Haven: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Four (22 page)

“I think we gained a few thousand new horses,” Errollyn replied. “There are easily more than a few thousand good Lenay horsemen without, so our cavalry have actually increased—we can't have lost more than a few hundred.”

“And our foot soldiers decrease in the process,” said Kessligh. “Don't disregard them; cavalry are more valuable now, but not where we're headed. If we're to cross the Ipshaal, I'm not even certain how many horses we can take with us. The Ipshaal is wide, and there are no bridges.”

“That was you on the right flank?” Errollyn asked Damon.

Damon nodded, wiping a sweaty brow. “I nearly wasn't fast enough, they just came on like a river around that flank.”

“But you were fast enough. That was expertly done, to deploy that line so cleanly.”

Damon looked unconvinced. Errollyn did not like that. Perhaps it was that his two brothers remained on the other side. Or perhaps Damon was just being as Sasha had always described him—cynical, put-upon, never finding things quite as perfect or proper as they ought to be. There was, Errollyn had to concede, quite a lot about the present situation that might lead a man to find it so.

“They thought they were a match for us man-to-man,” said Damon. “They'll not make that mistake again.”

“No,” Kessligh agreed. “Unless they're completely stupid, they'll make themselves a part of the Army of the Bacosh from now on, and join their forces to the whole. We've not seen the last of the Kazeri…and with them, the Army of the Bacosh regains a large part of what they lost when the Army of Lenayin left.”

“No,” said Errollyn. “We just proved that thirty thousand Kazeri aren't worth even a portion of the Army of Lenayin.”

“Thirty thousand Kazeri poorly led,” Kessligh corrected. “If I were Balthaar Arrosh, I'd put Koenyg in charge of the Kazeri from now, as most of Koenyg's force is cavalry.”

“Koenyg won't know what to do with them,” Damon snorted. “He'll have even less respect for them than we do.”

“Then perhaps he'll spend their lives callously,” said Kessligh. “But a callous spending can still buy great value. Koenyg will know how. I know him, as you do.”

Damon bit his lip and looked grim.

“The Kazeri may not wear it,” said Errollyn. “They'll have their own factions and leaders, and pride in who leads and why. Like you said, we must reach Jahnd first—cavalry will then be less important than foot soldiers, and twenty thousand surviving Kazeri won't make too much difference either way.”

It was as optimistic a view as he had to offer at that moment.

“At least we're now assured of who's in command,” Damon remarked to Errollyn as they watched Kessligh progress across the hillside, offering commendations and instruction to mounted officers who followed. His hands moved in wide arcs, describing formations of cavalry across the fields, like a lagand captain coaching his team on tactics after a game.

“You could do it,” Errollyn told him.

“I'm not at his level,” Damon scoffed. “No one is. The man's a legend, and it's a title well earned.”

“If Koenyg loses, you're king.” Damon said nothing. “I know it is hard to think on,” Errollyn persisted. “For all that has passed between you, he remains your brother.”

“Don't think I'd regret the victory,” Damon muttered.

“Easy to say,” said Errollyn. “Harder to live with. But I'm not talking about your personal battle. To the men of Lenayin who have followed you this far, you are king
now
, not Koenyg.”

“They followed Sasha, not me.”

“Sasha told me you were grumpy. Listen to me. It doesn't matter what you feel about what they did or did not do, or what motivates them to do one thing or the other. What matters is how things stand. That is how a king must view things, concerned only with how things
are
, not how he feels about them, or them about him.

“Kessligh commands this battle, and that is good, because he is the best of us all. With any luck, and if Sasha and Rhillian can convince the Ilduuri to come and fight, we may still win. But if we do, then Lenayin will still need a king. And the men of Lenayin shall either emerge from this trial believing in you, or not.”

“Have you ever seen such peaceful lands as these?” Damon sounded almost wistful. “Before this war, it must have been wonderful. All this prosperity, achieved with no king at all.”

“Lenayin is not Enora,” Errollyn warned. “You still need the fair and independent hand of a higher power there, or else all the regions shall start fighting once more….”

“Oh, I know, I know…” Damon sighed. “But I wonder. If the progression of humanity lies in moving beyond kings, can any king make such progress as to make himself unnecessary, and step down? Could I, had I been on the throne fifty years? Or will that progress always come with war, and the fingertips of royalty clutching to that bloody chair until the bitter end?”

