Blood War

Page 10

"The Pelipu's troops will be arriving by sea this afternoon, and will march from the port to meet us tomorrow. I expect trouble when they arrive. Some are mercenaries, although they wear the uniform of the Temple. Don't ever let that fool you, Liss."
"Don't you worry, sir." I was back to walking slightly behind him, down a trampled grass trail between tents. We were into the tents for the Regulars, and eight Regulars slept in a single tent slightly larger than Captain Solis'. We passed the Regular mess tents on the way to the sparring grounds.
"The officers' mess is on the other side of the officers' tents," Solis said, as sounds of metal blades clanging and wooden blades clacking against each other grew louder. "You'll either be eating with me there, as my bodyguard, or bringing both our meals back to the tent if I have work to do while I'm eating," Solis said. I nodded mutely.
His eyes, just like mine, were now on the practice ground and the sparring that was taking place there. Some of the men barely knew how to hold a blade, and if they did, they held it badly. Dragon and Crane would have scowled before wading into that mess and yelling at all of them. Dragon always said if you didn't have enough strength to hold a sword with one hand, then you'd best use two hands and be faster than your opponent. These guys would have washed out of the Warlord's army, I think.
"I hope the enemy either gives up or dies laughing," Solis muttered sarcastically as we watched. Desmun caught up with us as we stood and watched.
"Pitiful," he grumbled. "Are they taking civilians off the street?"
"I believe so," Solis replied.
Desmun stared at the hilts over my shoulder. "Steal those blades?" he asked.
"They were a gift," I said. "Sir."
"Of course they were." Desmun turned back to the sparring. One particularly clumsy young man dropped his wooden practice blade and got thumped when he stooped to retrieve it. A Sergeant, standing nearby and watching, yelled at him, causing the boy to flush to the roots of his light-brown hair. If he'd done that in a real battle, his head would have been missing when he straightened up. I didn't understand what had motivated him to join the army to begin with, without benefit of any training.
"Lack of money," Solis commented, as if he were reading my mind. I'd been shaking my head; I realized it after a moment. Desmun turned to watch the clouds gathering behind us.
"Messy night, tonight, and messier day tomorrow," he complained. Great. Rain was coming. "I hear those Green bastards can make it rain anytime they want," Desmun went on.
"Sounds like you're jealous," Solis replied indifferently. "I hear the locals who've joined the Green Fae once practiced a different version of the same religion the Pelipu practices," he added. "They rejected it in favor of living a peaceful existence."
"I wouldn't repeat that rumor near the Pelipu's troops," Desmun snorted. "They think religious deserters ought to be boiled in oil."
"What do you think, Liss?" Solis asked, his dark eyes studying my face.
"I'm still trying to find something worthwhile in this whole, sorry mess," I answered truthfully. If Toff weren't somewhere on this planet, I wouldn't have bothered.
"Mind if I see what your bodyguard is made of?" Desmun asked.
"You want an excuse to take your shirt off?" Solis wasn't looking at Desmun.
"I won't whack her around too much," Desmun replied.
"Use wood blades," Solis didn't sound as if he cared. Desmun took off to find some wooden practice blades. I started to follow him. "Liss," Solis said softly, catching me by the shoulder, "If you don't know what you're doing, now's the time to say. If you do, don't let him hurt you. If you're better than he is, best not to let him know. Not right away, anyway. He'll warm up to you after a while." Solis jerked his head toward the practice ground, where Desmun had claimed two wood practice blades.
"Fuck," I muttered, causing Solis to snicker.
Desmun only fought with one blade, and only handed me one. I let him whack me lightly after about a minute, and then let him whack me again a couple of minutes later. In between, I settled for blocking his blows with the flat of my blade, just as I'd been trained. Honestly, one of my twins could have knocked him senseless wearing a blindfold and armed only with a knife. I let him get one last blow in—he was satisfied with that—and I walked away, rubbing my wrist. That's where Desmun's last blow had landed. Desmun challenged a Sergeant afterward. I had no desire to stay and watch. Solis was ready to go, too.
"Someday," he said, as we walked toward his tent, "I want to see you fight with both those blades."
Chapter 4
It was late spring in Farus, and the thunderstorm that came through drenched everything in addition to making the footpath between tents look like a river as night fell. I was grateful the tents had some sort of waterproofing in the cloth; otherwise, we'd have been dripped on all night. I took the small shovel that Solis handed me and dug a trench around the tent, with a channel on each corner to divert the rainwater into the pathways in front of and behind the tent.
