VII: March 770
"If you don't mind my asking," said the Countess Vivian, "exactly what is it you're up to?"
"Washing up, my lady," replied the scout William Willd.
"You didn't tell me what that thing was before," said Vivian, "and though I've no complaints at all, really, I must admit I'm curious. It's your job to give me information, you know, no matter what other duties I might find for you."
Willd turned to look at her and smiled, something she hadn't seen often. It made him look older, but softer. She wondered how old he actually was. He seemed to be searching for a reply, but he was distracted. Vivian, half-covered by the sheet, casually pushed it off and stretched herself languidly on the bed. She couldn't usually get much of an emotional feeling from him, but now she saw his passion, again, as if he were telling it to her, and also his affection. Poor Chalris had only made her feel superior, but Willd managed to make Vivian feel beautiful. For his part, the naked Willd was rather a specimen, lean and tough and tall but not too tall.
"My lady," he said at last, "if you really want to know, it's a goat's bladder, sewn up to fit tight and cured in a mineral solution. It's something my father taught me." He returned to washing the translucent leathery tube in a dish of soapy water.
"I see. A preventative measure. You needn't have worried, I kept careful count of my days."
"In any case," replied Willd, "it seemed a delicate matter, so--"
"So, does it work?"
"It seems so, my lady. Only they do wear out."
They looked each other up and down with innocent lust. "So," she said, "you've worn a few of those things out. I'm sure you've got stories to tell." He smiled, but continued washing. She got up, went over to the basin and began to wash herself off with a hand towel. They dressed, smiling shyly at one another.
"Willd."
"My lady."
"I hope we can keep this, um, new duty of yours to ourselves."
"Of course, my lady. It wouldn't do for your personal life to become a matter of gossip."
She smiled at him, walked behind him as if to pick something up off the dresser and instead, standing on tiptoe, she managed to whisper breathily in his ear. "You've heard about Countess Tereza? Well, I've been reading her diaries--and taking notes."
He turned around and bent to kiss her: a short kiss, then she took a long leisurely kiss. Then Vivian turned to straighten her dress in the long mirror. She looked, to herself, like an adult. Is this how I am going to look for the next twenty years? she wondered. It wasn't so bad.
Ellean Rain, almost sixteen, was beginning to dazzle the local boys. She was staying with the Countess, and now Vivian knew firsthand that Ellean's romantic life was much more interesting than her own. The girl would go out every other night in the company of an adoring fellow, a soldier or a student at the college of Vonnis, or some son of nobility; two of her favorites were other young errand-riders. She would return in the hour before midnight and tell Vivian breathless tales of stolen kisses and clumsy whispers. She fell in love and back out of it several times a week, and her boyfriends experienced ups and downs that would have tested daring gymnasts or rough-riders.
It was one of those nights, and Vivian, alone with her glass of wine, suddenly had the answer. She had counted up the days of the month and had also ascertained that William Willd was off duty. He seemed, well, the obvious choice somehow. She dismissed Jen for the night, not an unusual thing, and managed to run into Willd while getting herself dinner. He sat and talked with her while she ate, and afterward was easily lured upstairs for a glass of wine. Two glasses later, she found him quite receptive to her suggestions--he even had suggestions of his own. It was not Vivian's first time: it was her second, her first being an experiment, when she was Ellean's age, with a clumsy young over-eager guard of the Delyan garrison. She did not know what had happened to the boy, and hoped that she wouldn't recognize him if they met again. Willd, to say the least, was not clumsy, nor young, nor over-eager.
They stood, fully clothed, at the door of her room. "Did you leave anything?" she asked.
He glanced around. "No, are my buttons done right?"
"Oh, you remind me! Did you have that goat thingy when you met your lady Sigrith?"
"My lady, I assure you all she did was have a look."
"You're probably too skinny to be good Rugian breeding stock." She put her hand on the doorknob, then looked up at him. She reached up, put her hand behind his neck and pulled his head down to hers. She gave him a long wet kiss. His lips tasted good. She liked his smell. Then they both straightened their clothes one more time and went out into the hall.
"Well, my lady, that's my report."
"Thank you, Willd. I will call on you if I require your services again." They turned and went opposite ways: she toward the stairs down to the council chamber, he toward the back stairs that led down to his bed in a tiny room over the stable. She turned and called to him in a stage whisper, as they each stopped at the top of stairs: "I'm well pleased with them so far." He smiled again, and then at last they parted for the night.
When Vivian got downstairs, there was an errand-rider waiting for her, a sixteen-year-old boy from Selac.
The next morning Vivian sat with her ministers in a conference room in Angren. Sir Rogier was summing up the news. "The Rugians again," he said. "Three thousand more. They've camped around Radun, and the Selacan farmers are all fleeing to Acali and Simkin and the hills."
"Can we do it with infantry alone?" asked Vivian.
"If we can arrange to fight them a thousand at a time," replied Sir Everard.
"Then what do you suggest? Send the cavalry too?"
"My lady," said Margus of Passaya, "we long to help in sweeping the Rugians off the field. They only need to be taught a lesson, as the Avars were taught. Those have not attacked us since."
"Still they threaten, don't they?"
"It is only a feint, my lady, as before."
"Wait. What is? How many Avars are gathered opposite us?" asked Vivian. "Did Chalris finally lose?"
"We have received uncertain news," said Sir Everard, "that the Avars have treated with the Count of Inzil, and perhaps that terms have been arrived at."
"What?" the Countess shot back. "What sort of terms could there be with the Avars?" Sir Everard shrugged and shook his head. "Why wasn't I told?"
"It was only rumor. I and Margus have heard it, but you knew what our scouts could see, which was that the siege went on."
"With parleys, apparently. Would they accept some sort of payoff?"
"That's my guess," replied Sir Everard. "The Avars tired of siege and did not care for fighting in the foothills of the mountains. The Count could go on ruling what he had left, and would pay them in gold. I grant you, it's not the Avar way."
"It's definitely not the Rugian way," said Sir Rogier. "And that's what this meeting is supposed to discuss."
