patched, and rotting. We got armor—cheap and rusted. We got weapons—and I practiced with better under Tarma; dull pot-metal that wouldn’t hold an edge if you got a gods-blessing on it. And food—stale journey-rations that could have given the Karsites lessons in tasteless, barrels of meat too salty to eat, flour full of weevils. And as for the horses—Kero shuddered. They’d had to shoot half of them, and half of the ones they’d shot had been so disease- and parasite-riddled they couldn’t even be eaten.
By then it was too late. They’d given their bond. If they defaulted, the Skybolts’ reputation—already suffering from the defeat in Menmellith—would be decimated.
We should have defaulted, Kero thought angrily, cursing under her breath as the metal scales on Shallan’s armor came off in her hands. We should have defaulted anyway. Anything is better than this. The Guild would back us, once they heard about the “supplies. “
The “war” had turned out to be waged within a House; two factions of the same merchants’ guild. Kero wasn’t sure what it was about—mines, or some other kind of raw material, she thought—and she wasn’t sure she cared. Neither side gave a rat’s ass about the welfare of the troops they’d hired—the Skybolts were just so many warm, weapon-wielding bodies to them, and if they thought about it at all, they probably assumed that the Company members welcomed a certain number of losses, as it made for fewer to split the pay at the end.
Kero had been made the officer over the scouts, and that made it all the worse for her. She was the one who had to take Ardana’s stupid orders—distilled from the even stupider orders of their employers—and try and make something of them that stood any kind of chance of working.
Kero dug into her kit for some of the half-cured horse-hide that was all they had been able to salvage from those poor, slaughtered nags, and laboriously patched it into the back of Shallan’s mail-coat. Then she stitched the scales that had come off back into that, cursing when the holes broke where they’d rusted through.
Fewer and fewer of her friends came back after each foray; she’d managed to keep most of the scouts alive, but as for the rest—
It was pretty demoralizing. Ardana didn’t have any strategy worth the name. The merchants dictated, and she followed their orders, directing the Skybolts—skirmishers all—to fight like a Company of light cavalry. They’d been cut down to two-thirds normal strength by the Menmellith affair—now they were down to half of that. Mostly wounded, thank the gods, and not dead—but definitely out of the action.
She shook the corselet and growled under her breath. Like the situation with her command, it was so tempting to just do what she could and leave the rest to the gods—but—Damned if I’m going to leave my friend half-protected. She cut the stitching on the faulty scales, took a rock from her hearth to use as a hammer, a bit of wood to use as an anvil and a nail for a awl, and punched new holes below the old ones, then stitched them back on.
Miserable cheap bastards. If I’d gone with Eldan, who’d be doing this for her?
If she’d gone with Eldan—the thought occurred a dozen times a day, and it didn’t hurt any the less for repetition.
I didn’t go with Eldan. I came back to my people. If Ardana won’t take care of them, I have to do what I can to make up for that.
And part of that was making sure her scouts stayed well-protected.
She held up the corselet and shook it, frowning at it, just as Shallan burst through the tent door, ripping one of the tie-cords loose as she did so.
“We’re being hit!” she cried, as a fire-arrow lodged in the canvas of the tent wall. Kero lurched to her feet, just as something large and panicked crashed into the tent wall.
Kero came to lying on her back, with her left arm and shoulder on fire. Literally; there was a fire-arrow lodged in her arm.
She screamed, as much from shock as pain, and rolled over into the mud. She put out the fire, but she broke the arrow off and drove the head deep into her shoulder, and passed out again from the pain.
The next time she woke, she wished she hadn’t. She couldn’t believe how much she hurt. Without opening her eyes, she took slow, deep breaths the way Tarma had taught her, hoping it would make the pain ebb a little.
- just had Need—
She had never been wounded before without having the sword with her—and now she realized just what a difference that made. She forced her eyes open, and blinked away tears of pain until she could see.
Canvas.
She turned her head to the left, since turning it to the right only made things hurt worse. Evidently she wasn’t the only victim of the camp raid; there were a dozen others laid out in various stages of injury within easy
