by DAVID B. COE
Jenoe smiled faintly and toyed with his spoon. "Our wealth isn't as great as you might think. But as I said when we first spoke, we can offer you land. If you help us against the Fal'Borna, you'll share in the spoils of our victory."
"Horses and gold, too," the woman said.
"If those are among the spoils," the marshal said, after eyeing her briefly, "then perhaps we can offer them. But I make no promises."
The woman frowned, but after a moment she nodded once. "Very well. When do we leave?"
Tirnya's father opened his mouth, then closed it again. "Forgive me, Eldest. I'm certain that you're a skilled sorcerer. But we're marching to war, and right now we have no spare horses to offer you. I believe that you'd be best off sending some of your younger men and women with us. And then after-"
"No!" Fayonne said, shaking her head. "We're going with you. That's what you said before."
Jenoe glanced at Tirnya, looking doubtful. "If you feel that you need to accompany us, I suppose you can."
"Not just me," she said, her voice rising. "All of us! Everyone!"
The marshal's eyes widened. "Everyone?" He laughed nervously, though his forehead was creased deeply. "You can't be serious."
She started to answer, but stopped herself, glancing at the elders. Tirnya couldn't see many of their faces, but she thought she saw several of them shake their heads.
A moment later, the eldest gave a small breathless laugh that clearly was forced. "No, of course I'm not, Marshal. I'll come with you. As eldest it's my place. But other than that it will only be the youngest and strongest of us."
Jenoe looked around the table, much as Fayonne had done a moment before. "All right," he said, sounding unnerved.
"Why are you so anxious to leave this place?" Enly asked.
Fayonne looked at him sharply, torchlight shining in her dark eyes. "Wouldn't you be?" she demanded.
"Other Mettai have refused us."
"Enly!" Tirnya said, glaring at him.
"They have a right to know," he said. He faced the eldest again. "Other Mettai have told us they want nothing to do with our war, but you… You didn't hesitate at all."
Fayonne regarded him for several moments. "Are all the men of Qalsyn like you?" she asked. "Are all of you the same?"
Enly gave a sour look. "Of course not."
"Then why should you expect all Mettai to be?"
"I don't, but as I say, these other Mettai-"
"Their villages were more prosperous than ours, weren't they? Their land was more fertile?"
Enly conceded that point with a nod. "Yes, it was."
"There's your answer." The eldest picked up her spoon and took another mouthful of stew. "Please," she said. "Eat. There's plenty."
None of them ate much more, and before long they were riding back to their camp, trying to make out the lane as their eyes adjusted to the night. "Something's not right here," Enly said quietly.
"I agree," Jenoe told him.
Tirnya couldn't bring herself to argue with them. Despite how eager she was to ride to war, she knew it as well.
"We could ride farther north," Enly said. "There may be other Mettai who'll agree to join us."
"And what if there aren't?" Tirnya asked. "We've struck a bargain with them. We asked them to ride to war with us and they agreed. Now you want us to break our word?"
"We could tell them that we want to find more Mettai to join us," Jenoe said.
She shook her head fiercely. "We're not going to find any others. You both know it's true. You're right, Enly: They are desperate. That's why they agreed. And before you argue that this makes them unfit in some way to march with us, I'll remind you that war often fosters alliances of convenience. How often did the Fal'Borna and J'Balanar fight together against the sovereignties?"
For a long time neither of the men spoke, until finally Tirnya's father said, "She makes a valid point."
"I know," Enly said. "I just hope their magic is worth all this."
"I just hope," Jenoe said, "that we're not forced to eat any more of their food."
Tirnya and Enly laughed.
"When we left earlier my men were on their way to hunt some game," Tirnya told them. "We can eat when we get back to camp."
As it turned out, though, Oliban and the others had found precious little to eat, and most of the men had been forced to cobble together an evening meal from the stores the army had carried from Qalsyn. Before going to sleep, Tirnya ate a bit of dried meat and cheese, but not enough to get the taste of the Mettai stew out of her mouth, and not enough to keep her stomach from growling as she lay down under the stars.
