Chapter 20 Campfire

Audit of T. Marsh. Note 22. Subject reassigned by Her Highness from "fifty paces in front" to "beside me". Her Highness's mare now travels fifty paces behind Her Highness. Her Highness walks. So do I. My feet hurt. I am using this to complain while I am recording. H.Q.

The princess walked all the next day.

She'd said beside her, and she meant it, and since no horse would come within fifty paces of me, that meant she had to get down off her mare and walk. So she did. She walked on my left and Miss Quill walked on my right, and the princess's grey mare came along fifty paces behind with a groom at its head, looking offended. Behind that came the column. Behind the column, now, came Brakka and her warband, not trailing behind any more but right up close as a rear guard. The princess had asked them to. She'd gone back to Brakka's fire at dawn and asked her, properly, warlord to princess. Brakka had been so pleased she'd hugged her, and the princess had come back with her ribs creaking and her hair full of smoke.

Sir Gareth rode at the front of the column, alone. He didn't speak to anybody all morning.

"Your Highness," he said once, around noon, riding up as close as his stallion would go, which wasn't very. "It is not fitting. A princess of Aldmere on foot in the mud, beside a peasant."

"I'm told walking is very good for the constitution, Commander," said the princess, without looking up.

"The men are talking."

"Then they have something to talk about," she said. "That'll make a change."

Sir Gareth rode away. Miss Quill wrote something down.

* * *

It was a long day, cold and grey, the grazing country running away flat on both sides with nothing on it but sheep and stone walls, and the dark line of the Greywild getting closer on the right. The wagon was full of wounded. Dannet lay in the back with his neck bandaged and his eyes closed. Rusk sat up on the driver's bench beside the carter, holding his ribs and swearing at every rut. "Bastard," he'd say, every time the wheel went down. "Bastard of a road. Oh, you shit." The carter had started saying it along with him by the afternoon.

We didn't talk much, the three of us, walking. That was all right. You don't always have to.

Late in the afternoon, the princess asked me what I'd do with the money when I got it. All of it.

"Pay the tax," I said.

"And after that? When it's paid?"

I had to think. I hadn't thought about after that. There hadn't been an after that, really. There'd been a number, and a date.

"Pay Mag back," I said. "Three gold and a bottle. Buy hay for the winter. Get a new bucket. The good one got broken." I thought some more. "Fix the back fence. I was going to do the back fence the morning all this started."

The princess walked a few steps without saying anything.

"That's all?" she said.

"What else is there?"

She looked at me sideways, and then at Miss Quill, and Miss Quill looked back at her across me, and something went between them that I didn't catch.

"Nothing," said the princess. "Nothing else. It sounds very good."

* * *

We made camp that night in a fold of ground below a ruined sheepfold, about a day short of Coldwater, out of the wind. Brakka's lot had gone off into a wood on the edge of the Greywild an hour before sunset, and come back at dusk carrying a red stag between four of them, singing.

Before she went, Brakka had done her lift. She did it every day now, morning or evening, whenever she remembered. She'd marched up to the cleaver where it leaned against the wagon wheel, spat on her hands, heaved till her ears went dark, and let go laughing, and Grosh had written it in his book. Fourteen lifts. Fourteen fails. He showed me the page. There were little drawings in the margin of Brakka heaving, very well done.

"For the camp," said Brakka, and dropped the stag at my feet. "My husband cooks. Everybody knows."

"Who's everybody?"

"Pip," said Brakka. "Pip tells everybody."

So I cooked.

I hung the stag from the sheepfold wall and had it skinned and broken down inside an hour. Grandad would have been proud of me. The cleaver goes through a joint like it's not there. Haunches and saddle for roasting on spits over the big fire. Ribs and neck and shin in the two biggest pots off the supply wagon, with onions and barley from the stores and some wild garlic Grosh found by the stream, and thyme off the hillside, and salt. The liver, sliced thin and fried with the onions while the rest cooked, because you always eat the liver first, that's the cook's share.

It took three hours. The smell went all over the camp.

They came one at a time, at first, the guards. Then all at once. They stood round the big fire with their bowls and their mouths watering while I carved, and nobody said anything about the farmer, or the peasant, or the luck. Rusk had three bowls of stew and then asked for the marrow bones. Dannet sat up in the wagon long enough to drink some broth, and said it was the best thing he'd ever tasted, and went back to sleep with a smile. Brakka's warband sat in a big ring and ate with their hands and sang between mouthfuls. The princess's maid, who'd been frightened of me since the stable yard, came back for seconds and said thank you.

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The princess sat on an upturned crate by the fire and ate a whole plate of roast venison with her fingers, very neatly, and licked them afterwards. She saw me looking.

"Don't tell my mother," she said.

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Miss Quill ate slowly. She did everything slowly when she was tired. She sat on a log on my other side with her bowl in both hands and her eyes half closed, and every so often she'd take a spoonful and sigh.

"This is very good," she said, at last, in a voice like she was reporting a finding.

"It's just stew."

"It is not just stew," said Miss Quill. "I've eaten Mrs Ostry's porridge for six years, and cold suppers in my room. I know the difference. This is not just stew."

* * *

Sir Gareth didn't come to the fire. He sat by his own, outside his tent, with the two officers, and they ate the hard bread and cheese out of the stores. One of the officers came over halfway through and asked, very quietly, if there was any of the venison left. I gave him a full plate. He took it back to Gareth's fire, and I saw Gareth take one look at it and get up and walk away into his tent. The officer ate it himself.

It was after the food, when everyone was sitting with full bellies and the fire built up high, that the Countess arrived.

She came out of the dark from the road side, on foot, in a long black travelling cloak with the hood back. Her black hair was up in its silver pins. She didn't look like somebody who'd been on the road for four days. She looked like somebody who'd stepped out of a carriage at the opera.

