The First Open Skirmish

He had not, in twenty-one years of service, fought beside an angel. He had heard, by long custom of campfires, the small lay-stories of the kingdoms; he had, in a careful private way, read the few records the Royal Sword-School had not yet been required to suppress; he had, at the close of the season previous, sat at the western door of the cathedral and listened to Silas Grimshaw tell him, in the small steady tone of a priest who had been chosen, what an angel of the Twelve had said to him at his courtyard wall a season ago. He had not, in any of the long careful years, been on a field with one.

He was on a field with two of them now.

The field was the open downs, four miles east of Darklume, on a stretch of country that ran level for half a league before falling, gradually, into the valleys north of the eastern forests. It was the country Drexel had used, since S5, as the soft floor of his work — the country in which villages had been calm the way held breath was calm.

Today it had on it a column of perhaps one hundred and fifty: forty riders in plain leathers, sixty foot in the rough grey of a Drek conscription, fifty walking dead at the back. The column had been spotted, the previous evening, by Tirenne — who had gone north along the spine of the ridge after the morning of the four — and her single quiet warning had reached the camp by, the chronicler will not pretend to know, what means. Raven did not ask. He had been given a coordinate and a count.

He brought with him forty of his own riders, the ten of Aelinna's who had been most useful through the autumn, and Ryder's troop. He did not bring the heir. He did not bring the priest. He did not bring the girl. The girl had been told — by Phaeren, in the small careful one-sentence visit he had paid the chapel at dawn — that she would come, but she would not fight.

She had said nothing else. She was on the field this morning, standing twenty paces back of Raven's right shoulder, in the small grey wool dress the older sister had given her, with her cupped left hand at her side and the flame inside it. The flame was, this morning, the size of a small apple.

Phaeren held the centre of Raven's line, six paces forward of it. There was no armour. There was no weapon. Kael of the Bowmen held thirty paces north, also forward of the line, with the bow about him strung. Tirenne was not on the field; she had gone, after delivering the count, north again. Vaelor was not on the field; he was at the cathedral, by a private agreement Raven had not asked for and which the angel had, by his absence, made him understand. The two on the field were the ones the four had agreed, by some quiet measurement of the morning, would be the right two for what the field was going to require.

The Drek column came up the long shallow rise from the east at the small careful pace of a column whose officers had not yet decided whether to engage. The riders at the head were Maelis's men. They were, by the small specific cut of their leathers, not Krypton; they had been, in their lives, of two of the Counted Houses.

The column reached the small fold of country at four hundred paces and stopped.

It stopped because Phaeren had, six paces in front of the Krypton line, gathered.

The gathering was not visible in any of the small ordinary registers a Krypton officer would have recognized. It was the small careful arrival of a sentence the country between him and the column was being asked to keep — the small unmistakable no further of a being whose attendance had been built for exactly this kind of arrival. The Drek column did not, on the gathering, retreat. The column held. The riders at the head conferred briefly. They decided something. They moved.

The riders charged.

Forty horsemen at three hundred paces is, in any cavalry doctrine of the Royal Sword-School, a weight the Krypton line in front of Raven would have been hard pressed to absorb. Raven did not, on the seeing, give an order. He watched. He watched because his own field-judgement, at that moment, told him that the order had already been given by the burned man at six paces forward of him.

Ryder, beside Raven at the centre of the line, did not, for a long count, speak. He spoke once, at the moment the riders entered the small fold of country.

The country at the small fold — a fold of perhaps a man's shin's height, the kind of fold no horse pulled up at — changed. The chronicler will not pretend to describe what the change was. The grass at the fold did not burn. The earth did not crack. The riders did not, on hitting it, fall. The riders simply slowed. The horses, at the fold, did not refuse. They were not given the chance to refuse. The horses, at the fold, were still travelling forward; they had not, by any rider's intention, slowed. The slowing was happening at a level under the rider's intention. It was happening at the level the air itself, between the horse's chest and the country in front of it, lay. The riders, at the fold, kept charging at the speed of a slow walk. The slow walk reached, at perhaps a hundred and twenty paces from Raven's line, a stop. The horses did not throw their riders. The riders did not curse. The riders did not draw second weapons. The riders sat on horses that had agreed, by some quiet decision the field had made for them, not to advance.

Then Kael of the Bowmen, at thirty paces north of Phaeren, drew.

He drew once. The bow was a bow. The arrow, when he loosed it, was an arrow. The arrow was loosed at the leftmost rider of the head of the column — a man Raven, with his small careful field-eye, had already identified as the column's officer. The arrow took the rider in the throat. The rider fell.

