Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 3

by Joel Shepherd

  “You blame us for their rise?” Alfriedo interrupted, his high voice quavering.

  “I’m a military strategist, primarily,” said Kessligh. “To every act on the battlefield, there is a response. As general, I am responsible for my enemy’s actions too, for everything I do, my opponent will counter. A clever general can use this to manipulate his enemy. Do you wish to be a clever general, Alfriedo? Or merely a boy protesting that his opponent did not play by the rules?”

  Alfriedo did not reply. His thin shoulders heaved in the silence, as he struggled for calm.

  “Your mother had groomed you to rule,” said Kessligh, leaning more closely. “Had proclaimed that yours is the birthright of kings. To rule, you must be a general, and accept that nothing is beyond your control. Some in Lenayin call me the greatest swordsman of that land, and think it a gift granted by the gods or spirits. But in truth, I achieved this merely because I refused to accept that my opponent could best me. I controlled the battle, not him. And if he killed me, it would be my failure, not his success.

  “Do not take your losses and griefs as insults inflicted by others, young Alfriedo. If you were truly born to rule, you would accept them as failings of your own, and resolve to learn better.”

  Alfriedo gazed at him for a long moment. Kessligh wondered if he had indeed judged the boy rightly, or if this would only push him over the edge.

  “You do not believe in the rule of kings,” Alfriedo observed finally. “How do you then claim to know so much of their kind?”

  “It is because I know so much of their kind that I do not believe in them. And I speak not merely of kings, but of men. Of leaders of all stripes. A true leader knows that knowledge and wisdom are all, but wisdom tells that not all men possess it. Thus, it would be folly to leave the ruling of lands entirely to kings.”

  “Even should that king be you?”

  “Suppose it was,” said Kessligh. “Suppose I ruled well. But who would follow?”

  “My mother ruled well,” Alfriedo said stubbornly. “As did my ancestors, when Rhodaan was a true kingdom. I would follow.”

  “Your ancestors were murderers, thieves and tyrants,” said Kessligh. “The serrin document it well. If you wished I have no doubt they would lend you many writings that say so, writings by reliable humans of the period, not merely by serrin. Your mother attempted to steal the Rhodaani people’s voice in Council from under their noses. She bred hatred among the common folk, and destabilised Rhodaan so that Saalshen felt it had no choice but to step in. She is now dead, you are orphaned, there is blood all over the Justiciary steps, the grand institutions of Rhodaan that have served so well for two centuries are in turmoil, and the Steel is less well prepared for the greatest challenge of its existence than it should be.

  “I have hope that you may lead your people well,ng Alfriedo. But have no illusions that should you do so, you would be the first.”

  There was a bristling of anger in the kitchen, but this time, no outbursts. Alfriedo remained silent for a moment. Then he looked at Rhillian.

  “Our differences remain,” he said to her, “yet our greatest threat is a common one, and marches upon our border from the west. I will make a pledge with you, Lady Rhillian, that all who follow me shall refrain from any violent acts against serrin, Nasi-Keth, or any institution of Rhodaan that we may consider moved against us. In return, you shall allow the Blackboots to re-form, and reinstate all senior city officials dismissed from their institutions. That includes the Council and their councillors, of course. Those who are still alive.”

  “I accept your truce offer,” Rhillian said calmly, “and I return it. The Blackboots shall be re-formed with no penalties to those who cast off uniforms and fought in militia. Any who committed crimes against innocents, however, may be brought to justice should witnesses come forward.”

  “The only innocents against whom crimes were committed were our women and children at the hands of Civid Sein thugs!” came a snarl from behind. Alfriedo, Rhillian and Kessligh ignored it.

  “We will discuss the reinstatement of city officials,” Rhillian continued. “Some, you may recall, have been implicated in treason. Trials for such matters can obviously wait until after the war in the west is resolved, but we must come to an agreement on interim appointees in the meantime.”

  “Agreed,” said Alfriedo, frowning in thought. “How?”

