Chapter 13
"Humankind has but one enemy - death."
- Katisha Franklin, 2 Nayacem, 1787 AC
When Aidan arrived, about six bandits were carrying a strip of burlap from her tent. Nadya lay on it, eyes closed and arms folded over her chest. Her cheeks were sunken, and her body so slender he wondered whether the men who carried her felt any weight at all. He cursed himself for taking her for granted and not visiting more often. He took off his fuzzy winter hat, the frigid breeze blowing cold and dry over his matted, curly hair. He felt a chill, a cold dread spread throughout his body. It was as though another member of his family had died.
He gathered everyone who wasn't on guard duty in a large circle around the burial site, a small clearing just up the now frozen stream, which everyone had been using for washing clothes and bathing. The fog had cleared, allowing him to look each one of them in the eye and see well into the distance. The overcast sky still cast a gray pallor over the whole event, and some whispered what a pity it was to die in winter, a time unfriendly to new-planted trees.
As the Redtails gathered, he grabbed his father's journal from his tent, remembering something he'd read shortly after he learned of his family's betrayal and Nadya's collusion. He had been so angry with her, but this passage had helped. And considering his present actions, he had long since made his peace with his family's ideals, even if they were a bit far reaching and beyond his understanding.
"Some of you knew Nadya from her time here at camp. She once told me that it was her goal to learn each and every one of your names. That was the kind of person she was - caring and compassionate. She served as my House's Steward honorably, and treated her fellow servants with respect even though their positions were technically beneath her."
He looked around and was surprised at some of the faces he saw weeping. He knew Nadya had been fairly popular with the othersm but to see Woodsen, usually so stoic, weeping openly both troubled and comforted him at the same time.
"She kept my family's journals safe at the cost of her own life and livelihood. Because of her, I am able to read their words and sometimes it is as though they are still with me. Almost as if they were alive again."
More weeping now, some no doubt using this procession as an opportunity to mourn once again for friends and family long gone. Marke and Ygretta held hands and stood chin-up, their serious expressions carved in granite. Charlene's cheeks betrayed a few falling tears, but she held her head high and made no attempt to hide her face. Rodrig was weeping, with Connel patting him on the back and handing him a handkerchief.
"I'd like to read a passage from my father's journal, which I think Nadya would have liked. Let his words bring peace to your soul as we remember our friend.
"Any man who openly questions my wisdom in hiring a female Steward will from now on be instructed to hold his silence whether he be Serf, a fellow Noble, or King Ethan himself. In addition to her commitment to keeping Barrowdown operating with an efficiency that makes our neighbors green with envy, Nadya is well spoken of by all of the servants and tenants. Were she born Noble, she would be the most courted Lady in the realm. Beneath her gruff exterior lies a soft heart, and her mind is filled with wisdom well beyond her years. If she were taken from us, we would never in a hundred years of searching find her equal."
The air held a thick silence all around the encircled band of thieves and cutthroats, his family's avenging army. Tears streamed down Rodrig's cheeks and soaked into his dense beard, and he closed his eyes as though trying to picture Nadya once again. Charlene wiped a tear from her cheek and placed a hand on Aidan's arm when he stumbled over the concluding sentence as he choked back his own tears. He clapped his hands together above his head and looked to the ground in the posture of prayer. With a resounding smack, the rest of the Redtails mimicked the gesture. Aidan recited the prayer of resting.
"Merciful soil, receive our dear friend Nadya, Steward of Barrowdown, into your heart with our testimony of her goodness and compassion. May Caledonia be enriched by her return, and may the leaves of her tree grow full and plentiful. Let it be."
"Let it be," echoed the Redtails. Aidan marched to the center of the ring where Nadya's body now lay and picked up one of the shovels. He stuck it into the hard, frozen ground with force that would dent a well-made breastplate, and after he set the pile of dirt to one side, he was joined by Charlene, Rodrig, Connel, Marke, Ygretta, and several of the newly-made Captains, Sergeants, and unranked fighters. The digging was slow, it being winter, but it was steady, and within an hour they'd made a hole deep enough to house Nadya's body without fear that wild bears or wolves might catch her scent and desecrate her planting.
