Chapter 258: Stripped (2)

"Fifth Legion of the White Griffin!" Sir Agnus shouted. "Form on the commander!"

His voice rolled across the lower field like a falling wall. Four hundred knights dropped what they were doing and came at a run. They had been eating breakfast, mending harness and grumbling about the cold. In less than a quarter of an hour, they stood in twelve neat ranks, horses held at the bridle, the long blue pennants lifting in the wind.

Zuri stood in front of them in full armour.

She had polished the griffin on her breastplate before dawn. She had not done that since she was sixteen.

The knights were tired. They were thin. Half their remounts had died on the road north, and none of them had seen their families since autumn. But they stood straight, and they looked at her, and they waited.

They were the best thing she had ever made.

She did not make a speech. She had thought about it half the night and decided that a speech would be for her, not for them.

"A letter from the Marshal has arrived," she said, loud enough for the back rank to hear. "Orsini has fallen. The Duke of the East says it fell because we were not there. He may be right."

A low sound went through the ranks.

"By order of the Marshal, command of this Legion passes to Sir Agnus. He will take you back east to the Velmont line." She paused. "I am ordered to report south, to my father. After that, the Crown will decide what happens to me."

The sound grew louder. Someone in the third rank said something sharp, and a sergeant hushed him.

Zuri unpinned the small silver griffin from her collar. The commander’s badge. She turned and held it out to Agnus.

He looked at it for a long moment. He did not take it.

"We rode north too, my lady," he said. He did not say it quietly. He said it so the whole field could hear. "Nobody forced us. You asked, and every man here said yes. If someone has to answer for it, it should not be you alone."

"Somebody has to answer for it," Zuri said. "And it will be me. I’m the one who asked."

She held the badge out a little further.

"Take it, Agnus. Please."

Agnus took the badge. He did not pin it on. He closed his big hand around it, and then he stepped back and raised his voice.

"Fifth Legion! Salute the commander!"

Four hundred swords came up together, flat against four hundred breastplates. The sound was like a single bell.

Zuri had promised herself she would not cry in front of them.

She kept that promise. Although it was very close.

? ? ?

The legion marched east before noon.

Zuri watched from the slope above the field. The pennants grew smaller on the road along the river. At the front, she could see the broad shape of Agnus on his grey horse, the great shield on his back.

When they reached the bend in the road, he turned in the saddle and raised one hand.

She raised hers.

Then they were gone.

"Do you regret it?" someone asked behind her.

She turned. It was Sir Gareth, his arms folded and his grey beard ruffled by the wind. She had not heard him climb the slope.

"Agnus asked me something like that last night," she said and looked back at the empty road for a while.

"My brother is missing," she said at last. "And because of him, eight thousand people are standing alive on this ridge. If you mean, do I regret my decision to come and support him, then no. I don’t."

Gareth nodded slowly, as if she had passed a test he had not told her she was taking.

"Your orders say to go to your father," he said.

"I’ll leave today."

"You won’t."

Zuri frowned at him.

"You would have to pass through the eastern roads, which are full of Lord Valcrest’s soldiers going home to bury people now," Gareth said. "Every one of them has heard that the Fifth Legion left Orsini to die. You’d be riding through them alone with a Gannon griffin on your chest." He shook his head. "In seven days, Captain Dael brings his company in from the river posts. When he does, I’ll send twenty men south with you."

"Father won’t like the delay."

"Then he can argue with me. I’ve had practice."

Zuri almost laughed.

"Seven days," she said.

? ? ?

That evening, she climbed to the top of the ridge.

The pale stone stood above the keep with the last of the light on its face. Three thousand, four hundred and eighty-two names, carved in neat rows. Fathers. Sons. Cooks. Lampwrights. Children. At the bottom, the masons had left an empty space.

There was something in the empty space now.

A small blue-glass lamp in an iron frame. Unlit.

Gus was sitting in the grass beside it with his back against the stone and his knees pulled up. He looked up when she came, and then looked back down at the lamp. He did not get up. He had stopped getting up for her weeks ago. She was glad.

She sat down next to him.

For a while, neither of them said anything.

"Why did you put it there," she said at last.

Gus was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his voice was very low.

"Because I was tired of holding it by myself," he said. "And I thought, this is where the young master will come first when he returns."

Zuri looked at the lamp. It was dark, as it had always been.

"He better come and get it." She pulled her knees up like his. "Before I’m dragged off to answer for him."

Gus did not laugh. But the corner of his mouth moved, just a little. It was the closest thing to a smile she had seen on him in weeks.

They sat there together until it was too dark to read the names.

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