“I don't think this has anything to do with you suddenly doubting the necessity of Lenay kings,” Errollyn said solemnly.

“There's nothing ‘sudden’ about it. I think I've always been like Sasha in some ways, doubting the high virtue of royalty.”

“Or perhaps your cynicism merely infects whatever thing is closest to you.”

Damon stared at him. He seemed about to be angry. Then he smiled faintly. “Perhaps. And perhaps Sasha should do it. Be queen, I mean.”

“If you inflicted that upon her, she'd be very unhappy.”

“It's not supposed to be about what makes her happy, is it?”

“I'd
be very unhappy,” Errollyn added. “To say nothing of the majority in Lenayin not yet enlightened enough to accept a woman on the throne, greatest swordsman in Lenayin or otherwise.”

“We go presently to war against most of those,” Damon reminded him. “If we win…” He didn't need to finish the sentence. This holy crusade to unite the Bacosh, and to unite the provinces of Lenayin at the same time, had instead reignited the embers of Lenay conflict that had first flared in the Northern Rebellion beneath Sasha's unwitting leadership. Now those embers made a full-fledged bonfire. This was now a Lenay civil war, where certain old questions would be answered for once and all.

Whichever side won here would undoubtedly return home to continue the victory there. If Koenyg won, nobility would be strengthened and the Goeren-yai attacked, missing much of their best defence lying dead upon these Bacosh fields. If Koenyg lost…well, the course of action then would lie with whomever sat upon the vacant throne of Lenayin.

“Oh, come on,” said Errollyn, as an image occurred to him. “Can you imagine Sasha as Queen of Lenayin? Cooped up for days mediating squabbles between lords and village heads over taxes, marriages, and boundaries? She'd go insane.”

“And I wouldn't?”

“You
wouldn't make everyone else suffer to similar degree,” Errollyn said pointedly. “You don't have a temper like a wildcat in a snare.”

“Just like Sasha to be rewarded for her instability,” Damon said. “I don't
want
to be king. I don't want to shrivel up inside like father did. I don't want to become a tyrant like Koenyg would like to be, if he could ever gain power enough over ordinary Lenays to be so. I'm not made for that kind of power, and it's not made for me.”

“So make
it
into the power that
you
wish it to be.”

“It doesn't work that way.”

“For men whose dreams entwine with the wild sinews of mountain lands, all is possible.” It was Tullamayne Errollyn quoted. One of those lines that stuck to the memory in any tongue.

“Why is it that serrin quote more Tullamayne than Lenays?” Damon complained.

“Perhaps for the same reason that Lenays are here fighting with us,” Errollyn said with smile.

Sasha reined her horse to the side of the road to gaze back across the foothills. They were not far now from the Ipshaal, and the boundary between Ilduur and Enora. But their pursuers were drawing closer.

Sasha could see them clearly, traversing a fold of hillside across the valley, where the road cleared an exposed shoulder of land. They were alarmingly close, near enough to count individual men and see the glinting decoration on saddle and bridle. But as always in such country, distances were deceiving—the valley between them was steep, and the Kazeri now faced a difficult descent, then a sharp rise up to Sasha's present position. As Sasha watched, the line of riders went on and on.

Their best guess was one hundred. Certainly the Kazeri had some idea who they chased, and to what purpose. Five nights ago they had decided to forgo sleep and cross the gap to the serrin/human camp by starlight, only to meet with serrin ambush and fifteen dead. Several more Kazeri had injured themselves falling from unseen rocks in the increasingly rugged hills…one, Aisha insisted, had tumbled straight off a cliff. They had not tried such a night approach again, and the two groups had camped each night a suitably safe distance apart.

Kiel had argued for a night attack of their own, and had gained Rhillian's permission to scout the Kazeri camp on several nights. But the Kazeri had selected their camps well, atop steep and exposed approaches with no trees for cover. Kiel had manoeuvred upslope and taken two Kazeri guards with arrows, but had then spent much of the remaining night returning to camp, and been exhausted the following day. Rhillian, Kiel, Aisha, and Arendelle made only four serrin in the group, and Rhillian judged that they would exhaust or sacrifice themselves in continuing such attacks, thus leaving their human companions exposed, and the entire mission in jeopardy. Whatever her preference for aggressive tactics, Sasha had to agree—she stumbled on rough ground even in moonlight and, without sight, her swordwork suffered.

