{"id":1405,"date":"2011-12-29T00:35:24","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T06:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1405"},"modified":"2011-12-29T00:35:24","modified_gmt":"2011-12-29T06:35:24","slug":"christmas-present-snippet-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1405","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Present: Snippet #5"},"content":{"rendered":"

Episode 5 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Noldin looked at her for a moment, then said, “In the storeroom we have dried beans, trail bread, and meal in casks.\u00a0 Cookpots and a couple of spare mugs and bowls.\u00a0 You will find also a stack of blankets and five spare cloaks.\u00a0 I’m sorry it is not more.”<\/p>\n

Vardan bowed.\u00a0 “We are grateful.”<\/p>\n

“I must go,” Noldin said.\u00a0 But she hesitated.<\/p>\n

“You will eat with us?”<\/p>\n

“No–but do you want me to tell any other Halverics I find where you are?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” Vardan said.\u00a0 “We cannot stay here long. But when we go, I can leave them word which direction.”<\/p>\n

Noldin disappeared among the trees like a wisp of smoke.\u00a0 Vardan told off her troops for the necessary chores, and by midmorning everyone had eaten at least some meal moistened with hot water and had a mug of sib.\u00a0 She let half of them sleep, dirty as they were; the others, she set as rotating sentries, with those off watch cleaning themselves and inspecting their weapons by daylight.\u00a0 She felt better when she’d washed the bitter ash from her own face, when she’d brushed the now-dried mud from her uniform, and exchanged the useless scorched frill of her cloak for one of the rangers’ cloaks.<\/p>\n

In midafternoon, she woke the first group and put them to work, and then slept until midnight.\u00a0 She woke with a clear idea of what she should have done, and what she should do now–send someone to Chaya to tell the king what the current situation was, take the rest to Riverwash to link up with Captain Talgan.\u00a0 But last night’s situation would have changed by now–surely the rangers would have sent someone to Chaya.\u00a0 She forced himself out of the shelter and then heard the rattle of sleet falling through the branches.<\/p>\n

“Sergeant?”\u00a0 Ganeth, the watch-first, spoke at once; he was huddled by the fire; it hissed when a bead of sleet hit it.<\/p>\n

“We’ll need to move tomorrow,” Vardan said, wondering as she said it if that would be possible.\u00a0 If the sleet turned to heavy snow–and she was not sure of the way to the River Road–they could be lost.\u00a0 The maps she’d had burned with the camp. “Unless it snows,” she added, sighing.\u00a0 “I’ll take over, Ganeth.\u00a0 Go in and wake sentries; I’ll tell the others they’re off-watch.”<\/p>\n

Flurries of sleet and snow alternated the rest of the night; at dawn the ground was powdered white.\u00a0 The troops looked better for sleep and food and cleanliness.\u00a0 They made breakfast smartly, straightened the campsite, and looked to Vardan as if they expected her to know what to do next.<\/p>\n

Three hands of them, and herself.\u00a0 What could three hands do best?<\/p>\n

The winterwards sentry hooted; in that instant Vardan knew one thing they could do: kill Pargunese who did not outnumber them.\u00a0 She signaled in Halveric hand-talk; her troops arranged themselves and moved out.<\/p>\n

The Pargunese they saw skulking through the forest looked as desperate as she had felt the day before.\u00a0 Four hands of them, half with pikes and half with crossbows.\u00a0 They stopped every few steps; they muttered in Pargunese, pointing this way and that.<\/p>\n

They were lost, that was clear, and they did not agree on something–direction?\u00a0 Intention?\u00a0 They were not expecting trouble–or had no discipline, which she did not believe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Episode 5 of Sergeant Vardan and her patrol during the Pargunese invasion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-1405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-snippet","tag-snippet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1405"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1405\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}