North along the Candovian coast, they pushed off the empire’s maps and into frigid waters. They threaded through mountains of ice that jutted from the water, slow-moving floating islands of white and blue and green, some carved into intricate shapes, ghostly to behold and ever changing with the slip of the sun across the sky. Never before had an Acacian army crossed seas like this. They did it on this occasion only because the league and Queen Corinn believed an Auldek army marched to invade them, following the land route the Numrek had stumbled upon during their years of exile.
Mena fought not to think too often of the two beings she loved most in the world. Melio had his own missions. It was better, she knew, that he not be here with her. This was war, not the hunting expedition that chasing the foulthings had been. She needed to make the right decisions. Many of those would send her soldiers to their deaths. Would she be able to do that to Melio? Or would she protect him unfairly? No, he wouldn’t allow that, which might mean he ended up in greater danger. Far better that he serve the empire elsewhere. Far better that she make her decisions without thinking of his crooked smile, the smell of his hair, or the time he held her in their tent on the Teh plains the night after Aliver was killed, or her promise that she would, one day, take his child inside her. What good was thinking of such things-of longing for the past or hoping for the future-when she had a war to fight? Better not to think about him or about Elya.
She had left the bird-lizard in Corinn’s care on Acacia, after a tearful parting that she had ended abruptly. Mena feared she had left Elya with the impression that she was angry with her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Mena had pushed her away, loving the kindness of her eyes too much. Mena tried not to think about Elya, lest the thoughts somehow reach her across the miles. This was no place for Elya. War was no task to set her.
Mena’s mood blackened with the passing of sea miles. The air became colder, the wind seemingly trying to shove them back from whence they came. But return was not an option. Queen Corinn had made that clear. Meet the Auldek horde, she had ordered, outside the Known World. Delay them, so that the empire had time to better prepare. Defeat them, if such a thing were possible. And in all this the implicit: be sacrificed for the good of the nation.
G andrel set his hands on his hips, listening as the Scav spoke and gestured. “This is where the Numrek first came through. The tracks from their carts are still deep in the ground, he says.”
They stood about a half mile from the coast on a buttress of rock thrust close to the ceiling of clouds. Below them, the jagged ridgelines on two sides sloped down, leaving a gap that headed toward the heart of the Ice Fields, a swath remarkable for its flatness and for the promise of ease of passage, as it veered off to the east and out of sight.
“They must come this way?” Perrin pressed. “If we invest everything here and then they go elsewhere…”
“Aye,” Gandrel translated Kant’s response. “It’s the only way. The mountains to the north stand like wolves’ fangs. Those to the south he calls Bear Teeth. Only here, between the two ranges, is navigable. He calls it the Breath Between.”
Perrin guffawed. “They’ve got a name like that for everything.”
Mena’s gaze drifted over the bleak landscape, from the sheer heights down to the flat tundra. No doubt about it. This was the place Corinn meant her to hold. This was where her sister wanted the invasion thwarted. Feeling cold to the core, Mena pulled her fur-lined robe tighter around her body.
“I want to go down and check these cart tracks he talks of,” Perrin said. “I can’t believe they’re still there all these years later. Should I send word for the ships to begin unloading camp supplies?”
“Not yet,” Mena said. “Come. Let’s all see these tracks. We should send a scouting party along the pass as well.” She began walking before any of the men had responded.
See the tracks they did. They were there, obvious once Kant pointed them out. The ruts were each a carriage-length wide, cut by massive wheels that had churned up the soil. Even covered with spongy moss and tough grass the slashes were knee-deep. According to the dispatches that chased them with new information from Acacia, the Auldek would come with vehicles with massive wheels like the ones that had scarred the land.
She listened to Perrin’s astonished rambling and Gandrel’s translations of Kant’s tales of how the Scavs had been the first in the Known World to face the monsters. She asked questions and made comments and ruminated on how they might use the terrain to their favor, speculated on where to place troops, set ambushes, where best to join battle. She acted as a royal war leader should, but in truth a question greater than all these details had settled in her mind.
That evening her officers dined with Mena on Hadin’s Resolve. Though cramped and simple by Acacian standards, the dining hall was quite comfortable. The table was one large slab of stained wood, beautifully grained and worked so that the contours of the edge seemed to fit each particular person, with resting places for each forearm and a modest concavity to accommodate expanding waistlines. Spiced pork and grilled vegetables sat on white-gold trays, with small dishes of relishes, pickled whitefish, and bowls of sliced fruit. The dark red wine was the same consumed on Acacia itself. To soldiers new to positions of command it must all have seemed quite grand.
By and large these soldiers were new to her, a very different lot from the Talayans with whom she had hunted the foulthings. Paler men and fewer women than she was used to, blue- and gray-eyed Candovians, some Senivalians, and even a few who might have claimed Meinish identity had that clan not been so defeated and scattered throughout the empire. They all seemed so very young. Few of them had fought against Hanish Mein. All of them wished for glory. They seemed to both relish the danger marching toward them and disbelieve in it.
When they all finally left to return to their vessels, Mena found herself alone with Perrin. They sat opposite each other, reclining in soft chairs near the small stove that heated the room. They sipped a liqueur made from yellow plums. Despite the warmth caged within the metal stove, a chill crept around the edges of the chamber through chinks in the woodwork. The portholes had begun to rim with ice.
Perrin propped his shiny leather boots on a footstool and set a hand on his abdomen, patting his stomach. “I’m going to miss meals like that. No matter how well we think we’ve provisioned, such bounty won’t last long. I had to laugh at how much the troops complained when we didn’t accept the casks of wine the league offered us. They acted like we were spoiling their planned holiday.”
“When the league comes bearing gifts, beware.” Melio had said those exact words before. Saying it herself, she heard his voice.
“Too right, Your Highness. The stuff wouldn’t have lasted long in any event. I know this from experience.”
“You trained on the Mein Plateau.”
Perrin nodded. His shoulder-length hair swayed with the motion. “Two years based in Cathgergen. Rather boring, really, considering that there weren’t actually any Meins to be worrying about anymore.”
“Did you see much of the plateau?”
“It’s mostly much of the same. Snow and trees and ice. Snow and trees and ice. Oh, there’s a mountain!” He feigned surprise. “That sort of thing. I went west as far as Scatevith. Wintered for three months in Hardith. Saw Mein Tahalian in the height of summer.”
“What was it like?”
“You’ve never been?”
Mena shook her head.
“In summer it was a misery of mosquitoes and biting flies. Place was deadly with them-we were bitten and the air was so thick with them, we could not help but breathe them in and choke. It wasn’t the winters that made the Meins so cranky. It was the summer wildlife.”