The Price Of Command

Slowly. She was having a hard time feeling her feet. Hellsbane let out a tremendous sigh as Kero pulled her left foot out of the stirrup and the youngster assigned as the officer’s groom came trotting up with his mittened hands tucked up into his armpits. He took the reins shyly from Kero, and led the mare off to the picket lines at a fast walk.

Kero made her way toward her tent at a slow walk; first of all, it wouldn’t do for the troops to see the Captain scurrying for her tent like any green recruit on her first winter campaign. And second, she didn’t trust her footing when she couldn’t feel anything out of her feet but cold and pain.

The command tent was easily three times the size of the others, but that was because the troops’ tents only had to hold two fighters and their belongings. Hers had to hold the map-table, and take several people standing up inside it, besides. That was the disadvantage of the little dome-shaped tents, and the reason she had a separate packhorse for her own traditional tent.

Her orderly held the tent flap open just enough for her to squeeze inside without letting too much of the precious heat out. And the first thing she did, once in the privacy of her quarters, was peel her boots off and stick her half-frozen, white feet into the sheepskin slippers he’d left warming beside the brazier for her.

As life returned to her extremities, she thanked the gods that she had made it through another day on the march without losing something to frostbite.

“There has to be a way to keep your feet from turning into chunks of ice the moment the wind picks up,” she said crossly to her orderly. “It’s fine when there’s no wind; the horse keeps your feet warm enough—but once there’s a wind, you might as well be barefoot.”

Her orderly, a wiry little fellow from the very mountains they’d just crossed, frowned a little. “’Tis them boots, Cap’n,” he said solemnly. “ ’Tis nothin’ betwixt the foot an’ the wind but a thin bit’a leather. ’Tis not what we do.”

She took an experimental sip of the contents of her wooden mug. It was tea tonight, which was fine. She hadn’t had any more of those dreams of Eldan since crossing the Comb, which left her with mixed feelings, indeed, and wine was not what she wanted tonight, even mulled. She didn’t want to go all maudlin in her cups, mourning the loss of those illusionary lovemaking sessions.

Whatever was wrong with me is cured, she though resolutely. I should be thankful. I’m back to being myself. But—come to think of it, Need’s been as silent as a stone, she realized, with a moment of alarm. Nothing. Not even a “feel” at the back of my mind. She might just as well be ordinary metal!

Dear gods, what if she won’t Heal me anymore?

I’ll deal with it, that’s what. It’s too late to turn back now. Think about something else. “Enlighten me, Holard. What do your people do?”

“Sheepskin boots, Cap’n,” he replied promptly, “An’ wool socks, double pairs. Only trouble is, ’tis bulky, an’ has no heel. We don’t use stirrups, ye ken.”

She shook her head. “That won’t do, not for us. I guess I’ll just have to suffer—”

At that moment, the guard outside her tent knocked his dagger hilt against the pole supporting the door canopy, and let someone in with a swirl of snow.

Quenten, and Kero had a feeling she wasn’t going to like what he was about to say the moment he came fully into the light from her lantern. He was haggard and nervous, two states she’d never seen Quenten in—and the mages had been conspicuous by their absence since they’d crossed the Comb. There was something up, and whatever it was, it was coming to her now because they couldn’t handle it themselves.

“Captain,” said Quenten, and his voice cracked on the second syllable. She waited for him to try again. “Captain,” he repeated, with a little more success this time. “We have a problem....”

Gods. Need, and now the mages?

“I’d already gathered that, Quenten, since you look like a day-old corpse, and I haven’t seen so much as a mage’s sleeve for a fortnight. Is it just you, or do all the mages look like you?”

“All of us,” Quenten replied unhappily. “We’d like permission to turn back, Captain. It isn’t you, or the Company, or the job. We think it’s Valdemar itself. There’s something strange going on here, and it’s driving us mad.”

He waited for a moment, obviously to see if she believed him. She just nodded. “Go on,” she told him, figuring she was about to have her little puzzle of mages and Valdemar solved, at least in part.

“I remembered what you told me, about how the Heralds seemed surprised by magic, and you never heard of a mage up in Valdemar. I thought maybe it was coincidence or something.” His hands twisted the hem of his sleeve nervously. “Well, it isn’t. The moment we got across the border, we all felt something.”