"Probably—no," he said, reluctantly. "Karse needs no extra mouths that come not with hands that can work. And—they are heretics, and the children of heretics, and what is more, even their own blood, to the Sunpriests' eyes, they are not—or no longer are—Karsite."
He did not elaborate on what that meant, but there was something very unpleasant stirring in the back of his mind; something like a—protovision. An intimation, not of what would be or what was about to be, but what might be.
A vision of the Fires of Cleansing. And the fuel that fed them.
"I don't want to sound utterly callous and hardhearted, Herald, but—not to put too fine a point upon it, what can we do?" the Lord Marshal asked. "They're on Karsite land, in Karsite hands."
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. "And this stopped Vanyel? This stopped Lavan Firestorm?"
The Lord Marshal wasn't about to back down. "That was in another situation entirely," he retorted. "And if you're referring to the 'Demonsbane' legend, Vanyel was on Hardorn land, not Karsite."
Alberich cleared his throat. "Ah—Herald Laika—a question. Suppose I must, that you have these children been among. Think you, they can be anything but Tedrel?"
"Most of 'em aren't now," she replied, and shook her head. "Some of 'em, in fact, a lot of 'em, are Karsite orphans—some of 'em are camp followers' children. And, dare I repeat myself, some of 'em are ours, grabbed every time they hit Valdemar in the past three years! But like I said, they don't have much use for girls that aren't breeding age, so they don't pay any attention to 'em, and boys aren't useful until they're thirteen and old enough to take into a Tedrel lodge for training, so they're all right up until then. Basically, they're not Tedrel, they're not Karsite, they're not anything, really. When I was in there, they had a lot of the camp followers that were tending to all of them, and most of those were girls out of Rethwellan, Seejay, and Ruvan, with a couple of Karsites. So that's what they've been raised as."
"Raised as nothing, then," Selenay ventured.
"Pretty much. A pretty weird mix, they all speak a kind of Tedrel-pidgin with words from all over. The girls don't ever get taught pure Tedrel tongue; that's a man's mystery. The kiddies have got some little religious cult they've made up on their own that isn't like anything I've ever heard of. Like I said, they aren't Tedrel, they aren't anything." She sighed. "What they are, is dead needy for adult attention. Even an old hag like me, they swarmed over."
"But babies—without mothers—" someone put in doubtfully.
"Babes in arms—" she shrugged. "That little, the Tedrels don't take. The ones born to the camp followers, well, they may be whores, but they're still mothers; the ones that'll bolt, they'll take the children they can manage to carry and run for Rethwellan. That leaves the orphans, or ones whose mothers don't care, and there's a couple hundred, anyway, of an age we could rescue. No more than a thousand...."
Selenay glanced at Alberich, who was thinking furiously. "Karse—I think might be busy—elsewhere—"
Elsewhere hunting down all the escapees on their side of the Border and either conscripting them as bound slaves or making sure no one else ever does—
"—and," he continued, "If the rescue and evacuation were made quickly, might not know it had been entered at all."
"And a thousand children?" Selenay gulped.
"It's not an unmanageable number," the Lord Marshal put in. "It's not as if it would be a thousand captives; most of them couldn't run far."
Laika snorted. "Show 'em food and smiles, and most of 'em won't run at all. And don't forget—some of them are ours. And if word gets out that we left Valdemaran children to starve or hope for the mercy of the Sunpriests...." she let that particular statement sink in without elaborating. "What's more, they aren't more than a day's march inside Karse! When the Tedrels moved this time, they were preparing the full-on invasion, remember. They thought we were going to go over with just a push, and they had everything and everyone set to move straight across the Border."
"Surely not," Lord Orthallen said skeptically. "Surely they were not going to put all of that so close to the battle lines."
Laika smiled grimly. "And what makes you think they were unaware that the moment the fighters left the base camp, the Karsites were likely to grab everything? Believe me, that was the talk all over the camp—everyone wanted to be sure that they didn't get left behind. The last camp they made would be where they left all the non-combatants and the baggage and all. In fact, there was talk about setting it less than a half-day's march from the Border, figuring that the closer it was to Valdemar, the less likely it was that the Karsites would come calling. The campfire glow we saw in the farther sky last night was probably from their full camp, not their battle camp."
"I thought they looked rather too well-rested," murmured the Lord Marshal.
"Then that means we won't have to break the Border so much as—bend it a little," Selenay said speculatively. "I suppose one could consider what is in that camp to be legitimate war loot?"
Now it was the Lord Marshal's turn to smile grimly. "One could, Majesty," the Lord Marshal said, "And in fact, one should. Why, after all, should the Karsites have the benefit of this—war booty—when it is Valdemar that suffered?"
Alberich merely raised an eyebrow. "How can we, calling ourselves civilized, leave children to suffer? And welcome in Karse, they will not be."
Now Selenay looked to the rest of her advisers and commanders. "I—honestly, gentlemen, ladies—I think we should do this. I know we can; I think we should."
"Bringing life out of death?" asked the Chief Healer. "I don't think there is any doubt. Sendar would."
Selenay smiled wanly. "My father would have been at the head of the expedition," she said softly.
That seemed to decide them all, and the prospect of having a positive task to organize also seemed to galvanize them, lifting them somewhat out of the slough of depression that most of the encampment had sunk into.
The mood in the tent suddenly lifted, and even Selenay's voice took on more life than it had held since before the battle.
"We'll need wagons to carry the children, won't we?" she asked, breathlessly. "How many? Where will we get them?"
"We already have them, Majesty," said the Chief Healer, catching fire from her enthusiasm. "We were going to send some of the wounded north—leg injuries, not so serious, but needing some recovery—but they'll gladly wait for a little to save these children! The horses are harnessed right now, the wagons are provisioned, we haven't loaded the wounded yet—why, we can be ready to go on the instant!"
She turned to Alberich. "Would—you—"
"Of course he would!" the Lord Marshal exclaimed. "Great good gods, who else! You used to patrol here, didn't you, man? And you won't be doing without him for more than a day or two—"