There were many of those. Banners from places a hundred leagues and more distant gave mute testimony to the strength of Dravan and the skill of the Eqetas who had ruled here. Tylara looked up at them as if to draw strength down from the rafters.
It was her first meeting of the full council, and she had no real confidence in these westerners. They seemed so little like her husband! And there were only two bheromen in attendance. The others were knights and merchants, a local priest of Hestia- this was a grain-producing region-and the inevitable priests of Yatar, two representatives of the yeomanry, a scattering of guildmasters. They called her Great Lady, and for the moment they respected her as Eqetassa of Chelm; but she was still a stranger who had never lived among them.
Her only real friends were the retinue she had brought from Tamaerthon, and they had no place in the council of this western land.
A messenger stood at the end of the table. What he read was full of flowery phrases and elaborate compliments, but his meaning was clear enough. She heard him out with impatience, then waved to have him led from the room. When he was gone, she looked down the length of the heavy wooden table. "Well, my lords? Wanax Sarakos makes us an offer. Have you advice?"
There was profound silence. Tylara smiled thinly. The silence was more eloquent than any speech could have been. Her bheromen wanted to accept the offer-or at least bargain with Sarakos while they still had something to bargain with. The yeomen and guildmasters-could they want Sarakos here also? Tylara looked at the impassive faces and read nothing. She knew too little of these people, and they were accustomed to hiding their thoughts from the great ones.
But if one of the bheromen spoke for accepting Sarakos, others would join. Or would they? These were her husband's people. Could they be so little like him? The memory of him stabbed at her, and she saw him as he had been: tanned, laughing, coming to her. She thrust the image from her mind before the tears came, for she had had this dream before, and it ended with reality-with Lamil cold and stiff in his bier.
She keenly felt her youth and inexperience. She was only twelve as they reckoned years here (in Tamaerthon they counted a child a year old at birth and added four more at age nine, so that she would be called seventeen there). She had lived far from these iron hills, and she did not know these people.
It said much for her husband — and for the strength of his family-that they obeyed her at all.
"Captain Camithon," she said. "It seems no one wishes to speak. Perhaps you will advise me."
Camithon had served three generations of Eqetas of Chelm; his beard had greyed in that service, and his body was scarred with wounds. A long scar from a lance that had narrowly missed taking his eye ran diagonally across his cheek, giving him a somewhat ferocious appearance that he sometimes took advantage of in councils of war. He stood hunched over as if his very bones were tired, and as he stood he muttered about his estates, which he had not visited in a year. But his voice was steady enough when he spoke. "The usurper marches with two thousand lances and a great train of foot," he said. "We have but a hundred lances, and we stand in Wanax Sarakos's way."
Tylara nodded gravely as she had seen her father do in clan meetings. Inwardly she wished to shout. Camithon was broadly proclaimed a splendid soldier and perhaps he was, but he could never come to the point until he had reviewed everything a dozen times and more.
She hid her impatience with good grace and thought no one noticed. She had learned endurance if not patience, and that would have to do.
"Dravan is strong," mused Camithon. He brushed his fingers against the scar on his cheek, as if to remind everyone that he had held Dravan in the battle that earned him his distinctive mark. "Our lady has seen to the granaries and magazines, and well done that was, too. This old castle has killed five armies — but it has never before been held with only a hundred lances, and it has never before been so thoroughly cut off from aid."
"As if there were any aid to send," one of the guildmasters muttered.
Camithon's sword rested on a map unrolled on the table. He lifted the weapon and used it as a pointer. "The Protector is here, ten days and more to the northwest with our Wanax Ganton. He has no more than a thousand lances, and the Protector cannot allow the young king to be penned up in any castle, no matter how strong. Thus he cannot come to our rescue himself, and I doubt he can spare any great strength."
Tylara wanted to shout. I know all that, her mind screamed. Outwardly she smiled and said, "You give us a hundred lances, but you have forgotten my Tamaerthon archers. I hope this usurper Sarakos makes that mistake. He won't make it twice."
There were murmurs of approval from behind her. Tylara's people could not sit at the council table, but she was attended by them; and the Tamaerthon yeomanry wasn't afraid to be heard in any council room. In their mountainous plateau by the sea, the clans did not live as peasants lived among the great lords and bheromen of the west.
She had a momentary twinge of homesickness. She longed for her high ridges, with the blue sea to the east, stark mountains rising from it to stand deep blue in dusklight and dawn. It would be so easy to go home. She had only to give up this castle to Sarakos and she could return as the wealthiest lady in Tamaerthon-or she could stay, with all her husband's lands restored. Sarakos would give her that, and the council would approve. She had only to say the words- "A hundred lances and two hundred archers are still but five hundred fighting men," Camithon said. He spoke as if proud of his arithmetic. "Fewer, for not all our knights have squire and man-at-arms. And these walls, though strong, enclose a great area. We have no reserve. Every man is needed at his post. What happens when they tire?"
Now, she thought. Say it now. But she couldn't. She had sworn. And how could she host her husband's murderer in his own home? Receive Chelm as a telast of Sarakos? It was unthinkable.
Yet-how do else? If the chief captain had no stomach for a fight, there was no chance at all. She fingered her braids restlessly.
"Yet honor demands that we fight," Camithon said. He looked down the length of the council table. "Do any dare dispute that?"
Some may have wanted to, but none spoke…
"I have never been one to fight merely for honor," Camithon said. "I prefer to win. But we can do no good elsewhere, so if we fight, we must hold Dravan. We sit astride the only good road south. Until we are taken, Sarakos can take no great force in search of our young Wanax. We buy time for the Protector."
"Yatar knows what he'll do with it," Bheroman Trakon said. His voice was overly loud, nervous, yet
Trakon was a good man who had stood by the old Wanax in his troubles, and had lost much for doing it.
"Unfair, my lord," Camithon protested. "The Protector is the greatest soldier of Draсtos, and he has won before when all seemed darkest."
"And the Dayfather may produce a miracle," Trakon said. He did not turn to see the red face of Yanulf, Archpriest of Yatar. "Yet what else can we do? I trust Sarakos not at all. Of the bheromen who have gone over to him, more than half have lost all to his favorites."
"Which hasn't stopped dozens more from joining him anyway," the weavers' guildmaster muttered. "Half the bheromen-no, three parts of four-have welcomed Sarakos. We fight to no purpose."
"Do you counsel surrender?" Camithon demanded.
The portly guildmaster shrugged. "It would do no good. Sarakos has his own weavers, and they like not our competition. But it's a forlorn fight all the same."