Raven's Strike (Raven #2)(81)

"I'd have let the dead lie," said Rufort, who was riding beside them. "There would have been too much to do, trying to ensure remnants of the Army of Man survived. It would be a poor repayment of the price Ernave and all their beloved dead had paid to be so busy burying the past they lost their future. I've heard said that a battlefield's as dangerous a month after the battle as it was during the fighting."

"Disease," said Tier. "I agree with you. Best to save the living and let the dead lie. Remember them in song and story - that's a better memorial than any grave marker."

They saw the remains of buildings, though they didn't ride close enough to see more than a few broken stone blocks that looked to be as large as their horses.

"I can almost see it," said Phoran in a hushed voice. "The smoke and the sound of screaming. The terrible task of fighting foes who died so hard."

But even as great a battlefield as Shadow's Fall had to end sometime. There were trees in front of them, marking the boundary between old floodplain and foothill, when Seraph stopped her horse again.

"Wait," she said. "There's something."

"Yes," agreed Hennea. She rode off to the right a little, where three ragged blocks had been stacked one atop another. They were sunk into the soil a little. Hennea handed Jes her reins and, throwing a leg over the mare's neck, slid off, leaving Jes still mounted. She crouched down so she could get a good look at the stones.

"Doverg Ernave atrecht venabichaek," she said, then translated, "Red Ernave defended us here and died."

"They left a marker after all," said Tier. He looked around, then he turned his horse in a slow circle, and an expression of growing astonishment appeared on his face. He gave a disbelieving laugh. "It's just as I pictured it," he said. "I wonder how much of the story of Shadow's Fall is true?"

"I don't like it here," said Rinnie. "And there's a rainstorm coming soon. I don't want to be here if the sun's not shining. I don't think it would be a good thing."

Hennea dusted off her hands. Jes gave her a hand, and she swung up behind him this time.

"I don't think so either," Seraph told her daughter. She wanted away from the things that beckoned her with their stories of the long-ago dead.

They had to stop, though, at the end of the battlefield because, where their maps had shown a road, there was no trail at all.

Rufort got off his horse and stretched, while Tier and the women tried to compare the old maps to the current reality. He took the opportunity to look behind them at the wide flat-land with its short yellow grass.

Shadow's Fall.

How had he, Rufort Do-Nothing, come to such adventures? The third son of the fifth son of the Sept of Bendit Keep, Rufort had fought for everything he had, fought siblings and cousins until he was banished to Taela.

He'd joined the Passerines when the place was offered, hoping for somewhere to belong, to be valued. The Path had valued him, all right. He wasn't stupid. It hadn't taken him long to see that the Passerines were throwaway troops in a game the Masters of the Path were directing, but by then he'd also known there was no way out except death. But he had nothing to live for anyway, and the Path gave him a way to use the anger he kept bottled inside.

It had taken two things to make him rethink his attitude. The first was a beating that had taught him that, no matter how big and tough you are, there is always someone bigger and tougher. The second had occurred one night in the hall just outside of his room in an almost-forgotten corner of the palace, when he'd looked at the dead body of one of his fellow Passerines and decided he didn't want to die.

Rufort was a survivor.

He looked over at Phoran, who'd given up on a quick resolution and stripped his big grey stallion of its saddle and was inspecting a place where the horse's hide had rubbed thin on the ride over the mountains. Who'd have thought that Rufort of Bendit Keep would find himself embarked on an adventure with the Emperor - and such an emperor.

Rufort had honestly thought that in the Emperor's Own he would be a simple guard, a glorified servant - which was better than dead. But Phoran had never treated him that way, not in the practice fields before this trip, and not during it. Phoran asked his advice and followed it - or explained why he didn't.

Oh, Rufort knew the things that people said about Phoran. He'd seen the Emperor passed out in a drunken stupor more than once. Had watched the careless cruelties spawned by dissatisfaction and boredom - and hadn't Rufort done the same and worse for the same reasons?

But all that had changed. Rufort wasn't certain exactly how or why it had changed - except that Tier, a farmer of Redern and a Bard, had been loosed among the Passerines and changed Rufort's life forever. He had a place now, a position he was honored to serve in, and honorable men to serve with and under.

Toarsen and Kissel were men he could follow. He looked at them a minute as they chatted softly together. Men now, both of them, not the boys that they, and he also, had been at the beginning of the summer, men directed their own destinies rather than dancing to the tune of another's piping.

Rufort chose to serve his emperor. He'd follow Toarsen and Kissel as his captains gladly. But Phoran, Phoran was a man that Rufort of Bendit Keep, Rufort Survivor, would lay down his life for.

He laughed softly to himself at his overwrought (however true) thoughts. He looked around and saw there was a place not far away where a line of dwarfed willows outcompeted the fir trees. Probably a creek, he thought. They'd filled their water bags and jugs that morning; but he was from drier country than this and had learned never to pass water by.