The Channeling (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 3) Page 8

  “Who is it?” she called out crossly. Irrationally upset that this moment of perfect contentment had to be ruined so quickly.

  “It’s Darius,” answered the Training Master, “time for your sword practice.”

  Falon groaned before resigning herself to the fact that, since she was the one who’d asked the former Imperial to set up a training bout today, she couldn’t very well skip out on it. Although, after dealing with the old witch into the late hours of the night, right now all she wanted to do was lay about in her tent and rest.

  “Lieutenant?” asked the Imperial.

  “I’ll be right out!” she yelled. “Just give me time to wash my face and throw on a change of clothes.”

  “I’ll be waiting for you in the circle,” said Darius before the sound of footsteps walking off told the tale of him moving away.

  “The Circle,” she grumbled, but on the whole it was a happy, if yawn inspiring, grumble. She had survived last night’s witch training without experiencing more pain than a nearly fatal wound—something she had a little experience with after her first major battle. Even better, she was now learning new magics! If she figured out how to actually use these new powers, she knew they would help keep her alive on the battlefield.

  For a moment she felt a pang; she missed her family back home terribly. In the beginning she was certain she’d die the first time she saw battle but now, especially with this new magic, she was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, there was a chance she could survive all of this excessive warring and have a chance to see her sisters and little brother again.

  Wiping a tear out of the corner of her eye, she roughly forced down the feelings of loneliness. She reminded herself that none of it mattered unless she actually survived, which was no small part why she needed to get her flat butt out of bed and into the training ring.

  Jumping up, she rushed over to the washbasin and shifted from one cold foot to the even colder to combat the chill in the air. She quickly poured a dollop of water from the pitcher in the basin, thrusting a cloth into it without bothering to check the temperature as she quickly applied the cloth to her sleep crusted dirty face.

  “Yeow!” she shouted as soon as the nearly freezing water drenching the cloth reached her face.

  Yelping and dancing around the inside of the tent, barely able to see, she scrubbed as much as she could handle before immediately tossing the rag into the basin.

  “Cold!” she declared. Reaching for her clothes she hesitated, prepared to deliberate endlessly on the merits of just throwing new clothes over the top of her woolen night wear and charging outside. That course of action stood in stark opposition to the one which saw her dive back under the still-warm covers of her bedding.

  Glancing back and forth, she finally gave it all up as a bad game and tore off her garments.

  “Cold, cold, cold,” she complained, snatching up the first thing that came to hand—which were new trousers. In a flurry, she tossed on a shirt, wool stockings, a thick jacket with a hood, and mittens before finally breaking down and stomping around the tent in an attempt to get warm.

  “You alive in there? ‘Cause yer making quite a racket,” hollered Ernest from outside the tent.

  Falon threw open the tent flap. “Not nearly as warm in the morning as it was back in the manor,” she complained. Then her eyes lighted on the steaming hot cup of pine needle tea in the other boy’s hands. “Give it up,” she ordered, making a grab for the tea.

  “Yeah, well, a tent isn’t going to be as warm as—hey!” the former farm boy complained as she snatched the cup right out of his hands.

  “Don’t worry; it’s for a good cause,” Falon explained, blowing on the still steaming hot tea before taking a sip of the almost scalding hot liquid. “Ahh,” she said right before grimacing at the bitter taste of freshly brewed pine needles while ignoring the minor burns to her tongue from the too-hot fluid that passed briefly through her mouth on the way to warming her insides.

  “A good cause? That’s mine!” he protested half-angrily. “What ‘good cause’ could you stealing my tea serve?”

  “Warming up your freezing commanding officer, of course,” Falon explained, hiding a smile behind a second sip.

  “That’s bunk and you know it,” Ernest complained.

  “It’s alright; you can have it back,” she said after taking a final drink, her half frozen insides already starting to warm back up, “I don’t need it anymore.”

  “Grrrr!” Ernest growled behind her as she skipped away.

  “Sorry, got to run,” she threw over her shoulder. She had a date with a blue eyed sword master and she couldn’t be late!

  “Next time, I’m stealing your tea!” he shouted after her.

  Chuckling, she skipped her way to the sword training circle in the middle of camp.

  Hopefully, as soon as spring came and the pass unfroze, the Prince would finally give up his warlike ways and settle down to the administration of his, no doubt massive, land grant from the king and let the rest of his people—including and especially her—go home.

  She knew it was a breezy outlook on the future, but she was feeling hopeful. After all man, even a Prince was not meant to make war alone. He had to run out of steam for conquest sooner or later…didn’t he?

  ****************************************************

  “I think that’s enough practice for today,” Darius said.

  “But I was just…about to…turn it around,” Falon protested between sharp breaths, certain that she was just about to win a victory and thus they shouldn’t stop yet.

  Darius gave her pitying look. “You’ll just have to wait to savor your victory next time,” he said, taking away her wooden training weapon.

  “Aww, man,” Falon complained, putting up a front on the outside but inside she was quite simply glad to be done with this unique form of torture in the meantime.

  Taking a hand towel, she wiped her face and neck. But because she was doing this, she missed Tug Bad-Scales sneaking up on her.

