The man I had appointed lieutenant of the cavalry rode into camp, the acolyte clinging on behind him. Fyodor stared at the two of them, jealousy creeping into his eyes. If the acolyte was to show our scouts what routes to take, she would have to work with our scouts closely. Quentin Gavreau, lieutenant of the cavalry, found the girl keenly interesting for many of the same reasons Fyodor Kransky, lieutenant of the artillery, did. The last week had been full of an increasing number of hostile stares from one lieutenant to the other as we made our way through the forest.
Perhaps if I had simply made the acolyte Quentin’s responsibility instead of Fyodor’s in the first place, Fyodor would not have seen enough of her to make an issue out of it. Why hadn’t I? The simple answer was that I hadn’t been as sure of the cavalry lieutenant’s intelligence or reliability. In the dream I had where I had drawn up the new command structure, I had confidently assigned him a degree of responsibility greater than (and a degree of supervision less than) nearly any other mercenary officer. (Captain Rimehammer had more responsibility, but also was much more closely supervised by officers of the Golden Empire.)
Fully awake and cognizant, on the other hand, I had trouble identifying the reasons my dreaming self had in mind for putting him in such an independent role. Quentin was arguably either French or Romanian depending on how seriously you took his inheritance claims, and in either case, he was from a noble family with allegiance to at least one liege lord whose interests were not aligned with those of Emperor Koschei. Pointedly, he had volunteered to take up arms to liberate Wallachia from the yoke of the Golden Empire; his ultimate loyalties were dubious.
Instead of worrying that the acolyte might compromise the loyalty of one of my officers, I was worried about the loyalty of two of them. Worse, I was worried that they might come to blows with one another. The two of them might try to kill each other in a duel or some such nonsense.
The acolyte may have been raised outside of and with contempt for civilization, but in spite of her general hatred for humanity, she was still human and no less young and foolish than either of my lieutenants when it came to matters of the heart. After years of isolated study under the watchful gaze of old white-cloaked wizards, she seemed to enjoy having a pair of handsome young men vie for a greater share of her attention, encouraging both of them.
According to the younger three of my elder brothers, most young women would find it flattering to be the center of two rival young officers’ attention. When I suggested this was just normal behavior on the acolyte, however, Katya bristled angrily, telling me it wasn’t right to lead two men on at once.
Katya had a most unflattering view of the young woman. I hesitate to write down what she said; suffice it to say that she suggested that the young lady had moss growing in certain unseen places (between her ears, and also between her legs), and would be charging two kopeks per ride as soon as she figured out what a kopek was. She may also have referred to a hypothesized history of inter-species conjugal relations when I told Katya that the girl had probably not spent much time around human men near her own age.
I let her know that according to the former thief’s reports, the young lady slept alone, but Katya waved away that information when I presented it, insisting it was only a matter of time before the girl’s bedroll turned into transient housing for an assortment of men that she wasn’t married to. I may have made the mistake of alluding to the potential impropriety of our own relationship when I asked why she was so angry with the acolyte; after that question, she grew very quiet and very still for the space of a dozen heartbeats, and then informed me that she was going to go check on the sentries for some time while I enjoyed (or rather, failed to enjoy) a tent to myself.
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She didn’t come back to the tent that night; in the morning, I learned she’d slept for a little while in the command tent, then rode out at dawn for an extended patrol. I had six cups of tea during an extended breakfast that was stretched over the course of three meetings. The first meeting was with Katya’s three fellow captains; the second was with a certain pair of lieutenants to let them know that their rivalry had not gone unnoticed and had better not escalate; the third was a meeting with Vitold about Captain Rimehammer’s fuel consumption calculations and how many mechs we could afford to operate while on the move.
Vitold and I also talked at some length about Katya, about the insanity of war, and about what we might want to do at the end of our term of military service if we got out of this alive (and also if we did not simply go straight from the army into prison). I talked of seeing my family again and returning to the peace of the countryside; Vitold talked about becoming fat and respectable somewhere, owning an estate or perhaps just a bakery, and how much easier baking seemed now that his life experiences had expanded.
It felt good to unburden my troubles on Vitold. While he had his own troubles to burden me with, I think the burdens weighed lighter on both of us after we shared them; and our friendship seemed to grow a little bit closer to what it had been before we had boarded that fateful train.
