Page 25 of Into the West

The next day ended with both him and Isla in the saddle. Isla, to go interview all of the people with Mindspeech that the Healers had identified, and him to ride up and down the lakeside, making sure that things were going as smoothly as possible.

When much of your command is because of personal charisma and trust, a wise leader makes himself seen and has personal visits whenever possible. It reminds followers that they are important for more than their tasks, and it replenishes their morale. Nobody wants to dare the wild following someone fifty leagues away, but they’ll follow the leader they saw last week. When appealing to the heart, make it personal and keep it personal, and apologize for when you can’t. Those were the words of his father, and wise ones. Certainly nothing he learned in the Imperial hostage school.

The impression wasn’t hurt when an elderly couple gifted Kordas with a basket of warm, morning-baked twisted breadsticks, explaining they were their grandparents’ recipe from home. Kordas shared the bread with minders, headmen, and guards along his route, passing the story along. Being seen giving food personally was good, but being talked about doing so was even better.

His quick check to the other side of the Gate told him that the flotilla was on the move again. Or at least the front part of it was. There was no sign of the native villagers, although, of course, they could have had one of their number up a tree keeping watch from afar. Rose assured him that all was well with the scouts, that the leading barges of the convoy had matters well in hand and had picked up speed, and that she would make sure he heard about it if any of that changed. So he took Arial back through the Gate to fret his way along the lakeshore, imagining all the things that could go wrong, and trying to think of solutions before they did. Passing through the Gate was a matter of timing, when boats were in motion. They came through at a steady pace, but returning to Crescent Lake meant jumping Arial onto a moving barge, rushing to the end before it came through, and leaping off on the other side of the Gate’s shimmer to the waiting jetty. Fortunately, head-on collisions were very unlikely; the laws everyone knew about Gate travel were good ones, and directional travel safely went through from opposite sides of the uprights. Similarly, the vessels came through with the same protocols they’d left old Valdemar’s canals by—straight through the Gate, then immediately break starboard to clear the way for following traffic, siding outward by half beam. If that hadn’t been ingrained in everyone who brought a boat through, they’d never have gotten a dozen barges to Crescent Lake.

The remaining mages had set up a camp just out of the way of the convoy, and before he could look for any of the Six Old Men, Ceri strolled up to his side. “We’ve each got our personal barges ready to attach to a string, and we’ve already calculated how many barges need to pass before one of us joins the string,” he said, without waiting for Kordas to ask him anything. “Kordas, you’ve spent every minute since we got to Crescent Lake organizing things so that each section of the caravan can pretty much manage itself. You want some advice?”

Kordas had pulled himself up a little when Ceri had said that—because it was absolutely true. Every village was in its own section of the group. People who didn’t have a village—like the Squire’s offspring—had organized with neighbors. Every group had a designated cook and a portable kitchen, and a common supply barge. Every group had a leader. Every group had more than one Doll. Even if some disaster separated the groups, they all had the means to communicate, get help, and survive until they met up with, or were rescued by, others.

“Yes, please,” he said.

“Let them. Tell your subordinates to think of all the ways things could realistically go wrong, and to work out solutions.” Ceri grinned, showing a set of surprisingly white and strong teeth for someone his age. “That way, we narrow down the number of ways we can be unpleasantly surprised, and you don’t exhaust yourself.”

“But—” he began.

“Yes, yes, I know,” Ceri said dismissively, sounding, in that moment, exactly like Sai. “We will still be unpleasantly surprised at some point. But you will have narrowed down the number of times that can happen by anticipating it and having solutions on hand. What you’re needed for are emergent situations, and leadership. Not spinning yourself up with anxiety solving every possible problem, which you probably won’t be there for anyway. Now go away.”

Kordas knew better than to argue, and sent Arial back to the family barge. When he wasn’t riding her, she would be giving a hand—or a hoof, as it were—to Dasha, the enormous False Gold mare he’d selected to pull his string of barges. A filly foal—Delia’s personal horse—was with Dasha as well, but she was much too young to do anything other than amuse the boys and be made much of. Each barge-string was going to be responsible for its own towing beasts, whether they were horse, mule, set of ponies or donkeys, or the infinitely patient oxen. Their little homing talismans were now attached to the first barge in their string, as opposed to a herdsman or corral. As far as he was aware, pretty much every animal that could be put into harness was towing a vessel of some sort.

And for as long as grass could still grow this late in the year, the Six had solved the problem of forage. Each mage had been taught the spell that made the grass grow unnaturally fast. When the column stopped for the night, the first thing each mage was supposed to do was hop out and start growing the grass. Even gorging themselves, the herds wouldn’t be able to eat it all—with this spell going, you could quite literally watch the grass grow.

Even if the spell drains the ground with the growth, the herds should replenish it as they digest. At least partly. It would not do to render the soil useless after promising we would do no harm. We’re doing more than enough harm just by being here.