The footpaths were the lowest ground we had around us, which meant everybody walked through water up to their ankles to get anywhere in camp. We walked in the rain to get to dinner and walked in the rain back from dinner. I helped hang up Solis' clothing after he undressed, in a useless attempt to dry it out. I think he and I would settle for extreme dampness at that moment; we were both soaked. Solis, sitting on a campstool in his underwear, wrote out two messages by candlelight as darkness fell around us. I heard plenty of cursing going on outside the tent—there wasn't any way to keep a fire going during the storm.
"Take this one to the General," Solis handed a message to me with a wax seal. "Take this one to Captain Cordus; his tent is just this side of the General's." Cordus' message didn't have a seal. "Use this bag," I was given a waterproof courier's bag. After stuffing both messages inside the bag, I nodded to Solis, walked from the tent and headed into a driving rain.
"Message, General," the General's bodyguard announced when I showed up at the green tent. I pulled out the sealed message and handed it to the General.
"You are?" he asked, examining the wax seal.
"Liss, Captain Solis' bodyguard and runner, sir," I replied. I hadn't seen anyone saluting, so I was thankful for that.
"Wait for a reply," he growled and opened the message, reading it swiftly. I stood near the tent flap while the General wrote out a reply, rolled it up and sealed it with wax from a candle. I took it, slipped it inside the waterproof bag and walked into the rain again.
Captain Cordus came next, and he didn't ask me to wait for a reply. I handed off his message and left, carrying the General's reply to Captain Solis. Solis gave me thanks in a distracted sort of way, so I left him in his half of the tent and went to dry myself off as best I could.
* * *
The General read Solis' message again before committing it to his candle flame. If something happens to your bodyguard, the note read, ask for Liss.
* * *
I'm sure the Pelipu's troops would have looked much more dashing if they hadn't been soaked to the bone when they rode up the following morning. As it was, they looked somewhat bedraggled in wet gray tunics beneath chain mail. A tabard was worn over the chain mail bearing a large, red hand across the chest. That red hand was supposed to be the hand of their god and according to them, it ran with blood when the god was angry. Well, if Red Hand was anything like Solar Red, the god's hand probably ran with blood when he was happy or even feeling so-so, too. The chain mail these troops wore had to be a bitch in a rainstorm, too. I wanted to snicker at their obvious discomfort, but held myself back as Solis and I watched the Pelipu's troops ride past. Their horses weren't happy either; their manes and tails hung in wet clumps as they clopped along, their heads down in the rain.
"What do you think, Liss?" Solis asked after the last Red Hand mercenary went past.
"You're right," I nodded. "Trouble just arrived." Solis offered a humorless chuckle.
* * *
In addition to my blades, I now had a knife clipped to the back waistband of my leather pants—Connegar had sent a note wrapped around the knife. I'd found it inside my duffle while looking for a bar of soap to clean up after dinner the night before.
"Glinda insisted that you take this—just in case," the note read. The knife was a good one, with a black steel blade. A long, sharp knife was Glinda's weapon of choice, apparently, and I wasn't about to argue with her. Before she joined the Saa Thalarr and Jayd had inadvertently found her, Glinda worked as Erland's bodyguard on Campiaa for more than twenty years. I clipped the sheathed knife to my waistband and practiced drawing it a few times. Since I couldn't use claws without giving myself away, the knife might come in handy.
I'd left my body behind to turn to energy sometime before dawn; I'd know whether anybody tried to wake me and could get back in less than a blink if necessary. I'd also written a quick message to Connegar and Sent the note back to Le-Ath Veronis using Power. All I'd written was a quick thanks—to him and to Glinda.
* * *
I wasn't interested, but Solis wanted to watch the Pelipu's troops finish setting up their camp after breakfast, so we went to observe. They'd only erected tents the night before and many of them slept on wet ground since they hadn't dug trenches around the tents. Rain still fell around us, with the occasional rumble of thunder. Quite a few Red Hand troops decided to change the location of their tents, so Solis and I watched as they struggled in the downpour. Higher ground was at a premium and Red Hand's officers had most of that already covered with their tents, leaving the Regulars to scramble for better placement.
Putting up tents in the rain was a tedious task, I discovered, and tent stakes don't hold well in rain-soaked ground. More than a few tents were blown over by occasional high winds. Red Hand's commanders had red striped tents, with the High Commander's tent a solid red. Everybody else had plain canvas, just as the Farus army did.