Haven atobas-4

by Joel Shepherd

  Nearing the mouth of the valley, she got her first good look at Jahnd. It rose up the rounded promontory in a slope that seemed as steep as Petrodor's, an amazing bristle of detail, clustered rooftops, and spires. Yet even from this distance she could see the wealth of its buildings, with none of Petrodor's crumbling decay. About the base of the slope, great walls loomed, arcing out of sight about the front of the promontory. But well before those walls, the city sprawled away from the slope and out across the valley floor to the river and across.

  Approaching that sprawl now, they crossed open fields and yards filled with cattle and sheep. And here, astride the approach road, waited a small welcoming party.

  Sasha recognised Kessligh immediately. Yells sounded out across the Steel column behind, and trumpets blared. Colours went up, a great unfurling of flags and pennants. Sasha's new horse had been selected from the Remischtuul stable, a young stallion who reminded her a little of her beloved Peg, in build if not in unremarkable chestnut colour. Clearly he'd been trained for display, for now with the flags and trumpets, he tossed his head and pranced a little. And was disappointed, for Sasha's style was not to prance, and she made him stop.

  She let an officer call the halt, and rode forward to greet Kessligh on her own. He looked good, perhaps a little more weathered than usual, but mostly from squinting into a lowlands summer sun on horseback. His companions included several lads from Tracato's Tol'rhen whom she recognised, and some well-dressed city men she didn't.

  His expression as he looked her up and down was quizzical. Sasha nearly grinned. “You brought the Steel, I see,” he remarked.

  Sasha shrugged offhandedly. “Oh you know. Just those I could find.” Kessligh's look held a good-humoured reprimand. “Seventeen thousand,” she answered his unasked question. “I'm told there could be another two or three thousand trailing. Three-and-a-half thousand cavalry, the rest infantry. Almost no artillery, just a few wagons of ballistas; the Ilduuri don't use them much in the mountains.”

  She could see Kessligh doing fast calculations. “It's good,” he told her. Which meant that it was unlikely to be anywhere near enough, but he was pleased anyhow. “All three Steel armies combined will give us about thirty-five thousand. Lenayin brings us closer to fifty, then there's all the talmaad. Our defensive position is strong.”

  Sasha frowned. “They can't have more than one hundred and fifty-if their advantage is only three to one, our position should be good enough. What's the problem?”

  “They have artillery now. Quite a bit of it, captured in Rhodaan and Enora.”

  Sasha looked at his grim expression, and her heart sank.

  “The Ilduuris. They follow you?” Kessligh asked.

  Sasha nodded. “My rank is general. Honorary, yet real enough.”

  Kessligh's smile was pure pride. And nothing at all of surprise. “Finally the world comes to see what I first saw,” he said.

  Sasha smiled, edged her horse alongside, and embraced him, one soldier to another. From behind, the Ilduuri Steel gave a cheer. To them, Kessligh Cronenverdt was a legend. They had been following his pupil until now, perhaps his successor. Now the legend commanded them too. Sasha thought that in their cheer, she could hear some relief that they had not chosen unwisely.

  Kessligh introduced her to Tallam, a council leader of the city of Jahnd. Together, the three of them led the way into the city outskirts, Sasha in the middle so that she could benefit from their conversation.

  “The walls are more than five hundred years old,” said Tallam, a strong-looking man of middle age, balding but long-haired at the back. He wore the colourful shirt of a townsman, yet underneath was mail, and he had a sword at his hip. “We've kept them in good condition, but as you see, the town now abuts directly against them.”

  “Buildings will need to be demolished to give archers a clear field of fire,” said Kessligh. “But some townsfolk resist.”

  Sasha did not even bother with exasperation, it was too predictable. “Five hundred years,” she pondered instead, gazing at the walls above the encroaching rooftops and cheering crowds. “How old is Jahnd?”

  “Serrin records place the first settlers here at the year eleven hundred before Saint Tristen,” said Tallam.

  Eleven hundred years before the Verenthane faith, that was. “Seventeen hundred years?” It was an extraordinary number. Many Verenthanes claimed it had not been that long since the gods had made the world.