"I'd say that the Avar situation matters," replied Vivian, "since it may mean they'll have more troops to face us. And listen, my lords, I understand your thinking, but next time tell me, understand? How many do they have in Bazir now, Horse Marshal?"
"Between three and five thousand troops, and perhaps ten thousand folk."
"Then you and the cavalry will stay at Vonnis. That will be our feint."
"Now what I want to know is," asked Sir Rogier, "what about Siret? Did the Rugians bypass it this time?"
"I have news," said Thane Horst, after silently waiting all through the meeting for his cue. "Another three thousand are in the upper valley. Again the warrior woman is spoken of."
"What is it with these people?" said Vivian, rolling her eyes. "Three thousand here, three thousand there--where will it all end? We're nearly bankrupt, we can't raise more than about three thousand total, and even though we win battle after battle, they keep sending more." She looked around. The others were all looking exasperated and gloomy as well. So much for her little outburst. She went on, "I guess it's time to talk about numbers. What infantry can we have on the road to Radun, and when?"
"Today is 11 March," said Sir Everard. "Westdubbik, Tarnver, Selac and the Countess's Domain will all be able to contribute, and we have five hundred swords and bows that we raised last summer from here and there. They've been building their arm muscles with road and wall work all winter."
"So how many?" asked the Countess. Sir Everard pushed his pile of papers toward her, and she examined them. The career soldiers and noblemen waited in silence. "Sixteen hundred infantry and the two hundred Tarnver cataphracts, and four hundred more infantry in Selac," she said. "Well, it could be worse."
"And I get to go, don't I?" asked Sir Everard. "You know I'm valuable. You told me that after the battle at the Hogback. You can't take it back now."
"Oh, all right, you can go. Margus, Weaver, you have your orders; Thane Horst, we'd be thrilled to have you with us."
"You have me," said Thane Horst.
"And Sir Rogier, you too proved valuable yet again."
"It's a curse, my lady, but I bear it with good grace."
"You surely do. Purcell Colmack?" The interior minister grunted. "You will be in charge of council business in our absence. Check out the walls of Vonnis. Lord Margus may yet need them."
"My lady," said Colmack with a curt nod.
"My lady," said Margus, "if it please you, I would like to plan a strike against the Avars. My riders may do more good on the field, ambushing and harrying, than behind stone walls."
"It does not please me," said Vivian. "You will only fight an Avar force if they have fewer men than you do."
"But that hardly seems likely!"
"That's right." She looked around. "Anything else? Well, we've been through this before, although I keep thinking it's the last time for a while. We muster on, hmm, the eighteenth of March, at Tarnhold?"
"Yes, my lady," was heard about the room.
"Then I must pack. I wonder, should I wear the green dress, or stick to basic grey?"
"Either one," said Sir Rogier, "would have value as camouflage. Now on a different subject entirely--"
"What a relief," said the Countess.
"I'm not sure you'll agree. We have just today received letters from Farlain that concern the possibility of an alliance by marriage."
"Oh, great. Let me make it clear that I liked Frenerac just fine, but--"
"Well, this time, my lady, it's the older son. Salvar. My lady, he wrote us himself, although his father Duke Maladar also wrote us, and one might be excused for suspicion due to the fact that both letters are in the hand of the Duke's scribe."
"Are there any troops on offer this time?" asked Sir Everard.
"They do make specific mention of two thousand knights," Sir Rogier replied.
"Now look," said Vivian. They looked, while she was distracted by unbidden thoughts of Willd's rear end. "Look. I'm not marrying him. That's that. We fight our own battles. Clane isn't about to become the North Farlain Annex."
"I have to agree," said Sir Rogier, "Even with Chalris's suit there was this problem, but it's especially acute with Salvar. Never have two Sovereign Lords married. Should the Countess of Clane marry Duke Maladar's heir, we would soon turn into a province of Farlain."
Vivian looked around. Everyone agreed--and for her part, she saw Willd smiling in her mind again. She was certainly not interested in marrying anyone else. "Well," she said, "now that my marital situation is disposed of for the moment, let's concentrate on fighting the Rugians."
After the meeting was over, the Countess stood alone in the conference room. Sir Rogier lingered outside, then went back in to find her staring at the maps. "My lady," he said, "if it makes you feel any better, you're not getting this visitation of invasions all by yourself. I doubt even that the Rugians and Avars have anything personal against you."
She looked up at him sharply. "No? Don't you think it strange that they waited until after my father was dead? Do you think they don't know that Clane has a young, untested Countess? Do you think it means nothing to them that Clane is led by a woman? A girl, even?"
"All right, they're personally out to get you, my lady. Does that help?"
"A little." She looked through him at something indeterminate on the wall behind him. "Sir Rogier, what do you know about underpayment of taxes?"
"I certainly don't! Though I'll give more, if it's needed."
"I know you don't. You pay plenty."
"You've looked at my tax records?" he replied. "I'm astonished. I knew you were one for detail work, but I never thought you were checking everyone's taxes."
"Not everyone's. Just some ministers and lords." She looked down at the map. "I knew that lords and thanes generally paid a little less than might be expected of them. I knew that there was some variation from year to year. Still--"
"My lady, in answer to your question, I don't know anything. Revenue was never my area. It's enough, I hope, that I pay my share?"
"Oh, you're fine. If only all my noblemen were like you. I just thought--it's strange, or maybe it's not. That several of our closest associates paid about half as much to me as they used to pay to my father."
They stood in silence for a minute. "My advice," said Sir Rogier, "is to wait another year. This crisis will pass, and be replaced by others no doubt. Then if it happens again, heat up the irons and oil up the whips."
"Really? You would suggest that?"
"My lady, as we've already established, the Lady Alice and I pay our fair share. If someone else is getting off easy, I want them to be treated very, very rudely."
Vivian sighed. "I used to think that people paid for the army and the roads and all those things because they know that if they don't, they won't have them."
"In a perfect world," said Sir Rogier. "But as any good tax collector knows, it's fear that makes the lords pay up."
"Then an invasion should spur more payment, not less." Sir Rogier smiled and let her have the last word.
