Sword of the Bright Lady (50 page)

And of course Royal. Christopher had been tempted to leave the horse behind. Why expose him to danger? But he had been bred for battle. When Christopher recognized that as a cheap excuse, he told himself Royal had saved his life too many times to stop now. Eventually that wore thin, and he had to admit he just didn't want to go to war alone.

Helga was inconsolable, red-eyed and weeping for the last three days. Even Svengusta struggled to crack jokes. The most visibly affected was Karl, because nothing ever visibly affected Karl, but these days he was snappish and angry with everyone. They'd had an actual shouting match over the armor.

“You have to wear it,” Karl had ordered. “You will be a prime target for the enemy. It will be all that keeps you alive.”

“It will make me stand out like a beacon,” Christopher had argued back. “I'm better off being invisibly anonymous. I'll have my chain shirt on underneath.”

“Chain mail won't save you. They'll know you from your horse. Wear the armor!”

“Then I'll leave the horse behind.” Christopher could threaten to do this because he knew Karl would never, ever accept that.

“You are impossible!” And Karl stormed out of the building, red-faced and confused.

Now the hard young man stood in Christopher's room, watching him pack.

“I cannot accept this,” Karl said finally, and laid Black Bart's huge sword on the bed.

“You're giving away my sword again? I keep giving you better and better swords, and you keep giving them away.”

The young man blushed, a truly unique experience for both of them. Christopher decided to stop torturing him.

“I'll pay you twice what Krellyan does. Plus room, board, and equipment.”

“Draftees do not get paid.” Karl's face was a mask of pain.

“Dark take that. I'll put the money on account for you. Sign up with me, Karl. Do an impossible third term. You wanted to save these boys; here is your chance. You know your expert leadership will make the difference.”

Christopher should have felt bad, asking the man to risk his life again when he'd already done twice what anybody could expect him to. But he didn't feel bad. He wanted Karl's help too much to feel bad. He needed him.

“I can't ask you to do this, Karl. Nobody can. You did your time, and it's impossible for anyone to ask you to do it again. You did your time twice. Nobody can ask you for more. But I'm asking you.”

He picked up the sword and held it out to the tormented soldier.

“I want to tell you that it will be different. But I can't, because I don't know. All I know is I need you. They need you. And I'm shameless for asking you, but I'm doing it anyway.”

Karl took the sword, sighed in utter resignation, a man defeated by his own immutable nature.

“Was there ever any doubt?”

Christopher shook his head. “No” was all he said, but the word carried much with it.

“Do I get a rifle?” Karl asked as he helped Christopher carry his belongings out of the room.

“Only if you give up that ridiculous armor,” Christopher bantered with him, but he stopped when they came across the six mercenaries standing together in the chapel.

“How much are you paying him?” asked one. “We'll work for half.”

“But only if we get to pick our own platoons,” said another.

“You don't know what you're saying,” Karl said with easy hypocrisy. “It's the draft you'll be joining, not a lord's personal regiment. We'll be under the command of gods know who, subject to his will. You can't come along as a private army but only as slaves, as boys without rank or merit, sentenced to three years of hard labor.”

Their response was a simple question.

“Do we get rifles?”

The regiment fell into marching order, winding its way out of the village. The columns of men in uniform, their helmets sparkling in the bright, cold sun, were a moving sight. Christopher could not help but feel strong, riding at their head, his officers ranging up and down the line on their black horses. The boys felt it too, their strength in organized numbers, and they marched with proud steps and high heads, as did Royal, finally in his rightful place.

“Karl, send out our scouts.”

The young veteran called orders to the boys they had chosen for this duty.

“Show me what you've learned,” he told them. “I don't want a crow to cross our path that I wasn't warned about.”

The scouts had been the hardest picks. It was a dangerous job and required many skills, of which riding was merely one. Karl had not given them rifles, at first, just spears. That had reduced the willing pool of applicants dramatically.

He finally relented, arming them with guns, but only on the express understanding that they never use them.

“I don't want you to kill anything,” he told them. “I want you to tell us about it so we can kill it. If you try to shoot at something, you might get shot back, and then where would we be? Deaf and blind in the enemy's grasp.”

They came into Knockford like a victorious army, and they got a hero's welcome. This was what the people had paid their gold to see. Their boys were not a helpless rabble sent out to servitude, but a single entity, a long and sinuous dragon with two hundred fire-breathing mouths.

Vicar Rana was uncharacteristically emotional, tears cracking from her eyes when she saw Karl in uniform.

“Does it never end?” she mumbled, but then shook it off with iron discipline. “We are sending one of our own with you, as we always do. Pater Stephram will accompany your regiment to provide healing and wisdom, though no one ever listens to first-ranked priests. Treat him well, if you can.”

Christopher hugged the young man tightly, grateful for this tangible sign of support. “It's good to have you, Steph.” Stephram didn't look so happy, but he hugged back. “We're going to be okay,” Christopher whispered.