Three-Eyed Laney came bearing a yearling maple with a few stocky lads carefully holding the burlap bag, which housed the roots and surrounding soil. The diggers had filled a layer of dirt around Nadya's body, her paling brown skin now covered by black loam and frozen bits of mud. Laney and her helpers unwrapped the tree's roots over the hole, and were about to set the tree in place when someone shouted from across the iced stream.
"One second, just one second!" Aidan turned to see that it was the heretic, Windhill, who ran up the steep hill and jumped the stream with a small brown vial in his hand.
"What do you want, Warlock?" Three-Eyed Laney spat. Her hand inched toward a long pouch at her waist, where everyone knew she kept a concealed dagger.
"To help, if I can." He turned to Aidan and held up the vial, panting a little as he caught his breath. "This mixture will help shield the roots from the cold and more efficiently absorb the nutrients from the soil. Considering the season, I think it's a good idea."
"Like as not it'll kill the poor maple," Laney muttered, her hand still creeping dangerously close to that deadly waist pouch.
"That will do, Sergeant Laney," Aidan said, holding up his palm in a stop signal. To Windhill, he said, "You may proceed."
"It's no guarantee, of course," the heretic said as he sprinkled the thin liquid sparingly over the root system, "but it might help. I didn't know this woman, but everyone deserves a decent tree."
"Well said." Aidan watched as the pale roots turned slightly brown as the mysterious liquid covered them, then returned to their light complexion a few seconds later. When he was finished, he bowed his head in respect to the body in the hole below, then bowed to Aidan. "Thank you."
"Whatever I can do to help," Windhill said, glancing cautiously at Three-Eyed Laney, "you know where to find me."
He side-walked carefully down the hill, and the rest of them finished the Planting. Laney had chosen a fine maple, already leafbare so it would be less likely to suffer from the oncoming snow. A few of the men who helped jogged down the hill and returned with some straw mats, which they wrapped around the trunk and the bases of the thicker branches. It appeared almost like a statue of Nadya herself, dressed in her plain, stout woolen robe.
"Have one of the carvers mark the tree before sundown," Aidan told Laney, who nodded in reverence. "Her initials will be enough. Tell him to make them good and thick, but not too deep."
"It will be done," she said, nodding to him and shambling back down the hill, still hanging her head in mourning.
For a long time, Aidan and the War Council encircled the tree as though standing guard. Silence shrouded the camp and the surrounding woods for a long time, and they kept watch over their friend. May we all be so well remembered.
Snow fell that night, and when Aidan visited her tree that morning it appeared untouched. He assumed it was sheltered by the branches above. Looking closer, however, it appeared someone had woken early and brushed the snow from its branches, clearing the soil around it to protect the delicate young trunk. Rodrig, he thought. Did she know how you felt about her?
The snow fell hard, and three days later, the wound of her death still fresh in his mind, Aidan and the council were meeting with the Captains and Sergeants to air grievances and reorganize a few of the platoons in the wake of Erick and company's
departure. There were a few complaints, but it was clear that Nadya's funeral had brought things into perspective. Though she died a natural death, it felt to Aidan as though they had suffered their first combat death. If the woman who protected his family's private writings for two years at the risk of her own life didn't qualify as one of his Soldiers, then no one did.
Their food supply was dwindling, and Marke estimated that they had around three days' worth at their current rate. If they cut out a meal, it would last maybe a week, but Charlene strongly advised against doing something that extreme this early in the season. The men could tolerate it for a week or two before spring came, but not for the whole of three months when snow ruled the forest. They would just need to send out more hunters. She recommended they double the assignments and send fifty hunters, nearly half their number, into the woods to find sufficient game. Fifty people, hunting alone and praying there were no armed patrols about.
The bandits groaned at the extra duty, but were promised greater portions of anything they killed themselves. Marke kept a careful accounting of who did what, scribbling names down in various tables in his ledger. Aidan hoped that they would bring in enough deer, hare, and pigeons to build their stocks back up within a week.