  “A sitting of the High Table,” said Rhillian. “But first, we must resolve the High Table and Council. At our count, we have lost seven of our hundred councillors dead, with another three unaccounted for. Of those absent ten, six are known to be feudalists.”

  “We count six and five,” came the first helpful interjection from behind.

  “We shall compare our names and numbers later,” said Alfriedo. “These people must be replaced before Council sits. I believe two of the missing are on the High Table.”

  “Indeed. This shall be our first order of business, but there are others on both sides who should attend such discussions. We must agree on a location for a meeting tomorrow, and on who should attend. Once we have made those appointments, we can have the High Table sit, and begin deciding which city officials should be reinstated, and which should be replaced. Agreed?”

  “Yes,” said Alfriedo. “Let’s begin.”

  “That’s a damn smart kid,” Kessligh remarked as they walked up from the docks some time later, in the company of their Nasi-Keth guards.

  “He is,” Rhillian said sombrely. “But intelligence is guarantee of nothing. He is still his mother’s son.”

  “We shall see.”

  “And they’re all fools to trust a fourteen-year-old to do their negotiating anyway, no matter how smart,” Rhillian sighed. >

  “Human ideals die hard,” said Kessligh. “Logic plays little role.”

  “Do you think it will hold?” Rhillian asked him. The truce, she meant.

  “We can try. The strength of the Steel is a great blessing, but a minor curse too. No one has taken seriously the prospect that they might actually lose. And so, even confronted by a common threat as immense as this one, it fails to unite Rhodaanis in its face.”

  “I must soon leave,” said Rhillian. “I am ordering the last significant force of talmaad in Tracato to go in support of the Steel, they shall need all the help they can get.”

  “Must you command them?”

  “I have experience,” said Rhillian. “It is expected.”

  “If the Steel are defeated,” said Kessligh, “all Rhodaani forces as can muster should depart for Enora immediately. We must continue the fight from there.”

  “You think a defeat is likely?”

  “Not likely. But where the Army of Lenayin is in play, anything is possible. I am stuck here in Tracato, so I have nothing better to do than make contingencies. The Steel is vastly experienced, but the one thing they have never experienced is defeat. I do not think it shall be pretty. They are a complex, structured force, and rely upon total control of the battlefield to maintain that structure. In defeat and withdrawal, that structure shall disappear and will be nearly impossible to regain, in the face of what numbers are arrayed against them. I predict either victory or rout. In the event of a rout, the Steel’s commanders shall march as fast as possible to Enora. Retreating to Tracato shall make no sense, it would be just asking for encirclement.”

  “And given the Steel’s strength, Tracato has allowed its own defensive walls to fall into disrepair, and the city to expand well beyond them.”

  “You see the problem. The border is defensible. Tracato is not.”

  “And Saalshen’s border shall be open to its enemies for the first time in two hundred years.”

  There was fear in Rhillian’s voice. Rhodaan’s people too would be at great risk of the predations of invading Larosans, but Kessligh did not think her fear selfish. Rhodaanis were human, and invaders would expect to return them to the status of vassals beneath a feudal overlord. Serrin, to the Larosans and others, were d
emons and deserved death to the last child.

  “They must deal with the entire Saalshen Bacosh before attempting Saalshen itself,” said Kessligh, with more confidence than he felt. “That will be no easy thing, even if Rhodaan were to fall.”

  “But they’ll never have so many forces mustered for the task as now,” Rhillian said quietly. “They’ll not waste the opportunity, no matter what their casualties. They’ll take the plains as far as the Telesil foothills, as Leyvaan did last time, only they won’t repeat his mistake and march into the forests. Those they’ll take piece by piece, clearing with axes as they go. It may take decades, but Saalshen will die a slow death. We cannot defeat such massed armour on our own.”

  If only, Kessligh was tempted to say, Saalshen had built heavy, armoured armies of its own. If only they had been willing to reorganise their society to accommodate such a militaristic change. With serrin, “if only” solved nothing. They were what they were, and change came to them with the utmost difficulty. And perhaps, he had often pondered, in changing to face such a threat, the serrin would lose that very thing that made them so worth defending in the first place.

