Tags
adventure, adventurer, Alix, Barbarian, Cath, dark ages, Elavon, Emma, Gynd, Inga, Irena, Killifar, Marthen, Medieval, Merrivan, middle ages, Sophie, Sword, The Fair, warrior woman
XVII
The dawn was misty and bracingly cold. The leading elements were already on the south side of Killifar, hiking through farm country toward hills, along a road much older than any of them knew, much older than it looked. Ella was with Dad and Nell and Marthen near the vanguard, dozing in the saddle. The trailing elements were still picking up stakes, urged on by a tired and cranky trio: Sophie, Irena and Emma. Matty was cranky too; a dozen younger men and women, with Slim, Ulf and Padric at their core, trailed with them, putting up with their crankiness. In between moved, way too slowly as far as Sophie or her dad were concerned, a mass of people and animals and carts that included about nineteen parts in twenty of the former residents of the outer town of Killifar.
Presently it began to rain. The movement bogged down even further.
“I can’t take it,” said Sophie, as she and Emma and Irena sat on horses behind the last group of a hundred or so former villagers from the south side of Tenna. “I liked twelve. Twelve was a good number.”
“Give me a whip,” said Emma in a low voice. “I’ll get these bleeps moving.”
“Listen,” said Irena. “We not know what happens at Killifar right now. Dudes you kill in forest say much killing today, Gama Kug want everyone dead outside town, then get around to kill everyone inside town. Dudes say tomorrow, say this last night, means today, right?”
“No bleep,” said Sophie. “And there’s horsemen shadowing us, have you noticed?”
“Did you just swear?” said Emma. “You’re picking up bad habits, isn’t she, Matty?” Matty had no opinion.
“Irena,” said Sophie, “did you just call the Kug dudes?”
“Yes—is correct, or not?” Irena asked.
“It’s fine.”
“So,” Emma went on, “you want to send someone to patrol?”
“Hey Slim,” said Sophie.
Slim, Ulf and Padric, sitting on their horses a few paces in front of the women, turned. “Do I hear the dulcet tones of my sister’s voice?” asked Slim.
“We need someone on patrol,” said Emma. “You’re someone. So’s Padric.”
“You want a couple of us to bounce back and forth, kind of,” said Padric. “Know what I mean? Go back and sight the enemy and come back up again.”
“Yeah, in the long haul,” said Sophie. “Right now, that’s not what we need. We’re stopped, and so are they.” She cast a glance back at where the old road made a wide turn in the woods.
“Someone back there?” asked Ulf.
“Just around the corner.”
“What I think we need,” said Emma, “and I’d do it myself, I really would, except for this baby, is for someone to sneak all the way back and get some news of Killifar.”
The men looked at each other. “I’ll do that,” said Ulf.
“You?” said Sophie. “You’re an arrow magnet.”
“I’ll go,” said Slim. “You been hunting with me, sis. You know I can go quietly. And you knew a long time ago what a coward I am, so that’s perfect.”
“Okay,” said Sophie, “but I don’t have to agree with the last part. Can you take someone with you? Maybe pick one of these people as a trainee?”
“What do you want me to do?” asked Padric.
“You,” said Emma, “can grab a trainee from among the rabble and see if you can train him or her to ride along behind us and do that bounce thing you talked about. Once we get moving.”
“You got it,” said Padric with a grin.
“How far are we going today?” asked Slim. “I ask so we know how much further we have to go on our return journey.”
“I don’t know,” said Sophie. “I kind of know where we’re headed, we’re headed for this old monastery on the coast, but I have no idea how far it is.”
“Wouldn’t worry,” said Irena. “We go not so fast.”
It soon was apparent more organization was needed. There were a thousand questions and a hundred delays, and since no one was really in charge, and since Dad was way at the front, all the folk in back just assumed Sophie was in charge. She who had never been in charge of anything before. Still, she managed. With three long pauses, the mass moved forward till early afternoon, when the rain moved off and a breeze off the hills to the west grew, drying out the mob but also blowing the leaves off the trees into their faces. They were miserable, they were tired, they were out of sorts, and Sophie had to wonder how most of them were managing to put one foot in front of another.
A couple of hours after midday, Slim caught up with Sophie and Emma while Irena was cajoling an ox-cart out of a patch of mud. He and his trainee, a friend of his from Mudwick named Georgie, had just gotten back from Killifar.
“That was quick,” said Sophie.
“Killifar’s under attack,” said Slim.
