Page 131 of Stardust Child

“What do you think, Rem?” Auber asked, coming to stand beside him.

“We’d lose half our number if we even tried,” Remin replied, rubbing weary fingers over his eyes. It had been so long since he’d had a decent sleep, he could feel the hollows beneath them, the dull ache behind them, the strain of just looking at snow, day after day. And yet he found himself willing something to move within that shadowy mouth. Just aglimpseof green fire would be enough.

Did he dare wait until nightfall to confirm it?

“We can’t defend from here,” said Auber, quieter, echoing Remin’s own thoughts.

“No, we can’t.” Remin rose and grabbed Breccey, shoving him toward the trail. “Come on, lads. Let’s get the fuck off this mountain.”

They had found something. It was better than anysomethinghe had hoped to find, and now they had to live to bring word of it home. Remin pushed them as fast as he dared, setting off signal smoke whenever the weather cleared, hastening down to Tounot’s camp, where one of the injured men had died. It only made him more determined to bring the rest of them home.

Back into the foothills, where his reserve camp had passed increasingly exciting nights as the devils fled the forest for the mountains, though there had been no sign of the purring devil. Lancer had proved better than any guard dog, for he had caught—and trampled—no less thansevenstranglers that had slipped into the camp, and his armor was flaking dried black blood.

Now they were racing back to the forest, for it was safer in the trees than on the rocky promontories that had sheltered them two weeks ago. It was a cruel march, for rations were tight, game was scarce, and everyone looked like scarecrows after weeks in the mountains. Remin himself had lost fifteen pounds of muscle in the heights, and by the time he and Jinmin dragged their entire camp into the trees, he collapsed into his bedroll and lay like a dead thing until morning.

But there was one more surprise waiting for them, near the crossroads that led to Nandre.

The first climbers were just scrambling into the trees to make theirevening camp when it happened, a small commotion at the edge of the clearing. Remin squeezed between the wagons just in time to see a small figure stumbling out of the underbrush, exhausted and almost incoherent with terror.

“Are you Duke Andelin’s men?” she asked, reeling forward and stumbling to one knee. There was a second, even smaller child clinging to her back. “You are, aren’t you? He said we should wait here, and you would come, he said to look for crossed swords—”

“I am Duke Andelin,” Remin replied, without moving. Auber was already going to look the girl over; they had been deceived before, child assassins sent by both Valleth and the Emperor. “Stay where you are, girl, let Auber have a look at you. You’re safe here. Where are you from?”

She was shaking so badly, he could see it even from thirty paces. How old was she? Ten? Eleven? He wasn’t good with children’s ages.

“Nandre. We’re from Nandre.” She clung to the little boy, who was sucking a filthy thumb and looking at them with huge, frightened eyes. “Sir Rollon came, and he said they would take us to Tresingale, and we left, and we’re all that left. There’s a devil, it will come for us, it kills everyone,everyone!”

Chapter 14 – The Devil of Nandre

When they finally saw smoke, it was coming from the wrong direction.

Ophele tried not to think of it that way, but Remin was more than a week late.

She saw the smoke with her own eyes, a green column in the sky to the northwest that everyone said must be Sir Ortaire returning from Meinhem. Over the last few days, she had learned what she could of the other villages, ashamed that it had not occurred to her to do so sooner. Meinhem was a small village on a tributary of the Brede that had once given a memorable fish fry to Remin’s Second Company. In her imagination, it was a tranquil place under the huge trees of the old forest, with people in straw hats fishing from the grassy banks of the stream.

The thought of a confrontation with such people filled her with dread. If they shouted at her, or hurled angry accusations, she hadn’t the least idea what she would say, and she was very afraid of what she might do, which could plausibly include bursting into tears.

But the people that finally appeared on the road before the cookhouse did not have the energy to be angry.

More than a dozen wagons had been dispatched to collect them, but at least half of them were empty. Soldiers stretched along the road in a line, dirty, bloody, but marching in good order, and Sir Ortaire rode at the front on a bay horse that had a number of healing gashes on its flanks. Dismounting, he dropped to his knees before her.

“Your Grace,” he said, and he looked so very tired.

“Sir knight,” she said, trying at once to remember every relevant speech she had ever read in every single book and then yielding to impulse, taking his arm to help him up. “Oh, rise, please. Welcome home. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, Your Grace.” She had only known Sir Ortaire a little before he left, but he had aged a great deal over the last few months. “We have a few wounded—”

“We are ready for them,” she said, her eyes going to Genon and his journeymen, already hurrying toward the wagons. “We have brought everything we could think of.”

There was an entire welcoming delegation waiting, with Ophele at the front and Sir Edemir and Sir Justenin behind her, impressive in their armor. To her right, Lady Verr, Emi, and Peri were already moving to the wagons, trailed by both Mistresses Conbour, and all the Benkki Desans, tall and dark-eyed and compassionate. Ophele’s heart was in her throat as she stepped forward, reminding herself to speak up.

“Welcome, all of you,” she said, as the people from Meinhem climbed down from the wagons. Stars, they were so thin! “I am so terribly sorry for everything you’ve been through. There is food waiting for you, so please sit and rest. You are safe. We will look after you now.”

Ophele had spent ages composing this little speech, but the survivors only looked at her with dull eyes, offering stiff, painful bows and curtsies and murmuring thanks.Beckoning Lady Verr and the rest forward, Ophele watched as they were shepherded through the wide doors of the cookhouse, where tables and benches were waiting for them between roaring fires.

She had forgotten to give her own name. Oh, well. Ophele’s hands twisted together as she watched Wen’s boys moving among them with bread, porridge, and a rich broth. She would have liked to help, even with something so menial as ladling out porridge, but everyone had flatly vetoed the idea of her going among so many strangers.

“Your Grace,” said Sir Ortaire, recalling her to her other duty. “Thank you very much for coming to meet us.”

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