Tirnya slept poorly, plagued by hunger and vague, disturbing dreams of white-hairs and Mettai. She awoke well before dawn and spent the rest of the night staring up into a cloudless sky, wondering if they were making a mistake by trusting these strange, desperate people.
They broke camp with first light. As Jenoe and Fayonne had agreed, the Mettai appeared on the road just as the sun was rising. The eldest walked at the head of their company, and with her were at least fifty younger men and women, all of them carrying travel sacks on their backs, and many of them bearing axes and long daggers, as well as the knives they carried on their belts.
Tirnya stood with her father, watching the Mettai approach. "Whatever else you might say about them," she remarked, "they look like they're ready to fight."
Jenoe nodded but said nothing. Many of the men around her had stopped what they were doing and were watching the Mettai approach. Some of them merely looked curious, but a good number were eyeing the villagers with suspicion, even fear.
Fayonne led her people directly to Tirnya's father, stopping just in front of him. "We're ready to march when you are, Marshal."
"Thank you, Eldest," he said. "My daughter was just saying that you and your people truly look like warriors."
The woman regarded him solemnly. "You honor us, Marshal." She glanced at the soldiers. "But your men don't seem happy to see us."
"It might take some time for them to get used to you," he said.
She nodded. "No doubt. We'll have to get used to them, too."
Jenoe took a long breath. "Yes, I suppose so." He forced a smile. "We'll be marching soon. You can take whatever place you'd like in our column."
"We'll walk behind you," Fayonne said immediately. She turned and spoke quietly to the Mettai man behind her. He nodded, and started leading the rest of the Mettai to the far end of the camp. "Thank you, Marshal," she said, facing Jenoe again. "We'll speak again at the end of the day." With that, she turned and left them.
Jenoe shook his head slowly, watching Fayonne walk away. "What was it Enly said last night? 'I hope their magic is worth all this'?"
"It will be," Tirnya said. "They may be strange, and they may he driven by needs we don't understand. But they're sorcerers. By the time the Fal'Borna realize what's happening to their armies, we'll have taken back Deraqor." She nodded, as if convinced by the logic of her own argument. "I'm certain of it," she said, her voice low.
"I think you may be right."
Tirnya looked at her father.
"I don't relish the idea of riding to war with these people," he went on. "But I can't imagine the Fal'Borna will be expecting this. It might just work."
She continued to stare at him, saying nothing.
"What?" her father asked, a slight grin on his face.
"I'm surprised. I thought you didn't like this idea."
"I thought so, too," he said. "But now that we're here, and the Mettai are with us, I'm starting to reconsider."
"Really?"
He nodded. "We're riding to Deraqor. I've dreamed of this since I was a child."
Tirnya smiled, feeling better than she had in days.
Let Enly doubt their plan. Let those Mettai who had refused them doubt it as well. Tirnya knew it would work. Yes, Fayonne and her people were strange. Their reasons for agreeing to this alliance clearly had far more to do with the desolat
e conditions in which they lived than with any affinity they felt for Jenoe's army and their cause. But the Mettai of Lifarsa were marching with them: fifty sorcerers added to an army of two thousand of Qalsyn's finest soldiers. Soon they would join forces with another two thousand men from northern and southern Stelpana, and together they would cross the Silverwater into Qirsi land.
Tirnya wasn't foolish enough to think that the coming battles would be won easily. But they would be won. Just as the early battles of the Blood Wars had been won by Eandi and Mettai fighting as allies.
Chapter 22
LOWNA, ON OWL LAKE
Commerce cares nothing for the color of a man's eyes."
It was an old saying, one that explained how trade could continue in a land long riven by racial hatred, one that many peddlers used to justify their willingness to take gold from people who would, under other circumstances, just as soon kill them as buy from them.