  “I tried my best,” Rhillian said, her voice small. “I tried to keep Rhodaan stable. I do not have a good record of achieving in human society that which I attempt to achieve, but…but I do not see what else I could have done.”

  For a moment, Rhillian appeared as Kessligh had rarely seen her—lonely and vulnerable.

  “I do not believe you could have done much differently,” Kessligh told her. “Lady Renine and her followers saw the coming war as a chance to retake control of Rhodaan for the feudalists. To place one’s own group above the defence of all Rhodaan is traitorous to say the least, and she got what she deserved. Had you done nothing, the Steel would never have stood for it, and their intervention would likely have placed some general in charge with a far less balanced attitude than yours. The Civid Sein were a nasty complication, and as much a failing of the Tol’rhen and supposedly civilised thinking as anything else. Even I did not see the extent of that problem until it was on top of us. You dealt with each problem in turn, and released the Steel in time to confront the Larosans, with the issue at least temporarily settled. I don’t think you did such a bad job.”

  Rhillian gave him a sideways look. “And what do you think to do now?”

  “Reorganise what’s left of the Nasi-Keth. Try to keep the peace here in your absence. Hope for the best, and plan for the worst. We shall not let Saalshen fall, Rhillian. Serrin civilisation is the greatest asset that we humans possess. We must save it for our own sake, not merely for yours.”

  “A man named Deani was of the same opinion in Petrodor,” Rhillian said sadly. “He was killed when Palopy House was attacked. Justice Sinidane thought much the same. We found him in the cells beneath his Justiciary, tortured and dead of shock. Those who hold such opinions do not live for long, in human lands. And now one of you whom I have loved has run away to the other side.”

  “Sasha has not stopped caring,” Kessligh said quietly. “She cares too much. She struggles to decide whom she loves more.”

  Sasha sat on a wet stone by the roadside, and waited in the rain. After a while, she heard a single set of hooves approaching. Then, about a bend in the road, a small horse came galloping, ridden by a man in a long cloak. Sasha’s horse looked up at the approach, ears pricked. She seemed to accept Sasha’s calm, and was not unduly alarmed.

  The small horse stopped before her, stamping and frothing, and the rider pushed wet hair and hood from his eyes. The left side of his face was tattooed, in a perfect dividing line down brow, nose and chin.

  “I am as welcome here as you,” Sasha replied in Lenay, and pulled from her cloak a crimson-and-yellow striped flag. It was the flag of the local House of Neishure, whose riders had escorted her to this point in the morning, proclaiming it the most obvious route to approach Rhodaan.

  The outrider stared at her more closely. “Who are you? Have you a name?”

  “I do,” said Sasha. “But it is not for you.”

  “The King of Lenayin rides this way!” snapped the rider. His accent marked him a southerner. Neysh, perhaps. “I’ll have your name!”

  “Come and take it from me,” Sasha suggested. Her face remained hidden beneath the hood. The rider peered further, his horse edging closer. Surely he suspected. But his suspicions would make no sense. He glared at her, and tore off up the crossroad, leaving Sasha alone in the falling rain. After a moment of silence, he came galloping back, having checked that reach and not found an ambush. He waited opposite her, looking back up the road. Soon another rider appeared and the first signalled to him. That man signalled back, plunged his horse into the stream, up the far embankment, and into the forest. Checking for ambush there, too. In case she were a lone spotter. Or a distraction of some kind. Or a lure.

  Sasha waited. Two more riders came galloping, and talked to the first, who pointed to Sasha, and the crossroad, his words inaudible. Then he galloped on, and the remaining two split, one up the crossroad, the other across the stream and into the forest at Sasha’s back. Again, she was alone.

  After a long while, the rain eased to a drizzle. More riders arrived, and she was similarly challenged. She gave them no more than she had the others. One seemed about to take it further, but another persuaded him otherwise, in furious whispers. They galloped on, save one, who retreated as far as the approaching bend, and awaited the column.