  “They were small settlements in those days; freehold farmers scattered across these valleys and hills. Serrin still lived upon the western side of the Ipshaal, on what is today the Bacosh. Humans and serrin were intermingled for a long time, and living quite peaceably together, to read the serrin records. But humans became stronger, and drove the serrin back across the Ipshaal, thus forcing the serrin to become more organised for the first time.

  “Some humans of the Bacosh saw human settlement on this side of the Ipshaal as an invitation to claim these lands also for humans, but this time the serrin fought back, and evicted from these lands all humans who had helped in the invasion. But the humans living in these valleys had always been friendly to serrin, and were allowed to stay. As feudalism gained strength in the Bacosh, and then the Verenthane faith, there came more and more wars; peasants and persecuted peoples escaped across the Ipshaal, and were directed by serrin to settle here. The first truly great wave was during the Wars of Five Kings-those people feared pursuit by their former masters into Saalshen, and so built the walls.”

  “The Wars of Five Kings,” Sasha murmured, recalling an old history lesson. The dates fit. She lost sight of the walls momentarily as taller buildings intervened, an upper-floor window crowded with cheering Jahndis.

  “But the pursuit never came,” Tallam continued. “Saalshen's talmaad grew strongest in that period. Over the centuries we have built a city that sprawls far beyond the city walls.”

  “How many people, do you think?” Sasha asked.

  “At last reliable count, nearly a hundred thousand,” said Tallam. Sasha whistled. Barely a fifth the size of Petrodor, she thought. Perhaps a little less than Tracato. Baen-Tar, capital of Lenayin, had barely eight thousand, or so people said. Being in the lowlands for this long had taught her to think differently on the scale of human civilisations.

  “I don't suppose you've taught all of them to fight?” Sasha asked wryly.

  “Some,” said Tallam. “But understand that we are guests in Saalshen, and do not take any measures that may offend serrin sensibilities. Serrin have argued for centuries whether it is a good idea to nurture such a large human city in their midst. We are required to keep records on every resident, to ensure that our one hundred thousand does not become two hundred, then five hundred.

  “So, naturally, they do not like us to have a large army, and become involved in affairs across the Ipshaal. We stay secluded, so that we do not draw other humans into the affairs of Saalshen, and give them excuse to attack the serrin.”

  “A nice hope while it lasted,” Kessligh remarked. “But like all vain hopes, likely to achieve the opposite effect to that intended, only at a later date.”

  It was an attractive city, Sasha thought. In the Bacosh, this sprawl of settlement about the defensive walls might be little more than a slum of peasants and landless, huddled close to a castle for protection and refuse scraps. But in Jahnd, these people seemed prosperous. Buildings here were low, more like the simple timber and wood structures of a Lenay town, yet everywhere were workshop yards and storage lots. She saw inns with stables, an ironmonger about a great chimney, and a leather-tanning yard nearer the river. There were butchers, millers, and bakers, and, here on the right beneath some shade trees, an entire courtyard for the sale of spun cloth.

  They came upon a great dedicated stables, this one for wagon horses, its yard filled with more wagons than Sasha had ever seen in a single place. The smell of many horses was thick in the air.

  “Jahnd does a lot of trade,” she observed.
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br />   “No more than Petrodor, on a person-to-person basis,” said Kessligh. “It's the quality of what is traded that sets Jahnd apart. There are craftsmen here who make the finest produce of Petrodor look like cheap junk.”

  Sasha left the army to make camp in the main valley beyond the city outskirts, as there were no accommodations anywhere for so many soldiers. Yet she first sent officers scurrying to arrange good food, and with instructions to allow them all leave in shifts, to explore the city they were to defend. And it occurred to her that probably the reason why everyone in Jahnd looked so busy was that they were flat out providing for an army that now totalled half the city population.

