Chapter 7 – Clear Blue Sky #2
“Oh? Then what would you call your nonsense, Miche?” Sir Tounot replied, without the least offense.
“Cardamom,” Sir Miche said promptly. “The spice of kings.”
Anise, Ophele thought. An acquired taste.
It would have been funny, if she had said that.
Both men made a kindly attempt to include her in the conversation, but as the rest of the knights joined them at the table it felt a little too much like making a speech, with so many eyes on her.
And anyway, she was much happier just to listen as all of them talked about the planting, the wall, the horses, the construction, and the thousand and one other details of building a town. She wanted to know everything.
Things felt less strange when she was sitting among the Knights of the Brede; she was used to them, even if she was still too shy to talk to them.
But once Sir Miche had left her at the cottage for the night, with the promise to pick her up early to go get the donkey, she realized just how far away she was from everything she had ever known.
It was amazing to think that this was only her fourth night in Tresingale.
And alone, in a house of her own. Ophele kindled a fire and lit an oil lamp, then sat down with a book.
All she needed was a cup of tea and one of Azelma’s hazelnut cookies, and it would have been perfect.
For the first time in her life, no one would come to bother her.
No spiteful Lisabe, no sneering Lady Hurrell, no Julot saying strange things and standing far too close.
And, though it felt disloyal to think it, no duke hurrying her or scolding her or icily ignoring her.
She didn’t blame him for not trusting her. Ophele tried to be fair about such things. She just wished he would stop showing her glimpses of what he could be like, if he didn’t hate her. When he talked to his knights, sometimes he even told jokes. He wasn’t mean to anyone but her.
By now, she had been married for over a month.
She didn’t feel married. She felt like she had acquired a very strict guardian.
Since leaving Aldeburke, His Grace had been with her almost every moment of every day.
He loomed so large in her life, figuratively and literally, and now that he was gone, she felt curiously bereft.
Especially once she put out the lights.
Ophele was sure she would sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.
A day in the sun had left her feeling like a wrung sponge and her limbs were in such agony, movement seemed impossible.
But suddenly the cottage felt very big and shadowy without the shape of the duke on the floor, lying between her and the door like a small mountain range.
It was fine. She wasn’t a child. Ophele hugged a pillow to herself and shut her eyes, trying to empty her mind.
And when that didn’t work, she reminded herself how sorry she would be if she didn’t sleep, and that she was going to get a donkey in the morning, and she needed to hurry up and go to sleep so there would be time to stop by the kitchen and ask Master Wen for a carrot or an apple.
Outside, there was a very soft scraping noise.
That was just one of the guards. The duke had said there were guards on every window and door.
But Ophele found herself wondering what a strangler looked like.
Sir Miche said they had long fingers—presumably for strangling—and that they could climb right over a wooden palisade.
And there were ghouls, too, that ate the dead on battlefields.
And maybe not just the dead; anyone that couldn’t get away, probably.
And though both men said they wouldn’t come down from the mountains until it was warmer, it had been very warm today…
It wasn’t impossible for them to come earlier, was it?
It wasn’t impossible that something could slip into Tresingale in the dark, creeping between braziers and torches unnoticed.
And it certainly wasn’t impossible that something like a strangler could creep up on her guards and strangle them, and they wouldn’t even be able to call out because they were being strangled.
And then it could sneak up to her window…
Another scraping noise.
“Is someone there?” she asked, her voice quavering. She was being silly, she knew it, but she was six hundred miles from home and all alone and people had been talking about stranglers ever since she got here.
No one answered. She sat up.
“If you are, please say something,” she said, clutching her blankets. Turning, she addressed the daubed wall behind her headboard. “It’s fine, I know I have guards, I just want to know what…who’s there.”
“One of your guards, m’lady,” said a reluctant male voice. “Just sharpening my sword. Beg pardon, didn’t think you’d hear it.”
Ophele closed her eyes.
“No, please keep it sharp,” she said. “What’s your name?”
“Dol, m’lady.”
She slid back under her blankets. “Are you here every night?”
