Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel Book Three (8 page)

“And fresh food!” said Sofy. She was getting a little tired of the dried fare brought from Lenayin in the supply wagons.

Damon shrugged. “Perhaps. If Lord Heshan is true to his word, and supplies our army along the way. The lords of the Bacosh are not renowned for keeping their word on anything.”

“He’d better,” said Sofy. “We haven’t brought enough. We’d have to forage, otherwise.”

Damon rolled his eyes and grimaced. A Lenay army in the lowlands. Foraging. It seemed dangerously close to “looting.” And “invasion.” The lowlands had lived in terror of a Lenay invasion for centuries, an occurrence only prevented by the overlordship of the Cherrovan Empire, and the preference of the various Lenay regions for fighting each other. Leading an army of thirty-thousand Lenay warriors into the “civilised” lowlands made a great many people nervous, including some noble Lenays who did not trust the civility of their ruffian country cousins. It was a delicate matter all round. That the Larosans were allowing passage across their lands, and had encouraged Algrasse and Telesia to allow the same, was indication enough of how much the Lenays were needed in the war to come.

“So,” said Sofy. “How does your journey fare? Amongst all the grand importances of the vanguard?”

“Still squabbling about who will take the centre in the first battle,” said Damon. “The northerners, of course, insist it shall be them, but Koenyg insists on the importance of deploying heavy cavalry to a useful flank, and Father agrees. Furthermore, the Hadryn insist they will not hold the Taneryn flank, and vice versa; the Isfayen will have nothing to do with the Yethulyn; a grand family of Fyden have discovered they share the same house banner as a family from Banneryd, and have nearly come to blows over its ownership; and the new Great Lord of Taneryn, Ackryd, refuses to ride with the vanguard, and has headed back to his part of the column.”

“Well, that’s Lenayin for you. I don’t know why you let it bother you, Damon. Division is the nature of our kingdom, and always shall be.”

“That doesn’t bother me,” Damon replied tiredly. “It’s just…I don’t know how this is going to work, Sofy. Everyone fights differently, everyone’s in the war for personal advantage and glory. I don’t believe there’s any certainty that the great lords will even obey commands from Father or Koenyg in the heat of battle, if they think they have a better idea. Or if they see the order as advantaging a Lenay rival.”

Sofy did not reply. She was thinking about her sister Sasha. Sasha was Nasi-Keth, and thus loved the serrin. Sasha also loved Lenayin. Yet Lenayin was now marching to make war on the serrin…or at least, on their Saalshen Bacosh allies. Gods knew what Sasha felt, wherever she was now. Sofy was a Verenthane, as were all Lenayin royalty, and most of the nobility. The war was being fought in the name of the Verenthane faith. Yet for all the grand pronouncements of Archbishop Dalryn, and of the devout nobility, and from the northerners in particular, she could not feel any enthusiasm for this war.

The serrin had never chosen to make war on anyone. War had been made upon them, and the occupation of the Saalshen Bacosh had been self-defence, nothing more. They were gentle and kind, save where human aggression had forced them to fight for survival. What the serrin had helped the Saalshen Bacosh to build, in two centuries of occupation, seemed wonderful. And now, her father King Torvaal of Lenayin was leading an army of her countrymen to marry a Lenay princess to the Larosan heir, and forge a holy Verenthane alliance that would bind Lenayin’s future to that of the Verenthane lowlands forever.

That alliance would necessarily mean the reconquest of the Saalshen Bacosh, and the destruction of all the civilisation the serrin had brought to those peoples…but that mattered little compared to the holy Verenthane future of Lenayin. The future
was
Verenthane, they were told. The Gods had ordained it.

“I’m far less worried about the squabbling of stupid nobles than what the Goeren-yai think,” Sofy said. “Half of this army is not Verenthane, yet we ask
them to fight and die for a cause that has not always treated them well. Many of the eastern Goeren-yai have long ties to the serrin, and do not march willingly to fight them.”

“They’ll fight,” Damon replied. “It’s a question of honour. You can question their willingness all you like, but never question a Goeren-yai’s honour.”

“I know they’ll fight,” said Sofy. “I’m just…” She could not complete the sentence. Dare she say it? Even here, to her most trusted brother and confidant? She swallowed hard.

“You’re not certain you want us to win,” Damon said sombrely. “Are you?” Sofy stared at his dark gaze, and bit her lip. She nodded, faintly. Damon took a deep breath. “These are our people, Sofy. We owe them everything—our lives if need be.”