R'Shev had been selling his wares in the sovereignties for nearly all of his adult life-more than four fours now. He was Nid'Qir by birth, but he had left his clan and the Iejony Peninsula as soon as he came of age, believing that there had to be a better life for him elsewhere. The Nid'Qir were to the Qirsi of the Southlands what Qosantians or Tordjannis were to the Eandi. His people were among the wealthiest of the clans, and they had never seemed to care much where their gold came from. Many of the clans specialized in one trade or another: The M'Saaren and A'Vahl were known for their woodcraft; the R'Troth were miners; the D'Krad were seafaring folk. The Nid'Qir did a little of everything. Mostly though, they accumulated gold.
R'Shev often told those who asked that he left Nid'Qir land because he would have had to work too hard there to become as rich as he wanted to be. The truth was, he wanted no part of his people's obsession with wealth, nor did he wish to associate himself with the obvious disdain the Nid'Qir harbored for the other clans. Qirsi in the Southlands often spoke of the arrogance of the Nid'Qir. R'Shev had grown up with it, and had freed himself from it as soon as he could.
He made a decent living in the sovereignties, selling those Qirsi-made goods that wealthy Eandi often coveted-wooden boxes from the Berylline Forest, silverwork from the I'Prael, wines from the H'Bel. But he hadn't gotten rich as a peddler; he hadn't even tried. He journeyed the land, he spent his evenings sitting around a fire with other Qirsi peddlers, trading stories, drinking good wine, and laughing. Occasionally he found a woman with whom to pass the night. All in all, his was a good life.
But though he never once had regretted his decision to leave the Nid'Qir, neither had he become one of those Qirsi who forgets who and what he is. Ile wielded two of the deeper magics language of beasts and shaping-and in all the years he had spent among the Eandi, he hadn't ever shared a bed with a dark-eye woman. Ile had some Eandi friends and had come to respect many of the merchants he dealt with in the sovereignties. But his blood ran Qirsi.
A few turns before he had encountered on the plain a Qirsi couple and their young daughter who had come to this land from the Forelands. They had been on their way to Fal'Borna land and had come upon R'Shev and his friends on a stormy night, having been refused a room in an Eandi inn in Bred's Landing. R'Shev hadn't seen the man or woman since, but he thought of them occasionally, hoping that they had found a home among one of the clans.
Often when he thought of the young family he reflected on what a shock it had been to them to be treated so poorly by the Eandi of Stelpana. From all R'Shev had heard, the Forelands had seen its share of trouble between the races in recent years. Yet, apparently even their experience with the Eandi of the north had not prepared the man and woman for the hostility directed at them in Bred's Landing. All this made R'Shev wonder if the Eandi were worse here, or if the divide between the races was just wider and deeper in the Southlands. He knew for sure that there was nothing in the history of the Forelands to match the intensity, bitterness, and duration of the Blood Wars.
Whatever the reason, and notwithstanding the fact that he took gold from an Eandi as readily as he did from a Qirsi, there could be no doubt that R'Shev would never fully trust the people of the sovereignties. And he long had vowed that if ever war returned to the Southlands, he would leave the sovereignties immediately and do all that he could to aid his people.
That was why he now found himself steering his cart toward the Silverwater Wash and Fal'Borna land.
He'd been in Kirayde, trading with the Mettai-not something many merchants were doing these days, with rumors of cursed Mettai baskets scaring everyone so. But the pestilence, it seemed, had moved off to the west, having devastated the Y'Qatt settlements near the Companion Lakes, and since there'd been no reports of the disease striking east of the Silver-water, he assumed that it would be safe. Since many were avoiding the Mettai now, he had thought to find a few bargains and sell some of his goods. The Mettai were wary of him at first, as they often were of strange Qirsi, but by morning's end he'd managed to make some sales.
When he first saw the three Eandi riders he thought little of it. True, they were all wearing the blue and green uniforms of Stelpana's military, but that hardly seemed unusual. This might have been a Mettai village, but the sorcerers lived under the authority of Stelpana's sovereign. Still, he watched with interest as they spoke to the village's eldest, who seemed unnerved by their presence here.
