At midday, they had finally gotten the inn’s wagon loaded with supplies and those few personal belongings that Red had required to be brought along on his trip to the capitol city. Harred hadn’t needed much, he said, and liked to travel light. Or, Elbana observed, as light as Harred’s lieutenant, Olun Hacson, would allow the old man to get away with traveling away from home.

Olun, Ol to those who had served under him, had been insistent that they take along Harred’s bed, as well as his personal weapons, and a large selection of his favorite foods, packed to travel. Their years together leading a mercenary troop had turned Ol into a doting old hen.

Which also possibly made the man the best kind of person to run an inn, and take care of his best friend, as well as to adopt a few strays and make certain they learned their letters while developing what Ol had always called a “strong wark efik.”

Elbana had known they had a stable boy who was also employed as a cleaner, kitchen boy, and a general errand runner, but she had not known until early this morning that there were two other younger children the men had taken into service at the inn.

When she had come down stairs just before dawn, she found the two younger children working in the common room. One, a girl of about ten, was polishing a pair of sturdy boots as she sat by the fire. The other, when she looked into the kitchen, was a boy of roughly the same age helping Olun make breakfast and pack large panniers with packets of dried foods, and small jars she assumed were filled with more edibles.

Hearing her walk in, Ol turned to her and shuffled her back out to the common room with a plate of fried tubers, and bread with a knob of spiced butter melting on it. A large mug of steaming tea was placed in front of her by the boy as she sat. He smiled at her, and gave Elbana a bouncy bow, simply saying “Master!” as he turned and ran back to the kitchens.

She had been halfway through her breakfast when the outraged shout of an enraged Captain Vogel drifted down from upstairs.

“Where in all the Twelve Hells are my boots?”

Glancing back to the girl by the fireplace, Elbana saw that she was gone, and had taken her tools with her. Two finely polished pairs of cavalry boots, however, sat gleaming in the fire light.

“They’re down here, Vogel!” she called back up. “Cleaned and polished. Let Ihyon know it looks like his boots are down here, too.” She thought for a moment, and then glanced down at her own boots, and noticed the road dust of the last few days' travel was conspicuously absent. The twos of the boots even looked shiny.

“Huh.” And with that, she went back to her tea and fries.

Later, once the wagon had been loaded, and the wagon team hitched, Elbana and the stable boy, Tully, sat on the front seat of the heavily laden beast as they pulled out of the inn’s stable yard.

Ol and the twins, who Elbana had learned were named Meggie and Gus, waved them off from where they stood by the front door of the old place. Elbana waved back, feeling as though she may have been stealing from Olun in taking Red away for a while. The men had been inseparable for decades. But, now Red had a task to complete at the palace, and for his cooperation, Elbana had promised to bring life back to this town.

She had planned to open a new garrison specifically for training anyway, and this just looked too good of an opportunity to pass up. She nodded to herself as Tyshinsay on Heorak agus on Nahair, or The Pub of the Squirrel and the Serpent, slowly disappeared behind her as the road stretched on ahead of her.

Myrl needed her. That was what mattered.

They had pulled off the road near sunset that first day, and made a quick camp. Red had slept most of the way in the back of the large covered wagon, having rigged a sort of hammock that kept him swaying above the packed gear and provisions. His slow, metered breathing had been just this side of a snore, and had amused Elbana as she and the boy, Tully, had taken turns driving the wagon.

Vogel and Ihyon had ridden ahead and behind the wagon as they had trundled down the Royal Road toward Ghlow, taking turns scouting ahead and ranging behind to ensure their safety, But now, as evening had fallen, all five members of their little band now sat around the low crackling fire. Dinner had been a vegetable soup Ol had sent along, and that Red had prepared for them all, while Tully and Ihyon had curried and watered the horses, inspected their hooves, and secured them to a tether hitch.

Elbana saw that Ihyon was impressed by the boy’s knowledge and care for their equine charges, and the two talked quietly about it all through dinner. Vogel had drawn third watch, and after eating a quick bowl of soup had sloped off to wrap himself in his trail blanket under the shelter of the wagon’s body.

Sitting near the fire with Red, who was mending a piece of leather tack, Elbana slowly worked a fatty oily mixture of kornut oil and beeswax into her belt and baldric. She liked the smell of the mixture better than just using neatsfoot oil.

“Olun and I owe you an apology.” His voice was low, soft; but Elbana was startled by it, breaking the calm silence in which she had been working as it did. Eyes wide, a brow raised, she stared at the older man, waiting for more.

Just as she had given up waiting, and had turned back to her work, “King Filian, and Queen Lurgetha for that matter, had approached the Red Stones with too lucrative an offer to refuse…” He trailed off then with a sigh.