When he got to the family barge, the whole family except for Delia was there, with Isla directing servants, children, and a couple of his Guard as if she was an Imperial Officer. Dasha was waiting patiently in harness, tethered to the family barge, and Isla greeted his arrival with the command, “Get Arial out of her tack and in harness. Our supply barges just arrived and we’re not that long from moving.”

“Yes ma’am!” he said, laughing so it wouldn’t sting. “I’ll be right back.”

It was kind of a relief to be in a position to be ordered around, instead of the one doing the ordering.

Funny how affection can take the edge off of anything. Anyone else and I’d frown over that. It must be love.

With the long caravan of barges now coming through the Gate, the scouts were on the move. According to everything that Amethyst had relayed, Kordas had the situation with the rightful dwellers of this land well in hand, so there was nothing stopping or delaying that ever-growing snake behind them. Of course he does, Delia thought, without any irony. I really think there is nothing that Kordas cannot handle, and he’s just letting us do things so we feel special and wanted.

There could be something to that, actually. Finding this river must have been a huge relief for Kordas.

For her part, she was getting into the rhythm of exploration. And making sure to enjoy what she could about this part of the journey, because things could and probably would get a great deal more difficult. Certainly it was already colder, and none of them knew anything about the climate of this part of the world. So expect the worst, and prepare for it.

She’d done the little she could by catching extra birds every day, stockpiling the firewood, and taking on the chores that anyone could do, as opposed to the more specialized things only a mage or Ivar or Briada could do.

That let her concentrate on traveling for literally the first time in her life, knowing that decent, if plain, meals were right at hand, and a comfortable bed awaited her at the end of the day. She didn’t even need to take a turn at night watch! Consultation between Briada Fairweather and Ivar had led to the conclusion that, since Doll Amethyst could, and had indicated she would, spend the entire night on watch, Amethyst would stand watch on the lead supply barge where the horses were going to be left to graze and sleep in the night. Meanwhile, the two Fairweather cousins, Ivar, Hakkon, and Briada would divide up watches on the rear barge carrying the Gate uprights, which was where anyone trying to sneak up on them would probably come from. For now, Ivar’s dog was sleeping on the roof of the women’s barge in the middle, and that was a third set of senses all night. From Delia’s experience, it was impossible to sneak up on Bay. Even when he looked like he was sound asleep, if you moved, an ear would point right at you. And his bark could wake the dead.

That is something I will miss about Crescent Lake. The noises. All the wildlife, stock, pets, and children sounding off, bits of music, the occasional whoop or howl from storytelling, or chants during chores. I may never hear that again. It might never happen again. This is the real here-and-now, but it’s also history. I heard that with my own ears, and I couldn’t even have imagined it as a concept a year ago. The idea of so many of us, who were spread across hill, dale, and meadow, put all together in one place? Incredible. This is scary, but it’s amazing, too.

Meanwhile, she was cheerily getting on with the two jobs she had been assigned: wood gathering, and hunting for dinner.

Or, in this case, fishing for dinner. She had discovered just by trying it that what worked in the air also worked as long as she could see through the water to her target object. She had no idea what kind of fish she was catching, she only knew that they looked nice and fat, and Sai had approved of the first one. She was belly-down in the stern, watching the wake, where it seemed fish liked to gather and snap at things jumping into the water from the bank. There were five fish in the basket hung in the water at the prow of the boat, and Delia was hoping to add a sixth, so everyone would get half a fish for dinner tonight. As she narrowed her eyes against the light on the water, she heard footsteps on the walkway behind her.

“If you can catch a sixth fish, everyone will get half a fish for dinner tonight,” said Sai, in an echo of her thoughts. “Fish and flatbread with that watercress I found where we camped last night. I’m shocked the geese hadn’t been at it.”

She didn’t ask him if he had tested it to make sure it actually was watercress; he’d already lectured everyone about how they could not count on plants that looked like something they knew was edible actually being that thing. She sighed, but quietly; she didn’t want Sai to ask her why she was sighing, because it was . . . pretty trivial. She missed the battered, fried fish the cook had made back home, when there was always plenty of everything and no need to worry about using up the last bits, and there were so many kinds of fat, from lard to butter, that one could waste it frying battered fish.

“And I’ll use a little of that goose fat you got us to fry up the dried mushrooms that are soaking in the kitchen,” Sai continued. “Now, there’s something even the late unlamented Emperor wouldn’t have turned up his nose at.”

A dim form slowly rose up through the green river water. Delia tensed, waiting to make sure it looked like the rest of her catch. It rolled up to the surface, and she identified the little telltale arrowhead in dark gray on the top of its head that all the other fish had. She reached, imagining she was snatching for the fish with two invisible hands—

And the fat silver fish lay flapping on the walkway just at Sai’s feet. Before she could move, he seized it in both skinny arms and trotted to the front of the barge where the netted fish-basket was, cackling with anticipation.