VII. On the Field

Seva smiled widely at Holland, rushing over to hug her guardian. "We are to be wed by spring!" she said, sounding so delighted that the penitent didn't have the heart to do anything but give the young woman her best smile.

"I'm happy for you," Holland said, giving Seva a slight squeeze in the hug. It felt so good to have the baroness's body against her own that it was almost physically painful to let her go. She tried to memorize the feeling no matter how brief the moment. "What's the prince's verdict?"

"As glad as I am," Seva said. She took a step back, still smiling brightly at her friend. "We missed thee at dinner."

"I spent some time catching up with an old friend before I prayed," Holland said. She had spent a lot of time in front of Nessa's altar, praying for knowledge after her encounter with the shard of Deus. Of all the gods, it was the Goddess of Death she felt the closest to, perhaps because she had spent so much of her life courting oblivion. "Ciar is going to be staying at the temple with the monks. They're fine teachers."

"A good place for him," Seva said. She took a seat on the broad ledge at the window. The sun was setting now, a brilliant orange bathing the sky. "I pray he will be happy there. Didst thou find the answers thou sought?"

"I didn't realize I was looking for answers," Holland said, sitting down facing her friend on the same ledge. Seeing Seva glowing like this for any reason made for a strange lightness in her own chest.

"Thou didst seem most troubled," Seva said, studying Holland more closely. Honestly, the warrior didn't look any more at ease than she had on the road. That realization sobered Seva slightly. "Thou art still troubled."

"Nothing that you need to worry about while you're celebrating, my lady," Holland assured her. "I will be departing the city for some time, but hopefully I'll be back in time for the wedding." Please, gods, let me not be back in time for the wedding, she prayed silently. She wanted Seva to be happy, but she could live without watching the woman she was in love with bind herself to Fionn for a lifetime.

"It wouldst not be the same without thee," Seva said.

The pain in her chest returned almost immediately. "If I'm still breathing, I'll be there."

Seva's blue eyes widened. "If thou drawest breath? What misfortune dost thou intend to find?"

"I'm going out with the Hooded Knights and some of the king's men to find the men responsible for Aediobri," Holland said. When she saw Seva's expression turn plaintive, she reached out and squeezed her friend's hand. It was far too easy and natural to touch the noble. "I've been in battle many, many times, my lady."

"And yet thou makest mention to me of death," Seva said reproachfully. She sighed and returned the squeeze to her hand. "Promise me that thou wilt be the very soul of caution. Thou art my best friend and one I would not lose. I would go with thee, but..."

"But you have to live, safely, to be Queen," Holland said. She gently pulled her hand away, feeling the loss acutely. What would it be like to lean in and kiss Seva? Some part of her would always wonder, she knew. "Anyway, I just came to say goodnight and make sure you were well. Congratulations on your engagement, my lady."

Seva's blue eyes followed her as she stood up. "Wilt thou ever call me by my name?" the baroness asked.

"I don't know, my lady," Holland said. She gave Seva a little bow. "Sleep well."

After she left Seva, the night passed altogether too quickly and Holland found herself saddling up Maël alongside the commander of the Hooded Knights, the Lord Protector Cadeyrn of Iria. He was a solid man in his early fifties, still fit enough to charge around the field of battle with sword in hand. The grey pennant flapped on the end of his lance in the light autumn breeze. They'd met before on a few occasions, mostly along the great south road that followed the coast of the Eye of the World. Holland had shared a campfire with him often enough to know he was a good man and by reputation, an excellent commander.

"You've done well for yourself, Holland," Cadeyrn commented with a grin as he saddled his own horse. "Friend of the future queen, eh?"

"So it seems," Holland said. She felt relaxed here, knowing she was on the path to a battle where she might easily die. It was cold, so she was wearing the surcoat of a penitent over her plain, foreign armor. This was a world that made sense to her. She had known battle for a very long time now. She climbed up into the saddle, taking with her a fresh, heavier eastern lance. Her lancea was too damaged after Moloch to repair, at least for the smiths beyond her homeland.

He donned his helmet and pulled up the hood. "It was a good political move, I'll give the Prince that. The old houses were starting to bitch. The Baroness of Essen doesn't have a family to make a power grab, but she's got a name that they respect. Y'think it'll last?"

"She loves him. She loves easily," Holland said.

"We'll see if he loves her," Cadeyrn said.

The penitent looked over at him with a frown. "Is that a second meaning I detect, Lord Protector?"

"He's keen on women, Lady Penitent," Cadeyrn said. "A man of quantity as well as quality."

Holland felt her throat knot up. She wasn't certain what she would do if Fionn broke Seva's heart by chasing another woman. Regicide was not exactly a good answer. Realistically, her vows prevented her from taking an active hand in it. "The older houses wouldn't take kindly to that, I imagine," she said as she moved her own helmet from where she'd left it hanging off the saddle. Her hair had been braided up so that she could pull on her mail coif and the visored barbuta helm that marked the Hooded Knights, adding the hood as well. She was warm enough in her armor and surcoat now. She looked almost like the rest of them except for the design on her chest and back.

