

Leof bowed. “My lord.”

He knew Thegan well enough to accept that any attempt to sway him was useless. The only thing that could stop the sacking
of the town was Thegan’s death. Perhaps the Lake would accomplish that. Half of him was appalled at the thought, while the
other — the part that had been well taught by Thegan, he recognized — knew that it was the simple truth. And although he winced
at the thought of Thegan’s men descending on the townsfolk, angry at the Lake’s destruction of their comrades, and believing
Thegan’s claims about the enchanter from Baluchston, still he was Thegan’s man, and would follow his orders. What else could
he do? Set his own will up against that of the warlord? Claim some right to command, a right that didn’t exist in any form?
Nor would walking away, giving up his position, help. The town would still die. Perhaps he could keep the men under some control
once the town was fired: keep the rapes and looting to a minimum. He wondered if Acton had ever faced a moment like this.
But Acton had laughed as he killed, a thing Leof had never understood.

He called the sergeants together and gave them Thegan’s orders. As they left, he called Hodge back, knowing that Thegan had
been testing him all day, and would continue to test him.

“Get those lists of the dead ready for me. My lord wanted them before noon.”

“Aye, my lord,” Hodge said. He hesitated. “The old lady… she was the Voice?”

Leof nodded. “She’s gone to consult the Lake. But my lord Thegan wants their surrender by noon, and if he doesn’t get it . . .”
Leof shrugged.

Hodge pulled at his lower lip, considering. “Seems like someone should have told her my lord doesn’t like to be kept waiting.
Saving your presence, my lord.”

Leof chuckled without humor. “Perhaps someone did, sergeant. And perhaps she ignored it.”

Hodge spat in the dust. “More fool her, then,” he said dismissively, and went to follow his instructions.

The sun was climbing. Hodge brought back the list of the dead — too long, much too long, no wonder Thegan was angry, Leof
thought. A waste of men, of time, of training — of sorrow and loss.

He presented it to Thegan in his tent.

“What a waste,” Thegan said, frowning blackly. “When I think of all the training we put into getting the Central Domain men
into shape!”

Leof said nothing. He was an experienced commander; he’d thought the same thing. It just sounded colder said aloud. He nodded
and went back to readying his men, lecturing them about discipline and orderly occupation of the town, hoping to fend off
the worst behavior.

“Kill only those who resist,” he said. “Remember, we don’t know how many were involved in the enchanter’s plot. Most of the
townsfolk are probably as innocent as you or I. No breaking into homes without orders. No rape. If a woman fights, kill her
cleanly. No destruction. My lord Thegan wants this town intact for his own use, and I’d remember that if I were you.” He said
it with a smile and there were a few chuckles from the older men.

“Sergeants, you will be held responsible for the behavior of your men.”

The sergeants turned as one to glare threateningly at their squads.

“We’re like Acton’s men,” Leof concluded. “We don’t want to destroy everything, because we’ll have a use for it ourselves.
Understood?”

The men nodded, but Leof doubted that, in the thick of it, amid the noise and the heat and the shouting, they would remember
to control themselves. He’d done what he could.

The sun was climbing. Less than an hour to noon, and no word from Baluchston. Leof found himself checking the road to town
every few moments, hoping to see a messenger bringing the surrender.

At noon, Thegan emerged from his tent and came to stand before his troops. The sun lit his fair head and reminded Leof of
the old songs about Acton marching into battle with a head of shining gold.

“The town has defied us. The town has killed our comrades. The town will be taken. You have your orders. Kill any who resist.”
He paused deliberately. “There will be pleasures afterward, for those who fight well. But I want order and I want discipline.”
He smiled, that miraculous smile that no one could resist, and the men smiled back, even the crusty old sergeants. “Those
who fight well today will be rewarded. Are you ready to avenge your comrades?” He raised his voice to a shout on the last
words.

“
Yes! Aye!
” they shouted back.

Thegan nodded and turned to his officers.

“Tib, take the lead —” he began but a scuffle behind the men attracted his attention and a quick frown.

“What’s toward?” Leof shouted at the rear.

“A messenger, sir,” someone shouted back.

A stir went through the men, half of relief and half of disappointment. Leof sent a quick prayer of gratitude to the gods
and shouted again, “Take his horse and let him through, fools!”

But the man who struggled through the troops was clearly not a messenger from Baluchston. He had ridden hard and long; ridden
to the point of exhaustion. He was an older man, completely bald, wearing a dark robe and carrying a stonecaster’s pouch at
his belt.

He was staggering as he walked, and almost fell as he passed Leof. Leof supported him the last few steps to Thegan.

“My lord,” the man said. His voice was hoarse with travel dust and he tried to clear it. Leof grabbed a waterskin from a nearby
sergeant and gave it to him. He swallowed a mouthful and waved the rest away.