“Don’t you go running off like that, Ten,” Mint said, a note of pleading in her voice. “How are we supposed to protect you?”
Jame was both touched that they cared and surprised that they still thought she needed protection. Here in this chaos of wind and weather, with unseen enemies perhaps still lurking around them, it was the cadets who seemed painfully young and vulnerable.
They led the way across the training field, almost more through water than air, both now laced with stinging shards of hail. Underfoot, the grass was slippery with runoff and mud. Here was a huddled group comprised of several cadets holding up their jackets to provide what shelter they could to the trio on the ground.
Anise lay on her back, coat and shirt cut away, an arrow jutting from her abdomen. Brier and Niall leaned over her. While all the cadets knew something about battlefield first aid, only these two had actually practiced it.
“Of course we’re not going to pull it out,” Brier was saying sharply to one of the onlookers. “Remember your training. And you, Anise, keep your hand away from that shaft.”
Jame ducked under the makeshift shelter. Anise was awake, panting, terrified. She reached out and grabbed Jame’s hand. Her exposed stomach swelled as if with some obscene pregnancy.
“She’s bleeding into the belly,” said Brier. “Damn.”
Anise spasmed and vomited a great gout of blood, mostly onto Jame.
“ ’ware horses,” someone said sharply.
One felt the vibration of their hooves through the ground rather than saw their approach. Suddenly the ten-command was surrounded.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said someone. “Our little lordan wasn’t jumping at shadows after all.”
“Shut up, Higbert.”
It was Gorbel. He leaned down from his horse, peering. “Nasty. It was those blasted Merikit, I suppose. Where are they now?”
“Gone.”
Gorbel grunted. “Hunt them, Obi. Bring one of them to me alive if you can, I don’t care in what shape.”
“And the rest?”
“This time take whatever trophies you want.”
Fash whooped. The ten-command’s horses disappeared into the storm as suddenly as they had emerged from it, despite Jame’s cry of protest.
“The herd is still running free,” she told Gorbel. “Fash had better not bag himself a mare. If he touches Bel, I’ll kill him. Anyway, it may not be Chingetai’s people at all.”
“Who else? I should have kept one back, though, to take your cadet to the college.” With his bare, swollen foot hanging beside the stirrup, he himself didn’t offer to dismount.
Brier stood up. “No need, Lordan.” It said something about the stress she felt that she addressed him at all. Usually Brier didn’t talk to her former comrades nor they to her. “We can carry her. Lady, we’ve got to get her some place warm, out of this filthy field.”
While the cadets built an improvised litter out of jackets and bow shaves, Jame continued to crouch by Anise, holding her hand, an unhappy ounce huddled at her side. Somehow, the fact that this was her least favorite among her ten-command made it worse. Poor, sharp-tongued, jealous Anise. Why had she been so unhappy? Now Jame might never know. She reminded herself, however, that the cadet might still survive. Kencyr blood clotted quickly, which was one of the reasons why they were so hard to kill. It was impossible in that downpour, however, to see if the wound still bled or if Anise was slipping into shock. That obscene, jutting arrow . . . ! No wonder someone had suggested removing it, even though it could do more damage coming out than going in.
The litter was only long enough to support Anise from head to buttocks, so Brier placed the cadet’s feet on her shoulders before she stood, bow tips in her hands. Rue took Anise’s head. The way back to Tentir seemed to take forever, slogging through the mud under an increasingly vicious hail of ice. Everyone was soaked and thoroughly chilled by the time they glimpsed the college’s lights.
They entered by the northern postern along the side of the Randir barracks. If the field’s mud had been bad, the grassless training square’s was worse. Hail thundered on the tin roof of the arcade while squares of warm light fell on its boardfloor. With some distant part of her mind, Jame noted that it was still early evening, barely past supper. Simultaneously, she felt Anise’s grip on her hand slacken.
“Put her down.”
“Here, in the mud?”
“She won’t mind.”
They lowered Anise on her bed of jackets, through which the mud immediately soaked. Her eyes were half-open, fixed on nothing. The arrow that had quivered with every agonized breath was still.
The door to the Knorth barracks opened, spilling golden light into the square.
“Well, well, well.” Vant stood on the threshold, wearing a fine jacket that had once belonged to Greshan. Jame remembered Rue passing it over as too large to cut down for her use. Greshan had been a big man. So was Vant. From the slight slur in his voice, he had also been indulging in the last of the previous season’s applejack.
Other faces appeared behind him, some likewise flushed. None could see Anise, whose body was screened from them by the sodden ten-command in the square. More barrack doors opened. More curious faces appeared at windows.
“Have you had a pleasant day, lady, chasing phantoms? I said no Merikit would dare raid here.” He spoke with lazy, drunken contempt, as if here was the proof of all he had ever said about the flighty, unfit lordan with whom Torisen had inexplicably chosen to saddle him.
Brier stepped aside to let him see Anise’s body.
His jaw dropped. Those behind him exclaimed in dismay and started forward, only to stop at Jame’s voice.
“You shouldn’t have laughed. Come down, Vant. Come down and see. Is this a laughing matter?”
“I . . . I didn’t think . . . you didn’t say . . . ”
“I say this now: come down, and bring with you whatever weapon you choose. No blood price can be demanded here at the college, certainly not within the same house, but I challenge you, Vant, for failure to obey orders, resulting in a cadet’s death.”
“What, here and now?” Rue asked Brier in a shocked undertone.
“Yes. While the slain is still warm. Let justice be done in her presence,” Brier answered.
“Oh yes.” Jame smiled, without mirth. Her silvery eyes never left Vant’s nor seemed even to blink. She could feel the power of a berserker flare growing in her, and this time welcomed it. “What good it will do her where she walks now, I don’t know, but by all means let us have justice. Come down, big man. Come down and fight.”
Vant stepped into the square, into the hail, stumbling a little, drawn by her voice but still not taking the challenge seriously.
“Your weapon, lady?”
“These.” Her claws unsheathed. The gloves, all but ruined, hung in tatters from her scythe-curved fingers. “You have woken destruction. Now come to meet it.”
The rail was lined with onlookers, including Timmon and several randon officers. No one said a word.
As she circled him, Vant laughed, a foolish, disbelieving sound. The ground was turning icy. He slipped, trying to follow her, but she moved without hesitation, sure-footed, bringing her own cold with her.
“First, I think, my uncle’s coat.”
With a flick of a claw, a sleeve flared open.
“Hey!” He frowned, both uncertain and indignant, at the damage. “Who’s going to repair that?”
“No one.”
Flick. The other sleeve. Flick, flick, flick. The back and front. Its shreds now hung on him as her tattered gloves did on her. He shrugged off the ruins and exclaimed angrily as icy rain plastered linen to his chest. Doubtless he had never had such fine clothes before, stained as they were with another’s sweat, nor had he ever dared to wear them in her presence.
“Stop it, lady! This is ridiculous.”