The Dread Wyrm

Chapter Twelve

The Company

Dawn found a surly company, sour from too much wine and too much marching. The horses were tired, and the oats were not enough to raise their spirits. Pages stumbled, half asleep, along the lines.

To add insult to injury, a light rain began to fall on men who’d slept with no tents and a single blanket.

Dropsy, one of the archers, was chained to the captain’s wagon, the only wagon left in the camp. Before they marched, the captain sat in judgment on him, and invoked the lesser penalty for sleeping on duty; not death and not a flogging. Instead, when all the men were formed, Cully stripped Dropsy to the skin and made him run down the ranks, and all the archers took a slap at him with their bows, or with arrows or leather belts or whatever they fancied. Running the gauntlet was a punishment as old as armies, and Nell, who hadn’t seen it done before, might have expected that the archers would go easy on one of their own.

She might have expected it, but she didn’t. The average archer’s capacity for cruel humour exceeded his kindness on the best of days-nice men stayed home and farmed. Nor was Oak Pew any different-her heavily studded belt slapped into Dropsy’s buttocks with a sound that made men wince and miss their blows.

Dropsy wailed at the pain and wept for it, but he didn’t fall down and he didn’t protest, and he was fast enough, when awake. He made it to the end more injured in pride than body. Cully was waiting with his filthy hose and his braes and shoes and a surgeon’s mate, who put a salve in the deeper welts.

The captain watched it all like an angry hawk watches rabbits.

“Mount,” he said to his trumpeter.

The men and women of the company were in a better mood for having punished Dropsy, and while the man still sobbed, which was disconcerting in a grown man and a killer, the rest ignored him, made dark jokes about his name and habits, and got their horses.

Mounted, they formed quickly, aware of the captain’s mood. The Occitans were slower off the mark, and the captain sent Ser Michael to move them.

Then he rode over in front of the company.

“We’re going into the worst place we’ve ever been,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll only have to march two hundred leagues and then fight once. But my friends, the fun is over. I was gentle with Dropsy. In a day, a man asleep could be our deaths and the failure of our cause.” He looked them over. “The sorcerer has taken Ticondaga. To the best of our knowledge, he’s going for the Inn of Dorling-and after that, Albinkirk.” He sat back. “We will endeavour to stop him. But for the next few days, we will move very fast through country that may already be hostile. The next man or woman asleep on duty will be flogged-even if it is a knight.”

Silence.

“Good. Company will wheel to the right by subsections forming a column of fours. March.” The company’s many subsections made quarter wheels, so that the whole manoeuvred like Moreans from being a long line three horsemen deep to a column four wide facing off to the right, down the road.

“Halt,” he called, and each section alligned itself.

He raised his hammer over his head and winced. Most of his body hurt this morning. He shook his head and lowered the hammer.

The captain rode to the head of his column, where Toby and Nell and the rest of the casa waited. To the east, the sun crested the mountains of Morea. Ser Michael cantered up.

“The prince hasn’t even awakened yet,” he said.

The captain nodded. “Then we leave him behind.”

Ser Michael nodded. “That’ll go over well,” he said.

The captain frowned and raised his hammer again. “March!” he roared.