Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar

in David's general direction.

'It's a bat.'

'I know what it is.'

'Then why did you ask?'

'Don't be a smartass, Kelse. Why are you carrying it around?'

'It's as much a weapon as anything else I own.'

'And you need a weapon on kitchen duty?' David laughed. 'Marrit, I didn't realize that you'd become such a danger over the past few days.'

'Look—don't you have something to do?'

'I'm off duty. I've got nothing to do but sit and visit.' He smiled broadly and took a seat He even managed to keep it for five minutes. Marrit didn't say one disparaging word about her cook's lax work habits when Kelsey dropped her knife into the potato sack, turned, and pushed him backward over the log.

Two days passed.

Carris was edgy for every minute of them, except when he spoke of Lyris. Then his emotions wavered from guilt and grief to a fury that had roots so deep even Kelsey was afraid to disturb them by asking intrusive questions that stirred up memories too sharp and therefore too dangerous. This didn't stop her from listening, of course. She managed to infer that Lyris was the Herald who had traveled with Carris, and further that Lyris was young, attractive and impulsive. She knew that he had come from the wrong side of town, just as Carris had come from too far into the right side, as it were.

Never anger a noble, her grandmother used to say. Especially not a quiet one. Although it was a tad on the obvious side, it was still good advice.

'Kelsey, why must you take that club everywhere you go?'

Given that she'd just managed to hit his rib with the

nubbly end, it was a reasonable enough question—or it would have been had she not heard it so often. 'Don't start. I thought if there was one person in camp I'd be safe from, it'd be you. Why do you think I'm carrying it?'

He shrugged. 'I don't know. Everyone here seems to have their pet theory.'

'What do you mean, everyone?'

'Guards,' he said, offering her the gleam of a rare smile, 'have very little to talk about these days.'

She blushed. 'I'd better not catch them talking about me, or I'll damned well show them what I'm carrying it for.'

Carris actually laughed at that. Then he stopped. 'I know I'm unshaven and unkempt, but have I done something else to make you stare?'

'Yes,' she replied without thinking. 'You laughed.' She regretted her habit of speech without thought the moment the words left her lips; the clouds returned to his face, and with them, the distance.

'And there's not much to laugh about, is there?' He said softly, his right hand on his sword hilt.

Kelsey was at the riverside, washing more tin bowls than Torvan owned, when she heard the screaming start. A silence fell over the men and woman who formed Marrit's kitchen patrol. Fingers turned white as hands young and old clenched the rims of tin and the rags that were being used to dry them. No one spoke, which was all the better; Kelsey could hear the sound of hooves tearing up the ground.

Horses, she thought, as she numbly gained her feet. The bandits have horses!

'Kelsey!' Marrit hissed. 'Where are you going?'

Kelsey lifted her fingers to her lips and shook her head. She motioned toward the circular body of wagons. Marrit paled, and mouthed the order to stay by the riverside, where many of the cooking staff were already seeking suitable places to hide.

It was the smartest course of action. Of course, Kelsey thought, knees shaking, that's why I'm not doing it. She swung her bat up to her shoulder and began to run.

In the confusion and chaos, panic was king, and the merchant civilians his loyal subjects.

The wagons, circled for camping between villages too small to maintain large enough inns and grounds, provided all the cover there was against the attackers. People—some Kelsey recognized, and some, expressions so distorted by fear that their faces were no longer the faces she knew—ran back and forth across her path, ducking for cover into the flapped canvas tents, the wagons, or the meager undergrowth. The guards on watch had their hands full, and the guards off duty were scrambling madly to get into their armor and join the formation that was slowly—too slowly—taking shape.

She counted forty guards—their were forty-eight in total—as she scanned the circular clearing searching desperately for some glimpse of Cards. No sign of him; maybe he'd finally shown some brains and was hiding somewhere under the wagons.

Ha. And maybe the horses she heard were a herd of Companions, all come to ask her to join them. She took advantage of a scurry of panicked movement to take a look under a wagon. She saw the horses then.

Funny thing, about these bandits. They weren't wearing livery, and they weren't wearing uniforms—but they looked an awful lot like a Bardic description of cavalry. The horses were no riding horses, and no wagon-horses either. She didn't like the look of them at all, and she loved horses.

They sure make bandits a damned sight richer than they used to, she thought, clenching her teeth on the words that were choking her in a rush to get said. And a damned sight more organized. She had a very bad feeling about this particular raid. And when the blood spray of a running civilian hit the grass two feet from her face, she knew that if there were any survivors to the raid at all, it was going to be a minor miracle.

A flare went up in front of the lead wagon; fire-tipped arrows came raining from the trees, and shadows detached themselves from the undergrowth, gaining the color and height of men as they came into the fading daylight.

Kelsey knew she should be cowering for cover somewhere, but the tree that she'd managed to climb was central enough—and leafy enough—that it gave her both a terrific vantage point and a false sense of security. She counted the mounted men; there were ten. She couldn't get as good a sense of the foot soldiers—bandits, she corrected herself—but she thought there weren't more than thirty. So if one didn't count the cavalry as more than a single man each, the caravan guards outnumbered them.

It made for a tough fight, but the horses were too large to be easily maneuvered around the wagons, and if the merchants and their staff were careful, the caravan would pull out on top. She smiled in relief, and then the smile froze and cracked.

For on horseback—a sleek, slender riding horse with plaited manes and the carriage of a well-trained thoroughbred—unarmored and deceptively weaponless, rode a man in a plain black tunic. At his throat, glowing like a miniature sun, was a crystal that seemed to ebb light out of the very sky.

This was the threat that Carris wouldn't speak openly of. This was what he had to reach other Heralds to warn them about. This was the information that the King needed. Kelsey gripped both her bat and the tree convulsively as the Mage on horseback drew closer to where she sat, suddenly vulnerable, among the cover of leaves.

His was a power, she was afraid, that dwarfed the power of all save a few Heralds—and she was certain that Carris was no Herald-Mage, to take on such a formidable foe.

Damn it, she thought, holding her breath lest a whisper rustle a leaf the wrong way. Carris was right. I shouldn't have brought him along with the caravan. Then,

And he'll probably die just like the rest of us—they won't know he's their Herald, and they won't care.

One of the mounted soldiers rode up to the Mage.

'That wagon,' he said, pointing. 'Food supplies, but nothing of more value.'

'Good.' The Mage gestured and fire leaped up from the wagon's depths, consuming it in a flash. The circle was broken, and the ten mounted horseman, pikes readied, charged into the encampment.

She heard the shouts and then the screams of the guards and the civilians they were to protect. People fled the horses and the hooves that dug up the ground as if it were tilled soil. They didn't get far. Kelsey saw, clearly, the beginning of a slaughter.Sickened, she shrank back, closing her eyes. There's nothing you can do, some part of her mind said. Hide here. Maybe they won't notice