“They were going to hand Cithrin to him in exchange for peace,” Marcus said.
“Were going to try to,” Yardem murmured.
“Now we’ve captured Lord Skestinin, and got a fleet and a dragon answering to her, that’s going to be harder for them to accomplish,” Barriath said raising his own drink in a toast. Marcus matched him, and they drank. Marcus put his mug down hard and closed his eyes. Enough. He’d had enough. He was done now. He took a deep breath and let it seep out through his nostrils.
“Well,” he said, “I hope her majesty had time to work out a fallback plan.”
Clara
The path through the mountains was not straight. The dragon’s jade curved through forest-choked valleys and rose to cling to the sides of grey-faced mountains. The air here was thin, and the nights grew colder than the season suggested. The body of the army took the lead, and Clara’s little caravan and a dozen others like it followed respectfully at a distance. If there were any travelers coming in the opposite direction, they postponed their journeys, for no one passed by them.
For seven days, Clara rode or, more often, sat her unmoving horse. Any delay in the column before her meant a dead stop, sometimes for hours, before moving slowly forward a mile or two and stopping again. She did not know the source of these delays, nor was there any way of discovering them. It was hers merely to wait and be patient. And, because it was her chosen task, to learn.
On the eighth day, the landscape broadened. Mountains still rose before them, but fewer. The valley in which they stopped spread wider. The army took up its camp along the road where there was soft ground to pitch tents on and trees to cut for wood. Clara’s ’van stopped farther up, where the land was still stone and the wood harder to come by. As night fell, the dark, sweet smoke of green wood thickened the air, and cookfires filled the valley below her like stars. Clara took her little writing kit and drew a bit away from the camp. Spring was well on its way to summer, and the evening sun was slow to fade. She found a flat-topped boulder with no obvious animal nests beneath it, sat, drew the steel-tipped pen over the tarry little ink brick, and continued the already impressively long letter.
I had been aware that certain women would follow the army, doing work of a sexual nature for the benefit of the soldiers. I had not—though perhaps you had—been aware that this is only one of many trading relationships that follow in a host’s wake. The army of Antea now marching is for the greatest part made of men who would otherwise be farming or plying trades in the towns and villages of Antea. They are far from home, possessed of little education, and rich with needs and desires beyond the merely sexual. The army includes a complement of scribes and couriers for the use of the highborn, but the caravans and low camps that trail include scribes and runners as well which the foot soldiers make use of for a price. The cunning men who wear the colors of the great houses are the only ones in this present valley, and more than healing, provide the service of fortune tellers, advisors, and even priests. Charms against death and illness can cost more here than they would in Camnipol. I am led to understand that there is often a trade in liquors and tobacco nearer the beginning of a campaign, though any such supplies have long been exhausted here.
It occurs to me that this unofficial and unrecognized support of the men is both significant and vulnerable.
“Lady,” Vincen said. Clara looked up, putting her hand over the letter. But he was alone. The light was fading quickly now, and she doubted she would be able to return to her report before morning. It wasn’t the sort of thing one wrote about the campfire where anyone might see it.
“Vincen, my dear.”
“It’s time to come back to the ’van.”
“Ah. Supper already.”
“No, ma’am. We’re breaking camp.”
Clara blew across the fresh ink to cure it, frowning as she did so. The fires dotting the valley below were steady. What little movement she saw had no urgency. Vincen followed her gaze and her thought.
“The ’van master’s been keeping watch. There have been twice as many scouting parties sent out and come back as usual. Last pass into the plains is half a day west of here. Thinking is that the locals will try to block us there.”
“And we’re pulling up stakes to go ahead?”
“Back, ma’am. The ’van master prefers we be a day’s ride behind when the fighting starts. Things go poorly, there can be some scatter.”
“Ah, I understand,” she said. Her knees protested when she stood. There had been a time, and it seemed not long ago, when riding all day and sleeping under the stars would have made her body stronger rather than just more pained. “But no.”
“I thought not,” he said. “We’ll be staying for the battle.”
“Well, I don’t see wading into it with a knife, but I’ve come here to see the war. This is it. I can’t imagine turning back now.”
“There’s the question of safety.”
“Safety would have been Camnipol. Or else nowhere.”
She started down the slope back toward the road. The stones grated under her feet, pebbles skittering ahead. Now that she knew to look, the ’van master was hitching his team to the carts. Likely he wouldn’t make much distance before it got so dark he had to stop again, and yet he’d make the effort. Fear of a night attack, then. Clara wondered how realistic that was. It seemed more likely to her that the forces of Birancour would wait for late afternoon when the sun would be in Jorey’s eyes.
Jorey.
It was easy to see the fires in the valley as the long arm of Geder Palliako. Perhaps she’d trained herself to look away from the fact that her sons were there too. The scouts that the ’van master had been watching had been going to and from Jorey’s tent. If the ’van master’s assessment was correct, he would be riding into battle the next day. In two days at the most. The Lord Marshal would be behind the main lines, keeping an eye on the battle, issuing orders, and so would be the least likely to fall in the melee. Still she could not help feeling anxious when she thought of him.
Part of her wanted to see Geder’s power reach its turning point, for his reach to go as far as it would extend and begin instead to fall back. That it meant Jorey’s battle lost and his army defeated complicated the feeling. She ached with fear and hope and dread, and couldn’t put a simple name to any of them. All that was left was to hope that nothing broke her heart again before tomorrow ended.
“There are others staying too,” Vincen said, his voice tentative.
“Vultures?” she asked, forcing her tone to be light.
“Well, and some cunning men to help with the wounded. But mostly body-pickers, yes.”
“Ah, my dear,” she said, tucking her arm in his, “what unexpected company we do keep.”
Clara managed to wheedle two days’ rations from the caravan master before he left. Salted pork, hardtack, and a bowl of beans with a crust all along the edge. There was room enough to set up their little hunter’s tent, and she was sufficiently tired that to her astonishment, she slept. Dawn had broken when she woke and crawled out from under the low tent to find Vincen sitting on a stone with a spyglass in his hands. A haze of smoke greyed the air that the valley cupped, the stale remnants of yesterday’s cookfires. No new fires burned.
“What’s happening?” Clara asked, dreading the answer.
“Birancour’s come,” he said, pointing. “You can see the banners between those two hills. The queen’s colors.”
“And Jorey?”
“No,” he said. “Vicarian’s the one that went out to meet them.”