In the City of Cats

Part 06

	The attack came in the middle of the night.  Ciara was wrenched out of sleep by her mother's shouting and the clash of metal.  Their campfire had been built up so it burned brightly and Deirdre and Fithir's bedrolls were empty.  Ciara had no doubt her mother had been up all night preparing for Sabia's surprise, and that Deirdre had all but invited the enemy into their camp.  Ciara kept her eyes averted from the flames to save her night vision and she picked up her sword from where she'd hidden it under her bedroll.  She knelt down beside Niamh to shake her awake, and she had to stifle a yelp when the girl rolled over and grabbed her wrist.
	“I know.  I smelled them before Deirdre did.  I hoped they'd miss us, but Deirdre had to go rushing out to meet them,” Niamh said.
	“Stay with Fiachra and keep down.  I'll be back as soon as I can,” Ciara said.
	“The hell I will.  You aren't going out there, too.  I'm not going to let you,” Niamh said.
	“No?  Will you let Mom and Fithir do all the fighting?  But Mom's already been hurt and Fithir doesn't know anything about real combat, no matter what she might think,” Ciara said.
	She wrenched her arm out of Niamh's grasp and ran toward the sound of the fighting.
	Deidre and Fithir were surrounded by four lynxes, all in leather armor and all armed with swords.  Deirdre was in the lead, bleeding in several places with her ears flat against her head.  Fithir swung her sword blindly and only held one of the lynxes at bay by sheer luck.  This was the target Ciara charged first.  She ducked under Fithir's arm and slashed at the lynx's leg.  She didn't hit him, but her surprise attack made him retreat a few steps away from them.
	“Go back to the camp and look after the rabbits,” Ciara said.
	“Not a chance.  They'll cut you apart,” Fithir said.
	“Not as badly as they will you.  Mom taught me how to defend myself, at least,” Ciara said.
	“It's my daughter we're trying to save,” Fithir said.
	When the lynx came back at them, Fithir belted him with the flat of her sword.  He dropped to his knees and Ciara ran her sword through his chest.  She only meant to wound him, to stop him getting back up, but she was drunk of fear and adrenaline and when the end of her sword met flesh she couldn't stop until her enemy lay twitching on the ground.  Deirdre cut one of the lynxes facing her down a moment later, which left only two.  One had the sense to turn and run, but the last one lunged at Deirdre.  His sword struck her shoulder and laid it open.  Deirdre dropped her weapon and clamped her hand over the wound.  She barely made a sound, only a low moan of pain, but it was clear she was out of the fight.
	Ciara and Fithir both hit the lynx together.  Ciara saw her sword sink into his chest and the life left his eyes as she watched.  Then she dropped her sword, too, and turned to tend to her mother while Fithir fell to her knees and was sick.
	“It's not that bad,” Deirdre said, as Ciara tugged at her armor.
	“That's what you'd say if he'd cut your arm off.  Hold still, damn you,” Ciara said.
	She wrestled Deirdre out of her cuirass and ripped the sleeve off of Deirdre's tunic.  Ciara felt blood ooze around her fingers, but they were too far from the campfire for her to see how bad it was.
	“We should get moving.  There will be more of them waiting for us,” Deirdre said.
	“I know,” Ciara said.
	She dreaded the thought of trying to ride anywhere now.  It wouldn't be too difficult for her or Thirteen, since Ciara was in the habit of going for a ride whenever she couldn't sleep and the yellow mare was good at finding her way in the dark.  As for the rest,  they were iffy at best.  Except for maybe Deirdre, nobody else had any experience with riding at night and there was no telling how a bunch of untested horses might behave.
	“We're going to get Niamh to look at your arm before we go anywhere,” Ciara said.
	“I'm fine, leave it alone.  We don't have the time for nurse-maiding,” Deirdre said.
	“We need you better than fine if we do get ambushed again.  You're the one whose supposed to keep the rest of safe,” Fithir said.
	“She's right.  Niamh won't hurt you, she's had a lot of practice with patching me up.  So stop being a baby and come on,” Ciara said.
	Deirdre protested all the way back to camp, but she didn't resist when Ciara sat her down by the fire.  Niamh and Fiachra were waiting for them.  Fiachra held a thick branch in his hands like a club, and Niamh had dug a knife out of the cooking supplies.  She lowered the blade when she saw them, and she grabbed a roll of bandages when she saw the blood matting the fur on Deirdre's arm.  She knelt down next to them and prodded at the cut in a way that made Deirdre curse under her breath.
	“You're lucky.  It could be a lot worse,” Niamh said.
	“This?  It's just a scratch, nothing to worry about, but of course nobody was happy unless I took my medicine.  I fought half a day with a broken arm, once, you know,” Deirdre said.
	“I remember.  That was fifteen years ago.  I was seven and you came home too drunk to see and out of your head on pain.  Then you used to wonder why I had such a dirty mouth when I was little,” Ciara said.
	“I never taught you half those words,” Deirdre said.
	“You have no idea,” Ciara said.
	Niamh splashed a little bottle of alcohol over Deirdre's wound, which made her yelp and squirm.
	“More than twenty years of this and it still hurts like fuck every time,” Deirdre said.
	“Wimp,” Niamh said.
	“My mouth was never as foul as yours, not on my worst day,” Ciara said.
	Niamh had Deirdre bandaged in five minutes, and Fiachra had the fire put out in three.  While they packed up the camp, Ciara went to round up the horses.  They came trotting up to her when she whistled, with Thirteen in the lead, all except for Deirdre's stallion.  Ciara hadn't expected him to come right to her, but he should be on the edge of the little herd at least.  Ciara scoured the area around the camp with a torch made out of a branch and a few rags soaked with some of Deirdre's whiskey, but the big black horse was gone.
	“He was cheap, anyway.  I should have known I wouldn't get a good war horse for only fifty dollars,” Deirdre said.
	“War horse indeed.  Thirteen is better trained than he is,” Ciara said.
	“Will she carry double?” Deirdre said.
	“If she has to.  But I don't like this.  I didn't want Sabia to know we were here before we were ready for her,” Ciara said.
	Deirdre gave her a strange little smile and ruffled her hair.
	“My little girl.  It's almost a pity you didn't follow in your mother's footsteps.  You could have made Captain in a year,” Deirdre said.
	“I'd have been dead in less time than that.  I know where my place in life is, and I'm better off looking after horses and rabbits than I am playing hero.  That's your bit,” Ciara said.
	She hated the thought of leaving a horse behind or, worse, leaving him in the hands of the enemy.  It wasn't so much that he'd cost them the element of surprise.  Queen Sabia had to know they were coming and she probably knew about everything that had happened since they'd left Oseille.  The thing that hurt was her sense of responsibility.  She'd never abandoned a horse before, and she kept looking over her shoulder even as she helped Deirdre up onto Thirteen's back.
	They rode abreast so they wouldn't run into each other, and it was Niamh who came up with the idea to bark every few minutes so nobody would get lost.  Deirdre nearly fell out of the saddle laughing the first time she heard Niamh yelp, but she was the one who answered the girl.
	“I used to think she'd turned you into a rabbit.  Now I see it's the other way around,” Deirdre said.
	“No, she's always been like that,” Ciara said.
	“She'd have made a good fox,” Deirdre said.
	Ciara was startled to hear her mother say such a thing.  Deirdre had never been as arrogant as some foxes, but she had been raised to think that rabbits were beneath her.  Oseille, it seemed, changed everyone for the better.