  Finally, there came the sound of many soft hooves, horses walking. But many horses. A chink and rattle of armour and equipment, and a squeal of leather. The sound hung in the air long past the moment when it seemed that surely the vanguard would appear about the bend.

  At last, the vanguard’s banners appeared, colours of royalty, of Lenayin, and of each of the eleven Lenay provinces. There was a Verenthane star, too, mounted on a pole. Sasha frowned, and thought dark thoughts. The vanguard soldiers were of the provincial companies, Lenayin’s most well equipped soldiers, riding tall on fine horses. Unusually, she saw they all carried shields. Some things, it seemed, were changing.

  Behind the vanguard rode a contingent of Royal Guard, resplendent in red and gold. The nobility followed, many wearing fine, unfamiliar cloaks over Lenay armour and leathers. The outrider who had waited back now singled out one man from the group, riding alongside while pointing ahead. As the vanguard passed, that man came off the road and stopped before Sasha, several Royal Guards and lords at his back.

  The lead rider came before them all, upon a great, roan warhorse. Broad, powerful, and oh-so-familiar. “Do you await anyone in particular?” asked her brother Prince Koenyg with amusement. The lords behind him laughed.

  “I don’t know,” Sasha replied. “Are you anyone in particular?”

  Koenyg frowned, and opened his mouth to retort. Then paused. And stared. “Is it…?” He edged his warhorse forward several more steps, peering closely.

  “Easy Your Highness!” called one of the Royal Guardsmen. “It could be assassins!”

  “Sasha?” Koenyg whispered. “Is that Sasha?” Slowly, achingly, Sasha slid off her rock, and pulled back her hood. And looked up at her brother.

  Koenyg swung down from his saddle in such a hurry that Sasha’s hand twitched toward the blade within her cloak. But Koenyg made no move for his weapon, strode forward and embraced her. The pain of it nearly made her scream. Koenyg seemed to realise something was wrong, and released her.

  “Sasha? Are you hurt?”

  “A few cuts,” she gasped, and swallowed hard. “Flesh wounds. I’m fine.”

  He seemed about to ask further but stopped. And to Sasha’s further astonishment, he cupped her face in his hands. “Sister,” he said, smiling. “You came back to us! All of Lenayin is united in this quest for the first time in history! This is a great time for healing old wounds, and building a new Lenayin. I’m so pleased you’re here. So pleased.”

  He kissed her on the forehead. Sasha was too stunned
to speak. She had not expected this at all. Koenyg seemed as she had only rarely seen him before—happy, and content with the world. Riding off to war, at the head of a united Army of Lenayin. It began to come clear in Sasha’s head, precisely what Koenyg saw in this whole adventure. An opportunity to meld together all the fractious regions and beliefs of Lenayin by the only forge all Lenays would respect—the fire of battle. She did not like his methods, but she had to admit, it was certainly a plan. Perhaps it would even work.

  “Where is Kessligh?” Koenyg pressed. “I heard that you and he fought to defend Dockside in the War of the King. You must tell me your tales. It’s rare that a sibling should have grander tales of battle to tell than I. And I heard that Alythia had joined you after House Halmady fell…. I suppose you’ve been in Tracato, yes?”

  There were more riders passing by, looking curiously to see this dismounted gathering by the roadside. She could hear exclamations, and men calling to others. Soon the news would spread along the column like fire through grass.

  Before she could answer Koenyg, more horses arrived and riders leaped off. Damon pressed through those surrounding, and Myklas. Koenyg had to tackle them to restrain them from smothering her. “She’s hurt you fools! Be gentle!”

  Damon pushed his elder brother away, fighting off an idiot grin. “Sasha, are you…?”

  “I’m all right,” she said, with tears in her eyes. She hugged him, and he replied with gentle pressure. Then Myklas, whose idiot grin was unrestrained. “You’ve grown,” Sasha observed.

  “You’ve shrunk,” Myklas retorted, and kissed her roughly.

  ȜSasha, where have you been?” Damon asked. “Was it Tracato?”