XX. Summer & Fall 782
Jen, helped by nine-year-old Lady Anne, was unpacking a picnic, out of the wind behind a rock, on a brilliantly sunny day of July, with the clouds charging across the sky from the west out of the high mountains. Eleven-year-old Lady Susan stood a little way away, with her fingers in the grip of eighteen-month-old Violet who stood on Susan's feet and leaned away in front of her. Thus bound the two of them were slowly turning around and around. They looked out in all directions upon Clane and its mountainous frontiers from the broken top of Mount Nikolad.
Countess Vivian was sitting on a rock rubbing her forehead. "My lady," said Jen, "is it still that headache?"
"Yes," said Vivian between clenched teeth.
"And Miranda's herbs did nothing for it?"
"No." Jen went back to setting up the picnic, but Annie came over and took Vivian's free hand. Vivian rubbed her temple once more and then stopped and took both the girl's hands. "Annie, Annie, Annie," she said with a tired smile.
"Poor mom. Is there anything I can do?"
Vivian stood up and pulled Annie against her, and the girl hugged her mother's hips as if she was hanging onto a tree sticking out over a cliff. Then she settled for a hand and the two of them went over and sat down on the blanket spread out on the ground. There was bread and cheese and sliced meats and apples and pears and honey and maple syrup and wine. "Want to eat, darlings?" Vivian called to Suzy and Violet.
"Come, Lady Violet," said Suzy, "are you hungry?"
In moments the two women were surrounded by children eating. Cups were filled halfway up with wine or cider. Maple syrup went on everything: the girls were growing up to be Nikoladians. The local grey jays began to gather, looking sad and needy while waiting for the opportunity to make off with goodies. Somewhere along the way, Vivian and Jen both got enough to eat, and managed to talk while their children stuffed their faces.
"The headache," said Jen.
Vivian gave her a look. "It's not a normal one. I don't know what it means, but I presume it's His childish way of getting back at me."
"What did you actually do?"
"Oh, I--Careful with that! You're spilling--oh, great. Suz, could you--"
"Why do I have to?"
"Just give me the towel there," said Jen, "and I'll clean it up."
"No, Jen," said Susan, "I'll do it."
"You're a sweetie, Suz," said Vivian. "Well, I, kind of, well, sat in his chair a little bit."
"You didn't," Jen replied.
"I did, and I--kind of might have sunk his navy, too, a little."
"But," asked Susan, "why doesn't he just squash us if he's so strong?"
"Maybe he can't. Maybe this is all he can do."
"My lady," whispered Jen, "he can't--just kill us, like the old Emperors?"
"Um, no, not so far away." The truth was that Vivian worried about that very event. Clane seemed safe. Vivian had no idea why. It all made her quite nervous. She touched the place on her breast where a tiny teardrop-shaped gem might hang.
"Just like a child who can't get his way, isn't he?" Jen took the towel and wiped up Violet's spilled syrup. "It's terrible that he can cause you such pain, but--"
"Oh, I agree," said Vivian. "Better this than he cast the pox on Nikolad or something. And I don't think it can go on forever." She took a large bite of honeyed bread, and then added, "Eventually I'll murder him, or he'll murder me."
"Mommy, look," said Susan, grabbing Vivian's sleeve. She looked where the girl pointed, and there, several hundred yards down the mountain, they could see two people ascending the steep open path. "It's Ell, and papa," said Susan.
"You have good eyes, my big girl. Now eat up your bread and honey. Those jays look like they're ready to grab it out of your hand."
By the time the two scouts climbed to the picnic site, the thieving intent of the grey jays had been thwarted. The messengers came up just as the girls were finishing.
"My lady," said Willd, as Ellean turned around and around in the breeze, unable to resist the free air of the heights and the startling vistas. "We have news from the south."
"Oh? Could you wipe Annie's face? She's got honey and jam all over it."
"She does, doesn't she?" replied Willd. He turned to his blond daughter. "How'd that happen? Can't you control your food, little girl?"
"Yes," Annie replied with a sweet smile.
"Countess," said Ellean, "did you know we have news from the south?"
"I think I remember hearing something like that."
"Well, I guess the Emperor's decided to give you a headache the old-fashioned way," Ellean went on. "He's gathering an army in Farlain, with supplies for a major expedition."
"How new is this news?"
"Martin and Siglind just brought it back today," said Willd. "They were in Sakavis, on the way back from spying in Calway."
"Sakavis, eh? Was Marty checking on that parcel of land by the crick?"
"He may have wished so," said Ellean. "He took an arrow in the shoulder, but he'll be all right. Siglind knows some healing tricks from her mom."
"I'll bet she does," said Vivian. "Between you and Siglind, that Martin's getting a lot of healing, isn't he?"
"Honestly," Ellean replied, "in front of the girls!"
"Sorry. Oh, ouch. Oh, my head." She stood up unsteadily and looked wincing into the blue distance, in the direction of Avigon. "Well, let's go down, and call the Council for this evening." The others started packing up while the Countess stood holding her head. Annie hung on Willd while he helped Jen gather the scattered utensils and Ellean held Violet in the spell of her baby talk. Suzy went over and put her arms around her mother's waist.
"Poor mom," she said.
"Oh, yes, poor mom," Vivian replied, putting her arm around her daughter's shoulders.
"Don't worry, mom. You'll murder him, not the other way around."
"Twenty thousand, the word is," said Siglind. "We have it from several locals. It's not much of a secret. They're buying up all the goods available for sale in north Farlain and Intror." The slender, half-nude Rukh sat back in a chair in the dining room of Nikolad, her legs extending out under the table. Beside her, Martin of Auzel, looking particularly shabby with a big bandage covering the hole in his right shoulder and a matching hole in his old blue jacket, reclined in a similar manner. Beside Martin sat Willd, also combining a relaxed pose with a worried look. Vivian sat across from them, her eyes shut, her hands massaging her temples. On her right, Susan, Sir Rogier, Lady Mirabel, Angeline Rain and Enjele Ennis paid concerned attention; on her left, Ellean Rain, twelve-year-old Jack Rain and the scribe Anne Atgate each took notes. Prince Frenerac sat by the scribe, with Sir Tylon next to him. At opposite ends of the table sat Miranda the Brewer and Thane Sigrith's eldest daughter Sigfrinda, who looked on her kid sister Siglind with pride. The young woman went on. "They're about evenly split among militia, Avars and Imperial knights. Last we heard they were in northernmost Farlain. The Emperor is not thought to be with the army; Duke Salvar and Count Chalris and Temkuz, the Khan of the Avars, are the leaders."