“Great,” said Sophie. Then she met his eyes and said, “Oh, Slim. Do you want to—?”
“Go back? Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah. I want to go back and kill them all and get inside and—!”
“But that’s not how it works,” said Sophie.
“I know. How’d you get so smart, Sis?”
“How’d I get so smart? This bleeping month. That’s all it took.”
“Where’d you get that mouth?” he asked, finally smiling. Sophie grinned and gestured at Emma, who was nursing in the saddle.
“Sophie,” said Emma, “we have to get with your dad and Marthen and, um, Nell, and Irena, and decide what exactly we’re going to do. I mean, for now, these people are just going to walk and walk, but we need to feed them and we need to find a camping spot and we need to figure out where we’re headed and—!”
“Elavon,” said Sophie.
“Elavon. What’s Elavon?”
“Margery’s husband Perkin told us about it. It’s an old monastery on the coast. It might even be abandoned. He said it’s wicked defensible. I’m telling you, it’s the only obvious place. It’s the right direction, and if those bleep-heads follow us all the way there, maybe we can hold them off and show them what the bleep we are made of.”
“Whoa,” said Slim.
“You kiss babies with that mouth?” asked Emma.
“You are the boss,” said Slim. “You are.”
Sophie, surprised how worked up she’d gotten, calmed herself and said, “So, yeah, Slim, would you mind going and finding Dad? Have him, um, call a halt and we’ll all catch up and we can plan a bit better.”
It took at least half an hour, but as the sun finally started to show through the shredding clouds, the family and close friends had a chat and a bite in the saddle.
“Kug and Frungans,” said Slim. “Attacking Killifar. We have definite on both. They even seem to be working together. Kug are attacking one side while Frungan bows are picking off defenders on the walls and Frungan horse are burning farms.”
“Who’s behind us?” asked Dad.
“Kug,” said Padric. “I’d put it about five hundred on horse. They’re staying back a mile, maybe half a mile, half a mile to a mile.”
“So,” asked Emma, “is that five hundred, or half of five hundred, or a couple of five hundreds?”
“I’m pretty sure about the five hundred. Four hundred to six hundred.”
“Pad,” said Sophie, “you’re doing a fine job. Okay, they think we can’t take five hundred of them. I think they’re wrong.” She looked at Dad.
“If we get the right people and pick the right spot,” said Dad, “sure, we could take half a thousand of them. We also need to send some people ahead to find this Elavon place.”
“I know there are people from the outer town who’ve been that far,” said Nell.
“I’ll stay up front with Squire John,” said Marthen. “Sophie’s in back with Emma, and that leaves Miss Nell the task of organizing the masses.”
“They’re more organized than you think,” said Nell.
“Uh, John, sir,” said Padric, “want me and Ulf to see about getting together some volunteers with bows to see off those guys behind us?”
“I’ll put Sophie in charge of that expedition,” said Dad. “Just be careful, we don’t want to lose anyone if we don’t have to. I’ll tell you what, I am just sick and tired of folks dying.”
“Padric,” said Sophie, “you and Ulf go find as many as you can. Boys with bows and horses. Don’t ignore the girls with bows and horses. Have them let the rest of the folks go by and they can form up back here.”
“Okey dokey,” said Padric.
“But Soph,” said Dad as Padric rode away, “I’m serious about finding the right spot. I will tell you when I see it.”
“Okay. I’ll trust your tactical instinct. But that’s assuming we get to pick the spot.” Sophie looked at Nell. “Sister-in-law, would you take charge of keeping the non-fighting people happy and moving?”
“I’d love to.”
“Slim, um, George,” said Sophie, “would you guys care to organize some hunting parties? Just ride along outside the main group and see if you can shoot some things we scare up.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Slim. “How much meat do we need?”
“We have between three and four thousand mouths to feed right now,” said Nell. “Any amount you can bring in will help.”
“And if you find fruit, taters, herbs, whatever,” said Irena, “I cook. We got pots?”
“Yes actually,” said Nell, “loads of people couldn’t be parted from their cookware. You know. Farm wives.”
“Yeah,” said Irena. “I know farm wives.”
“Okay then,” said Sophie. She looked at Dad. “Are we good?”
“I think we’re as good as can be,” Dad replied. “You’re in charge in back, you and Emma, me and Marthen are in front, and Nell and Irena are in charge in the middle. Anything else?”
“Well,” said Sophie, “I want Ella with me. That should about do it.”
