Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [202]
Kly turned his horse around, heading back down the trail. "Here, Sergeant, put the boy up."
"I can carry the boy. Think you'd better give m'lady a lift. She's about out."
Too true. It was a measure of Cordelia's exhaustion that she went willingly to Kly's horse. Between them, Bothari and Kly shoved her aboard, perched astraddle on the pinto's warm rump. They started off, Cordelia gripping the mailman's coat.
"What happened to you?" Kly asked in turn.
Cordelia let Bothari answer, in his short sentences made even shorter by his burdened stride, as he carried Gregor piggyback. When he got to a mention of the men heard down the vent, Kly barked a laugh, then clapped a hand over his mouth. "They'll be weeks getting out of there. Good work, Sergeant!"
"It was Lady Vorkosigan's idea."
"Oh?" Kly twisted around to glance back over his shoulder at Cordelia, clinging wanly.
"Aral and Piotr both seemed to think diversion worthwhile," Cordelia explained. "I gather Vordarian has limited reserves."
"You think like a soldier, m'lady." Kly sounded approving.
Cordelia wrinkled her brow in dismay. What an appalling compliment. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking like a soldier, playing their game by their rules. The hallucinatory military world-view was horribly infectious, though, immersed in it as she was now. How long can I tread water?
Kly led them on another two hours of night marching, striking out on unfamiliar trails. In deep pre-dawn dark they came to a shack, or house. It seemed to be of similar construction to Kly's place, but more extensive, with rooms built on and other rooms built on to the additions. A light from a tiny flame, some sort of greasy homemade candle, burned in a window.
An old woman in a nightgown and jacket, her grey hair in a braid down her back, came to the door and motioned them within. Another old man—but younger than Kly—took the horse out of sight toward a shed. Kly made to go with him.
"Is it safe here?" Cordelia asked dizzily. Where is here?
Kly shrugged. "They searched here day before yesterday. Before I sent for m' nephew-in-law. Checked it off clean."
The old woman snorted, surly memory in her eye.
"What with the caves, and all the unchecked homesteads, and the lake, it'll be a while before they get around to re-checking. They're still searching the lake bottom, I hear, they've flown in all kinds of equipment. It's as safe as any." He went off after his horse.
Meaning, as unsafe as any. Bothari was already taking his boots off. His feet must be bad. Her feet were a mess, her slippers walked to flinders, and Gregor's rag shoes utterly destroyed. She'd never felt so near the end of all endurance, bone-weary, blood-weary, though she'd done much longer hikes before. It was as if her truncated pregnancy had drained life itself out of her, to pass it on to another. She let herself be guided, fed bread and cheese and milk and put to bed in a little side room, herself on one narrow cot and drooping Gregor on another. She would believe in safety tonight the way Barrayaran children believed in Father Frost at Winterfair, true because she desperately wanted it to be.
* * *
The next day a raggedy boy of about ten appeared out of the woods, riding Kly's sorrel horse bareback with a rope halter. Kly made Cordelia, Gregor, and Bothari hide out of sight while he paid the boy off with a few coins, and Sonia, Kly's aged niece, packed him some sweet cakes to speed him on his way. Gregor peeked wistfully out the corner of one curtained window as the child vanished again.
"I didn't dare go myself," Kly explained to Cordelia. "Vordarian has three platoons of men