‘As soon as we’re gone, he’s going to hit the gates headlong and drive his whole strength inside as fast as he can.’
The Tor nodded once, stiffly. His lips had a blue color in the chill; Terisa saw them trembling. To himself, he murmured, ‘So the Alend Monarch masters Orison at last. And we must let it happen. My King, forgive me.’
Geraden looked like he was chewing a mouthful of glass, but he didn’t say anything. Master Barsonage’s expression was bleak and grim. Only Ribuld kept grinning, like a man with secret sources of gratification. Terisa didn’t have any attention to spare for him, however. She was too busy trying to evaluate the new clarity she had seen in Prince Kragen’s face.
Would it make him happy to take Orison?
Would Elega let him be happy about it?
In a mood that resembled defeat, despite Terisa’s recent victory, the vanguard of Orison’s army passed through the intersection and headed south, toward the Broadwine Ford and the Care of Tor.
Unencumbered by supplies or unnecessary equipment and weapons, they set a brisk pace. Soon the last of the riders were in the intersection; the last of the unmounted guards were emerging from Orison. Southward, the ground rose slightly – not enough to block the sight of the Broadwine from the high towers of the castle, but enough to give the vanguard a view down the length of the army. Now Terisa and everyone with her could see what Prince Kragen’s men were doing.
Peeling away from Orison on both sides, they formed themselves into two masses: one larger, which took shape on the road northwest of the intersection; one considerably smaller apparently positioning itself to approach the gates.
The vast number of Alend servants and camp followers had already begun to strike the tents, break down the encampment.
The Prince must have been very sure that he would be settled inside Orison before dark.
Scanning the nausea on the faces of his companions, Ribuld chuckled maliciously.
At the crest of the slow, southward rise, the Tor left Castellan Norge to lead the army. With Terisa, Geraden, Master Barsonage, and a handful of guards, he moved to a vantage off the road from which he could watch the progress of his forces – and the fall of the castle.
‘How long can Artagel hold out?’ Terisa asked Geraden quietly.
‘A lot longer than Prince Kragen thinks,’ he replied, biting down hard on each word before he released it. ‘He knows how important this is. If he fails, the Prince can cut off our supplies.’
Oh, good, Terisa groaned. Wonderful.
She could feel that her face was red, chafed by the cold. She wished the Tor looked the same, but he didn’t. His cheeks were too pale; his mouth and eyes, too blue. He didn’t seem to have enough blood left in him to bear what he was about to see.
Or perhaps he did. ‘Now, Prince Kragen,’ he muttered as the last of the guard reached the intersection and turned south, ‘do your worst. Preserve yourself and your father if you can, and remember you were warned that this would never save you.’
While the lord and his companions watched, the smaller mass of the Alend army placed itself across the road in front of Orison’s gates, just beyond effective bowshot from the walls.
At the head of the larger body, Prince Kragen rode into the intersection.
With his standard-bearer carrying the Alend Monarch’s pennon before him, Prince Kragen led at least six and perhaps seven thousand of his soldiers south along the road Orison’s army took.
‘You knew about this,’ Geraden said severely to Ribuld.
Ribuld grinned. ‘They shouted a lot of orders while I was waiting for you. I didn’t have much trouble figuring out what they meant.’
‘And you didn’t think it was worth mentioning to us?’ demanded Terisa. She wanted to hit the scarred veteran. She also wanted to shout for joy.
Enjoying his own joke, Ribuld replied piously, ‘I could have been wrong, my lady. I didn’t want to mislead you.’
‘They were getting this ready while we talked to the Alend Monarch,’ Geraden muttered with fire rising in his eyes. ‘The decision was already made.’ Which explained the excitement Terisa had seen in Prince Kragen. ‘They were just waiting for a final word from Margonal.’
‘Then why didn’t they tell us?’ asked Terisa.
‘They don’t want an alliance.’ Geraden sounded wonderfully sure. ‘They want to be ready to help if they think we’re right. Prince Kragen does think we’re right. But they also want to be free to abandon us – or even turn against us – if we’re wrong.
