Tracato: A Trial of Blood and Steel, Book 3

by Joel Shepherd

  “Aye. Kessligh’s still there.”

  “And Alythia?”

  “How did she cope living as a pauper on Dockside for half a year?” Myklas asked joyfully. “I would have given anything to see that!” Koenyg cuffed him on the head.

  Sasha looked at the sodden grass. She’d almost been hoping for a frosty reception, she realised. From Koenyg at least. Now, they were all together, and almost a family, for the first time in…spirits, she couldn’t think of when. She wanted to enjoy it. Wanted to talk with her brothers and tell all her tales, and listen to theirs, and laugh, and eat and perhaps even down a cup of wine in their presence, where no priest would see her. But it had to be done. It was a duty of blood, that she be here. That they hear it from her own mouth.

  “Alythia’s dead,” she said softly. “I saw the body.” For a moment, there was no sound but the great passing of the column. Koenyg looked pale. Damon, aghast. Myklas, disbelieving.

  “No!” Myklas insisted. Then he stamped in fury, his eyes spilling. “No! You’re wrong! She’s not dead!”

  Koenyg grabbed him, a hard immobilising arm about the younger man’s shoulders. Myklas tried to fight him off, but Damon grabbed him and Myklas collapsed against Damon’s shoulder, sobbing. Sasha’s own tears escaped her, and she was drawn into the four-sided embrace. Her brothers’ arms about her hurt, but that was well. Everything hurt. They grieved together, a small circle of pain by the roadside. And Sasha wondered what it said about her family that pain and war should unite them at last, where so little else had worked.

  The siblings took lunch in the same carriage that had carried Sofy from Baen-Tar to Sherdaine. It was a shameful thing for a Lenay prince to travel by carriage, but it was the only way all four could converse together without halting. The king rode further back in the column today. Word was travelling to him of Sasha’s arrival. Sasha did not look forward to that inevitable meeting.

  She told her brothers the story from the beginning. Her time in Petrodor, Kessligh’s struggles to unite the Nasi-Keth, her friendship with Rhillian, and the trials that followed. Then Tracato. Koenyg listened grimly to hear of the troubles there. Damon looked wearily resigned. And Myklas, completely impatient with any politics, wishing only to hear of Alythia’s end. When she finished, none of them spoke. The carriage wheels clattered and bounced on the road, jolting Sasha’s wounds. She’d felt altogether more comfortable in a saddle.

  “That is quite a tale,” Koenyg said finally. “You and I shall talk some more on affairs in Tracato, and Saalshen’s moves for power there. We shall talk on the Steel’s formations and tactics, also. But I must know…you say the Steel have left Tracato?”

  “Those formations that had been fighting in Elisse, yes,” said Sasha. “It has taken me ten days to get here. The Steel moves more slowly, but are remarkably fast for such a heavy formation. They are all in position now, I am certain.”

  “And the Enorans?” Koenyg pressed.

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  “I have not been in Enora, I could not say. But rumour was that the Enorans were quite unnerved by Tracato’s troubles. Some rumours suggested there may have been Enoran formations readying to march into Rhodaan to restore order, should the feudalists grasp control. But even if true, I suspect they too would be in position by now. You’re late.”

  “The Torovans are late,” Koenyg corrected. “And weddings between nations take an obscene amount of time. But it’s true, it would have been nice to get here a week earlier.”

  “And Ilduur?” Damon asked.

  “Ilduur is mountainous,” Sasha replied. “Most Rhodaanis don’t trust them, from feudals to Civid Sein. Ilduur has natural fortifications, there is no way through for any invading army, save through narrow passes that would be death against far lesser forces than the Ilduuri can muster. So the Ilduuri tend to sit in their mountain strongholds and wait. They are sworn by oath to defend their blood brothers of Enora and Rhodaan, but they show little enthusiasm for it. Their posture is defensive, and they will not launch a flanking thrust to threaten Enora’s attackers, as Enora will and has for Rhodaan.” She looked at Koenyg. “What’s the plan?”

  “It was to be a two-pronged attack, against Rhodaan and Enora. But this news of Tracato’s troubles continues to mount, I now think it would best be focused upon the Rhodaanis…if the Rhodaani Steel has been suffering some desertions, and some of their soldiers have been fighting in Elisse, Tracato, and now to the border, they’ll be tired, and perhaps disillusioned. A breakthrough against Rhodaan would seem more likely now than Enora.”