  She made her way with Kessligh, Tallam, and the command vanguard beneath a great arch in the city's walls, and up the main road of Jahnd. It climbed the steep hill face in a huge, curving zigzag, and here the buildings did stand tall and grand. Sasha had never seen such buildings. They were no grander than in Tracato, perhaps, yet the architecture! There were spires and odd-shaped minarets, great overlooking balconies and enormous windows. There seemed no consistent style, as though the city were the work of a thousand wild imaginations, with no single identity. Small roads climbed or descended the slope off this main road, very much like Petrodor, often breaking into stairways where the road became steep. And to the left now as they climbed, there was the view.

  “That's the Dhemerhill Valley,” said Kessligh. “The small valley you came up is the Ilmerhill Valley. The Ilmerhill is just a small tributary into the Dhemerhill, and the Dhemerhill just another tributary into the Ipshaal. If you look behind, you can see the Ipshaal from here.”

  Sasha turned in her saddle to look back. Down at the valley's end, amongst rolling hills, she could glimpse the wide expanse of water, glinting beneath overcast skies. Not far by horse.

  Across the Dhemerhill Valley were hills. Kessligh saw her looking. “Almerhill Hills,” he said. “The tongue is Enoran, like the first settlers here who named everything.”

  “They don't look steep enough,” Sasha said grimly.

  Kessligh shook his head. “Dhemerhill gives them a narrow approach, but the Almerhill Hills are not sufficiently steep to really box them in. They can deploy formations for depth up that slope if they choose.”

  “Cavalry,” said Sasha. “Wonderful place for a cavalry reserve, should we have need to charge into them.”

  She thought it sad that she had arrived in such an interesting place, yet had no time to admire it. Her primary interests now were hills, approaches, and natural lines of defence. Already she itched to ride into the valley and seek out all the lines of sight, so that she would know what an enemy would see from that vantage, and how he might be inclined to deploy.

  But first, she needed a high view.

  Windy Point provided it. Here was the best vantage in Jahnd, directly on the tip of the promontory, and high. Parts of the city rose higher, yet Windy Point was central, the natural point of command for the battle to come.

  Sasha leaned on a stone balustrade, and gazed across the valleys. She could see straight down Dhemerhill Valley to the Ipshaal beyond. Upon her left was the Ilmerhill Valley, smaller and narrower, its mouth almost entirely consumed by Jahnd's sprawling settlements. To the right, the Dhemerhill Valley continued into the depths of Saalshen. Only it turned slightly, and widened, creating open fields upon the promontory's right flank. Beyond Jahnd's walls rose several higher peaks, upon which buildings clustered. Worse, the hills leading down from those peaks were more gentle, and she could see a number of roads continuing down into the valley from those heights. It wasn't nearly steep enough on that side to stop determined infantry or cavalry. Or even artillery, she feared. Upon the open valley floor to that side was a small village, nestled against the Dhemerhill River.

  “We have a right-flank problem,” Sasha observed, as Steel officers, city officials, and talmaad stood about and looked for themselves, not standing quite so close as to obscure Sasha's view.

  Kessligh nodded. “We'll be defending on two fronts. One force will come up the Dhemerhill from ahead, the other will make its way around to the right flank.”

  “There's a road that allows this?”

  “Yes, northward.” He pointed, across the Almerhill Hills. “A wide road, well known to all.”

  “We could block it,” Sasha suggested.

  “Balthaar's becoming wise to our ambushes.”

  “Your ambushes.”

  Kessligh shrugged. “If we send a force to block that road, I'm not sure we could kill more than one-and-a-half for every one we lose. He'll be leading with cavalry, either heavy Larosans, or perhaps even Lenays.”

  “Koenyg,” Sasha muttered.

  Kessligh nodded. “The logical way to clear a road, and travel a longer distance than the main army. If we can't kill them at three to one or better, it's not worth the cost. They'll outnumber us by that many or more, so anything less than that is a win for them.”

  “And we won't stop them achieving their objective anyhow,” Sasha concluded. She pointed into the valley. “What is that town on the river?”

  “Haller.”

  “We can't stop them gaining it, but we should make them pay for it. They need it badly; it controls the approaches up our right flank. If we have artillery for cover on these hills over here…” and she pointed to the peaks on that side beyond the walls, “…we can give protection to anyone defending Haller.”