An older man who had been looking at some silver blades from the I'Prael had paused over R'Shev's wares to watch the exchange as well.
"Do you know who they are?" R'Shev asked him.
The man looked at him and shook his head. "No idea," he said. "But the older one's a man of some importance. Got an army with him that could ring the entire village."
"What?" R'Shev said, not quite believing it.
"'S true," the man told him. "You can look yourself. They're waiting on these three, just outside the village." He stooped and picked up one of the blades. "How much for this one?"
"Five sovereigns."
The man frowned and shook his head. "Too much." But he didn't put the blade back on the blanket.
"That's the price, my friend," R'Shev said, still watching the soldiers and the eldest out of the corner of his eye.
The man stared at the dagger, twisting his mouth.
Abruptly, the eldest turned away from the strangers and hurried down the lane out of the marketplace. The soldiers didn't follow, and a moment later they left in the opposite direction.
"I'll give you three and a half," the man said.
R'Shev looked at him. "The blade is silver, mined and forged by the I'Prael themselves. The hilt is black crystal, also from the I'Prael. If you don't want it, don't buy it. But if you want it, the price is five."
The Mettai man didn't look pleased, but after a moment he dug into his pocket and pulled out five sovereigns. Then he walked away, muttering to himself about white-hair merchants and their high prices.
R'Shev made a few more deals as the day went on, but mostly he sat on his cart wondering what an army so large would be doing so far north this close to the Snows. Late in the day, just as he was thinking it was time to pack up his cart, he spotted the eldest again, making his way through the marketplace. After a moment's hesitation, R'Shev called to him.
The man paused, checking the position of the sun in the sky before approaching R'Shev's cart. The eldest was a burly man, a smith or a wheelright by the look of him, with dark eyes and steel grey hair. He had a kind face, and he smiled as he stopped in front of R'Shev, though there was a troubled look in his eyes.
R'Shev stood to greet him.
"What can I do for you, friend?" the eldest asked. "I hope business has been good today."
"It has been. Thank you, Eldest. But I was curious about those soldiers I saw you talking to earlier."
The eldest's smile vanished. "What about them?"
"I heard someone say they were leading an army. Is that true?"
He exhaled, then nodded. "Yes, it's true. It looked to be a large force. Ne
arly two thousand men, I'd say."
R'Shev shivered, though he wasn't cold. "Two thousand? Do you know what they're doing here?"
The eldest didn't answer at first. He looked down at the ground and kicked at the dirt with his foot. Finally, he looked R'Shev in the eye again. "I'm not sure I should say. I could… Stelpana's sovereigns have allowed us to remain here for generations, but they've never been happy about it."
"Did they threaten you?" R'Shev asked.
The eldest smiled wanly, though only for an instant. "No, nothing like that." He started to say something, stopped himself, licked his lips. "You might want to consider whether you wouldn't be better off west of the Silverwater," he finally said.
"West of the…" R'Shev stared at the man. "There's a war corning, then."
"I… I shouldn't be saying any of this, but after all that's happened.. He broke off again, shaking his head. "The Mettai have never had any dispute with either the clans or the sovereignties. I told him that-the marshal, I mean. But there may be others in my position who feel differently."
R'Shev frowned. "I don't understand."
The eldest shook his head again. "I know. The point is, it isn't safe for you here anymore. Or at least it won't be for long."
"Are you ordering me to leave your village, Eldest?"
The man shook his head, a pained expression on his face. "I'm urging you, as a friend, to leave Stelpana while you still can."
R'Shev nodded slowly, trying to make sense of what the man was telling him. "All right, Eldest. Thank you."
"I'm sorry," the eldest said. He hesitated again before turning and walking away, his shoulders hunched.
R'Shev began to pack up his wares, all the while thinking about what the eldest had said. Clearly those soldiers had been marching to war, which was alarming enough considering the Southlands' history. But he thought there was more to the man's words than just the obvious. He'd been trying to tell R'Shev something, and he'd been too circumspect-or R'Shev had been too dense-for the message to get through.