“I could see that the gorget fretted you,” Gaudaric had written. “Please accept this as a gift from my family and a grateful city.”
“It’s beautiful,” breathed Rue, touching it with a fingertip.
“Yes. It is. And now it has to be useful as well.”
Jame regarded the armor laid out on her bed, trying to remember the arming sequence. One started at the feet.
Ran Spare’s voice echoed below, distorted by stone walls. He was telling the cadets what they faced.
Jame fumbled with the hooks that secured the back- and frontplates of the greaves, then remembered that she hadn’t buckled the heel plates onto the articulated boots. Quick, quick . . .
Next the belt, to which the thigh guards were attached.
“Now what?” Rue indicated the padded gambeson and the equally padded ivory vest.
Should she have put on the former first? Too late now.
“The vest.”
Rue helped her on with it and laced it up the back. Then she dropped the breast- and backplates of the cuirass over Jame’s head. Below, Spare was ordering the cadets to the armory, then to the stables.
. . . arm harnesses, spiked shoulder guards, gauntlets . . .
Jame started to pick up the helmet, then remembered that she needed a weapon. Gaudaric hadn’t sent her a sword because he knew that she already had one. It hung from a hook in its leather sheath in the corner, a nicely balanced, sharp-edged piece of steel with the wavy patterns down its blade of many foldings. Her lack of skill with it was legendary. As the doggerel verse went:
She had never yet managed to hang on to a sword throughout an entire engagement.
Beside it were her scythe-arms, those elegant double-pointed blades that functioned as extensions of her claws. Of the two weapons, Jame much preferred the latter, but they weren’t intended for mounted combat. Reluctantly, she took down the sword and strapped its belt around her waist.
“Here.” She gave Rue the shield and barding to carry, herself taking Death’s-head’s high, heavy saddle and bitless bridle from their racks. “We need to get out the South Gate before the cadets catch up with us.”
Horses neighed in excitement behind them in the ward as they hurried down the deserted street.
Creak, creak, creak went Jame’s leather armor. It might not be as heavy as steel plate, but it certainly was noisy. And stiff. I’m a dragon, not a tortoise, she told herself, beginning to sweat and pant as the saddle’s weight dragged her down and its dangling stirrups tripped her up.
Meanwhile, she called silently to the rathorn, but received only sullen silence in reply. She had visited Death’s-head as often as she could over the past year, but had had little to ask of him even though she sensed that he was growing bored and resentful. Now he was sulking.
Bel-tairi met them beyond the gate, over the bridge. Jame slung the saddle onto the Whinno-hir’s back and tightened the girth as far as it would go but, designed for a much larger barrel, it hung loose. Rue grabbed the right stirrup as Jame swung herself up, then handed her the shield, bridle, and folded crupper while she balanced precariously.
“I don’t think she can carry me too,” the cadet said, stepping back. “You go on.”
Jame looked down at her, remembering how Rue had longed to prove herself to the rest of the Knorth barracks. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. Go.”
She rode across the training field, into the dips and hollows carved by the Amar’s overflow. From ahead of her came the sound of swift water, and of something noisily churning in it. Splashing around a curve, Bel knee-deep in the early spring runoff, she saw the rathorn in the shallows, vigorously rolling in the mud. He regained his feet with a snort and shook himself. His white coat was streaked with muck, his mane and tail tangled. Jame regarded him in dismay.
“Oh, no. Not now.”
She shifted to dismount, and felt the saddle slide sideways under her. There was barely time to kick free her feet before she hit the water. Trinity, but it was cold, even so far from the mountains that had given it birth. She surfaced sputtering to find both rathorn and Whinno-hir watching her. Death’s-head snorted again, as if in scornful laughter. Jame pushed dripping black hair out of her eyes and scowled at him.
“Come here, you.”
At first she thought he was going to sidle away from her, but she must have put more command into her voice than she had thought. He stood, blowing with impatience, as she sluiced water over his shoulders and raked her claws through his unkempt hair. Beyond the ravine, out of sight, horses thundered past, the cadets riding to war. Quick, quick . . .
Death’s-head accepted the saddle, bridle, and crupper with an ill grace, but his ears had twitched at the sound of hooves. Something was afoot, something interesting.
Jame swung up into the high saddle, feeling water drain down inside her armor and run out of the gap at her heels. She had barely gathered the reins when the rathorn was in motion. He trotted up the creek bed with his horn-crowned head held high and his nostrils flaring red, then clambered up its steep bank to the valley floor. The other riders were a cloud of dust to the west. Death’s-head started after them at a canter that quickly grew into a gallop. Jame resisted the urge to clutch his mane, instead tightening her legs around his barrel. At the touch of her heels, he went even faster.
Some two miles from the camp, a mountain spur cut into the valley from the south while a recent massive landslide from the Rim pinched it to the north, leaving only a hundred feet clear between them. The cadets were racing for this bottleneck, the only place along the Betwixt where their inferior number might hold off the far larger Karnid horde.
But for how long? Jame wondered.
By now, hopefully, Brier had alerted Harn Grip-hard. The bulk of the Southern Host would come as soon as it could, but it would take time for a significant number to descend the Escarpment, and then how many horses had the cadets left them to reach this new battlefield?
Two miles for the cadets to cover, eight for the Karnids, but the former had spent a good half hour getting ready. Who would reach the gap first?
The mountain spur loomed ahead, its steep sides bristling with stunted trees and shrubs. Opposite it was a slope of rocky debris, reaching from the valley floor halfway up to a giant bite taken out of the Escarpment’s rim. Sunlight climbed both. Beyond, westward, the sky was still dark enough to show scattered stars, although building clouds soon obscured them.
Ah. The cadets were pulling up just short of the gap, with no Karnid yet in sight. They had won their race, for whatever good that might do them.
Jame hauled back on the reins, but the rathorn only tossed his head in irritation, almost unseating her, and plunged into the Kencyrs’ back ranks. Horses squealed, fighting to escape his rank scent. Some threw their riders and bolted back toward Kothifir. Others collided with their mates and fell in tangles of thrashing limbs.
“Sorry,” said Jame to startled faces as she bucketed past. “Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .”
She emerged through the broken front line to face a crescent of nine senior randon who had turned to observe her precipitous arrival.
“I don’t believe it,” said the Caineron, scowling. “Where did she spring from?”
None of them looked pleased to see her, Ran Spare least of all.
“You should turn back, Lordan,” he said. “This is no exercise.”
There was a jostling among the riders. Timmon emerged on her left riding a palomino, Gorbel to her right on a sturdy dark bay. The Ardeth wore hardened leather with rhi-sar inserts over gilded chain mail; the Caineron, a full suit of unornamented black rhi-sar. Most of the other cadets had donned less, down to mere padded jackets, depending on the wealth of their respective houses. Jame began to feel overdressed. She also felt rising anger.