The Price Of Command

Kero gave up speculation as a bad job, and turned her mind toward the immediate future. Instead of supplies, the quartermaster carried cash. Since they would be traveling through exclusively friendly territory and harvests had been good this year, they were going to buy every bit of food they needed, for horse and human alike, except for what they needed to get them over the mountains. That was going to keep them light enough to travel at a good speed, and ensure the locals were always happy to see them.

We should meet Daren and the army about halfway between Petras and the Valdemar border, she figured, making rough calculations in her head. And may the gods watch over them. Foot-slogging in winter is as bad as anything I can think of. I bet they’ll be glad we broke the trail for them. Let’s see; about a moon to the Valdemar border, then at least a fortnight to get across the mountains if I figure on bad weather all the way. Then another moon to get to the capital. Not bad. Better than any other Company I ever heard of, including the Sunhawks. Of course, without the cousins to help me with packhorse breeding, we’d be pulling wagons through this muck, and making the same kind of time as anybody else.

And I don’t even want to think about taking wagons over the mountains in the dead of winter.

Hellsbane’s eyes were half-closed; Kero suspected she was dozing. Although the road was churned-up muck, it wasn’t really too bad, since it was too warm for the stuff to freeze before the hooves of the tailmost horse went through it. Later though, it would be bad.

Let her doze, Kero thought, settling. This is the easy part. Anything from here on is gong to be worse.

Pray gods, not as bad as I fear.

Pray gods, the dreams don’t follow me....

Twenty-one

Snow swirled around Hellsbane’s hocks, as the wind made Kero’s feet ache with cold. Kerowyn huddled as much of herself inside her cloak as she could, and kept her face set in a reasonable approximation of a pleasant expression.

She would not dismount until her tent was set up. Her tent would not be set up until the rest of the camp was in order. The troops could look up from their own camp tasks at any time, and see her, still in the saddle, still out in the weather, for as long as it took for all of them to have their shelters put together.

Wonderful discoveries, these little dome-shaped, felt-lined tents. The wind just went around them; they never blew over, or collapsed, and instead of needing rigid tent-poles, you only needed to find a willow-grove, and cut eight of the flexible branches to thread through the eight channels sewn into the tents. You wouldn’t even damage the trees; willows actually responded well to being cut back, and the Company had passed groves they’d trimmed in the past, whose trees were more luxuriant than before they’d been cut.

The hard part, especially in midwinter, was pounding the eight tent stakes into the rock-hard ground to pin the tents in place. Without those eight stakes, the tents could and had blown away, like down puffs on the wind. That was what took time, lots of time, and each pair of troopers was sweating long before the stakes were secure.

And meanwhile, the Captain got to sit on her horse and look impressive, while in reality she wanted to thump every one of her troopers who looked up at her for taking even a half-breath to do so, forcing her to be out in the cold that much longer. She’d rather have been pounding stakes herself; she used to help with setup, before she realized that helping could be construed as a sign of favoritism. Then she set up her own tent, before her own orderlies told her in distress that it wasn’t “appropriate.”

So she sat, like a guardian-statue, turning into a giant icicle, a sodden pile of wet leather, or a well-broiled piece of jerky, as the season determined.

The sun just touched the horizon, glaring an angry red beneath the low-hanging clouds. No snow—yet. It was on the way; Kero knew snow-scent when she caught it.

A wonderful aroma of roasting meat wafted on the icy breeze, making her mouth water and her stomach growl. In that much, at least, being Captain had its privileges. When she finally could crawl down off Hellsbane’s back, her tent would be waiting, warmed by a clever charcoal brazier no larger than a dish, and her dinner would be sitting beside it. She sniffed again, and identified the scent as pork.

Good. The past three weeks it’s been mutton, and I’m beginning to dislike the sight of sheep. Then she had to smile; when she’d last been this far north, she’d have sold her soul for a slice of mutton. In fact, most merc Companies would be making do with what they’d brought in the way of dried meat, eked out with anything the scouts brought in. This business of buying fresh food every time they halted had its advantages. Given the opportunity of making twice an animal’s normal price, in midwinter when there was no possibility of other money coming in, most farmers and herders could manage to find an extra male, or a female past bearing. Just before they’d gotten into the Comb, in fact, they’d found a fellow with a herd of half-wild, woolly cattle who had been overjoyed to part with a pair of troublemaking beasts at the price the quartermaster had offered.

“Them’s mean ’uns,” he’d said laconically, as he delivered the hobbled, bellowing, head-tossing creatures to the cooks. The smile on his face when he accepted a slice of roast, and the tale her quartermaster told later of putting the cattle down, convinced her that they had done the man a favor.

The last tent went up, and Geyr, currently in charge of the crew digging the jakes, hove into view from the other side of the camp, and waved his hand. Kero sighed with relief, and dismounted.