"They don't care as long as there's an heir with old blood," the older man said, his voice given a muffled quality by his helm. He moved the visor up. "You'll look after her, Holland, and gods love you for it. I know enough from Riaghán to know that."

Holland left her visor down to conceal her face, looking out at the world through the eye-slits, secure in the knowledge that for now no one would be able to divine her emotions. "Let's just go," she said. She didn't want to keep talking about it. The more she heard, the more she wished she had taken Deus up on his offer.

"Aye," Cadeyrn agreed.

The orders went out quickly for the column to move, and Holland found herself at the front of it beside the Lord Protector. The countryside of Yssa was as beautiful as always in the riotous colors of fall. She cleared her thoughts and prayed again to the Eternal Watcher for guidance as they made their way south, towards the site of Aediobri. She knew the century wouldn't have left yet. If they were really here as a probe, they would dig in like a tick until they had their response.

It was weeks of moving at a small army's pace before they reached sight of Aediobri. Sixty knights and almost a hundred men-at-arms did not move as quickly as a few horses at full speed, as she and Seva had moved with Ciar. The air of the salted fields that had once been a town was no longer filled with the smell of putrefaction, as the bodies had decomposed past the point of reek. Holland felt a tremor of unease that she couldn't explain as they approached. Not a single bird was singing.

An ambush. There had to be an ambush waiting in the rocks due south. She could feel it in the pit of her stomach as the army started that way, marching towards the sea. "Cadeyrn, we're looking at a fight very soon," she called to him. "The rocks."

He nodded and sent out orders.

They pitched camp between Aediobri and the rocky canyon, out on flat open ground, or at least made a show of doing so. There was water enough for the horses in the river nearby, thankfully far enough from the salt to be drinkable still. At least, they made a show of pitching camp. They would be ready for a night attack.

Holland settled in with the others to wait, dusty from the road but still feeling fairly rested. They had taken a late start in the morning, so it wasn't as if they were pushing their limits too hard. She blinked hard and started watching with her other-vision, hunting among the rocks for the sparks of life. She was rewarded an hour later by flashes of white approaching. As soon as she told Cadeyrn, people started to shift ever so slightly, taking up weapons even as they pretended they knew nothing. Knights lingered near their horses, checking hooves or adjusting their saddles and barding.

When the first shout came up from the south side of camp, Holland swung herself up into the saddle and pulled down her visor, grabbing her lance from where it had been resting against Maël's side. She went into a full charge straight into the middle of the enemy ranks. They were not in a proper battle formation, as they'd been anticipating a sneak up into the camp and an easy victory. Holland's lance drove right through a man's neck, taking his head off with the force of the blow. Her aim was better than she remembered. The Imperial legionnaires were unusual in that they didn't flee, but they were not in formation and that made them easy prey for the charging knights and hounding footmen.

Maël was proving his worth as a warhorse. Holland had been training him more since Seva gifted him to her, and he lashed out with his hooves to lethal effect, rearing up and slamming down. Holland was trained enough to keep her seat. She wheeled her horse around and passed back into camp to grab another lance that was standing up from the ground, tip buried into the earth. She snatched it and rounded on the enemy, hunting for a commander. She was using her normal vision, which struggled to make out too much detail. At least, until she saw the figure on horseback up towards the rocks, armor dull. She spurred her horse and Maël rose to the occasion, hitting a full charge.

Instead of fleeing, the figure lowered its own lance and charged straight back at her. Holland tucked her body and angled her shield, hoping it would deflect the weapon off as her own plunged into her target. Instead, the lancea of her enemy sheared through her shield and caught its frame, jerking her shoulder out of its socket and unhorsing her. Her lance plowed straight into the enemy's horse rather than the rider, its scream joining that of many men and horses across the field. Her opponent tumbled to the ground.

Holland swore a blue streak as she picked herself up off the ground, pulling off her shield. Her left arm was dangling uselessly at her side, but the pain was met by that strange rush of pleasure and power through her uninjured limbs. Maël had skidded to a stop, but he was wisely keeping his distance from the unhorsed celeres. Holland grabbed the pointed end of half of her broken lance and advanced on the figure stumbling to his feet.

The man drew a sword of a make that she recognized. His armor did not gleam in the night. It was the same matte black as that of the rest of his legionnaires. But he moved differently from the average soldier. He moved almost like...she did.

