Rewrite That Witch
CH109 · Rewrite
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Chapter 109: Echo (Part 2)

Brian was still sitting in his position when Carter came back through the gate.

The order had been to rest in place, not to dissolve. So they had stayed — two hundred soldiers sitting in the dirt of the practice field, waiting, while the castle on the hill sorted out whatever had just happened. Brian’s patrol shift started in three hours. He was working out the arithmetic of whether confinement was better or worse than standing guard all night.

“Sir Knight, Captain Iron Axe — is he coming back?” Nail appeared at his elbow, as Nail tended to do. The man had worked the mines for six years before joining the army and had the particular social confidence of someone who had spent those six years in close quarters with difficult people. He called Brian sir knight despite being corrected every time. “What His Highness did — he won’t be too hard on him?”

“Don’t call me that,” Brian said. “Group Leader.”

“Group Leader.” Nail scratched his head. “Only I’ve seen what happens when a civilian bumps a noble’s carriage. The guard killed him right there in the street.”

Brian had seen the same kind of thing. He had also watched Iron Axe for three months of training — had watched the man teach tent-rigging and winter navigation and hand signals in five different languages with the patient thoroughness of someone who believed that the knowledge was worth having for its own sake. He had watched Iron Axe correct soldiers’ grip and stance without the contempt that Carter couldn’t quite keep out of his voice when doing the same. Whatever had possessed Iron Axe to throw himself on the ground in the middle of a formation, Brian could not imagine the Prince being unreasonably hard on him for it.

“His Highness isn’t like that,” Brian said.

Nail nodded. “That’s what I said. I’ve talked to him personally. He’s — ” He frowned, searching. “He looks like a noble but he acts like something else.”

“They’re back,” someone said.

Carter was coming through the gate with Roland and Echo, and no Iron Axe.

Brian watched Carter’s face: neutral, which meant nothing had gone catastrophically wrong. Roland had the expression he wore when he’d handled something and moved past it.

“Formation,” Carter said.

They stood.

Roland stepped in front of the line. He moved along its length until he could see the full width of it — Brian watched him do the count, the quick assessment — and then stopped at the center.

“The woman beside me is a witch. Her name is Echo.” His voice was even and carried. “She and Iron Axe had been separated for several years. Today he broke formation without an order. He has been sentenced to two days’ confinement.” He paused to let this settle. “I will say this once: you are the First Army of Border Town. The most important rule of this army is that you obey orders and maintain discipline. On the practice field, on the march, in action — always. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Your Highness!”

Brian felt Nail’s elbow in his side. He looked sideways and found Nail’s face arranged in the expression of someone whose prediction had been confirmed and who intended to be recognized for it.

“During our field training,” Roland continued, “Echo will simulate instruments — horns, drums, everything that a full band would carry. The rhythm she sets is your command rhythm. You march to it, hold formation to it, execute orders to it. Learn to recognize the patterns.” He turned briefly to Echo, something passing between them, and turned back. “One more thing: wherever we march, she marches with us. She stands behind the line. You protect her the same way you would protect your ammunition. With your lives if necessary. She is the voice of this army.” Another pause. “Now — listen.”

Brian had heard music in taverns. He had heard the Castle musicians at the Months-end celebration, which had been pleasant and slightly boring. He had a vague expectation of something similar — moderate, competent, forgettable.

What came out of Echo’s mouth was none of those things.

The drum entered first, and Brian felt it in his sternum before he consciously heard it — a beat with weight to it, not decorative, the kind of rhythm that organized the body without asking permission. Then the flute above it, quick and clean, and then strings threading through both, and suddenly the whole thing was more than its parts. Something in the combination moved.

He became aware that his foot was keeping time.

He looked down at it, confirming this, then looked at the man to his left and found him doing the same thing. Down the line, shoulders had straightened without anyone ordering it. Two hundred men who had been sitting in dirt for half an hour had produced, without instruction, something resembling a formation.

Brian thought: This is what he meant.

This was not music for listening to. It was music for something else — it made the distance ahead feel shorter, made the weight of the pack less important, made the cold and the mud into background rather than foreground. He had read, once, that armies in the old histories used drums to maintain pace in marching. He had thought he understood what that meant.

He had not understood it until now.

“Group Leader.” Nail had abandoned the elbow and was simply looking at him, the way a person looks when they want to say something and are waiting for the moment. “I think I want to be in this army for a long time.”

Brian said nothing. He was listening.

The song went on, and his foot kept time, and somewhere ahead of him — always somewhere ahead — the distance waited, and for the first time since winter he did not find the waiting difficult.

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