Binding the lieutenant’s arm securely to the slats of her splint, Shia glanced over to where she could see the captain standing and talking to Calli and one of the other injured guardsman. Lord Corus had sent his approval for Dara’s field promotion to captain as soon as he had learned of the first attack, but as they had suspected, Torhold had not been able to spare any militia to pursue the bandits. Even Torhold’s Healer had only given a half-day’s visit to check on Breyburn’s injured. He had come a day or two after the first attack, glanced at the dead who were about to be buried, briefly examined those who were not yet back to their activities, then returned to Torhold, saying only, “The girl’s mother must have had good skills to teach her that well, for all that no one knew where she’d come from.”
Accepting that they were on their own, the townsfolk had resolutely taken matters into their own hands. Dara had taken any and all volunteers from the townsfolk or the shepherd and small farm families outside the town, training up some to join the town guard, others to simply learn how to stay alive if the bandits came back into the town. And come back they had, though none of their raids had the impact of the first. Rather, they picked away at the town and the trader caravans, making trade sporadic and shattering the cycles of the town’s summer. The season was half over, but it felt as though it had barely begun, for few of the townsfolk had been able to work as they usually did.
Captain Dara held out her arm to Shia, wincing just the slightest bit as she dabbed the sharp cleansing ointment over the edges of the wound. “It’s been months now, and we can’t find the bastard,” she said. “That’s what bothers me. He runs aground as soon as we get close. We’ve picked off his band and found most of his hidey- holes, enough that I don’t think he’ll be back soon, but he keeps slinking off. Bad enough that they’ve been coming back all summer, but if he has time now to go back to wherever he came from and find more men, he’ll be back as soon as the rains are done next spring.”
Shia sighed as she put down the cleansing pad and reached for her bowl. “Lieutenant Fellan is right. You’re only one. You need to take more care for yourself until Lord Corus can approve your new militia. No one else has the training, experience, or personality to lead the guard. Torhold can’t spare anyone now, any more than they could when Captain Nolan was killed in the first raid.”
“My young men—and the two girls—are doing well enough, especially since Fellan’s arm healed up so quick and he was able to help with the training again. They did well enough to take on an ex- merc bandit who thought to control the trade routes down from the quarry and the tin mines. We’ve stopped him for this year, at least.” Despite her frustration, the new captain’s satisfaction with her troop was palpable.
Holding the edges of the wound together, Shia applied her poultice and started wrapping bandages, her fingers tracing along the length of the wound beneath the fabric, feeling the heat from the angry gash. An absent part of her attention drifted down to the injured flesh, almost willing the healing to happen. She didn’t notice the startled way the captain’s eyes flicked up to her, so absorbed was she in considering the importance of Captain Dara’s success or failure. If they had indeed done enough damage to the surprisingly well-organized bandits to keep them from attacking for the last moon of the summer, the harvest and preparations for winter and the spring rains could go back to normal. Or normal enough to make do.
“At least the sheep and the goats have already been brought back down to the town green,” she said at last. “And the traders won’t fear to bring the grain supplies up here now, so we’ll be able to winter the animals well enough.”
The captain nodded, her eyes considering the young woman seated beside her. “We should think about increasing the grain stores this year, just in case. How are your harvests coming? Josette says her bones are telling her that it’ll be a long winter and a hard rainy season.”
Shia smiled fondly. “No one would ever dare suggest that Josette’s bones are telling her that she’s too old to spar with the youngsters. Calli and Pira have helped me gather, though, and Calli is allowing me to experiment with growing some plants in the sunny room next to the chapel. It’s close enough to the kitchen fires that I think it will stay warm enough to keep some of the hardier stock alive all winter.”
She didn’t add that she thought that Josette’s bones were right, and that she had already prepared for a long and hard season away from the mountain’s wild herbs.
Drawn by some unnameable call, Shia opened the side door off the Stadres’ kitchens and glanced out over the garden. As she expected, the rain was pouring down, creating lakes and rivers where in summer there were plant beds and paths. No sane creature stirred out of doors during the unpredictable flash rains, yet here she was, somehow knowing that she needed to be somewhere other than tucked securely in Calli’s tiny spare room, where she had spent the winter tending her experimental plants. Tugging her cloak up around her ears, she darted out through the sheeting rain and splashed around to the front of the house, finding a spot just under the eaves that was a little less wet. Not knowing why she was standing there, she stared down the main road for long, cold minutes, until she saw movement that was not falling rain coming towards her from the edge of her vision.
Mud-spattered, worn out, he was everything a Companion on Search shouldn’t be—nothing like the gaily caparisoned mare who had come for Teo. He was so drenched, it was impossible to tell where the lathered sweat ended and the cold rain staining his coat began. He didn’t even look white anymore, just a muddy dark gray. Yet he was unmistakably what he was—even to the bells on the soaked harness, though their ring could not be heard above the rain pounding on the roofs.
This time, Shia was the only one who stood in the square, rain running in rivulets down her face. Light glowed out of the windows around the square, and she suddenly hoped that no one was even looking out to see this bedraggled colt slogging through the fetlock-deep mud.
And then he was standing before her, his sodden nose brushing her cheek, his glorious, impossibly blue eyes swallowing hers.
:I’m sorry you had to wait so long for me, Chosen.:
Tears mingled with the rain on her face, streaming warm with cold, and Shia collapsed heedless to her knees in the muck, weeping out the agonizing emptiness of the last four years.
The Companion—Eodan, she knew without words—folded his forelegs and lay in the mud beside her, curving his neck around to draw her slight form against his steaming side, his warmth seeping into her bone chill.
:I came as soon as the King’s Own Companion said I was ready—although he warned me about the spring rains in Breyburn.: There was a note of self-deprecating amusement in his rich MindVoice. :You will learn that patience is not natural to me.:
“What about Pira? She’s Gifted, I’m sure, so shouldn’t you be for her . . .” Shia finally managed to get words past the rawness in her throat.