Chapter Twelve #2
He returned to his work, feeding the horses and pigs, and finished out the day somewhat less drained than on those first nights at the beginning of his servitude.
He had slept only a few hours when he was awakened in his barn loft by shouts and voices coming from outside.
The horses whinnied in their stalls below him, similarly disturbed by the noise.
The thick darkness told him that dawn was still several hours away.
He rose from his pallet and crept across the floor in his stockings, then peered down at the courtyard through a gap between slats of wood.
An Amazon messenger had arrived on horseback.
She stood next to her mount, surrounded by warriors holding torches.
A moment later, Tavie rushed from the entrance of the keep to greet the messenger, and a leather sleeve passed between them.
They spoke, though Lorath could hear nothing of their conversation, and then Tavie pulled the message from its sleeve.
Her eyes widened as she read it, and within moments she was calling orders.
Something of urgent importance had happened. Lorath pulled on his clothes and scrambled down the ladder to the floor of the barn. On his way through the door, he bumped into Tanna as she came in.
“Good, you’re up,” she said, looking somewhat disheveled. “We need to saddle a fresh horse.”
“Why?”
“To carry a message back to the front.”
“But—”
“There’s no time to explain.” She pointed at a roan stallion with a black mane. “Saddle him up. Now.”
Lorath did as he was told, as quickly as he could. The stallion seemed to sense the tension in the air. He snorted and chuffed, nostrils flared, but there was also an eagerness to the stamping of his hooves as Lorath laid the saddle over his back.
“You want action as much as I do,” he murmured.
As he led the horse from the barn into the courtyard, he saw Tavie return the leather sleeve to the messenger, who then hurried over to take the reins from Lorath and mount the stallion.
Tavie had followed her and laid her hand upon the horse’s neck, looking up at the Amazon in the saddle.
“Courage be with you, sister,” she said.
“And with you,” the messenger said. Then she wheeled the horse around and charged off at a gallop through the open gate. Tavie stood and watched until the night’s darkness swallowed both horse and rider.
“What has happened?” Lorath asked.
“See to her horse,” Tavie said. “Her name is Thistle, and you’ll need to walk her. She has ridden long and hard.” With that, she marched away without looking back.
Lorath considered following her, but a hand on his arm stopped him and gently turned him around.
“Do as she ordered,” Tanna said. “I’ll find out what’s going on.”
Lorath accepted this with difficulty, but he eventually took Thistle’s reins and walked her through the gate, out into one of the paddocks.
The mare was still breathing heavily, and she seemed agitated at having been left in a strange place with a strange handler.
Lorath spoke calmly to her, and he stroked her shoulders, wondering where she had come from and what she had seen.
After she had settled and her breathing had fallen to a normal rate, he walked her back into the fort, then into the barn.
He gave her a stall next to Zerae, where he removed her saddle and brushed her down, then fed and watered her, the whole while watching for Tanna’s return.
When the stablemaster finally appeared, she looked troubled in a way that Lorath had never seen.
“It’s a Drowned incursion,” she said. “But it sounds dire. The Athulua Garrison is surrounded. Besieged.”
“What about Adreona?”
“She’s hiding out with a small patrol outside the barricades, in a cave near a rock formation called the Pommel. The warriors inside the garrison can’t escape, and Adreona won’t leave them. But she doesn’t have the numbers with her to break the siege and drive back the Drowned.”
“Then we need to send reinforcements—”
“ We? ” Tanna snapped. “What do you think Tavie is doing? She’ll be leading a mounted company at first light. A second force will travel by sea.” She clenched her teeth and shook her head.
“What is it?” Lorath asked.
“Even if they push the horses until they’re lame, by the time they get there it might be too late.”
“Surely the warships will reach them sooner.”
“If they could sail the whole way, yes. But they’ll be rowing through the dead waters of Atanos. If they’re attacked on the way, it might even take them longer.”
A war horn bellowed out in the camp, calling the Amazons to battle.
The sound of it seemed to rouse something in Tanna.
She straightened her back and inhaled deeply, her eyes keen and her expression grim.
“You and I have work to do,” she said. “We need every mount saddled and ready to ride by dawn. That’s only a few hours away. ”
Lorath nodded. “Then let’s get to it.”
Together, they pulled in every horse from the pastures, some of which had to be carefully awakened.
They offered all of them hay, but no grain, given the long ride they would soon be undertaking.
The late-night feeding seemed to confuse them, but most of them ate; a few horses refused, perhaps disquieted by the unusual activity in the fort.
When each horse was ready, Lorath led them outside into the courtyard, where he handed them off to waiting Amazons.
By the time the sky had entered the blue hour before dawn, they had saddled all but the incoming messenger’s horse, Thistle, and Zerae, who stood with her head high and ears pricked forward, alert to the bustle around her and her foal.