"Twenty thousand!" said Sir Rogier. "He doesn't have to be there!"
"It's more than twice the biggest army we've ever faced," said Angeline.
"Yes," said Sir Rogier, "he must have decided after Samarra that he could use this twenty thousand more constructively in a land war."
"Salvar and the Khan detest each other," said Prince Frenerac. "It'll be interesting to see them try to coordinate an attack."
"How much coordination do they need?" asked Sir Rogier. "They could take turns if they wanted to. Each half of this army could give us a pretty serious mauling."
"We're doomed," said Angeline. "I just hope I can be with Francis at the end."
"We're sure they want to fight?" asked Lady Susan.
"We have to assume so," said Prince Frenerac. "My brother's not so subtle as to feint with an army of twenty thousand. No, they're quite serious."
"Well," said Sigfrinda, "we will give them the fight of their lives."
"If I knew better, I wouldn't bet on our side winning," said Frenerac, "and it'll be bloody if we do, but our foes will rue this battle. At least we can weaken the Emperor enough that others can rise against him."
"I hope you don't think I'm carping," said Sir Rogier, "but I am not especially comforted by that sort of talk."
"Maybe," said Ellean, "this is like his last big shot at us, and if we survive it--"
"Yeah, I'd like to think so, too," said Martin, "but you know he's got at least one more army of twenty thousand behind this one. I wouldn't bet he doesn't have another behind that."
"Yes," said Vivian, "he'll keep hitting us year after year if he has to. Well, I guess I should be sorry I got all of you into this."
"No," said Ellean, "we're on the right side. It's just that the wrong side has an awful lot of soldiers."
Sir Rogier sighed. "I just don't know what to say. Twenty thousand. Salvar did us enough damage with just eight, back in '76. What can we muster, maybe five?"
"Assuming we can get what we got in '76," said Mirabel. "It was enough to contain eight thousand. But this."
"Well," said Ellean, "I'm with Sigfrinda and Frenerac. At least we'll go down swinging." The Rukh sisters nodded solemnly. Sir Rogier and Mirabel de Nikolad started to rub their temples in imitation of the Countess. As the evening deepened, a similar gloom was settling on the table.
Vivian shook her head. "I don't know," she said, "but I think he's scared."
When Sir Francis Weaver and Thane Sigrith arrived several days later, on the first day of August, they tended to share Sir Rogier's point of view. The other school of thought expected a glorious stand in the face of insurmountable odds, and its chief proponents were Ellean, Prince Frenerac and the younger Rukh. The Countess alone seemed sort of optimistic.
Just after the new moon of late July, Vivian took a quick look at the approaching host, camped south of Delyan. It was big, of course, not that she could count it. She took a good look at Salvar--who appeared identical to the man who had tried to lure Vivian into the trajectory of an arrow eleven years before. Around him were officers from across the Empire: Farlainer, Avigonian, Rahavonian, Amarian, Orzalian, Vendrezi, Allorian, Shadewinder. The Duke was unemotional and intense, surrounded by maps and plans and secretaries. In a smaller tent next to Salvar's, Count Chalris of Inzil conferred with his own circle of advisors.
The Avars kept a completely separate headquarters, and the Khan's maps and plans were all inside his head. Fat and greasy, Temkuz Khan yet had a sparkle in his eye that warned of a hidden brilliance. Appetite alone had not made him ruler of large swaths of Clane, Inzil and Shadewind. The men that surrounded him were not aides nor fellow nobles nor even hangers-on: they were loyal warriors of his kindred, and if their most dangerous job involved throwing themselves in front of arrows and daggers, their most interesting one was bringing to the Khan whatever harlots were to be found within ten miles of the camp. On this particular night, the harlot was a Farlainer, who exhibited great professionalism. Temkuz Khan was a connoisseur. Vivian left them to their pleasure and business.
"It certainly is a big army," said Vivian to the only people with whom she could share this intelligence: Ellean, Jen, Willd, Martin, Miranda, Susan and Anne. They were gathered the next evening with ale and pumpkin bread.
"Do they have any weaknesses?" asked Martin.
"I'll keep looking."
The sixth of August was the night of the full moon, and Vivian, Susan and Anne sat in the little library with the High Priestess and the cup and the candles and the book. This time, the book was the thin tome in the glyphs of Count Mattas the Old. Vivian made each of her daughters drink of the cup, and then drank the large remainder herself. In moments, hand in hand, they were falling through the wisps of powerless evil. They alighted inside the arch and looked around. There was no one about.
The three, all grown women, advanced into the garden. They came to the place where the hedge opened out into the wide region before the mansion under its twilight sky. There He was, or his image, standing alone in the avenue far off, watching them. Vivian's apprehension rose for a moment, but her eldest daughter felt no fear at all. Murderer! she cried in thought toward him. Stop hurting my mother! Get out of our sight! In spite of their fears, Anne and then Vivian joined in heckling the Emperor, who retreated up the avenue. Susan wanted to hound him, but Vivian put her hand on her daughter's shoulder. They turned around and saw the Lady of the Fountain nearby watching them with her customary worried smile. They followed her back to her realm and found the little girl with the brown ponytails sitting on the edge of the fountain's pool. They looked into it and saw only thick fog reflected.
The Lady had much to teach Vivian and Susan and Anne. There were many things yet for the girls to learn as Vivian had, by blunt experience, but long did the Lady speak to them while Vivian strolled along the fountain in the company of the little girl. Then the Lady and the girl escorted Vivian and her daughters to the arch, and there was no sign of the Emperor as they fell back into the world and came awake in the little library in the castle of Nikolad in the empty highlands along the mountain fringe of Clane.
"Mom," asked Anne, "he can't take us, can he?"
"No, honeybunch, I suppose he can't," said Vivian, noticing that her headache was somewhat relieved. "I think he knows he can't, not on our turf."
"And not when all three of us are together," said Susan.
"You're right, little girl. That's why he sends his army up here and doesn't come himself."
"So what are we going to do?"
"Well, we have to take the advantage he gives us--that he's not here with them. It's something, anyway."
"Mommy," said Anne, "who's that girl? The one by the fountain?"
"I don't know, honey. I haven't thought about it for a long time. Long ago I thought she was to be my first daughter. But here's Suzy, and here's Annie, and neither one of you is her." She got up and began to put away her paraphernalia.
"Maybe you're going to have another little girl?" Annie suggested.
"No, that's certainly not it," said Vivian. "Two of you is plenty."