But of course Stephram had already been drafted once and no doubt did not find Christopher's empty promises very reassuring.

There would be no third priest. Karl had spent all the Saint's money on guns. Christopher had spent twice as much, but those who sold tael did not part with it for mere paper.

“We'll be marching on,” Karl said. “Technically we have another week to report for duty, but I do not wish to be the dregs of the barrel. Unless Krellyan already knows who we are to serve?”

“If he does, he does not tell me,” Rana said unhappily. “But avoid the city as much as you can. Its iniquity is terrible, and many a young man has lost his way there. These boys are not yet fixed in their affiliation, and they face a terrible future. Do not let despair entrap them.”

She gazed out over the column of young men. “This is the first time we have ever seen our draft assembled. I do not think we realized how much we sacrificed each year, when it was hidden in towns and villages sending their children to the city in little droplets.”

And then she kissed Christopher on the cheek, and Karl and Stephram too, then fled.

Christopher had to say good-bye to all his employees, gathered together in a small crowd. He felt much like Rana had described, realizing for the first time just how many people now depended on him.

“Make me rich while I am gone,” he told them, trying to grin.

“We will, lord,” they swore, solemn and grave.

The goal was Copperton, not the town but the county, a twenty-mile march from Knockford, and they'd gotten a late start out of the village. But the highway passed through Fram, so they could camp there if they had to. Karl didn't think they could do twenty miles in one day, and of course he was right.

They barely made Fram by nightfall, and the boys fell out to pitch camp on a field outside the town. They were terrible, getting in each other's way even though they'd all done this as smaller groups before. The crowd of sightseers didn't help, laughing at general chaos and egging on the flaring arguments.

In the morning Christopher lined the men up and showed them his latest invention, a number of cloth stripes, three inches wide and half an inch long. He handed them out to his officers and subalterns, and while the army decamped, women from Fram town sewed the stripes onto their coats.

Christopher tried to explain the concept of military rank, hoping it would reduce the number of times a draftee ignored a mercenary's command simply because he was from a different platoon, but the men couldn't get past the word.

“There aren't ranks in the draft,” Karl said. “And the mercenaries outrank me, anyway, since they have Apprentice ranks.”

“It's not
rank
ranks,” Christopher said. “It's military ranks. How high you are in our military organization. The original boys are all the first step, the mercenaries are all the second step, and you're the third.” Finally he got through to them when he gave up on the word “rank” and called them “levels.”

“I'm going to do three drafts too, so I can have three levels like Karl,” boasted young Charles the quartermaster, completely misunderstanding the point. He was carrying a satchel full of papers and armed only with an ink pen, so perhaps his idea of soldier duty was a bit different.

Nonetheless, the older men laughed. “That's a lot of pain for a bit of cloth.”

They made their twelve miles the next day, camping at the fork in the road that led north to Copperton. Amazingly, they still got visitors, not only from the surrounding hamlets but a few from Copperton town as well.

“I shouldn't let them in,” Karl said, “but this will be the last time these mothers see their boys. When they come home, they'll be men.” Superstitious as any soldier, he was careful to say “when” instead of “if.”

Some of the alleged mothers seemed suspiciously young, and Karl had to check all the tents that night to make sure there weren't any unapproved guests.

The middle of the next day they passed into Kingsrock county. Christopher felt like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. He had nowhere else to go but forward. He wondered if Caesar had felt that unreasoning pang of fear, that desire to turn and bolt for safe home and old familiar ways.

They reached the city the next day at the edge of darkness. There was still enough light for Christopher to see why it was called Kingsrock. The city was built on a spire of rock sticking out of the ground, like Stirling Castle in Scotland. It was a magnificent natural fortress, and as the night fell, the sparkling lights from the city made Christopher dizzy with nostalgia.

They camped at its feet, in an open field next to a series of squalid barracks. From his tent in the heart of his temporary hamlet, he listened to men and horses snoring. He felt like a debutante on a blind date, waiting for the inevitable faux pas, certain that the morning would dispel the mystery and glamour of the distant city.

But it wasn't the city that shriveled in the light of morning, it was their camp.

“This is where the recruits train?”

“Yes, Pater,” Bondi said. The field was mud, the buildings were dilapidated, and the smell of manure clung to the ground and everything it touched.

“It's filthy.”

At least it was winter and the ground was frozen solid. The place would be a muddy hellhole of disease and infection otherwise, Christopher complained in disgust.

“It usually is.” Bondi was indifferent, and Christopher wondered if it was because the Church could heal any disease, or whether it was just ordinary military-style indifference.

The situation was not helped by their neighbors. A handful of dirty men lounged in the doorways of the barracks, watching them with indolence.

“Who are those riffraff?” Christopher asked.

“The regimental commanders park all sorts of trash here, Pater. Keeps the farm boys out of the city. The real troops, the personal retinues and what-not, they got quarters in the city usually.”

Bondi stopped to spit on the ground, although whether he was offering his opinion on the riffraff or on the regimental commanders wasn't entirely clear.