Avani dropped her bag with a cry. Liam, busy polishing Morgan’s armor with handfuls of scrubbing sand, looked around in dismay.
“My lady?”
She didn’t reply. Standing rigid a few steps from the young earl’s tent, she appeared not to notice Liam or the dropped bag. Her mouth worked silently; she pressed fingers against her closed eyes.
Liam set aside the sand and rose to his feet. He didn’t want to jar Avani from whatever vision gripped her. Since they’d ridden out from the city five days earlier she was struck often with unexpected fits of what the Widow used to call augury, though as far as Liam could tell Avani wasn’t seeing into the future, but back in the direction of Wilhaiim and Mal.
He’d surprised her once, the very first time it happened, when she’d been in danger of spilling hot porridge down her front. She’d startled, alarmed, from her waking dream and brought her wards up in a wall of silver fire at the same time, nearly setting Liam’s sleeve alight. After that they’d agreed he wouldn’t touch her but instead call out until she revived. It seemed to Liam a weak plan, especially as the fits were coming upon her more frequently as days passed.
“My lady,” he cajoled, taking another stride in Avani’s direction. “Wake up, now. You’re here with me and the rest of the royal cavalry, my lady, atop the white cliffs amongst scrub and heather, remember?” He snuck forward a second step. “Listen, hear the Maiden crashing below us, can’t you? And look, here comes his lordship, red in the face and riled. I suppose the constable’s given him another tongue lashing, the third in two days, innit it?”
“Liam!” Morgan rasped, abruptly stopping his forward march into camp. He was indeed red in the face, although Liam couldn’t be certain that was the constable’s fault. Morgan, a sensitive sort, was easily vexed by the simplest criticism. The young earl’s men were kind to his face but condescending when they thought he wasn’t listening. It was evident to everyone involved, especially Morgan, that they would have preferred his dead brother in his stead.
“What are you doing?” Morgan demanded. “We agreed it was safest to let Lady Avani alone when she was caught out of body!”
Out of body seemed an odd fancy to Liam who could clearly see the clench of Avani’s hands against her thighs and the roll of her eyes behind her lids. He squatted, picked up a medium-sized stone, and sent it whizzing through the air. He had astonishingly fine aim—the lancer in charge of their most recent training had remarked on Liam’s keenness many times already—and the stone hit Avani square on the shoulder exactly as he’d planned.
“Sir!” Morgan yelped, aghast. He launched himself in Liam’s direction as Liam reached for a second stone. For such a slight lad Morgan was surprisingly solid. He tackled Liam around the middle, employing one of Riggins’s favorite grappling holds. They tussled in the dirt, more for the excitement of their new station as Kingsmen than any real quarrel. Liam choked on giggles. Morgan, trying to land an elbow on Liam’s ribs and still avoid his damaged leg, socked him in the gut instead. Liam, whooping, bit his wrist hard enough to draw blood. Morgan’s curses turned salty as any sailor’s.
Bear, until then dozing in the shadow of the earl’s tent, roused and began to bark.
“Ai, Liam! My lord!” Tepid water drenched them both head to neck. As one they froze and lay still, afraid to look around. “What mischief is this?”
“Not mischief.” Liam swiped wet hair from his face. He prodded Morgan with his foot before sitting up. If they were about to have their ears blistered, he intended they’d do so together. “Practice. We’re supposed to practice every chance we get.”
“Aye, shooting and riding and throwing the lance,” retorted Avani, setting aside the water skin she had used to douse their enthusiasm. “Not rolling about hissing and biting like two pups.” She crossed her arms, looking down her nose at the both of them. Her eyes were clear again, her expression shrewd.
“My lady . . .” Morgan hopped to his feet. “Apologies. Only,” he continued hastily, “you were suffering one of your visions, understand, and Liam threw a stone even though we both expressly gave our word not to disturb you during augury.” He flicked an admonishing finger Liam’s way. “My squire needs to learn that word given is binding. He cannot just ignore direction as he sees fit.”
“He has a bad habit of doing just that,” Avani said. “You’re unlikely to break him of it any time soon.” But she winked Liam’s way as she retrieved her pack and slung it over her shoulders. “I’m going down the hill to check with Brother Absen at the healer’s tent. Unless you’ve need of me, my lord?”
