Page 33 of Gryphon in Light

Inside the tent, the atmosphere could not have been more different than it had been before Kelvren the gryphon had joined them. The last of the “magical” gryphon feathers had long since been fletched into arrows, but you wouldn’t have known it by the iridescent striping on the vanes of the newly finished ones stored head-down in racks by the tent-flap. Hallock had convinced the gimps that there was almost as much “magic” in Ammari’s “paint” as there had been in the gryphon feathers—after all, it came from inside the same Change-Circle from which Kelvren had arisen, alight and rejuvenated!—therefore, it must be magical. The “paint” was in great demand now, and while Ammari was not exactly amassing a fortune from the tiny amounts of it that ordinary folk could afford, she was no longer scrambling for every honest job of petty labor she could get, and was, in fact, devoting all her time to making the paint.

So that’s three people who are better off since Kel landed among us. He counted himself among the three, of course.

“First in the tent!” someone barked as he lifted the flap. The chantey stopped mid-word, and although most of the people in this tent couldn’t leap to their feet, they did sit up straight in a posture as close to “standing at attention” as they could manage.

“Be at ease,” he said, as they had known he would; some of them were already losing the stiff pose before he spoke the words releasing them. Not that he blamed them. There was a lot of pain in this tent, even with better and more drugs available and Healers with the Gift, not just herb-and-knife Healers.

Not that I’m turning up my nose at any Healer. There were plenty of things that the unGifted Healers did just as well as those with a Gift.

“Have you heard anythin’ at all about our gryphon?” was the first thing called to him by a fellow who’d had to have a leg sawn off below the knee. Hallock felt himself warmed by the anxious gazes that met his; his “gimps” had taken Kel right into their hearts, and properly so.

“Only that he scared the rebels witless, which you already knew. Lord Breon has declared it was on his orders to do so, and that he made it back to the Hawkbrothers. And that’s where what I know ends.” Frowns met the second item on his short list.

“But—” someone began.

Hallock held up his hand, silencing protests. “This is the tale we will tell,” he said firmly. “Orders from above. It’s politics.”

Groans and nods answered that statement. Everyone here understood that when it came to “politics,” the best policy was for the grunts to keep their heads down and their mouths shut, and say nothing that wasn’t the official statement.

“Is our gryphon all right, though?” someone else persisted.

“No news is good news,” Hallock replied, although he knew very well that was cold comfort at best. “I’ll be sure and let you all know the very moment I find out myself. But I have other news. We’re not going home. Or rather, this is about to become our home.”

Heads came up and jaws dropped. “That means we’re being garrisoned here?” some bright spark asked immediately.

“We are.” He nodded. “Full garrison. Which means, for those of you who still want to serve, there’ll be places for you.” That was the Valdemaran way; if someone wanted to stay in the Guard after suffering injury, there were always non-combat positions for them within the walls of a garrison. Clerks for the literate, cook’s helpers, laundry, cleaning, weapon-crafting and repair—the Guard cared for their own.

“Lord Breon’s looking at his properties for something that’ll serve until the real garrison gets built,” he continued. “I can guarantee four real walls and a roof; we might bivouac in some barns for a while, but it’s spring, and by the time fall gets looking nasty, we’ll be in our own quarters.”

He didn’t have to add but if you want to go home, you’ll be sent, because that was a given with the wounded, and not out of the question for those whole and sound.

He waited until the conversation became general and didn’t necessarily need him, then showed himself out. Going home was out of the question for him. He was First now. These were his Guards, and he had duties to them. Going back home right now—and going back to Genni—well, that was not an option, and it ached him much more than his healing wounds that such was the case.

You knew what you signed up for when you took the uniform, he reminded himself. Although it was a usual thing, it was not, and had never been, guaranteed that a man would serve somewhere near home. Rotations leaned toward at least one faraway posting in any Guard career, and compared to the border, this would not be terrible for him. Still.

I need to stop taking things for granted.

His rounds complete, he went back to his tent; the First he had served under hadn’t brought much with her, and that little had been sent back to her people. Her body had been buried, along with the other casualties, even those from the “other side,” in a plot donated by Lord Breon himself. Well, Hallock didn’t have much more to his name than his First had had, and the tent was a pretty barren place, with little more than his pack and the cot, folding chair, and table all officers got as a matter of course. It had that musty-canvas smell all their tents did, after being out in the rain for so long, and having been packed away damp before they’d been sent out with the Guard to the North.

But there’s no ribbon hung outside this tent, so I’m still ahead.

This was not the life he had imagined, when he’d signed up as soon as he was old enough to. He’d imagined riding against bandits, standing watch along the border with Karse, and maybe, if he was lucky, escorting someone important. Standing watch on the Palace walls had been the height of his ambition, and when he’d met and married Genni, life had seemed perfect. Everything had been turned upside down by the war with Hardorn and the Mage Storms.

He sat down on the cot, which creaked under his weight, but it was more comfortable to sit on than the little camp stool. Officially, he was always on duty, but in practicality, now that the Elm rebellion had been quelled (for now) and the mercs had slunk back across the border with their tails between their legs, there wasn’t much for him to do except more rounds. And as a former grunt himself, he knew that there came a point when the rounds stopped seeming to be the work of an officer who cared, and started appearing as the work of an officer who wanted to manage every moment of every day of every one of his soldiers. So he sat, elbows on knees, hands dangling between them, restless, but unable to think of anything productive to do. There was too little time for a nap—a First’s prerogative, and considered a positive sign rather than one of laziness. A First having a nap was interpreted as a mark of their competence, someone whose duties were fulfilled over long hours, and who was confident of their troops.

It was nearly suppertime. The mess tent was going to be full, and although as an officer he was entitled to go to the head of the line, this news about staying here-ish had killed his appetite. They’ve surely told Genni. How is she taking this, I wonder?

Knowing her, with a smile on her face and the determination to keep her own feelings well under control. She knew what she was getting into when she married into the Guard, he reminded himself.

Still, he was going to take a few moments to himself to let his disappointment run its course. Like her, he’d go back to his people with a smile on his lips—or at least, without a frown—and keep his feelings to himself.

When he got up and walked to the mess tent, he found that not only were the new orders the main topic of conversation, they were the only topic of conversation. The huge canvas structure, full of trestle tables and benches, buzzed with gossip in which the word “garrison” cropped up every few moments.

He stood there a moment, taking in the space, listening to the tone rather than the words. The tone was positive, as far as he could tell. The word was generally pronounced with enthusiasm.

Of course it is, he realized after he thought about it. A garrison means a real set of buildings. Walls, floors, ceiling, real rooms out of the weather. Most of his people were unmarried, and one barracks was as good as another as long as the roof didn’t leak. And those who had sweethearts back home, well . . . sometimes those relationships lasted, and sometimes they didn’t, and the result probably would have been the same had this Company not been sent to this corner of Valdemar.

He made his way to the line of cooks standing over the benches laden with tonight’s fare—although as he was nearly the last to be served, the kettles and stacks of bread were looking pretty depleted. As he held out his mess kit to be filled, one of the cooks gave him a wink, and instead of getting the scrapings from the bottom of the soup kettle, the cook reached under the table, pulled out a pitcher, and tilted out a bowl full of soup he must have saved when the kettle had first been brought in from the fire. “Garrison sounds like a fine thing to me, First,” the cook said conversationally, topping off the kit with a round loaf of bread. “Real kitchen, real ovens.”