In the gloom ahead, faded of colour, he saw the shape of a banner, leaning on the body of a dead horse. He limped over and found a tangled mess of bodies, Hadryn and not. One of the Hadryn was gasping, trying to live, propped against the dead horse's side. Most of his entrails were in his lap. A sergeant in Yethulyn Bears colours lay with his head split open. Jaryd limped past them, searching the bodies with his eyes. The desperate story of their fight revealed itself in their final, fallen forms. Here a desperate, heroic defence. There a defiant charge. Men had fallen from their horses and fought on the ground. One of the dead Hadryn had deep bite-marks through his hand and glove, the familiar curve of human teeth. Desperate fighting indeed.
Another dead horse, a dappled grey. This one, Jaryd saw as he limped around the dead animal's head, had a rider trapped beneath it, caught by the right leg. The horse's head was half-severed by a single blow. The horse must have fallen hard and taken its rider down with it, even harder. The rider had that look, splayed on his right side, an arm outstretched, twisted and halfconscious. Like a man who had fallen from a great height onto hard ground. His clothes were lordly, over his mail, with decorated stitching on his leather gloves and silver embroidery on his belt.
Banners. He'd charged this way, seeking banners. Lordly banners. Jaryd took another two steps. The half-conscious man seemed to register the boots before him and looked up, his helm askew. "Help me!" demanded a thin, anguished voice. "Help me, I'm hurt!"
A northern accent. A familiar, petulant tone. Now he remembered. "There's many hurt, Lord Usyn," said Jaryd, hoarsely. "Help yourself."
Usyn stared up at him. Perhaps the darkening overcast remained bright enough for silhouette, because the Great Lord of Hadryn's eyes seemed to widen with recognition. `Jaryd Nyvar!" He sounded almost relieved. "Master Jaryd, you must… you must help me up. My father was on good terms with your own. You are heir to the great lordship of Tyree. Great lords should always conduct themselves with honour, even in battle."
"And with what honour have you conducted this battle, Lord Usyn?" Jaryd asked. In the distance, trumpets blared again. "I saw the bodies in Ymoth. You attempt the slaughter of an entire Lenay people, and you speak to me of honour?" The fury was with him again. They were all the same, these nobles. His so-called peers and comrades. Everything he'd ever aspired to be, it was all a lie.
"You would stand there and snarl at me, while I lie wounded?" Usyn looked about, desperately, and found his sword on the ground nearby. He snatched it, and tried wriggling free from the horse's weight… and nearly screamed. "Have you…" he gasped, desperately. "Have you no honour?"
"My father and brother are dead," Jaryd said tonelessly. "Family Nyvar is no more. We were betrayed. If that is the honour of Verenthane nobility, then no, Lord Usyn, I have no honour. I reject your honour. I am a man already dead, and I have no fear of anything any longer."
"You would kill me?" Usyn asked. There was fear in his voice, a high, thin quaver. "Like this? Defenceless? I am not your enemy! Why
… why do you ride with these… these people! You have the blood of the chosen in your veins! The nobility of Lenayin! The masters of the land!"
"The nobility of Lenayin slew a ten-year-old boy for daring to be frightened. Your honour is horseshit. Or worse. At least horseshit has uses."
"I didn't do it!" Usyn screamed. "I didn't kill your damn brother! You can't… you can't accuse me of… "
"Of vanity? Of power lust? Of murder? Of massacres and hatred? I know only too well what you are, and what you've done, Usyn. I know because I was once of your kind. I've been so stupid, and so blind, that I didn't realise what they'd do until it was too late. For that, I deserve death. And if I do, I'm quite certain you deserve worse. Look about you."
Some men were groaning, amidst the tangles of wheat. A little further, someone was sobbing. Torchlights now moved across the fields, riders searching for wounded.
Usyn was crying, Jaryd saw with surprise. He'd thought him many things, but not a coward. Yet it did not surprise him too greatly. They were all hypocrites and fakes, all the nobility.
