Chapter 9: Climb Every Mountain

Gamelin stared at the ruin that the other patrol had suffered, shaken to his core. Not even a finger-width. In less than a finger-width, his patrol had destroyed a Zarthani patrol, larger than his own. Gamelin glanced at his own dead trooper, sprawled on the ground a few feet away. It wasn't the first dead man he'd seen, but it was the first man to die that he, personally, had been responsible for. It was hard to say which was more sobering: the ruin on the hillside in front of him, or the dead man a few feet away.

It hit him much harder than the realization days before that the men he'd sent south had mainly died. Those had been out of sight; they hadn't even heard gunfire from their positions. They'd simply been swallowed in the maw of the enemy.

"Time to go," Tuck told Gamelin, his voice harsh.

Gamelin met the stranger's eyes. The truth: his patrol hadn't destroyed the Zarthani. Tuck had.

He remembered then, a cold and windy evening, his father and he had been alone on the Saltless Sea, in a small boat. "Never lie to yourself," his father had told him. His father pointed to the waves, marching at them in steady ranks, as far as the eye could see, which, considering the storm, that wasn't far off. "We must run. We could try to fight, but the Witch Storms of Winter would swallow us. You must learn, my son, when it is time to fight... but first you should learn when it is better to run! And you must never tell yourself that honor forbids running, when that's the only way to preserve it."

At the time, Gamelin had mistaken what his father was saying. A storm was, after all, a show of Nimue's anger, nature run amuck. You can't fight nature and you certainly couldn't fight Nimue, the Goddess of Storms!

In the High King's Academy for young officers, they'd been blunt. "You've been taught all your lives about honor and dishonor. It isn't wrong, what you've been taught, but it wasn't right either. Death solves your problems, but it doesn't solve the problems of the troopers you lead, the people you defend, the High King or Hostigos.

"Before you decide on an honorable death, contemplate who it will hurt. Contemplate if you could do more alive. Sure, it is honorable to stand alone, to face the enemy's champion. But what if you die? Who will lead your men? Suppose you die and there is a fight anyway? Are your men going to fight carefully or seek to avenge you? Will the man who replaces you in command be as careful of those men as you would have been? Or will he be intent on revenge for the death of a friend? Or might he look at a situation that frightens him and simply turn tail and run?

"Death comes to us all. The question is: when and how. True honor is having people say after you're gone, 'He did his duty and more!' It's not people saying, 'He'd died an honorable death and left the rest of us to die with nothing."

Vosper coughed and Gamelin met his eyes. Gamelin's order was a simple and uncomplicated. "Withdraw to the camp."

They pulled back, finding the original camp empty, except for the signs that they stayed for a day. They moved further back, a quarter mile, half way to the new camp. After a palm-width, there was still no sign of pursuit.

Gamelin pointed to Tanda Havra, who came at once. "You say your people can walk all day and do it again tomorrow?"

"Yes," the woman said confidently.

Gamelin knew how much trouble he was going to be in for having armed a local. But he couldn't take the weapon away from her, not with honor. He'd seen her kill a Zarthani with it.

"Then please, you and yours," he pointed to the spot at the base of the Barrier. "Go there, where there is a trail up. Vosper, send one of the troopers who knows the way."

Vosper nodded.

"This?" Tanda said, hefting the rifle.

"Take it to Outpost. I don't know... given what's happening..."

The High King was going to need every ally he could find here; perhaps this was a way to add quite a few, all at once.

Tanda bobbed her head, and then was off, running.

"We must keep going," Gamelin told Tuck. "I know they hurt, but..."

"Better hurt than dead," Tuck told him. "Must make do."

It was a long day. They reached the bottom of the range and headed into the basins beyond. The scouts kept reporting that they saw no pursuit and they were keeping a careful eye out, Gamelin was sure.

Finally, Gamelin called the end of the day's march, many palm-widths earlier than he normally would have. Once again, Tuck's charges were lethargic, going on only because they were too numb to stop.

Then it started to rain, adding to the misery of everyone, not just those tired and hurting. Thunder boomed over the hills, lightning spiked down on the hilltops, sending more thunder rolling over them.

There had been no time to erect the tents. Gamelin found Judybondi with her friends, under the fly, which was reasonably dry.

She said a few words, but it was clear she was exhausted. Even a few words were beyond the others, they simply lolled, barely conscious.

Tuck was there, watching them. He grinned at Gamelin. "Tomorrow, second wind," he told Gamelin.