‘I told you the Prince is an honorable enemy.’
The Tor didn’t say anything. While Prince Kragen led his forces up the rise after Orison’s army, the old lord sat on his mount with tears in his eyes and a look like a promise on his broad face.
FORTY-SIX
A PLACE OF DEATH
The wind continued to blow out of the south – not hard now, but steadily, and full of cold, rattling through the trees and along the ground like a rumor of icicles – and Orison’s army marched into the teeth of it. The men went almost boisterously at first, when the word was passed down the lines that Prince Kragen and his troops were coming toward Esmerel instead of attacking the castle; then slowly the guards’ mood turned grimmer, more painful, as the wind wore down hope, drove both men and horses to duck their heads and brunt a way forward with the tops of their skulls. The unseasonable chill stung the eyes, rubbed at the spots where tack or mail galled the skin; it searched out the gaps in winter cloaks and made the air hurtful for sore lungs and caused earaches. By the time the Tor and his forces had crossed Broadwine Ford and halted to make their first camp, they had lost whatever optimism they had carried with them from the Demesne. Disspirited and worried, the army turned its back on the wind, huddled into itself, and cursed the cold.
The men already looked beaten.
By Castellan Norge’s reckoning, however, they had pulled nearly four miles ahead of the Alends.
‘That disturbs me,’ muttered the Tor while Master Barsonage and the other Imagers chose an open patch of ground and began to unpack their mirrors. ‘I do not wish to be separated from the Prince – and I do not wish to wait for him.’
Norge shrugged as if the movement were a twitch in his sleep. ‘They’re carrying all their food and equipment and bedding and tents – everything they need. They’re lucky they can come this close to our pace. If Prince Kragen tries to drive them this fast tomorrow, some of them will start to break.’
‘And that will benefit no one,’ fretted the Tor. Abruptly, he called, ‘Master Barsonage!’
‘My lord Tor?’ the mediator answered.
‘Do I understand correctly? This evening you will translate our necessities from Orison – and tomorrow before we march you will return everything to the castle for the day?’
Master Barsonage nodded. He was impatient to get to work. One of the Congery’s three supply-mirrors was his.
The Tor kept him standing for a moment, then said, ‘I will wager the Alends carry enough food and water to sustain them for eight or ten days. If their supplies were added to ours, could you manage so much translation?’
That got the mediator’s attention. ‘My lord, you propose a vast amount of material to be translated. All Imagery is taxing. And we have only three mirrors.’
‘I understand,’ the Tor replied rather sharply. ‘Can you do it?’
Master Barsonage glared at the ground. ‘We can make the attempt.’
‘Good.’ The old lord turned away. ‘Castellan Norge.’
‘My lord Tor?’
‘Send a messenger to my lord Prince. Say that I wish to consult with him – that I wish to consult with him urgently – on the subject of his supplies.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ If Norge had any qualms about the Tor’s idea, he didn’t show them. Instead, he gave the necessary orders to one of his captains.
Muttering under his breath, Barsonage went back to work. ‘He’s right, you know,’ Geraden commented to Te
risa as they hugged their coats and watched the Masters prepare. ‘That’s a lot of translation for only three mirrors – three Imagers. It’s going to be hard.’
Terisa didn’t want to think about it. In fact, she didn’t want to think. Men had died to keep her alive. That was what war meant: some men died to keep others alive. The bloodshed had hardly begun. Numbly, she asked, ‘What do you suggest?’
He studied her. ‘We could help.’
She blinked at him. She could see that he was cold, but he didn’t seem to feel it as badly as she did. He was still able to be worried about her.
‘The practice might be good for us,’ he said casually. ‘And you look like it wouldn’t hurt you to be reminded that Imagery has a few’ – he searched for a description – ‘less bloody uses.’
She grimaced. ‘I don’t think I have the strength.’
‘Terisa,’ he said at once, ‘listen to me. You didn’t kill anybody. You were trying to stop the killing.’