  It seemed very hopeful, but Sasha held her tongue. Any advantage against the Steel was a good thing. “So you’ll be thinking a feint against the Enorans?” she asked.

  “Perhaps a third of the total force. Or perhaps a quarter made to look like a third, if we think we can get away with it. Enough to hold the Enorans from a flanking sweep, and focus our maximum force upon the Rhodaanis.”

  “They’re not that strong, surely!” Myklas scoffed. “Rhodaan and Enora have maybe thirty thousand each, but even with Torovan understrength, we number a hundred and forty. There’s never been an army of this scale in all the history of Rhodia!”

  “You’ll need all of them,” Sasha told Koenyg, not bothering to answer her youngest brother. “Focusing strength is good. Even if successful, it will be a close run thing.”

  Koenyg nodded, not contesting her assessment. Sasha was relieved at least to see that he had a clear idea of what they were up against.

  Koenyg leaned forward, and looked her hard in the eyes. “Sasha. I will not lie to you. You are useful to me, and to this war. You have great standing amongst the central and eastern Goeren-yai, and many of them are still not too keen on the fight. Damon has been attempting to drum some sense into their thick skulls about the need to change their fighting styles, with some limited success. Your own words, from Kessligh’s student, could convince them.

  “But I must know. Kessligh is still in Tracato. He shall perhaps not assist the Steel directly, but he most certainly assists the defe of Rhodaan more broadly. As does your friend Errollyn. As do many others of your former friends and comrades. Now you choose to ride here with us. Tell me truly—when the horns are sounded and men start dying, where shall your loyalties lie?”

  Sasha’s gaze was expressionless. “With Lenayin,” she said flatly. “Always.”

  Koenyg nodded. Convinced, perhaps, but…“Have you lost faith?” he wondered. “Kessligh had great hopes for the Nasi-Keth. He had great hopes for you, as a leader of the Nasi-Keth. What of those dreams, Sasha? Where do they lie?”

  “Aside,” said Sasha. There was no emotion in her voice, because she did not feel any. She felt…empty. “I cannot say that I have abandoned them entirely. But they lie far aside all the same. They were cast aside not by me, but by the factions of Tracato, Nasi-Keth amongst them. I saw that the civilisation they had built was but a thin shroud over barbarism. I saw Nasi-Keth themselves, who should have known better, casting their lot in with a mob who were little better than the frothing Riverside mobs in Petrodor, only better dressed and led by intellectuals. I gave them my best, I gave them a fair chance, and they betrayed all my dreams, tortured me and Errollyn, and murdered my sister.

  “I am here because one dream lies shattered. I cannot stand to see my nation shattered as well. I have come to defend the most important thing I have left, the thing I still believe in with all my heart and soul—my people, and my family. I may be only one person, but I am duty bound to help however I can. Lenayin will need every asset at its disposal.”

  Koenyg nodded. His look was one of firm approval. Sasha reflected that it was perhaps the only time she could recall him looking at her in that way.

  “I will find you a role,” he said, “never fear about that. You have done well for Lenayin. Welcome home.”

  He opened the carriage door and got out, walking to where a Royal Guardsman trailed his horse to one side.

  “How good ar
e they?” Damon asked when he was gone. “The Steel, I mean?” Sasha saw from his sombre look that he had grasped something that perhaps Koenyg had not.

  “Good,” she said. “Surely you’ve been speaking with Bacosh veterans of past wars?”

  Damon nodded. “But they cannot give a full picture. Usually their fights were too brief, and consisted of everyone dying or running away.”

  “That’s been the pattern for two hundred years,” she admitted.

  “What will it be like?” asked Myklas. He would be expected to participate in the attack, Sasha knew. At seventeen summers now, he was well and truly grown. Oh Myk.

  “Hell,” said Sasha. For the first time in memory, she thought she spied a flicker of fear in Myklas’s eyes. It seemed a time for such firsts, among siblings. “Damon, we must think of some tactic to reduce the effectiveness of their artillery. Their infantry lines are tough enough, their tactics negate the primary Lenay strength, which is swordsmanship. We fight as individuals, they fight as a single entity. But even so, if we get that close, we can win, because it is what we’re best at, and Lenay warriors will never lose their nerve.