  “I’ve got that list you ordered, Sergeant Darius,” the much-less-rotund-than-before-winter Clerk said, producing a parchment.

  “Thank you, Clerk,” the Training Master said so seriously that Falon couldn’t suppress a groan.

  She’d been ambushed, that’s what had happened. They’d waited until she was tuckered out from fighting in the ring and then jumped her.

  “This is a setup,” she declared, glaring at the parchment that had now transferred itself from Tug and into Darius’s hands.

  “The weight of command has the ability to crush lesser men,” Darius said facetiously. “Here’s the list of Snow Fox tribals that have signed up for the Swans, along with the tally of their dependents.”

  “Hmph,” Falon said loudly, just to make absolutely clear her position on the matter of catching their commander when she wasn’t ready. While she did so, she half-heartedly wondered how if the weight of command could crush a man, what exactly was it going to do to her a young woman who didn’t know what she was doing half the time?

  While she was still pontificating being crushed—either metaphorically or literally—the list was thrust unceremoniously into her hands. So with a sigh she started scanning through it.

  “Fifty three new Snow Fox recruits?” Falon asked with surprise. “And another twenty odd peasants have signed onto the battalion?”

  “Twenty six starving peasants for which the Forgers are requesting a cash advance on their silver-per-head bounty,” Tug interjected quickly.

  “Give them the copper per person I promised them and not a bent penny more,” Falon warned.

  “They asked for the advance right after I gave them the penny—demanded, really, if ye want to be technical,” said Tug.

  “They can try pounding sand or mining the northern snow for wealth, because they’ll find silver faster that way than they will trying to change the deal and raid my pockets,” Falon said dourly.

  “Oh did you hear t
he news?” Darius asked, casually changing the subject.

  “No, what?” Falon asked absentmindedly, her eyes and attention still focused on the battalion’s roster.

  “Apparently the border patrol under Lord Jasper suffered a midnight attack by northern raiders. Sir Jasper and all his men were killed,” reported the former Imperial.

  “Good—what!” she said, her mouth on autopilot before the full import of his words smacked her upside the head. “He’s dead?!”

  “Sadly, none of the poor souls on the patrol survived,” Tug said piously.

  “A real shame,” Falon said halfheartedly, meanwhile wondering if she needed to strengthen the night watch around the Swan camp.

  “Personally, I’d suggest paying out the silver to the Foragers now rather than waiting,” Darius advised. “Not only did they do a soldier’s job on the way here, they also volunteered for the first night watch.”

  “I don’t see what one has to do with the other,” Falon frowned.

  “Night watch duty can be pretty hazardous,” said Tug.

  “Yeah, what with all the throat-cutters running around at all hours of the night,” said Darius.

  Falon opened and closed her mouth, and just before she was about to put her foot down the Swan’s Senior Sergeant gave her a significant look.

  “I advise we pay the silver,” he said.

  “Un…unbelievable,” she said, feeling a chill as the potential implications of what her suddenly enthusiastic would-be-silver-paying underlings might be hinting at. “Do you mean—”

  The imperial spoke over her smoothly. “It shouldn’t be too much of a strain on the purse strings,” he advised.

  “Fine,” she said foully, “but tell them not to get in the habit of thinking they’re going to be receiving cash advances in the future. Also I don’t think the Foragers should be on Night Watch anymore. They’ve done enough already. I don’t think I’m entirely satisfied with the work they’ve been doing guarding this camp.” she finished sharply.

  “Night watch is a thankless job,” agreed the Imperial.

  “Fine,” she said flatly, wondering if she was losing control of her company—or just her mind—by becoming overly suspicious. More importantly, did she really want to know the answer?

  The two men exchanged looks when they thought she wasn’t paying attention, which only sent her a simmering.

  “I’m warning you, though: nothing like this had better happen again or—and I’m serious here—heads will roll,” she said angrily. “I don’t like to be ambushed like this; I should have been involved in the process the entire time.”

  “I’m sure the clerk will keep you better apprised of the parchment work and…I’ll make sure to let you know if there’s anything a brewing before I request him to work on something,” Darius said.

  “That’s the way,” Falon said sardonically, while trying to hide the suddenly fast beating of her heart at the thought that if the Foragers could murder one leader—as annoying and useless a person as Jasper the lordling had been—then she might not be as safe as she thought. Maybe she should ask the former Ravens under Uilliam to start sleeping around her tent; she thought certain that she was going to have any number of sleepless nights in her future thanks to this. “Well, if there isn’t anything else, I think I’ll be on my way.”

  “There is one more thing,” Darius said with a wince.

  “Yes?” Falon said, tapping her foot on the ground.

  “This is strictly regarding the new recruits; I swear,” Darius said, raising his hands.

  “We already went over it. Feed them and fatten them up, you’ll know better than I will about how far we can push them when it comes to training,” Falon snapped.

  “I don’t mean the peasants, I’m talking about the Snow Fox,” Darius said.

  “What’s the problem then?” she sighed.

  Once again the two men exchanged looks.

  “I think it’s better if you see it for yourself first,” he said.

