Chapter 7 – Clear Blue Sky #3
“The war ended a year ago,” said Juste. “You could have accepted the amnesty.”
“No, we couldn’t.”
Loyal enough to Valleth to refuse an amnesty, but not quite loyal enough to finish their service.
Remin might have been sympathetic; most of Valleth’s army was composed of conscripts by the end of the war, and it was hard to blame a man for not giving it his all when he was a slave in all but name.
And all a deserter would find in Valleth now was an execution.
But Remin had offered them a way out. They could have settled peacefully in the valley, or gone anywhere else in the world, and had chosen to stay and be his enemy.
“Who was supplying you?” Juste asked. “We know you didn’t survive the winter on your own. It will go hard with you if you lie to us.”
“Do we look well-supplied?” Drazhake spat. He had a point. The bandits were long-haired and unshaven, with ragged, patched clothing. But they weren’t starving.
“Jinmin.” Juste turned to the behemoth knight standing a few yards away, arms crossed and silently observing. “How many did we capture?”
“Twenty-two.”
“Twenty-two.” Juste crouched in front of Drazhake, somber as a confessor.
He even looked sympathetic. “I’m going to go and ask the other twenty-one men this question, and promise to spare anyone that tells me the truth.
Do you think all twenty-one are going to give me the same answer?
The stars have blessed you with the opportunity to answer first.”
He let that sit there. The sun beat down on the bare hills, brown rock and iron deposits. Interrogators were gamblers at heart, playing the odds, watching for tells.
“Very well.” Juste stood up. “I’ll go and speak to your friends. Truth is important.”
“You’re going to kill us anyway,” Drazhake said angrily. “Why should I tell you anything?
“No. It may be that we will spare someone useful.” This was a lie. Drazhake knew it was a lie. But he wanted to live.
“We went to Ferrede,” he said, bitter, angry. “Twice, over the winter. They have a mill. We ordered them to give us grain and said if anyone complained, we’d come back and burn it all.”
That was a good one. It might even be true. And Juste knew it, too; he gave Drazhake a long look and then turned away without another word. He had been asked and answered. Now they would see what the other bandits had to say.
Over the next hour, the source of the grain was variously given as theft from a grain cart they encountered on the road, theft from a mill, supplied voluntarily by an elderly man and a teenage girl—which made everyone else glare ferociously at the man who said it—and supplied directly from Valleth.
That last was so transparently impossible that Juste only looked sadly at the man who had said it, as if he were ashamed for him.
They might have gotten more details if they had tortured a few of the men, but what they had was enough.
This did not look like a complex conspiracy.
Remin took his own turn killing the bound, wailing men.
There was no glory in it, he didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t ask his men to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself.
His knights and squires silently performed the same task further down the line, lifting their swords to plunge them into dirty, squirming backs, the heavy steel slamming through flesh and bone, aimed for the heart of a man who was doing his level best to wiggle away.
Remin had to put his boot on the back of one dying man to wrench his sword free before he went on to the next.
He reminded himself that the bandits had chosen to march on Tresingale, where he and those loyal to him were breaking their backs to carve homes out of the wilderness.
His soldiers had laid down their arms and deserved some peace.
There were hundreds of other men who had come to the valley at his invitation, who might have been injured or killed.
And one seventeen year-old girl. What might these bandits have done to her, given the opportunity?
Remin’s jaw tightened. That thought made it easier to do what was necessary.
In less than half a day, they had positioned themselves to intercept the bandits, killed them, questioned the survivors, and left over a hundred corpses on the bare crowns of the Iron Hills.
Remin left a few men to search the dead and dispose of them, sent his archers home, and moved on with his remaining force for Ferrede, five days away, riding hard.
Remin had all but forgotten Drazhake’s name by the time they were on their way. There were so many other names and faces in his memory already.
And when he arrived in Ferrede, he suspected there would be at least two more.
* * *
“My lady?”
“My lady.”
A gentle poke.
“My lady, wake up.”
“Lady, it’s morning…”
“Ophele.”
Ophele’s eyes snapped open, meeting a pair of bemused hazel eyes. Sir Miche straightened.
The donkey.