Morgan demurred. The young earl had yet to relax around Avani; Liam wasn’t sure he ever would. The old houses hadn’t forgotten the magi’s betrayal and Wythe was one of the oldest still standing. Morgan had confessed to Liam that his grandsire, on the day Andrew had been installed as Renault’s vocent, had ridden all the way from Wythe to Wilhaiim for the express purpose of begging the young king to put the magus to the sword. The audience had ended badly, Morgan’s grandsire had not again set foot inside the white walls, and Wythe had been Renault’s most grudging subject ever since, obedient only insofar as to not give undue offense.
Avani whistled. Jacob stuck his head through the flap of Morgan’s tent where he’d taken to sleeping the days away as his wing slowly healed. Though Morgan claimed the raven muttered at night in his dreaming, Jacob had not spoken a word in public since the cavalry had left Wilhaiim, and Liam was glad of it. If a black-feathered bird was considered ill luck in battle, how much worse a black-feathered bird screaming broken king’s lingua?
Jacob hopped out of the tent and made his way awkwardly to Avani’s shoulder. She scratched his neck in greeting before arching a brow in Liam’s direction.
“My lord’s armor won’t scrub itself clean,” she reminded him. “The stew pot’s empty and we’re low on kindling. Either get yourself to the quartermaster for rations or find us some rabbit while you’re foraging wood.”
“Yes’m.”
She ruffled his hair as she left camp. Liam took the gesture of affection with better grace than usual. He watched after as she made her way down the hill through Wythe’s strictly ordered tent garrison. A few men and women called out in acknowledgement as she passed. Many more did not. Wythe’s prejudices were not confined to the countess and her son.
“Are we to now pretend it’s not happening?” Morgan asked when Avani was safely out of earshot. “Pick up and carry on just like she’s not gone all stiff midconversation?”
“Avani’s been struck with visions since I was a wee lad.” Resigned, Liam glowered into the empty stew pot. “Why, before the sidhe burned Stonehill she was having them fast and regular-like. She knows better than you and me how to handle them. My lord.”
“Before the sidhe burned Stonehill,” Morgan ground out. “Are you listening to yourself? Don’t you think it’s worrisome they’re coming fast and regular-like now, again?”
“Nay,” Liam lied. “I told you, she can handle them. I’m going to check our snares. Bear, stay, guard!”
The brindled hound, curled nose to tail again near the earl’s tent, opened one eye in lazy agreement.
“I’m coming with you,” Morgan decided. Liam refrained from sighing. It wasn’t that he disdained the lad’s company. It was that lately Morgan couldn’t seem to decide whether he was coming or going. Absent Arthur’s blunt companionship, Morgan’s anxious nature had turned high-strung as one of the cavalry’s overbred coursers.
“As you like,” Liam replied. “Just . . . try to keep up, my lord. I’ve plenty left to do before midday.”
The white cliffs, while steep and unsurmountable to Wilhaiim’s north where they abutted the Maiden Gate, at their heights sloped gradually further northward until the incline collapsed into prairie near the verge of the king’s red woods. At their summit on a clear day the cliffs provided unobstructed views of countryside west of the forest as far as the eye could see; the King’s Highway snaked on past Wilhaiim toward sandy Whitcomb where brilliant blue sea merged with the skyline beyond. Low Port, further to the west and north, was too distant for even Liam with his lauded eyesight to glimpse, but he’d taken to looking that way first thing in the morning when he woke, as if somehow the horizon would look different once Roue’s small navy had arrived.
The highway was busy from dawn to dusk and often into the night with refugees come from farm and cottage to shelter within Wilhaiim’s walls. The old keeps—and thanks to Mal’s drilling Liam could list all fifteen houses by device and by title—were protected from invasion by even older bone magic, wards set into their walls tuned to repel even the most determined enemy, but the keeps were not large enough to contain every surrounding farm family, tinker’s brood, or traveling merchant. Wilhaiim was meant to accommodate the overflow, and Kingsmen were busy up and down the flatlands spreading word that the time had come to seek the castle.
Liam couldn’t help but marvel at the crowd below on the highway as he and Morgan walked the edge of the cliff nearest their campsite. He wondered how many families had come with children. He worried at the sheer number of mouths to feed, and whether Wilhaiim’s food stores would hold out in the face of war. He hoped many of those men and women, come at Renault’s call, would willingly stand in defense of the city alongside career soldiers, even once the royal armory was emptied.
Mostly, Liam wondered if they were afraid.
There were ground squirrels living in holes in the face of the cliff: fat, happy creatures with short whiskers and long, bushy tails. They were shy around men and difficult to catch but they were tasty in a stew and plentiful, and Liam had spent the first years of his life surviving off small game and determination. Squirrels on the Downs dugs their homes in the ground, which made for easier snaring, but Liam enjoyed a challenge and the puzzle of trapping dinner on a sheer, vertical surface kept his mind occupied during what was beginning to seem a ceaseless wait.
