Beguchren left the lady to consider how deep soil might flow like a liquid and said to the captains, without the slightest fear he would distract her, “I expect the Safiad to make his appearance, in considerable force, quite soon. Today, tomorrow, most likely not so late as the day after. Suppose he approaches this very afternoon. If we cannot halt him entirely, I think we must delay him at least three days.” After that, if the Wall had held so long, it would probably break. At that point Iaor Safiad would have to forget about the Delta and set his men against the griffins. If that happened, Beguchren intended to support the Feierabianden king with his own men. Provided he had any left, which he would not if he had been forced to use them in battle. He did not intend to have events come to that.
He said merely, “We do not wish our king to find himself pressed from the rear when he has urgent matters to which he must attend elsewhere. We most particularly do not wish him forced to engage Iaor Safiad personally. Given the possibility of unfortunate errors attending that sort of engagement, even if they had been previously avoided.”
Again, both captains nodded. One of them murmured, “No, indeed, my lord,” in a fervent tone that made Beguchren suspect the man had young sons of his own, and sufficient imagination to flinch from the picture this statement called to mind.
“We shall hope, however, to persuade the Safiad to hold using nothing more forceful than moral suasion,” Beguchren said firmly, and dismissed the captains. As they drew away, he overheard one of them murmur to the other, “Well, my lord is the man for moral suasion, if anyone is,” and the other answer, “He might bid the river flow backward and have it comply, but an offended king is likely to prove harder to turn than a river.”
This summed the situation up tolerably well. Beguchren, too, would have much preferred not to be forced to depend wholly on his own personal persuasiveness. Lady Tehre was a weapon, but it was not weapons that would win this particular argument—not if it could be won at all.
He could not help but recall, as sometimes he did rather too vividly, that once his usefulness to his king had not been limited to the fluency of his tongue and the persuasiveness of his arguments. Sighing, he rose—stiffly, for he was no longer a young man—and, leaving Lady Tehre to contemplate the possibilities inherent in this gentle pastureland, went to once more look over the arrangements he had made.
The King of Feierabiand rode south along the river road and out into the broad pastureland just after noon. Scouts had warned Beguchren, so he had his men properly drawn up. The formality of their disposal made the thinness of their lines all the more apparent, which was not accidental. Nevertheless, they made a fine, aggressive display, with all their neat uniforms and their helms polished and their spears neatly parallel. The spear-and-falcon banner of the Casmantian king flew over their heads, sapphire and purple.
Only the officers were on horseback, and they would dismount if the Feierabianden troops rode forward, for there were certain to be horse-callers among the Feierabianden ranks. No Casmantian, whether soldier or officer, could possibly trust himself to even the best-trained horse. The long Casmantian spears, made by the best weaponsmiths in the world, were meant to compensate for this Feierabianden advantage. Ordinarily they might do so, though today, with so few men, and those arranged in long lines rather than a powerful defensive block, they would never compensate sufficiently if it came to battle.
Iaor Safiad had clearly had scouts of his own out ahead of his main force, for he did not seem surprised by what he found in the open country along the river. His men filed off the road and formed up in their own lines, broader and far thicker than the Casmantian lines, for this was the Safiad’s main force, all that could be gathered hastily. Feierabiand was accustomed to having an uneasy neighbor on either side, and so that was a large proportion of all the male population, townsmen and farmers alike. The Feierabianden army might possess relatively few professional soldiers, but its militia was large, experienced, and swiftly available. And mounted. Feierabiand was proud of its horses and knew very well what a powerful advantage they possessed in their mounted companies. They rode to battle with other creatures as well: Hawks and even eagles perched on more than one shoulder, and the birds were greatly outnumbered by mastiffs with powerful shoulders and even more powerful jaws.
To be sure, though Beguchren might lack horses and dogs, he did have Lady Tehre by his side, and she was a weapon more to be valued than any number of spears. He asked her, “How much are we outnumbered, do you think?”