At the end of the meeting, I stared down at the bottom of my teacup, but no matter how I turned it, the leaves would not tell me a happy story. Betrayal from an unexpected quarter; death and dismemberment stalking ahead; a road full of teeth; a caged bird with its wings clipped. According to the tea-leaf reading techniques I had been taught by the little old lady in those summers in the woods, the omens had been terrible every single morning in the forest; I was beginning to understand the superstitious worries that had plagued the soldiers as we had started into the deep and sparsely-inhabited woods.
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I suppose even the fact that I was back to reading tea leaves was a sign that I was growing nervous. I am not inclined to put much credence into such silly superstitions, but the tea leaves were right in front of me and added to my sense of constant danger. In spite of the terrible omens, though, we had not yet run into any difficulties since the battle, and we were making very good time with our guide’s help. Our scouts had, over the past week, found some signs that we were being watched, but the inhabitants of the woods themselves remained elusive; more good fortune.
The scouts found no sign of those that day; or the next; at which point I began to worry. Not, mind you, about being attacked, which seemed less likely in the absence of signs of probable enemies, but about Katya. I tried to quash my worries as irrational; Katya was no more likely to get lost in the woods than a goat was to get indigestion. As far as danger was concerned, she was one of the most dangerous people I knew. She was much more likely to bring misfortune to someone else than to fall prey to it herself. Love, I decided, leads us to folly. I resolved to have faith that Katya would return when her anger had cooled.
Several wagon-loads of provisions had been emptied on the march, and we filled one of them with a contraption intended to manufacture charcoal while simultaneously driving a steam engine. We would put wood in, and it would simultaneously burn wood down to charcoal and push itself forward at a slow but steady walking pace, provided the terrain wasn’t too rough. Now we could process some charcoal on the march, stretching our resources further. It wasn’t the most efficient device, either as an engine or as a charcoal burner, but there was no shortage of wood for us to turn into charcoal.
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Working together with Vitold on a simple and useful machine was a pleasure; but even that pleasant activity could not take my mind off what (or rather who) wasn’t with me. Even as my mood fouled, Vitold’s improved as he considered the long-term effects of even a modest rate of charcoal production while on the move.
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My third night in a row sleeping alone was filled with dreams of an unrestful variety, and I woke before dawn, unable to go back to sleep. Instead, I sat and watched the dawn with aching eyes, blood-red fingers of the sun’s first light trying to push through the thick cover of the forest canopy then stabbing into the ground here and there as it found gaps. I was not alone; the acolyte sat a cautious distance away, wanting to talk about something but unsure how to broach the subject.
Vitold brought me a mug of tea and word that we would be able to get on the move shortly. He took one look at the acolyte and then shot a questioning glance at me.
I made a very small shrug as I accepted the tea and began to sip at it. Nothing really to be done but ask.
“Something on your mind, miss?”
She hesitated, glancing at Vitold, and stood up.
“Um. Nothing important, sir,” she said. Then she hastily headed back towards the main part of camp. I watched carefully as she left, trying to guess what had been left unsaid.
“I preferred Katya,” Vitold told me quietly, giving me a sharp look.
“It’s not like that,” I told him as I watched the acolyte leave, smiling a little at the way Vitold jumped to conclusions.
I could still remember him calling Katya a ‘spooky woman.’ Vitold was just the sort to prefer the devil he knew to the devil he didn’t. He may have thought Katya a devil, but he would much rather I be with her than take up with the awful acolyte.
“There’s nothing between us. I think she just didn’t want to ask for advice while you were around,” I added.
Or, it occurred to me, forgiveness for stirring up trouble, or permission of some kind. Rumors flew swifter than most birds and were generally more colorful. My discussion with Fyodor and Quentin might have gotten back to her in a form that gave her cause to worry.
Vitold frowned. “You’ve got that thinking look on you, and I saw you watch that devil girl’s butt as she walked off. She’s trying to enchant you, just like she tried to enchant me. Touch cold iron and think of Katya instead. She’s probably in trouble somewhere by now. Maybe dead,” Vitold said, giving voice to the worries I had tried so hard to suppress.
I let his first misconception slide in favor of his second, shaking my head. “Katya is the deadliest woman – deadliest person, perhaps – that I know. She rides like a tick, shoots like a standing man at a full gallop, and is woods-wise enough that she won’t lose her trail. We haven’t run into anything more dangerous than a disgruntled badger since the locals’ attempted ambush. She’ll come back when she’s not angry at me anymore.”
