Vially frowned and then looked disgusted, as he finally understood. “Why did we never think of that? It’s fantastically simple.”
Ladvik ran a hand over his face. “We’re still thinking of them as just another army when they’re anything but that. They can do things we’ve never considered. Our strategies have to change.”
“Yes,” Andelko said. “First we need to know if Aniska’s theory is right and if it is, why we haven’t heard about it. Let’s start asking questions.”
With a bit of digging, yes, those further down the line confirmed it. Each party of Deojrin the patrols had observed always contained at least one of the black-robed slaves. Somewhere, the information stopped percolating up and thus never reached any of army leadership—a massive failure that gnawed away at Andelko’s confidence once more.
After thanking the three men for their help, he rushed to the small library for breakfast, prepared to fall on his sword. As he laid out the problem and what he had uncovered, he saw Leisha frown. “I’m honestly so sorry. I should have thought of this. Someone below me should have made sure everyone was aware of it. The fault lies with me—”
Holding up one hand, she interrupted him, afraid Andelko might start divulging his darkest indiscretions once he finished with this confession. “There’s no need to despair, and no one is blaming you. This is fixable. Now, sit and eat.”
He fell down into an empty seat and Zaraki shoved a plate of eggs and bread at him. After lying awake most of the night thinking, he spent a moment organizing his thoughts. “I think the biggest concern is most of the army knows nothing about mind readers. They weren’t in the keep in Lida to see you killing people. They weren’t on the beach to see the Deojrin killing the archers. Most of these men have nothing to reference and maybe they don’t see the Cursed as a threat.”
“And, so, we have two problems,” Leisha said. “Teaching the men about them and figuring out how to fight them.” With her words, quiet descended over the table. Showing the men what she could do would not be difficult. Armies loved gossip. Demonstrate to a few and they would carry stories to the other soldiers and officers. Harder would be finding a way to deal with the Deojrin slaves.
“Maybe both can be corrected the same way,” Zaraki said into the silence. “I think the solution to the scouting problem is fairly simple. Marksmen. We need to find men who can hit a target reliably. Send them out with the riders. They kill the Cursed before anything else.”
Leisha shook her head. “I’d imagine the act of firing requires them to concentrate on their targets. If those mind readers are anything like me, they’ll know when our archer is thinking about them.”
That deflated them all.
“Can you be fooled?” Ani asked after a moment of thought.
Considering the question, Leisha nodded. “Probably. My nannies learned how to lie without me noticing. Sometimes.”
“Let’s try it in the courtyard,” Zaraki said, standing up and sounding excited. He loved problems that needed solving. “Andelko, get your captains, Vially, Ladvik, and have them bring some archers with them. Let’s experiment some.”
***
When the idea first floated out of Zaraki’s mouth, Leisha loved it. She would contribute something besides tersely worded letters. But now, with a crowd gathering to watch, it made her oddly uncomfortable. She remembered how her nannies treated her, how they disliked her for something she could not control. They always drew away from her because she could read their thoughts and hear their secrets. Leisha remembered the fear and panic in their eyes as they rushed to sweep their buried confidences under rugs and into dark corners.
But Andelko needed this and so she stood, rigid and nervous in the courtyard as army officers, a group of marksmen, the stable boys, servants and workers all watched.
Andelko beckoned his men over. They crowded around in a semi-circle, curious about what he planned. “We know, now, the Deojrin raiding parties and patrols often have mind readers in them. Her Highness has graciously agreed to demonstrate her abilities to help us all see what she can do and help us think of ways to counter them.”
“How should we do this?” Leisha asked nervously.
“Your Grace.” Ladvik bowed to her. “It would be very useful for us to understand what you do first.”
Leisha hesitated, not sure where to start. “All right. You’ve probably heard I can kill someone with a thought. I can enter the mind of another person and tell their hearts to stop beating or their lungs to seize up and stop drawing breath. I can do it from a fair distance.”
Some people nodded, others looked doubtful and nervous.
Andelko continued, “We know our enemies have mind readers who can kill the same way Her Grace can before any of our riders are in range. We suspect that’s how they’re killing the raiding parties. Our idea is to use you to kill the slaves first. Lightning-fast raids that take out the mind readers and then the riders.”
“Can we have a demonstration?” one of the archers in the back whispered, laughing and nudging the man next to him. He did not believe her.
Leisha turned cool eyes on him, offended now. “Yes, we can. Come here.”