He touched the sore place in her, the ache of responsibility. Stiffly, she said, ‘They died protecting me.’
‘But you didn’t kill them. Their blood is on Eremis’ head, not yours.’
‘No,’ she retorted. ‘Don’t you understand? I didn’t have to give him the chance to attack me. We could have gone around the intersection. Nobody had to die. I made that decision.’
Like Lebbick, the men protecting her had died for nothing more than a ploy, a gambit – a move at checkers.
‘That’s true.’ Geraden practically smiled at her. ‘You struck back. You took the risk of striking back – and all risks are dangerous. Next time, you might want to choose your risks more carefully, so nobody has to face them except you. Us.
‘But you were right. That’s why we’re here, we, all of us. Including those men who got killed. To strike back. If we aren’t going to strike back, we should have stayed in Orison.’
Choose your risks more carefully.
‘In the meantime,’ he said as if he knew what her answer would be, ‘we can make ourselves useful. The Congery has curved mirrors they aren’t going to need tonight. I can tackle one of them. And there’s probably a flat glass to spare. If there isn’t, you can try your hand at a regular translation, where you don’t have to shift the Image.’
As well as she could, she met his gaze. Sometimes she forgot how handsome he was. He had a boy’s eyes, a lover’s mouth, a king’s forehead; the lines of his face were capable of iron and humor almost simultaneously. He lacked Eremis’ magnetism – he was too vulnerable for that kind of attraction – but his vulnerability only made his strength more precious to her, just as his strength made his vulnerability dear. And he was so good at turning his attention to her when she needed it—
With one cold hand, she touched his cheek, ran a fingertip down the length of his nose. ‘I hope Master Barsonage is in a tolerant mood,’ she muttered. ‘I might make some pretty dramatic mistakes.’
‘Nonsense,’ scoffed Geraden happily. ‘After the mistakes I’ve already made, anything you can do wrong is going to be paltry by comparison.’
Chuckling, he led her toward the open ground where the Masters were unpacking their mirrors.
When he explained what he had in mind to the mediator, Master Barsonage’s harried look eased noticeably. ‘This is too good to be true,’ Barsonage said as he assessed the possibilities. ‘Something must go amiss. If neither of you cracks a glass – and I feel constrained to remind you that nothing of what we have can be replaced – perhaps Prince Kragen’s Alends will be overwhelmed by sentiment against Imagery, and will feel compelled to throw a few propitious stones.
‘Master Vixix.’ This was a middle-aged Imager with hair like roofing thatch and a face as bland as a millstone. ‘We require your glass.’ To Terisa, the mediator explained, ‘Master Vixix has shaped a flat mirror which shows a scene lost somewhere in the Fen of Cadwal. We brought it because a fen can be a useful place to drop trash and corpses. As a weapon, however, it has little value. Perhaps it would serve for you?’
Without waiting for an answer, he instructed another Master to unpack one of the Congery’s normal mirrors for Geraden.
Soon the ground was cleared, the mirrors were set, and guards stood ready to carry away translated equipment and supplies. Nodding in satisfaction, Master Barsonage approached his own glass and said, ‘Very well. Let us begin.’
Standing more beside the mirror than before it, he gave its focus a last touch, then began to stroke the edge of the frame with one hand while muttering words Terisa couldn’t distinguish.
From the Image of Orison’s ballroom, two sacks of flour and a side of cured beef flopped to the ground at Master Barsonage’s feet.
Another Imager produced a cask of wine, which was greeted with a rough cheer by the nearby guards. The third began to spill a steady stream of bedrolls through his glass.
‘You realize, don’t you?’ Terisa said to Geraden under her breath, ‘that I don’t have any idea how to do this. I don’t know what words to say, or how to move my hands, or anything.’
