Squire. Tamora Pierce

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СКАЧАТЬ He looked around at the others; all were nodding.

      The Rider Groups, the centaurs, and half of Third Company were given places along the crescent. Raoul would command the fifty men of the Own in the field. Flyndan and the rest of Third Company would make a fast ride at dawn, slipping far around the bandits to reach Owlshollow. The robbers would never realize the trap was set until it closed.

      As everyone prepared to go, Raoul said, ‘Kel, you’ll report to Captain Flyndan and his sergeants.’

      Kel and Flyn stared at him. Flyn protested, ‘She’s your squire, my lord—’

      Raoul shook his head. ‘I want her with you.’

      One of the first lessons pages learned was never to question a knight-master’s command. One pleading look was all Kel allowed herself before she began to clean off the table. By the time she was done, everyone had gone to their beds. She went in search of hers.

      Raoul crouched between his tent and Kel’s, giving Jump a thorough scratch. ‘Walk with me,’ he told her, rising to his feet. They strolled across the large clearing that held their camp.

      Raoul finally stopped to lean against a massive oak. ‘You want to know why I’m sending you with Flyn.’

      ‘Sir, I’m to obey without question,’ Kel pointed out, though she did want to know.

      ‘That’s fine if you’re to be a lone knight – you have to figure out things yourself,’ he said quietly. ‘But if you get extra duties someday – like command – you should know why you’re asked to do some things, particularly those that aren’t part of regular training.

      ‘Putting you with Flyn at Owlshollow accomplishes two goals,’ he explained. ‘You’ll deal with his not liking you. He’ll probably give you scut work. You need to show you’ll do your part no matter what. Plenty of nobles won’t take orders from a commoner, and they baulk when there’s no potential for glory. You need to show that you’ll do what’s needed, not just for me, but for others. And I’ll see how Flyn manages you, if you change his thinking at all. I know you want to be among the hounds, but trust me, this is important.’

      Kel nodded. She understood his reasoning, though she hated the assignment. And she still couldn’t argue, because proper squires didn’t.

      Raoul clasped her shoulder lightly and let go. ‘There will be other chases,’ he said. ‘Now get some sleep.’

      Owlshollow was larger than Haresfield, and better fortified, with a double stockade wall to shield it. Late that first morning within the walls Flyn called a meeting with the men of the Own and the town’s officials. The squads would wear farmers’ clothes over their mail and work in the fields, so anyone who scouted would think all was normal. Flyn gave each squad a position, then looked at the townsmen. ‘Did we forget anything?’ he asked. ‘Any side trail, any hole that might let a few escape?’

      The chief herdsman was in a whispered argument with the son who had accompanied him. Finally he sighed and looked at Flyn. ‘My son Bernin reminds me of the old game track, b’tween the bluffs an’ the marsh. It’s overgrown – I don’t know how bandits from outside would know of’t, or see’t to escape.’

      ‘If I’ve learned nothing else in my years of service, master herdsman, it’s that the unexpected always happens,’ replied Flyn. ‘I would hate for even a single louse to escape.’ He looked around until his eyes found Kel. ‘Have your son show this track to Squire Keladry. That will be her post when things warm up.’

      Kel left with the shepherd lad Bernin, swallowing disappointment again. She’d hoped that Flyndan would relent and let her take part in the main fight. There’s a waste of hope, she thought bitterly.

      As Bernin led her through the gates, he kept peering at her. Finally, as they trudged around the outermost wall, he asked, ‘I’n’t Keladry a girl’s name?’

      Bernin was right. The trail was clearly still used, by animals if not people. Someone desperate could take it to reach the river. A bridge two hundred yards downstream would provide a clean getaway if a fugitive got that far.

      She wasn’t sure she could hold it alone, so she asked Captain Flyndan to look. He had done so, then told Kel, ‘Just be ready to take anyone who actually makes it here. I doubt they will.’

      They waited for the rest of that day and through the next. Word finally came that Maresgift’s band had camped just a few hours’ ride from Owlshollow. Raoul’s hound forces in the forest would start their push at dawn. Maresgift would have two choices: to stand and fight, or to run for Owlshollow – and Flyndan.

      The next morning the raiders came. Lonely at her post on the bluff, Kel heard the battle chorus: horn calls, yells, the clang of metal, the scream of horses. It would be a desperate fight in the fields. The bandits knew that capture meant hanging.

      It was maddening to guess how it was going from sounds blown to her through the tangled briars that hid the trailhead above. She stood on a broad ledge halfway between the town and the River Bonnett. It was reachable only by the track down from the heights or up from the river. Here she had flat dirt and room to fight. The river’s edge was all tumbled stones, where it would be too easy to break an ankle.

      Kel got a coil of thin, strong rope and took it down the trail from the top of the bluff. Using spikes to anchor it, she stretched the rope at knee height across the trail, six feet above her guard post. It would bring any fugitives tumbling onto the ledge, where she would be ready for them.

      She kept her fidgets to the occasional walk to the edge of her post, where she could look at the swift, cold Bonnett thirty feet below. When she caught herself at it, she felt sheepish. You act like the edge is going to creep up on you till you fall, she told herself sternly. Now stop it!

      The morning she had climbed down the frail, rusted outer stair on Balor’s Needle had marked the end of her fear of heights, though she still disliked them. Looking at the Bonnett from her ledge was like wiggling a loose tooth with her tongue – it was silly, but she had to remind herself that she would no longer freeze in panic at the sight of a drop. She also wanted to be sure her body would remember that a cliff lay only ten feet behind her.

      The battle sounds grew louder. She smelled smoke: had the bandits set the fields on fire? If she climbed to the top, she might see. Her orders were to keep quiet and mind her post. She ought to be like Jump. He crouched at her feet with the patience of the born hunter, ready for game to be flushed. The sparrows were among the briars above, preening, sunning, and doing whatever birds did when bored.

      Suddenly they zipped down the bluffs past Kel, screeching the alarm. Gravel rattled down ahead of whoever was on the trail. Kel settled her hold on her glaive and checked her stance. She heard scrambling feet …

      Was that a child crying?

      Someone shrieked. Stones flew as the fugitive hit Kel’s rope hard enough to rip it from its anchors. A centaur skidded onto the ledge half on his side, tangled in her rope, brandishing a short, heavy cutlass.

      Kel, hidden by a large boulder where the trail met her ledge, lunged into the open, driving her glaive down. She halted her thrust a bare inch from a squalling girl tied to the centaur’s back by crossed lengths of rope. A cool part of her mind noted that this was why no one had shot the centaur: they had feared to kill the child.

      The centaur hacked at Kel with his cutlass as he wallowed, fighting to get СКАЧАТЬ