Authors: Hilari Bell
“Every landholder in the council is already screaming that they’re not going to be able to get the planting done with the men they have,” Koryn told him. “And the number of men
the Hierarch can demand for army service was set when the Realm was first formed.”
“So what?” said Jeriah. “If the choice is between sending more men or relocating, the landholders will find men to send. And the Hierarch…the Hierarch speaks for the Seven Bright Gods. If the first Hierarch set the limits for army service, why can’t this Hierarch speak for the Gods again and change it?”
This Hierarch was a mindless husk, and the Gods’ will was currently being interpreted by Timeon Lazur, but Koryn might not know that. How deep in Master Lazur’s confidence was she?
“If we had the men,” he went on, “surely we could wipe out enough of their army to drive them away. Yes, it might be hard to get the crops in if we sent more men to the border. Yes, it would mean changing the ancient laws about army service. But that has to be better than trying to move the entire Realm!”
He was panting when he stopped, but he’d had the sense to keep his voice low. To question the Hierarch’s decrees was to question the Bright Gods themselves—both heresy and treason.
“It’s not just numbers,” Koryn said. “Our army outnumbers theirs right now, by about five percent as nearly as we can estimate.”
Jeriah brightened. “If we already outnumber them, then we wouldn’t need many more troops! We can—”
“It’s not a matter of numbers! You served with the army for almost a year. You have to know what I’m talking about.”
This wasn’t something Jeriah ordinarily admitted to girls, but…“I was only on the border for one summer. I went out with several patrols, but I never actually fought the barbarians. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“But you must know about…” Koryn eyed him warily. “Never mind. We’d need more men than you think, because the barbarians aren’t going to get discouraged and go home. They can’t. There’s a terrible drought in their own lands. Not a natural drought, either—it’s lasted more than ten years now, and it’s getting worse every year. Their rain has vanished. Their lakes are gone. Their rivers are gone. They have no crops. Even the grass is dying. Their only chance for survival is to conquer a new land. And the only land available is ours.”
“But that’s impossible. No drought lasts that long.”
“As I said, it’s not natural. The priests say the Bright Gods are punishing them for giving themselves over to the Dark One.”
“Right,” Jeriah said dryly. “Isn’t there some way we could negotiate—”
“It’s not nonsense! I don’t claim to know what the Gods are thinking, but the barbarians are evil.”
“If they’re all going to starve, if they just want to survive, then surely we could work something out.”
“That’s what the Hierarch thought when they first attacked us, years ago,” Koryn told him. “He was going to offer them the northern wood. Safe passage through the Realm—escorted by the army, to make sure it was safe for everyone. The land would be hard to till and settle, but better for everyone than war to the death.”
“That sounds like a good solution,” said Jeriah. “Why didn’t it work?”
“Because the barbarians turned it down,” Koryn told him. “And ate all but one of the diplomatic party who carried the Hierarch’s message. Which made it a bit hard to repeat the offer. The one they left alive—he was only a boy, somebody’s page. He came back to our lines, draped in one of their filthy amulets, and told the generals that the barbarians said they didn’t want useless woods. That they could take the land they needed, for they had nothing to fear from us. Later that night”—her voice was very quiet—“the boy killed himself.”
Jeriah’s stomach was churning. “All right, but that was before this war had really started, before so many of their own warriors died. Maybe now—”
“Aren’t you listening?” Her calm voice was rising. “The barbarians are
evil
. We have no choice but to fight them to the death—theirs or ours! Because this can’t end any other way.”
The words echoed in the quiet room, and Jeriah looked around. There was no one nearby.
“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I heard about what happened
to your family. But you have to admit that might be influencing your judgment. It would influence anyone! So I have to—”
“You know nothing about what happened to my family.” Her voice was quieter, but contempt flashed over her face. “
You
never even fought them.”
“Neither have you,” Jeriah pointed out, nettled. “Your father put you up on a horse before the attack, and it bolted. Which is good,” he added hastily. “You’d have died, otherwise.”
“So that’s what they think happened?” She considered this a moment, then shrugged. “Close enough.”