“Hmm?” The lady was mounted on a pretty bay mare. She wore a practical traveling dress with split skirts, a set of copper bangles around one wrist, and an abstracted expression. “Not much above four to one,” she said, glancing casually across the field. “Four and a fraction, I believe. About four and a tenth. You know, I don’t believe there’s much to do with all this deep soil after all.”
“Oh?” said Beguchren.
“No, I think the thing to do is snap all their bows. Or perhaps their arrows. The bows themselves are quite resilient to breaking, you know, especially at these cool temperatures, but they will very likely break if the arrows are broken just as their strings are released.”
“Ah,” said Beguchren.
“Although the timing in that case would certainly need to be very precise, even if they shoot in volley,” Lady Tehre added reflectively. “Perhaps it would be better to think about—”
“Please do nothing at all until it is quite clear that the Feierabianden force is actually attacking,” said Beguchren. “And I would greatly prefer it if, in that case, you do as little as seems consistent with a reasonable possibility of success.”
The lady’s gaze sharpened. After a moment, she smiled. “I understand,” she said.
Beguchren returned a small smile of his own, confident that for all her apparent absentmindedness, she did.
He rode out alone across the field toward the Feierabianden lines—rode, because it showed both confidence and peaceable intent to ride a horse within distance of the Feierabianden horse-callers, and because the Casmantian commander could hardly walk on foot across the mud and grasses, and most of all because he needed the horse’s height and beauty to make a proper show. The horse was a particularly fine white mare, not large, but pretty and elegant, with blue ribbons braided into her mane and tail for the occasion. Beguchren wore white to match her, embroidered with blue and set about with pearls. Together they would make a brilliant show, which was one skill Beguchren still owned, for all he had lost.
Iaor Safiad sat his own horse, a plain bay with good shoulders and powerful quarters and not a single ribbon, in the center of the Feierabianden lines. He did not ride out to meet Beguchren. Nor, which might have been more likely, did he send any man of his to ride out. He brought his horse forward only a few paces and then waited, compelling Beguchren to come all the way to him.
The King of Feierabiand was not as big a man as the Arobern, but he owned a kingliness all his own, and he had grown into his power as he had aged. His lion-tawny hair was just becoming grizzled, but he was one of those men, Beguchren thought, whose personal force would only deepen with time.
At the moment, the Safiad’s expression was stern and his mouth tight with anger. A difficult audience, Beguchren judged. But he had not expected otherwise.
The Feierabianden officers were spread out, each to his own company, and so far as Beguchren could judge, the king had not brought any court advisers with him. But beside the king and a little behind sat a young man on a fine black horse, a thickset young man with black hair and dark eyes and the unmistakable look of his father. He carried neither bow nor spear, but he had a sword at his side; a good, plain weapon and no courtier’s toy. He met Beguchren’s eyes with a serious, uneasy intensity.
Beguchren was already well within arrow-shot. He came within an easy spear cast and then rode closer still, until he was very close; close enough to be easily heard without shouting. Then he drew up his mare and simply sat fo
r a moment, meeting the furious stare of the King of Feierabianden.
“Beguchren Teshrichten,” the king said at last, bare acknowledgment with no courtesy to it. But he had reason to be angry.
“Iaor Daveien Behanad Safiad,” Beguchren answered, inclining his head in grave respect.
Iaor glared at him and lifted a hand, gesturing from left to right across all the field and the men arranged in their lines there. “What is this? Well? Brechen Glansent Arobern gave me his word he would be amicable, and now I find this in my way? What will he have of me?” He glared at Beguchren and then jerked a hand sideways to indicate Prince Erichstaben. He said, even more furiously, “I am aware he has a new young son; has he forgotten the one he gave to me? Does he believe my patience is without limit?”
Beguchren bowed his head in the face of the king’s anger. He said softly, “The Arobern indeed has hope of your patience, Iaor Safiad, but he does not believe it to be limitless. He asks, if you please—”
The Safiad slammed a fist down on his own thigh, reining his horse back sharply when it flung up its head and jolted forward a surprised step.
