Sasharia En Garde (57 page)

Neither was prepared to see a couple hundred women either
riding or walking over the bridge, which two generations ago had been a
drawbridge, but had been left down for over fifty years. A couple of hundred?
More than that, all strung out in a slow-moving line, as far as one could see.

Hilna gasped when she recognized the tall, tough-looking
woman walking beside a horse. “Plir Silvag?”

Plir lifted a hand in greeting, and waved at the woman on
the horse. Hilna blinked up at a pretty woman her own age, with pale hair done
up elaborately on the top of her head. She looked vaguely familiar—

“You remember Princess Atanial?” Plir asked.

The sisters stared in mute surprise.

Hilna gave a stiff curtsey, her expression changing from
blank surprise to a wary question.

Atanial looked down into those faces, seeing yet again the
question, doubt, resentment that had been mirrored in variations during her
long journey.

They had passed along the old paths, far from the fine
military roads and the waterlogged main roads. The worst of the journey had
been at first, when Atanial’s conversation with Plir was repeated, sometimes
with far more hostility than Plir had shown. But Atanial listened, and said the
same thing over and over:
We cannot
permit an invasion
. A few refused to join. Of those, half caught up later,
like Plir herself. With her she brought a number of relatives and old contacts.
Since then more were catching up day by day, women of all ages, from girls
barely in their teens to women far older than Atanial and Plir.

Women led them to other women who they felt would embrace
the cause, and so the group swelled in number every day. The strange thing was,
Atanial had realized one night, by now they could hardly be secret, and yet at
least so far, no one seemed to have sent word to the king. She did not know if
all Canardan’s spies were all at the war game, or if some had quietly changed
their minds about what side they were on.

Atanial returned Hilna’s bow as best she could from the back
of a horse, then said, “May we speak privately?”

Hilna rubbed her forehead. “I suppose. But what shall I do
about all these people?”

“Most of them brought their own journey bread. And we’ve
been buying fruit along the way.” Atanial did not mention that she alone hadn’t
come prepared. Most of the women shared, but Atanial did not like taking too
much. She was always hungry.

Hilna shaded her eyes to ward drops of cold rain. Among
those faces, most her age or older, and a very few young, were a couple of
guild mistresses, a baroness who had inherited her title in her own right, and
at least one garrison captain’s wife. “I think you all had better come inside.”
She cast a glance at her sister. “We can fit you into the hall out of the
weather.”

“And the sun room, too. This way.” Pirie gestured to the
women accompanying Atanial. “I’ll see to food and drink for those who need it.”

“Princess, you come with me, if you will.” Hilna waited at
the door.

Atanial dismounted with a smothered
woof
and tried to be delicate about rubbing her inner thighs as she
walked stiffly behind her hostesses. A smothered snicker from behind testified
to her success, before the last of the women vanished into what appeared to be
a parlor with plastered and whitewashed walls; they moved through that to the
rest of the ground floor of the castle beyond.

But Hilna did not crack a smile as she stalked into a low
entry of bare swept stone, the enticing smell of baking apple tarts drifting
from somewhere. Atanial’s stomach rumbled.

A sharp turn, up a short stairway to a room off a landing, and
the smell was cut off by a thick wooden door swinging shut. Hilna indicated a
massive wing-backed chair that had to be a hundred years old at least.

Atanial winced at the prospect of her aching hips dealing
with that ungiving wood. She sighed in relief when she spotted a newly stuffed
cushion on its seat, embroidered somewhat crookedly with tulips and bluebells.
There was another such chair, both angled toward a fireplace where a good fire
already burned.

Hilna perched on the edge of one and Atanial collapsed into
the other, plopping her cold feet onto the fender.

“I’ll try to be brief.” Inwardly she resisted the strong
desire to sleep right where she was for at least a year. “You don’t have to
answer. I don’t want to put you into a bad position. But Mistress Silvag
insisted we should stop here and at least let you know what we’re doing.
Whatever you decide to do about it, considering who you are married to. Or
rather, who your husband is brother to.”

“Dannath,” Hilna breathed.

