Grendar Walks into the Camp

He saw the figure first from the western pickets, where Ryder had set him at the third hour of the day with three of the older men of his small troop. The pickets had, in the past month, been moved twice — once to widen the camp's perimeter, once to widen it again — and Ryder had been, in the moving, more particular each time about who he placed where. The western pickets were the men who had been with him longest.

The figure came up the western lane.

It came up the lane the way a man came up a lane who had been walking for some time and who did not, in the walking, want to startle the country he was walking into. It walked the small careful pace of a column-veteran on his last day before furlough. It carried, in its left hand, a leather case of perhaps a foot in length, square at the corners, oiled at the seams. It wore a long grey cloak, a sword that had not been drawn, boots that had been walked in for some weeks. It had a face under the hood. The face was, when the older private at the picket lifted his lantern slowly at hip height, not the face of a man who had been alive for some time.

The private did not, on the seeing, swing the lantern. He did not, on the seeing, call out. He turned his head a fraction toward Ryder, who had been standing six paces back of the picket line in the shadow of an old plough-cart, and Ryder, on the small specific angle of the private's head, walked forward to the line.

He looked once at the figure on the lane.

"Halt there."

The figure stopped at the edge of the lantern's circle.

Ryder did not, on the speech, move forward. He did not, on the speech, signal his men back. He stood. He looked at the case. He looked at the figure.

The figure inclined its head. It set the case down on the road-stones at the centre of the lantern's circle. It stepped backward — one pace, two, three, four — until it was standing at the second wooden pole that Ryder's men had set into the ground six weeks ago at the edge of the picket. It stopped there. It did not, in the stepping back, draw the sword. It did not put its hands on the cloak. It stood, with its hands at its sides, in the small polite formal way a courier stood when he had been told to stand still.

Ryder turned to the older private.

The older private went.

Ryder did not, in the going, take his eyes from the figure. The other two men of the picket did not move. Ryder did not move. He stood, at six paces from the case, and he looked at the case, and the case did not, in any of the small ways a case sometimes does, do anything.

The Major arrived in the time it took a man to come from the courtyard with his cloak still on him. The princess arrived the time it took her after that. The priest arrived behind her. They came down the western lane in the small careful order they had been arriving in, in each other's vicinity, for the past three weeks — the Major a half-pace ahead at the right shoulder, the heir at the centre, the priest a half-pace behind on the left. They stopped at Ryder's shoulder.

The figure did not move.

The Major studied it for a long count. He had, by some discipline of his own face, schooled the face he had brought up the lane to a face that did not, on its surface, register the sight. Aelinna had not. She did not, on Aelinna of Krypton's face, mind the registering. She let the face do its small careful reading. She did not, in the reading, take her eyes off the figure to look at the case.

The figure considered the question. It considered it the way a man, in life, would have considered a question of category. It answered, after a count, in the small careful tone of a man who had been a soldier and who, on the question, was being honest.

The figure inclined its head a fraction. The inclining was not, on Aelinna's reading, the inclining of a being trained to be honest by the warlock's table. It was the inclining of a man who had been taught, in his life, by his mother, or by his sergeant, or by the small private patient women a man had known, to deliver a message he had been given without tampering with it.

"My grandfather. Pickelbridge. Forty-one years ago."

The Major, at her shoulder, drew a small breath. He did not, on Aelinna's reading, intend it to be heard. She heard it. She did not, on the hearing, turn.

She turned her head a fraction to the priest.

He said it without elaborating. He said it without going to the case. He had, by some quiet practice she had not had occasion to see before, read the case from the place he stood at her shoulder. He did not, in the saying, look at her face. He looked at the case.

She nodded.

The Major nodded once. He went past Ryder to the case. He picked it up by the leather handle. He did not, in picking it up, alter his face. He carried it back along the lane in the careful even pace he had used to come down it.

The princess turned, again, to the figure.

The figure considered the question.

He turned. He walked, in his careful even pace, back down the western lane. The pickets watched him go. The men did not, on his going, lift bows. They had been told, by the heir's careful instruction, the conditions. The figure walked the lane in the slow soft autumn light, and at perhaps two hundred paces it stepped, briefly, off the lane to skirt a small fallen branch, and a younger picket at the second pole drew, on Ryder's small careful command, a single arrow to half-tension and held it. The figure stepped back onto the lane after the branch. The arrow did not fly. The figure walked on. At perhaps eight hundred paces, the figure was, in the autumn light, no longer distinguishable from the lane. By the half hour, it was gone.

The case was on the stone bench in the small chapel at the eastern wall. The Major was at the door of the chapel, with two of his older men. The princess and the priest were inside. The girl with the flame had been moved, by Silas, to the western chapel with the older sister of the cathedral.

The chronicler will not, in the line that closes the chapter, name the contents of the case. The chronicler does not, on this morning, know them. The chronicler observes only that a delivery from the warlock to the angels had been a delivery to which side?, and that even the angels, when the case was, three days later, opened by Phaeren on the ridge above Darklume, were not certain of the answer. The case held a single ritual instrument from the laboratory north of Marrowport — a small dark glass cylinder, dead at the centre, hollow at the rim, of a kind Phaeren did not, on his best reading, recognize. Phaeren put it into a second case of his own. He carried it away from the camp. The chronicler will not, in this season, follow it.

A delivery had been received. The receiving had cost the camp nothing in lives and a great deal in certainty. The chronicle's most useful currency had been spent, by the warlock, on a single morning's walk by a man who had, forty-one years ago, learned honesty from his grandfather. The currency had been spent well.