your captains as well. I expect they’ll want to be housed with their cohorts, yes?” The Duke nodded. “I’ve arranged a suite for you and Aliam, convenient to my quarters; we have much to confer about.” The Count glanced at the column again. “Do you—do you need separate barracks space for the women?”
“No, my lord Count.”
“I see.” He sounded doubtful. “We don’t—meaning no disparagement to your troops, Phelan, but we have not seen so many women active in warfare. A paladin here or there, and occasional knight—but—well, no matter.”
“I assure you, my lord, that they are quite capable.” The Duke’s voice was dry, and Paks suppressed a grin.
“Oh, quite—quite, I’m sure. Meant no disparagement. But one thing, Phelan, your troops can’t wander about armed in the city—”
“Certainly not, my lord. They will stack their arms in barracks, and I had not planned to permit any wandering anyway.”
“I didn’t mean to sound inhospitable—”
“Not at all. No one wants strange troops straying loose. These won’t.”
“No harm if they go to the fountains—or if you need more supplies—but it might be better if they stayed close.”
“Certainly.”
“Very well, then. Fersin will direct my quartermaster to stand ready with any assistance. I know you brought your own surgeons, but if your wounded need special care, you have only to ask. Hobben—” He spoke to one of the gate guards. “Open this thing and let our guests through. Come along, Phelan, and tell me what you found.” He turned away; the Duke and Aliam Halveric followed him through the opening gate.
The column followed Fersin, who turned left inside the gate and led them beside the wall to two-story stone barracks built against it.
“This and the next are empty,” he told Arcolin. “If you need more bedding, just tell me. The baths—” he glanced back at the column, “are in the far end of this one, and the near end of the next; there’s a kitchen in each cellar. By the Count’s order, water’s been heating since noon, for your convenience. If you need food, we can supply it, but it will take a little time, since I must speak to the quartermaster. I’d appreciate a squad of your men—uh, troops—helping me bring it—”
“We’re well supplied,” said Arcolin. “We have what we took from Siniava’s army. But we appreciate the offer. Where shall we take the baggage mules?”
“I’ll have stable boys come help you. Just a moment—” He looked up and caught the eye of one of the soldiers on the wall, then whistled a complicated phrase. The man saluted and turned away.
“We’ll take the far building,” said Arcolin. “The Halverics are behind us, and the Clarts behind them; we don’t want any more confusion than necessary. Now, where are the fountains?”
“Just down that street,” said Fersin, pointing. “There are full waterbutts in each barracks, but if you need more, feel free to get some.”
“Thank you, Fersin. Stammel, two squads for the mules; send the rest in. I’ll check back.”
The Count’s barracks were much like the Duke’s: long clean rooms with wooden bunks. Each room would hold two cohorts if some slept on the floor, and there were plenty of pallets to make that comfortable. Soon the upper room was organized for the night. Paks caught Stammel’s eye when he came upstairs to look.
“Why didn’t that man call the Duke by his title?”
“The Count?” Paks nodded. Stammel shook his head. “Oh, he’s what they call an aristocrat—one of the old kind.”
“So?”
“Well, he doesn’t think the Duke is really a Duke—from what I hear, the only duke he thinks
Paks frowned. “Is he like those bravos, then that you told me about my first year?”
“Tir, no! Nothing like. He really is a count, the sixteenth in his line, I think.”
“But you told me nobody disputed the Duke’s title.”
“The Count doesn’t dispute it; the Duke doesn’t ask him to acknowledge it. That’s different. Courtesy among allies. And if it doesn’t bother the Duke, why should it bother you?”
“I don’t understand.” Paks felt that it ought to bother the Duke.
Stammel shrugged. “Remember what I told you about Aare—the old country across the sea?” Paks nodded. “Well, these southern nobles trace their titles back to it. They hardly allow that the throne of Tsaia has a king—or a crown prince, as he is—and they don’t recognize Pargun and Kostandan and Dzordanya at all. You can see if they don’t recognize the crown of Tsaia, they wouldn’t acknowledge titles granted by it.”
“I see.” Paks laid out another blanket. “Well, is the Honeycat one of their kind of nobles, or our kind, or just made up?”
“I don’t know. If anyone does, it’ll be this count. They say he’s so proud of his family that he can recite his fathers and mothers and aunts and cousins all the way back to the beginnings, and say who married whom two hundred years ago.”
Paks thought about that, shaking her head. In her own family—she mused over it, coming up blank past grandparents, aunts, uncles, and near cousins. How could the count keep up with more? When she looked up, Stammel had gone on to something else.
Paks drew first shift for a bath, and came to the basement dining hall dry, warm, and comfortable. It would be strange to sleep indoors again. She wondered what it would be like to live in those barracks all the time—then remembered the count’s comments on women, and chuckled to herself. Southerners had strange ideas. She wondered if southern women who wanted to be warriors went north.
The next morning they marched at first light, carrying only their weapons, to attack the besieging force that held the south road. They made their way around the city between the outer and second walls. On the south, the city seemed to tip itself over the edge of high cliffs. Before Paks could see what lay below, they dove into an echoing torchlit passage, steeply pitched, and came out on one landing of a zigzag stair winding down from wall to wall, and ending in a huge gatehouse still some way above the rivers. Here they were joined by some five hundred Andressat troops who had come by a different way. As the gates opened, Paks could see nothing at first but distant slopes, dim in the early light.
Once through the gates, the road ran steeply down to a platform above the confluence of the two branches of the Chaloquay: a wild, tossing whirlpool at this season. Upstream, on the right, a narrow road led down to a high arched stone bridge, guarded by towers at either end. The enemy held both towers.
With the roaring rivers close below, it was hard to hear the captains’ commands, but their gestures were clear enough. Paks yawned, clearing her ears, and shifted her shield a bit as she marched forward with the others. Spray from the rivers drifted up, cold on her legs. As they dropped to the level of the bridge approaches, arrows skipped along the stones in front of them to shatter on the wall to their right. Archers from the bridge towers: Paks knew how bad that could be as they came closer. But a flight of arrows passed over them from the wall of Cortes Andres. Paks saw several enemy bowmen throw up their arms and fall from the nearer tower. Fewer and fewer archers cared to expose themselves to Andressat’s accurate aim; the arrows stopped. Then as the road made an abrupt left turn to the bridge, Paks caught a glimpse of fleeing men on the road south. She hoped that meant the bridge was not defended. A battle was one thing, but she didn’t like the thought of fighting over water, or being swept away in the Chaloquay’s fierce currents.
The bridge gates, a lattice of heavy timbers rather like a folding portcullis, were closed; their own bowmen sent a volley of shafts through the lattice onto the bridge itself. The enemy retreated to the far tower. Doubling shields, the front rank of archers made it to the gates and unhooked the bar that held them closed. Another rank stepped forward to pull the gates open; soon they gaped wide. Their own archers ran for the tower stairs. Paks’s cohort went forward onto the bridge. Nothing barred their way at the far tower; against the light that came through from the open air beyond she could see a dark mass: the enemy.
As they charged, Paks heard the whirr of a few arrows, but saw no one fall. The enemy fell back before them; the rear ranks were already turning to run. By the time the first two ranks were engaged, Siniava’s men had retreated from the bridge approach, giving them room to spread out. Paks found herself an opponent. She pressed forward, fending off his blade easily until he left an opening, then she plunged her sword into his body. Another, and another, and the enemy was fleeing, breaking away from the fight in ones and twos and clumps to run gasping up
