“Yes, you do, Kero,” Firesong said mildly. “You generally make them into officers if they manage not to get themselves or anyone else killed.”
“You can make yourself useful by finding that dyheli and having him drop that language into Eldan’s skull,” she replied sternly to Firesong. She waited for his nod and withdrawal from the tent, then turned back to Darian. “You are going to stay here and give me every single detail of what you saw, heard, and did.”
“What about us?” Gentian asked, with a wink for Darian that told him he’d won this round.
“Back to your Healer business,” she said, making shooing motions with her hands.
Everyone else spilled out into the gray light of false-dawn, wasting no time in putting some distance between themselves and their commander.
Nightwind stayed with Darian, and Kerowyn didn’t object. When everyone else had left the tent, she wearily waved at them to sit; there were only three places to do so in her tent and she was already occupying the only chair, still dressed in the old shirt and hose she wore to sleep in, her hair coming undone from its braid. So he took a seat on a small campaign chest, leaving the stool for Nightwind.
He went back over the night’s events in excruciating detail, leaving out nothing, not even the changes in Hywel’s expression. He also did not leave out the alleged Ghost Cat, although his description was as vague as his own sighting of the thing had been. When he had finished, Kerowyn brooded in silence for some time, her fingers automatically undoing and rebraiding her hair. Despite the fact that Darian knew they had been right to act as they had, the tension in the tent built until he thought he couldn’t bear much more. Granted, he wasn’t under Kerowyn’s direct command, but she could order him back to the Vale, and the Tayledras would probably enforce her orders.
Finally: “Dammit, you did right,” she growled as she bound up the end of her braid. “I don’t like it one bit, but you did right.”
The tension snapped, replaced by the feeling that someone had removed the weight of a horse from his back.
“Captain, if anything had been different, if Hywel had been less cooperative, if the victim hadn’t been a small child, if that ghost - or whatever - hadn’t been leading him out in the first place, we’d never have done what we did,” he replied with feeling. “I swear.”
“It’s that so-called Ghost Cat,” Kerowyn said, chewing her lower lip. “That’s the thing that’s - Bothering me isn’t the word, it’s a more spooky feeling than that. It’s not like some shaman’s trick or wishful thinking. It seems as it every time it shows up, it guides these people properly, and I have to wonder if it can - and will - do more than that. You say you saw it, Tyrsell says he thinks it’s real - and whenever anybody so much as mentions it, I get a shiver down my spine that I can’t stop. I’ve had that same shiver before. . . .”
“And?” Nightwind prompted alertly.
Kerowyn smiled crookedly. “Let’s just say that it’s a sign of one of my Gifts.” She turned back to Darian. “It’s a good thing that you aren’t under my command, because even if you are right, this is way too close to insubordination for my comfort. However, you aren’t, and that lets me out of having to find a way to discipline you for exercising your brains without orders.”
“Yes, Herald-Captain,” he said, and deemed it wise to say nothing more.
“Now you go make yourself useful and try not to get into any more trouble,” Kerowyn ordered. “I’d like to talk to this lady for a bit.”
Darian left, with the distinct impression he’d had a narrow escape indeed - but also with the nagging feeling, which grew with every moment, that there was something of critical importance that he had left undone.
He got no chance to think about it, for the situation that had been at stalemate just a moment before suddenly avalanched down around their ears, with no prior warning whatsoever.
“Oh, hellIires” came the exclamation from behind him. Kerowyn suddenly shot out of her tent as if her hair were on fire, followed by Nightwind who was moving just as quickly. She sprinted up the path and grabbed Darian by the elbow, startling him into an undignified yelp.
“I need you - now!” she said, as Nightwind grabbed his other elbow. Before he could even blink, the white bulk of Kerowyn’s Companion thundered down on them from out of nowhere, and Kero and Nightwind literally threw him up on Sayvil’s bare back. A heartbeat later, Kerowyn was up behind him, and it was a good thing that he had automatically grabbed a handful of mane, because the Companion launched herself into an all-out gallop as soon as the Herald’s rump touched her back.
He clung with hands and thighs, the wind of their passing whipping through Sayvil’s mane until it lashed his face and eyes unmercifully, leaving tiny, stinging welts. He’d heard of the legendary speed of a Companion, now he got a firsthand experience, which would have been breathtaking, if it hadn’t been so terrifying.
In a much shorter time than he would have dreamed possible, they were among Kerowyn’s fighters and Kero slid down off Sayvil’s back, leaving him still perched there in confusion. Just beyond the screening of trees and bushes, someone shouted in a voice torn by anguish, fear, and rage.
“What’s the situation?” she demanded, as one of the fighters separated from the rest and saluted.
“Things were dead quiet, then all of a sudden there was a ruckus in the camp,” the scarred and weathered veteran reported brusquely. “Lots of shouting, carrying on, women wailing. Then the men started raising hell over there, and the Chief comes tearing through the barricades and starts waving weapons around and shouting at us.”
“You!” Kerowyn slapped Darian’s leg to get his attention. “We’re looking for Tyrsell - but until then, what’s he saying?”
Belatedly Darian realized that he understood the shouting perfectly well, and paused to listen to it.
What he heard made his jaw drop.
“Well?” Kero demanded. “ What? “
Darian licked dry lips. “He says we sent child-snatching demons into his camp last night, and he wants us to bring back his sons right now. Or else - ”
“Never mind. I can guess the ‘or else.’ “ Kerowyn swore softly. “And it’s just our bad luck that your little friends happened to be the Chief’s offspring - which obviously, the older one didn’t bother to mention.” She chewed on her lower lip, then turned her gaze to her Companion. “Sayvil, go take him back to camp, then get your tail back here; this is no place for him. By now Tyrsell’s given Eldan this language, and we’ll see if his silver tongue can lie us out of this mess when he gets here. And we’ll pray that Keisha can come up with a cure, fast”
Sayvil didn’t wait for Darian to object; she all but launched herself out from underneath him, and only a quick grab for her mane kept him from tumbling over her rump.
He had the presence of mind to slide over her shoulder as soon as she reached the edge of camp where his first tent still stood and slowed a little; he hit the ground running to absorb his own momentum and it was a good thing that he did. She didn’t stop, not at all; she just pivoted on her hind hooves and galloped away again, leaving him panting in the path behind her, staring after her, absently recognizing that there was another Companion standing behind him.