Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,193

not move after its rider got hit. The knight himself fell off and lay on his face in the road, his left foot still tangled in a stirrup.

The girl pricked the horse. It surged forward, dragging its erstwhile rider, shouldering the bandit with the sword. His guard was open for an instant. She slipped the head of her spear up under his chin and shoved. Then she went after the wounded man, who was making a limping effort to escape. He was losing blood. She ignored his pleas. She stuck him till he stopped moving. She seemed possessed.

She returned in a rage. “What is the matter with you people? Not one of you lifted a finger to protect yourselves. What if there had been more of them out there in the woods?”

Raulet Archimbault said, “Poppet, that’s why …”

“That isn’t why. You froze. Every last one of you. Like rabbits who hope the fox won’t notice. What happened to all those loudmouthed wolves who were howling before we left Khaurene? And you. Old man. Master. You’re the experienced traveler. Why did you just stand there with your thumb in your mouth?”

“I’m used to talking my way through confrontations.”

“You’re used to being too damned poor to rob and to not having women along. There wasn’t going to be any talking your way around those four.” She dropped to her knees beside the fallen knight, tried to recover her bolt. It would not come loose. She kicked the corpse viciously. Then she took his foot out of his stirrup so the horse would not have to drag a dead man everywhere. “Go on, horse.” She faced the party. “There would’ve been rapes and murders. You know it.”

She was right.

Kedle returned to her cart. She took the crossbow out and spanned it again, the while glaring around. “You people better not get my children killed.” Then, “Othon! Let the dead be. They don’t have anything we want.”

“But …”

“Othon.”

The man, twice Kedle’s age and twice her size, left the dead knight. Kedle said, “Let somebody else plunder them and get caught with the evidence.” She returned the ready crossbow to the cart, took her youngest back from Guillemette, said, “Let’s go. And nobody says a word about this when we get to Castreresone. Or ever.”

The rattle, clank, and squeak started up.

No one spoke for a long time.

The earth had shifted under all their feet.

“Not a word, Master,” Kedle said when he fell in beside her. “I won’t hear your nonsense.”

“As you wish.”

The silence got to her eventually. “I was moved by a grand example, Master. Duke Tormond IV.”

“But Tormond would not have …”

“Exactly. He would have procrastinated. He would have temporized. He would have talked. He would have done everything to avoid making a decision that might upset somebody. Or, worse, would compel him to act. As a consequence, we would find ourselves with a homeland where half the people were persecuted, foreign armies would roam around as they pleased, and it would be lethally dangerous to use the roads.”

The old man could not answer that.

There was a counterargument. Pacifists always had one. But he had become embedded too deeply in the everyday world to bring a good one to mind.

He did mutter, “But three men are dead,” understanding that it was an absurd remark as he made it.

“Leaving the rest of us, the people we care about, alive and unharmed. Eh?”

How did you argue with true believers in mathematics and human nature?

* * *

There were problems at Castreresone. The consuls had decided not to let any more refugees into the city, whether or not they had relatives inside. But those relatives could come out and talk. They could provide food and drink, blankets and clothing and such.

Castreresone had not yet fully recovered from its romance with the old Captain-General. The suburb called Inconje, where the big bridge crossed the Laur, had been abandoned by its original inhabitants. Now it housed a thousand refugees. Brother Candle saw many familiar faces. All were tired of travel and its constant fear. Many had lost everything to bandits.

Brother Candle’s group did not want to face those risks anymore, despite his assurances that they would be welcomed by Count Raymone Garete. Pettish, the Perfect told Raulet Archimbault, “I’m probably wrong about that welcome, anyway. He’s looking for people with some spine. People willing to help turn the tide of evil drowning the Connec.” He stopped. Kedle sneered at him from the shadows beyond the communal fire. Little Raulet snuggled