Charlene volunteered as a hunter to establish some solidarity with the others, and it seemed to work. She set aside her crescent-topped staff and took up a hearty oak bow, a small silk pouch containing its string, and a twenty-arrow quiver bearing the Redtail Crest, the three intertwined trees. Aidan looked at her nervously, but she gave him a peck on the cheek and smiled.
"Don't worry about me, my love," she said, as the other hunters gathered around snickered at their exchange, "worry instead for the game I encounter."
"Very well." He smiled despite still wearing his worry like a coat. He held up a small velvet pouch and shook it twice by its strings. It made a clinking sound. "Five crowns to the hunter who returns with the most game."
"Should I take it now, or are we pretending at sport?" Three-Eyed Laney shouted, clicking her telescopic eyepiece into place and grinning. The rest of the hunters laughed and followed up with some good-natured laughter and boasting.
An hour into the hunt, Aidan felt restless, and his stomach churned. He hadn't eaten lunch, but it wasn't hunger that fueled his discontent. He had planned to spend this day reading his family journals, but the words became jumbled as he read them, and he found his mind drifting. He couldn't stop wondering whether he oughtn't join the hunt himself, perhaps riding on horseback and helping haul carcasses back to camp.
The clouds above were dark and menacing, but did not drop any snow that day. The snow on the ground had not yet become hard packed, making it safe for Midnight to slush through without slipping. If he walked him slowly, his hooves made only a small shucking sound as they dented the snow.
Whispering the command to utilize his helm's telescope, he surveyed far ahead to make sure he didn't disrupt any of his hunters. He nodded to one of the outer sentries, who knuckled his visor and exhaled a thick cloud of steam. Aidan scanned the horizon, seeing in one place two hunters working together to flush pigeons while another three stalked hares. Most that he saw were examining the ground around them, no doubt looking for tracks or fresh scat. One idiot was basically taking a stroll through the woods, and Aidan thought briefly about sneaking up on him to teach him a lesson. He quickly realized the man might kill him by accident, so he thought better of it. Make him skip a meal instead, perhaps.
Two hunters nearby slowly crept together wielding thick cudgels, but didn't see their quarry. Why would they use clubs? Perhaps a wounded animal? It seemed cruel to him, beating some poor creature to death just because it walked with a limp. But there was a logic to it; every arrow they expended could potentially break or become otherwise unusable. They needed to reuse them as much as possible, and if they didn't need to risk one, they shouldn't. Sometimes being a good Soldier means setting being a good human aside for a while. He rode at a slow trot toward their position, Midnight's hooves quietly chuff-chuffing through the snow.
Quick as lightning, the men pounced. A large evergreen Manzanita thicket blocked his sight; a club came up and down. Must be a deer. I'll offer to take it back to camp so they can continue their hunt. Risking a little more speed, he trotted around the thicket so that the Crest on his breastplate was in clear view and they wouldn't mistake him for an ambushing enemy patrol. He was about five horse-spans away from them when suddenly one of the three lurched back, clutching at a large red gash that appeared on his face.
"Bitch!" he yelled, and Aidan thought for a moment that perhaps they had trapped a large mountain-cat. Then the offending appendage came into view - a human hand that now shrank into a fist and bashed desperately against one of the other men, pinning the victim to the ground. An auburn hand with green fingernails whose arm was wrapped in tattoos of complex knots that were rendered to appear like sequoiavine.
"Hold the bitch down and spread her legs!" the scratched man screamed, holding his face and wincing. "I'm gonna make you pay for that, Your Highness!"
His mind filled with red and began to boil. He plucked his flanged mace from his hip and whipped the reins, Midnight responding with a hard gallop. The horse surged eagerly forward, happy to finally have the freedom to run. Aidan whispered the commands that activated his targeting system and took a deep breath, feeling the savage blood coursing through his veins eager to unleash violence.
