“Does anyone know what the hell is going on? Where’s Jame? For that matter where in Perimal’s name is your flag?”
Her ally, young Doni, looked at the board helplessly, the Knorth ten-commanders likewise. They had already searched the dormitory where the flag was supposed to be but wasn’t. Whatever opinion they had had of Jame’s ability to lead, her absence disconcerted them more than they would have believed possible.
“Some say that Timmon is wearing her scarf,” offered a Danior—one of the few left after the Ardeth had stormed their tiny barracks, torn it apart, and triumphantly retreated bearing the Danior flag as well as most of the Danior scarves. Feet shuffled. No one blamed their ally for the catastrophe, rather themselves for being too slow to prevent it. Berrimint was a competent subordinate, but given three houses to command, including the Highlord’s, she was stumbling badly.
“Enough of this,” said Brier and strode into the room, leaving Torisen in the shadow of the doorway. “Report.”
It amused him how they all—nominally the Southron’s superiors—came to attention, although some glanced slantwise in his direction. Probably they thought he was Jame again, de-scarved and therefore voiceless, but there.
They look to her, he thought, with a sudden pang of jealousy.
“If you don’t watch out,” Harn had warned him, “You’ll lose that Kendar to your sister.”
Brier Iron-thorn and how many more?
“Our spies and scouting parties are all out gathering information,” the Brandan master-ten was saying, somewhat defensively, addressing both newcomers; Rue was still out hunting for Jame. “Of the major flags, ours is well protected. Yours seems to be missing. Gorbel is literally sitting on his—with those sore ribs, this can’t be that much fun for him. Meanwhile, his own ten-commander Obidin has run afoul of a hazard in the shape of a brick balanced on top of a door. He’ll kick himself in the morning over that, if his head doesn’t hurt too much. As for the Jaran and the Randir, their flags haven’t been located yet.”
“And the Edirr’s?”
“Oh, they’re running around with it hanging out, so to speak. Moreover, their barracks is so full of makeshift hazards that they don’t dare enter it themselves.”
“Then they should have left it there.”
“You know the Edirr: they flaunt even what they don’t have, much more so than what they do.”
“Actions?”
“Besides raiding the Danior, Timmon and the Jaran made a sortie against the Brandan, but were repulsed. Meanwhile, the Caineron invaded the Ardeth. I hear that they made a real mess of Timmon’s quarters, but didn’t find anything. Possibly his flag is missing too. Oh, and Gorbel seems to be in a private war with his Randir allies, who laugh at all his orders and go their own way. Something strange is going on in their barracks. Ancestors forbid that Lord Randir has extended his purge here, now of all times.”
Torisen felt his skin prickle. He didn’t like the idea of Timmon wearing Jame’s scarf, or of the two missing flags, or of blood purges in the Randir. His sense was that the Winter War was usually a straightforward campaign, a real-life game of Gen, not something this rife with dangerous undercurrents.
“There go the Edirr again,” said someone by the window.
Keeping to the side, Torisen went to look. There, indeed, they went, waving their flag before them, prancing in some drill of their own eccentric creation, and singing.
“We’re the Edirr and we don’t care.
“Come and catch us if you dare!”
Torisen noted one at the end of this procession who looked less happy than the others, a girl with fluffy brown hair followed by a scurry of mice.
“They use them as spies,” said the cadet at his elbow. “We kill them when we can.”
“What about the Commandant’s rule about no undue violence?”
The cadet shrugged. “They’re vermin. Who cares?”
“ ’Ware Ardeth!”
The shout came from below. Under cover of the Edirr diversion, Ardeth cadets were spilling into the first-floor Knorth quarters through the door to the internal hallway that ran from one end of New Tentir to the other. Weapons were forbidden but all on both sides were highly skilled at unarmed combat. Some of them dashed up the stairs to the common room. The cadet in charge of the intelligence board threw his arms around his map and blocks in a despairing gesture.
Torisen kept back, watching. What were they after? Then he spotted Timmon’s golden head among them and met his questing eyes. He looked enough like his father Pereden to always give Torisen a jolt. Worse, around his neck, the Ardeth wore two scarves, one embroidered with a singularly inept rathorn crest; Jame never could sew a straight line.
He had to get Timmon away from his troops. A strategic withdrawal seemed in order. Using wind-blowing, Torisen winnowed through the combatants, keeping them between himself and Timmon. Reaching the stairs, he ran down them.
Below the first-story reception area was the subterranean kitchen. Torisen entered and slipped behind the door. Breakfast long over, it was quite dark with only a banked fire. He picked up a candle with a snap-wick and waited.
Timmon plunged past him into the room, almost skidding into the central fireplace, entangling himself with its impedimenta.
“Where are you?” He floundered about, not waiting for his eyes to adjust. “What are you doing here when I left you scalped in your blasted uncle’s room? And don’t tell me it’s because I snatched your scarf a few minutes before this farce of a war actually started. I do things like that. You don’t.”
“I don’t?”
“There you are.” He focused on Torisen’s shadowy form by the door. “What’s wrong with your voice? If you’ve caught cold sitting on that beastly floor, it serves you right. You should have let me warm you.”
“I should?”
They were circling the fireplace now, two shapes of darkness in a dark room. Embers caught random lines of their moving forms. It was eerily reminiscent of the scene in the fire timber hall, dressed down to farce.
“You know eventually that you will yield to me. I get what I want, and I deserve what I get, like my father. Am I so much less than him?”
“More. I hope.”
“What, then? Dammit, I’m not the one who keeps pulling your wretched brother into our dreams. It’s quiet and private here. Come. Let’s make the most of it.”
Torisen had stopped. Timmon moved to embrace him, but stopped short when the snap-wick flared to life between them.
Torisen smiled into the Ardeth’s astonished face. “I’m flattered, but no thank you.”
With that, he twitched off both of Timmon’s scarves, stepped out the door, and locked it behind him.
“Obviously you don’t know my sister very well,” he said, and left to find his uncle’s quarters.
Behind him, Timmon started to pound on the door and to shout.
The boy stumbled on. He didn’t know why he was so miserable. No one had been making fun of him for once and his best friend Sheth hadn’t made one of his witty remarks—the sort whose sting is only felt afterward. Sheth probably didn’t even intend to make him feel stupid. Perhaps smart people didn’t understand how barbed their intelligence was to those less gifted.
Besides, the boy’s father was the current commandant of Tentir. Wasn’t that a special thing, one to be proud of? And Harn was very proud of his father. Hallick Hard-hand was everything that the boy longed to be: strong, honorable, smart, and above all confident. That his father could ever have been a chunky, blundering cadet like himself never crossed Harn’s mind.
Right now, his father was out with the eight other former randon commandants and that beast Greshan. They were hunting the Whinno-hir Bel-tairi whom Greshan had maimed, all through spite for his grandmother whose mount the White Lady was. Of course, the Highlord, Greshan’s father, didn’t see it that way. High spirits, he called it. A boy’s enthusiasm for the hunt gone astray.