'I will not win the throne for your sake,' he said.
Silona laughed, and the sound came from every direction, from the very forest itself. 'You do everything for my sake,' she said.
CHAPTER 5
Queen Charion paused in her striding to look out over her capital from the walls that surrounded it. Daavis had been turned into a city in which the houses, cannibalised for their stone and wood, looked like hollow skulls. Everywhere she looked her people scurried like ants, repairing city walls, restocking depots with food and armaments, tending livestock, pushing carts and pulling wagons and, if too young or too old to help, keeping out of the way. Parks and gardens had been turned into fields and pens. Cattle had been slaughtered and their meat dried and salted; sheep and goats were kept alive for their fleece and milk and an emergency meat supply. New cisterns had been dug and plastered and whitewashed then filled with water from the Barda River. Metal bowls, cups, eating utensils and jewellery had been collected and melted down and were being converted into spear and arrow heads and swords and daggers. New tunnels were being dug parallel to the walls so enemy mining could be countered swiftly. Long lines of elderly matrons were tearing clothing into strips, bleaching them in vats of urine, drying them and folding them for bandages.
Charion breathed deeply. She commanded all this activity and all the countless minutiae that went with it.
She could not remember the last time she had managed to sleep for more than two hours at a time, and she knew it was starting to show. She was even more crabby and acid-tongued than usual; food tasted like sawdust, and wine like brackish water. She had worn the same dress now for God knew how long, having donated most of her clothes to her city's cause, not to mention most of the cooking pots and utensils from her palace's kitchens. She had even ordered most of the good quality palace furniture sent to the sawyer so the wood could be used in wall construction or in the making of arrows and spear hafts.
But she could not complain. This was the second time in as many months that her people had been called on to prepare the city for a siege, and she had heard no word of criticism, no sound of complaint. How could she do less?
She glanced down and saw workers labouring in one of the counter-mine tunnels. 'Farben!' she shouted, and everyone in a radius of forty paces suddenly froze. All except Farben, that is, who hurried to her from the back of her entourage.
'Your Majesty?'
'I thought I ordered the trenches to be at least two paces deep?'
'You certainly did, your Maj—'
'Then why is this trench decidedly less than two paces deep?'
The workers in the trench looked worriedly at each other. Farben wrung his hands! 'I don't know, your Maj—'
'Then get down and find out!' she ordered, and Farben scuttled down the nearest stairs and to the local work foreman, a large hairy man who scowled at him. Charion watched the two men argue for a moment before the foreman angrily grabbed a measuring stick, stuck it into the trench, pulled it out and waved it in
Farben's face. The official made a placating sound and hurried back to Charion.
'Well?' she demanded.
Farben was sweating from a mixture of nerves and fright. 'It is two paces deep, your Majesty.'
Charion looked surprised. 'Really?' she said mildly, leaning over to look at the trenches a second time.
Farben nodded eagerly.
Charion harrumphed and set off again around the walls, yelling out observations that were carefully recorded for future action: 'We need more stone here… shift labour from the cisterns to trench construction… we need more canvas to shelter the people in this quarter…' until she had done a complete circuit of the walls, ending at the northern gate. She dismissed her officials and gazed around once more, noting with relief that the walls were almost completed. Her biggest worry had been that Lynan would attack before she could repair all the damage done by Salokan when he attacked Daavis, and now it looked as if the city would be even better prepared than on that occasion. Maybe she would even allow herself four hours sleep tonight.
Before descending from the walls she looked northwards over gently rolling farmland, now deserted and starting to look rundown. The next winter would be a hard one for her people. But they would survive. Somehow, they would all survive.
Galen and his men filled their helmets with water from a stream and let their horses drink from them; when the horses had finished, and none of them showed any signs of illness, the knights themselves slaked their thirst from the stream. When Galen had drunk his fill he wet a scarf and wiped his face, then placed the scarf around his neck; the cool water trickled down his chest and back, bringing some relief from the heat. It was a hot day and even though the knights were dressed at most in greaves, and of course their helmets, they were all soaked in sweat. They were not used to summers this far north, and it was telling on them as well as their mounts.
Magmed, looking nothing like the young and arrogant knight who had set out all those months ago from Kendra, joined Galen. 'It is nearly summer, and this stream shows no sign of drying; the weeds are still green right to the top of the bank. What do you think?'
Galen looked around. He liked this spot. The land sloped gently from west to east, the stream eventually disappearing in a copse of trees not a hundred paces away. He nodded. 'Aye. We'll place an outpost here. There is water and wood and a good view of the surrounding land.'
In fact, Galen admitted to himself, he liked this land a lot. Although the heat was not to his favour, it was at least a dry heat, unlike the sultry summers citizens experienced back in Kendra. The grass was starting to yellow, but there were enough waterways and cool valleys to keep livestock going until cool autumn rains replenished the earth. You could raise good horses here, he thought. Good stallions for the knights of Kendra.
As well, he admitted to himself, a property here would give him an excuse to be away from Kendra… and closer to Charion. As a member of the Kingdom's aristocracy—the Twenty Houses—he found that Areava had made Kendra a little too chilly for his liking; her dislike for his kind was well known.
He had seen a great deal of Hume over the last ten days. His mixed command of knights from the Twenty Houses and light infantry from Aman had early established that Lynan's Chett army was not yet moving on Daavis, and so had subsequently pushed back the perimeter of the area under Kingdom control further and further north of the city. Every twenty leagues or so, he would establish a series of outposts in a wide arc, each outpost equipped with signal fires and a garrison. This spot would provide the last outpost necessary for the line some sixty leagues out from Daavis. That was five days march for most armies, three for Galen's force, and two for the Chetts, unmatched in mobility. Galen would push out another twenty leagues and establish a final ring of outposts. After that he would return to Daavis and see what Queen Charion had planned for him.
Or even Areava. She may have sent new instructions while he had been away.
For a moment he pictured the two women together. Areava he had long admired from afar. She was cold, aloof, as beautiful as winter; and she was ruler of all Grenda Lear. For a long time he had harboured the secret dream of wedding her; her marriage to Sendarus had temporarily sunk that, but now that the man was dead, for which Galen was genuinely sorry, the way was open again. But now there was Charion.
He shook his head in wonder. Until a short while ago he had convinced himself he did not even like Charion, but after leaving her behind in Daavis he found he missed her intelligence and her strange dark beauty, the opposite of Areava's.
Yes, he thought. It would be good to get back to Daavis.
It was bright day in Kendra, and a gentle breeze wafted through the south gallery of the palace. Olio stood at the entrance to the gallery watching a kestrel flying high, high above the harbour. It made great circles in the sky, dipping and soaring, patiently waiting for the right moment to strike. Olio was hypnotised by it.