"I just…" Usyn sobbed, his face contorted, "… wanted to be worthy of my father! I… I wanted to be a great lord of Hadryn! I wanted him to be proud of me, and… and I want to see my sister again, and…"
He lashed his blade in sudden fury at Jaryd's leg. Jaryd leaped back, with the barest moment to spare, and hurled his sword point-first for Usyn's throat. It struck, and Usyn died with a horrid gurgling, drowning fast in his own spurting blood.
Jaryd turned away, unable to face the sight. He put his good hand to his head and stared across the battlefield, to where the tips of the northern mountains continued to glow, long after the light had fled the land below.
In a clump of wheat nearby, he heard a man coughing. He walked and found it was a Goeren-yai villager, with a bloodied face and a sword thrust through his side. Not deep, though. He might yet live. Jaryd sheathed his borrowed sword and managed to haul the man upright with one arm, long enough to dump him over one shoulder. Then he stood, muscles, ribs and leg shrieking protest, and began limping toward the river.
Dusk was falling as the army reformed behind a defensive line. No counterattack came, and masses of riders began falling back to rest their horses and water them at the river. Others searched for fallen comrades. Sofy helped with the wounded, and Sasha joined her, being horseless for the moment.
The wounds were terrible. Soldiers bound bloody gashes with rolls of coarse cloth, stripping spare shirts for further bandages. Men bore terrible, disfiguring injury with a courage that defied words, biting back screams. Goeren-yai recited spirit chants, and Verenthanes holy verses. Others acted as healers, administering herbs and pastes for wounds as were available. Others brought full waterskins from the river. Men died upon the ruined fields of grain. Others lived, and suffered.
When Errollyn arrived Sasha felt horribly guilty at the relief she felt to be summoned away from that patch of bloody, hellish ground. She climbed up behind him, leaving Sofy to attend the wounded amidst the lines of flaming torches men were planting in the ground to ward the approaching night. Her little sister moved from man to man, holding each hand in turn, assuring those in delirium that it was indeed the Princess Sofy who attended them, and that they would not die alone. Errollyn then touched heels to his horse, asking nothing more than a walk of the weary animal, heading for the masses of horses by the river.
Sasha rested her cheek wearily against his back. "I thought perhaps I'd lost you," she murmured.
"And I you," Errollyn replied. Torchlight lit the fields, sentries standing with light aflame, guiding the way. "I didn't see you fall, there was too much happening." Sasha felt him heave a deep breath. "I hope to never have to do anything like that again."
A Lenay man would never admit to fear. It did not surprise her that Errollyn would. He was so… straightforward. For a serrin, anyhow.
"Take this sword," he said then. "We cannot have a commander without a sword."
He pulled a serrin blade in its scabbard from a binding alongside his saddle and handed it to her. Sasha pulled the blade a short way from its sheath and examined the edge. It was every bit the deadly, unblemished edge that her old blade had been. Even without fully drawing it, she could see that its balance would be perfect.
"Whose is it?" Sasha asked.
"It's Tassi's," said Errollyn.
"But… oh no, I couldn't just take her…"
"Aisha insists she would wish you to have it," said Errollyn.
"Me? Why? These things are expensive, Errollyn. It should be passed on to her family, and then on to their children…"
"Not so expensive in Saalshen," Errollyn corrected. "Only here. That steelwork is not a technique we share with humans. In Saalshen, it's no rarer than any other blade."
"But even so…"
"You don't understand," Errollyn told her. "Tassi rode all this way because she had some hope that there were old and ancient ways amongst h
umans that were worth saving. She had hope that humanity itself was worth saving, and that in the saving, there would be good for serrin as much as humans. If the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt, the greatest Nasi-Keth of Lenayin, does not represent that hope, then no one does. Tassi gave her life for that hope. Allow her blade to continue to serve, even as she cannot."
Sasha gazed at it for a long moment. "If you wish to return it to her family one day," Errollyn added, "you may do so in person. But I suspect they shall tell you exactly what I have."
Sasha undid her own empty scabbard and replaced it with Tassi's. Her shoulder hurt-more wrenched than damaged, she thought. She'd been lucky. Unbelievably lucky, when she recalled her blade breaking. If that had happened a moment earlier, she'd be most likely dead. Serrin steel was not supposed to break. But her blade had been old, she knew. Everything broke sometime.
