Stalking Darkness

her.
    “Sergeants, I’m as new to this as the rest of them. Are there any special words to be spoken?”
    “Whatever you want to say,” Braknil replied with a shrug.
    Beka raised the arrow in front of her. “May we all fight together with honor, mercy, and strength.”
    With that, she touched the arrowhead to her tongue and the coppery tang of the blood flooded her mouth. She wanted to grimace and spit, but she kept her face calm as she cleaned the arrowhead in the snow and dropped it back into her quiver.
    “Honor, mercy, and strength!” echoed the others, doing the same with arrows and sword blades.
    “I guess that’s it. Now we’ve got supplies to deliver,” she told them. “Anyone seen my horse?”
    That evening Captain Myrhini’s troop feasted on the first fresh meat they’d had in weeks and drank the health of Beka and her turma several times over.
    When they’d finished and were settling in their tents for another cold night, Captain Myrhini drew Beka aside.
    “I’ve been talking with some of Mercalle’s riders,” she said as they walked together past the campfires of the various turmae. “Sounds to me like you kept your head and took care of your people.”
    Beka shrugged. She’d been doing some thinking of her own. “It’s a good thing. I made a mistake sending out two riders when three were already up on point. I don’t think it was any accident that those ambushers jumped us when they did.”
    “Oh?” Myrhini raised an eyebrow. “What could you have done differently?”
    “I was going to relieve Mercalle anyway. I should’ve ridden up alone and sent the other two back for their replacements.”
    “But that would have left your riders without an officer or sergeant.”
    “Well, yes—”
    “And the way I hear it, it was you who kept those green fighters from wasting all their arrows on the bushes, which the raiders were probably counting on. The fact is, it was me who made a mistake today.”
    Beka looked at her in surprise, but Myrhini motioned for her not to interrupt. “I assumed that because we were in neutral territory,it was safe to send a decuria out on its own. If you’d had the turma with you, those brigands would never have attacked. Of course, you were far too tactful and inexperienced to bring this to my attention when I gave you that order, weren’t you?”
    Beka couldn’t quite read the officer’s cryptic smile. “No, Captain, it just never occurred to me that we’d need any more people than that for a supply run.”
    “Then we were both in error,” Myrhini said. “But learn and live, as a certain friend of ours always says. You did well, Lieutenant. Sergeant Mercalle thinks you’ve got the makings of a good fighter, by the way.”
    “Oh?” Beka asked, caught between pleasure at the veteran’s appraisal and a certain pique that the sergeant had evidently not had the same confidence in her abilities before now. “What made her say that?”
    “I think it was the way you were grinning as you fought,” Myrhini answered. “At least, that’s what she hears from those fighting beside you. Tell me, were you scared?”
    Beka thought about that a moment. “Not really. Not during the fight, anyway.”
    “Sakor touched!” the captain exclaimed, shaking her head. But Beka thought she sounded pleased.

25
L OOSE E NDS
    C lutching the stolen loaf beneath his shirt, Skut sprinted through the late afternoon crowd filling the marketplace. Behind him he could hear the furious bread seller shouting, “Stop him, stop thief!” A few people made halfhearted grabs at him, but the sympathy of the waterfront crowd was obviously with him. Reluctant to leave his wares open to further depredations, the bread seller quickly gave up and returned to his handcart.
    Hunger knotted Skuf’s empty belly; Tym’s death had thrown him off his game for three days now, and he’d had almost nothing to eat. Grabbing the loaf had been a desperate move, but he couldn’t stand the gnawing ache in his gut any longer.
    Keeping one eye out for trouble, he threaded his way through filthy alleys to a ruined warehouse on the western fringes of the lower city, his current home. One wall had burned and fallen in and the whole place reeked of old smoke, but an attic loft was still sound. Picking his way over the rubble, he climbed the makeshift ladder leading up to it.
    Sunset light spilled across the floor below but the back of the loft was already lost inshadow. The grey doves roosting