She came ashore just beneath where they lay. It was here, they realised, that she had left her clothes. She stepped out of the water and began to dry herself with her hands, facing out towards the water, her back to them.
They each looked at the other. They did not need to speak. Here was a woman, by herself. She had no escort, no companion, and she was, as far as they both knew, without a husband or a champion at the court. Again, neither stopped to think that in fact she did have a champion at the court, and he was without equal or better. This pale body exposed before them excited them even more than the one they had just lost sight of, and an instinct even deeper than that of hunting flooded their hearts, taking them over and extinguishing all rational thought.
It was dark beneath the circling trees and the birds were calling all around, alerted by the flight of the xule, and so providing sufficient noise to mask even a clumsy approach.
They might knock her out, or surprise her and blindfold her. She might never even see them, in other words, and they might be able to ravish her without risk of discovery and punishment. That they had been led here by the xule seemed like a sign from the forest gods of old. They had been delivered here by a creature close to myth. The opportunity was too good to ignore.
Puomiel took out a pouch of coin he had in the past used as a cosh. Auomst nodded.
They slipped out of the bushes and made their way stealthily down through the shadows between a few small intervening trees.
The woman was singing softly to herself. She completed drying herself with a small kerchief which she then wrung out. She stooped to pick up her shirt, her buttocks like two pale moons. Still facing away from the two men, who were now only a few steps behind her, she held the shift over her head and then let it fall down over her. For a few moments she was and would be blind, pulling the garment down over hers-elf. Auomst and Puomiel both knew this was the moment. They sprang forward. They sensed the woman stiffen, as, perhaps, she heard them at last. Her head might have started to turn, still caught inside the folds of the shirt.
They woke with aching heads in the darkness of a night full save for Foy and Jairly, shining down like two grey reproachful eyes upon the calm, still waters of the hidden lake.
The Doctor was gone. They each had bumps the size of eggs on the backs of their heads. Their bows had been taken and, most oddly of all, the blades of their knives had been twisted, bent right round and made a knot of.
None of us could understand that at all. Ferice, the armourer's assistant, swore that treating metal like that was next to impossible. He tried to bend knives similar to Auomst and Puomiel's in a like manner and found that they broke almost immediately. The only way to make them behave in such a fashion was to heat them to a yellow-white heat and then manipulate them, and that was hard enough. He added that he had received a boxing about the ears from the armourer for such assiduous experimentation, to teach him not to waste valuable weapons.
I was suspected, though I did not know it at the time. Auomst and Puomiel assumed that I had been with the Doctor, either guarding her with her knowledge, or spying on her without it. Only the testimony of Feulecharo, whom Jollisce and I had been helping to sort through some of Duke Walen's possessions at the time, saved me from a coshing.
When eventually I did discover what had happened I did not know what to think, save that I wished that I had been there, either to guard or to spy. I would have fought both of those miserable ruffians to the death to protect the Doctor's honour, but at the same time I would have gladly surrendered my own for a single furtive glimpse of her such as they had been afforded.
18. THE BODYGUARD
The city of Niarje is conventionally supposed to lie six days" ride from Crough, the capital of Tassasen. The Protector and his company of fresh troops arrived there in four, and were appropriately tired after their long days in the saddle. It was decided they would rest in the city while they waited for the heavy artillery pieces and siege engines to catch up with them, and for fresh word from the war in Ladenscion to arrive. That word soon appeared in the form of coded messages from Duke Ralboute, and was not good.
The barons" forces were proving far better trained, more comprehensively equipped and reliably supplied than had been anticipated. Cities would not quickly be starved into submission. Fresh defences encircled almost all of them. The troops manning those defences were not the usual rabble but rather gave every indication of having been drilled to the highest standard. Partisan forces harried the Protectorate's supply lines, sacking camps, ambushing wagon trains, taking weapons meant to be directed at them for their own use and forcing troops needed at the front to attach themselves to each of the supply caravans. General Ralboute had himself nearly been killed or captured in a daring night raid which had issued from the besieged city of Zhirt. Only luck and some desperate hand-to-hand fighting had prevented disaster. The general himself had had to draw sword and was within one defending aide of having to join the fray.
We are told that one of the situations a soldier craves to engineer for his enemy, and dreads being caught in himself, is that of the pincer movement. So it can only be imagined what UrLeyn felt when he was caught in just such a plight in Niarje, not by the attack of enemy troops, but by information. The intelligence that the war in Ladenscion was going so ill arrived just half a day before news came from the opposite direction that was, if anything, even worse, and also concerned illness.
UrLeyn seemed to shrink in on himself. His hand holding the letter fell, and the.letter itself fluttered to the ground.
He sat down heavily in his seat at the head of the dining table in the old Ducal mansion in the centre of Niarje. DeWar, standing just behind UrLeyn's seat, stooped and picked up the letter. He set it, folded closed, by UrLeyn's plate.
"Sir?" asked Doctor BreDelle. The Protector's other companions, all army officers, looked on, concerned.
"The boy," UrLeyn said quietly to the doctor. "I knew I should not have left him, or should have had you stay with him, Doctor…"
BreDelle stared at him for a moment. "How poorly is he?"
"At death's door," UrLeyn said, looking down at the letter. He handed the letter to the doctor, who read it.
"Another seizure," he said. BreDelle dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. "Shall I return to Crough, sir? I can start at first light."
The Protector stared down the table at nothing for a moment. Then he seemed to rouse himself. "Yes, Doctor. And I shall come too." The Protector looked apologetically at the other officers. "Gentlemen," he said, raising his voice and straightening his back. "I must ask you to continue on to Ladenscion without me, for the moment. My son is unwell. I hoped that I would contribute to our eventual victory as soon as you will, but I fear that even if I were to continue, my heart, and my attention, would still be drawn back to Crough. I regret that the glory will be yours, unless you contrive to extend the war. I will join you as soon as I can. Please forgive me, and indulge the fatherly weakness of a man who, at my age, should really be a grandfather."
"Sir, of course!"
"I'm sure we all understand, sir."
"We will do all we can to make you proud of us, sir."
The protestations of support and understanding went on. DeWar looked round the young, eager, earnest faces of the junior noblemen gathered round the banqueting table with a feeling of dread and foreboding.