“Oh, I know that! I know that as well as anyone! But…some of these people are evil, Damon. These Larosans. What they’ve done to serrin and half-castes across the border in Enora and Rhodaan—”

“I know,” said Damon. “I know. But it is the future of Lenayin at stake. We have no choice.”

For a while, there was no sound but for the creaking of wheels, the thudding of hooves, and the jangling of harnesses.

“And how is your riding coming?” Damon said after the pause.

“Well, I tried using the rein as you showed me.” Sofy smiled. “Dary was quite impressed. He thinks I’m a little dense, but he tolerates me.”

“Koenyg complains you should not be riding a dussieh. I could get you a warhorse if you’d rather?”

“Never!” said Sofy. “I’ll not trade my little Dary for anything. Besides, Koenyg was just telling me he doesn’t want me riding at all. He’s determined to find fault with everything he does not understand.”

“Ignore him.”

“I do try.”

“I must go,” said Damon, gathering his gloves. “Tomorrow, after breakfast, we’ll go riding together. That’ll shut Koenyg up.” His eyes lingered on her for a moment, as though he wanted to say more. He reached and took her hand. Sofy clasped his and smiled at him. Then Damon departed, slamming the carriage door with a force that was almost anger.

Sofy sighed, picked up her book, and resumed reading. But the beauty of the foreign words escaped her now, and she stared forward instead, out of the windows.

She was not married yet, but Damon missed her already. For a long time they’d been friends. Most of his life, Damon had felt constrained, ignored, put-upon. Eldest brother Krystoff had been brash and flamboyant, a figure
impossible to emulate in life, and doubly so in death. Koenyg was the hardest of hard Lenay fighting men, and brooked no dispute from anyone, least of all his younger brothers. That left Damon, awkward, gangly, misunderstood and mistrusting, suspecting all of merely liking him for his royalty, or about to stab him in the back at a moment’s notice. All, that was, except Sofy.

For many years, she had been his solace, and now that solace was being married off for a cause that Damon had little enthusiasm for in the first place. It had been Koenyg’s decision as much as Father’s, and Damon blamed them both equally. Now, Sofy sat and gazed at the banners, and felt a desperate melancholy advancing at the thought of how much Damon loved her, and she him, and how lonely they would be apart for the rest of their lives. Even as she willed herself to be strong, her eyes filled with tears.

Jaryd’s feet ached worst of all. His thighs and knees weren’t much better, and his shoulders were painful beneath a weight of mail, shield and rucksack. Yet he walked, and contented himself to know that tomorrow, he’d have his horse back again. Most other men in this column weren’t so lucky.

Yells from far ahead signalled the coming halt, as the sun dipped low upon the western horizon. Then the shout rose from nearby, and men spread out, found a clear patch of ground for a campfire and swung down their loads with aching groans.

Jaryd sat with one half of the Baerlyn contingent, and took the opportunity to pull off his boots. “Not near me, please,” said Byorn, a hand raised to ward the smell. Jaryd removed a sock, and prodded at a new, bulging blister on his big toe.

“Wow,” said Andreyis. “That’s a beauty.”

“Master Jaryd has soft feet,” Teriyan remarked, his own boots removed and now sitting splayed-legged on the grass, as an experienced warrior might. “Like all lordlings, too much time ahorse has unmanned him.”

Of one hundred and thirty-seven men of fighting age in the Valhanan village of Baerlyn, thirty-one had joined the Army of Lenayin on this march. Enough were left that Baerlyn would not suffer too badly in the months or (spirits forbid) years that they were away. The Baerlyn Council had made the final say on the number, and had refused many who asked. Some men were essential, farmers in particular, but also bakers, smiths and others.

The King had not demanded more than twenty men in every hundred capable of fighting, through all of Lenayin. Much discussion about campfires now speculated as to the size of the Lenayin population in total…thirty thousand marching soldiers made one-fifth of a hundred and fifty thousand fighting men. Which would be only half of the total number of Lenay men,
when counting children and elders, making three hundred thousand men in Lenayin. Double that to account for the women, and there were six hundred thousand people in all Lenayin. It was a number so large, many refused to believe it. Scattered for countless centuries across their uncounted rugged valleys, so many people had divided into equally countless tribes, with differing tongues, beliefs and ceremonies. Now, thinking of just how many people Lenayin actually had, Jaryd wondered if any other human land possessed the sheer scale of fractious diversity the gods had granted his homeland.

