LEOF WOKE WITH his mother’s voice in his ears. “Go home, child,” it said. “Leave this place in peace and go back to one who will love you.”
He struggled up, murmuring, “Mam?,” half-expecting to find himself in his bedroom at home, half-expecting to hear his brother’s snoring and the well pulley clanking in the yard outside as the stableboys filled the horses’ buckets.
He didn’t expect to find himself in the top branches of a pine tree, precariously wedged between a limb and the trunk, his head aching so badly that it felt like it would blow apart. The dawn light was not golden, but gray, and it was a long, long way to the ground.
Shivering with cold, he took stock. He was wet but not sopping, as though his clothes had been dripping for some time; they were clammy against his skin. He smelt of lake weeds.
Struggling to a more comfortable position, he sat himself in the fork of the tree and looked out. The wave had carried him a long way inland; he could only just glimpse the Lake through the trees, and then only because so many of them were broken in half, or their branches had been ripped away. Below, the forest floor was a mess of broken limbs and fallen trees. And bodies. Oh, gods of wind and storm, the bodies of his men. He could see three, four, at least five. They lay with the abandonment of death, limbs crooked, some buried under trees, some splayed on top.
He had had six horses and fifteen archers under his command; perhaps the others had been lucky too. Leof paused at the thought, remembering the voice which had spoken to him as he had woken. Perhaps luck had nothing to do with it. Perhaps the Lake had preserved those she wished to preserve. In which case, why him? Why him and not, as he could see as he climbed down toward the nearest body, why not Broc?
Broc lay on top of a smashed tree trunk, his back as broken as the tree. He looked older than he had the night before, as though he had tasted pain and despair before he died. Leof remembered his father, taking him to see what the Ice King had done to the villages he pillaged. Twenty-two years ago, when he was eight. The bodies had lain everywhere, cut down mercilessly, and for what? A few trinkets and some goats. Barely anything had been stolen. His father made him look at each body — children, women, men, granfers and grammers — all slaughtered and left in their blood. The flies had swarmed over the face of a little girl about the same age as he was, and he had vomited. He had been ashamed, but his father had understood.
“You will lose men in battle,” his father had said. “It will be hard. But it is not so hard as seeing the bodies of the innocent folk who you have failed to protect.”
That had been the moment when Leof had sworn himself to be a soldier, to protect the people of his land from the raiders who had left not a single person alive in two whole villages. He had known then, and in the years since, when he had defended the Domain against the Ice King’s raids, that he was doing the right work. No matter how hard killing was, it had to be done, to protect the innocent.
Now, he stared down at Broc, who was both a man he had lost in battle and an innocent he had failed to protect. Tears scalded Leof’s eyes and he let them fall onto the boy’s body. It was the only blessing he could give him, and a plea for forgiveness. He should have told Broc to run as soon as the ground began to shake. He should have run himself, as Thistle and the other horses, wiser than men, had done. He should have known the horses would not be affected by illusion. Lord Thegan had been wrong. This was his fault.
Leof banished the thought immediately. Commanders based their decisions on the information they had at the time. Thegan had not had the right information. The Lake was much more powerful than they had known. They would have to regroup and make new plans.
On that thought, his tears dried and he began to think again like an officer. He checked the other bodies, without trying to disentangle them from the branches and debris which lay over and under them like macabre winding sheets. Two archers, two horsemen. He would have to search further afield for the others. He sent out a halloo but heard no response, so he began the gruesome task of searching for more bodies, in case there was anyone left alive.
He found three more men dead and a horse he didn’t recognize before the cold and dizziness made him stop. Although he didn’t have any obvious injuries apart from bruising, his head was pounding and he was shivering in fits and starts. He needed to find help before nightfall, or he would become another of the Lake’s victims.
Reluctantly, he turned toward the Lake shore. There would be searchers out, he was sure. Sooner or later, Lord Thegan would organize the remnants of his army. He would expect a report from his officers. There had been twenty of them, each with a troop stationed at intervals around the Lake, so they could attack it from all sides.
Leof approached the shoreline cautiously, wondering if he should call out to reassure the Lake that he meant no harm. Then he remembered the voice he had heard. It had not seemed violent or maddened, just sad. Somewhat reassured, he threaded through broken branches and climbed over fallen trees.
The Lake stretched before him, impossibly peaceful. The water was still and serene, reflecting a perfect blue sky — so still that even the reed beds were silent, their eternal whispering paused. This was how the Lake should be, not riven by war and death. Leof was overwhelmed by remorse. It came unexpectedly, so quickly that he was taken by surprise. We should not have come here, he thought. We have no right to invade these people. Then he wondered whose thought it was, his or the Lake’s, and was frightened, truly frightened, for the first time since he was a boy, at the idea that the Lake could put a thought in his head.
To his relief, he heard a shout from his left and turned to find a search party of four men making their cautious way around the shoreline. Hodge led them, his grim face lightening as he saw Leof.
“My Lord Leof!” he called, raising his hand in greeting. “Thank the gods!”
Leof went to meet them and clasped forearms with Hodge, although that was a gesture used between equals, not between officers and sergeants.
“I’m glad to see you alive, sergeant,” Leof said. Hodge nodded.
“Same with us, sir. You’re the first we’ve found in this stretch.”
“How far did it go?”
Hodge stared at him, surprised. “All the way around, sir. Wherever we had men, wherever the arrows caught the reeds. We’ve lost — I don’t know how many, maybe a quarter of the men, a third of the horses.”
“My Lord Thegan?”
“Thank the gods, he’s safe. He was ordering the attack from a lookout point and it was almost higher than the wave. He just got a wetting.”
Leof exhaled in relief. “He’ll be angry.”
“Cold angry, sir, and dangerous with it.” Hodge cleared his throat, aware suddenly that sergeants don’t make comments like that about their lords. At least, not to officers. “He wants all survivors to gather toward Baluchston.”
“Baluchston?”
“Aye.” Hodge spat to one side. “The wave didn’t touch the town. So my lord reckons they’ve turned coat there, gone native, like. He’s going to raze the town, he says, to teach them a lesson.”
Leof went so still that he heard his heart thumping clearly, heard the blood thrum in his ears. He had to get to Thegan. Try to turn his anger away from the town. It was the Lake who had sent the wave, not the people of Baluchston. He knew that in his bones.
“Do you have horses, sergeant?”
“Aye,” Hodge nodded. “We’ve been gathering up the strays. Most of the horses made it out. About ten minute’s walk back that way, sir. We found your Thistle.”
Thistle safe. Leof smiled and clapped Hodge on the back. “A silver piece to every man in your group, sergeant, when we get back to Sendat. That’s the best news I could have had.”
He started off toward the horses with a light step, but turned back somberly as he remembered. “You’ll find eight men and a horse that way,” he said, pointing back to the forest. “I couldn’t find anyone alive.”
“Aye, sir,” Hodge said, nodding to his men to continue their search. “I think this section had the worst of it, by the numbers dead.”
“The wind was at our backs,” Leof said. “The Lake had only one chance to stop us.”
“She only needed one chance, sir,” Hodge said. Leof noticed that “she.” He wondered if Hodge, too, had heard his mother’s voice telling him to go home. He wished, with all his heart, that he could follow that advice. Instead, he kept walking around the shoreline, trying to think of arguments which would convince Thegan that no good would come of massacre.