“I don’t know how much you know, but the evidence is clear
that Dannath Randart and the king will be invading Locan Jora in the spring.”
Atanial braced for—anything. But oh, she did so hope she wasn’t going to have
to leap to her aching feet and bucket down those stone steps and back onto that
horse, sword-waving women on her heels.

Hilna’s mouth tightened.

“I know the reasons put forward in favor,” Atanial said
swiftly. “Locan Jora has been part of Khanerenth for most of recorded history.
Though the outer borders have danced about quite a bit from generation to
generation. I know there are people who lost their homes when the takeover
happened. I know they want their ancestral homes back. I know that there is a
belief that the economy will vastly improve, that there will be land and titles
for the loyal, that this and that will all make things better. But. I really
want you to consider the cost. The real cost. Which is lives. Not necessarily
ours, but young people’s, like your son’s. Because he’s supposed to be leading
this war, isn’t he?”

Hilna’s eyes narrowed.

“At least, he’ll be right at the front, with all the banners
and so forth, but we know who will really be in command.” Atanial paused,
wondering if she’d gone too far.

Hilna rocked on her chair while rain tapped at the leaded glass
window in the deep stone embrasure, and the fire on the hearth crackled and
snapped. “If I interfere, I’ll never see my son again. It’s rare enough I see
him now. Either Damedran or my husband, Orthan.”

Atanial leaned forward. “Tell me.”

Hilna brushed a strand of hair off her forehead with
trembling fingers. “What is to tell? I get to see him once a year. If that.
Then he pushes me away with
‘Uncle
Dannath says
I’m too soft.’
Uncle
Dannath says
after every visit home, always something aimed at me.
My husband, too.
Dannath says
Damedran has slid back into boy habits, and requires a week of drills to
toughen him back up again.”

“So you disagree with their goals?”

“If I wished to be known as a traitor,” she retorted. “I
cannot have an opinion that differs from Dannath’s. None of us can. Why do you
think I never adopted into the Randart family? It was the one single thing I
could keep of my own, my family. Even this barony is nothing but an air
title—Orthan saying, often and often, that soon we’ll live in Vadnais, we’ll
have a real title, and this castle, which I have spent the past fifteen years
making into a home, is good enough for Pirie and Wolfie.”

Atanial had used the past two or three days forming logic
chains to argue against every conceivable point of view against an invasion.
She had never expected this reaction.

“What would you like to do?”

Hilna dashed her wrist angrily over her eyes. “Is that meant
as a jab? No, I see by your face it isn’t. But how can you ask that, knowing
Dannath? Oh, I knew from the very start that Orthan was loyal to his brother,
but in those days the goal was rebuilding the army, which had gotten slack,
with pilferage and cronyism and scandalous behavior shrugged at in the upper
ranks. That’s how we lost half the kingdom in the first place! But after
Damedran was born, there were more and more hints about royal vision and royal
gifts and . . .”

She wiped her eyes again, frowning down into the fire.
“About five years ago, I realized they were not talking about the king. They
meant Dami. And at first I conceded, with a mother’s pride. I thought he’d make
a fine king. I didn’t consider how he might get there.” She looked up, saying
fiercely, “And it’s as well I conceded, because I vow as sure as I sit here
otherwise, Dannath would have seen to it something happened to me. He’s never
had any use for women—for anyone, really—unless they can fight.”

Atanial nodded. “Or serve. But not think. That seems to go
for men, too.”

“Yes. Orthan is plenty smart, and loyal, but he’s no grand
thinker. So what is it you are doing?”

“We are marching across the kingdom.” Atanial swept her arm
wide. “Where, you shall see. None of the other women know the destination, only
that I strongly expect that we will meet the king there, and War Commander
Randart. I knew that nothing I did on my own would ever make any difference.
But if there were enough of us, maybe we could get them at least to listen?”

Hilna let out her breath in a slow, shaky sigh. “I know I
sound like a coward, and perhaps I am one. If I ever cross Dannath, even in a
small thing, I will lose my son altogether. And what you are suggesting is no
small thing. I shall have to think.”