  “But I’ve spoken with Steel soldiers, I befriended the commander of the Tracato school for Steel officers, and I spoke at length with my serrin friend Aisha, of her experiences in the war in Elisse. And my biggest fear now is that Lenay warriors may be too brave. Previous armies have survived encounters with the Steel because their nerve broke, and they ran away to fight another day. Lenay warriors do not retreat easily. And I worry that should we stay too long, under that kind of artillery fire, there will be no Army of Lenayin left.”

  Damon nodded slowly. “It will be cavalry,” he said. “It is where we are most evenly matched. We must use cavalry to flank their infantry and disrupt their artillery.”

  “It’s been tried before,” said Sasha. “By two centuries of military thinkers. None worked.”

  “Why not?” asked Myklas.

  “Because we are the attackers,” said Damon, “which means they get to choose the ground on which they fight. They know their border very well, and have altered the landscape in many places to suit possible encounters. There are many fortresses and walls, channelling attackers through awkward approaches and limiting the room on the flanks for cavalry. They force the attackers to charge infantry straight up a selected approach, with little cavalry support, and the Steel artillery scythes them down like wheat. What’s left, the Steel infantry are vastly overmatched for.”

  “And they’ve talmaad,” Sasha added. “Lenay cavalry may be a match for Steel cavalry if we can find enough open ground to fight on, but no one can match the talmaad on horseback. Mounted archery is a terrible skill in the right hands. I wonder we’ve never tried it ourselves.”

  “There’re many useful ideas Lenayin has never tried,” Damon said darkly.

  Myklas gave him an unimpressed look. “That becomes tiresome, Damon.”

  “Defeat will seem more so,” Damon muttered.

  The column halted for the evening by another castle, where local lords hosted all Lenay nobility and royalty in a feast. At Damon’s insistence Sasha was ushered upstairs to the lord and lady’s chambers, where maids assisted her to wash, and apply her ointments. Soon Damon and Myklas entered, ignoring the protests of the maids.

  “It’s all right!” Sasha announced tiredly as she lay face down, naked but for a towel over her buttocks. A maid tried to hide the rest of her with a robe, but Sasha shoved it aside, and waved impatiently for them to continue pressing the ointment-soaked cloths to her worst injuries, the burns in particular.

  “Great fucking gods on a horse,” Myklas muttered. “How in all the hells did you ride here from Tracato like that?” He walked around her, as though examining some strange fish washed up on the riverbank.

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Sasha murmured into the bedsheets.

  Damon sat on the bed alongside. He grasped her hand. “This Reynold Hein,” he said quietly. “If we find him, when we reach Tracato, may I have him?”

  Sasha laughed, humourlessly. “There’s a queue.”

  “Does it hurt very badly?” Myklas asked.

  “Less than it did. It looks so bad now because of all the scabbing. When they peel it will be better. Perhaps a week.” She turned her head to look at Myklas. “Did you come to see that I wasn’t exaggerating?”

  “They’re shit,” said Myklas. “I knew you weren’t lying.”

  “Who’s shit?”

  “Oh the usual noble cow pats. They say you’re exaggerating your injuries to make yourself a martyr for Lenayin.”

  “When I’m actually a traitor,” Sasha concluded. It didn’t upset her. She’d expected nothing better.

  “Sasha, I need to warn you,” Damon said. “Be careful. You’re truly no safer here than you were in Tracato. Probably less.”

  “I didn’t come here to be safe.”

  “The northern provinces all want you dead, of course,” Damon continued. “Much of the nobility of all provinces, too. I don’t think you can ride with the vanguard, too many high nobility ride there, and will take it ill.”

  “That’s shit,” Myklas snorted, lounging into a chair beside the bed. “She’s our sister, she should ride with her brothers.”

  “It is not our decision to make,” Damon said firmly. “We can’t start a fight with the lords now just before a war, not even for Sasha.”

  “I agree,” said Sasha. “Where do you want me?”