The headache was back the next day. Meanwhile the Emperor's army moved forward, albeit at a glacial pace, and Vivian pondered her books, and the errand-riders came and went. She walked the walls of Nikolad, she scanned the night skies, she tried to pierce the curtain of the mountains with her Eye. The lords of Clane made ready to muster once again at Tarnhold--the date was set for the twentieth of August, as no reason for haste had been suggested.
One evening, a day or two after the full moon, after a hot afternoon, Vivian was walking across the courtyard of the castle of Nikolad, and noticed Martin of Auzel sitting facing Fergus Clark on the stone bench in front of Thane Horst's statue. She stepped quietly up behind them to spy on their conversation.
"He'll come out," said Martin. "He'll have to."
"I know it," said Fergus. "Or she'll go get him."
"Oh, I see," said Vivian. "It's that game."
"Yes, ma'am," said Fergus, turning. "Martin's teaching it to me, by the simple expedient of beating the piss out of me repeatedly. But next game, next game!"
"We'll see," said Martin. "So, is he coming out?"
"It looks like Fergus is doing pretty well," said Vivian. "He has lots of peasants, his two castles, his priests and knights, and his Emperor is well-defended."
Martin smiled slyly. "Yes, my lady, it sure looks like he's doing well. Your move, old man."
Fergus muttered, his hand hovering over the board. "No, can't move him," he said. "Can't do anything there. Can't do that." He grinned at Martin. "Can I pass my turn?"
"Nope. Gotta do something."
Fergus stared glumly at the board. Now Vivian noticed that Martin's Countess and one castle were lined up on the open middle of the board. Fergus's Emperor seemed more trapped than defended by the host that surrounded him. "Don't want to come out," said the old man, "but if I stay, she comes and gets me. Dang." He scanned the board again and cursed under his breath. "There has to be something I can do."
"Take your time," Martin replied. He smiled at Vivian. "This could take a while. His Emperor can't stay back there, and he doesn't dare come out and fight." Fergus grunted and moved a priest out to threaten the Lady. Martin sighed and slew the priest with a peasant. Fergus grunted again. Martin grinned and said, "I'll just kill whatever you pull out, till your Emperor makes a run for it."
"Dang," said Fergus.
"Well, good luck, gentlemen," said Vivian. "I'll make sure they send you food and beer out here." She turned and walked back toward the hall. Well, she thought, you don't have to hit me over the head with it, as her long-awaited long-range strategy floated into being.
Two sunny weeks later Vivian was in Tarnhold, in the hall of the ageless Thane Hugo. The entire Council was there, along with the four Thanes currently saluting the Countess: Hugo of Tarnver, Sigrith of Siret, Rodrik of Selac and Agnes of Westdubbik. They could barely contain their eagerness to count troops, but first they all had to wait through the invocation and the obligatory summary from the Minister of State.
"The Emperor," said Sir Rogier, "is at Delyan. I should say, his army is; He Himself is supposed to be still in Avigon, though twenty-six thousand of his associates have come north into what we still think of as Clanish Intror."
"Twenty-six thousand!" replied Thane Agnes. "You're joking! We thought it was twenty, and that was bad enough."
"I wish I was, though it wouldn't be a very amusing jest. No, this number comes from our trusted secret friends in Intror, of which we still have many, Thane Karlan's counterintelligence efforts notwithstanding, and from our expert band of scouts, who have gained all too much savvy in the numbering of superior foes."
"Foes of superior numbers," the Countess quibbled. "Not superior foes."
"I agree, my lady," said Sir Rogier, "but the fact remains, twenty-six thousand of the enemy are coming for a visit. The breakdown is ten thousand militia, nine thousand Avar cavalry and seven thousand Imperial Knights. He has no worthwhile infantry, of course, but counting up sixteen thousand horse, I think Duke Salvar and the Khan won't be sending off wheedling requests for more troops."
"We don't have any choice but fight," said Francis Weaver, who was as handsome as ever with a few grey hairs and wrinkles. Angeline sat beside him, holding his hand. "No sense whining. I'd like to add that we've faced worse odds, but we haven't."
"Torak well outnumbered us," said Sigrith. "We found cracks in his army. Maybe we can do the same to this one. That militia, for one thing: I think they'll run at their first sight of my Rukh warriors. And we're a match for the Avars, I reckon. You know, Francis, you fought both."
"Oh, I'd rather fight Avars than Rukh, but nine thousand of them, well, and the knights--"
"All right, all right," said the Countess. "They outnumber us. And my head still hurts too, but we all must endure. As you say, Marshal Weaver, we have no choice but fight. My thanes, what aid do you give your Countess in time of need?"
"Five hundred cataphracts," said Thane Hugo, "four hundred mountaineers, and we expect we can find another two hundred pikes from the Valley, considering it's a special occasion."
"Seventeen hundreds from Siret," said Sigrith, "of which two hundred are Sir Toby's cavaliers. They'll ride with the cataphracts. The rest are my Rukh axes and Hvanar swords. Kersten leads them. You know how she is about glory."
"Westdubbik," said Agnes, "sends a thousand swords and bows, and two hundred more cavalry to Sir Francis's cataphracts. We hold back only a hundred militia in Dubkarin and a hundred in Nikolad for defense."
"Of course," said the Countess, who knew the militia Agnes spoke of, and didn't expect to miss them much. "Selac?"
"Um, Selac," said Thane Rodrik, in his mid-twenties but still looking like a teenager, "sends a thousand infantry under Egon and Frak his son, and my hundred knights, led by me."
"Very good, Selac," said Vivian. "Sir Francis?"
"We have four hundred more swords and bows, and five hundred cataphracts and horsebows. And no reserves."
"Well," said Mirabel de Nikolad, "we are squeezing out what must be the largest army ever assembled by a Count of Clane. If my addition is correct, it's fifteen hundred cavalry and forty-six hundred infantry."
"It's a pity we're facing--" Sir Rogier began.
"I know," said Vivian. "I know. They fought with fifty thousand against a hundred thousand at Vodaru. And oh, by the way, the smaller force won. I tell you, my lords and ladies, I could find a use for a few more troops of my own, but I truly wish that the Emperor had sent more, so that we could take them all at once. As it is, this is the first blow of several that will fall on us, and we will endure it, because we have no choice. And we will defeat the next army, and the next, and somewhere down the line, He will have to come to Clane, and then we'll have him."
They all looked at her as if she had suggested they could jump off the tower over the gorge and fly away. Then Sir Rogier nodded and said, "My lady, I speak for all here when I say that we doubt you not at all, and that again to you we will trust our lives."