The winter's weather had been both cold and snowy, but on the seventh day of March there was a thaw, and by the tenth the rivers were high and the unpaved roads were muddy. It was that night that the young fellow from Selac had ridden into Vonnis, and eight days later, as the Clanish infantry mustered at Tarnhold, the thaw showed no signs of abating.
Thane Hugo of Tarnver again feasted the nobility, presenting them with another concoction of pasta and cheese and sauce and plenty of garlic. Compliments were given and reluctantly received, toasts were made and replied to and witty conversation strove for attention against good food and drink. After dinner, old Thane Hugo retired to his parlor, where he sat with a glass of port and talked with his old war-buddies, Sir Everard of Angren, Sir Rogier de Clatu and Thane Horst de Fugad. Vivian, meanwhile, was walking in the chill of late evening with Ellean, wandering the streets of the town of Tarnhold, anonymously cloaked. Ellean was again giddy with the opportunity to immerse herself in events, but Vivian had a headache.
"So, Jack's a big boy," said Vivian. Angeline's son had been born on the coldest night of February; he had already spewed on Angeline's every dress, and once on his Countess, who was smitten by him.
"Oh sunspots," replied Ellean. "He's huge! He's not a month and a half yet and he's bigger than either of her cats. He nurses and nurses and nurses and nurses, too. He's going to be a giant. Angeline still wants a big family, though."
"Oh, not me," said Vivian. "I saw her right before. And right after. She looked totally drained. I'm trying to imagine fitting something that size out that way."
"Oh, I'm wondering that too. Of course I don't have any prospects--!"
"Any what? Ellean, you're fifteen! Sorry, almost sixteen. But since you brought it up, are you or aren't you still an item with that scout?"
"You mean Ivor? That jerk! It's over between us. Don't even mention his name."
"So who is it now, if I may ask?"
"Well, Wulfstan--I don't know, though, he's kind of old. Or Dirk--Dirk! I wonder if he really could be serious, though?" It went on in this wise while Vivian rubbed her aching head. Ellean asked suddenly, "Do you think we'll beat the Rugians again?"
Vivian was silent for half a block's walk. Then she said, "I don't know. I hope so."
"You've won all your battles so far."
"I know. It has me worried."
"Your father won all his battles, didn't he?"
"The Count of Clane can't afford to lose. Or the Countess. Think what it would cost. Suppose the Rugians had defeated us last summer. We'd have had to fall back out of Siret, leaving Ellimer on his own, and probably all of Siret would have gone. Then we'd have a lowland border with the Rugians, and they'd have food and housing close to our heartland. Then any threat from the Rugians or the Avars would tempt the other to exploit our weakness. We'd be trapped between two enemies, and we could never take one on without worrying about the other."
"Not too different from now."
"Different enough." She blinked back the headache, which had been growing all afternoon and evening. It hung back as if waiting to pounce.
They walked on in silence. The mist that had floated in with the evening thickened to a soupy fog. They wandered the back lanes, made half the circuit of the street along the town walls (called, as everywhere, Wall Street) and then turned to a little park next to the citadel of Tarnhold. Vivian felt the headache rising up again. She swooned suddenly and fainted to the ground.
A moment later she opened her eyes and saw Ellean's sweet face, creased with concern, looking down at her. "From far over the mountains," said Vivian. "But no, now not so far."
"What?"
Vivian sat up. "Nothing, it's passing." She started to get up. Those dark wings rose again in her head, and eyes flashing. She swooned again, and then lay, her eyes open and her breath quiet, on the wet fall grasses not yet green again with spring. It was gone. "Mmm," said Vivian, "just let me lie here for a minute or two."
"What's wrong? Are you sick?" Ellean put her hand on Vivian's forehead. "You're not feverish, as far as I can tell. Maybe it was dinner?"
"No," said Vivian. Something was circling, watching, but now removed, as though, lying down, Vivian could not be seen. She considered her choices, including just sleeping here in the park on the wet grasses all night. She took a deep breath. "Ellean."
"Yes, my Countess?"
"I'm going to tell you a big secret. Is that all right?"
"You're sick or something? You're pregnant?"
"No, no, not at all. No, it's bigger than that." She smiled. "Though I hope the secret would be safe with you."
"It would, of course it would. I keep everything you tell me secret."
"I hope so. The penalty for revealing state secrets is death by torture, you know."
"Anyway."
"Yes. Anyway," said Vivian, still lying on her back with her head in Ellean's lap. "Anyway, there's something, mmm, strange going on. Some power far away that my grandfather vied with, and that my father vied with, that I now vie with." Ellean stared at her. "Oh, Ell, my darling, there are powers that are not visible in the daylight, or to the physical eye."
"And one is attacking you? Why?"
"I don't know why. It's not the first time, but it's the first time like this." She could think of nothing else to do, so she reached out with her mind into the over-arching ether from which her headache had seemed to come. It was as empty and innocent as a clear evening sky. She looked up at Ellean and wondered how much she could trust the girl really, how much to tell her, whether she should have told her nothing. "Listen. There's danger for anyone who learns of such secrets. I don't know how much you would really want to know. But there's something--someone. Threatening."
"Oh, Vivian," said Ellean, looking down into her countess's face. "I'd take on this enemy of yours singlehanded if I could see it."
"I know." Vivian made another scan of the ethereal sky: no shadow stood tall enough to be seen. She sat up: the headache was gone. "Anyway, it was probably all in my imagination."
"I don't know," said Ellean. "You really looked sick for a minute there." She helped Vivian stand up. "So I can't tell Angeline, even?"
"Oh no. No one. Promise?"
"I was just kidding. I promise."
Vivian took the girl's hand and put it on the Countess's Medallion. "Swear by--?"
"Wow, that serious, huh? Of course I will. I swear on the Medallion of the Countess of Clane," she said, taking it in her hand, "that I will never reveal to anyone else anything said in confidence to me by her ladyship the Countess Vivian. Ever."
Vivian smiled. "That should do. And if I need you to cover for me, you'll know." They brushed themselves off and returned to the citadel of Tarnhold by the shortest route.
The army left Tarnhold on the nineteenth, in the early morning, and pushed through three hard days of marching to reach the town of Acali in the province of Selac on the night of the twenty-first. Here the force of eighteen hundred found at least as happy a welcome as before--now, hidden in the forests between Acali and Radun was a Rugian force of several thousand.
