AND YES, OUR SHORES ARE WARM;
I trust you will not show this song to Mother, for I could almost hear the nurse blush as I sang it, she who has bathed me and dressed my wounds over many weeks. As I think further, perhaps it would be best to show none of this to Mother. The story becomes no more pleasant.
We were speaking of snow and the trip to the tower and the indecent singing of footmen. One of the knights — it might even have been Sturm Brightblade, whose name you have no doubt heard in the histories and will hear again and again in this story — took exception to the song, and raised his voice in the Huma chant of which you are, dear Bayard, so fond. It faded into the fog behind us, for few knights took it up, weighted down as they were by the drizzling cold, and the footmen were not about to join in, the only version of that chant I had heard pass their lips an immodest parody in which the breast is no longer Huma's, is a different and softer reward entirely for the warrior.
I keep forgetting that the nurse is here. The Measure is still new to me. And I forget where…
THE SNOW, she says.
The snow. It was misery on horseback. I trust it was more miserable on foot, for boots were scarce, and most of the men had wrapped their feet in rags against frostbite and the sharp edges of ice. Breca, an old veteran among the foot soldiers, had bargained, begged, and finally threatened my boots from me on the road to the tower. And though I was angry at first, when I saw the boy to whom he gave the boots, saw the blisters and blackness about his ankles, the blood through the rags bright on the merciless road, the threats were unnecessary.
We passed the first night of the blizzard in marching. Breca returned the boots the next morning. Averted his eyes, said that the boy had no further need, that he rested with Huma now. Breca rejoined his column, and Sir Heros, uncomfortable but safe at least upon horseback, told me I had SEEN THE DARK SIDE OF WAR, THAT MEN DIE, BOYS DIE, LAYING DOWN THEIR LIVES FOR JUSTICE AND FOR A HIGHER CAUSE. It was almost inscribed, surely a speech he must have prepared for this moment as a promise to our father, something that smacked of the SONG OF HUMA to reassure and hearten his squire, the son of his fallen comrade. As if I had no idea that men die, boys die, from the ambushes that had followed us for a week. Breca, among others, began to claim that we guided our march by ambush — that when we were waylaid, again the knights were assured that we headed in the right direction.
For draconians, Bayard, do not fight in the lists. The Dragon Highlords may show elegance, breeding, but the war has nothing to do with the Measure, with a stately dance of challenge and courtesy. Often a footman would drop at the rear of the column, a barbed black arrow sprouting in his back, a chorus of catcalls and sometimes hisses from the woods nearby. Indeed they have no love of the cold; their blood thickens and their movements slow. But there are humans among them, and even the draconians can survive such weather, wrapped in furs they do not bother to cure or tan, and they know we have no love of the cold either.
Two days from the tower they struck a final ambush, a flurry of arrows from a stand of vallen-woods, falling harmlessly short. We could see them through the mist and the snow and the bare branches, some recognizably human, all moving like spectres or shadows. A few of our archers returned fire, their arrows falling short, too, which was what the dragon-armies wanted, their own supplies virtually endless.
One of them called out, FOOTMEN! LISTEN TO THE VOICE OF THE DRAGONARMIES! Melodramatic, yes, but effective across the mist and the dead land. Our bowmen ceased fire, glancing at one another nervously.
FOOTMEN! the man shouted again. HOW DO YOU LIKE BEING FODDER FOR THE KNIGHTS? An old trick, spreading dissension in the ranks, and indeed some of the knights — Lord Derek, Lord Alfred, our own Sir Heros — were outraged, Heros reaching back to me for his sword, Derek preparing to charge the stand of trees, alone if necessary, Sturm and his strange companions bristling in their wet saddles, until the loud voice of Breca stilled the bravery and muttering in the column.