"Hear, hear," came in a variety of tones and accents.
"Thank you," said the Countess. "I think never has a Count of Clane had Council and Thanes so worthy, and I only hope your trust in me proves not foolish. Although it's possible that we've all finally lost our minds."
"Crazy or not," said Sigrith, "one thing's sure. If we can beat four to one odds, any who had doubts will lay them aside forever."
Even at eighty-five Thane Hugo could not stay out of the kitchen during a visit from the Countess. After another lovely dinner, Vivian sat and sipped red wine and talked of old times with him and Sir Rogier, and before midnight she left them recalling their service to Clane in the days of Count Theodred and the "Last" Emperor. She went to her room and kissed Willd, and he smiled in his sleep; then she went to the room nearby where Susan and Anne shared a bed. Suzy was awake, leaning on an elbow looking at the door when Vivian opened it.
"Wake up, Annie," said Suzy. "Mom's here."
"What?" cried Anne, sitting bolt upright. "What is it? Oh, Mommy, I had the worst nightmare. I dreamt about the battle."
"I've had that dream," said Vivian, sitting on the bed. "So many bodies. Just remember: we can see to it, you girls and I, that those are not Clanish dead on the field of battle. Understand? Now come, we have some seeing to do."
A few minutes later the three were sitting on the floor of the little tower room that Thane Hugo had left for Vivian's use. A cup of wine was set between the candles, the right one lit, the book laid open. It was Count Lenward's major work, which, as Vivian had only just figured out, was on the topic of "seeing". A card was chosen and placed upon the book: it showed a bright star in the night sky shining down upon a woman who poured forth the water of inspiration upon the earth. Susan sat on Vivian's left side, and Anne on her right, facing each other across the candles, tome and card. Vivian nodded to her daughters, and all three concentrated on the unlit candle. Vivian held back and felt the great untutored force of Susan's mind surge out, and then the answering, slightly gentler power of Anne meeting it, and she felt their eyes lock together as their forces became one. Vivian had to reach in to damp the outpouring of energy for fear that the candle would incinerate all at once and leave only a pool of charred wax. Instead, it leapt to life and settled into a shapely flame.
A great muscular Eye floated out into the night. Vivian had seen children walking big dogs, and she felt like she was doing the same thing, leading these two great eager wills toward her own goal. She wondered, not for the first or the last time, how powerful they would be when full-grown. Down to Angren she took them, and as they stretched to examine Bald Mountain and the rivers joining and the dungeons of Vonnis and the road to Bazir, she turned them southward into Intror. There were about fifteen miles of territory here along the Lavan that looked unchanged from the day Count Edmund died, and then she came to Passaya and Delyan. Between the two towns lay the vast Imperial camp under its white pennants.
For a few minutes Vivian pondered the layout as her daughters snooped independently about the regiments, and presently she saw the gold-embroidered tent of the Khan of the Avars. She dropped toward it as her girls came back to her, and through the tent flap they flew. There he was, the Khan, not in any sense a mysterious figure: fat and draped with fine cloth and gold and jewels. Five younger men stood about him, his sons perhaps, arguing with each other and then taking his orders in the Avar tongue. They left, and a guard came in, escorting a young Clanish beauty, a daughter of Intror dressed in the veils of a nomad dancer. Then the guard left, and so did Vivian's eye, for the girl did not seem unwilling, and Annie and Suzy were curious.
They were distracted from this line of inquiry as soon as their attention returned to the outside. There before them in the empty plaza before the Khan's tent, shimmering as if not really there, was a figure in white.
Vivian tensed for a struggle, but her daughters cursed the figure. He reached out a hand as if to harm the Eye before him, but suddenly the Grey Lady herself stood there, Vivian mixed with Susan and Anne, and their wrath blazed forth hot as a sword pulled from the forge. The figure drew back his hand and grimaced. This is our land! they shouted. And Susan added something like, Leave my mother alone! And then--he did. The figure fell back, just as it had before Vivian's wounded animal wrath in Angren a dozen years before, into a shadow vanishing.
Left alone, the Eye took its time looking over the army. There were certainly a lot of men down there, and the Khan was hardly the only one entertaining a woman of the province: there were authentic Avar vixens, wenches from Calway and Marchwind and Avigon, and a few eager-looking blondes of Rukh extraction. Mother, came Suzy's voice, isn't that Kersten? Well, this is interesting, thought Vivian; indeed, if it was not Sigrith's second-in-command, with four kinswomen, flirting with a dozen Avar warriors before a garrison tent, it was someone who looked exactly like her. Vivian had seen a lot of Kersten, and she was seeing a lot now, for these Rukh were wearing earrings and necklaces and jeweled belts and not much else. The Avars and the Rukh seemed on very good terms indeed as the women led the men into the tent.
I never quite trusted her, thought Vivian as the Eye swept down and almost ran into the last of the squad of Avars. She held up for a moment just outside, not sure she wanted her daughters to look at what might be happening inside in a few minutes, but they pulled her in. It seemed that the orgy was already starting. There were the sudden gestures of passion, the cries of awe. Then blood, and then more blood, as the eagerest of the Avar men went down with their throats slashed. Their sabers came out in the hands of the Rukh, who set to work slaughtering the rest of their suitors in a businesslike manner. The last man escaped the tent but fell in the plaza with two daggers in his back. Then Kersten and her friends simply cut their way out through the canvas at the back of the tent. They disappeared into the night before the alarm sounded against them.
Vivian and her daughters watched the camp roil up like an anthill trodden on. A little way away, in the camp of the Imperial knights, the alarm did not reach. Vivian wondered if Kersten would be playing her little game there soon, but in the vastness of the camp she had scant hope of noticing. What difference had it made? A dozen men were dead, but out of twenty-six thousand. The Eye tired, and rose up into the starry sky. They hurried back to Tarnhold, flew in a window and down the hall to the little room. Ellean walked right by them, dressed for a post-midnight liaison, which drew the interest of the girls, but Vivian led them back to their bodies. They came awake around the candles and the book and the wine and the card.
"That was great!" said Suzy. "Did you see how--"
"Yeah," said Annie. "That was Kersten, wasn't it? She's something!"
"Is that what Ellean's going to do?" asked Suzy.
"I don't think so," said Vivian. "Come on, back to bed." But the girls whined, and the three of them wound up sitting around on Vivian's bed, while Willd slept soundly on the other side. They were up until a couple of hours before dawn, having milk and cake--and playing checks, as they called the game that the Rukh had brought over the mountains.