When Tanna went to saddle her, Lorath objected.
“Arjak isn’t fully weaned,” he said.
The stablemaster’s mouth tightened. “Shieldmatron Tavie called for every available mount. That includes Zerae.”
“Why not Thistle?”
“She isn’t rested. We can’t risk her going lame halfway there. Zerae is strong.”
“But Arjak could die without her.”
Tanna clenched her fists, but not in anger.
It seemed she wanted to stop them shaking, from either exhaustion or some inner turmoil.
“He’s eating hay now,” she said, but she sounded as if she were reassuring herself.
“I’ll give him goat’s milk while his mother is away.
He’s tough. He can survive until she gets back. ”
Lorath knew he wasn’t thinking or behaving rationally.
He knew that Adreona would need every spear she could muster, which meant that Tavie needed every horse.
But he had come to care for the foal more deeply than he had realized, or perhaps it was simply the idea of innocent life that the foal represented.
“And if Zerae doesn’t come back?” he asked.
“Then Arjak’s brief story may come to an end. But let us hope for the best, eh?”
Lorath nodded, but his resolve faltered when they went to remove Zerae from the pen.
Arjak tried to follow his mother, clinging to her side, almost underfoot.
Lorath had to break the foal away and push him back into the stall.
Zerae put up an argument then, twisting her head against the bit, but Tanna calmed her and pulled her away.
Arjak whinnied and nickered as he paced around the stall, clearly in distress.
“She’ll be back,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can to take care of her.”
Then he helped Tanna saddle Zerae, planning to ride her himself. But when he asked the stablemaster to hold her reins while he went up to the loft to put on his armor and retrieve his other gear, she looked confused.
“Why do you need your armor?”
“Because I’m riding west.”
She offered him a sympathetic smile. “I don’t think you are.”
Lorath took the reins from her and led Zerae from the barn into the courtyard.
More than thirty Amazons stood near their mounts or sat high in their saddles, arrayed in their armor and helms, with spears and javelins strapped to their backs.
In the chill morning air, the breath from the horses’ nostrils turned to a cloud of steam.
Lorath searched the company until he found Tavie standing among them, determined to waste no more time begging for permission.
“I’m coming with you,” he said.
“No,” she said, “you are not.”
“You cannot stop me.”
“You’re right. I cannot stop you from following us on foot. But you will not be riding with us.” She snapped her fingers and motioned to two Amazons, who marched up to Lorath and pulled Zerae’s reins from his hands.
“I can help you,” Lorath said.
“You already have.” Tavie leapt up into the saddle of her mount. “You have done what Captain Adreona ordered you to do, and I can ask for no more than that.” Then she shouted to those with her, “My war-sisters! We ride!”
The sun’s fire had begun to push reds and oranges over the horizon, and the Amazon cavalry thundered west from the fort with its golden light at their backs.
Lorath watched them go, hoofs kicking up dirt and mud behind them, barely containing his rage.
The beast within him roared in its lair, rattling his ribs and echoing down his bones.
“I know,” Tanna said, having walked up to stand beside him. “I know. I wish I were going with them. And for what it’s worth, I would have asked you to ride beside me.” She clapped a hand on his shoulder. “But that is not our lot.”
“I determine my own fate,” Lorath said.
He pulled away from her and returned to the stable, where he went to saddle Thistle, the last horse remaining. Tanna had followed him, and when she saw what he was doing, she placed herself between him and the horse with folded arms and planted feet.
“Don’t be a fool,” she said. “This horse should already be lame, the way she was ridden. If you take her, all you will succeed in doing is killing her and stranding yourself leagues from where you’re trying to go.”
Lorath threw the saddle to the ground and shouted, “I have to do something !”
“Something often feels better than nothing.” The voice came from Keldon, who now stood in the barn doorway.
“Even when it’s the wrong thing.” He looked over his shoulder in the direction of the harbor, shaking his head.
“I just watched a fleet of Amazon warships row to battle. That was a sight I’ll not soon forget. ”
The appearance of the sailor distracted Lorath from his anger long enough for him to realize that his plan to ride Thistle would have most likely failed, just as Tanna had suggested. He did not know what else to do.
“Why are you so eager to join a fight that isn’t yours?” the stablemaster asked. “Do you wish to die?”
“It’s not that,” Keldon said as he stepped into the barn. “There’s a rage in him needs quenching. And I think there’s a woman he wants to stand alongside.”
“No,” Lorath said. “It isn’t about that. It’s about justice and fighting evil wherever we find it.”
Keldon shrugged. “Then let’s go fight.”
“How?” Lorath demanded. “There aren’t any horses left to ride.”
“Horses?” The sailor scowled, but a moment later, his expression turned into a grin. “Who said anything about horses?”