I took charge of our rations and mess kettle and began to collect some of the drier and older wood I found. Fires bloomed around me, promising some warmth and a hot meal. Split peas, salt-cured pork, and some withered carrots—not bad, I surmised, given that a swift boil would produce an edible soup.
“Can I help with the fire?” A pockmarked young man offered a spade.
“Of course, please,” I said. “Unless you’re wanted elsewhere.”
“Nah.” He dug the blade into the sod, turning it over. “I mean, no, ma’am, I’m not needed. Vicks has got the fire under control and Helms says I’m not allowed near the food.” He tried for a grin and missed.
“What’s your name? And where are you from?”
“Harrel,” he said. “Vernon Harrel. I’m from Havensport. I don’t reckon you recall, but you were there, before Midsummer. I saw you at the packinghouse.”
“Oh!” I said, louder than I intended. He started and grinned, a real smile this time. “Then you were there, with Byran Border and the rest of the Red Caps?”
“That I was,” he said, producing flint and steel and some tow from his haversack. “And what you said—gave us all some hope we’d come out of this scrape better than before. That there was someone on our side, you know?” He struck steel to flint until sparks fell on the tow. He breathed it into full-fledged flame and tucked it into my firewood. “Were ready to give up on that until the prince came back with your brother and the Serafan—not on fighting, we were going to run ourselves into the ground if we had to. But we’d about given up on winning.”
“Border wrote to me, it was how we knew about the outbreak of the war,” I said. “Have you heard from him? I expected him to join us in Hazelwhite, I suppose, but perhaps he went to the city?”
Harrel shook his head. “He was captured, in a raid on one of the Pommerly outposts, before you came.”
“Captured? Perhaps we can discuss prisoner exchanges—”
“No, ma’am. They don’t—they didn’t keep many prisoners, early on.” He looked away and prodded the wood with his toe, maneuvering a log into a better angle to catch the flames licking at its underside. “That should do it, ma’am.” He ducked his head and hurried back toward his mess mates.
I stared into the flames, sobered by his news. I hadn’t known Byran Border, not really—only by a brief exchange over salted fish and by his letters. Yet he’d represented something for me, a foundation of common people ready and willing to fight, and ready and willing to work with Theodor, too. Before we’d left West Serafe, before I’d traveled to Galitha City and then Kvyset, Fen and then, finally, Hazelwhite, I had known that there were those willing to fight.
“Are you planning to cook those peas or are we going to eat them like pistachios?” Theodor said. “I imagine we need a tripod like those lads have.” He cocked his head as though trying to calculate the exact angle of the branches they had used to suspend their kettle.
“I know we decided that we wouldn’t do a formal officers’ mess sort of thing, or outfit you with servants,” I said, “in the spirit of democracy and equality. But you’re either going to have to get more competent or I’m hiring you a manservant.” I slipped inside his embrace and kissed his cheek.
“And you started this fire entirely on your own, in the past fifteen minutes, without a flint and steel! Most impressive.” He kissed me back.
“I did,” I said, “and you can’t prove otherwise.”
“I imagine that I could,” Sianh said, carting with him a trio of thick branches from closer to the creek. “We ought to have gotten you a proper fire-starting kit, and for that, I apologize,” he said. “Now—let me show you how this is done.”
Theodor helped Sianh set up the tripod and looped a bit of hemp rope from the center for the kettle. We boiled the peas and ate without speaking much, heavy responsibility for this small army settling like a mantle. I felt a bit as I had when, as a child, our mother had charged me and Kristos with going to the market to buy fish and turnips. I knew, deep in my bones as much as from the warning Mama drilled into us, that if anything happened to Kristos, I was responsible. Even though he was older, I was the responsible child who could be trusted to remind her brother not to run off or get into any scuffles with the other ragtag boys in the market. I forgot to buy turnips, if I recalled correctly.
I looked out over the camp, a temporary mark on this quiet pastoral corner of southern Galitha. In a week, the trampled grass and broken branches would begin to settle back into the landscape, and in a month, one would never be able to tell that an army had bivouacked here, eaten a poor supper of dried peas, and shaken the frost from their blankets in the morning. And in a year, a decade? In a generation, how would they tell the story of this army, this encampment, the battle that would surely come within days?
33
WE STAYED ON THE MOVE FOR THE NEXT WEEK, TAKING THE ARMY farther inland and farther north, toward the Royalist stronghold at Rock’s Ford. The Rock River came to a narrow and shallow point, and there the Crown had built a military school nearly two centuries before on the site of an old castle stronghold. Nobles sent their second or third sons, the ones who weren’t set to inherit titles and land, to train to take commissions in the army or navy. With the outbreak of civil war, the fortified location had become the stronghold of the Royalist army.
That narrow bend of the Rock River was also home to the Westland estate. When he fled the capital city, the king had gone home, like a loosed horse or a wayward dog, I thought with some contempt. The largest and oldest Pommerly estate was not far, either, and between the ancestral lands of two old, powerful, and rich families, the Royalist army had bided its time.
“They were smarter than I might have hoped,” Sianh said as we huddled around a campfire, the final night before the push to Rock’s Ford and the anticipated battle. “They could have attempted to hold any number of small fortifications or outposts along our way, but they’ve given us very little resistance.”
“Just a few skirmishes, and they pulled back quickly,” Theodor agreed.
“Too quickly.” Sianh sighed. “They learned. When we engaged in small skirmishes like that, they got the losing end too often. They know their strength. Their strength is in massed numbers like they will have at Rock’s Ford.”
“Cheery,” Theodor said. “I wonder how Kristos and Alba are faring.”
“No word is a good word,” Sianh said. I smiled privately at his attempt to translate the expression—his Galatine was usually exceptionally precise, and employing better grammar than most Galatines. “I am going to review the rest of the camp.” He stood and strode away, though I noticed that he made toward where the horses were tethered to their line, not toward the rest of the men.
“You think he’s nervous?” I asked.
“Most definitely,” Theodor replied. He swallowed. “I am, too. If we fail here, it’s over.”
“And if we win, we still have to march on toward Galitha City.” I looked out over the scattered campfires, bright in the dark field like night-blooming flowers. “Are you all right? We’re… we’re so close to your house,” I said lamely.