Vitold clasped me by the shoulder. “Mikolai, she took three days of rations for the trail,” he said, his tone appropriate for a funeral.
“It’s three days now,” I said, my brow furrowing for only a moment as I reviewed my memories, breaking into a smile. “So then she’ll be coming back soon.” Vitold’s sense of humor had gotten more subtle, I thought to myself.
“Katya takes three days’ worth of trail rations when she goes out for a single day’s ride,” Vitold said. “I asked her why once. Felix had been griping about spoilage lately and short supply. Katya told me that if she thought she would be gone three days, she would pack for a week’s food if she could. Just in case.” Vitold crossed his arms.
“Oh,” I said.
There was not very much else I could say without looking like a complete idiot. My heart sank as my mind raced through the possibilities. She could still show up, having been delayed by foreseeable complications – investigating a curious trail, resting a lamed or injured horse, et cetera. She would not starve in the woods; indeed, she could easily start foraging for herself. But she hadn’t meant to leave for more than a day.
Unless … perhaps she had decided to leave for good and didn’t want to arouse suspicion by checking out more supplies than usual. I shook off the thought. The only relationship Katya was willing to court with desertion was shooting people who did it. What if she had run into trouble, too much trouble for one woman, however deadly, to handle?
I stared down at the tea leaves in my mug, swirling the last dregs of fluid. The tea leaves plastered against the edges of the mug in a pattern suggesting the painful dismemberment and death of a loved one. The memory of an old lady’s voice echoed in my ears, talking about how the future was mutable but signs of it could be seen reliably in many places.
“Damn peasant superstitions,” I growled to myself, flinging the mug violently away from me.
The tin mug struck a tree and bounced off, halfway crushed by the force of the impact. Vitold started, surprised by my sudden motion; Yuri raced after the mug, fetching it back and depositing it at my feet. I patted the dog on the head but passed the slobbery and dented mug to Vitold, instead of throwing it for Yuri to fetch again.
“Sorry,” I said to both of them, standing up and shaking my head.
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I headed back into the center of the camp, to talk to a certain lieutenant of the cavalry. He wasn’t able to tell me much more about Katya’s intentions; just that she’d ridden out ahead of us and wasn’t back yet. She’d left some markings along the way to point out fresh water and the location of a blackberry hedge. I gave him some rather brusque instructions on finding her trail and catching up with her; he muttered something in Romanian about hypocrisy and fraternization, and I decided not to let it pass.
“Quentin, I don’t care about fraternization so long as it doesn’t impact the mission. I don’t care if you get a werewolf pregnant with a litter of a half dozen puppies so long as it doesn’t slow us down. You and Lieutenant Kransky could share one large sleeping bag between yourselves and our friendly local weather-witch at the same time for all I care.”
By the end of that statement, I was speaking with a raised voice. I stepped closer without moderating my volume.
“However, the two of you cannot duel with each other, whether with pistols and swords, or, as you have done so far, trouble-making and words. You will treat your fellow officer with due respect and consideration, and you will keep your temper not only leashed, but kenneled until it is housebroken.”
I glared down at him from a close distance.
He hastily saluted and stammered out an affirmative mingled with a couple of “sir”s before rushing off to follow my orders about finding his immediate superior. Then the captain who was Fyodor’s direct superior came over to chat. Cued by jealous rivalry, fraternization, and perhaps Vitold’s comments about how I should not think about the acolyte’s posterior, I found myself taking notice of the fact that the officer in question was a healthy woman not too many years older than I was.
I tried to push that awareness out of my mind, feeling vaguely disloyal to Katya for having noticed in the first place as we found a quieter corner of camp in which to have a private conversation. The subject was fraternization, her subordinate Fyodor, and the chain of command, and I readily conceded that yes, she would be well within her rights to bar Lieutenant Kransky from intimate fraternization with the acolyte, or his fellow lieutenant, or both simultaneously. Although not a woman easily disconcerted, I think at least one of those possibilities took her off-guard; she had some difficulty formulating a reply past a “Yes, sir.”
I also quietly let her in on the reasons I had made the decision to assign Fyodor as the girl’s watchdog, and discussed what I knew about her. When we walked into the mess tent together, I caught Vitold giving me a sharp look, reminiscent of earlier in the morning. The cavalry lieutenant also took note; he turned to give the two of us a speculative look, the corner of his mouth pulling a little, reminding me of his mutterings about hypocrisy. I frowned sourly at them. Both of them quickly looked away.