Knowing that Zanja reported to Emil, the people who had been on watch gave her a garbled account of not having seen a bit of movement in the valley all night, until suddenly the firefight erupted. “They must have slipped out of Wilton last night. Somehow, our spies there didn’t notice. And they worked their way towards us from the north, along the rim of the valley where we couldn’t see them. That’s what we think happened.”
Zanja paid no heed, for how this horror had happened seemed irrelevant. “We need to light the beacon,” she said.
“There’s three people up there already, like always.”
“They would have lit the signal fire by now if they were still alive.”
“Shaftal’s Name!” someone said, raw voiced. “These Sainnites are devils!”
But they were too experienced to waste precious time cursing the enemies. The five that were still in condition to fight set out for the beacon hill, which pressed itself like a blunt knucklebone against the stars. But, as Zanja more than half expected, the hill crawled with Sainnites, with more arriving even as Zanja and her companions watched. It had been a well‑planned attack, the Paladins bitterly told each other. The Sainnites must have attacked the beacon, the watchposts, and the encampment simultaneously, and now two‑thirds of Daye’s unit was almost certainly dead.
But now the Sainnites appeared to have nothing better to do than to keep the Paladins from lighting the beacon. Zanja and her companions returned to the site of the encampment, finding it now occupied only by the sprawling dead. Daye had died fighting–“As she intended to,” said one of the survivors dully.
Zanja sorted through her trampled gear, blinded by tears, feeling as choked for breath as though she were drowning. But one part of her stood distant from her grief, coolly reminding her that she had survived worse horrors than this. Mechanically, she found and put on her boots, holstered her pistols in the belt that crossed her chest, slung a light haversack upon her back, and abandoned the rest of her gear where it lay.
“Listen,” she said to the others, who stood in an aimless, stunned group. “The Sainnites have bigger plans than this tonight, or they wouldn’t be troubling themselves to secure the beacon. We need to learn what they are doing, and then we need to run messages to Willis, Perry, and Emil. Some of us need to go to the nearest farmholds to get help for the wounded and to carry away the dead. Do any of you watchers have a spyglass?”
They all walked the short distance to the overlook, where more bodies lay. It was impossible to see much in the dark, but the column of soldiers marching briskly towards them across the valley along the east‑west road would have been difficult to miss. Zanja handed back the spyglass to its owner. “I’ll carry the news to Perry and Emil,” she said, and began to run.
The pallid light of dawn was warming Zanja’s shoulders when the road began to edge its way around an appealing meadow, where anyone with any sense would break their journey to rest and water their horses, if they had them. She herself paused to fill her canteen at the brook, and then stood for a while, wasteful though it seemed to stand so quietly while disaster unfolded around her. Her thigh muscles quivered with fatigue, but surely the Sainnites also would be weary after marching all night, and even on a forced march would have to take the time to rest and eat. This meadow seemed a likely place for it.
She took herself up a gentle hillside on the far side of the road, and settled down among the dappled shadows to eat her honeycakes and fight off desire for sleep. Soon, a few outriders arrived on worn‑out horses, and while the horses were being watered, the riders searched their immediate surroundings for lurkers. The bulk of the army arrived soon after: 150 soldiers, Zanja counted, all heavily laden with the kind of gear that might support a long and rigorous journey.
Perry’s encampment now lay a hour’s journey to the south. Zanja got heavily to her feet, and as soon as she had found a deer path to follow she began to run again, which relieved her from the need for further thinking, until the path abruptly popped her into the channel of a chattering brook. On the other bank, Emil sat waiting for her. Stupid with exhaustion, she gaped at him. Two of his messengers lay under the trees nearby, apparently sleeping.
He said, “I sent a message to Perry some time ago, and I expect his entire company will arrive shortly. Have you alerted Willis and Daye?”
“Daye’s dead,” she gasped. “Attacked last night. Most of the company was killed. I was with them.” She sat down where she was, rather too quickly as her legs gave out under her. For a little time they sat in silence, with the brook between them. Then, Emil breathed in, white‑faced, and asked calmly for more information. She told him all she knew.
He sat silent. She groped for something more to say. “How did you know to send for Perry’s unit?”
“I heard a voice in my sleep. But when I awoke, it kept talking to me for a while. A voice in the sky. It was very strange. Perhaps,” he added, not much seeming to care, “I am losing my mind.”
Zanja looked around for any sign of a big, black bird. “Well,” she said, in a neutral tone. But in the midst of her exhaustion, she felt an extraordinary relief.
Chapter Twelve
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, until they could no longer see the way, Zanja and her twenty companions made a swift, hectic journey through the woods, following a path cut through the wild lands that they jokingly named Bandit’s Road. The older Paladins told how that path had first been cut–how in the interval between planting and harvesting, Emil had recruited farmers and dray horses from all across the region to help in the enterprise, which none of them had thought necessary. Every year since then, a grumbling expedition walked the length of the path with saws and axes to clear away the year’s growth and deadfall. Now, more than one old timer patted Emil’s shoulder and apologized for cursing him behind his back.
The Bandit’s Road paralleled the east‑west road, but rather than meandering around the hills and wild lands, it cut directly through whatever lay before it, straight as a compass could make it. Zanja and her companions could not know how far ahead of the Sainnites they traveled, but that they were in fact ahead of them seemed certain.
That first night, Zanja awoke from exhausted sleep, and tottered out to the edge of their haphazard encampment. There she found Emil sitting by himself, weeping for his dead where no one could see him. She sat with him, dry‑eyed. In time, he wiped his face and in a rough voice admonished her for not resting when she had the chance.
“I’d say the same to you,” she said, “if you were not my commander.”
“My blasted knee keeps me awake. But I drank a potion for it and should be able to sleep soon.” He tilted his face back so the starlight shone on his deeply creased skin, and added, in a voice still hoarse with sorrow, “I’ve heard no speeches from the sky tonight.”
Zanja said seriously, “Surely the voice will speak again if it seems we need more guidance.”
“You believe we are watched over?”
“I believe the gods take the shapes of birds when they choose to speak to us.”
“I am not a religious man.”
They sat in silence, until Zanja said, “I imagine the Sainnites have their seer with them, and he will have realized by now that we are running ahead of them. So if we cannot take them by surprise, how are we to stop them from crossing the bridge?”
“Have you ever tried to shoot a mouse with a pistol?”
“I should think,” Zanja replied after a moment, “that any self‑respecting mouse would no longer be where it was, by the time the pistol ball arrived.”
“Exactly. And where would the mouse be instead? I doubt even the mouse knows.”
“So our best strategy is no strategy?”
“When seers predict the future, they are simply telling themselves stories, as you and I tell stories to each other. And they have the gift for knowing which of many possibilities are the most likely. The better educated they are, the better the stories they can tell themselves. But if all the possibilities are equally likely, then how will our enemy know where to point his pistol, and when to pull his trigger?”