The bowman drew again.

He loosed again. The arrow took the rider beside the first. The rider fell.

He loosed a third time, a fourth, a fifth. Five arrows in the count of perhaps ten breaths. Five riders down. The remaining riders of the head of the column, at the slow-walk stop, did not, on the ground in front of them having lost five officers in ten breaths, turn. They could not turn. The slow-walk did not give them the room. They sat on their horses. They held their reins. Their eyes did, for the first time in the field's morning, the small specific reading-back of men who had understood that they had been brought to a field they were not going to leave.

The foot, behind them, did the only thing the foot could do. They ran.

The foot ran in the careful disorder of men who had been conscripted by methods they had not, in their conscriptions, been told. They turned. They went east the way they had come. They went past the dead at the back of their column, and the dead did not, on the foot's running, attempt to stop them. The dead, for their part, kept advancing.

Phaeren's attention adjusted.

It came round to the dead.

The dead, at perhaps two hundred paces past the slow-walk stop, came on.

The presence gathered a second time. There were no small theatrical motions a younger angel of his order might have made. The gathering was the small unceremonial gathering of an attendance at the edge of a hearth that had decided, on this morning, that two of the warlock's bound were to be returned. Two of the dead — the chronicler does not say which two; the chronicler does not believe it matters — unmade. They did not burn. They did not collapse. They simply stopped being, in the field, dead. The dead were, by the small careful field-sense Raven had been fighting his career to develop, not gone in the way an unmade dead was, in the doctrine of the kingdoms, supposed to be gone. They were, more accurately, put down. The angel had not destroyed them; he had ended their service. The bodies, where they fell, were the bodies of two men who had, before the warlock had taken them, lived, and who were now, by the angel's gathering, permitted to be dead.

The remaining dead held for a count, and then dissolved — not by Phaeren's hand. The chronicler does not record by whose. The dissolving was, by Raven's reading, the warlock's. The warlock had, somewhere on his table, withdrawn the small cord of attention he had been keeping on this column, and the dead, without his cord, had nothing to hold them in the field. They sagged. They went, by small slow increments, into the country they had been brought up out of. The sagging took perhaps two minutes.

The riders, freed, turned.

They went east.

Phaeren did not, on their going, gather a third time. He let them go. Kael of the Bowmen settled the bow. He did not, on the settling, fire after them.

The skirmish had taken, by his careful reading, perhaps four minutes.

The chronicler will record, for the season's books, that no Krypton soldier was lost in the skirmish; that perhaps fifteen of the column's riders and an unknown number of foot died at the hands of Kael's bow and the foot's own running; that two of the empty were unmade by Phaeren's hand and laid to rest as men; that the rest of the column dissolved when its master withdrew his attention. The chronicler will record all of that. The chronicler will not, at the close of the chapter, suggest that the skirmish was a relief.

The girl had stood twenty paces back of Raven's right shoulder for the entire four minutes. She had not, in the four minutes, lifted her hand. The flame in her cupped left hand had not, in the four minutes, grown larger or smaller. She had stood with her cupped hand at her side and watched the burned man hold the slow-walk stop while the bowman put down the column's officer corps in five breaths.

She walked, after the engagement was over, six paces forward to where Phaeren held the small fold. The angel did not, on her coming, adjust. The morning had registered her. She did not, in coming up beside the place where he held, attend the patterned air around him. She attended the country to the east, where the foot had run.

She spoke once, quietly, in the small careful tone she had used to him at the end of the morning's training.

She nodded.

She did not, after, ask further. She turned. She walked back to Raven. She walked back the twenty paces in the small careful unhurried way of a girl who had, by long shepherdess habit, learned that you did not run on a field of dead men. She stood beside the Major at the centre of the line. She did not, on standing, ask him anything. She watched the country until the column's last riders were not, in the autumn light, distinguishable from the country.

A worse battle, Raven understood, had been agreed by both sides to follow. It would not, by the small careful reading he was making at the centre of his line, follow soon. It would follow at a moment Drexel's table would choose, and it would follow at the cathedral, and it would follow with the flame at the centre of it. He did not, on the morning, name the moment. He did not, on the morning, need to. The country had on it now, in the place where its first open battle in ten seasons had been agreed, the small clean air of an announcement: that the rules of the chronicle had, by the slow walk of fifty horses at a fold and the rising of a hand by a being whose name no Krypton soldier had been taught, been changed.

He gave the order to ride home.