Gamelin didn't understand at first, but Tuck was patient. Ah, yes! He knew second wind! Gamelin looked at the exhausted and dispirited girls. Privately, he doubted they were going to catch anything, except, perhaps, summer colds. Summer colds were the death of many.

For a short while, after dark, it cleared off, the rain and lightning stopped. He signaled, using Tuck's candle method. To his surprise, a few heartbeats later, there was an acknowledgement and a terse command, "Continue to Outpost. T."

Gamelin was content with that. The rain starting up again was something that could be endured.

Vosper, though, had been watching. "The Zarthani will attack the signal post, probably soon."

Gamelin nodded. "Hopefully, they will see them come in time."

Vosper raised an eyebrow. No, the Zarthani would send Mexicotal, men who were as good as Tanda Havra at sneaking past sentries. There would be no warning.

Gamelin turned to his signaler. "Send, 'Dralm bless you, Galzar keep you safe. Gamelin.'"

Vosper nodded and the signaler did as bid. Vosper clapped Gamelin on the shoulder, "You would be surprised what Galzar Wolf's Head can do, given time to prepare. They are not safe, but they will be no easy feast for the vultures!"

Judy struggled to sit up, to wolf down the barely warm porridge that they'd given them to eat for dinner. Rain poured down noisily; there was a curtain of water off the low end of the canvas fly. She shook herself. She had to take charge! If nothing else, of herself! She had to! Her friends depended on her!

Whoever it had been who'd supervised setting up the fly had done a good job. They had dug a trench just below where the water was pouring off the canvas. The trench collected the water, and led it about six feet away; where it simply joined a myriad of other trails of water, all heading downhill.

She focused on that. A simple thing. She printed it indelibly in her memory.

Elspeth held her plate under the water stream, letting it wash off the few remnants of her meal. She looked at Judy and grimaced. "I have to say, if that's the punishment for not being able to keep up, tomorrow I'm going to go like gangbusters. I'd rather have blisters over every inch of my body than eat this shit again." She waved the plate for emphasis.

"You cleaned it up pretty good," Judy told her, laughing.

"When you're as hungry as I am, eating for two, you don't notice for the first half dozen mouthfuls. Then, since it's half done anyway... momentum."

"Eating for two?" Lydia said, showing she wasn't as asleep as she looked.

"I'm pregnant," Elspeth said matter-of-factly.

Lydia's eyes went round in astonishment.

Elspeth looked at Becky. "You have anything in your box that can fix that? A clothes hanger, maybe!"

Becky crossed herself. "No, if I had something like that, I wouldn't give it to you."

Elspeth looked at the two shocked girls. "Let me tell you, this," she held up her switchblade, and it snicked open. "This is a fine form of birth control. Stick it between the bastard's ribs before he squirts his shit in you."

"She was raped," Judy said, trying to be as matter-of-fact as Elspeth had been.

That silenced the incipient conversation for more than an hour. The rain finally let up, and Judy got to her feet and found Gamelin, sitting with Vosper and Tuck.

"Evening," she said.

"How are you?" Gamelin inquired, solicitously.

"Better and better," Judy said, wishing it was true.

"I told them you would get your second wind tomorrow," Tuck told her.

Judy wanted to laugh. Second, third, tenth... one of those times.

For more than an hour, they talked as the light faded from the sky. Judy learned a lot of new words, this time mostly from Tuck.

Finally fatigue overwhelmed her, and she went back to the fly. The others were sprawled on top of their sleeping bags. Judy joined them and was asleep almost at once.

Freidal, Captain of the King's Guard First Cavalry Regiment watched the rain drown the camp. The groans of the seven wounded men wrenched his heart, and what little shelter that remained, those men got.

Tiki, his batman, shook water from his eyes as he came and stood next to Freidal. "My Lord, they did not pursue."

It had not really been a serious possibility, but Freidal had learned a few things quickly today. Never take anything for granted, first among them.

"Is it always like this?" he asked his batman, a graying veteran sergeant of more than twenty years service.

"My Lord, they had sharpshooters, they armed some of the villagers. I counted nearly forty shots in the volley, my Lord. Damned Hostigi! Arming the villagers! That will come to bite them in the future, I have no doubt!" Tiki was nothing if not a man of Freidal's father.

"I don't look forward to facing Xitki Count Quillan with my report."

"The count is a fair man, my Lord. You had your plume shorn; I have no idea what it was that cut the links of your chain mail on your sleeve."

Freidal reached up and touched the severed links. The cut in the rings was only about two inches long and he had a long cut underneath that had bled freely. But it was a scratch, even so. "Maybe a steel bullet, I don't know."