Like any lad, Morgan knew how to construct a simple noose snare out of strong leather cord and was eager to put his knowledge to the test. But without horizontal space to scatter bait, a basic lariat at first seemed of no purpose. Gorse, heather, and flowering scrub grew in abundance above the cliff face but the squirrels appeared to shun the plants, ignoring an array of bright red berries in favor of the nuts on a single, stunted oak growing halfway down the cliff.
After some time wasted exploring back and forth along the edge of the cliff and an evening spent gnawing tasteless jerky while trying to think like a squirrel, Liam finally worked it out.
“Water,” he explained to Morgan their second morning at camp. “Surely they don’t drink from the Maiden below—it’s foul. They must come up to drink, I’m sure of it. Somewhere close to the edge, somewhere sheltered, somewhere they’re not easily picked off by bird or fox.”
“The only fresh water is all the way down the hill,” Morgan argued, “in the old well.”
“The arrowroot pool,” Avani suggested from where she sat near Bear, ripping strips of cloth from a pile of embroidered petticoats and rolling the strips into bandages. Liam was certain she hadn’t ridden out of the city with court fancy dress bundled in her journey pack. “Ai, it’s more of a puddle than a pool, but it’s close to the cliff and surrounded all around by old heather.”
Morgan had run off to look and reported back that although the ground around the puddle was too marshy for tracks, it seemed a fine solution for a colony of thirsty squirrels, so Liam had taught the young earl the trick of anchoring a line of snares to a heavy piece of broken lance pole borrowed from a refuse pile, and the secret of anise seed for bait. Avani carried plenty of anise and the broken lance was solid enough to stay put in the mud near the arrowroot pool.
Morgan and Liam set the trap before dark and on their third day on the hill they had an abundance of squirrel meat for their cook pot and extra for Bear.
But on the fifth day, their snares were empty. Morgan, already in a pother over Avani’s visions, with Liam’s tooth marks still healing on his wrist, took the empty traps as a personal affront.
“By the Aug,” the lad complained, stomping in the mud. “Someone’s been about thieving our catch. Dammit all, my mother will hear about this. Wythe makes no allowance for theft. This is treachery!”
“A few stolen squirrels are not treachery. And I don’t expect Wythe makes allowance for a tattling earl, either,” Liam said mildly, squatting to examine the trap. “You’ll never make a good commander if you run down to mum every time something goes awry. You didn’t used to grouse so much before His Majesty pinned the bar to your breast. What’s changed?”
Morgan didn’t reply. Liam, without looking around, could feel the young earl tensing to spring.
“Do it, my lord,” he said, “and this time I’ll box your ears. It’s not ‘practice’ if you deserve a thrashing.” He rolled the lance pole over in the mud. The snares had been carefully loosened which meant Morgan was correct in assuming thievery.
“Sir,” Morgan said, gone abruptly somber, “look.”
He’d wandered away from the drinking hole and was peering at something in the heather. Curious, Liam joined him. What he saw there made him reach for the knife on his belt and wheel around, staring about, though he knew better. If Cleena had meant to be seen, she’d be standing before him, not leaving prettily wrapped gifts in the heather where she must have known he would find them.
Cleena, for it must have been she, had spread a patchwork kerchief in the mud beneath a large gorse, and weighted it down with an assortment of stoppered pots. Liam counted seven of the familiar jars, each decorated with a sprig of flowering herb. He’d seen their like many a time in her stall at the Fair when he’d stopped by to sample her sweetmeats.
“She took our squirrels and left us honey,” Morgan said, baffled. Although he’d not heard the whole of Liam’s wild Hunt, he knew enough to reach for his own blade and cast a nervous glance around the cliff edge. “What does it mean?”
“A game, I’m supposing.” Liam wished the sight of those little pots didn’t make his heart constrict behind his ribs. The wounds in his leg were barely scabbed over. He kept Faolan’s torque hidden in his bedroll with the few other precious things he could call his own. He hadn’t expected to mourn the aes si so deeply; he’d met Faolan just twice, he was for every purpose a stranger.
But Faolan had been kind to him, as much as any sidhe knew kindness. In welcoming Liam into the Hunt, he’d offered up a chance at belonging.
“Some sort of barrowman jape,” Liam said. Still, he bundled the pots together, knotting the kerchief into a neat bag. “Or warning. She doesn’t like me much.”
