Free Arms-Commander by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

crossing valley. They’ll wait there for a day or two. I don’t think they even know we’re following them.”
    “No. Women don’t track down armsmen. You’d think they’d know better after ten years,” said Murkassa.
    “Why would they? We’ve protected travelers and routed anyone who came at us, but we haven’t actually tracked and attacked anyone.”
    “Wouldn’t they think we might when they started to send squads to terrify travelers?”
    “No,” Saryn replied. “Women in Gallos wouldn’t even consider that. They have the idea that we’re like the females of most species—females will protect their own and their cubs, but they won’t go that far from their territory to chase a marauder.” She smiled. “We’re about to change their ideas.”
    At that moment, Adiara turned and looked up from the fire, her eyes wide.
    Saryn could sense the mixture of feelings within the girl—sadness, anger at the death of her mother, exhaustion, but most of all, something like awe, as if she had seen a glimpse of something she had never seen before.

XI
    F iveday dawned bright, with frost across everything, and a rime of ice on the still waters at the edge of the stream. The thin layer of slushy snow in the shade had a crunchy crust of ice on it that would soften by midmorning. All that was usual for spring on the Roof of the World, and morning duties were quickly completed, so that Saryn and second squad were riding eastward long before the sun cleared the taller peaks.
    As they started up the gradual incline in the road that Saryn had scouted the night before, she turned in the saddle toward Murkassa, riding to her right. “You’ve got five bows. How many are good with them?”
    “All, ser. I’ve trained everyone, but the five who carry them are as good as anyone in the guards. All of them can put the shafts through plate, sometimes at a full gallop. Zanlya can hit a moving target the size of a pearapple at fifty yards, sometimes close to a hundred.”
    Westwind shafts, thought Saryn, with arrowheads forged by Nylan before he left. Those arrowheads were the ones that the guards spent glasses searching for after they’d used them against brigands… or poachers. That was something on which both Ryba and Saryn agreed. The replacement arrowheads forged by Daryn, Huldran, and Ydrall were good… but not so good as those done by Nylan. Everyone knew it, and no one ever said so.
    Sometimes, the guards sang the song Ayrlyn had written about Nylan, but never when Ryba was around. Saryn smiled briefly as she recalled the engineer’s embarrassment at the opening lines: Oh, Nylan was a smith, and a mighty mage was he … She also wondered if the former comm officer had composed the song just to assure Nylan’s legacy.
    “How long will we be riding, Angel?” asked Adiara.
    “All day,” replied Saryn. “You’ll have to ride with some of the others soon.”
    The girl nodded solemnly.
    A glass or so later, Saryn turned the girl over to Raena, one of the junior guards, and joined the outriders. That way, she could sense any dangers as soon as possible.
    For a time, Saryn and the two outriders rode silently along the high stretch of road between the evergreens and shaded snowdrifts. The air was chill enough that the only scent was the faintest hint of pine and spruce.
    “Do you think they’ll have attacked more travelers?” Abylea finally asked.
    “I hope not. It’s early in the year for travelers, except for traders, and I don’t think they’d want to attack traders.” Saryn shrugged. “They might not be that smart, though. If the traders start avoiding Fenard especially, that won’t make the Prefect happy.”
    “But he’s the one who had to have ordered the armsmen—”
    “We don’t know that, not yet. Besides, rulers don’t always understand what happens as a result of what they order. They just think they do.” Saryn couldn’t help but think about the UFA marshals who had ordered the Winterlance