"It's very simple," Vivian explained to her military geniuses a few days later. She was playing another game of checks with her minister of state, and as she picked up her favorite piece to move it, she gestured around the board. "If the Emperor moves his Lady up, we take her with our Lady, or Countess if you prefer. If he moves his castle or his knight, then we defend ourselves and drive him back, so he'll have to bring in his Lady."
"Do you know what she's talking about?" asked Sir Rogier.
"I do," said Sigrith, "though he has seven pawns to our three. We will have to play again, Countess, and see if you can beat me from that position."
"I'll be happy the first time I beat you, Sigrith, from any position," Vivian replied. "But I doubt He has ever played this game. Fortunately for us, it's not Sigrith or Egon we're up against. So," she went on, fixing an eye on Francis and Kersten, "how are the raids coming?"
Kersten grinned. "We have made a nuisance of ourselves, Countess. We lost the warrior Ingrith Ingsdaughter last night, but I make our tally for the past week at five dozen."
"For our part," said Weaver, "two companies of the Countess's Cataphracts have been taking supply trains in the woods of northern Intror. This wine attests to our success, but neither our supply raids nor Kersten's infiltrations have noticeably impaired their ability to make war on us. And they burned a village in Intror near where the last raid occurred, on the correct assumption that we had aid from people there."
"So," said Sir Rogier, hopelessly studying the board, "now we have to worry about being responsible for the burning of our own villages."
"No we don't," said Vivian. "A, those villagers helped us knowing that they could be punished for it. B, let's try to keep track of where the responsibility for things lies. We're responsible for raiding a supply train. Salvar's responsible for burning that village, as well as others that gave him no reason. Remember Fugad, in our first winter at Nikolad?"
Sir Rogier raised a hand in surrender. "You're right, you're right, and I do remember Fugad. He massacred that village just to provoke us."
"One of our many grievances," said Vivian. "What else do we have going for us?"
"We might as well keep up the raids," said Weaver. "And we have a few other weapons. What about your people, Lord Peter? Valerie?"
"The Tarnver mountain companies," said Lord Peter, Hugo's grandson, "have harried their advance from the wild hills north of Angren."
"Our first two companies," said Valerie de Nikolad, "have faced their vanguard several times, but we have been careful to follow orders as far as staying behind defensible positions. Two hundred of them tried to force crossing of a stream south of Angren, while chasing us, I think it was three days ago, and they were seen off with losses. But they are also being held back by orders."
"We're cautious because we have few lives to spend," said Vivian, "and they're cautious because He wants no mistakes this time. But we have more reason for caution than he does, so eventually he'll get careless." She pondered the board for a second, then slashed across it with her Priest, backed by Lady and Castle. "We shall have to think of something clever."
"But meanwhile," said Sigrith, "let's be content to play a careful game, grabbing his pawns until he chances to leave us an opening."
"Yes, good," said Vivian as Sir Rogier tentatively shuffled a Knight to the middle of the board to take her Priest, backed up by a pawn. "Very good." She moved her Lady across the board to Sir Rogier's last rank. Alarmed, his Chieftain fled, and the Lady began casually chewing up his undeveloped back pieces.
"I give up," said Sir Rogier after three more shuffling moves. "I hate this game." He began to set his pieces back up in their starting positions. "Another one?"
The third of September was the night of the full moon, and again Vivian and her daughters went to the Other Side to receive instruction from the Lady of the Fountain. Again she instructed them wordlessly for a while, and then Vivian walked hand-in-hand with the little pony-tailed girl, while the Lady conversed with Annie and Suzy. There was not an Imperial simulacrum to be seen anywhere in the garden.
The Lady came over and joined Vivian as she sat on the stone bordering the fountain's pool. She gazed at Vivian with a slight smile and then looked over the pool's surface, and Vivian followed her eyes. A few stars peered from the water as out of a clear twilit sky. Then of a sudden a black pall crossed the watery heavens. Lightnings ran from cloud to cloud. Then rains came. Then snow and fog. Vivian looked up and found that the sky above her had remained clear and slate-blue, with here and there an isolated star.
She looked back into the Lady's eyes, the same blue as the evening sky. The Lady smiled. Vivian still didn't get it, but she smiled back anyway.
By the first week of September, the Imperial Army was encamped around Angren, and of the original twenty-six thousand there remained approximately twenty-six thousand, in addition to the five thousand Farlainers who formed the garrison of occupied Clane. The weather was gorgeous, hardly a cloud in the sky. Meanwhile the Countess's army materialized from south and west and north and began their patrolling duties. On the afternoon of 8 September a force of five hundred Avars bumped into four hundred infantry of the Westdubbik contingent in swampy woods ten miles southeast of Tarnhold along the Rocky River. There was a sharp affray before the Westdubbikans fell back to dry ground and there held off the Avars. Evening gave both sides the chance to slip away to lick their wounds, of which there were many. "We lost seventy-five," Weaver told his Countess that night, "and we count their losses at just over a hundred."
"We have to be more careful," she replied. "They can bleed us dry with such trading, these skirmishes where we lose almost as many as they do. What were those soldiers doing, anyway?"
"Foraging, my lady."
She sighed and rubbed her head. "Look," she said at last, "we can open the winter supplies, we don't have to forage. If they defeat us this time, we won't need the stores, and if we win, we'll have all the time we want to forage. We might just get their supplies."
"You're sure it's all right, my lady?"
She sighed again and massaged her temples. "Yes, I'm sure. I'm sure it's better than fighting larger foes in the open."
Another week passed, and still the Imperial Army was preparing its great stroke. The Countess was known to be at Tarnhold, and the stroke would be directed there, against its massive earth-and-stone walls built into the terraces of the steep town, against its supply line into the Tarn River valley, protected by small stone towers and steep pine woods, and against the lands south of the Rocky River to which landowners had only returned in the past five years. These included Sir Rogier and the other residents of Clatu, which was sacked in a perfunctory manner on 14 September. A third of the knights took several days off to menace Dubkarin, and burn a village on its northern side, but they were too far afield to do much harm. Meanwhile Vivian's cautious strategy saw several stunning successes--twice Kersten managed to hijack fully laden supply carts from the Lavan River Road near Passaya and drag them behind quarter horses up a woodland track over the hills to Dubkarin. There were also failures, of nerve or planning. One of these cost the lives of two dozen Clanish soldiers, surprised by a hundred Avars as they waited to pounce upon another supply shipment.
