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"The diversion will start now," the monk said. Grimly: "Men are dying as we speak to distract the Protector's troops. Let's go."
The party went forward into the rainy night; the monk in the lead, as the native guide; then Alleyne Loring and his father; then Eilir Mackenzie and Astrid Larsson and John Hordle spread out in a fan as rear guard. They moved with cautious speed, across a meadow where no cattle grazed in this time of war, past a small farmstead equally empty and silent, and through a bare-branched orchard of peach trees just past bud-break. At the northern edge of it Nigel caught a flash of movement, more sensed than seen or heard; he patted the air with one hand, and they all sank down behind the weeds that flanked the fence and the laneway behind it.
Good, the Englishman thought. Not a sound.
He wasn't surprised at either Alleyne or Hordle; he'd helped train them himself, and knew their capacities. Astrid wasn't that much of a surprise either; Sam Aylward had taught her, and Michael Havel, and he knew the one and had a lively respect for the other. The movement had probably been nothing more than a fox or rabbit.
But Eilir is a bit of a startling phenomenon. I wouldn't have expected someone who couldn't bear to be able to be so quiet. She must have natural talent. I should have taken Hordle's word on it. He's not a man to let personal attachments cloud his judgment, not at all.
Lying by the fenceline, he put his ear to the muddy ground; even under the patter of the rain he could hear hooves approaching, many of them; at least a dozen riders, possibly twice that. Moments later a clot of horsemen followed the sound that heralded them, shambling along in no particular order, but with arrows on the strings of their short recurved saddle-bows or heavy machete-like sabers in their hands; one rose in the stirrups as he watched and slashed at an overhanging oak bough, bringing it down with casual ease though the wood was wrist-thick. He recognized the type; eastern mercenaries, plainsmen, the same folk he'd seen in action out near Pendleton last year, and which reports had placed in the Protector's service in this war. One had a light lance across his saddlebow and prodded at the roadside vegetation now and then.
Twenty of them, more or less, he thought; it was hard to be certain, with the light of the moon gone and the rain getting heavier.
They halted uncomfortably near, although there was a strip of meadow between the fence and the dirt road. One dismounted to piss into the roadway, holding the skirts of his long oiled-linen duster aside; a few of the others spoke, though most kept a keen eye out. Their ponchos and slickers made them look top-heavy and somehow inhuman through the murk and drizzle as they hunched in their saddles, and their heads swept back and forth.
I suppose they're nervous in close country like this, he thought; it was all small farms and fields here now, with new fences and hedges splitting up bigger pre-Change holdings. Not much like the great sagebrush plains and canyonlands of their homes, and doubly so in the wet darkness.
"What's got the Portland pussies all het up?" one asked. "They all tore over to the north there like it was a pretty girl spreading wide and yellin' first man here gets a piece!"
"Or like it was free beer on tap," someone else said.
"Oh, it's some raid or other, the monks kicking up their heels, I expect," a slightly older man replied; none of them sounded as old as his son Alleyne's twenty-eight. "Y'all know what the Portland pussies are like, hup-one-two-I-gotta-pike-up-my-ass. They spook easy, you ask me."
"Goddamn cold here," another said, wiping at the water on a face that was a blob of slightly lighter darkness. He looked up, which would only get him another face-full.
"Hey, who's the pussy now?" the older voice scoffed. "Been a lot colder, riding herd in winter."
"Yeah, but it's usually a dry cold. This country's too wet soon as you get west of the mountains. A man could get mushrooms growing on his balls around here."
"You could, Al, considering where you've been known to stick your dick. Rain's good for the grass, anyways," the leader's voice said. "Hey, Frank, you finished pissing or you got an irrigation system going there?"
"That was good beer we found," the one named Frank said, buttoning up his leather trousers. "Damn good. Better than any to home. I liked them little spicy sausages too, and the sweet cake with the nuts, but the beer was fine, with a real bite to it and a good head. Hope the monks got more for us to take."
"You want to take it, go up and knock that hard head of yours on them walls," the leader said, and there was a soft chorus of chuckles. "Anyway, saddle up. We got to patrol twice as much ground while the Portland pussies are away."
"Excuse me, while the noble knights and their vassals are off there chasin' noises in the dark," Frank said as he vaulted easily back into the saddle of his quarter horse, landing with a wet smack of leather on leather. "Christ, what a bunch of play-acting put-ons."
"They're payin' the bills. Mebbe we should dismount and scout some more. There's a farmhouse over to there, about a quarter mile. It'd get us out of the wet, at least."
Nigel's hand made a slight, almost infinitesimal movement towards the sword slung over his back. That farmhouse was directly in back of them; if the patrol leapt the fence, or came to tear it down "They ain't payin' me enough to get off my horse all the time," Frank said. "Considering we checked that house yesterday and there's no beer there. If I'm going to be cold and wet, I'd rather do it moving."
The mercenaries laughed again; then their horses rocked into motion in unison. The party waited silently until the patrol's hooves had faded into the rain; Nigel held out a hand and made them wait a moment more while he pressed his ear to the ground again. The muffled thump continued, fading steadily; they hadn't stopped to come dashing back.
"Go!" he said softly.
They crossed the road in pairs; he mentally blessed the overconfidence that had made the Protector leave only a bit over two thousand men here-enough to invest the town and the splendid fort, to be sure, but not nearly enough to encircle it, or keep small groups from infiltrating under cover of darkness. If they'd spread all their men in a thin ring around it out of supporting range of each other, they'd have been horribly vulnerable to counterattack and sally if the garrison was in any strength. Instead they'd sensibly kept most together in a single body big enough to defend.
Although in their commander's shoes I'd he screaming for another two or three thousand men, enough to put a fortified camp at each point of the compass and drive a ditch and trench all the way around. Interesting. There haven't been many sieges since the Change; nobody's quite sure of how to go about it, or how different it will be from the books.
A pruned vineyard covered the slight upward slope on the other side, the vines catching at their legs like twisted fingers in the dark. Then they went through a field, half plowed and half still in crimson clover; the disk-plow itself stood forlorn in the center of the field, abandoned when the word of war came, marking the spot where the sucking, gluey mud gave way to wet pasture. Nigel blessed the rain even as he cursed the squelching sounds their boots made and the way the ground clung to them; still, it was getting as dark as a wardrobe, and the hissing, drumming sound made a blanket of white noise around them. They were safe unless they blundered directly into another patrol; he could see less of the hill and fortress than he'd been able to half a mile back. It was fortunate the monk knew his way, because this was exactly the sort of situation that could get even experts thoroughly lost.