No wonder we’re always in such a mess, he pondered, gazing about at the long, settling column. There was no thought of fortified camps here on the Telesian plains. Telesia had few people, and had only escaped conquest by Bacosh neighbours because it possessed so little that anyone wanted. Mostly it made a bulwark between the Bacosh and southern Lenayin, and there was no threat to a Lenay army here.

Jaryd set his boots aside and rose barefoot. “Come,” he said to Andreyis. “We’ll spar while there’s still light.”

Andreyis looked tired too, but he removed his boots and rose all the same, withdrawing his practice stanch from within his bundled gear. They took stance on a clear patch of grass, shields laid aside, and practised in the traditional Lenay style—two hands, no shields and little mercy.

Some other men did the same, and most of those pairs were also made up of a youngster and a more experienced warrior. Jaryd now had twenty-two years, but he had once been heir to the province of Tyree, and perhaps the most celebrated sword- and horseman in that region. Since then, he had been deposed, his family dissolved by ancient clan law, his youngest brother murdered and his siblings married off. He had taken refuge in a Goeren-yai village, sought revenge, and found something perhaps greater than that which he had lost. He remained uncertain of exactly what it was that he had found. So many things, he was still discovering every day.

Sparring over, he and Andreyis returned to the campside, and took their places in the circle.

“You should train with those damn shields, lads,” Teriyan told them. “We’ll have to use them soon enough.”

“Foundation first,” said Jaryd. “Shields later. The lad has to walk before he can run.”

“I can walk fine,” Andreyis muttered, rubbing a bruised arm where Jaryd’s stanch had caught him. “I’ve been doing nothing but walking for weeks.”

“When I was a noble,” Jaryd said, lounging back on the grass, “my father once received a travelling entourage from Larosa. Some bunch of idiot lowlands nobility seeking trade, horses and powerful friends in Lenayin. Anyhow,
this lord’s heir was seventeen; I was fifteen at the time. He was boasting to me about what a great swordsman he’d become, of how he’d trained with a master-at-arms from his father’s army since he had barely ten years, and how he thought himself more than a match for anyone in Lenayin.”

Men grinned or snorted. In Lenayin, boys held the stanch and learned footwork from the moment they could walk. “I challenged him to spar,” Jaryd continued, “and beat him black and blue from one side of the circle to the other. Then I handed off to my brother Wyndal, who’s another two years younger again, and not much of a fighter, but he did scarcely worse.”

“What’s your point?” Andreyis asked. The lad was a little touchy where his swordwork was concerned. Well, Jaryd supposed, it couldn’t have been easy having the stuffing smacked out of him all through childhood by Sashandra Lenayin. Now, fate had afflicted another great and cocky warrior upon him. Probably he was getting sick of it.

“My point is that everyone can improve. That little lowlands snot thought he was great, but he learned that greatness in the Bacosh and greatness in Lenayin are two different things. Perhaps somewhere out there is another kingdom of warriors who make Lenays look foolish with a blade. Always assume you’re not as good as you will be tomorrow, if you work at it.”

“Listen to the pup,” Teriyan remarked, “spouting wisdom like he knows what it means. You come and talk to me when you’ve seen even half the battles I’ve fought in, youngster.”

“Aye,” said Jaryd, smiling, “you’ve fought in so many battles that last time we sparred, I could hear your bones rattling.”

“Sparring is not warfare, boy.” Teriyan looked less than his usual good-humoured self at that reminder. “When the formations line up, and you see nothing but Rhodaani Steel from one end of the horizon to the other, then you’ll learn the value of experience.”

Jaryd just smiled, and stretched out on the grass. Andreyis joined him, stretching an arm above his shoulder.

“Am I better than that Larosan boy?” Andreyis asked sombrely.

“That little fool? No contest, you’d kill him one-handed.”

“I know I’ll never be great,” said Andreyis. “I’ve had some of the best training of any man my age in Lenayin, with Kessligh and Sasha, and now you. I should be better than I am.”

“Not true,” Jaryd insisted. “Kessligh and Sasha fight with svaalverd, you’ll not learn a thing from them. I think it might have hurt you, truthfully.” Andreyis looked doubtful, but did not argue. “Look, you’re a tall lad, you’ve not filled out properly yet. Your technique is fine, you just need to get quicker, and that’ll take care of itself as you get older.”