Sovereign

'I want to be sure. I don't want to be trapped between two forces. Our mobility is our greatest advantage.'

For a moment neither man said anything. Ager then noticed Jenrosa sitting by Kumul's grave. 'Have you talked to her in the last three days?'

'No,' Lynan said quietly, not needing to ask who he was talking about. 'I'm not sure… perhaps it would be best if you…'

'I think you need to go to her,' Ager said with more certainty than he felt. He was as worried by Lynan's seeming indifference as he was about Jenrosa being alone with her grief.

Lynan nodded abruptly and left. Ager watched, resisting the urge to go with him. He's no longer a boy, he told himself.

Jenrosa stared at her hands, unwashed since the day of the battle and still gory with Kumul's blood. It was all she had left of him, except unreliable memories. As the sky lightened she started to see patterns in the tracery of the blood; at first nothing definable, just glimpses of landscapes, unknown faces, mythical animals; but then it formed something like a map, and in her imagination she watched armies marching to and fro across her hands, watched great battles and watched great dying. A single tear fell from her eye and splashed onto her palm. Blood turned red again and whorled before coalescing into a face she recognised.

'Lynan,' she whispered, and even as she said the name his shadow fell across her. She looked up at him, and for a moment thought his pale skin had turned the colour of blood. She put her hands to her face and looked away, gasping.

Lynan gazed down on her with concern. 'Jenrosa?'

She looked up at him and saw that his skin was pale again, as pale as dawn. She let out a deep sigh that made her whole body shudder. 'I thought…' she started, but could not finish.

He squatted beside her and took her hands in his own. She could not believe how cold they were, colder even than hers. A hundred things to say passed through her mind, but she did not want to say any of them.

'What will you do now?' he asked. She could tell from his tone that he was trying to be gentle, but there was a dryness about it that made him sound uncaring.

'Carry on, of course,' she said, surprised by the sound of her own voice. She had expected it to be filled with emotion, but there was something of Lynan's dispassion about it, and she understood then that inside he must be feeling as desolate as she. 'I am a magiker. I am a Chett magiker. I will stay with you and Ager and Gudon and the rest.' She drew a deep breath. 'I will avenge Kumul's death. Somehow.'

'Then come,' Lynan said. 'We will have need of you before long.' He stood up, bringing her with him.

Jenrosa felt suddenly cold and shivered. Lynan took off his poncho and draped it around her shoulders, then signalled to Ager who hurried towards them.

'Take her to Lasthear,' he told Ager. 'She should be with other magikers. They will know how to make sure she rests.'

Ager nodded and left with Jenrosa, his arm around her shoulders. Lynan thought his two friends looked terribly small then, and quite frail, so different from the confidence and strength they had all seemed to share when Kumul was alive. He wanted to shout out that he would protect them, that everything was alright, but remembered he was standing beside Kumul's grave and realised it was a lie. He could protect none of them, and did not believe for a moment that everything was going to be alright.

The scouting groups Korigan sent out before sunrise returned halfway through the morning. They reported directly to Korigan, who then went to find Lynan. She found him with Gudon and his personal bodyguard, the Red Hands, already mounted as if they had only been waiting for word from her.

'Areava's army still has not moved,' Korigan said. 'They are waiting to see what we do first.'

'And the force to our north?'

'Salokan,' Korigan confirmed. 'He is moving as quickly as he can, but he has a lot of infantry and a lot of wounded with him and his progress is slow. He is heading due north, for the Haxus border.'

'Why is Areava's army not pursuing us?' Gudon asked.

'We hurt them badly,' Korigan said. 'They are licking their wounds.'

'And with Sendarus dead, and the Key of the Sword taken from him, they may not have a commander,' Lynan added.

'Squabbling between seconds-in-command?' Gudon asked.

Lynan glanced at his oldest friend among the Chetts. 'Maybe. Or maybe they don't know how badly we were hurt. Or maybe just indecisiveness. Kumul told me that my father once said a general should always do something. Better the wrong thing than nothing at all.' Both Korigan and Gudon looked at him keenly then. Lynan laughed ruefully. 'Don't worry. We'll be doing something.''

For a moment no one said anything. Lynan seemed content just to sit on his mare. Eventually Gudon prodded: 'What are we waiting for?'

Lynan pointed west. Gudon could see a faint haze on the horizon and scurrying birds in the air above it. 'Eynon,' Lynan said. Gudon glanced at Korigan and saw her worried expression. 'But we are not going to wait for him. I am going to meet him.'

'I'll call the banners,' Korigan said. 'You will meet him with your army behind you.'

'No. I will go with my Red Hands. Wait for me here.'

'But your Majesty, this is Eynon!' Korigan pleaded. 'He knows that destroying you will destroy me and open the way for him to become king of the Chetts—'

'Do you really think Eynon can kill me?'

Korigan remembered the way the enemy had struck at him in the last battle with no effect at all. After Jenrosa had given him the blood of the wood vampire Silona to save his life he had become something more than human; to the Chetts he was the White Wolf returned, the apothesis of myth. She blushed and shook her head.

'This needs to be done,' Lynan said to her gently. 'Trust me. Wait here. I will return before evening. Send out more scouts to keep watch over the Kingdom's and Salokan's armies. When I come back I will want to know exactly where both are.'

Many years ago, when Eynon was still a boy, his father had sent him on a trading expedition to the east. Accompanying one of the midsummer caravans across the Algonka Pass, he saw with wide-eyed wonder the lush and rich lands between the sea and the Ufero Mountains, lost count of the teeming thousands that lived there, and marvelled at the wealth even the smallest landowners displayed. Now, decades later, he still had to resist the temptation to just sit on his horse and gawp, open-mouthed, at the verdant pastures and forests he was leading his Chetts through. He also had to resist the temptation to think this plush land produced only plush soldiers. He knew the armies raised here had conquered most of the continent of Theare for the Rosethemes, and under General Elynd Chisal—Prince Lynan's father—had even chased the mercenaries out of the Oceans of Grass, something the Chetts themselves had never been able to do.

Until Korigan's father united us all under his banner. Eynon breathed deeply. He understood that what the old king—also called Lynan—had done had been for the good of all the Chetts, but in the internecine wars he had waged to forge that unity, Eynon's own father had been killed. And now Lynan's namesake, the son of the great General and ally of Korigan, was creating a new destiny for the Chetts.

Eynon retrieved the Key of Unity from a pouch around his waist and felt its weight in his hands. It was heavier than it should have been, although to his surprise it grew lighter day by day. His followers had expected him to place the Key around his neck. After all, had not the White Wolf himself sent it to him as a bribe, to bring him and his Horse Clan and all the clans allied to him back into the fold? But he had not done that. The Key had not been sent to him as a bribe, as his people thought, but as a reminder of where his real loyalty should lie; it had been a gentle prod from a wise prince.