“How dare you!”
“You disobeyed an order. Would you rather I’d killed you?”
“You—”
“Sir!” That was one of his troopers. “Sir—no—!”
“Problem, my lord?” Cracolnya’s voice was smooth as butter, but he held a crossbow steady, the bolt aimed at the captain’s back.
“No,” Arcolin said. “The captain has misunderstood the situation.” He looked at the troopers loosely clustered nearby. “See if you can collect the loose horses those brigands were riding. We’ll need them later.” They hesitated but finally turned and rode off. Then to the captain, “Put that sword away and think about why you didn’t manage to draw it in the face of the enemy but only when confronting your commander.”
“You—!”
“Yes. As Constable and as Duke Arcolin, I am your commander in this place. I told you that before. Put up your sword.”
Red-faced, beginning to shake—was it anger or reaction, realization of what he had done?—the captain finally got his sword back in the scabbard after a couple of tries. Arcolin sheathed his own in one practiced motion and nudged his mount closer to the captain’s. Cracolnya’s cohort was now between him and the rest of the Royal Guard contingent, alert and ready for anything.
Arcolin went on. “If you cannot, or will not, follow my orders, I will send you away. As you are, you are a danger to my people and yours. Do you understand?”
“I—I—you can’t do that.”
“I can. I will. One more time: Will you do what I tell you, at once and without question, or will you go back to Fiveway on foot, unarmed, and try to explain yourself to your senior in the Royal Guard and the king?”
“On foot? Unarmed?”
“Of course. Why would I leave someone like you on a valuable charger? With a sword? Either you accept me here and now as your commander and give me the loyalty owed, or you go home in disgrace. If you make it that far.” Arcolin made his tone conversational. “Now: give me your answer.”
The shoulders drooped. “I—I accept you …”
“Good. I am pleased to hear it. Go back to the wagons and tell the drivers to start setting up camp. The people running from the mage-hunters will need care.”
The captain opened his mouth, shut it, finally bit off a “Sir,” and turned his horse back up the slope.
“He wouldn’t have lasted long in Aarenis,” Cracolnya said after he’d ridden off. He took the bolt from his crossbow and eased the string.
“Young, inexperienced,” Arcolin said.
“Dead,” Cracolnya said.
“True enough. Let’s go meet our travelers.”
Cracolnya said “Camp” to his sergeants and followed Arcolin to the group now huddled in the dry wash near the road.
They were, as Arcolin had thought, Girdish families from a vill near the Finthan border.
“We hear Tsaia doesn’t kill mages,” one said.
“Or them as aren’t mages but someone says they is to steal their cows,” another said.
“The king said no killing mages,” Arcolin said. “You are safe for now. What about your supplies?”
The first one—he gave his name as Dorthan—shook his head. “They almost caught us in camp two nights ago—we had to run, leave everything.”
“We have water and food up on the road,” Arcolin said.
Soon the cohort had laid out a proper camp, and the fugitives, now under canvas, had eaten and drunk their fill. Of the nineteen, five confessed to being mages, four of them children who could do no more than make light with a finger. The fifth, a woman, had a parrion of healing. “Had it all my life,” she said. “So I thought this was just somethin’ else I’d picked up. Only they said it was magery.” All the rest were relatives of the mages or those afraid of being killed even if they weren’t.
“No better’n brigands,” Dorthan said. “They got our sheep, our goats, our cows, our houses … It’s not right, but we’re not enough to fight’em.”
“What about the grange?” Arcolin asked.
Dorthan hooked his forefingers together. “Tight as that with the mage-hunters, Marshal is. Him and his snuck around the bartons, takin’ weapons. Not that we had much.”
“Took my fightin’ staff that I made myself,” said another, who’d given his name as Tamis. “Walked two days there and back to get wood for that, I did. Had it up dryin’ all one winter.”
“How many of you being hunted by the mage-haters are in this area?”
This provoked a lively argument and much counting on fingers. While that continued, the Royal Guard troop came back to camp with eighteen horses, all with saddles, and three captives, all injured. The others, they said, were dead where they lay.