He shrugged. "And will that be worse than to be killed at home? I doubt not that the Chooser can find me here as easily as in our mountains. When it is time to guest in his lodge, then guest you will. And yet," he mused, "and yet the Dayfather holds higher sway here. Do you think old One-eye has lost sight of this land? It would be pleasant to know."
"They say he sees the wide world," Tylara said. "Cadaric, I think they trust me not."
"They know you not. You are a young girl to them, and all they know is that their lad chose you. And because he did, they love you. Och, Lady, I know you mourn him."
And that was more than true. Tylara touched her cheeks, determined not to let the tears start again. A widow before she was properly a bride. It was the stuff the minstrels sang of.
Certainly Lamil had loved her. Eqeta of Cheim, one of the great counts of Drantos, he could have had his choice of a hundred ladies; but his ship had been wrecked on the rocky Tamaerthon coast, and after a summer (overly warm-could the priests be right?) he chose the daughter of a Tamaerthon chief. Tylara had no dowry, nothing to bring to the marriage-only two hundred archers, and a hundred of them free to leave after five years' service-but Lamil had chosen her above the great ones of his homeland.
She had loved to watch him; young and strong, calf muscles as hard as granite and standing out like thick cords from his slim legs. He browned to a deep copper in the sun. At night they ran on high ridges lit by the Firestealer. By day he laughed in the surf, climbed high on the ledges above the sea in search of young eagles. And he had laughed. Those were her favorite memories, of his laughter; laughing and swearing that he would have no other but her when she knew it could not be, laughing again at the furor he caused in rejecting the great ladies of Drantos and the Five.
And yet-it had been no silly match. Tylara brought nothing-and did not give anyone cause to fear an expanded county of Chelm. If no great lady caught the most eligible man in Drantos, then there were no jealousies. Yet she knew he had loved her.
She was married to him before he left Tamaerthon, but she was too young to go with him. The law required that the marriage be "consummated," and so it had been, but with a thick quilt between them in the wedding bed, and her father's dour henchmen standing by through the night.
And for a winter, while the Firestealer plunged through the True Sun, she had made ready to go to her new home, to join this strong and handsome young husband. She sang the winter through until her father pretended disgust that she could be so happy to leave. In spring, when shadows stood doubled at noon and the ice was thin, she sailed north with the yearly merchant fleet, too strong for pirates to molest. They sailed north, then west through the chain of islands and swamps, and then upriver. When they landed, she was so eager that she set out the same day. She drove so hard that her maidservants were exhausted and the archers muttered ribaldries.
They reached Castle Dravan only hours ahead of the news. Lamil had chosen to stand with the boy Wanax Ganton. There had been a great battle, and Lamil was dead. Most of his troops had died covering the retreat of the boy king and the Protector. Captain Camithon told her that the Eqeta had charged Sarakos and struck him on the helmet before the guards beat him from his saddle. A dozen men had held him while Sarakos personally delivered the death stroke.
"I mourn him," Tylara said, and there was ice in her voice. "Have your fletchers make true shafts, Cadaric. We will teach this Sarakos what plumage the Tamaerthon gull wears."
2
There were none but fighting men in the great hall of Castle Dravan. The council was not needed; and now Cadaric and three subcaptains of archers sat at the table among the knights and bheromen.
They all stood respectfully when Tylara entered. If the bheromen resented her archers sitting as equals to armored knights, they kept that to themselves. Their lady had shown how sharp her tongue could be during the few weeks that she'd been with them-and they had seen what those shafts could do. They waited until she was seated at the head of the table. Then all began to speak at once.
"Hold! Silence!" Bheroman Trakon pounded the table with a dagger hilt. "That's better." He smiled at her. "My lady."
She nodded her thanks. Trakon had been most attentive lately. His wife had died of the plague ten months ago. He was twice her age-but only that, and handsome enough. Certainly she could not remain a virgin ruler of this county forever. She would never find another like Lamil, and Trakon would do as well as another when her mourning period ended. But so soon, so soon- "They come, Lady," Captain Camithon said. "Two days' march to the north."
"Two days if they're lucky," Trakon said. "They're so swollen with plunder, they're lucky to march two thousand paces an hour."
"But all of them?" Tylara asked.
"Aye, Lady," Cadaric said. He glared at the others, ready to resent any objection that a mere Tamaerthon archer would speak. But there was only silence. Trakon, Cadaric, and Camithon had seen the advancing enemy, and the others had not. "I counted five hundred banners in their vanguard alone."
"You scouted the land well?" Tylara asked.
"Aye, Lady," Cadaric said. "It's more than suitable. We could blunt them, aye and blood them as well, and not lose a handful were it done well."
More babble. Trakon pounded for order again. One of the knights shouted. "Blunt them? What madness is this?"
Tylara noted Trakon's grim smile. He had not been too proud to listen to Cadaric as they rode back from scouting. A good man, she thought.
"The passes are narrow," Tylara said. "The maps remind me of my home. In narrow passes one man is the worth of ten-"
"Narrow they are, but not that narrow," Captain Camithon said. He sounded hurt. Strategy was a matter for professionals, not for girls hardly old enough to bed lawfully. "Do we stand in the passes with our hundred lances, we would blood Sarakos, aye, but then his strength would ride over us. Then who would there be to defend Dravan?"
Trakon's grin widened. "Our lady does not propose a stand," he said.
"Then what in the twelfth name of Yatar are we talking about?" Camithon demanded.
Cadaric grinned. "It is plain that you in the west have not heard the tales of how Tamaerthon won freedom from Ta-Hakos and the other greedy ones about us," he said. "I propose to have a ballad sung for you. With my lady's permission?"
Tylara nodded, and before there could be any protest one of the younger archers began to sing.
There were mutterings at first, but the boy's voice was good. They listened in silence, not trying to hide their astonishment at this intrusion in a council of war. As the song went on, Camithon leaned forward eagerly and Bheroman Trakon began to grin broadly. Before the ballad ended, the knights and captains were huddled over the map. For the first time in weeks, there were shouts of laughter in the great hall.
Tylara sat astride her horse. This in itself was shocking enough; but worse, she rode no gentle mare but a great stallion-a war-horse any knight would be proud to own. She sat atop a small knoll, surrounded by a dozen men-at-arms and as many archers.
This was the price she paid for coming herself to the battle. She had never got her people to agree to that-but she'd come anyway, and no one dared lay hands on her. One soldier, ordered by Trakon to seize her bridle and lead her back inside Castle Dravan, would bear the welt from her riding crop for weeks. She must see at least one blow struck against the man who had killed her husband.
Below were not only all her fighting men, but hundreds of peasants with brush hooks and axes. They were using these to cut the low scraggly wax-stalks from the hillside and carry them into the pass. For five hundred paces from the top of the pass to where it widened below, the narrow road was carpeted with the newly cut brush. More was piled high to either side.