“Aye, lady. Night watch doesn’t change much.”
“One of the watchmen back home said that. He said once you got used to being up all night, it was best to stay that way.” It was easier to talk to a stranger if she couldn’t see him. “His name was Alou.”
“I don’t mind it. But you probably ought to sleep now, m’lady.”
Now that she knew she wasn’t about to be strangled, she thought she could.
It wasn’t just that she was alone in a strange and frightening place.
She had never been on her own before, ever.
She had never had any control over her life.
She had been born in fetters, pushed into marriage, with no choice in what she was and the inescapable destiny thrust upon her.
But maybe now, even if she couldn’t choose her own path, she at least could go down it her own way.
* * *
To call what happened in the hills west of Tresingale a battle would have been a wild exaggeration.
It was a slaughter. Brisk and ruthless, a barrage of arrows followed by the thunder of heavy horse, with the dreadnaught Jinmin in the front.
People called Remin a giant, but Jinmin was nearly as tall, and so massive it was hard to find a horse that could carry him.
The hundred bandits had rough shields and threw them up after the first volley of arrows, but they might as well have been waving daisies at Jinmin.
Remin, seated on his black warhorse, watched from a nearby hilltop.
His participation wasn’t necessary, and there was always a small chance there could be a secondary force nearby, or a weapon hidden among the rapidly decreasing number of surviving bandits.
Years of warfare had taught him to always hold a force in reserve.
But in this case, it wasn’t necessary. In less than fifteen minutes, the remaining twenty or so bandits had thrown down their arms and knelt in the bloody grass.
Then he rode down.
“Who is your leader?” he asked curtly. Almost every man before him had the pale skin and ice-blond hair of Valleth.
The bandits exchanged glances. It was possible their leader was already dead, but curiously, there was one man that no one was looking at.
“Who supplied you?” he asked in his adequate Vallethi, watching them carefully.
Again, they looked at each other, but the man fifth or sixth from the left looked at no one, and no one looked at him.
“Does that mean your leader’s dead?” Remin asked conversationally, leaning forward over his saddle.
“Or ran away? I guess if you weren’t cowards, you wouldn’t have deserted in the first place. ”
Now the man on the left was looking. Glaring. Remin sat up, nodding at Juste.
“That one,” he said, pointing. He wasn’t always right about this kind of thing, but even if that fellow wasn’t the leader, the others would wonder why he had been chosen.
The rest of his knights waded in to split up the other survivors, binding their hands and leading them off in small groups, too far away to see or hear each other.
Remin had learned the principles of interrogation when he was a squire.
It was filthy work that usually left him feeling drained and discouraged, no matter what the outcome.
But Juste was the best of his men at the task, and very rarely had to resort to actual torture.
It was he that had struck upon the idea of separating enemy units and pitting them against each other.
It left them wondering what was happening in the other groups.
Were they being tortured? Were they talking?
Juste made the same offer to all of them, out loud, for everyone to hear: talk, and you’ll live. Or rather, talk first, and you’ll live.
Sometimes it was even true.
A disciplined unit could withstand the technique. Remin did not believe he was looking at a disciplined unit.
“Huber,” he said, waving over the master of his scouts. “Send some men to Bram. He should be in Ferrede. Let him know we’ve wiped out the bandits and to expect us there in five days. Send the rest of your men to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.”
The Iron Hills were four days from Tresingale, and the question he most wanted to ask the bandits was what they thought they would accomplish by going there.
It was true that if Remin had been away when they arrived, or if he had been incompetent enough not to send scouts out into the surrounding country, they might have succeeded in surprising and overpowering his forces.
Temporarily. They had no hope of holding the town.
“We weren’t going to hurt anyone,” said the bandit named Drazhake, in a Vallethi accent so thick that Remin had to look to Juste to interpret. “We were just planning to take some things we need. We’re in a bad way and we can’t go back to Valleth.”
That was a third option: they could have been planning to raid, then retreat. But it was a lie to say no one would have been hurt. Remin’s men would have fought to the death to defend what they had worked so hard to build.