Meanwhile the weather remained fiercely clear. Farmers in the high country were happily harvesting, but the soldiers looked out from the walls and worried. The foe moved up, burning houses as he came. The camp was within two miles of Tarnhold's Vonnis Gate on the seventeenth of September. That evening Vivian and her daughters looked out on a horizon filled with men and supplies and equipment and horses. Particularly eye-catching was an array of battering rams and catapults and cartloads of projectiles. Just after dusk the operators of the catapults tried them out, hurling objects at the walls and sometimes into the town--where the projectiles burst into flame. The hail of explosives was brief, a mere trial, and no real damage was done to the town, but Vivian and her captains could feel the precious small supply of morale leaking away from the defenders.
"It's terrible dry, my lady," said a soldier from Dubkarin standing next to his Countess on the wall. "One spark to a patch of trees and we got another enemy."
"How true," the Countess replied. "How very true." She smiled at him, then turned and crossed the street to the keep entrance. She found her daughters playing checks, waited for Suzy to polish off Annie and then took them back to the little room. It was the night of the new moon.
They went quickly into trance and Vivian immediately pulled their eye southward toward the sea. Up into the sky she carried them until they were miles above Avigon the Dirty. They could see a circle of storm rotating slowly around the city, rotating about an axis running upwards from the dome of the Imperial Palace. The cyclone's fringes lay across the southern half of Shadewind and Farlain, and over the Gulf of Almery, but outside its influence the skies were cloudless all the way to the zenith of the northern range.
Vivian turned the Eye and flew headlong back to Tarnhold, so fast that all three of them felt dizzy for a minute after they returned to their bodies. "Why'd you do that?" asked Suzy.
"The Emperor is messing with our weather," said Vivian. "Obviously, as anyone should have guessed months ago. But we can't do anything about it now, if I'm not mistaken, not until the moon starts to grow back again."
"We can't?"
"No, I don't think so. I'm such a fool. Why didn't I think to try it last month? Such a fool! That's what she was trying to tell me. I thought it was all some sort of complicated symbolism, but she was just saying that we could use a really good gully-washer. No, I guess we have to wait another fortnight, till the full moon."
"Well, can't we at least have a look at their camp?" asked Suzy.
"Yeah," said Annie, "let's go look at their camp."
"You're right, of course, we should. But no dragging the Eye off to peek into tents, understand? We're just having a look at their siege preparations."
And so they did--almost. The girls hung about restlessly while Vivian scanned the siege engines and the horse pens and the carts of arrows and spears and projectiles. The Eye wandered through camp, and it was a relaxed army they saw, or really three armies: the forward camp was occupied by the knights and the best of the infantry, while the Avars backed them up and the militia in their thousands stayed back near Angren. They found themselves passing the Khan's tent, and Vivian was unable to hold back her daughters when they saw a teenage girl being dragged into it by two burly soldiers.
The Eye came in behind them just as they were throwing the girl down onto the Khan's wide bed. She was dressed and painted like a Calway harlot, but Vivian guessed she was fourteen or fifteen. The Khan said a word to the guards, and they picked her up. She stood listlessly among the pillows as the Khan reached out ring-laden hands to pull her robe open. He gestured to the guards and they removed the robe, leaving the girl wearing only a few garish necklaces and bracelets. She was underfed and small, with thin arms and legs, but she stood defiantly as he ogled her. The guards took a last look and returned to their post outside the entrance.
In her daughters disgust vied with fascination, but Vivian was simply disgusted. She felt out from her Eye, and from her mind sitting in Tarnhold a few miles away, and rummaged across the top of the Khan's brain. There was quicksand there, and pitfalls and partitions, but there was also lust and indolence--and there was the figure of the Emperor, standing stock still in the front of the Avar chieftain's consciousness. It might have been a statue--but for glittering eyes. Vivian's hair stood on end, back in Tarnhold. Those eyes were watching what passed in the Khan's mind: and they were aware of her. Then all at once she was engaged in battle. For a minute their minds locked together like the horns of two great herbivores in time of rut. She was strong, with her daughters behind her, and here in her own land, but he was still stronger, even if he was further away. She could not pull back, nor could he; like horned animals, neither beast could retreat without letting the other gore it a few times. So they wrestled, causing each other little harm, while the Khan stood dazed by the inexplicable struggle inside his head.
Suzy noticed this, and noticed that his ornamentation included several carven blades under his belt. The Eye lit upon one gorgeous dagger a foot or more in length, its shining blade written in flowing letters, its handle carven into the shapes of fierce animals and set with many gems. Go on, take it, Susan was saying, almost aloud.
Who's she talking to? wondered Vivian and her foe.
Take the knife! Susan repeated. Take... the... knife! From his belt! Take it, will you? Go on, take the knife! Anne's voice joined her sister's. Take it take it take it take it take it! Vivian heard all this while still wrestling with her Enemy, but she had no energy left over to think about it.
The naked girl looked at the Khan, looked at the dagger, looked around. The Khan was beginning to shake off his reverie. The girl stepped up to him. He smiled at her. She put her hand on the carven handle. He still smiled.
Go on, came Susan's voice. In the neck. Suzy had listened closely to Ellean's tales of battle. The girl pulled the knife out, held it up beside her head. In the neck in the neck in the neck!! She looked at its gleaming blade; so did the Khan. He still smiled. Then the writing on the blade blurred as it shot forward. Its point drove two inches into his neck. She couldn't make it go farther, so the girl started carving back and forth as gouts of blood poured out onto the pillows and onto her. The Khan's mouth was working, but no sound could come out. Then finally he fell back, wrenching the knife from her grasp. He was dead when he hit the floor with a clatter.
There was a commotion outside. Run! shouted Suzy and Annie. The other side of the tent! Run run run! The girl looked as though she had just woken up. She spent no time pondering the situation, however. She grabbed up her robe and in a moment she was crawling under the tent cloth and out into an alley on the other side. Countess and Emperor leapt from the Khan's mind like pirates fighting on the prow of a burning ship, and Vivian's spirit fled, chased only by her daughters' spirits, across the camp and the no-man's-land and into the walled city.
Then they were back in their own bodies. She turned on her elder daughter as soon as Susan's eyes were open. "What exactly did you do back there?" she asked.
"He had a knife on his belt, and I suggested that she, um, stab him with it."
"And she did," said Annie eagerly.
"I can't believe you did that," said Vivian. "I know it seemed like a good idea, but--"
"But what, Mommy?" Annie challenged her.
"Mom, it felt really weird," said Suzy. "Dirty. All that blood everywhere. I didn't know there was so much blood in someone."
