slowly. “What about everyone else? The older men? The women? Master Pendie? Lirys? Ulrik?” I reel off the names of people I care about.
“Anyone useful has been sent to Tressalyn, including Ulrik.” His mouth twists as he mentions his old mentor. “They want all able hands preparing for war. The older men have been sent to the great forge to make weapons, even some of the women. Pendie is still in Tremayne, though. Still running the apothecary. Lirys is at home too. Most of the women have been left at home to keep the farms and businesses running. For now.”
“For now? Are they going to ask women to fight?”
“If it gets bad enough.” He looks at me thoughtfully. “Wait, don’t tell me you’d want to?”
“You think I couldn’t?”
His mouth tightens before he tries for a smile. “Oh, I know you could. I think it should be a choice, that’s all.” He pauses. “An educated one. Not telling people it’s for glory. Because there’s nothing glorious about death—” He stops himself, too late, and looks at me, paling. “Sorry,” he says, and I wave his apology away. “Anyway, you’re an apothecary. They’d want you for that.”
“I’m not licensed.”
“If this carries on, it won’t matter. I was a blacksmith; now look at me.” He gestures at his bloody uniform.
“What’s it like?” My voice is quiet. “Is it likely to get bad enough for women to be called to fight?”
“I don’t know,” he says slowly. “In Tremayne, things are fine, on the surface, at least. There’s no rationing yet, at least not that I know of. No attacks. People are preparing, stockpiling food and fuel, clearing out cellars to hide in, but there’s no real sense of panic.”
I hear something in his voice that makes me think there’s more than that. “But?”
Kirin shrugs and takes a step without thinking, immediately yelping and gripping my shoulder painfully, taking long, deep breaths. I wait until the colour has returned to his face before I bend down to look at his leg. Blood is soaking through the cloak bandage, but not much. I nod for us to keep moving, putting my arm back around him.
“When you leave Tremayne, you see the rich heading towards Tressalyn with carts full of valuables,” he continues. “You see lines of men – boys – leaving to be soldiers, their mothers, and sisters, and wives, and children crying as they walk away. And you smell the refugee camp at Tyrwhitt long before you see it. And here, there’s men in the woods and a new report every day or so of where he is and what his golems have done. Lortune, Haga, Monkham…
“Truth to tell, we’re all hoping that it won’t come to a proper battle at all. We simply don’t have the men, even with the drafting. We’ve been at peace for one hundred years; we’re not ready for a war. Especially not a war against bloody golems. How do you kill stone? We have no siege engines, no nothing. You can’t send men against rock. We can barely fight other men.”
I look over my shoulder to the woods, where his comrades still haven’t emerged. But then again, neither have the others. “So, who were they?” I jerk my head at the forest. “Are they refugees, or the Sleeping Prince’s?”
“Oh they’re his, all right.” I notice that he doesn’t name the Sleeping Prince. “Human raiding parties. It doesn’t take people long to turn on their own if they think it’ll keep them alive. The Silver Knight commands the human army, recruiting the dregs, and the traitors, to raid and kill the Lormerians who try to resist, or fight back. He’s started sending parties into the woods to try to break our army’s lines. Testing us. This is the third lot here, so far. They never get out of the forest though. Or back to him.”
“The Silver Knight?” It’s the first I’ve heard of him.
“The Bringer. He leads his father’s mortal army.”
“Of course.” I shiver. United at last.
“We have companies all the way along the border, from coast to coast, patrolling and keeping them back, and so far…” He trails off, frowning. “Obviously this can go no further.” He looks at me warily.
“My lips are sealed.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he was toying with us. I reckon if he planned to invade, he’d do it. But this? Sending small parties to harass us, engaging in back and forth with the Council? He knows we’re running scared, and that we