“No. I do tell a lie there.” in the flickering shadows and light of the fire Harred smiled sadly to himself. “They flattered us too greatly for our egos to refuse, I should say. They sent their personal representatives, along with their little prince, Hyrel, along with a pair of chests five times our usual retainer to get the entire Band on those ships and sail to Velpse. To fight in that war they had with Hamuria. Filian provided ships for transport, provisions for two years, and enough gold and the promise of more on our return if we fought for Velpse on Rhiada’s behalf for five years, or until the war had ended, if it ended before that five year term of service.”

She watched him then. Waiting. There were things she wouldn't ask him, but she desperately wanted to know.

“You told us that this was a trap, I remember.” His voice brought itself up from the whisper it had been to a conversational level, but remained soft. It lacked the aggression and confidence she had remembered from her time as a member of the Red Stones.

“Red…” she began, but he cut her off.

“No. Let me get this out first. We… Ol, Sumner, Happa, Coin, and I all agreed that this would be the easiest contract we had ever been handed. A king was going to pay for a thousand horsemen to sail to another king’s aid. We would be our own detachment, and we would have the liberty to refuse any orders that we judged as not worthy of our efforts. And for five years we would rage across a battlefield that knew very little, if nothing, of our cavalry tactics.”

There was another long pause as he reached for his mug, and slowly drained it. “Bah,” he looked sourly into the dark depths of that now empty piece of blue painted ceramic. “Ol sent this tea, didn’t he? He thinks it will help me breathe. Says I have some kind of ill lung humors. I keep telling him I have spirits, not humors.”

And then he split the night with a bold, deep-belly laugh that startled the horses, made Vogel roll over reaching for his sword, instantly awake, and brought up Ihyon and Tully’s heads from where they were talking about shoeing methods. It made Elbana smile, reminding her of riding into a frey at his side, spears and swords in the bright morning sun as a small army they had been paid to clear shat themselves as Harred laughed into the wind and the Red Stones all cried out in joy and rage and fear.

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“He was never a king. He was appointed as regent only.” She said into the following silence and darkness of the night, remaining loyal to her charge. To her king.

“He ran the country, and had the purse strings to the treasury. He made it plain enough that the Red Stones could take this commission or we would be asked to leave Rhiada for some other country. He had the reins of an army to make it plain we would only stay if we defeated HIS army. And the retainer he paid… well. He was king enough for the Red Stones.”

On her own side of the fire, Elbana frowned into the face of that hard truth.

“But the point I was getting to… You said that this was all a trap. And we fell for it. All of us who went. We set aside half of the retainer with the Landsraad Bank. We accepted the generous provisions offered. And we set sail for another war, in another land, to fight for His Holiness, Ignaciatto le Mani Rossi.”

Another pause as the old man got up and went to the back of the wagon to refill his mug with clean water from the barrel. Walking back to the fire, he drained most of the water he had just retrieved.

“And you cautioned us all. You told us all the ways that this was a bad idea. You and those few you convinced mustered out, took your remaining pay, and left that very night. It broke Olun’s heart to see you go. He didn’t understand. At the time, neither of us did, actually.”

As he sat, he stretched.

“We tried to tell you how tired most of us were of fighting for other kings. Showing up for paltry paydays to kill other men’s sons. We wanted out of these bloody games as much as anyone else. But, to do that we needed a stake to set ourselves up in new lives. Money to see to it that those of us who wanted to do more than become town guards, or soldier retainers in some londlings household guard, could afford to buy a small place in this world. That was all we wanted.”

Harred’s head slumped down then, as his eyes stared into the embers at the edge of the fire.

His voice sank again to softer registers, “You were right.”

“Harred…”

“Let me finish. I know I’m drawing all of this out.” he let out a low, slow chuckle. “When we landed in Velpse, the Velpsean army allowed us to encamp in a large field just off their rocky shore near a city called Itazze. Their mayor came out to meet us, along with a detachment of their ‘Blessed Suns,’ which is what they call their wizard arm in their military. They then told us how happy they were to receive such a large shipment of fine horses, weapons, and slaves from their ‘Good friend, King Filian.’ And then the lightning fell on us from out of a clear blue sky.”

He took a final slow drink of his water. “They had decided that their God was on their side in this war, and they just needed enough bodies to throw at their enemies. Whoever their generals were, they were zealots. We never met them. We were just fodder, sent to them to die for their cause by their king’s ‘honored friend.’ For a year, we were thrown into the worst, stupidest kinds of battles. I saw an entire field of soldiers and slaves cut down by one Hamurian mage. Their generals had no idea how badly outmatched they were.”