Late that night, Vivian, Sir Rogier, Sir Everard, Thane Horst and the captains met with Lady Selene, the chief lord of Acali, and her son Lord Arthur and several scouts. The chief scout was a man called Holman, a few years older than Willd and from the same part of Selac.
"We're looking for their main body," he said. "They were three thousands, a week ago at Radun, but they have since retired eastward toward us. Since then, they have sent scouts out to spy us, and we have sent scouts to spy them, and all we have found are one another's scouts."
"And what do you do when you meet their scouts?" asked Vivian.
"Usually we run away," replied the scout. "Sometimes not. Three mornings ago I killed one of them, a skinny fellow that came at me with a knife. I hadn't killed a man since I was a young soldier under your father, my lady, and never up close."
"Well, I want you to know, I appreciate you, just as I'm sure my father did. It's dangerous work you do."
"Indeed," said Thane Horst, "and most of the soldiers think the scouts are all cowards. Still, it would be nice if we knew where exactly the Rugian main body is."
"And what they hope to gain. They're not besieging and they're not advancing. They're just eating and wrecking things."
"They hope to gain more than that," said Sir Rogier, "though that's plenty in itself. They hope to meet and destroy our main force. They know we can't tolerate three thousand Rugians between Acali and Radun."
"So it's us or them, eh?"
"Exactly."
"And all we need to do is know exactly how many of them there are, exactly where, and hit them at exactly the right time. So Holman," she said, "your work is not finished."
In the pine woods, foot-deep drifts of snow were swiftly melting into foot-deep fields of mud. It was twenty-five miles from Acali to the outskirts of Radun, and in that space three thousand Rugians had lost themselves. Now under Thane Horst's management, the Clanish force likewise concealed its size and composition in and around the town, quartering itself in the houses of Acali and the surrounding farms, then camping quietly in the woods. Every night the scouts brought their information to the council, and every morning at dawn Vivian rose to find Thane Horst sitting with tea and last night's news.
Meanwhile she pursued her usual secret habits, but very cautiously. The dark wings did not stoop upon her again, although she thought there was something watching her from afar. She couldn't think how to defend herself except by doing her own watching.
On the third night at Acali, the twenty-third of March, she sat on the floor of her room in Lady Selene's hall while the fog rolled up to her window. She drew a card: the Emperor, seated on his stone chair, gripping his scepter, his iron-shod feet flat on the ground. She took a sip of wine, then placed the cup behind the card. She placed the unlit candle on the left, the lit one on the right, and concentrated briefly on the left candle: it winked into life. She was already staring into the air before the throne of the Emperor.
It was Vivian who now sat on the stone chair. She looked this way and that and saw her realm, the land all around her, laid bare. For some time her eye wandered, increasingly impatient as she examined forests of pine, long fields of snow, streams edged with decaying ice, skies full of stars, a town here and there. A mass of men with swords and heavy cloaks turned out to be wearing the grey of Clane. Then, off somewhere in a valley among the trees, she caught a glimpse of blond and red-haired warriors gathered about small fires.
She cast about for a landmark, but this land was unfamiliar to her. It was off the road, away from the river, but where, which side, which direction? For a minute she lost them again, searching for a memorable landmark. There they were, camped along several parallel streams in the densest of Selac's forests. Calming herself, she looked more closely at these folk. They were big and tall, she supposed, but otherwise ordinary: one with a bulbous nose, another with a bad case of acne, a dozen shapes of beard. All were male that she could see. They were cooking a little, eating a little, drinking quite a lot, from barrels that sat beside the oxen that bore them, or from ceramic jugs or from wineskins. Some busied themselves preparing for battle: sharpening spears, cutting arrows; others wrestled or engaged in swordplay; many others sat on rocks and stumps and did nothing. All seemed ready to jump up, pick up pack and weapons and be off.
There among them was one in hood and dark robe. She looked at him, and suddenly he looked up, almost at her.
She fled. But he had not seen her. What under the Sun is he--or are there several of him? But the wide hills and forests of Clane lay all about empty, of blond warriors and of hooded aliens. With a conscious effort, she relaxed and took the time to have a look around at her realm. She saw Tarnver, a rind of muddy fertile valley lining a white interior of high mountains, where hid another fertile valley, the province's dairy hinterland. She saw Skavin, going about its business in spite of a camp of Avars much less than a day's ride to the east. That camp looked almost like a frontier town itself, with artisans and a market and many women and children. She saw the wide hill-country of Westdubbik, with its prosperous towns, Dubkarin, Fugad, Clatu. Far off on the verge of the high mountains she saw a castle that flew the Clanish flag, under a broken mountain, on a stony ridge edged by ravine, accessible only by a high stone bridge. Where have I seen that before? She couldn't think, but she knew she had never been there. She gave up and let her sight float free again before coming down to look at Vonnis.
The little city in its stout walls slept through a mild night of early spring. Then she saw a camp of horsemen on the east side of the valley. A glance told her they were Avars and not the Clanish cavalry. A longer look told her that they were still unpacking their own camp. She turned away to examine Vonnis, and caught her breath as she made out Lord Margus standing on the wall above the gate, himself examining the Avar force with a telescope. He was like a little perfectly-made doll on a toy castle, but she knew with the Emperor's knowledge that it was all deadly real.
Pounding at the door brought her around. She blew out the candle on the left and picked it up, along with the cards and the wine, setting them on the side table. The Emperor--it was dangerous to stand on such a height. She went to the door.
"Who is it?"
"My lady," called William Willd. "I've just come from Vonnis."
She swiftly opened the door. There he was, muddy and sweaty and cold from riding. It was all she could do to keep from undressing him right there and washing him clean in hot water, but behind him was Ellean, and behind her one of the Westdubbik scouts. Behind them, Sir Rogier and Thane Horst came up to join the throng. She gave way to let them into the room. "What is your news, Master Willd?"
"My lady, an Avar force of two thousand horse has appeared on the ridge east of Vonnis. We expect them to be in the valley across from the city by tonight."
"Great," she said. "Did you gentlemen all hear that?"