The guards went very quiet. One of them crossed himself.

"Good evening," said the Countess, to the fire in general. "What a coincidence. I happened to be passing."

"Through a sheep paddock," I said. "A day out from Coldwater."

"I am very fond of sheep," said the Countess.

Brakka stood up.

It took her a while. When she'd finished, she stood with the fire behind her, looking down at the Countess, who was a head shorter and about a third of her width.

"Dead thing," she said.

"Green thing," said the Countess.

"You tied a spy to a tree."

"I found a spy. He was already very nearly tied. I merely finished the knot." The Countess looked round. "Someone had to watch the road at night, since the escort's commander was busy watching his reflection."

Some of the guards laughed. Not quietly enough.

Brakka glared at her for a long moment. Then she reached into her jerkin and pulled out a flat leather flask, very battered, and held it out.

"Mare's milk," she said. "Fermented. Three years. It will burn the hair off your tongue."

The Countess looked at the flask. Then, slowly, she took it, and unstoppered it, and sniffed it, and an expression went across her face that I'd never seen on her before. She looked surprised.

"I can't drink this," she said.

"I know," said Brakka. "Smell it anyway. It is very good."

The Countess sat down on the log beside Brakka. She held the flask under her nose with both hands. After a while she reached into her own cloak and brought out a slim silver bottle, and gave it to Brakka.

"Brandy," she said. "Older than your grandmother. Don't drink it all at once."

Brakka drank it all at once.

* * *

They sat up past midnight, the two of them, arguing. About the war in the east, and whether orcs or vampires had better manners, and whether a man who couldn't lift a cleaver should be allowed to sing about wyverns. About me, sometimes, in voices they seemed to think I couldn't hear. Once it nearly came to blows over whether I was a husband or a research subject. The princess solved it by pointing out, very calmly, that legally I could be both, and they both turned and glared at her, and then at each other, and then the Countess laughed and Brakka laughed and that was the end of that.

The Countess and Miss Quill eyed each other across the fire for a long time, without saying anything. In the end it was the Countess who spoke.

"You," she said. "The one with the ink."

"You," said Miss Quill. "The one who bit my audit subject."

"Your audit subject," said the Countess, "is the finest vintage in Aldmere, and I will not apologise for having taste."

"He is not a vintage. He's a person."

"So is a vintage," said the Countess, "if you're doing it properly."

Miss Quill opened her mouth. Then she shut it, and looked at me, and looked at the Countess, and I swear something nearly like a smile went over her face.

"Section four," she said. "Records are confidential. I won't be discussing his vintage."

"Pity," said the Countess.

The princess was watching all of it with her chin on her hand, the way you'd watch a play. When she saw me looking she raised an eyebrow, and I raised one back, and she smiled. It was the first time I'd seen her smile properly. It made her look younger.

I sat there by the fire with an empty pot at my feet and the cleaver leaning on my knee and looked round at all of them. Brakka with her big feet up on a stone, singing under her breath. The Countess beside her with a flask under her nose. Lys on her crate. Miss Quill on her log, eating the last of the stew out of the pot with a spoon. Rusk asleep against a saddle with his mouth open. Grosh writing in his little book.

I'd never had this many people round a fire in my life. At home it was me and Dad, and then just me. Me and Duchess and the chooks.

It was warm. That's all I can say about it. It was warm, and it wasn't only the fire.

* * *

They went off to sleep one at a time, in the end. Brakka to her warband. The Countess into the dark, the way she'd come, saying she had business. Lys to her tent, stopping at the flap to look back at the fire for a moment before she went in.

Miss Quill stayed. She sat on the log next to me, with her grey coat round her and her hands held out to the coals.

It was very quiet. Even the warband had stopped singing.

"Miss Quill," I said.

"Hmm."

"The dog."

She didn't say anything. She waited.

"I keep saying I got lucky," I said. "I said it to Gareth. I've been saying it to myself all day. And I don't think I've ever got lucky in my life. Not once. I've never won a raffle. I lost the only bet I ever made, on a horse race at the Thornfell fair, when I was twelve." I looked at the fire. "It came at me low and I put it down. That's not luck. That's just what I did."

"Yes," said Miss Quill.

"And the bolts. And the stones. And the scale. And Brakka. And the Countess, going over like that." I stopped. "Every one of them, I've got a reason. And every reason's all right on its own. A cheap crossbow. An old stone. Somebody tired, or drunk, or not trying. Any one of those is all right." I rubbed my face. "But you put them all in a row, side by side, and they start to look like a fence that's got too many patches on it. You can't see the old wood any more. Just patches."

Miss Quill was very still beside me.

"What do they add up to?" she said quietly. "In a row."

I thought about it. I thought about it for a long time.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't think I want to know. Because if it's not them, if it's not the crossbows and the stones and everybody else, then it's..." I stopped. "Dad told me every day of my life I was nothing special. Every day. And he wasn't a liar, Miss Quill. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't a liar."

She didn't say anything for a while.

"When you want to know," she said at last, "ask me. I'll tell you. All of it. I've written it down."

"Not yet."

"Not yet," she agreed.

We sat. The fire went down to red. After a while she leaned her head on my shoulder. I don't think she meant to. I think she was just very tired, and it was there. Her breathing went slow and even.

I didn't move. I sat there with her asleep on my shoulder and the cleaver across my knees, and watched the coals, and the Greywild black against the stars to the east. Somewhere down there, two days south, was home. A barn with a plank over a crack in the floor, and Elsie doing the milking, and Mag on her veranda.

I didn't move till the sky went grey. It was the best night's sleep I didn't get in my life.