Squire. Tamora Pierce
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around a large table on which maps had been placed. These were younger than Greystreak, and looked to be in their twenties and thirties, though with centaurs it was hard to tell. Their youth lasted for two centuries; like other immortals, they never aged past mature adulthood. Unless an immortal was killed by accident or in a fight, she or he might live forever.
There were four human newcomers in plain white shirts, brown tunics and trousers, and riding boots. They wore the emblem of the Queen’s Riders, a crimson horse rearing on a bronze-coloured field, circled by a ring. One Rider wore a crimson ring around his badge, the sign of a Rider Group commander. Two wore a crimson ring with a thin black stripe in the middle: they were second in command. The Riders had a looser command structure and did not follow traditional military rankings.
The fourth Rider was a woman with golden brown skin and straight black hair. She was five inches shorter than Kel, with a short nose, firm mouth, and level black eyes. She was stocky and muscular. Her hair, braided tightly back from her face, framed high cheekbones and a square chin. The ring around her Rider insignia was gold.
Kel blinked, surprised. As she set cups before the guests, she eyed the Commander of the Queen’s Riders. Buriram Tourakom – Buri, as she was known – was as famed as Lord Raoul or the Lioness. She’d been made full commander during the Immortals War, when Queen Thayet, the previous commander, had seen she was too busy as queen to serve the force she had created. Buri had been Thayet’s guard before she was queen; she had been co-commander since the Riders’ creation, and had done most of the everyday work in the company. She was a ferocious fighter, armed or unarmed. No one tangled with her, given a choice. When Kel placed a cup before her, Buri murmured her thanks.
Once everyone was served, Kel stood at ease behind Raoul and listened. These centaurs, three females and two males, were very different from Greystreak. They were eager for the hunt and the fight to come.
The meeting ended late. Kel fought yawns as she followed Raoul to the inn where he, Buri, and Flyndan had been given rooms. While the inn was largely intact, the scent of smoke filled it from cellar to garret. Kel didn’t care; neither did the others, she suspected. The men and Buri went to their rooms immediately. As Raoul’s squire Kel opened her bedroll in front of his door. The sparrows protested this odd way to sleep, but found places around Jump. Kel was pulling off her boots when someone down the hall whispered, ‘Pst!’
She looked up, squinting. The wall lamp was nearly out of oil; its flame barely cast any light.
‘Pst!’
Kel unsheathed her sword and walked towards the noise, stockinged feet silent on the wooden boards. If she had to go out of sight of Raoul’s door, she would wake him. This could be an attempt to draw her off, an attempt on his life.
The attempt was only Lerant, standing at the top of the stairs. ‘What do you want?’ Kel demanded, in no mood to be polite. She wanted to sleep.
He glared at her. Kel turned to go back to her bed. ‘No, wait!’ he whispered.
She turned back as she considered smacking him with the flat of her sword to teach him respect. Such thoughts only told her how bone-tired she was. Normally the idea would never occur to her.
‘Why didn’t you tell?’ Lerant kept his voice low.
‘Tell what?’ she asked, her own voice barely audible.
‘Come on. I heard Osbern set you straight. You didn’t tell him who steered you to the packs, or he’d’ve had me up before Flyn.’
‘You couldn’t ask in the morning?’ she demanded, cross.
‘I want to know now!’
Kel sighed. ‘I don’t tell on people,’ she said. ‘Good night.’ She walked back down the hall, sheathed her sword, and crawled into bed.
If the Haresfield renegades were new to forest robbery, the centaurs and other humans with the band were not. Lord Wyldon had taught the pages much about tracking, but the next two weeks saw Kel’s education expand ferociously. Whenever the robbers could mask their trail by walking in streams and over rocks, they did. It reached the point where the hunters moaned at a glimpse of water or a patch of stone. The robbers often split into five or six groups to confuse their trackers.
The centaurs used magic to hide their passage and their appearance in scrying crystals. They buried or hid loot so it wouldn’t slow them down. The Riders found two caches; Dom’s squad found a third. Everyone knew more was hidden away, because the bandits attacked every village they could, no matter how slim the pickings. In one village they sold loot from other raids, taking it back with everything else of value when they struck that night.
Clean clothes became a delirium dream. Kel washed hers cold and wore them wet, thanking the gods she didn’t get sick easily. She learned why Raoul had said she would do few of the things that squires normally did for knights. She barely had the strength to care for their mounts and weapons. Waiting on him as he ate and putting out his clothes for the morning would be ridiculous.
On the ninth day they ran out of the lotion that repelled insects. Lord Raoul growled under his breath and sent a party to the palace for supplies, for Riders and centaurs as well as Third Company.
By and large Kel thought the centaurs who hunted with them were decent people. They worked hard and never complained.
‘Rogues make us look bad,’ Iriseyes, their female leader, told Dom, Qasim, and Kel one night as they gnawed stale flatbread. ‘Enough two-leggers call us animals as is, without this crowd making it worse. We told Greystreak he ought to cull Maresgift, Jealousani, Edkedy, and their crowd, but he wouldn’t do it. I suppose it’s hard to cull your own brother.’
‘Cull?’ Dom asked.
‘Kill ’em,’ Iriseyes said. ‘Herdmasters like Greystreak can do it. You don’t want bad blood in the herd, particularly not in the slaves. It ruins the slaves, so you have to get rid of them, too. That’s probably what Greystreak’s doing now, culling the slaves that bred with that crowd.’
Kel got up abruptly and walked away. Killing horses because they’d been mounted by wicked centaurs was obscene, she thought, hands shaking as she washed her dishes. It was as obscene as babies’ being shot as their families ran from danger.
That was the eleventh night. The next morning the party with fresh supplies found them. Clean garments and insect repellant gave everyone, including Kel, a more cheerful outlook. She could even talk to the centaurs, though she had to banish the word ‘cull’ from her mind when she did.
On their fifteenth night they got a piece of luck: Osbern’s squad picked up Macorm, a Haresfield renegade. The young man was filthy and afraid. A bite on his arm was infected. He was bound hand and foot, wounded arm or no. Osbern told Raoul it was to protect Macorm as much as hold him: Osbern’s men had not liked what they saw in Haresfield. They knew Macorm had been one of the two who had opened the gate.
‘It wasn’t what I imagined, my lord,’ the prisoner told Raoul. ‘There was no feasting or pretty girls or wine. Just take and run, and run. Gavan likes it, but he likes killing, too.’ A tear ran down his face, drawing a clean track in the dirt. ‘All I did was ask to go home. I swore I’d never tell, but they didn’t believe me. They said they’d cull me at sunset for the Mares with Bloody Teeth—’
‘Our goddesses of vengeance,’ explained Iriseyes. She and two other centaurs were listening to Macorm’s tale.
‘They said they’d eat my heart. I believed them. They tied me up, but I got away.’ More tears followed the first.
‘We’ll just shackle you, then,’ Raoul said. ‘To keep you from repeating the experiment.’
‘I know