"Yes," said Sir Rogier. "And we gentlemen are not especially surprised."
"We cannot turn back, my lady," said Thane Horst. "Besides, there's no reason to. Two thousand is too many for Margus to take in the open, but the river is high and he has nothing to fear as long as he keeps to the walls."
"I agree," said the Countess. "Willd, tomorrow at dawn you will make the return journey, and you will emphasize to Lord Margus that he is to remain behind the walls of Vonnis. We'll get Lady Selene's scribe to write it up nicely, but that's the message."
"I will inform the scribe," said Sir Rogier. He turned and left.
"Thane Horst, any news from our other scouts?"
"The usual," said the thane. "They meet only Rugian scouts. Wherever they are, they're keeping quiet."
"Well, keep me apprized." The Thane nodded and left, followed by his scout, to whom he was giving many orders as they passed down the hall.
"Anything for me to do?" asked Ellean.
"Yes, actually. Find a good map of the province and figure out which wooded stream-vales we have as yet not scouted. I'm looking for several that run parallel."
"Intuition, my lady?"
"Yes. Intuition. Tell me in the morning."
"Good night, then!" Ellean grinned and was off.
Willd looked at Vivian with a questioning expression. They were alone in the room, the door open, no one in the hall. "My lady," he began haltingly. She smiled cautiously at him. "I was just checking, my lady, to see if--"
"Well, actually," said Vivian, shifting from foot to foot, "there is one thing--would you mind shutting the door?" He did, and soon Vivian and her errand-rider were in close consultation.
The next morning, 24 March, Vivian for the first time in her life awoke in the arms of a man. In the cool grey hour, she lay against William Willd, his arm behind her and under her, his scent around her and hers around him. It suited her fine, lying there in his arms, but it couldn't last long: they were out of bed before dawn. She sat up and made small talk with him while he got his clothes on and made ready to ride back to Vonnis. They rounded up Lady Selene's scribe and the message to Vonnis, and he was gone, just as the sun broke the line of the Tarnver mountains.
A few minutes later, she and her advisors and lords, and a half-asleep Ellean Rain, were slumped around a table with mugs of strong tea, nibbling on pastries. They also chewed on the news from the night: there had been a skirmish between about five Rugian scouts and a Clanish patrol of a dozen infantry. The patrol had been ambushed, but with numerical superiority on the Clanish side only one Rugian had gotten away; two of the Countess's soldiers were dead.
"It happened so fast," said the sergeant in command of the patrol, a herdsman and swordsman of Westdubbik's part of the Rocky River Valley. "Two boys went down before we knew what was up. Then the fight went our way, and all of a sudden the last guy was running."
"You didn't get a shot off at him?" grumbled Thane Horst, his liege lord.
"A couple of arrows flew," said the swordsman, "but there's no chance they hit him. It was all in dense undergrowth. That stand of oak trees north of town."
The thane looked hard at him, and the soldier returned his gaze balefully. Finally the Thane half-grinned. "You did as well as anyone could," he told the soldier. "You'll be running the fight over in your head for a few days. Tell me if you figure out a way to get all five of the Rugians, or to save the two of our boys."
"I will, sir." He stood up, looked at the Countess. "Thank you, my lady."
"Thank you, sergeant," she said. "You did well."
"Well," said Thane Horst as the man left, "they'll know we're here in force, just as soon as that scout gets back to his friends."
"They must've had a good idea before," said Vivian.
"Now they know for sure."
"And," said Sir Everard, daintily cleaning honey from his white moustache, "we can't say how much they know, but I'm sure they know they outnumber us."
"So? We have the walls of Acali."
Sir Everard, Sir Rogier and Thane Horst each did his own sardonic grunt. "We don't fit behind them," said Sir Everard. "We don't outnumber the Rugians, but we outnumber the walls."
"Yes, I suppose we do," said Vivian. "Besides, Rogier and I just last summer berated Thane Ellimer for hiding behind walls while they ravaged the country."
"You're no Thane Ellimer," said Sir Rogier. "You don't even look alike."
"Well, thank you. Anyway, the consensus seems to be that we need to do something. Shall we have a vote on that, or move on to deciding what we should do?"
"My lady," said Sir Rogier, "we are your underlings. We merely advise."
"Advise, then."
"All right," said Thane Horst, "the conventional wisdom says that we should pick up stakes and move into the wilderness. Keep quiet, keep moving, try to find out where they are before they find out where we are."
"And Acali?"
"We'll have to leave a couple of hundred here," said Thane Horst. "We can't go too far from Acali ourselves, for fear of a raid behind us. Meanwhile, the Rugians will be moving and shifting too, but I guess they'll stay in the deep woods."
"I agree," said Vivian. The three old men looked at her skeptically. She went on. "I would expect them to stay to the cover of stream valleys. The Rocky River is too much out in the open, but there are several deep and well-wooded vales on this side of the river. Let's see..." She produced a folded-up sheet of coarse paper from a pocket. Vivian had, among the other campaigns of her two years as Countess, successfully campaigned to add pockets to all her clothes, even the dresses she wore for ceremonial occasions. She unfolded the sheet and all four of them gazed upon a pencilled map of the province, rough-drawn but done by someone with exceptionally neat handwriting, a pretty river valley with five or six snaky streams roughly paralleling one another as they curled their way out of the hills. At one point four of the streams almost joined together before all four, separately, flowed into the Rocky River. At one side of the map was Radun, with its walls drawn in as well as a few houses; at the other was Acali, represented as a quaint village with a winding wall. Lady Selene's hall, the town's chief landmark, was reproduced in loving detail. Any Clanish subject could have identified the two towns on the basis of the artwork alone, but their names were there also, rendered in a showy script that spoke of a cartographer who, even in rough draft, could not escape the lure of art.
"This is the work of Lady Selene's scribe?" asked Sir Everard.
"No," said Vivian, "it's the work of Lady Rain the younger."
"Oh," he replied, frowning approvingly. Ellean perked up.
"There," said Vivian, putting her finger on the assembly of four stream valleys. "Looks like it might be swampy, but I'll bet it's heavily wooded."
