By the Sword (64 page)

The only difference between Talia's and Selenay's uniforms was that Talia openly carried a long knife, and wore breeches, and Selenay wore a kind of divided riding skirt that gave the appearance of a little more formality without sacrificing too much in the way of mobility. The Queen's thick, shoulder-length blonde hair was confined by a simple gold circlet—there was no other outward sign of her rank. Even this office, the first room of the Royal Suite, was furnished quite plainly. There were two old tapestries on the wall, a few chairs chosen more for comfort than looks, and a dark wooden desk cluttered with papers; there was no indication anywhere that this room was used by anyone with any kind of rank.

“We're under wartime conditions here, Captain,” Selenay continued, accepting Kero's scrutiny serenely. “I don't know what you were anticipating, but I am expecting a certain amount of work out of your troops until we take the field.”

Hmm. Better make some things plain—like we aren't miracle workers.
“I'll tell you this honestly, your—Selenay,” Kero replied. “If you're expecting us to turn to and help with everything except training green recruits, we'll be able to do what you want. But if you thought we could take plowboys and make specialist cavalry out of them in less than a fortnight, you might as well just send us straight out to where you expect Ancar, because we can't do it. Nobody can.”

Selenay nodded quickly, as if that was what she had expected Kero would say. “I realize that. What I'd like your people to do is work with the mounted troops we've gotten from some of the highborn, privately recruited, maintained, and trained. I expect some of them will be dreadful; I'd like the dreadful ones weeded out and put somewhere harmless. Some will be marginal, and those we'll put with the mounted Guard units, the ones I had out chasing bandits. The good ones I'd like you to train as much as you can, so that they'll work together without charging into each other.”

“Which is what they're doing at the moment,” Talia added from behind the Queen. “If the situation wasn't so bad, I'd advise keeping them around for entertainment.”

Kero managed to keep her face straight.

Selenay's mouth quirked up at one corner, but she did likewise. “Keep the Lord Marshal appraised on a daily basis; I've appointed a liaison for you.”

Kerowyn was impressed and relieved, both. Selenay had a good grasp of what was possible and what was not, and was willing to settle for the possible. That made
her
job that much easier.

“Can do,” she replied, relaxing. “Who's my liaison to the Lord Marshal?”

“My daughter, Elspeth,” Selenay said, and Kero's heart sank.
Just what I need, a know-everything princess at my heels. I wonder if I can convince Anders to charm her and get her of my way—with those big, brown eyes, the beautiful body, and all the rest of it, he should—

A rap on the door to the Queen's quarters interrupted them, and as Kero turned, startled, another slim young woman in Whites slipped inside, a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl with a startling resemblance to Faram. “Mother, I'm sorry I'm late, but there was a—” she stopped instantly as Selenay held up her hand.

“You're here now, and you can tell me what delayed you later. Elspeth, this is Captain Kerowyn. Captain, your liaison, my daughter.”

The girl's eyes went round with surprise, and she crossed the room quickly, to take Kero's hand in as firm a clasp as her mother had.

“I'm dreadfully sorry, Captain,” she said in accent-less Rethwellan. “If I'd known you were arriving today, I'd have arranged things differently. We Heralds have to spend our first year or two acting as arbitrators and judges under the supervision of a senior Herald—normally that's outside Haven, where we can't run home to mama when a thunderstorm hits, but since I'm the Heir, they won't let me do that. Go out in the Field, I mean, not run home to mama.”

Kero blinked.
Well, this is amazing. First highborn child I've ever met who wasn't either spoiled or convinced rank alone conferred wisdom.
“I can understand the constraints,” she replied, in Elspeth's tongue. “All it would take would be one stray arrow.”

Elspeth sighed. “I know, but the problem is that since I'm not out of reach, the Weaponsmaster seems to think I have all the time I need for lessoning and practice, and Herald Presen keeps assigning me to
another
city court and I
still
have all the Council meetings as Heir—and Mother, Teren said to tell you that—”

“I have the War Council, I know. So do you, and I'm bringing the Captain along.” Selenay smiled fondly on her offspring, and Kero didn't blame her. Kero echoed the smile. There wasn't going to be any trouble in working with this one.

Then, out of nowhere, Need roused, for the first time since crossing the Border—focused on Elspeth-

Kero felt as if someone had dropped her inside a metal bell, then hit the outside with a hammer. She and the sword vibrated together for what seemed like forever, with everything,
everything,
focused on Elspeth, who seemed entirely unaware that anything was going on. She kept right on with her conversation with her mother, while Kero tried to regain her scattered wits.

There was no doubt in her mind that Need had found the person she wanted to be passed on to.

But—now?

She thought that question at the sword as hard as she could, but the blade was entirely quiescent once more, as if nothing had happened.

Blessed Agnira,
Kero thought, mortally glad that Selenay and her daughter were still deep in conversation.
Is that what the thing did to Grandmother the first time I showed up on her doorstep? No, it couldn't have. For one thing, she wasn't wearing it at the time. But I'd be willing to bet this is how that old fighter that passed it to her felt.

Well, at least the stupid thing wasn't going to insist on being handed over immediately. Maybe it sensed that Kero was going to require its power in the not-too-distant future. And surely it knew—if it was aware—that she'd fight it on that point until this war was over.

Fine,
she decided, as Selenay turned away from her daughter, and gestured that the two of them should followed her out the door.
I'll worry about it later. We all have other things to worry about—and
I
'll be damned if I'll give this thing to a perfectly nice child like Elspeth with no warning of what it can do to her!

And she thought straight at the
blade—So don't you go trying your tricks on her—or I'll see that she drops you down a well!