She found Peg amongst the horses by the riverside, drinking knee-deep in the flowing waters of the Yumynis. He whinnied as she dismounted, and came to the riverbank to greet her. Sasha stroked his nose and hugged his neck. Errollyn had found him wandering, sniffing fallen riders, searching for her. But he had recognised Errollyn and Errollyn's horse, and allowed himself to be led to the riverbank. Sasha took off her boots and waded into the cold water to give him as much of a rubdown as she could, without daring to remove his saddle lest some emergency happen.
Two of her vanguard riders were also present, haggard but desperately apologetic for having lost her in the confusion. Sasha waved their apologies away, commended them on their valour and asked after the missing two. One was dead, she heard, and the other wounded, but expected to live. She could not internalise so much suffering so quickly. She found her mind wandering to thoughts of Kessligh, his reactions when faced with memories of the Great War, and his occasional, unbridgeable distance. All this time, she'd been living with a stranger. Only now was she coming to understand him.
She was leading Peg ashore amidst the mass of riverside activity in the torchlight, when Captain Akryd arrived and embraced her.
"You were right," he said apologetically. She could see his face properly for the first time with his helm removed. It was a homely face, round and ruddy, with only the tracings of spirit symbols about one brow and temple. The face of a farmer, or a husband, or a good father. "Forgive my opposition, M'Lady. We'd have suffered far worse than this had we stayed in Ymoth, with the outcome yet uncertain. This has been a glorious victory, and it is truly yours."
"No," Sasha said quietly. "It's theirs." Nodding to the men about, particularly back to where the wounded and the dead lay.
"Aye, M'Lady. We found Lord Usyn slain on the battlefield. Several senior lords, also. Hadryn is severely wounded, no wonder they retreat in such disorder."
Sasha blinked. Usyn dead. Just like that. She did not know who would be in command now. He had a younger brother, she recalled… but too young to be on this ride. The great Hadryn army was leaderless. "They'll fall back into the valley now," she said quietly. "They'll know we have suffered losses, and will delay. They'll know that Prince Koenyg will ride behind us and they'll hope to hold out long enough for Koenyg to rescue them."
"Aye." Akryd nodded. "They have little other choice. Does M'Lady wish to make camp here?"
Sasha shook her head. "This is too exposed to the rear. The moon rises. We'll ride tonight, force the Hadryn far up the valley. We can rest when we're camped."
Akryd bowed. "I shall make arrangements."
Approaching midnight, and the clouds had cleared. The moon burned in the sky above the Udalyn Valley like a small silver sun. To either side, the valley sides loomed, bathed in moonlight, their broad slopes patched with fields and forest, grain and paddocks. Little cottages watched over their respective lands, some high on the furthest slopes, others nestled on the banks of the river, or hidden amongst folds in the valleyside. The Yumynis flowed broad and straight down the valley centre, flanked by green pasture and fields of grain. Its waters gleamed silver in the moonlight, and the entire majestic valley seemed to wait, and watch, with hushed anticipation.
Sasha rode near the head of the column, along a road that lifted slightly on the sloping right bank of the river, and felt her skin prickle uncontrollably beneath her clothes. The air seemed warm as a gentle southerly breeze blew from behind their backs. She had never been here before, and yet it felt as familiar as the Baerlyn Valley.
She felt herself filled with longing. She wanted to call up Andreyis from the column behind, and talk with him as they once had talked-as children on the hillside by the ranch, eating fruit from one of Madyn's orchards, and talking about horses, or swordwork, or the doings of other Baerlyn children, and how stupid they all were. But Andreyis had survived his first battle with glory, a rider from the rear had told her, and now rode with his comrades as an equal for the first time.
Now she felt more apart from that idyllic childhood world than ever. Kessligh, the towering pillar of those years, had become someone far different than she'd realised. Andreyis was no longer a boy, but a warrior, blooded in battle. Baerlyn had lost Dobyn the drummer, whose wonderful rhythms would no longer fill the Steltsyn Star on a rowdy evening, and Tesseryl the farmer, who would no longer share fresh mountain olive and goat curd with his neighbours. Farmer Lyndan, from whom Kessligh had often bought chickens, had lost a hand-a common enough injury in cavalry exchanges. But he'd been in good spirits, declaring that he and Geldon the baker could now compare stumps, and that chickens required no more than five fingers anyhow. Nothing was as it had been, and there was no going back.