The lacerated man, still holding his sliced face, looked up as Aidan came close. The last thing he saw before his brains were dashed bloody into the snow was Aidan's mace, swung with equal measures disciplined accuracy and boiling rage. He didn't have time to make a sound before he was dispatched.
The other two looked at Aidan dumbfounded as he wheeled his horse around for a second murderous pass. They both made to bolt, but Charlene grabbed one of their cloaks, and he fell to the ground. She grabbed at something on the ground nearby - a hip dagger! She stabbed it repeatedly into the man's legs and back while he screamed and whimpered like a wounded animal, trying to squirm away like a worm. Aidan charged to trample the second man, who appeared stunned until the moment before impact, when he jumped quickly into a thicket to the left, utilizing the foliage to cover his retreat.
He bolted from the thicket and started running through an area dense with trees, impossible to follow on a horse. Aidan pursued nonetheless, going around the thicker bunches and hoping for a clean opening. Just as he was about to cut across and run the bastard down, a fletch of gray pigeon feathers suddenly sunk into his back, a bloody broadhead-tipped arrow springing from his chest. He crumpled to the ground without making a noise, and Aidan reckoned he was dead before he would have felt the cold snow's impact. He hastened back to Charlene, who was holding her knees and rocking back and forth on the ground next to the man she'd stabbed, the bow lying next to her still strung.
"Are you all right?" He dismounted and removed his helm. She leapt to her feet, startled by his words as though she hadn't noticed his approach. In a flash, she was on her feet, bow in hand and aiming another pigeon-fletched arrow straight at Aidan's face. He held up his palms in surrender, taking a step back and staying very still. Her eyes were wide and her breath quick and ragged, her nostrils flaring and several locks of her meticulously braided black hair violently undone and frizzing around her face. She looked to Aidan like a trapped wild animal, dangerous but still in need of help.
"It's me," he said, his mouth slowly wrapping around each syllable, "Aidan. They're gone now, they can't hurt you anymore."
She glanced at the crumpled, cloaked man beside her whose gushing wounds streamed down his brown cloak in rivers. She looked immediately back to Aidan, who hadn't moved. He raised his eyebrows, wondering if he would end up a casualty of his own good deed and thinking about leaping into one of the thickets in his peripheral view. He was about to risk it when she let the bowstring go slack, pulling her hands together and dropping the weapon and its deadly
broad-tipped arrow. She collapsed back onto the ground and once again held her knees close to her chest.
Aidan moved slowly forward, remembering what speed she had grabbed the weapons only moments ago. She looked through him now, accepting his presence just as she would accept a rock or nearby tree. He slowly reached for the bow and arrow he flung them away, then also tossed the dagger away that lay near the stabbed man.
He made to embrace her, but she winced and turned her head away as he spread his arms. Her face held a fresh bruise, a rectangular purple wound spreading across her cheek and lower jaw. Aidan felt the urge to weep and shriek a battle cry all at once, to hunt down every man on the planet - in the galaxy! - who would lay hands on a woman in this way. Instead, he bottled his rage and asked a simple question.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"Sit with me." He sat beside her, still keeping his distance. Her eyes fixed on some distant point, and tears leaked from her eyes in a narrow but well-fed stream. Her breathing slowed down bit by bit, exhaling gradually larger clouds of steam as she breathed out. They sat together for a long time, and Aidan made no attempt to touch her or speak. The silence felt cleansing, even for him. Every concern about the food supply, every regret that he didn't spend more time with his deceased loved ones, even his haunting lack of understanding about his family's treasons all faded into the cold, drifting like their cloudy breath into the breeze and vanishing as the water and air became one.
"Thank you," she said at last, taking a bent-kneed step toward him and giving him a swift hug. She started walking back to camp, and Aidan walked his horse beside her after strapping the bodies of the rapists to its saddle, glowering as he thought of washing the bloodstains of such unworthy men.