Morgan looked doubtful. “Is it poisoned, do you think? The honey, I mean? Because it seems a fair trade to me, and she did save you from dying, so I don’t know why you insist she dislikes you, and I wouldn’t mind having something sweet to eat with our supper.”
“Avani can tell us, I imagine,” Liam said.
“No squirrel for the pot.” Sighing, Morgan reset the snares. “Best visit the quartermaster after all.”
“Avani first,” Liam decided. “If the honey’s good, we might trade some for extra rations.”
“Oh, aye.” For the first time in days the young earl brightened. “But not all of it. If the world’s to end soon I’ll enjoy a pot of honey first.”
The walk down the hill to the healer’s tent meant they had to pass through the center of Wythe’s makeshift garrison. While the king’s constable administered to the royal cavalry as a whole, it was Morgan’s duty to directly marshal those mounted troops put forth by house Wythe. There were near one hundred tents flying Wythe’s proud green-and-gray pennant beneath Wilhaiim’s scarlet and silver, making house Wythe one of the largest and oldest divisions of the cavalry. Wythe took singular pride in the horses bred and raised on their land for service to the throne. Similarly the men and women sent to serve as Kingsmen were by custom drafted into the cavalry for their dexterity in the saddle.
During the day, the garrison was mostly empty of Kingsmen. Horses, hobbled near individual tents at night, needed exercise and distraction during the day to keep sound. Some were ridden out on scouting assignments. No one knew for certain from which direction the desert would emerge and a soldier on a horse could survey surrounding terrain much more efficiently than any foot infantryman. The rest were ridden in practice or in recreation. Every animal was meticulously groomed morning and evening to check for signs of illness or injury. A soldier’s horse was more than just a livelihood; a cavalryman without a mount was infantry.
Servants and squires tended to the fitness of the camp while their betters tended to the safety of the kingdom. Water for soldier and horse had to be carried up in buckets from the stone well at the base of the hill. Meat, bread, fruit, and ale from the quartermaster’s tent also needed to be refreshed daily. Armor and tack required mending and maintenance. A Kingsman’s battle readiness, Morgan liked to lecture Liam, depended on the comfort of his temporary home.
In the wake of the Red Worm, Wythe’s squires were grown men and women, farm folk better suited to battle than servitude drafted to replace lost children. When the time came, they would be expected to fight alongside their commissioned champion instead of keeping back and out of direct danger as a young squire might.
They were kind to Liam despite the rumors attached to his scars. He fretted over their own battle readiness after days of backbreaking work but found small consolation in the knowledge that, because they worked for the cavalry, they would at least be provided a good horse while their less fortunate counterparts in the infantry would not.
They paused in their work to bow in Morgan’s direction as he and Liam made their way through the garrison. Morgan accepted their recognition with a congenial word here and a stiff nod there, but it was obvious from the growing color in his cheeks that he was unhappy with the attention. That he was uncomfortable was impossible to miss; servants and squires muttered amongst themselves as he passed.
“You might at least pretend you’re pleased to see them,” Liam said under his breath. “Instead of walking like you’ve a stick shoved up your arse. My lord. They’re looking to you for courage.”
“I’ll ask for your advice,” Morgan responded out of the corner of his mouth, “once you’ve commanded one hundred and eight soldiers to take futile stand. Sir.”
“Futile?” Liam lengthened his step until they walked side by side, though tradition dictated a squire walk a perfect two paces behind his master. “Bit glum, don’t you think? His Majesty wouldn’t send out soldiers on a hopeless cause.”
Morgan snorted. “Of course he would. He has to.” He leaned close. “By all reports the odds are six to one, and if they have access to sidhe tunnels they could appear anywhere at all—or several places at once. I’m leading my brother’s men to their deaths, Liam, and they must resent me for it.”
“They’re your men now,” Liam reminded him, “and they’d resent you less if you pretended some pride. A soldier going to his or her death—why, I imagine they’d feel better about the job for some gratitude. I know I’d feel better about dying at your side if I thought you loved me more for it.”
Morgan chewed his lip. “They’ll be dying for Renault.”
“It’s not the king walking amongst them now,” Liam retorted. “It’s you.”
“I’m frightened,” Morgan confessed, voice cracking. “This wasn’t supposed to be me. It was supposed to be Michael, and me the squire scrubbing his gear. I’m not old enough. I don’t know how to be a man, much less an earl.”