"Hmm," said Thane Horst. "Yes, I'll wager it is. Hmm. Well. Hmm." He and Sir Everard arched over the map, hmming and welling and muttering back and forth in the language of generals while Sir Rogier and Ellean and the Countess sat and waited for their pronouncement. "Here," said Horst, putting his finger on the map at a point about half an inch to the right of the nexus of stream valleys. "This would be high ground, but I know that whole tract is woods. We can get there in an easy day's march and have plenty of time to camp."
"Good," said Vivian. "I have, ah, business to attend to. Order it so, and make sure we have our dinners made up ahead of time--I think the camp fires are going to be kept low tonight."
The day was warm and dry--above ground level. The infantry stamped through mud and swamp and, under the trees, deep slush as they moved about ten miles northwest from Acali into the wooded highland. Even the complaints were muted, under orders from the Countess, but complaints there were. Keep the fires low, they were told, but not many could get any kind of a fire going, and it was all they could do to dry out after the march, and to keep their blankets dry. Lady Selene and Lord Arthur tried to talk the Countess into staying at Acali, but Vivian knew that there would be a price in the good will of her soldiers if she did so. Thus she too had reason to complain, but no one in authority over her to complain about.
"That's never stopped you up to now," said Ellean, as the two lay in their blankets in the dark that night listening to the drip of ice melting out of the trees and onto their tent.
"I should let you do this job for a month sometime," said Vivian. "See how you like it. But no, you'd give it back to me after the first hour."
"I have an idea," said Ellean. "Let's go find Willd and go scouting."
"Very funny, in this sludge. Willd's at Tarnhold by now, or beyond. Probably sleeping in a nice warm bed under a real roof. Good night, Ellean." She rolled over facing the tent cloth and pulled her blankets around her. She could feel the rocks poking out through the soft mud under the tent, her feet were cold and showed no sign of getting warmer, and on and on went the drip, drip, drip on the tent roof, and all Vivian could think of as she lay awake in the night was whether her errand-rider would make it safely to Vonnis.
The twenty-fifth day of March dawned cool with a west wind stirring up what would have been fog, leaving only a thin overcast. The birds were back in business in these woods, and had been yelling at the tops of their tiny lungs since two hours before dawn. By midmorning the sky was clear and the air was warming up. In another day or two only the mountains would have any snow left. Vivian, standing among the tents, took in lungful after lungful of the spring air with all its plans and promises and its undertones of decay.
"Your horse, my lady," said Ellean coming up, leading both their horses.
"Why, thank you, Ellean. What am I supposed to do with her? Go scout the Rugian lines?"
"It's a thought."
"Except that they don't have lines, and we're as likely to spend all day wandering in this muck and not see anything as we are to get ourselves skewered before we even see their faces."
"Did we not sleep well last night?"
"I didn't, but I guess you did, because I could hear your breathing while I lay awake for hours." She smiled at Ellean. "Look, let's go ride around and check my far-flung host anyway. We surely can do that much without getting into any danger."
"Surely," said Ellean.
They saddled up and rode from one circle of tents to another, receiving salutes and seeing caps doffed by all they met, and exchanging a few words about the weather with a soldier here, a sergeant there. It was a bottom-heavy force, with the knights and most of the militarily-inclined lords with the Horse Marshal at Vonnis, leaving the commoner-dominated infantry.
The camp was arrayed on high ground that had once been a single hill before centuries of rain cut it into a dozen lobes, separated by narrow, wooded streambeds. Captain Gervas Gerold's three companies of Vonnis swords and bows were the farthest point on the tour, on the westernmost height overlooking the low woods. Finally, on the very end of the highland, where the hill slanted gradually down into the thickets and swamps of the stream-valleys below, they came to a camp of eight tents and about fifty men.
A sergeant, at least fifty years old, short and skinny and leather-skinned, stepped up to speak with the Countess, hat in hand. "My lady," he said, "my men and I are at your service." Vivian swung down from the saddle.
"Thank you," she said. "How did you find your accommodations last night?"
"Well, my lady," he replied, "they're the best to be had in the area, and it made it a lot easier knowing that your ladyship had to put up with the same as the rest of us."
"It's not my Citadel, that's certain. Did you sleep well?"
"My lady, as well as can--"
A commotion broke in from the thickets below. "What's that?" asked Vivian.
"I've no idea, my lady," the sergeant replied.
"Well, let's go see," said Vivian, remounting. "Sergeant?"
"My lady, are you sure--? Hey, Robin, Edmer, Joran, Ben, grab your weapons. We're Countess's Security." In under a minute, Vivian and Ellean had five men on foot to escort them. "My lady, are you sure?"
"Oh, we're just going to take a peek."
They turned and began the descent from the piny hilltop to the oak woods of the slope. Quickly the five swordsmen formed up in front of the two women on horseback, beating the brush down as they went. There was no need for concern about noise: the commotion below grew steadily louder and sharper, and by now it seemed that a medium-sized volcano could erupt nearby and escape notice. The sound of horns came through the trees from a little way below, the clear high Clanish notes and the bellowing trumpets of the Rugians. The battle along the stream below the Hogback came to Vivian's mind, but it was too late to turn back with any dignity, and curiosity pushed her on anyway. There was a fight ahead, but it certainly wasn't a battle of thousands on each side.
Suddenly they were no longer heading toward the fight, but were right in the middle of it. Vivian stood speechless, trying to take it all in, but her escort, for the most part, threw themselves into the skirmish with zest. Apparently about two dozen Clanish soldiers, on patrol, had run into about a dozen Rugians and were busy slaughtering them. The job was already half done, and the Clanishmen were using their unusual numerical superiority to finish it with minimal losses. None of the Rugians was fleeing. One stepped back from his three opponents and raised his trumpet to blow a mighty blast, but he was cut off in mid-note by an arrow that hit him just below the eye. He fell to the ground, his silent horn still in his hand.
"Yesss!" cried Ellean, reaching to her quiver.
She didn't have another chance, though, as the last of the Rugians went down fighting the Clanish swordsmen. As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. They looked around. A dozen Rugians lay sprawled about in various uncomfortable-looking poses, but so too lay four Clanish soldiers. Four more were significantly wounded, and half the rest had cuts and bruises from the fight. The survivors suddenly noticed that their Countess was with them, and all who could manage it pulled off their woollen caps.