  Chapter 14: The Fresh-Faced Youth?

  Falon looked at the line of new tribal recruits and blinked. She surreptitiously rubbed her eyes and then blinked again, but no matter how many times she looked she still saw the same thing.

  “You see the problem now?” asked Darius.

  “How many new recruits do we have here?” Falon asked, carefully her eyes cutting over to the clerk who was once again carrying the master list.

  The clerk looked down and started counting on his fingers his eyes cutting back and forth between the list and his digits as he counted.

  “A grand total of fifty three,” Tug said after a minute, “enough to account for the just over two hundred dependents that are still with us.”

  “Well then…” Falon said heavily.

  “And as you can clearly see,” Darius waved toward the lined up barbarians in their fur and leather equipment, “a good half of them have…problems.”

  “Hmm,” Falon muttered. “When it comes to meeting the minimum requirements, I mean,” he amended.

  “Seventy…nine new recruits, is it?” she asked, perplexed before an entirely wicked idea occurred to her. “So what you’re saying is we might not have the equipment for this many new recruits,” she said, deciding to play dumb and see how far it got her.

  “That’s not what I mean!” Darius exclaimed, clearly starting to get agitated.

  “What exactly are you trying to imply?” Falon demanded, putting an edge in her voice and entirely happy to have the chance to grab a hold of these two men’s chain and give it a good hard yank after the fireball they dropped into her lap earlier. “If we’ve got the equipment then train them. We need every swinging blade we can get right now!”

  “You can’t be serious! We’d be the laughing stock of the entire army if word of this got out,” Darius said, looking perturbed to the point she wondered if he was going to start frothing at the mouth, “this is clearly just a ploy so that they can feed their tribe.”

  “Have you put them through their paces yet?” Falon asked blithely.

  “That’s not the point and you know it!” Darius quipped, gesturing toward the line.

  Nodding, Falon stopped smiling and reexamined the new recruits. A good half of them had suspicious ‘chest bulges,’ and an equally suspicious lack of facial hair. The former might have been explained away, but the latter was simply beyond the pale for a people who started growing their beards early and refused to touch them with a razor thanks to the wicked cold in their native north.

  With a serious look in her eye, she reluctantly nodded. Taking on these recruits would definitely cause problems in the future. But on the whole…in all honesty, she simply didn’t care. Maybe if they’d caught her on another day she’d have done ‘the right thing,’ at least as they and the rest of the army would view it. But due entirely to their own efforts, they’d caught her in about the worst mood possible and she wasn’t inclined to turn away anyone who wanted to fight. She still had to put on a show, though.

  So, with a frank and serious look in her eye, she turned back to the two men beside her and nodded. “You’re right,” she finally admitted, causing them to relax fractionally right before she then proceeded to rain all over their parade.

  “I’m glad you agree,” said Darius.

  “You want us to break it to them slowly or get it over all at once?” asked Tug.

  “You’re right,” Falon agreed with Darius, acting as if Tug hadn’t spoke, “in that there are entirely too many fresh-faced youths among this batch of recruits. That said, beggars can’t be choosers, which is why,” she took a deep breath, this was the moment of truth, “I want you to take all of the recruits over to Madame Tulla’s and have them bearded—at my expense,” she said firmly.

  “Uh…” Tug droned with a stupid look on his face.

  Meanwhile, Darius looked like an ox that had just been struck in the forehead with a sledgehammer.

  “We can’t let this unit become the laughing sto
ck of the entire army! Therefore we must endeavor to hide our shame, gentlemen,” Falon said, suppressing a snicker at the poleaxed looks on the faces of her two right hand men.

  “No!” Darius finally said in a strangled look. “They can’t do the job, not to mention the other concerns that would crop up with a mixed unit!”

  “Have you tested them yet and put them through their paces?” Falon inquired politely.

  “That’s entirely beside the point,” he said firmly.

  “No,” Falon said thunderously, “I think that’s the only point that matters. Can they do the job or not? If they can’t, you are ordered to kick them out with whatever prejudice you deem appropriate. But if they can prove themselves…” she looked over at the group of new recruits—which were at least half female, “then let the ‘youths’ in and give them the Swan mark the same as the rest of the ‘men’.”

  “We’ll be the laughingstock of the Prince’s army!” the Clerk declared, repeating that term much to Falon’s ongoing annoyance. “The other companies will think we’re marching a group of soiled doves in disguise and come over for a midnight snack,” Tug warned, “to say nothing of what our own men will think—or do!—after they’re mixed into the current squads.”

  “So let them form their own unit,” she said, waving to the group of new recruits, “there shouldn’t be any problems with their own family members. As for outsiders, give them armor, a shield, and a beard; no one will know the difference,” she advised, forcing herself to hide a smile at knowing just how true her words were.

  “We’ll know the difference! We can’t hide this from our own men,” Darius said darkly.

  “I dare say if any of our own people try anything, they’ll probably get their hands—or other body parts—chopped off. If not by the ‘youth’s’ then by their relatives,” Falon said with a significant look at the males in the soon-to-be-mixed unit before her, “besides, we’ve got a whole horde of camp women among the followers currently with us.”