Slaves were building up the long fires and clattering with food preparation; ponies whickered. Hansen swore, scratched, and got up. He hadn’t gotten chilled in his cocoon of heavy furs, but the irregularities of the ground left him stiff and sore.
They were camped in a valley of pine trees shattered two meters in the air. During a grim winter several years before, the trees had been buried in snow to that height. An avalanche blasting down from the crags to the right had sheared off the trunks above the level of the protective snow.
Hansen glanced up uneasily, but the high rocks were mostly bare and seemingly too distant to spawn such a catastrophe anyway.
Which was a reminder to be wary at all times, here no less than when he headed Special Units on Annunciation.
Shill sat on a log by a fire and stared into the mug he held before him. Hansen snapped his fingers at a slave, called, “Something hot to drink!” and seated himself beside the older warrior.
Shill gave him a nervous smile, as though he expected to be kicked. There was a bruise on the older man’s forehead from one of the work-outs Hansen had put him through.
“I was wondering,” Hansen said as he took the cup a slave brought him, “who was on guard last night?”
“Guard?” repeated Shill. “Guard against what?”
That was exactly the reply Hansen had expected, but he’d been too tired the night before to go into the matter then. When you ache all over, from training and from the unfamiliar exercise of riding a pony, it was easy to tell yourself that everything would be taken care of by the people whose business it was. And anyway, there wasn’t anything he could do to change accepted practice.
The second part of the proposition still looked accurate in the grim light of day.
“What if the Lord of Thrasey attacked us at night?” Hansen asked, simply to get a reaction which would represent the attitude of everydamnbody in this sorry excuse for an army.
The older man was honestly puzzled. “Huh?” he said. “Nobody fights at night. And anyway, the battlefield’s still a mile ahead. Though I guess we’ll have to suit up and walk it,” he added glumly, “just in case Thrasey jumps the gun.”
Hansen sucked at the contents of his cup. It was fresh mead or perhaps honeyed wine, sweet enough to qualify as food and warm from being mulled in a water-jacketed boiler—which was the most sophisticated device he’d seen on Northworld, apart from the battlesuits.
“So,” he said as his mind digested the information. “The time and place of the battle are arranged already? And that’s always the case?”
“Sure,” the older man agreed with a nod. “How else would you do it?”
He gestured. Trees of considerable size grew on the valley’s distant southern slope. A mist hung among their branches, indistinguishable from the bitter smoke hovering over the pine-log fires of the encampment.
“Blazes,” Shill said. “We could stumble around for weeks and never find Thrasey—nor the other way either.”
A group of freemen were mounting their ponies. When the riders were safely in their saddles, slaves handed them weapons—lever-cocked crossbows or three-meter lances.
Some of the freemen had already ridden off. Scouting appeared to be as disorganized as every other aspect of battle management.
Hansen abruptly slugged back the rest of his drink. “I’m going out with them,” he muttered.
“Why d’ye wanna do that?” Shill asked.
“Because I think somebody in this army ought to know what’s going on,” Hansen snapped.
He looked around. “I gave my pony to a couple slaves to off-saddle and feed,” he said. “Where would they be now?”
“If you’re really going to do that,” Shill said, “take one of those.” He pointed to the gaggle of freemen, mounting and equipping. “They’re saddled already, after all.”
“Right, thanks,” said Hansen, striding toward the freemen.
The older warrior shook his head in wonderment. “Sometimes I wonder what sorta place you come from,” he called.
Hansen turned his head. “That’s fair,” he retorted. “Because I sure-hell wonder what sort of place I’ve come!”
The leader of the half-dozen freemen whom Hansen accompanied was named Brian. He was about Hansen’s age; a husky, steady man whom Hansen would’ve been glad to have as a unit leader back on Annunciation.