"Um, get our dead back to the camp, and the wounded as well," she told them.
A handsome young soldier stepped forward. "My lady," he said, then turned to the others. "Mert, you and your men get the dead and wounded up to camp. Harold, take four men and beat the bushes for more enemy." He turned back to Vivian. "My lady, I'm Tim Relloy, at your service."
"What happened?"
"Well, my lady, it was a surprise to everyone concerned, I think. We were patrolling the perimeter when we ran smack into these fellows, and I don't think either one expected the other. They're obviously scouting for the Rugian host."
"Pardon me, my lady," said the wiry sergeant, "not to disagree, but these were no scouts-- you wouldn't send out a dozen men to scout. These were a Rugian patrol."
"What's the difference?" asked Vivian.
"You send out scouts, my lady, when you're far away and looking for the enemy. You send out a patrol just to keep security around your own camp."
"Then," said Tim Relloy, "they can't be a patrol, because that would mean--"
He was interrupted by a chorus of blood-curdling yells. They barely had time to turn before another twenty Rugian warriors were upon them. Tim Relloy went down under a murderous axe-swing before Vivian's very eyes. The rest of the Clanish soldiers, about a dozen now, fell back toward Vivian instinctively. Ellean shot an arrow into another Rugian axeman at close range. Vivian, who couldn't think of anything better to do, grabbed up her hunting horn and blew.
The tiny band of Clanishmen held on long enough to be relieved, though five fell in the minute or two it took, and then again the odds switched. Thirty men came charging down the hillside from the camp above, and now it was the Rugians who found themselves outnumbered. They fought admirably, however, and Vivian suddenly realized that they were just delaying. Three or four were committing most of their energy to blowing their horns. She grabbed Ellean's arm before the girl could shoot another warrior.
"The horns," said Vivian. "We have to take them out."
"Why? Let them blow."
"The Rugian camp's nearby," Vivian hissed, reaching for the bow she had practiced but never used against a living creature. In the event, it wasn't so difficult. She nocked an arrow, took aim and fired. Her arrow stuck in a horn, which surprised but did not injure the blower. The same could not be said of Ellean's shot, which went through the man's neck. Vivian took more careful aim at the next trumpeter and put her arrow in his chest. Then, just as they were starting to enjoy themselves, they heard more shouts. Crashing through the undergrowth from the swampy land below them came another fifty or a hundred Rugians.
Vivian stood up on her stirrups. "Fall back! Fall back, men!" she shouted. "Up the hillside!" Her high voice attracted no attention whatsoever. She grabbed the wiry sergeant by the shoulder. "Hey, call the retreat," she told him.
"Men! Fall back!" he bellowed. She wondered at the amount of sound the little guy could generate. All the Clanish soldiers pulled back from their foes and began to retreat up the hillside. Vivian turned Finesse around and was up the hill in moments, with Ellean behind her: they turned back to see how many followed, and saw that most of the Clanish soldiers were making their way back out of the fight below. They were followed by the Rugians, who were blowing their horns with great vigor.
"You," said Vivian, whacking a young infantryman on the head with her bow, "go find Sir Everard and tell him we'll soon have the whole Rugian army on us."
"Yes, my lady!" The young man bowed and was off.
"Form up here," called the wiry sergeant. "Any bows?" Only about thirty men in Clanish grey gathered on the hilltop, and none bore a bow.
"Just us," said Ellean. The sergeant did a double-take, and then the barbarians came charging out of the brush. Vivian blew her horn one more time, then gave herself over to firing. If the Clanish side had little for archers, the Rugians had none at all, and for every Rugian axe that slew a Clanishman, two attackers fell with arrows in them, until Vivian and Ellean found themselves at the same moment pulling out the last in their quivers. "Make it good," said Ellean. They fired, and just as they were about to dismount to scrounge for arrows a boy ran up to them with four more quivers full.
"Where did these come from?" asked Vivian.
"The huntsmen, my lady," said the boy. "They don't need them now."
A hundred at a time, the Clanish troops were reinforced, but the Rugians too were growing in number, coming from their camp hidden below in the swampy thickets. They pushed the defenders back until Clanish soldiers were crowded around the two horses, while more Clanishmen crowded in from behind. Vivian had to choose her targets more carefully now, as the two sides were more and more entangled. She forced herself to think about the tactical situation. There was no leader here, unless she was it, and she could see that the Clanish troops were dangerously disorganized. The left flank was thin, while behind her many of her men were standing around fidgeting.
"Captain!" she shouted with her lowest and loudest voice, when she saw Gervas Gerold standing amongst his men of Vonnis. He heard her voice and looked at her, startled to see his Countess in this scene. "Get your men to the left! Move it!"
Without hesitation, Gervas Gerold started pushing his men to the left, and soon the Rugians were stopped on all sides. The fight began to take on even more of the character of a brawl. Men yelled and cursed and groaned with the pain of sudden deep wounds, and fell cursing and clutching at each other, and as they fell more stepped up from behind to avenge them. Vivian stood aghast at the sight, at the many sights and smells of the midst of battle, but beside her Ellean's bow sang note after note of its lethal song. Vivian's attention was caught again when she heard a sound close by her ear. An arrow whistled past, not a foot away, and stuck in the arm of a soldier behind her. She saw the Rugian archer, the first of twenty or so now climbing to the hilltop, and thought no more about the tactical situation. She put an arrow in him before he had another shot, and she and Ellean spent most of the rest of their arrows on the Rugian bows.
The battle went on for what seemed like days, at once languid and bitter, static and deadly earnest. It was hard to tell, but Vivian became sure that the Clanish troops were far outnumbered. Still they held the advantage, having higher ground and an interior circle and better discipline; the famed ferocity and bravery of the Rugians were not so decisive now that there was nowhere for their foes to run. When Vivian had fired all her arrows again, she felt a tug on her sleeve and there was the boy, standing between Finesse and That Colt, proffering another quiver for each of them. "Thanks," the two women said together, before they went back to their bloody work.
