Kushiel's Dart - Jacqueline Carey [297]
Whether or not the Skaldi would follow orders, I doubted. Remembering the fractious tribal rivalries that pervaded the encampment at the Allthing, I could well imagine it would be hard to maintain the iron rank-and-file discipline that had made ancient Tiberium such a formidable foe. That was one point in our favor, albeit a small one.
Selig still had the numbers. And the Allies of Camlach.
So I brooded as we marched, each glorious day that dawned hastening my unease, the warm balm of sunlight serving to remind me of time's swift passage.
"Will you take it all upon your shoulders, Phedre?" Joscelin asked me quietly one day, jogging his mount alongside mine. How he knew my thoughts, I don't know; I must have been wearing them on my face. "Can you slow time, or shorten the road we travel? I was reminded, not long ago, not to take upon myself that which is not mine to carry."
"I know," I said, sighing. "I can't help but worry. And the Skaldi. . . ah, Elua, you've seen them! If the Cruithne are riding toward death, they're doing it at my word, Joscelin."
He shook his head. "Not yours; Ysandre's. You but carried it for her. And 'twas their choice, made freely."
"It may have been the Queen's word, but I spoke it, and did all in my power to persuade their choice." I shivered. "The Dalriada wouldn't be here if I hadn't. None of them would."
"True." To his credit, Joscelin said it without his usual wry twist. "But Drustan rides for love, and a pledge. Love as thou wilt. You cannot gainsay it."
"I'm afraid of this war." I whispered it. "What we witnessed in Alba . . . Joscelin, I never want to see the like again, and it will be as nothing to what awaits us in Terre d'Ange. I don't have the strength to face that much death."
He didn't answer right away, gazing forward, his profile in clear relief against the green fields. "I know," he said finally. "It scares me, too. There'd be somewhat wrong with us if it didn't, Phedre."
"Do you remember waking up in that cart, after Melisande betrayed us?" I asked him. He nodded. "I could have died, then. I wouldn't have cared. Hating her was the only reason I had to live, for a while." I touched the diamond at my throat. "I don't feel the same, now. I'm afraid of dying."
"You remember Gunter's kennels?" He gave me the wry look. "Hating you kept me alive, then, when I thought you'd betrayed me. If you'd asked me before, I'd have sworn I'd kill myself before I endured such humiliation. And Selig's steading? You shamed me into living."
I remembered shouting at him, shoving him where he knelt, wounded and chained, and flushed. "I was desperate. Are you going to do the same to me?"
"No," Joscelin said, though he grinned as if the prospect weren't entirely displeasing to him, which gave me a strange sensation, a fact I kept to myself. "They are," he said, twisting in the saddle and nodding to the rear. "That's what I came to tell you, actually."
I turned to look.
Rousse's men were marching behind us; there weren't enough horses to mount them, they'd fought on foot. They marched in formation, four columns six deep. The Admiral, his leg still healing, rode alongside them. As I watched, the foremost row grinned, and one man-Remy, who'd taught Hyacinthe to fish-stepped out in front, carrying a tight-wound standard. The others in his row shifted, so they formed a wedge.
Phedre's Boys, he'd called them. Atop a wide-barreled chestnut gelding, Quintilius Rousse chuckled.
Remy unfurled the standard and held it aloft with a clear D'Angeline shout, letting the banner snap in the breeze. They'd made it themselves; sailors are great tailors. Where they begged the cloth, I don't know; I heard later