A squire, lugging two buckets of water past them on the track, stopped to gape their way. Morgan awarded her a frozen smile. Liam shook his head and waved her on. Water splashed over the sides of her buckets as she hurried up the hill.
“They’re not meant to know that,” Liam argued, drawing Morgan on. “And it’s your job to see that they don’t. What did Riggins say about the Kingsmen who took a last stand against the barrowmen and in the end drove them to ground?”
One corner of Morgan’s mouth turned up. “He said, ‘It wasn’t their might nor even their steel nor even the horrific Automata that made the sidhe believe the war was lost. It was that they baffled the sidhe host with sheer bullshit, and made the world entire believe humankind had triumphed.’”
“Aye, good advice for a young commander facing his first test at warring, don’t you think?”
“Baffle them with bullshit?” Morgan enquired archly, but some of the hectic color had left his cheeks.
“Seems like a sound plan to me,” Liam proclaimed, and was delighted by Morgan’s honest mirth.
The quartermaster’s tent squatted at the bottom of the hill within sight of the red woods. It was a lively place during daylight hours, crowded with members of house Wythe vying for the choicest portions of meat, the newest pieces of fruit, and the least moldy bread and cheese. Rations of uncooked oat porridge and barley ale were passed out each morning for breakfast. In the evening there was wine for those who had their own coin to spend and more ale for those who did not. The tent closed at twilight. The quartermaster and his family slept in a covered wagon close by and rose again with the sun to start all over again. He was a florid man, but heavily muscled beneath his fat and by all accounts handy with the broadsword, while his two adult sons professed loudly and often their allegiance to the short bow’s deadly accuracy. If ever any person thought to rob the tent after sunset, they were quickly brought to their senses by the sound of the quartermaster’s hearty snore issuing from the bowels of his wagon.
The king’s constable spent her days riding the garrison line from east to west, checking in with her commanders and making sure the cavalry was in order, but at night she slept with Wythe in a private pavilion near the quartermaster. A Kingsman stood watch on her doorstep whenever she was away, minding whatever royal secrets she kept secured behind the tent flap, and accepting the frequent missives sent up the highway from the castle. Several times Liam had seen a message arrive by wing instead of by hoof, sent by falcon over the white walls. He’d goggled at the beauty of the hawk, her noble head and her ruddy feathers, awestruck.
Wythe’s priests lived beneath an open-air baldachin erected between the constable’s tent and the garrison well. The baldachin, a raised timber roof supported at four corners by gray stone pillars, was spacious enough to bed down patients and healers alike while also providing for a basic stone altar for garrison worship. It, and the well, were remnants from war with the sidhe; they came as a pair and were duplicated fourteen more times throughout the countryside in an expanding half circle around Wilhaiim’s flank.
Before, Liam had paid the ancient buildings little attention; the flatland was dusted with crumbling relics of time past. But now that he’d seen the garrison stations at work he couldn’t help but admire the arrangement. Organized by house and by station, the cavalry stretched in an unbroken line encircling city and farmland together, the initial band of defense before infantry and white wall. Against overland sidhe the borderline of mounted lancers carrying iron spear and sword must have provided matchless defense.
If the barrowmen had not in their exile wormed the earth with tunnels, the line might still be to Wilhaiim’s advantage. But a mostly immovable barrier would do no good against an enemy unfettered by the usual terrain. The sand snakes were equally as likely to erupt behind or within the line as they were in front of it. And in indiscriminate attack, Liam worried, it was possible the cavalry would break apart and fail.
It relied upon the Countess Wythe and her seconds to keep the line from falling into disorder no matter the threat. Liam did not envy her that task. It seemed to him an impossible one.
“Baffle ’em with bullshit,” he muttered, glancing gravely in the direction of the constable’s secured pavilion. “Bet your mum’s quite good at that, hey, my lord?”
“Excruciatingly so,” agreed Morgan, laughing again. “Are you suggesting I keep my mother in mind as I ride into battle? I’m told most men prefer a lover’s token on their sleeve for inspiration.”
“A lover!” Liam smothered a snort. “You’ve not yet grown chin hair, my lord. No self-respecting lass would have you.”
“You’re a bastard,” Morgan said. “I should have you whipped for insolence.”
But he said it with a grin and looked lighter of heart than he had for days, if not weeks. He lifted a cheerful hand to the men and women tending their horses in the shade of the red wood, and called hallo to another group galloping past. Pleasantly surprised, they all returned his hail with matching exuberance. Silently, Liam congratulated himself on a job well done. Mayhap, he thought, with a little encouragement the young earl would yet settle in to his role.