Captain Valichi stepped forward to lead them in the oath of service. “We swear to you our hands, our blades, our blood, our breath—the service of the hands, and the service of the heart. May the gods witness our oath of loyalty and be swift to punish the oathbreaker.”
“And I to you,” said the Duke, “pledge hands and blade and blood and breath. My honor is your honor, before all enemies and trials, in all dangers high and low. The gods witness my oath to you, and yours to me.” He looked back and forth at the recruits, and nodded.
“Well, now, companions—” Paks stiffened, surprised by the change in his voice and address. “You’ll soon be on your way to battle. As always, one unit must be first on the road. ’Tis no easy chore to choose among you. Tir knows what I’ll do if the Company grows to four cohorts. But the choice is made, and that’s for Stammel’s unit—” Paks suddenly felt that she could soar high in the air on the breath she drew. She locked her jaw on a yell of triumph. Someone behind her was less careful. To her surprise the Duke grinned. “One yell won’t hurt,” he said. “Cheer your sergeant, if you will.”
And “Stammel!” they yelled, and the walls rang with it.
The Duke rode out the next morning, with a late snowstorm behind him. He had hardly disappeared into the swirling veils before the recruits were hard at work again—this time in preparation for the march south. First they were measured for their uniforms, having changed shape since they arrived. With the maroon tunics went taller boots and longer socks, a long maroon cloak with a hood, and—most exciting—armor. Instead of bandas, they would wear boiled-leather corselets (“Until you can buy something better, if you want it,” remarked Devlin.) There were greaves for their legs, and wide bands to protect their wrists. And bronze helmets on top of all.
“Make up your minds,” said Stammel, “how you’re going to wear your hair. If it’s long, I’d say keep it inside the helmet, hot as it is, or some enemy will grab it and throw you. It’ll make a cushion.” Paks found a way of winding her braid that was comfortable and secure. But the helmet was heavier than she’d expected. So was everything else.
“You’ll get used to it,” said Stammel. “After you’ve marched all the way to Valdaire in it, you won’t even notice.”
It seemed hardly any time at all since the Duke’s visit when two of the captains arrived from the south to escort them. A last few days for inspection and packing the mule train that would carry their necessary supplies—and then it was the last night in the barracks. Paks found it almost as hard to sleep as she had the first one.
Chapter Eight
As Paks passed under the gate tower and out into the cold gray light of a late-winter dawn, she felt how changed she was from the girl who had left home those months before. She had not told anyone when her nineteenth birthday came, but she felt the extra year like a wall between her and the past. No one would take her for a farmer’s daughter, not with the sword at her side and the skill to use it, not in the uniform of Duke Phelan’s Company. Beside and behind her, eighty pairs of almost-new boots beat the same crisp rhythm on the hard-frozen road to Duke’s East. Going to the war, the rhythm sang in her head. Going to the war.
By the time they reached the rise between the stronghold and Duke’s East, the sun was rising, a brief red glare between the clouds. This was the last bit of known road: the curve into the village past the Red Fox, the square, the bridge. Smoke rolled out of chimneys. As their boots rang on the cobbles of the square, faces appeared at windows and doors. Mayor Fontaine opened his door to wave, along with the row of children that appeared at his back. Several children ran from houses to march alongside, singing and yelling, until they were called back. Beyond the bridge was Kolya’s farm and orchard; Kolya was leaning on the gate, grinning.
“Good luck,” she called. “Fight well.” Paks glanced at her, and Kolya winked. Then they were past, and after another fifty paces the road swung left again, leaving the village behind to curve through a wooded swamp, now frozen. After that it climbed, and the trees fell away. A stone wall bordered the road on the west, and beyond it Paks saw a herd of shaggy cattle, guarded by several men in leather capes. All the cattle stared at them, ears wide, as they marched by. Most of them were heavy in calf, and looked as wide as they were long in their winter coats.
They were seven days on the road to Vérella, marching at first through forested ridges that gentled into farmland sprinkled with villages. The people were shorter here, and looked heavier; the women wore their headscarves knotted high, with a peak to one side. Each night they stopped by a large stone-walled barn with a fox-head design chiseled into the stone. Stammel explained that the Duke had built these barns for the farmers to use, provided they let his troops shelter there while traveling.
The column settled quickly into the habits of a long march. Recruits took guard duty in rotation with the regulars, and hardly thought of themselves as recruits. They knew the captains now: Pont, junior to Cracolnya, and Ferrault, junior to Arcolin. As they passed through the villages, they saw themselves as they were seen: mercenaries. The Duke’s Company. They began to pick up the news of the road as they neared Vérella.
“Eh, Captain,” shouted one graybeard. “You’re late this year. They Sobanai is already come by here.”
“Seen anything of Vladi’s?” called Pont.
“Nay, and I hope not. They don’t come this way but once in a while, and I’m glad for it.”
“Why, grandfather?”
“Eh, well—he’s too hard for us, that one. Better he go east.”
The captain laughed and rode on. Paks wondered who the “Sobanai” were. She watched as two children, screeching to get the soldiers’ attention, struck at each other with wooden swords. An older voice called them, angry, and they dropped the swords and ran off.
Then they came to Vérella—the first city Paks had ever seen, Vérella of the Bells, the seat of the Kings of Tsaia. From a distance its great stone walls and towers seemed to sail the river meadows, already tinged with spring green. They had passed slower carts and wagons all that morning, and as they neared the city, they met more traffic: trains of mules, ox-drawn wagons, foot travelers, and horsemen.
The guards at the city gates wore rose and gray, and carried pikes. They marched under the gate tower. It seemed immense to Paks, its opening wide enough for two wagons at once to pass. The way was paved with square cobbles of pale gray stone, and was even wider than the gate. Paks tried not to gawk, but she was distracted by the buildings, tall and many-windowed, and crowded wall to wall, and by the incredible noise and bustle. Against the tall stone walls lay a flotsam of bright canvas awnings over shop windows and street peddlers, merchandise of all sorts piled in alluring heaps—it seemed that only the constant current of traffic kept it from taking over the road itself. She had never imagined such a variety of people and things. Men in long gowns with fur-edged sleeves. A stack of intricately patterned carpets next to a pile of polished copper pots of all sizes. Four men carrying a sort of box on poles, with curtains swaying on the box. A woman in green velvet, on a mule, strumming a hand-harp. A fat child, broad as he was tall, with an axe at his belt—as they passed, Paks was startled to see a waist-length red beard on the child. She gasped.