“That’s not what happened?” The story his friends had told about Mistress Koryn’s escape had some holes in it. But they were all clear that her horse had bolted, and that was how she got away. How she’d broken her leg in the process wasn’t entirely clear.
“It’s true as far as it goes. We had almost no warning. We were far enough from the border that we never expected them to reach our estate, but my father set watchers on the edge of our land, just in case.”
“So you did get some warning?” Jeriah asked. Her golden skin was pale—but Jeriah wanted to learn about her, and this was his chance. Besides, he had a feeling that she ought to talk about it. That she might be ready.
“You could say that,” Koryn said. “They screamed. Warning enough. A barbarian war band was swarming
across our fields by the time we all ran outside.
“My father was organizing the men to fight.” Her voice quivered for the first time. “But he told our steward to get the rest of the family on horseback, to put me up on Snake. Snake was his own horse, the fastest in the stable. I was still arguing that my father would need him when old Rinnie threw me into the saddle.”
She had been staring off into space. Now she turned to Jeriah, and he flinched at the agony in her eyes.
“I was a good rider, better than my mother, but when the barbarians attacked…No one could have kept Snake from bolting. I tried to turn him back. I did.”
“You shouldn’t have,” Jeriah said gently. “And no rider can stop a bolting horse until it’s ready to stop. You couldn’t go back.”
“Oh, but I could.” The smile that touched her lips chilled Jeriah to the bone.
“I fell off when Snake jumped the north ditch,” she continued. “But my left foot got caught in the stirrup. I remember being dragged for a while. Then nothing till I woke up, just before sunrise, with my leg twisted three ways and my head hurting almost as bad. I was tangled in a big clump of brush,” she added. “That’s probably what pulled my foot out of the stirrup. And it must have kept the barbarians from finding me, because I was only a few fields from the house.”
Jeriah’s whole body tightened when he realized what would come next. “You went back?” He couldn’t raise his
voice above a whisper. “You went back there?”
She eyed him curiously, as if she were seeing him for the first time. “Most people assume I crawled away.”
Jeriah shook his head.
“Well, you’re right,” she went on. “I crawled back to the house and found them. Everyone. Even the servants…I’d grown up with them, too. So you see, I know
exactly
what happened to my family. Although you’re right,” she added. “It certainly influenced my judgment.”
“Why aren’t you crying? You should be hysterical by now.”
In fact, Jeriah was wondering if he should send for a healer.
“You think I didn’t cry? I screamed my head off. I cried my eyes out. I spent the whole trip to the palace, and most of my first month here, bathed in tears. I finally got tired of it.”
She didn’t claim she’d healed, Jeriah noted. She might never heal. On the other hand, she was clearly able to talk about it, and that might help.
“So how did you escape? With a badly broken leg, behind the battle lines, and no horse?”
“A horse wouldn’t have done any good,” she said. “I couldn’t have mounted something that tall. We had an old donkey, in a pen under the stable that the barbarians missed when they were stealing the rest of our livestock. I managed to get myself onto his back. As for getting through the lines, I’d been riding through that countryside my whole life.
I knew every ditch, back road, and trail. It wasn’t hard to avoid the war bands. They were noisy.”
Her voice flattened on the last words. Jeriah could all but hear the screaming, the sound of carnage drifting over the grape fields.
“I’d probably have lain down and died,” he admitted.
“I thought about it.” Was there a note of humor in her voice? “But I wanted revenge more. So I made my way to the regional headquarters and told the commander that his pickets had been massacred, and the whole barbarian army was ravaging the Southlands. They were quite surprised,” she added. “And even when I told them, they didn’t—”
She rubbed her face and sighed.
“No, that’s not fair. Once I got word to them, they did all they could. No one can stop the barbarians.”
“But why?” Jeriah demanded. “I don’t care how many barbarians there are—every man in the Realm who can carry a weapon would turn out for that fight!”
“It wouldn’t matter,” she said. “Come on, Rovan, think! Even if you were recalled before the fall skirmishes began, you must have heard rumors!”
“I heard dozens of rumors,” Jeriah said impatiently. “Maybe hundreds. What
are
you talking about?”
She hesitated a moment, then said softly. “About their magic.”