It was as if someone had put their motions on fast forward, though it felt almost agonizingly slow to Holland and no doubt to her opponent. She could move the broken half of lance around like a toy, and his sword danced just as gracefully. If it hadn't been for the langets on her lance, he would have probably sliced it in two. Holland found herself stepping in as close as she could, hand choking up the lance so she could drive it in like a dagger. She found a joint in his armor, piercing deep, and he slammed his guard into her visor so hard it dented the metal in until it almost touched her face, knocking her over backwards. As soon as she hit the ground, she rolled to the side and narrowly avoided being stabbed through the throat.

Holland kicked out, hitting him in the side of the knee and blowing it out, dropping him to the ground. She forgot the lance and drew a long, lethal misericord as she drug herself to him. He had grabbed his own stiletto and drove it towards the eye-slit in her visor. Holland snarled and twisted, evading the blow. She drove her own blade into his thigh, earning a yelp. He was incredibly strong though. He managed to grab her by the throat and hold her to the ground, but she was faster, driving her blade up under his chin before he could stab down and kill her. His body slumped on top of her and Holland let out a gasp of pain.

She rolled him off of her and pulled off his face-concealing helm.

It was Galeo, though she almost didn't recognize him. He was older, face lined and dark hair streaked with silver. She would have recognized him anywhere. He looked so peaceful under the moonlight, blood oozing black from beneath his chin. Holland felt her throat close up.

..."Why can't I ride with you, Ilex?" the young man asked even though he knew the answer full well, holding onto her saddle as she adjusted her sword. He looked up at her with warm, brown eyes and a reluctant smile.

"You can come with me the day you're an Immortal," she said with a laugh, leaning down to him to kiss his cheek quickly, knowing that it would never happen. Better that he stay celeres, further from death.

"At least pretend to stay safe, sister," he said, touching her cheek with his hand in return. His thumb was warm when it followed the curve of her cheekbone. They weren't blood siblings, but they had trained together enough that they felt like it. Friends were rare for her kind, and certainly not encouraged...

Holland wished in that moment that she knew how to cry. Instead, her eyes stayed stubbornly dry as she closed with one hand the eyes she knew were warm brown. If Galeo was here, that meant these were Saraqael's men. She heard the sound of a horn, this one Imperial. It was sounding the retreat, a rare thing indeed. "I'm sorry, little brother," she said thickly, pulling off her own dented helm. She tossed it to the ground and whistled for Maël.

The horse trotted over obediently, allowing her to heave herself back into the saddle. She needed to go meet with Cadeyrn and the others now that the enemy commander was dead and the knights were picking off those in rout while the men-at-arms finished off the wounded on the field.

Her old life was coming back to haunt her. She would be thinking about Galeo for a long time. Who else was here, among the dead, at the insistence of Saraqael? These were people she had cared about once, so long ago. Time had not erased them from her heart. She felt oddly disconnected from the world as she surveyed the battlefield. It was always like this: painfully real in the thick of it, but the moment the chaos began to subside, she felt herself drift gradually away to the outside. She observed as if she hadn't been a part of it.

Cadeyrn rode over, spattered with blood and gore, with his mace still clutched in his hand. "Good work with the commander. Saw it from here," he said as he looked her over. "That shoulder's going to need some seeing to."

"It'll pop back in," Holland said dully.

"Something wrong?" he said.

"Just hurting," she assured him. It wasn't a lie.

By the time dawn came, her shoulder had been snapped back together and her arm was in a sling. She walked up the hill to where Galeo's corpse lay, feeling that same constriction in her throat when she saw him lying out there under the rising sun. Could she really mourn him, knowing what he had done to Aediobri? How was she any better, with all the things she had done at Saraqael's behest? There was no way he could have recognized her on the field. Would he recognize her now?

She searched his body one-handed, turning up a golden promise band on his wrist. She felt her heart twist at that. So he had made his proposal to Pera, then. Did he have children? And there, around his neck on a fine chain, was something she recognized. It was a twisted piece of metal with a maker's mark on it, the same fragment that he'd pulled out of her throat to save her when an attempted assassin made it too close and she was just a little bit too slow. Galeo had gotten the man from behind with a lethal stab from the same stiletto that he'd been trying to use on her last night.

Holland took the promise band and his knife. She didn't want to leave the piece of jewelry to be taken and melted down by one of the men-at-arms. Her immediate instinct was to somehow seek out Pera and give it to her, but that was thousands of miles and an ocean away. She tucked it into her saddle bag. She wanted to bury him and not leave him out for crows, but she only had one good hand.

He had been born by the river too. She used Maël to drag his body over to the river. It took work, but she tore his cloak and used the strips to tie stones to his body. Burial in the water was better than being carrion food.

"You're taking awfully good care of him," Cadeyrn said as he approached.

"I knew him," Holland said in a voice that by some miracle didn't crack. "He was a good man."

Cadeyrn absorbed this silently, no doubt thinking of Aediobri. He seemed to know that it was better not to comment to the contrary. "I'm sorry," he said finally.

Holland nodded.