"Yeah," said Annie. "It was amazing!"
"That's not what I meant," Suzy shot back. "You'll understand when you're older."
"And you," said Vivian, "are starting to understand what I didn't learn until I was three times your age. But come. It's very late."
"But Mom," said Annie, "we can't go right to sleep after that. We'll have nightmares. We need to have some warm milk. How about some cake too?"
"You want cake after that?"
"Yeah!" said Annie in her why-not tone. "What's going to happen to that girl?"
"She's probably swimming the Rocky River by now." She shook her head, then looked Suzy in the eye, then Annie. But what could she say? "All right, let's go get some milk and cake, and if it's all the same to you I'll have a glass of that Farlain wine."
Temkuz Khan was dead. Official news of this event did not travel the ten miles from the Khan's tent to the town until two days later, when a thirteen-year-old girl named Eliza was brought in, dirty and hungry and cold, by a squad of the Countess's Cataphracts. Vivian knew her as soon as she got cleaned up. There was skepticism about her story, that she had been taken by Avar foragers, starved for a couple of days to reduce her resistance and then brought to the Khan; that, acting on a whim, she had seized the ceremonial dagger from his belt and stabbed him in the neck with it. Vivian believed her, of course, and didn't want to know any more about her memories of the killing. Susan immediately befriended her. Eliza said that her immediate family, living on a farm along the Rocky River, had been massacred during the Avar raid that resulted in her capture. Ironically, the family were already refugees from Maklos.
No single death, besides the Emperor's, could have been as much of a blow to the invading army, at least in the short term. The Avar contingent was not only in mourning but, all of a sudden, gripped by a leadership struggle. Temkuz Khan had ruled the Avars since before Vivian was Countess, had led them over the Fire Pass and into Bazir and Maklos and Shadewind and western Inzil, and had carved out a realm larger than any of the Sovereign States. It had always been a one-man business, though he had dozens of sons (and a quantity of daughters that no one had bothered to count). He left no clear successor, and his men solemnly pulled back from the fight against the Countess to prepare for the fight amongst themselves.
Still, the Duke's army, at seventeen thousand, seemed more than enough. For the next week or so they rearranged, while Duke Salvar sent emissaries to talk the Avars into continuing the fight. In the meantime, the hail of fireballs and heavy stones continued, and by the end of September the knights had finished cutting off Tarnhold from Westdubbik to the south and Selac to the east. The weather continued favorable to the besiegers. They burned any structure they could find, they burned some of the woods on the lower slopes of the mountains, and they started catapulting into Tarnhold the body parts of Clanish fallen, civilian and soldier alike. The Clanish army stood listlessly at their posts and the Clanish captains and commanders weren't much better. No one said, "We have to do something"-- except for the Countess saying it to herself.
Still, the Khan's demise had bought her the fortnight between new moon and full.
On the last day of September, Vivian and her daughters began a new ritual in their closet in Tarnhold. Miranda had come down from Nikolad to join them. Count Mattas's book was open before them, and around it were a variety of powders and herbs in little bowls. Vivian went into trance, joined by her daughters, while Miranda, holding a handwritten list of steps and ingredients, sprinkled a bit of this in the candles and a bit of that in the wine and a pinch of the other blown out into the still air.
The Emperor sat upon his throne under the great dome. About his white brow a great spiral of storm rotated, pulling in the clouds and winds from all around. For months it had been thus, and by now the storm was ornate and convoluted and exceptionally stable. Beyond its fringes the weather was mild and clear and bone-dry.
Vivian began to chant the words she saw inside her eyelids. The mountain had an eye in it, and the moon was half dark, and the wheel flew above the river. Symbol after symbol passed before her eyes, and her steady voice read them out one after another, and the brewer kept track of her cues and sprinkled this and burned that, and slowly, far off, the Emperor became aware of them.
The air in the little room grew thin and hard. Miranda watched as Vivian's face whitened, as her hands found her daughters' hands and gripped tightly. The brewer tried to keep up, and guess what the Countess wanted as she pointed to a dish or whispered a word or two.
Outside, the temperature began to rise, as the earth turned through black night. The wind sprang to life. Air full of moisture from the Gulf of Almery began to reach up across Shadewind's hills. The Emperor easily kept the balance, pulling the new storm into the old one, which wobbled just slightly in its slow rotation. The fish in the house. The rock bleeding. The fire in the chair. A larger mass of warmth and rain rose from the sea and started its journey north and east over Rahavon and Amari. It too was easily pulled into the nexus around Avigon, but the load was getting heavy and storms were breaking out along the fringe of the wheel, over Farlain and Shadewind. The earth turned through the grey hours before dawn. The fish on fire. The wheel above the mountain. The rock with wings. With a great effort, the Clanish nexus began to pull another mass of air from the Gulf. Again they were resisted, but the heat of their exertions again pushed the temperature up. The Imperial nexus put forth its strength against its enemy, drawing off most of the energy into itself, as Avigon and the Grand Duchy were pounded with rain and hail before sunrise.
Vivian's voice rose. The eye in the sun! The fish flying! A great black bar of cloud, a mother among storms, rolled northward across Amari toward Mount Farag. The temperature rose again as the air gathered the energy to support the gale. Now the Emperor had to reach out and block this new assault, raising the pressure and holding down the temperature over Clane. Out of the clear sky lightnings flashed, white bolts striking the towers of Tarnhold and landing among the wide horse pens of the camp. The storm stalled above northern Amari and Farlain, and then as the daughters of the Countess threw their untaught strength into the push, it ground northward a few more miles. The moon bleeding! The eye in the fire! The sun inside the house! Reinforcing storms trooped up, using the circulation of the Imperial nexus to push them on behind their mother storm. With a great effort, their enemy stopped them again, and the temperatures fell back with the dawn. The pressure grew higher and higher, and the wind whipped up, as the Emperor tried to blow back the advancing front. It stalled again, and slid back. He was too strong. Even with all their shoulders against it, the wheel was too heavy and the hill too steep.
Now his energy threatened to push over into the room itself. Vivian could feel a great wave of excess force pressing against the membrane of her mind, as if it could spill through her and into Tarnhold. She fought back against the pressure. She knew it was too much. Miranda's ears popped. The Countess swiftly pulled her daughters loose from the struggle, yanked their hands back from the book and broke the bond. Opening her eyes, she shouted at Miranda, "Quick! The strafewort! Into the left flame!" Just as the lefthand candle flickered toward death, Miranda tossed a pinch of powdered leaf on it, and it went out with a burst of fragrant smoke. They leapt up and went to the window.