A lot of armored men had died today. Damned Hostigi rifles! You might as well not bother with armor! Where was the honor in fighting as bare-naked as a babe in swaddling clothes?

There was a rustle and one of their Mexicotal allies, one of their priests, Mexcala, sank down next to Freidal. He was wearing a headdress with a lot of feathers, and a leather flap to cover his manhood, armed only with an obsidian dagger just as all of the God-King's priests carried. Priest or not, he'd brought up the rear when they'd retreated, armed only with a rock dagger.

"My Lord, twice today I was to meet with patrols. They never reported. Yesterday, we had several patrols see survivors from the village. I understand one of your patrols met a Hostigi scout."

"They are devils," Freidal told the befeathered priest. "Four of our men saw him. Somehow he fired first, killing one man and wounding another, before making good his escape. We killed his horse and he still got away."

Freidal sighed. Count Quillan was not going to be happy at all with what his cavalry were going to report. He decided to try to put the best face on it he could.

"As you reported two days ago, Count Tellan has armed the villagers. They fought for their village and they fought us this morning."

"There were never very many, and after this, there will not be any at all," the priest said darkly.

Another man approached Freidal, his troop sergeant. "Lord, another has died," the man reported.

Freidal stifled a curse. The sergeant nodded, understanding Freidal's expression, even if he did not voice the words he'd have liked.

"We will be able to travel at first light. There is another man who will die during the night. The rest will be able to ride, tomorrow," the sergeant continued.

The sergeant's job, Freidal knew, was to tell him facts; it was stupid to be angry with the messenger or the message. He tried to focus his anger on his enemies, the men who'd done this to them!

"We will rouse in time to be able to move as soon as it is light," Freidal said, even though his bones screamed with weariness.

"My Lord, I will see to it," the sergeant told him, bobbed his head and vanished into the darkness. Like all of them, trying to ignore the rain.

As if to show Freidal how helpless he was, the rain stopped.

From somewhere Tiki procured a dry blanket that Freidal could wrap around himself; the night breeze over wet clothes was chilling. He lay looking up at the stars, the cold, hard points of light hid the eyes of the Gods who watched as men struggled and died this day. Were they laughing at Freidal? At all of them? There was no way to tell, not really. You just had to do your best.

And if your best was getting a dozen and a half men slaughtered? Freidal shied away from the thought.

He didn't really sleep during the night, dozing and waking at every movement in the camp. In spite of the defeat and the palpable gloom that had fallen over them, the troop sergeant had guards out, walking their posts. Freidal didn't envy them their rounds. Nor did he want to know what they were thinking.

They'd had two Mexicotal scouts, who'd reported that they could smell smoke ahead. He'd thought nothing of the fact that both scouts had returned to report; they'd been doing that all along. It was something he'd never permit again! They'd waited until the column had come up to report, instead of running back with the word. Another thing he'd never permit again!

And so, when they'd started off, the scouts were scarcely a dozen yards in front of him, when the first shot killed Lemeus, his second in command, riding at his side. Another shot had shorn a plume from Freidal's helmet and a second later his banner man had died.

Single shots, he'd thought. Marksmen, so he'd thought. He'd almost crowed in glee, that so many of his enemy had emptied their weapons! He'd given the order to charge and then the Hostigi had hit them with two solid volleys. First rank and second rank. How many times had he practiced that maneuver? Ten thousand times, surely!

When they rode into the main camp late the next afternoon, Freidal knew every man in the camp was looking at the officer who led the long string of horses with the bodies of his men draped over their saddles like so many sacks of grain. Freidal just grit his teeth and stopped in front of Count Xitki Quillan.

Freidal dismounted lightly and saluted, hand on his heart. "My Lord, I have failed."

"Well, you returned, which saves me no end of trouble," the count told him. "Come inside the headquarters and make your report."

The count turned to his aide. "See to Captain Freidal's men, Captain Okestreus." The other bobbed his head, while Freidal followed Count Quillan inside the headquarters.

It had seemed frivolous when Freidal had first heard of it. With the first wagons into the main camp was the knocked down headquarters building for the count. It wasn't much, about twenty feet on a side and two stories, a plain wooden frame covered with planks. Already Mexicotal laborers were working to build stonework to cover the plank walls, but the frame would remain.

More importantly, Count Quillan had a place to hang maps, to meet with his officers, out of the elements. After yesterday's rain, Freidal thought that was a greater luxury than he'd imagined.

Freidal reported to his father's oldest friend in detail, including the things he'd done wrong.

Count Quillan, as usual, didn't see things the way Freidal had. "You retreated in good order?"