Prince Erichstaben, breaking into the moment with a sense of dramatic timing that might have been his father’s, moved suddenly. He had not appeared shocked or frightened at the Safiad’s threat, but had given Beguchren an involuntary glance that repeated the king’s question, only with real anxiety to it: Has my father forgotten me? But he did not ask that question aloud. He did not speak at all.
Instead, the prince stripped off his sword belt with quick movements, slung his sword over the pommel of his saddle, swung one leg over his horse’s shoulder, and slid down to the ground. Then, having collected all eyes, he walked forward to stand by the Safiad’s horse. He took the king’s reins and himself steadied the horse, absently patted its shoulder, and at last lifted his head to look up at the king. He did not speak, but his open, honest look spoke for him quite clearly and very well matched the courage and dignity of his gesture. Then he glanced at Beguchren and bowed his head, waiting.
The prince’s gesture could not have been better suited to Beguchren’s purposes if he had directed the boy through every instant. It changed everything about how Beguchren meant to proceed, for he had expected that he would need to slip every word he spoke past the Safiad’s outrage. But Prince Erichstaben had created a silence in which any word spoken would carry several times its normal weight, and in which any gesture, too, would carry more than usual weight and force.
Beguchren carried no sword of his own to give up, not even a knife, so he could not quite match the prince’s gesture. But he twisted his reins about the pommel of his saddle and swung down to the ground, came forward a measured few steps, and sank down to one knee. He said clearly and steadily, “Lord King, Brechen Glansent Arobern remembers every oath he swore to you and repudiates nothing. He sends me to beg you hold your hand and your temper and your men.” He deliberately touched his fingertips to the muddy ground and then to his lips in the gesture of eating dirt, met the king’s eyes, and said, “I do not know how to beg more abjectly.” He was satisfied to see that Iaor Safiad, taken aback, appeared at a loss for any answer.
Turning to the young prince, Beguchren added, with all the forceful sincerity at his command, “Your father has not forgotten you. However events fall, whatever these perilous days bring, he begs you believe that you have been always in his thoughts. He declares, with great passion, that no new babe can replace his firstborn son.”
Prince Erichstaben’s expression lightened. Though he still did not speak, he bent his head in an admirably dignified nod of acceptance and gratitude.
Beguchren shifted his gaze back to the Safiad. He said, “My king acknowledges that you hold the life of his son in your hand, but entreats you to hold.” And then, once more directing his words to the prince, “I beg you will believe that only the hard necessity of a king could have driven him to risk you.”
Iaor Safiad found himself constrained by Beguchren’s meek humility on the one hand and by Prince Erichstaben’s honest bravery on the other. He opened his mouth to speak or perhaps curse, but then only drew a hard breath. He said at last, still harshly but without the bright-lit fury of those early moments, “Get up, then—up, I say!—and tell me why the Arobern has committed this offense against my borders—for the second time!—and why I should hold.”
Beguchren rose as quietly and smoothly as he could. He did not remount his horse, deliberately using his own slight size to further constrain the Safiad to a civilized restraint. He said, “The cousin of your lord Bertaud came to my lord king. Lady Mienthe daughter of Beraod. Through the pass she came, to Ehre, with a companion who gave his name first as Teras son of Toharas to the royal guardsmen and to my king only as Tan.”
He had captured the Safiad’s attention. Though the king did not speak, his curt gesture indicated that Beguchren should continue. So he outlined the alarming news the lady had brought them: Linularinum on the one side and griffins on the other and confusion throughout; the strange determination of Linularinan agents to reclaim the legist together with whatever mysterious working he had stolen. He drew, without allowing himself to flinch, on his understanding of mages and mageworking to describe the way events were bending wildly around Tan, and his own guess about the legist gift and what Tan had stolen, and what that theft might mean for them all.