Nothing was happening. They turned in disgust and went out, and found their way up to the roof of Tarnhold's highest tower. There was a small breeze, but the sky was still clear and the air cool. "Well," said Miranda, "it was worth a try."
"Oh, we almost had him," said Vivian. "And yet--"
"Mom, it's really cold," said Annie.
"Wow, look at the fog rising," said Susan. Indeed, as the surface wind died and the temperature plummeted, tendrils of fog crept up from the lowlands. They looked up and saw that the upper airs were most definitely in motion: clouds were slipping down off the great ranges of northern Tarnver. They stood shivering as they watched the blue sky covered over with clouds, not from the Gulf in the south, but from the tall northern mountains. A big flake fell before their eyes and landed on the parapet.
"Neat!" said Annie. "Look! It's snowing!" It didn't look like much at first, but in a few minutes they were standing on the roof in a blizzard. The two women and two girls stood there in summer dresses, huddled against the cold with snow in their hair--laughing.
"Of course," said Vivian. "I should have known. Not from the center of the Empire will help come, but from far off over the mountains. From the Clanish mountains. By accident!"
After ten minutes in the snow they turned away and climbed back down the ladder into the tower. The girls were nodding off walking by the time they got back to their room. Vivian tucked them in with kisses before going and kissing Willd in the room next door. He only smiled in sleep. Then Vivian and Miranda went down to the Thane's hall and called for tea.
The snow fell for an hour, and accumulated three inches, the heaviest snowfall in memory for Tarnhold on the first of October, but the temperatures stayed above freezing. By the time full dawn had come, the Rocky valley, from Acali down to Vonnis, was soaked with heavy fog. The two women sat and drank tea and spoke not a word as they watched the visibility at the window drop to feet and then inches.
Valerie de Nikolad and Sigfrinda Sigrithsdaughter came in and found Vivian and Miranda sitting there. Vivian fixed them with tired eyes and said, "Better get Weaver out of bed. There's work for the Cataphracts this morning."
The next evening the Countess sat at the same table, with her daughters and the Rain sisters and Miranda and Sir Rogier and Thane Hugo, as the scouts and the military commanders summed up the day's events. "The militia," said Willd, "are already back to Vonnis, and the knights are scattered about, some in Westdubbik, some toward Angren, some still running. The Avars have already removed across the Lavan."
"Thane Agnes's pikes and a few companies of cataphracts are hunting their scattered remnants in Westubbik," Weaver added.
"You did good work, Sir Francis," said Vivian. "What losses did you have?"
"Well, none against the militia, save for several riders who fell to stray arrows. And we captured much of the supply depot they were guarding. It seemed that the snow and fog put them at the edge of panic, and we had little trouble pushing them over, especially with Kersten and Sigfrinda and their axewomen."
"The knaves are mostly sensible, if nothing else," said Sigrith. "They fled at the sight of my girls. Then we could loot their camp untroubled, until the Farlain cavalry turned to fight."
"The knights were tough," said Valerie. "We lost at least three hundred against their attack. We held, for they charged us across swampy ground, but they didn't know the land and could hardly see in any case. But it was there that the fog hampered us, for we couldn't fell them with arrows at any decent range."
"Still," said Francis, "over a thousand knights fell there, and two hundred were taken prisoner. Then we went over to the attack, and then we won our great victory. In the pursuit, we probably slew another two thousand knights and at least as many militia."
"Aye," said Kersten, "for some would stand against us in spite of all, and yet they were no foes for us. A few of my sisters now march in the army of the heroes, but it is the blood of Avigon that will nourish the grasses between here and Angren next spring."
Vivian smiled primly. "So, our losses?"
"I make it," said Sigrith, "four hundred cataphracts and three hundred Rukh, just yesterday and today. We have perhaps lost a thousand in this campaign. The Emperor's army is lighter by seven thousand that fell, or maybe eight, and altogether five hundred knights captured and two thousand militia. The Avars are out of play for at least the winter. They have not the Rukh knack for choosing a new leader. We know beforehand who will be the strongest among those who remain. The Avars must meet and debate and then divide up and fight and then perhaps meet again and divide again, before one emerges strongest."
"Still," said Vivian, "those thousand men and women of Clane will never more walk the earth. It is a heavy price. And it doesn't count our villagers who lost their lives in the massacres. We cannot long sustain such losses, and our enemy surely can."
"Come, Countess, we have won this battle, against all our fears and beyond all hope. And was it not you who said it would be thus? Now would you not celebrate our victory?"
"I'm sorry," said Vivian. "Force of habit. It was a great victory. But it's not enough."
"At least," said Sir Rogier, "the big fellow should leave us alone for a while. How many times in a year can he lose half an army? Twice, I would think, no more."
"Aye," said Sigrith, "mayhap we'll be left to mend our wounds in peace for a year or two."
"But we don't want Him to recover too," said Vivian. "No, I have to keep the pressure on, and I can't think how I'll do it. And, if you all wondered, my headache's back to its old intensity. I'm starting to get used to it, that's the scary part." She looked out the window. The County was being pounded with rain. "And I wonder how long he's going to keep this up."
"Can you blame him?" said Miranda. "I'll bet it's like this all month."
"If not all winter," replied Vivian. "But I have failed again to show my appreciation. You have all fought valiantly in the face of what most of you assumed would be certain and utter defeat. Now I think you know that victory will be ours as long as we can get him to fight us."
"Countess," said Thane Sigrith, "I said before that if we won against such odds, any who doubted you would lay their doubts aside. I may have worried then, though I kept it to myself, but indeed I will never doubt you."
"I can't say I'm sure of the next victory," said Sir Rogier, "but we all know now that no army he brings will be too great for us to take on. We were all so sure of defeat--except for you, of course, my lady--and by the Sun's good light, we won. Your people will not blink at his next army, and the one after that. At least until He sees fit to come himself. Perhaps he never will."
"Oh, he will," said Vivian. "He will tire of playing with priests and knights and castles, while he skulks in the back row. Yes, he will come, all the way to Clane, and then we will have him." She gazed out the window and rubbed her temples. "I only hope I have the strength."
"To win the endgame," said Sigrith, "does not take strength, my Countess, only daring and cleverness and nerve."
Vivian looked into the Rukh Thane's blue eyes. "The enemy is clever," she said, "and determined and cold as the Nikolad winter. So we will have to win on daring alone, and on our heart for the battle." She looked around. "And you, my friends, and the Clanish people, have never given any reason to doubt your daring or your heart."