The forest held its silence as well, the quiet between Aidan and Charlene broken only by the distant cries of hawks and the flushing of pigeons by nearby hunters. A bough a few strides to their left emptied itself of snow rather suddenly as they passed, and Charlene jumped a little, grabbing Aidan's arm and clutching it for the rest of the long walk. The camp was bustling with its daily activities, some drenching clothes in rendered soap and melted ice water, the cook on duty stirring something that steamed inside a large pot, and a clanging from Connel and the heretic repairing their various weapons and armor, Kluny the smith inspecting their work and shaking his head.
Aidan took the corpses to the War Council's command tent and laid them on the ground, stripping their clothes and searching through their purses and pockets. He tore the ragged doublet down the middle of the first one's chest, kneeling on his wrist for leverage. When he stood, that wrist's forearm was suddenly covered a black tattoo of the triple-crown that formed the Royal Crest with a tall black tower in their center.
"The Order of the Crown?" Aidan said aloud to himself alone. He pressed the wrists of the other dead men and watched in wonder as the black tattoos bloomed onto their arms. It made no sense - why would these men, whom he recognized as some of the Archers who came with Marke and Ygretta - try to rape Charlene?
"Charlene said there was trouble- oh!" Rodrig said as he entered the tent then stood like a statue when he noticed the bodies. He blinked at them a few times before giving Aidan an inquisitive look. Aidan told him everything that had happened. Rodrig's eyes transformed into a glare aimed directly at the dead bastards on the floor.
"Three dead rapists," he said, his voice filled with venom and bile, "that's what I call a good start." He spit on the tattoo of the middle one. "You think perhaps the heretic might know something about this?"
"They came with Marke," Aidan answered, keeping his voice very low for fear of long ears that could be lurking outside. "So I think there are a lot of questions to be asked."
"I can't imagine young Deumar would be so reckless." Rodrig shook his head but kept his voice likewise low. "His family has strong ties to the Crown, but he risked everything coming here, even his father's own life."
"So he tells us." Aidan's words were tinged with a sharp edge of bitterness and suspicion, but he couldn't help it. What would they do when they were finished raping Charlene? Hang her from the nearest tree? Bury her secretly so he'd never know her fate? He drew his hip dagger and shoved it into the heart of the nearest dead man. He gave the other two the same treatment.
"Just making sure," he said to Rodrig, whose eyebrows were raised with alarm. He nodded his bushy head and looked at Aidan's work approvingly.
"Nothing wrong with being thorough."
Windhill betrayed only surprise that three agents of the Order of the Crown had been among them, but just nodded his head when Aidan told him what happened.
"The Crowns aren't proper Soldiers," he said, fiddling with a small sparking torch on a tiny green square that was laced with silver and gold circuitry, "they're disruptors. They'll fight on the field if they're needed, but they mostly serve the King as intelligence gatherers and creators of chaos."
"They won't be causing any more chaos around here," Rodrig chuckled proudly. "Charlene killed two, and Aidan bashed the brains out the back of one of their heads."
The heretic nodded approvingly, and Aidan was fully convinced he was not involved. It seemed unlikely that a man condemned to a lifetime of mindless service as a thrall would help either the Guild who sentenced him to such service or the King who legitimized their existence. That left only one more question to answer. Could Marke be involved?
"You need to burn the bodies," Winhill said, wincing as his fingers caught one of the sparks that flew from his small instrument, "or else they'll know where we are. Although likely as not they know already."
"What are you on about?" Rodrig sounded skeptical, and Aidan worried about his superstitious distrust of the man.
"They all have a magic bean in them that the commanders in the Order can track." He held up his small green circuited square up and peered at it very carefully. "Fire ruins it."
"Great," Aidan sighed, his mind busy thinking of where they ought to relocate, "magic trouble. Rodrig, see to it - take the bodies to some remote part of the woods and burn the three of them like the refuse they are. Don't bother planting a tree, just cover their bones with snow."
"More than they deserve," Rodrig muttered, then went about his work.
"Perhaps we can convince the Order that our camp is somewhere else," Aidan said, hoping the heretic would agree. Instead the man just shrugged. A few moments later, while Aidan was thinking about how to approach Marke, a sentry's horn blew.
One long blast. Enemy approaching.