The horde, or crowd, or mass, or peasant pilgrimage, wound on southward with only brief interruptions for another two hours. By the time they found a place to arrange a camp, they had moved perhaps ten miles from Killifar. The mass of people had opened out in an area where the old road left the woods and came down along a wide old streambed with a tired little stream in it, flowing down from the hills ahead of them. The rearguard, which was now up to thirty self-appointed cavalry, kept the hindmost families moving, mostly by helping them move. Sophie and Slim and Ella rode side by side for a while, each with a couple of young children sharing the saddle. Finally they gave in and helped people set up camp.
Sophie found the campsite of the family whose two little boys had ridden with her. They were from outside Tenna, but now their abode was on the bank above the lazy streambed, and the grandma of the family was busy coordinating with other grandmas to make sure no one muddied or peed in the stream. Sophie ran into Slim and Georgie while chatting with the family. Slim and his buddy, having got the hunters out, bagged a couple of pheasants themselves, and then, having eaten, were ready to ride back toward Killifar to have a look. Sophie found a couple of young women with bows to ride back to have a look at the pursuing force.
Then, finally, Sophie and Ella had stew with an extended family of Killifar farm folk. These had lived in the area for at least four generations, but had never, to the inner town, merited the protection of the inner town, and now they were on the run from the only place they had ever lived. They seemed in good enough spirits, though, and Sophie exchanged friendly goodbyes before going in search of her dad.
It was completely dark, with a solid ceiling of cloud, as Sophie and Ella wandered into the middle of the camp. People were cooking all over the place, all sorts of things, and mostly it was the smell of this activity, and not others, that hung in the air. Hunters were bringing in game at a steady pace, but mostly people were eating things they had brought with them, stone soup indeed.
Sophie was beginning to think the entire thing was descending into chaos when she spotted Nell and Irena organizing a large-scale stew operation by a pond near the stream. Nearby, Dad and Emma and Marthen were passing a bottle and talking; next to Emma, Aedith was holding Matty and smiling at everyone who came over to gawk at the baby. And lo and behold, there were the two scout girls Sophie had sent out, bending Dad’s ear. Sophie and Ella hurried over and jumped off their horses, and before they could start complaining about the confusion, Dad started in on the situation.
“So everyone’s getting fed,” he said, “and according to your scouts here, it looks like the pursuit isn’t going to whack us just yet, but we’ll need your new little army to camp at the back and keep an eye on them. Up ahead the road goes up and up and apparently it goes through a pass or something. Don’t know what’s beyond, but I think we’ve gone no more than a quarter of the way to this Elavon. Maybe we’ll go faster tomorrow but I doubt it.”
“I don’t think anyone actually dropped dead along the way today,” said Emma. “That’s good.”
“Dad,” said Sophie, “what’s the chance my little mini cavalry will be able to do anything? They outnumber us ten to one, according to what we actually know about anything, and they’re, you know, actually trained?”
“Well, girl,” he said, “you’re probably better off with a smaller, more nimble force, right? And as for training, that’s a thing to do then.”
“Train them? Now?” She looked at the scout girls, who shrugged.
“As good a time as any,” said Dad.
“Okay, okay,” Sophie yelled out, as she circled around the west end of a loose collection of young folks on horseback. Before them, the old road came out of the woods to the north; behind them, a bend westward of the road followed the bank of the stream, which widened in the turn. “Okay, let’s all huddle up, no, stay on your horses, come on, folks, let’s go, okay, you two, huddle up, back toward the middle.” She kept this up for twenty minutes, circling all the way around the loose collection twice, with Ella and the two girl scouts following her and doing likewise. The loose collection slowly glommed together into what almost looked like a cavalry. Sophie alternately fantasized them putting the Frungans to rout, and watching them melt away into the woods and fight amongst themselves. Finally she found herself on the north side of the not so loose collection, sitting on Horseradish in the middle of the old road. Ella was beside her, and four other girls around Sophie’s age, and two boys, were behind her. She looked at her scout girls.
“The Kug are half a mile back,” said the redhead. “They seem to be camping, four to five hundred of them.”
“Okay,” said Sophie. “Okay,” she said again, louder, to the crowd.
There were a lot of them. They were all looking at her.
“Okay,” she shouted. “Group into tens. You can count to ten, can’t you? Come on, group up.”
“Group up, you idiots,” shouted Ella. Sophie and the other girls looked at her.
“Okay, group up in tens,” shouted Ulf, near the front, where Sophie hadn’t noticed him. He turned his horse toward the crowd and went on, “Ten. It’s how many fingers you have.”
