Rodrigo Belmonte came back west. The Asharites withdrew towards Silvenes again and reinforcements came to them from Cartada and Tudesca and up from Elvira on the coast.
Five hundred men also arrived from the fortress of Arbastro—led by Tarif ibn Hassan himself. The outlaw and his sons had stopped at Cartada to receive formal pardons from the new king. Almalik II, the parricide, had been executed by Yazir—one of his first actions upon arriving the autumn before. His brother Hazem, called One-hand, had been installed in Cartada.
The Ruendan army, what was left of it, emerged from Ardefio again and moved cautiously south, joining the rest of the Esperansan forces near Silvenes.
Silvenes. It seemed that here the seasons of war were to come to an end. Either Yazir and his army of rescue, here in response to the importunities of fleeing kings and panic-stricken wadjis, would bring Ashar back in triumph to this land, or ... or the Khalifate's fall a generation ago would be as nothing compared to what came now. The necklace of Al-Rassan had been broken then, the pearls scattering. Now they could be lost.
Heralds met on the ground between two armies.
Yazir ibn Q'arif, weighing possibilities, accustomed to swift decisions, instructed his herald to make a proposal. The representative of King Ramiro, a man clearly too young for his task—he was white-faced with what he heard—carried that message back to Ramiro and his constable.
A short time later, grim and precise, the same young herald rode back and met his counterpart again, bearing a reply.
It was as had been expected.
There had been, in truth, no way to refuse. Not in honor, not in pride, not before a battle such as this one was to be. The weight of centuries had come down.
Waking in the morning before Ammar, Jehane lay quietly, looking at him, trying to comprehend how time and the gods had brought them to this. From outside the tent, she heard the sounds of men beginning to stir in the camp; the first prayers of the morning would soon begin.
Her last dream before waking had been of Mazur. Prince of the Kindath. Dead now, half a year ago. She was still unable to stop herself from picturing him emerging from the walls of Ragosa and walking to the Jaddite camp. Where did men find it in themselves to do such things?
The Muwardis had landed in Al-Rassan that same season. Later, in winter, they had learned how those two crossings—ben Avren through the walls to his death and Yazir ibn Q'arif across the straits—were linked to each other. Lines of movement, so far apart, joined at their source. Mazur's last gift to his king and Ragosa.
There had been terrible stories of what Queen Fruela had ordered done to the grey-haired Kindath chancellor after he had walked, unarmed, into her camp. Jehane knew that the worst of them would be true. She also knew, bitter and grieving, that the Muwardis would have done much the same, had they been the ones outside Ragosa's walls.
Who are my enemies?
How did one rise above hatred at these times?
Ammar slept still. It amazed her that he could. She was tempted to trace his features with a hand—eyes, mouth, ears, the straight nose—like a blind woman, to memorize him. She shook her head, pushing the thought away. His breathing was quiet and slow. One arm lay across his chest, oddly childlike.
He could die today. If he did not, Rodrigo would.
It had come to this. Were mortals only playthings for the gods they worshipped, to be tormented in their dying?
It had been agreed between the heralds of Ashar and Jad that leaders of each army would fight before battle, to invoke the will and the power of their gods. One of the oldest rituals of men at war.
Had they somehow guessed that this day might come, the two of them? Had that been the terrible foreknowing that lay beneath the last words they had spoken in the darkness of Orvilla? Or even earlier: in Ragosa, staring at each other that first morning in the brightness of the king's garden with the stream running through it? They had refused to fight each other. There, they could refuse. There, they could fight side by side.
Jehane made herself a promise at that moment, watching her lover sleep, hearing the camp coming awake outside: she would do all she could not to weep. Tears were an easy refuge. What was to happen today demanded more of her.
Ammar's eyes opened without warning, vivid and blue, the same color as her own. He looked at her. She watched him settle into an awareness of the day, what morning it was.
He said, first words, "Jehane, if I fall, you must go with Alvar. He can take you to your parents. There will be nowhere else, my love."
She nodded her head, not speaking. She didn't trust herself to speak. She leaned across and kissed him on the lips. Then she laid her head down on his chest, listening to the beating of his heart. When they spoke afterwards, outside, it was about inconsequential things. The absurd pretense that the world was a normal place that day.
There will be nowhere else, my love.
Alternately hot and cold as the setting sun slipped behind and then out from the swift clouds in the west, Jehane stood on a windy height beside Miranda Belmonte d'Alveda, looking down on a plain between armies.
Alvar de Pellino, a herald of Valledo, garbed in white and gold, was with them as escort to Miranda. So was Husari—granted leave by King Ramiro to accompany his herald.
Husari was the governor of Fezana now, serving Valledo. Jehane did not begrudge him that. He had chosen Ramiro over the Muwardis, making his choice of evils in a time that forced such choices upon all of them. Ziri had decided otherwise, it seemed. He had not left Ragosa with Rodrigo's men. Jehane understood. He would not fight under the banners of the god whose followers had killed his parents. She had no idea what had happened to him. You lost people in war.
She looked down. The armies below were roughly balanced. The ground was even. Neither leader would have been here with his forces had it been otherwise.
The temporarily united Jaddite troops could not remain in the field another winter, and the tribesmen had no disposition for a war of siege and attrition so far from their sands. Tomorrow would see a battle on open ground. A rare thing. There might even be a decisive result, or this could go on and on. Slow, bitter years of fire and sword, disease and hunger and cold, in the breaking of a world.
But before tomorrow could come, with its armies in that plain beneath banners of blue-and-gold or silver-on-black, there had first to be this evening's sunset. Jehane reminded herself that she had vowed not to weep.
Ceremonial battles between Ashar and Jad took place at dawn or at day's end, in the balancing moments between sun and stars. There was one moon in the eastern sky—the white one, nearly full. It was, Jehane thought bitterly, irrelevant to the duality so harmoniously shaped and decreed.
A handful of soldiers from each army were on opposite sides of the slope below them. She knew the Jaddites. Rodrigo's men: Lain, Martin, Ludus. They were not really needed as guards, for Alvar was on the hill and the traditions of heralds were being honored in this campaign.
Men were like that, Jehane thought, unable to check the bitterness from rising again. This was warfare as savage as could be imagined, but the soldiers—even the Muwardis—would defer to the herald's banner and staff.
And they would watch now like boys—enraptured, overawed by the ancient symbolism—what was to happen on the plain between armies. A challenge of gods! Each faith with its great champion, its holy lion of the battlefield! Poets would write verses and songs, chant them at feasts or in taverns or in the dark under desert stars.
"Will there ever be a time when it is not a curse to be born a woman?" Miranda had spoken without turning her head. "When we can do more," she added, staring down at the plain, "than stand by and be extremely brave and watch them die?"