“I know the barbarians have magic. And I heard plenty of wild rumors about it, too. So what? Our battle priests
serve the Seven Bright Gods, and their power is more than a match…for…”
The hard stillness in her face stopped him. This scholarly girl, who’d faced so much, was now facing something that frightened even her.
“Nothing is more powerful than the Seven Bright Gods!” For all his shock, Jeriah’s voice dropped. This was a conversation no one should overhear.
“So they say.” Koryn might be frightened, but she didn’t retreat. “I don’t know what gods the barbarians serve. I’ve been trying find out, but the bits of information I’m reading don’t make much sense. What we do know is that the barbarians have a magic our priests have never encountered before. It comes from human sacrifice, from death and blood and pain. And it makes the barbarians so strong in battle that our troops cannot defeat them. No matter how many men we send to the front, the Realm’s defeat is inevitable. Unless we find a position of overwhelming tactical superiority. Like a very small border”—she gestured to the map—“defended by a big stone wall.”
“No magic is stronger than that of the Seven Bright Gods,” Jeriah repeated. “It can’t be. If it was…”
“Then one of the founding tenets of the church, the bedrock beneath the whole Realm, turns to quicksand,” said Koryn softly. “And on the eve of invasion by an army we can’t defeat, we’d be faced with anarchy and rebellion as well. Inconvenient, isn’t it?”
If that was true…It couldn’t be true.
“But suppose…suppose the barbarians’ magic is just some new trick of the Dark One? Something our priests could easily counter if they could figure out how. Suppose figuring it out is the Bright Gods’ test?”
“Suppose all you want,” Koryn said. “Why do you think I’m studying every scrap of any document that even mentions the barbarians? Our battle priests have been trying for years now to find a way to negate their magic. If this is one of the Bright Gods’ tests, we’re failing.”
Jeriah struggled to gather his scattered wits. The barbarian invasion had suddenly become much more real. But even if their magic was stronger than that of the Bright Gods—which he still couldn’t believe—he had a brother to save. He’d wanted to learn about Koryn, in order to find a lever to use against her. And he had.
“The priests,” Jeriah said softly, “aren’t the only ones in the Bright Gods’ Realm with magic.”
Koryn snorted with unladylike force. “You think hedgewitches and herb-healers can defeat barbarian battle magic? You’re dreaming.”
“Maybe,” said Jeriah. “Or maybe that’s part of the test. Has anyone tried it?”
He already knew the answer. So did Koryn. “They got rid of all the lesser magic workers because they might have encouraged resistance to the relocation. So we’ll never know, will we?”
“There might be a few left,” Jeriah said carefully. “If someone could find them.”
The gray eyes fixed on him with the intense focus Koryn gave the books she studied. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.
“You know some of the lesser magic workers? You could contact them?”
“No,” said Jeriah truthfully. “I don’t know any of them, and I have no way to contact them. Even if I did, even if I wanted to give them a handful of barbarian amulets, say, to see if they could tell us anything about barbarian magic, I couldn’t do it. Because I don’t know where the amulets are, either.”
He had no doubt she’d take the bait—there was nothing this girl wouldn’t do to destroy the barbarians.
“I don’t know what you’re up to,” Koryn said slowly, “but they don’t have the power to disrupt the relocation now, so I can’t see how it would do any harm. And if you could find a better way for us to fight—even something that would buy us a little more time—that’s worth some risk. But, Rovan…”
“Yes?”
“If you do anything to hinder the relocation, anything at all, I will stop you and all your friends. Permanently. No matter what it takes.”
The cold fervor in her voice left Jeriah speechless.
“The amulets are stored in chests under the chorus steps.”
Koryn rose awkwardly to her feet and limped away.
Guilt washed over him, so intensely that he almost called her back. Jeriah would have felt guilty using a tragedy like that against anyone, and Koryn…she was a hero! She’d overcome agony, and a grief he couldn’t even imagine, to warn the army. Every life they’d saved from that attack was to her credit. No knight in the Realm’s history had done more. In an earlier, more romantic age, Jeriah would have knelt and offered his sword to her service. A part of him wanted to do it anyway—she deserved that kind of tribute. But Jeriah had a brother to save. That intelligent, driven young woman was his enemy.