Nearby, Daish was slumped on the grassy verge, looking pale. Aisha kneeled alongside, helping him to drink. Sasha joined them.

“How bad?” she asked in Lenay.

Aisha just shook her head and looked worried. The most recent bandages to Daish's side were red with new blood. Constant riding had not given the wound a chance to properly heal. They could not leave him now—towns in these hills were too isolated and too vulnerable to the Kazeri warband behind. And the townsfolk they'd passed were not friendly anyhow.

“We should reach the Ipshaal by nightfall tomorrow,” said Aisha. “If the border guards let us in. Then we can stop running…but all of this riding isn't doing him any good.”

“Hey,” Daish said weakly. “No mumbling about me in foreign tongues. It makes me think you're saying things you don't want me to hear.”

“We are,” Sasha teased. “There was a girl in the Tol'rhen who claimed she'd slept with you, and you weren't any good. We were discussing whether she spoke the truth.”

Daish managed a smile.

“I think not,” said Aisha, helping him sip more water. “Surely not.”

“What was her name?” Daish asked after the swallow.

“Peala,” said Sasha. “Long hair, always in curls.”

Daish managed a laugh, weakly, so not to hurt his side. “I never touched her. I have more taste.”

He clasped Aisha's hand. Aisha clasped it back and, as Daish closed his eyes to rest, she gave Sasha a worried look.

Yasmyn stood further up, scanning the way ahead. “The horses are struggling,” Sasha told her and Rhillian. “We can't hold this pace much longer.”

“I think our pursuers will try to push the pace,” said Rhillian. “They need to catch us before we reach the Ipshaal.”

“If the border guards let us cross,” Sasha countered. She sipped from her waterskin and swatted at a fly. “It's hot in Kazerak; I reckon Kazeri horses will handle this heat better than ours. If we push this hard for two days, we'll have them falling dead from under us. Hills are one thing, hills and heat together are a killer.”

“We'd better find someone to feed us along the way,” Yasmyn said darkly, looking at the high mountains. “A climb like that takes a lot of eating for horses and people—that's a four-day pass, more if the weather turns bad. We're already low on food, and if the villages remain unfriendly…”

“We'll find a way to persuade them,” said Rhillian.

Sasha was impressed by the sheer size of the Ilduuri Range. It began down by the border with Meraine, where foothills rose into valleys that made the land easily defendable against any Meraini attack. There were fortresses there, Aisha said, and walls guarding the mouths of valleys, manned with detachments of the Ilduuri Steel and local militia. If any attack breached that first defence, an army faced a long march up a climbing valley toward the mountains, where further battlements guarded high passes, manned in turn by reinforcements brought from middle Ilduur by signal fires set burning at news of the first breach. Looking at the mountains before her, Sasha could see why Ilduur had never been conquered. It was a natural fortress, and granted entry only to whom it chose.

She led the way down the next slope, into a steep valley with sides so rocky they would bear no human settlement. The valley floor was narrow, and earth gave way to loose rock and shale, across which a stream flowed. Now it was truly hot, with sun glaring off the rocks, and she pulled her broad-brim Petrodor hat from her saddlebag.

By midafternoon, Aisha was pushing her way up the trail to Sasha's side. “Daish can barely stay on his horse,” she said. “Sasha, if we keep going like this, we'll kill him.”

Sasha signalled a halt, and wheeled her sweaty horse around. Yasmyn was next behind, then Rhillian and Kiel. “We can defend this ridge,” she said, gesturing around them. “It has shade, steep sides, only one approach. If we stop, we stop here and fight. But there's no water, and if we go down into a valley, the Kazeri will gain the high ground, then surround and kill us.”

“Can there really be any discussion?” Kiel wondered. “I know it always falls to me to say the cruel and heartless thing, but is there truly anything to be discussed?”

Sasha looked at Aisha. Aisha looked desperately at Rhillian. “Sasha,” Rhillian said quietly, “if it falls to me to decide, you know there's only one decision to make.”

Sasha swore, and dismounted fast from her horse. She jogged to Daish, who slumped over his saddle, pale and sweaty, without even the strength to swat away the flies that landed on his face. Seeing him like that, Sasha recalled Yulia of Petrodor, another young student of the Nasi-Keth, who had died by the risk Sasha had subjected her to, by her own orders.