Again and again Vivian thought that her men, worn-out and bloodied and sick of the fight, were about to give way before the anger of the red-bearded warriors, but again and again another twenty or thirty Clanish soldiers reached the fray and kept the lines intact. Bowmen of the Countess's Domain began to filter into the front ranks, pouring their fire out with impunity at close range. At last she was aware of a slacking-off, and found that the press around the horses was less, as her soldiers pushed forward. "Slow!" she shouted to them, thinking of battles she had read about in which over-eager troops were lured from high ground by a feigned retreat. "Slow up!"
This time many of them actually heard her, and the Rugians, whose trumpet-notes had changed to sound a retreat of their own, began to separate. Just then, on the left, new horns were blowing, and horsemen with Clanish grey cloaks and yellow roses of Tarnver charged up to the wavering Rugian flank and began pouring arrows into it. The Tarnver cataphracts sealed the fight for Clane, laying low row after row of the enemy before the barbarians turned and ran. Some of the infantry would have liked to chase them, but the leader of the cataphracts held back his own men, raising his hand in the air. It was Sir Everard, and Sir Rogier was next to him. The Countess stood on her stirrups and cried out, "Stay!" and the infantry did not need more persuasion.
The little hilltop camp was a shambles. Where fifty men had bivouacked, several thousand had fought. There were bodies everywhere, more than half of them Clanish, but when Vivian dismounted and picked her way to the edge of the hillside she found piles of Rugian dead, many with arrows in them, still more disfigured or decapitated by swords. She and Ellean spent some minutes wandering among them, pulling out arrows. She was numb all over, and it took her a moment to realize that Sir Rogier was with her.
"My lady," he said when he had her attention, "you're all right?"
"Fine," she said, putting her foot on the chest of a dead man and pulling the arrow from his neck. She glanced at it and handed it to Ellean. "One of yours."
Rain came in the afternoon and washed the blood from the bodies. Most of the unwounded soldiers were busy lining up their fallen comrades for cremation and dragging the enemy dead down the hillside. It was not a battle of knights and lords: few drops of noble blood were shed, not counting the nobility that men earn by their actions. But Gervas Gerold was dead, whom Vivian had promoted after the battle on the stream below the Hogback last summer, stabbed in the early going and then trampled for hours. Of the fifty men from the camp where the battle occurred, only a dozen remained alive, among them the wiry sergeant, who had well paid the foe for his several wounds.
Vivian and Ellean washed themselves, more or less, but Vivian still kept finding bloodstains she'd missed, mostly from the retrieval of arrows. They dressed, and by evening she and Ellean and Sir Everard and Sir Rogier were sitting around in the headquarters tent sipping hot tea.
"What of Thane Horst?" asked Vivian.
"He's rearranging the camp," said Sir Everard. "We can hardly move today, but tomorrow maybe we can pull back to Acali, or go on to Radun."
They were silent for a while, and then a soldier came up and spoke quietly to Sir Everard. "My lady," he said to the Countess, "we have the toll. The enemy lost over three thousand dead."
"Out of maybe three thousand?"
"My lady," said Sir Everard, "they had more than we knew. There were at least four thousand Rugians here."
"Four Thousand?" He nodded. "They had more than twice our number--maybe three times?"
"We had the hilltop," said Sir Everard, "and we had the archers. You took a heavy toll."
"More than they can afford, my lady," said Sir Rogier, "and I have it on good authority that you two took care of at least a hundred just by yourselves."
"And our losses?"
"Four hundred dead," said Sir Everard.
"That's a fourth of what we had in camp!"
"Yes, my lady."
"All those men--gone." She shook her head, as if to shake out the very idea. "Never to return." She rubbed her face as if to wipe the sights from her eyes. She sighed. "What's the point? Oh, never mind." She sipped her tea. "It's all my fault. If I'd known what was happening--if I'd been able to lead them properly--"
"If you hadn't been there," said Ellean, "we would've lost, and that's that."
"She's right," said Sir Everard, "and I'm glad she was with you. But you must remember, we were fighting a huge force. We lost a tiny fraction of what they lost. This was a good day."
"Mmm," said Vivian. "I know you're right. But it doesn't feel like a good day. I mean, there are always more Rugians waiting over the mountains. There won't always be more Clanish. We're gonna run out one of these days."
"Well," said Sir Rogier, "Selac is safe again, and that's something. My lady, your father too had many doubts about himself as a leader, and he was one of our greatest tacticians. It was a hard fight, but we won, and you played a large part."
"But how many more such victories can we endure?"
"Better such a victory," said Sir Rogier, "than a defeat."
They went back to sipping their tea, and were still doing so five minutes later when the sound of hooves awoke them from their reverie. A rider came up to the tent, dismounted and hurried inside. He knelt before the Countess.
"News from Vonnis?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady. I've ridden two days and a half to find you."
"Are you reluctant to give me the news now you've found me?"
"Yes, my lady." The man took a long breath, looked around. "The Avars have come down to the Lavan River in strength of about two thousand horse," he said.
"We knew that."
"And Lord Margus, three days ago, he took his knights across to do battle with them."
"What?! I gave him explicit orders to stay put! But then Willd would not have made it to Vonnis by then."
"No, my lady, I met him in Tarnver yesterday afternoon."
"So what happened?" asked Sir Everard.
"They were slaughtered, sir," said the errand-rider. "We lost six hundred knights. The Avars sucked them in by a feigned retreat, and then caught them on both flanks."
"Ohhh." said Vivian. "And Lord Margus?"
"He's dead, my lady. And two thousand Avars are still camped before Vonnis, and it's thought more are coming from Bazir. Captain Weaver has taken command of the defenses, along with Purcell Colmack. They cannot cross to attack the city, with the river so high."
"Still." Vivian's head spun. So many lost, in the space of a couple of days. What was the point? Couldn't she just find out what these people wanted from Clane, and give it to them without so much slaughter? But there was someone else who wanted something, she didn't know who, she didn't know what, but she felt his presence, suddenly, as if he stood at her side.
"My lady?" said Sir Everard.
"Well," she replied, "at least one thing's settled. We're going back to Vonnis."