“Counting the thumb,” yelled Padric from nearby.
“Okay, let’s go,” several more young men and women yelled.
“We got ten,” shouted a girl from the left. “Ten here!” came from here and there.
“Okay,” Sophie said to Ella, “how many tens?”
“I’ll check,” said one of the scout girls, a redhead almost as tall as Sophie but skinny. She had no sword and nothing like armor but her bow was long, like the longbows that came from down South.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“Alix,” said the redhead. She gave a quick smile, then did a sort of in-saddle curtsey. “My lady.”
“What was that?” asked Sophie as Alix rode off, leaving her smile behind her.
“She’s always like that,” said the other scout girl, of normal height and long brown hair. “I’m Cath. Want me to count the other side?”
“Group them in hundreds,” said Sophie. “Hundreds!” she shouted back at Alix. “That’s tens of tens!”
“Yes, my lady!” Alix shouted back. She was moving to the left pointing: “Ten one, ten two, ten three, ten four, ten five, that’s fifty. Ten six, ten seven—!”
“Seven!” shouted the young man at the head of the seventh ten.
“Ten eight,” called Alix. “Eight!” replied the young man at the head of Ten Eight. “Ten nine, ten ten, a hundred!” called Alix.
“Ten nine!” shouted the girl right behind the boy who seemed to be sort of in charge of Ten Nine. “Ten ten!” shouted all the girls of the all-girl Ten Ten.
“That’s a hundred,” Alix yelled at Sophie.
“I got a hundred over here, Sophie,” called Cath.
“Hmm,” said Sophie. In between the now very organized left and right wings huddled four groups of ten and about two dozen loose ends. “Okay,” she went on, using full voice. “You in the middle. Form another ten, and everyone who’s not in a ten, go back to camp.” Voices rose, mostly in talk amongst themselves. She managed to raise her voice even further. “If you want to do something, go report to my dad or to Nell or Emma or Marthen and see what they want you to do. Or Slim, my brother. Okay? Go!” Not a lot happened. “Okay, you,” she called to Ulf, on a horse in the middle, “Ulf, you take charge of those extra folks, get it organized. Okay?”
He shrugged, smiled, waved and started organizing.
“Okay, Alix,” Sophie yelled, “have half your guys practice shooting at trees, make sure they don’t shoot each other, and have the other half practice some riding. Can you do that?” Alix waved, her hand white as a beacon in the moonlight. “How about you?” Sophie called to Cath.
“I can do that,” said Cath.
“Okay,” said Sophie. She turned to the two young men and two young women behind her. They were all older than Sophie and they seemed a little more reserved than the others. “Can you guys handle watching the road?”
“Sure,” said one of the men. “My name’s Oldric, I was in the King’s Army.”
“Were you at the Vara River?”
“Yeah, so were you,” he replied. He grinned.
“Come on, Oldric, stop flirting with your commanding officer,” said the woman next to him, who was in fact his wife, “and start being on guard duty.”
“Yeah,” said the other young man, “beats the poop out of mess hall duty.”
“Okay, fine,” he said. He grinned at Sophie, a big handsome grin in a blond face that had a little hair but didn’t need to be shaven as yet. “Peg,” he said. “I do what she says.”
“You both better do what I say,” she replied.
“Obviously,” said Peg.
Sophie watched them go, then turned and watched her new commanders ordering their two hundreds and a fifty around. She smiled at Ella, who was the only one still next to her, her adjutant or something. Marthen to her Sir Bodon. “This is fun,” she said.
The camp cavalry practiced for an hour or so, then broke for stew in shifts. Sophie stayed in the saddle, chatting strategic points and squinting up the road. At some point, Emma came by on her own horse, with a mug of someone’s stew and a hunk of someone’s hard white cheese. She and Ulf and Alix and a couple of other teenagers sat on their horses eating and talking with Emma and Matty. Two different teenage boys tried to flirt with Sophie, but she didn’t even bother to slug them.
With the full moon riding high, Sophie noticed Ella next to her, dozing in the saddle. Sophie realized how tired she was. They found a spot out of the way beside the road north, and lay down on the beaten-down grass, their coats around them. The next minute, it was an hour or more later by the moon, and a dark male figure was bending over them.
“Uppy up,” said Padric. “Lookouts say there’s horse trying to get sneaky.”
“What? Uppy? Sneaky?”
“In the woods,” said Oldric. “Kug are trying to sneak up through the woods.”
“Oh bleepin’ bleep,” said Sophie. “Let’s get busy.”