* * *
At the outer gates of the palisade, the old, the young, and the incurably unfit for combat fled Oakford. Merchants’ wagons, full of families and what belongings they’d been able to pack in a few hours, rumbled out. Others followed on horses, mules, or their own feet. Amris watched as a young woman kissed a towheaded child and set him on horseback in front of an old man. All three were weeping; the adults only did so quietly. The woman kissed the man on the cheek, smacked the solid draft horse gently on the rear, and then turned away and walked over to Amris.
“Where do I go to train, sir?” she asked, her voice still choked.
“Make your way to the fortress. When last I saw Corporal Valerin, he was…making his presence hard to miss, but if you need further guidance, he’s roughly my height but rounder. He has long black hair, and he wears a brown sash.”
Over the course of the morning, he’d repeated the same instructions nearly a score of times. Although he was a stranger and wore no sash to indicate rank, the folk of Oakford chose Amris to answer their questions. He wasn’t entirely surprised, and that wasn’t entirely vanity: of all the armed people in the town, he looked steadiest on his feet. Many of the soldiers were positively green. Even Olvir and Katrine, making themselves useful as he was, had a lost air about them; they moved as though they weren’t quite sure the world around them was real.
For them, of course, this duty was new. For Amris, it was sadly familiar—but as he watched the young woman jog off toward the fortress, he doubted that was all the explanation.
He’d watched that morning when Hallis had broken the news. The faces in the crowd might have been from his own time, his own commands, in their fear and confusion, but there was an element of disbelief that Amris didn’t recognize from so far back. He’d seen it on Hallis’s face, though. It had been less present on Darya’s—because she’d discovered the situation piece by piece, because she’d seen him locked outside of time, or simply because the Sentinels lived intimately with magic and threats—but present nonetheless.
In Amris’s day, Thyran and his army had been bad foes, and their reputation had grown over the course of the war, but that had been all. Now Thyran was the architect of a hundred years of ruin, of death and privation that had driven people to the most desperate acts: a name to conjure with.Known to bad children and old wives everywhere, Darya had said.
The folk of Oakford faced not just a threat, and a bad one, but the upending of the world they’d known—of time itself, in a manner, for Thyran had been safely dust and legend before Darya and Amris had come in and dragged the past bloody-handed behind them.
Thus, Amris answered questions, gave directions, broke up the occasional argument, and helped to get runaway stock or children into the care of those fleeing the city. He wouldn’t normally have known either the land or the people as well as the rest of the soldiers, but just then, he kneweverythingbetter than they did.
He turned from pushing a barrel back upright on a wagon and caught sight of Darya headed toward him through the crowd. Even in the chaos, many drew back from her.
“You’re making me feel lazy” were her first words when she reached his side.
Like him, she was clean and cleanly dressed, itself a dramatic change. While Oakford had done the best it could by Amris in the way of one man’s second-best tunic and another’s spare pair of breeches, Darya clearly wore her own clothing, and wore it well. Sea-green wool served her for hose and for the laced doublet that cinched tightly over a light-brown shirt with wide sleeves and a low neckline.
Many of those avoiding her touch were staring surreptitiously all the same. Amris would have been among them, had he not seen the glowing emerald in her sword hilt and heard the cheerful voice in his head as Darya got closer.She’s only halfway lying, love. I wouldn’t have expected to find you on your feet so soon, much less out here—except that I know you.
“You’re awake,” he said, drawing close enough that—hopefully—nobody would notice the warmth in his voice, or think it strange for apparently addressing a woman he’d known all of three days. “And you’re well?”
Very well, considering the circumstances—and very interested in what I managed to do, now that I had the link to both of you. It was as much instinct as logic just then, you understand, but—Gerant broke off and laughed at himself—I am so glad it worked, and that the creature didn’t harm you seriously.
“Not seriously, no.” Amris touched the bruises on his throat gently. Necklines were lower in this time, and his did nothing to conceal the marks of the previous day; that might well be working to his advantage as a figure of authority. “And we made short enough work of the others.”
I would’ve expected nothing less from the pair of you.
“I’ve more or less filled him in on what happened,” Darya said, with a sidelong glance that meant she hadn’t been forthcoming withallthe details. “I’m meeting with Hallis soon. He’s moving quickly, I see.”
“Not him alone,” said Amris, gesturing to the refugees, “but yes. Already he’s gathering what supplies are in reach. More will be coming soon, and soldiers to go with them—with any luck.”
“And you’re the voice of reason in the middle of it all?” Darya took in the fleeing townsfolk and the soldiers struggling to do their duty. “I don’t think I could help—somehow, I’m not the sort people ask for directions—but damn me, you don’t get a minute of rest, do you?”
He hasn’t in years.
“Life hasn’t allowed it,” Amris replied. “Though some might say I had a hundred years of rest.”
Yet it hadn’t felt like rest. He’d been in the midst of battle one moment and facing Darya the next, with a strange sensation between that had been more similar to a long blink than sleep. When Darya responded with a dismissive laugh, he didn’t argue the point.
“I should go and hear my fate,” she said, and bit her lip before going on. “I’ll find you afterward, all right? Grab a spare sword from the armory, give you two an hour or so to talk. I’d do it now, but there’d be questions.”
And I should be at the meeting as well,said Gerant.Afterward, though—I’d be glad of the chance. Thank you.
“That’s most generous of you,” Amris added with a slight bow, and hopefully no sign in his voice of anything but gratitude. Hewasgrateful, and he’d take Gerant’s presence with a joyful heart—but he realized, in that moment, that being close to Gerant now meant being close to Darya, with all the temptation that implied.
He thought she had come to the same conclusion. The way she’d caught her lip between her teeth before making the offer, and the uneasy shift of her weight while they spoke, implied as much. They each loved Gerant, in their own manner, and as much as that kept them from acting on their urges, it would also keep them from maintaining the distance that would make such restraint comfortable.
“I’ll see if I can find some decent liquor,” said Darya. Her voice implied that she’d need it. Amris silently agreed with the sentiment.
Chapter 28