  “You're not thinking widely enough,” said Kessligh. “They'll come down the Dhemerhill from the east in a full force of cavalry. That's where we'll defend from, one long cavalry line, falling back all the way to Jahnd.”

  “So you'll be using talmaad to shoot at any pursuing force?”

  “And I have just the man to command them.”

  That tore Sasha's gaze away from the troublesome right flank for a moment. “He's here?” she asked.

  “Out scouting,” said Kessligh. “He told me you'd either have all of Ilduur in flames by now, or the entire Ilduuri Steel would come marching out of the mountains with you at their head.”

  Sasha smiled faintly. “He knows me well.”

  “He's also the best battlefield commander the talmaad have,” Kessligh added. He glanced around, but Rhillian was in conversation with some officers. “His strangeness from other serrin gives him a creative and a brutal streak. Will Rhillian object?”

  Sasha shook her head. “You know serrin, very little ego. If I were to decide who should rule Saalshen, I'd put Errollyn in command of its armies, and Rhillian in command overall. She has the long vision, but Errollyn is better equipped to solve the problem before his nose. I think it should be so here as well.”

  “So,” said Kessligh, “I have overall command. You have the Ilduuris. Errollyn has the talmaad.”

  “And Damon has Lenayin,” Sasha said comfortably. And smiled. “How can we lose?” Kessligh did not agree. Sasha's smile faded. “What's wrong? Something with Damon?”

  She'd barely made it to her quarters in the Great City Hall when she was accosted by Great Lords Ackryd of Taneryn and Markan of Isfayen. She exchanged warriorlike embraces with each, as she considered both friends, and received a particularly ferocious one from Markan.

  “My sister brings you back safe, I see,” he observed, releasing her.

  “Yasmyn was magnificent,” said Sasha, as servants carried her saddlebags into the enormous bed chambers. “She learns svaalverd. I admit I thought her too old to start learning, but she knows much from knifework already, and her skills are good.”

  “Ha!” laughed Ackryd. “If she learns svaalverd well, even her brother may not be able to best her soon!”

  “Unlikely,” said Markan. “We come to talk of Prince Damon.”

  “What about Damon?” Sasha asked cautiously, walking over to consider the view from her massive windows. It was extraordinary, looking clear down the valley to the Ipshaal.

  “He is a good commander,” said Markan. “Competent. You are better.”
r />   “And more respected,” added Ackryd.

  “Most of what men follow in me is more legend than fact,” Sasha replied. “I am good, but command of armies is not like swordwork. I doubt I am better than Damon.”

  “Your results have been more extraordinary.”

  “Men will follow you,” Ackryd insisted.

  “Men will follow Damon,” Sasha retorted, with a sideways stare. “What's the difference?” Ackryd looked frustrated. “Besides, I command the Ilduuri Steel. They trust me and only marched on the promise that I would command them. Lenayin already has a good commander-to abandon the Ilduuris so that you can fulfill this childish whim is stupid.”

  “You could command both,” said Markan.

  “You would be hard-pressed to find two forces more unalike than Lenayin and Ilduur,” Sasha snapped, feeling her temper slipping. “Combining them would be folly. What is this really about?”

  “It is about gaining the best commander for Lenayin at the most important time,” Ackryd insisted.

  “Don't you be dishonest with me,” Sasha accused him, stepping forward to stare up at him. So good she'd become at holding her temper, compared to the past. Amongst foreigners, temper was not always useful. But now she was amongst Lenays once more, and Lenays expected fire. “I'm not some foolish girl to be lied to.”

  “There is talk that you should be queen,” said Markan, blunt and unafraid as ever. “Men would prefer it.”

  Sasha swore, a string of very bad words even by Lenay standards. She strode back to the window and stared out, trying to calm herself. “Damon will be king, when Koenyg is defeated,” she said.

  “As he will be,” said Markan. “No one is speaking of replacing Koenyg now; the battle to come shall decide the rightness of any change of kings. But this is the question. Battle shall decide which Lenay side in this conflict shall inherit the Lenay throne, and that is good. But battle shall not decide the order of its claimants. On our enemies' side, Koenyg is first and undisputed over Myklas. But on this side, there is no such certainty.”