  “Valhanan would not work,” said Damon, and Sasha’s heart sank. “They march too far back in the column, I’d like you nearer the front. And Koenyg is right, it would sow division. It is well known that the Goeren-yai of Valhanan have doubts about this war, having a former leader such as yourself ride amongst them would only remind them of the things that divide them from the Lenay nobility, and all the reasons they should not fight. You must ride with nobility, to show them you are no threat, and will not agitate the Goeren-yai.”

  “Well no one north, east or probably south will have me,” Sasha pointed out. “Taneryn would, but you don’t want to ignite that again. You’re not going to dump me with the bloody west?”

  “I have an idea,” said Damon. “Tomorrow we shall see.”

  Sasha buried her face against the mattress, as the maids continued to soak and apply their cloths. In all her haste to return to her people, she’d forgotten how terrible Lenay politicking could be. Only now did it truly occur to her just how few of her people would be as pleased to see her as she was to see them.

  SIDESADDLE, SOFY DECIDED, WAS NOT MERELY LUDICROUS but dangerous. Several times when her mare lurched unexpectedly, she thought she might topple. She would have felt so much safer on her little Dary, but the travelling court had been scandalised enough that she would wish to ride on horseback to greet her sister Sasha, and to have the princess regent riding on a scruffy little Lenay dussieh would have been too much to ask.

  She sat instead upon an elegant white mare lent to her for the occasion, alongside her husband on a tall black stallion. About them rode knights in full armour, and lords in less taxing mail and formalwear. The banners of the regency swung in the midmorning sun. They numbered nearly a hundred strong, with servants and squires, heralds and scouts. The Army of Larosa, and the Army of Lenayin, marched on parallel paths, not more than a quarter-day’s ride apart, to save the roads from churning to muddy bogs beneath many thousands of boots, hooves and wagon wheels in the late-spring rains.

  Balthaar seemed in good humour, laughing with his lords and knights, and admiring the sunny morning. He complimented Sofy often on how lovely she looked, and how well she rode, and missed no opportunity to reach for her hand and exchange a smile. Sofy did not know what she felt. She tried simply to ride, and enjoy the freedom away from the royal procession at the Larosan Army’s head, and to appreciate the morning as her husband did.

  Soon enough, the Larosan party arrived at the head of the great Lenay column, and Sofy exchange
d greetings all over again with her father and brothers, while insisting that the army should not stop simply to observe the formality. All seemed very subdued, and her father in particular, deadly grim. That was no surprise, King Torvaal Lenayin was usually grim. And it had only been a week since leaving Sherdaine, so the sight of her was no great astonishment to any. But Sofy gained the distinct impression that something was very wrong, and no one wanted to be the one to tell her. Was it Sasha, she suddenly feared?

  She left most of the Larosan contingent with the Lenay vanguard, and rode with a small party of knights in single file along the roadside. The Isfayen rode forth in the column, and it took some time to reach them. Lenay warriors cheered as she passed, and she waved, smiling, and trying to be happier than she felt. It was all confusing. She wanted to see Sasha again so badly. Sasha had that way of making things clear and simple to her.

  When she reached the Isfayen place in the Lenay column, her first sight was of Yasmyn, riding at her father the Great Lord Faras’s side. The two of them talked and laughed, and Yasmyn’s eyes shone with happiness. Sofy wondered what it would be like, to share a relationship like that with her own father. Sasha rode at Yasmyn’s side, evidently expecting Sofy’s arrival. Upon seeing her, Sasha rode forward, and dismounted. Sofy did likewise, and embraced her tearfully. She could not hug hard, for her brothers had told her of Sasha’s injuries. She could not hug long, either, for the column marched on, oblivious to the concerns of sisters who had not seen each other in far too long, and wanted only a moment’s pause to catch up. It felt awkward, and not at all the heartfelt reunion Sofy had dreamed of. When they parted, Sasha seemed reluctant to meet her eyes.

  “Sasha, what’s wrong?” Sofy asked, wiping tears from her cheeks. Sasha’s eyes were dry. Somehow, that disappointed her.

  “Did they tell you?” Sasha asked quietly. “About Alythia?”

  “No.” And with growing alarm, #x201C;Sasha, what about Alythia?”

  Sasha made a muttered curse, and stared off across neighbouring woods. “She’s dead, Sofy. The great Tracatan enlightenment killed her.”