Spring is a lousy time to fight,
Kero thought, peering through the drizzle, as droplets condensed and ran down her nose and into her eyes. She wiped them away in bleak misery.
And if that fool is going to attack, you'd think he'd pick better weather than this. Fog
and
rain, what a slimy mess.

She stood beside the mare on the only significant elevation in the area. Though it stood well above the surrounding countryside, it wasn't doing her any good. This miasma had reduced visibility to a few lengths, and the only way she was going to find anything out was through the scouts and outriders.

Hellsbane shivered her skin to shed collected water droplets. Kero wished she could do the same. If Selenay's people hadn't insisted that
here
and
How
was where Ancar was going to make his first attempt, expecting no resistance, she'd have gone right back to the tent where it was warm. Her hands ached with cold, and there was a leaky place in her rain cloak just above her right shoulder.

But the tent was already packed up, and the Heralds with the Gift of ForeSight hadn't been wrong so far.

The only troops on the field today were the Skybolts in Valdemar colors. To them would fall the task of harrying Ancar for the first couple of engagements, of wearing him out before he ever encountered real Valdemar troops, and of confusing him with tactics he wouldn't have expected out of regular army troopers.

They'd staged their defense with an eye to making him lose his more mobile fighters early on. The troops Ancar would meet for the next several days were all mounted; the foot troops would meet up with them farther north. At that point, hopefully, his foot soldiers would be exhausted from trying to keep up with the horse, while their foot would still be fresh.

Kero's plan was to make every inch of ground Ancar gained into an expensive mistake, and to lure him northward with the illusion of success, when all the time he was only moving along his own border.

When Kero had explained, as delicately as possible, her Company's other specialty, Selenay had given her another pleasant surprise. “You mean you're saboteurs?” she'd exclaimed with delight. “A whole
Company
of dirty tricksters? Bright Astera, why didn't you say that before? For Haven's sake, if anyone questions your tactics, send them to me, I'll back you!”

So now Kero and the Skybolts had carte blanche to do whatever they needed to. Which was just as well, really, since they would have done so anyway.

I thought some of the things we'd run into before were odd, but this is stranger than snake feet,
she thought, recalling her presentation to the War Council once she'd finally worked out a general plan based on the tentative one she'd put together with Daren.
First, the “watchers, ” whatever they were—then the fact that it's like driving nails into stone to talk to people around here about magic—but then there's the business with Iftel. It's like the country was invisible from inside Valdemar. It's on the map, but their eyes slide right by it....

“We basically have to get Ancar in a pincer, and leave him with only one avenue of escape. Our best bet right now is to get him right up against the Iftel border, and trap him there,” she'd said to the War Council.

And they had, to a man and woman, looked absolutely blank.

Finally, “Iftel?” faltered Talia, as if she had trouble even saying the name. “Why Iftel?”

“Because of what I've been told by the Guild,” Kero had said to them all. “That Iftel protects itself—by making you forget it exists, and keeping you out if it doesn't want you in. I think you've just confirmed the first, which makes me think the second is true, too.”

“Iftel is—strange,” Selenay admitted. “I do have an ambassador there, a non-Herald. They—how odd, they didn't want a Herald there at all. Yet they have never, ever threatened us in all our history, and they have signed some fairly binding treaties that they never will. From all accounts, though, the country is just as strange as the Pelagirs, and that is very strange indeed.”

That matched with what Kero had been told by the Guild.
They
didn't have a representative there, but it wasn't because they'd been barred from the place. It was because every time they'd sent someone in, he'd nearly died of boredom. Iftel had no bandits. Iftel had its own standing militia, organized at the county level. Iftel hired no mercenaries—because Iftel needed no mercenaries. Occasionally young folk got restless enough to leave, but that was the only time the Guild ever got members from Iftel, and
they
never went back home.

Iftel took care of itself, thank you.

Well, that made it a good place to take a stand; Ancar's forces would be squeezed against the Iftel border to the north, Valdemar's forces would be to the west, and Rethwellan's —hopefully—would be coming up from the south.

Kero wiped rain out of her eyes, without doing much good. She still couldn't see past the bottom of the hill. But somewhere out beyond in the fog, the specialists had been at work, and if the Foreseers were right, in the next candlemark or so, Ancar's forward troops would run right into something nasty that wasn't supposed to be there.

The skirmishers stirred restlessly below her, waiting for their chance. Today was likely to be the only easy day of the campaign, which was why Kero had wanted only her Company in on it.
They
knew that a war is neither lost nor won in the first battle, and they knew very well that one easy day is the exception, not the rule. But if Selenay's greener forces were in on this, when the going got rougher and rougher, they might see every day after the easy one as a constant series of defeats, and lose heart. In fact, Kero hoped she wouldn't lose a single fighter this first day, but she knew as well as anyone on the field that engagements like that came once in a career and never again.

The sound of muffled hoofbeats came through the fog; years of practice had enabled Kero to pinpoint where sound was really coming from on days of rotten visibility.

It's from the ambush site. I think we're about to get some action.
One of the scouts materialized out of the drizzle and pelted up the hillside, his horse mired to the belly. “They're coming on, Captain, straight for the trap. ”

Her heartbeat quickened, in spite of years of experience. “Good,” she replied, and the Herald beside her silently relayed that on to the rest of his kind—which included Selenay and Elspeth. “Tell the rest that if it looks like he's straying, tease him into it.”

“Sir.” The scout saluted, and pelted off again, vanishing back into the mist like a ghost.

The “trap” was a swamp—a swamp that hadn't been there a week ago. But last month Kero's experts had diverted a small river from its bed, several leagues away, and had confined its waters behind an earthen dam just above the flat, grassy meadow the ForeSeers said Ancar was aiming for. Then, two nights ago, they had broken the dam.