Harred was crying now, tears leaking silently down his scarred cheeks. “The Hamurians had a mage, one single man, who would lay devastation across the battlefield like no one I have ever seen. No one I have even heard of. The Velpsean High Command… they just had their Faith. That, or they were letting their insane zealot of a king do whatever he wanted. I don’t know. But, it took those of us who were able to escape almost ten years to make our way back to Rhiada.”

He raised his mug to his lips again, but realized he had already emptied it. “Ten years. And at least 700 Red Stones. Maybe more, I don’t know.”

He looked up at her then, meeting Elbana’s gaze. Eye to eye across the distance of a campfire and almost twenty years of betrayal and misery.

“I’m so sorry, Banni. You were right, and we all paid the price for not listening to you. Maybe if we had at least slept on it for a day or three, more of the Red Stones would have mustered out with you. Maybe more of us would be alive now. Not all, but…more.”

Silently, not knowing what to say to one another, they worked on their maintenance chores for another hour as the fire crackled on, throwing its cheery orange light onto them both. Eventually Ihyon and Tully finished cleaning, inspecting and fawning over the various horses, and came to the fire to get some sleep before their own second watch would begin.

As the night darkened further, and the stars eventually came wandering out from wherever they hid during the day, Harred asked Elbana in a clear, calm voice that completely ignored his earlier distraught state.

“Does he have plans for a queen yet, your boy?”

Elbana laughed lightly at the idea that Myrl was “her boy,” but answered as if that image hadn’t been there. “Not yet. He knows he has to choose a queen. Has to make that alliance. He’s just not in any rush to do so. He just took the throne at the end of last Summer, he thinks he has forever to figure these things out.”

“Is he playing around with mistresses, then?” Red sounded curious, but that curiosity was tinged with a note of fear.

“There are some young court ladies who fancy they have a chance. But he’s thinking of alliances, not a local bride. Not a local ‘Surprise! It’s an unexpected heir’ child, either. And there is a woman I would bet money on, but she also doesn't have the political heft he needs. She loves her own life too much to notice how much she lights up around him, though. But, no, none that I can tell.”

She replied with a slow shake of her head. “And I can tell a lot. He was spending much of his time swatting away young women like marsh flies. There were dozens, if not more, young and youngish women whose parents were throwing the poor things at him. Even a few older women who thought they might have had a chance with a young man who didn’t know what court life was like, and who might have a need for a mother in his life.” She chuckled then at that. There had been more than a few, and they had been less than subtle.

“And you won't be supplanted as his ‘mother,’ eh?” Harred was grinning across the fire at her.

She threw her tin of leather oil at him. “Don’t be crass. I’m no more his mother than Ashe… Lord Ashe is his father. You may as well say that Donk is his father figure as lay that shackle on Lord Ashe’s neck.”

Having snagged the tin of oil out of the air rather than get pelted with the thing, he pulled off the lid and gave it a speculative sniff before smiling and asking, “I don't know who Donk is, but I’ve heard of this Lord Ashe. Everyone in Rhiada probably has. Is he as formidable as folks make him out to be?”

“Moreso.” She said, “I doubt he has the Talent to clear a battlefield like the mage you mentioned earlier. Nothing like it. But he’s a thinker. A planner. And he’s the kind of practical that would sooner see you pushed off a cliff with a dagger in your liver than explain to you why you shouldn’t keep doing whatever it is he wants you to stop doing.”

“A man like our Olun, then?” Harred asked.

“But with fewer smiles, yes.”

“I can live without smiles.”

“If he decides you are making the world worse for Myrl, he won’t hesitate to fix the problem.” Elbana said, never breaking eye contact with her one-time mentor.

“Hrrrm. Is he going to make my training of your boy difficult?” Red looked concerned, his smoothly shaven pate gleaming orange in the firelight.

“No. We each have our own realms. Our own domains. We don’t interfere with each other. I teach Myrl to be a soldier. To fight. To take a punch and to punch back. Lord Ashe is his classroom tutor, and his mentor where politics are concerned. Lord Ashe is interested in keeping Myrl on the throne, and keeping the kingdom fully intact.”

He smiled at this, though Elbana withheld the fact that Ashe had guided Myrl’s Talent based skills and studies.

“I've heard he has the Talent, like his parents did.”

…FUCK…! She kept her face neutral though she was raging inside. …Did EVERYONE know Myrl was a Talent now…?

“He has.” She said simply.

Harred considered, leaning back and kicking his fake foot up to cross his ankles. “And is he likely to lose his temper and strike me dead with lightning or some such?”

“Well, you are very annoying…” Elbana tried to lighten the mood.

“...Banni…”

“No. He is the most disciplined Talent I have ever met.”