Dorrin touched the point of her sword to the medallion. Green light flared upward, and a rotten stench filled the room. The sword’s glow was clearly visible now, blue and steady against the pulsing green. Dorrin pulled the sword back, and both glows faded. “Well, that’s that. We can hardly leave it there. We need a cleric to counter it. Paks—” Paks jerked her eyes away from the medallion: was it moving slowly? The captain nodded when their eyes met. “Go find the Duke, and tell him we need a cleric. Don’t tell anyone else. Wait—do you have Canna’s Girdish medallion?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“You’re wearing it?”
“Yes, Captain. Isn’t that all right—?”
Dorrin gave her a long look. “Seeing it probably saved your life, I would say it’s all right. It’s well known St. Gird has no love for Achrya Webmistress. But let’s see—take it out.”
Paks fished the medallion out of her tunic. Dorrin took it and let the chain slip through her fingers until it hung above the silver spider on the floor. Again the green glow rose from the spider, but the crescent above did not change. Dorrin handed it back to Paks.
“Yours is the weaker one, or at least it doesn’t reveal any power. Still, you’re alive and he isn’t.” She nudged the dead man with her boot. “Go on—find the Duke. And the rest of you search these bodies carefully. We might find more mischief.”
Paks tucked Canna’s medallion back into her tunic as she jogged down the stairs. By the time she had found the Duke, and carried his message to a tall man in black armor in Vladi’s camp, a Blademaster of Tir; it was dark. She was both eager and afraid to see what he would do, but Dorrin met her on the stairs and sent her back to camp.
“It’s priestwork now, and none of ours,” she said firmly. “We’ve much to do tomorrow, and much to guard tonight. You’re on second watch; get some food into you and rest before you’re called.”
The next day brought no such excitements, but more work, as they cleared the rest of their sector. Paks could not begin to guess how many bales of cloth, rolls of carpet, boxes, bags, and trunks of moveable treasure, copper, bronze, and iron pots, dresses, gowns, robes, tunics, shirts, shoes, boots, buckles, combs, scrolls, daggers, swords, shields, bows, bowstrings, arrows, war hammers and wood hammers, battle axes and felling axes, reels of yarn and fine thread, needles, knives, forks, spoons of wood and pewter and silver and gold, figurines carved of wood and ivory and stone, harps and horns and pipes of all sizes they had taken and packed in wagons. The very thought of all those things made her tired. What could people use it all for? A well-stocked larder or armory made sense, but not all the rest. In one house she had seen shelves of little carvings: horses, men, women, fish, leaves of different shapes, birds—what could anyone do with those but look at them? No one worshipped that many gods. She had run her hands over fine silks and velvets, furs of all colors, and handled lace so fine she feared it would tear in her fingers. And these were beautiful. But—Paks thought again of the militia around the bonfire in their stolen finery—they weren’t for her. Not now.
More to her mind was the captain’s sword and its blue glow. She wanted to ask about it, but she was with a different squad, and she did not know Dorrin’s people that well anyway. Had she imagined it? Could it be a magical weapon, like those of old tales and songs? Paks remembered Dorrin’s scars—those any soldier her age might carry—and thought not. Yet she worried the question, in the back of her mind. She had heard of the Webmistress, Achrya, though around Three Firs they called her Dark Tangler, or the Dark One. But she had never seen any evidence that Achrya was real until that spider medallion reacted to Dorrin’s sword. She had thought of Achrya as another name out of old stories—something in her grandfather’s time, perhaps, when orcs attacked Three Firs—not a present danger. Now she had the uneasy feeling that she might not know as much as she’d thought. She pushed that aside and asked her new squad leader about the plunder they were packing.
“What do we—what does the Duke—do with chairs and tables and old clothes? The gold I can understand, but—”
“He sells ’em; either down here, or back north. There’s a good market for good things—even partly worn things. You’ll see.”
They built another mound north of the city, and with the Halverics held another memorial celebration to honor those who had died as Siniava’s prisoners or in taking Rotengre. The Guild League cities each sent a representative, but their militias stayed away; Paks was glad. After that, the heavily laden wagons of plunder followed the Company north and west to Valdaire along the Guild League route. It was later than usual, already winter, as Aarenis knew winter: cold and unpleasant enough. Their elation at breaking Rotengre drained away the closer they came to their winter quarters, for every day on the road they marched with the ghosts of the slain.
Chapter Twenty-one
When they reached Valdaire, Arcolin took the remnant of his cohort and assigned them the same quarters as the year before. Paks almost wished he had left them with the others; alone in a barracks meant for a hundred or more, they were achingly aware of their losses. Even the winter routine of training and work could not distract them. Every night Paks faced the rows of empty bunks, and looked aside to meet eyes as unhappy as her own. They had been told the Duke would replace the missing—he had already ridden north—but this was no comfort. Who could replace Donag? Or Bosk? She would not let herself think of Saben and Canna. Day by day she and the others grew even more silent and grim.
Then Arcolin announced a feast for them at
At the end of the meal, when the food was cleared away, and the servants had left, Arcolin passed around the rings which the Duke had made for them. Paks looked at hers before slipping it on her finger: a plain gold band with a tiny foxhead stamped on the outer surface, and the word “Dwarfwatch” and a rune that Arcolin told them stood for loyalty engraved on the inside. She ran her thumb lightly over the foxhead, and glanced aside to see Arne doing the same thing.
Arcolin waited for them all to look up before speaking. “I wish,” he said quietly, “that I had been with you, to fight beside you. Not that you could have done better. Tir knows what I—what everyone—thinks of your fighting. But you have shared something now, bitter as it is, that will bind you heart to heart for the rest of your lives.” He stopped and looked around, gathering every eye that had dropped, before going on. “Very shortly,” he said, “the new recruits will be down; we’ll be back to size, or near it. You know, and I know, that they cannot take the place of those we have lost—but they can help avenge our friends. The Duke has sworn vengeance on Siniava. So has the Halveric. Let us, then, swear our own oath, for the memory of our friends and the destruction of our enemies.” He read out again the names of those who had died; they gave a great shout after each. Paks was crying; she saw tears glisten on most faces. Hand felt for hand around the table. Then Arcolin said, “Death to the Honeycat!” and the responsive roar shook the room. Paks felt a surge of rage, felt the anger in the others that made them one. She wished they could march at once.
But some weeks passed before the new recruits arrived. After the banquet, Paks felt more at ease; she and the others began looking forward to the new campaign almost as much as backward to the past one. They drilled with every weapon they had or had captured. Paks spent more time with the longsword. She enjoyed the great advantage her height and reach gave her with the longer weapon. But not all her time was spent in practice.
That winter the Vale of Valdaire seemed even fuller than usual of wintering troops. Paks met more of the Golden Company, commanded by Aesil M’dierra, a dark hawk-faced woman from the west. She saw Kalek Minderisnir, a scarfaced, bandy-legged little man who commanded the Blue Riders, and Sobanai Company, whose dapper commander looked, to Paks, too dressy to be a good fighter. The talk was of war: battles and encounters,
