Sovereign

Worat yelped and turned round in his saddle. Serefa had time to see the short black arrow sticking out of the knight's eye before he toppled off his horse. Something hissed by his ear and he heard the man behind him gargle blood. Without thinking, Serefa threw himself over his horse and kicked his heels in. The horse was too afraid of the slope to move, and Serefa cursed it as he threw himself off. Just as he did so an arrow thwacked into the saddle, and then another into the animal's neck. The horse screamed and dropped. The third knight was half running, half scrabbling down the slope. He had almost reached the bottom when a single Chett leaped up from behind a depression with his bow and used it like an axe, whacking it across the knight's face. The knight fell backward, jerked like a puppet and then was still.

Serefa drew his sword and charged downhill, sliding and slipping, desperately trying to keep his balance and watching as the Chett righted his bow and fitted another arrow. His feet skidded out from under him when he was only two paces from the Chett, and a hastily fired arrow parted his hair. Serefa could not control his fall, and he barrelled into the Chett, sending him pinwheeling back into the depression he had been hiding in. When Serefa regained his footing he looked over the edge and saw that the Chett had broken his neck. His sword drooped and his shoulders slumped. Then it occurred to him the Chett might not have been alone. He frantically looked around him, but saw no sign of any more enemies. Keeping his heart under control he checked on his fellows. All three were dead. Two horses had been killed as well and another was lame. The fourth horse—Worat's—was nowhere in sight. Serefa heard a noise and looked up to see a horse he did not recognise galloping north around the hill. The Chett's mount, he reasoned. Now what could he do? The enemy column would catch up with him for sure if he tried to make it back to Daavis by foot.

The donkey brayed.

'Shut up,' Serefa snapped. He blinked. The donkey. He sheathed his sword, quickly unloaded the water casks and led the donkey to level ground. Once there he carefully clambered onto its back. Without saddle or stirrups it took him some time to get it to go in the direction he wanted, but eventually they were moving at a pace that would have been something like a slow trot for a horse. With luck, he would keep just far enough ahead of the Chetts to survive until he made Daavis.

With luck, he repeated to himself.

It occurred to him then that being in Daavis might not put him in a more secure position. If there was a Chett scouting column heading south there was probably a Chett army not far behind it, and Serefa had no trouble guessing where that was heading.

Mally rolled the knucklebone. It landed with the number five uppermost. 'That's it!' he cried. 'That's what I need!' He moved his white stone five spaces along the polygonal playing area he had scratched in the walkway, landing on a red stone. 'Your duke is gone!'

The old soldier grunted, then smiled at the small boy squatting opposite him. 'Indeed. I think you have won the war.'

Mally grinned from ear to ear. 'Did you let me win, Brettin?'

'I would not cheat you like that, Mally,' the soldier said. Not absolutely true. When his grandson was just learning the game Brettin had let him win quite a few times, but not for over a year now. And Mally won more often than not. He was a smart boy. Too smart to be a soldier, Brettin thought. Alas, it is all he's interested in. Well, his poor father had been one after me, so it's not surprising.

'What were you keeping in your castle?' Mally asked.

'Let's see.' Brettin flipped over the shells hiding his last few stones. 'Two spearmen and an archer. What about you?'

Mally lifted his shells one by one. None of them had anything underneath.

'You little rascal,' Brettin laughed. 'I could have taken your castle any time.'

'But you didn't,' Mally laughed back. 'Another game?'

'I have to do my rounds soon, Mally…'

'Oh, Brettin, please? It won't take more than a few minutes.'

'God, who's cocky all of a sudden?' He mussed Mally's hair. 'Alright. I'll set up first this time.'

Mally agreed and stood up to stretch his legs. Brettin collected all the stones and shells and started deploying his troops, selecting a battering ram this time, together with the swordsmen to support it. Mally's father had been good with a sword, he remembered. But not good enough to beat off a Chett lancer. He forced himself to think about something else. His grandchildren. That would do. And his fine daughter-in-law, whom he loved as if she had been his blood daughter, and who loved him as dearly in return. Little Serven, only two, and sweet Mally, whom he loved above all else in the world. He would have to talk to Mally's mother about getting him real schooling and a real job, one that would not have him spilling his guts on a dusty, blasted battlefield. A tear came then. He wiped it away with a rough finger and concentrated on deploying his pieces.

Mally, meanwhile, was taking advantage of being allowed on the wall. It was not often his grandfather got patrol duty up here, and he loved to look out over the city and the wide, gentle Barda River to the south and the wide, gentle countryside to the north. One day he would go exploring. He would follow the river to its source in the Ufero Mountains and discover gold. And when he was rich he would make an army for the great queen in Kendra, and lead it north to defeat Haxus and then on to the Oceans of Grass to take his revenge on the Chetts for the death of his father.

North, across all those miles of farms and fields and rolling hills…

'Brettin.'

'Yes, Mally.'

'I see smoke.'

'From a farmhouse?'

'No. White smoke. A whole tower of smoke. And there's another, south of the first.'

Brettin stood up so quickly he dropped his spear. 'Fuck,' he said under his breath. 'They're coming.'

Mally, who knew when to pretend and when not to pretend to hear Brettin swearing, said: 'The Chetts?'

Brettin nodded. He picked up his spear and trotted to the nearest tower to give the alarm, Mally close on his heels.

Others watched the white smoke as well, and for them it meant something else.

'I'm sorry, Lynan,' Korigan said. 'The scouts failed. Daavis has been warned.'

Lynan nodded wearily. 'Well, it can't be helped. The enemy was better prepared this time. I had not counted on them establishing so many outposts so quickly.'

'We can reach Daavis by nightfall if we push the army.'

'No. We will arrive too tired and too late to do anything useful before it is too dark to fight. Truth, the city will be locked to us, and our cavalry will be of little use. We will wait until tomorrow.'

'The Haxan sappers want us to cut wood for their machines.'

'Fine. But not now. When we reach the city there will be time to cut down whole forests if needs be. There's no reason for us to carry more than we have to on the way. This army moves slow enough as it is.'

Korigan grinned at him. 'You are used to a purely Chett army. Now we have Salokan's infantry.'

'And demoralised infantry at that. They have been beaten too many times this year to have much heart for the business of war.'

'A victory will fix that.'

'Then let's make sure we give them one.'

Korigan studied Lynan's face. She could see the lines of worry creasing the corners of his mouth and eyes, the deep furrow that seemed permanently ploughed across his brow. The campaign in Haxus had been a fast, vicious one but she had some idea how much it had taken out of him. She wanted to lean over and kiss him, but to do that in front of his army would embarrass him.

'You will have your victory, my love,' she whispered.

'This time, yes. I will not let Grenda Lear defeat me twice.' He turned to her and smiled slightly. 'I have no doubt about that.'

Korigan saw that it was true, and felt a twinge of fear. Since the night they had made love she hoped she had learned something more about him, but in the clear light of day she knew the hope was fruitless. He was something new in her experience, a warrior and innocent at the same time, and she did not know how to make sense of that. In his rage, when he became more than a man, or maybe less than a man, he was terrifying, and yet for the rest he was small and almost childlike, but weighed down with worry. He did not want to fight, but only battle seemed to liberate him; the problem was, she did not think she could ever love the Lynan who swept all before him, the one who could not be wounded, the one who revelled in slaughter. And yet it was those very characteristics that had married his followers to him. The Chert warrior believed Lynan was almost godlike. They would follow him to their deaths if need be, and willingly. And Korigan knew that if it would advance his cause, to their deaths he would send them.