His eyes sparkled as he faced the mirror which the Masters had unpacked for him. It showed an arid landscape under a hot sun, so dry that it seemed incapable of sustaining any kind of life, so hard-baked that the ground was split by a crack as deep as a chasm and wide enough to swallow men and horses. Despite his past, the Congery – or at least Master Barsonage – trusted him with that glass. Touching the convoluted mimosa wood frame delicately with the tips of his fingers, he smiled and said, ‘This may sound strange, but that isn’t exactly a secret. It’s one of the first things Apts learn – as soon as the Congery knows them well enough to be sure they’re serious. Imagery doesn’t depend on waving your hands the right way, or making the right sounds. It depends on talent. The rest—’
Interrupting himself, he came to look at Master Vixix’s glass with her. In the gloom of evening, the Fen of Cadwal looked forbidding: dark and wet; unpredictable.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Move your left hand on the frame – like this.’ He showed her. ‘Gesture with your right hand – like this.’ He showed her. Then, without allowing her any opportunity for practice, he said, ‘While you’re doing that, mumble these sounds.’ In her ear, he murmured a complex string of nonsense syllables.
‘Most Apts,’ he commented, ‘work on things like this for a year, off and on. You ought to be able to handle it’ – he gazed at her innocently – ‘almost immediately.’
She stared back at him, unwilling to believe that he was making fun of her – and unable to think of any other interpretation.
‘Try it,’ he urged, as if half a hundred guards and most of the Congery weren’t watching her. ‘Go on.’
His smile seemed to promise that nothing would harm her.
Quickly, so that she wouldn’t be paralyzed by self-consciousness, she approached the flat mirror.
Move your left hand on the frame – like this. No, more like this. Gesture with your right – that was wrong, try again – with your right hand – like this. At the same time. And mumble.
Working hard to remember the syllables Geraden had told her, she forgot for a moment what she was trying to accomplish.
With a roar like a cataract, rank swampwater began to rush over the edge of the frame onto her feet.
Startled, she jumped back.
Instantly, the translation stopped.
The Masters and most of the guards were laughing; but Geraden’s grin was too full of approval to hurt her. ‘I’m sorry.’ He chuckled. ‘I didn’t mean to embarrass you. This is just one of those situations where if you know what you’re trying to do it gets harder.’
Terisa looked down at the muck on her boots. Croaking in hoarse astonishment, a frog hopped away across the hard dirt. Despite the chill, her cheeks and ears were hot from the laughter of the spectators. Balanced between indignation and mirth, she rasped, ‘I hope you can give me a better explanation than that.’
Her tone made him serious a
t once. ‘The words and gestures don’t have anything to do with translation. They’re for your benefit – to help you concentrate in a particular way. When you’re first learning, they help by forcing you to think about them instead of translation. And when you’ve learned, they help – sort of by force of habit. After enough repetition, they put you in the right frame of mind almost automatically.
‘But if I told you all that first, you would think about how you were concentrating, instead of actually concentrating. It would be harder. Now that you know what the right frame of mind is, you’ll have an easier time getting yourself back there.’
He made sense. She knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t trying to make fun of her. She ought to laugh—
But she had seen men die today. And she had every intention of killing Master Eremis. She was in no mood to laugh at anything.
Deliberately, she went back to the mirror and began to clear her mind so that she could shift the Image, transform the Fen of Cadwal into the ballroom of Orison.
Before long, Prince Kragen arrived in person to discuss the question of his supplies with the Tor. By that time Terisa had already succeeded at bringing a stack of groundsheets through from the ballroom – and no one was laughing. The guards and the Masters were all hard at work, preparing to feed and shelter six thousand men for the night.
Prince Kragen observed that he had no alliance with Mordant. And without an alliance he certainly couldn’t entrust his army’s supplies – in effect, his army’s ability to function – to a group of men who were historically his enemies, in addition to being notoriously crazy.
The Tor observed that if the Alend army continued to carry its own supplies, and continued to try to keep up with the forces of Orison, it would reach Esmerel no better able to function than if it had lost all its supplies.
Prince Kragen observed that it would not hurt Alend to let Orison meet Cadwal first and test the High King’s mettle.
The Tor observed that two separate armies of six thousand men each would pose a trivial problem for High King Festten’s twenty thousand, compared to a united force of twelve thousand.
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