He did not mention Lady Mienthe’s odd gift or power, for fear the king’s very familiarity with the young woman might lead him to discount her. But he gave an honest and almost complete account of the reasoning that had led the Arobern to come west, and their fear that the Safiad, though rightfully outraged, might perhaps err in his anger and prevent the recovery of the legist book. “If the Wall does not hold and griffins ride their burning winds across Feierabiand,” he said quietly, “then we may all wish most fervently we had bent our efforts toward this work of legist-magic that might subordinate them.”
The king lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “You think this is possible.”
Beguchren met his eyes. “I think it likely,” he said gently. “And who would know better than I?”
He had used that phrase many times in his long life, generally to good effect. Even here in this foreign country he saw the words go home and belief settle in the king’s eyes.
The Feierabianden king said in a low tone far removed from his earlier anger, “I have heard a good deal of you, to be sure,” and then paused.
Not for any reason would Beguchren have broken into that considering pause. He stood with his back straight and his hands open at his sides, his eyes steady on the king’s face, waiting.
Prince Erichstaben waited also, his hand still resting on the neck of the king’s horse. He did not look again up at the king, however, for pride forbade any faintest suggestion that he might ask for mercy, either for his father’s sake or on his own account. There was tension in the set of his broad shoulders; nothing to wonder at with the recent vivid demonstration of a king forced to a hard necessity he would never have chosen freely. From that tension, Beguchren saw that the prince thought it was possible that the Safiad might still reject everything Beguchren had said and every plea he had made. But he also saw trust and even affection in the placement of the prince’s hand on the neck of Iaor Safiad’s horse.
The Safiad glanced down at the Casmantian prince. His expression was closed and cold, but only a man with a heart of stone could have been unmoved by the young man’s quiet courage. Beguchren was not at all surprised when the king said, in the low tones of a man making an admission, “We should neither one of us forgive the other for such an act, nor for compelling it.”
Beguchren bowed his head in acknowledgment.
The Safiad eyed him without enthusiasm. “Your king has presumed on my good nature, Lord Beguchren. He has greatly presumed. I am not in the least amused by his presumption, nor by your own effrontery. Nor is my patience endless. Get your men out of my way.”
His head still b
owed, Beguchren dropped again to one knee.
“Well you may beg,” the Safiad said sharply. “It is indeed effrontery! You do not have men enough there to hold me. Well?”
“Lord King,” Beguchren said, with a perfect humility that would surely have made the Arobern laugh out loud, “I am commanded in the strictest terms to see that the Arobern remains free to act, on your behalf and for us all. I beg you will forgive my effrontery and be so gracious as to permit me to obey my king. Only your generosity can redeem my honor. If you command me again, I shall have no choice but to comply, for, as you say, I have few men. I would never wish to compel a lady onto a field of battle, nor would the lady Tehre Amnachudran Tanshan wish to be so compelled. She would much prefer to ride north with all speed and see to her Wall; she was greatly distressed to hear of the damage that has come upon it.”
The Safiad looked momentarily taken aback by this combined threat and offer. Then he actually laughed—a grim laugh, but with something like real amusement. “Get up,” he said. “Get up, Lord Beguchren, and draw back your men. Set them in some less provocative order, and we shall discuss the matter. That is your pavilion down by the river? We shall retire to it and consider what we may do.”
“Lord King, I shall do everything exactly as you command,” Beguchren said smoothly, and rose.
CHAPTER 14
What does one do to prepare for the swift and terrible arrival of fire? Where does one go to hide from the fiery storm? Where does one go if the storm will come everywhere?
Casmantian for making, as the saying went, and to be sure, Feierabianden makers were neither so common nor so skilled as those of Casmantium. But it was humbling to see with what dedicated hearts the makers of Tihannad bent to their tasks. Especially when everyone in the city, and they themselves, must suspect their efforts would in the end prove inadequate.
Law of the Broken Earth: The Griffin Mage Trilogy: Book Three Page 31