“Fair enough.”

“There are two things I will say. First, I will only discuss
it with Pirie. And maybe one other friend who I think will be sympathetic. But
I’m not sending any messages to Orthan.” She gave a small sigh. “I could never
force him to choose between his brother and—well, leave it at that. I’m mum.
Best that way.”

Atanial gestured her thanks.

“Second, if you can convince Starveas Kender to join you,
she might bring some of the old Joran nobility over. Her husband loved marrying
an old noble family with a title, even if deposed. The Kenders have their title
by courtesy, as do all the old Joran nobility. You know that.” She scarcely
paused for Atanial to assent. “I know that he can hardly wait for the invasion
to be over, so they can lord it once again on the other side of the mountains.
But she’s worried. Not only about Ban. Also about her daughter Mirnic, who will
be sent with the mages. Who end up as targets as often as the warriors.”

“I would love to, but I don’t dare go back to Vadnais. It
was too difficult to get past the guard on my way out. I don’t believe I’d make
it back in without being caught.”

“The Kenders don’t live in the royal city,” Hilna exclaimed.
“They live in Ellir. They left that several weeks ago, knowing about the siege
running into winter, and how those with castles along the west will all go
home, taking sizable portions of the army with them for the winter. The Kenders
are staying with her cousin, the Duchess of Frazhan. They stopped here day
before yesterday.”

“Frazhan on the border,” Atanial murmured.

“They have that wonderful old castle directly across the
river valley from Ivory Mountain.”

“Ahhhhh.” Atanial smiled.

Magister Zhavic watched the king rub his forehead with
tense fingers, the ruby in his ring winking and glittering.

He looked up wearily. “Zhavic. I know you don’t trust my war
commander. Neither of you has ever even tried to comprehend the other, it seems
to me. Yet you are loyal and dedicated. So why can’t you see that we must work
together now? We cannot afford strife among ourselves.”

Zhavic struggled to suppress his annoyance. It wasn’t as if
this reaction of the king’s was unexpected. “Write to him, your majesty,” he
urged, keeping his voice low, quiet. “Please. If there is a reasonable
explanation, I vow I will never again bring forward any suspicions.”
Not without undeniable proof, anyway
.

The king let out a long-suffering sigh, and with a spurt of
ill-tempered impatience, threw aside a couple of stacks of papers in search of
one of the small slips he used for the magic-transfer box.

Zhavic bent, picked up the snow of papers on the floor and
returned them, glancing covertly at the top of each. Most were supply lists,
but one was from the
Skate
’s infamous
Captain Bragail, on which Zhavic glimpsed the phrase . . .
of the pirate absolutely no sign
.

The king extricated a small piece of paper, picked up his
pen, dipped it, and frowned at the mage. “What am I asking again?”

“I do not know what questions you deem appropriate, your
majesty, but the questions that occur to me are why he considered it necessary
to send his nephew and several senior cadets away from the siege on a secret
mission, and why he suddenly had to ride off, again without telling anyone.”

The king frowned down at the pen, apparently not seeing the
slow formation of a droplet of ink. It was about to splash on the paper when he
threw the pen into the well and leaned back in his chair. “You know, it really
is
odd, when I think about it. He
mentioned nothing of any of these things in his report last night. I thought
Damedran was with the other cadets. And that Randart himself was overseeing things
at Cheslan Castle.”

Zhavic put his hands behind his back lest they betray him.
Long years had taught him to keep his face impervious, but the surge of triumph
burning through him made him almost shaky.

The king nipped up his pen. He wrote in a fast scrawl,
folded the paper, shoved it into the box without waiting for the ink to dry and
tapped it. He looked up, eyes narrowed. “If there is a good explanation I will
hold you to your promise.”

“If there is a good explanation, I shall be satisfied, that
is a vow. You know I only have the good of the kingdom in mind—”

“Yes, yes, everyone always has the good of the kingdom in
mind, especially when they begin arguing with me.” Canardan waved a hand to cut
off the flow of self-justification. He uttered a sharp laugh. “If you didn’t,
you would hardly be alive to argue.”