“Oh, no,” she said, bolting upright in bed and clinging to her blankets. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
“Another slugabed,” he said, but he was smiling as he headed for the door, which he had left carefully open. The duke’s knights were scrupulous that there would be no opportunity for misunderstandings.
Ophele flew to get dressed. She hadn’t even wondered how she would wake up on time in the morning; she had never had to, and the duke hadn’t been the least bit shy about shaking her awake when he wanted her up.
Stumbling out of bed, she tugged a dress out of her trunk and put it on the right way round on the second try, then buried her face in a basin of cold water until some of the fog cleared.
In ten minutes, she was outside with her veil and hat in hand, and had only fallen over things twice.
“I thought Rem was exaggerating,” Sir Miche said, amused. “No, don’t trouble yourself to apologize, my lady, I knew someone else who had the same trouble. Stable’s this way. Sure you’re awake?’
“Yes.” Her eyes were open very wide.
She had often visited the stables in Aldeburke, so she was familiar with the smells, the sounds, the stomping, blowing, curious horses. There was a lone donkey in a small corner at the back of the stable, an elderly little fellow whose head was roughly level with Ophele’s.
“Hello,” she said softly, holding her hand under his muzzle and wishing she had a treat for him. “Do you know his name, Sir Miche?”
“Just Miche. Drover said they called him Eugene.”
He looked like a Eugene. He lipped at her fingers, searching for food, but didn’t bite, and Ophele looked him over. She would feel horrible if he were hurt or too old and she made him work anyway.
“Some of the masons used him to carry their kit on the journey,” said Sir Miche, who seemed to intuit something of her thoughts.
“But he’s too small for most work around here.
They were talking about putting him down, but he makes do with scrub, so it’s not like he’s costing us in feed. I think he could handle a small cart.”
“Of course he could,” she crooned, stroking his ears. He needed a good brushing. “Can’t you, Eugene?”
The donkey seemed a little shy of hands around his head, but she gave him a few minutes to get used to her, moving her hand from his shoulder to his neck so he would know where she was.
Tam had told her it was like that with horses; they were big animals, and they couldn’t see what was around their sides unless they turned their heads to look.
Tonight, she would give him a good wash and scrub.
“Let’s get him hitched up.” Sir Miche straightened and untied the ropes that blocked the donkey’s improvised stall. “Most days I’ll have the stable boys get him ready for you, but you’ll need to learn to manage his tack yourself, just in case.”
Two helpful stableboys were nearby to explain the harness and cart, a tiny four-wheeled wagon that showed signs of hasty repair.
The leather harness looked like a tangled mess until they got it on Eugene, but Ophele soon saw how it all fit together, with an additional bit of complex strapping in the wagon to keep the barrel from bouncing out.
She was delighted with all of it. Not just because of the donkey—though she already considered Eugene a gentleman and bosom friend—but also because this meant she really was doing something valuable, however humble.
“He can start by carrying my shovel,” said Sir Miche, cheerfully pitching the tool into the back of the wagon as they set off.
His sword was strapped in its usual place on his hip, never absent even when he was digging ditches.
“I finally got one with a decent handle yesterday, they’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands. ”
“Can we see if there are carrots or apples in the kitchen?” Ophele asked as they approached the cookhouse. They were already a little late; the sun was a finger-width above the horizon, but she could make up any lost time now that she had Eugene.
“I’m sure there are, but you’ll have to talk Wen into parting with them,” Sir Miche said dubiously. “If you can do it in five minutes, my lady, I’ll make friends with Eugene in the meantime.”
Ophele blanched. She had secretly been hoping that he would get them for her.
And he likely suspected as much; there was a teasing look in his eyes as he reached for Eugene’s lead rope, and before she left, he sketched the sign of the stars’ blessing over her head and intoned, “When you find yourself in the void, may the light find you.”
She could do it. Hadn’t she just been telling herself last night that she could make her own way? Ophele hurried to the kitchen at the back of the cookhouse, braced herself, and opened the door.
The massive cook did not have a knife in his hand. That was a good omen.
“Master Wen?” she asked timidly, remembering not to cross the sacred threshold. “Excuse me?”
His vast back to her as he stirred something over the fire, and he showed no sign that he had heard.
“Master Wen?” Louder.