Ahead, Sasha realised that someone was singing. It was a low, gentle voice, barely audible above the plodding of hooves and the shifting of harness. But it was beautiful, and strange, of lilting melody and haunting melancholy. The singer did not seem to wish to bring attention to herself, yet all murmured conversation behind ceased as men listened to the song. It was Aisha, Sasha realised, and her voice was fair indeed.
She seemed to sense, then, that the attention was on her, and sang louder. Clear notes drifted on the moonlit air, high against the soaring valley sides. Sasha could not make out the exact words, but it seemed that she sang of a lost friend, of suffering seen and partaken in, and of beloved lands, family and friends far away. The gentle swaying of Sasha's saddle seemed in time to the ceaseless murmur of the never-ending river, and the vast, beautiful silence of the fields, farms and cottages. She found herself thinking of all the strands in her life that had brought her to this point-of Krystoff and Kessligh, of Torvaal and her mother. And those more recent faces-Sofy, Damon, her friends in Baerlyn, and Andreyis and Lynette in particular. Jaryd. Captain Tyrun. Of friends made upon the road, and then lost forever.
Tears prickled at her eyes. To her side, she saw that Sofy too rode with tears in her eyes. And yet, for all her sadness, she rode with a newfound confidence, straight-backed and certain in the saddle. Whatever the tears, her eyes never stopped wandering as she gazed about at this legendary sight in wonder. Sasha extended a hand down to her. Sofy looked up, clasped her sister's hand, and smiled.
Twenty-One
Sasha awoke to the disorientation of a comfortable bed and blankets. She looked across the little room and found Sofy's bed empty. Daylight streamed through the window and, with it, the sounds of camp from the lower slopes – whinnying horses and soldiers at early muster. Somewhere distant, she fancied she could hear the yells and grunts of morning drill as soldiers trained upon an available patch of ground. Beyond that, drumming from the Udalyn wall. Sometimes it seemed that they'd never stop. Surely they'd be getting tired, after two days and nights without pause.
She blinked at the ceiling, massaging her aching shoulder, and trying to clear her head from sleep. It was the third morning after the victories of Ymoth and the Yumynis Plain. The previous evening, the king himself had arrived at the head of an army of nearly six thousand. Torvaal, at least, was taking no chances. The banners last evening had suggested that Koenyg was with him,
and probably Damon as well, but the light had been poor and the royal messenger had not bothered to clarify. She was to meet with the king this morning. The very thought was enough to make her wish she could roll over and go back to sleep.
The little room had a stone-paved floor covered by a thick rug. The beds were of simple wooden frame. The room, and the entire cottage, had a simple dignity that appealed to her.
From beyond the window, she could hear Sofy humming a tune in the garden. The splash of water from a pail. An inaudible question from one of the guards… although Sasha could guess. A cheerful reply, and the splash of more water being gathered, then poured. Sasha smiled. Sofy would give the entire guard contingent green thumbs soon enough. Kessligh would approve.
Sasha stretched aching limbs, careful of her shoulder, and then began to dress in clean clothes she'd washed the day before, and dried before the fire that night. She'd washed herself too, in the warm water, and what a luxury that had been. Once dressed, she straightened out the bed and made a spirit sign to the house spirit for watching over her and her sister while they slept… not that she truly believed in such things, but because she suspected the Udalyn who owned this house might, and it was considered bad luck to leave such things neglected for any period.
Stepping into the main room, she found that the interior guard had already started a fire in the central pit and was boiling some water.
"Hello!" said the guard with a bright smile. "Would you like some tea?" Sasha blinked. It was Andreyis.
"I'd love some," she replied with a sleepy grin, trying to brush her hair back into place with both hands as she walked over. "How did you grab this duty?"
Andreyis grinned even more broadly, and looked smug. "The honour is being given to all those of outstanding service. The men chose me to represent Baerlyn." And he shrugged, stirring the tea with a wooden spoon. "I know they're just being nice. And I don't think any of them really fancied the morning shift."
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