The man paled and she saw a sheen of sweat break out over his face. “I can do it with you standing there if you prefer,” she said, though her words carried no threat.
Looking tentative and unhappy, the archer stepped forward.
Once he stood in the middle of the half-circle of men, Leisha smiled. “I promise I won’t hurt you. It will be uncomfortable, nothing more.”
She reached out and lowered herself into him. Don’t panic, she said as she listened to the swirling song of his mind. Awe and fascination flowed up through her veins and Leisha remembered feeling this before—this potential, this command over life and death, this wonder at what she could do. Deep down, she felt the power stir and knew she could do more, but with no one to teach her she had no way to learn. Leisha mourned the loss.
Gathering herself now, she followed the pulsing rhythms to the man’s breathing center. With each inhale and exhale, she felt the rush of air in and out of his lungs. She would smother it for only a few seconds.
Now, she warned.
All those gathered around saw the man suddenly paw at his throat while opening his mouth in a vain attempt to draw a breath. After a few agonizing moments, they heard a gasp and rushed intake of air.
“Again,” Leisha said aloud.
Once more, the archer pitched his head back as instinct took over and told him to fight for his life. When she let him go, he collapsed on the cobbles, panting. Shocked expressions met hers, but at least they knew the truth of the rumors now.
“They’re killing our men that way.” Leisha pointed to the archer as he tried to climb to his feet.
A long, quiet minute passed as nearly everyone considered this information. Zaraki and Andelko had seen it before. She saved their lives by doing it over and over one night. But for the others, the thought of this power in battle served up new questions, new complications, and new possibilities.
Vially spoke first. “How do we—how do we even begin to fight something like that?”
“They can be killed. Don’t think this makes them invincible,” Andelko said. “But we have to be smarter than they are. That’s where the marksmen come in. If they can get close enough, surprise them and kill the mind readers first, the others can attack the soldiers.”
“There’s a complication, though.” Leisha paused, thinking how best to describe how her abilities worked to a group of men completely deaf to them. How could she explain colors to someone born blind? “When someone is thinking intensely about me—perhaps ‘concentrating’ is a better word—I hear it. I can sense about where they are, things about them. This means the Cursed will know when you’re preparing to fire on them.”
“So, Highness, you just know? You just hear our thoughts and you know?” Fillip tried to keep the skepticism from his voice, but Leisha heard it and felt it.
>
Forcing herself not to shift nervously, she tried to explain something she had no real words for. “No, there are two things I hear. I hear your thoughts and I hear this warning. They’re different.” She knew they did not understand and it was her fault.
Years ago, she tried to explain it to Zaraki and he seemed to grasp her meaning, so she tried again. “All right. Think of it this way. Right now, if I wanted to, I could listen and hear all the thoughts around us. All seventeen of you. It would be deafening, like seventeen people in a room, all speaking at the same time, and I would have a hard time picking out just one voice in the cacophony.
“But imagine someone walking into the room and screaming my name. That’s the warning. That’s how I know someone is thinking about me, intensely. I hear chiming, like a bell being rung. I feel a pressure. It’s not your thoughts you have to guard from me. It’s your attention you have to keep diverted.”
“Perhaps you can demonstrate?” Andelko asked when she did not continue. Pointing at three soldiers he said, “Go hide. Can you turn around, Your Highness?”
With her back turned, she heard several pairs of feet running off. Again, she did not want to do this. She kept intimate knowledge about her gifts confined to her little group of friends for years. They were not a secret, by any means, but she did not flaunt them either.
Zaraki took her hand, seeing how she held herself rigid. “Don’t worry so much. They’re fascinated by you,” he said, and spun her back to face the expectant crowd.
“Let’s walk and when we get close you can tell us when you hear the one I told to concentrate on you,” Andelko said.
Leisha did not need to move closer. “He’s hiding behind the dovecote,” she said, without taking a step. The building stood against the castle wall, perhaps thirty yards ahead. “And his name is Eltai.”
All of the assembled men looked towards the dovecote and then back to her, mulling the implications. “Yes, it is,” Fillip said finally. “And you can tell from this far? Can anyone like you do that, Your Majesty?”
“I don’t know. I only know what I can do. I’ve never spoken to another mind reader.” She shook her head, feeling an unaccustomed sense of loss.
“Is there any way to prevent you from hearing—sensing—them?”
“That’s what we’re going to try and find out,” Andelko said with a smile.
***
Cobbles covered most of the small courtyard at Savne. For the twentieth time, at least, Leisha tried to listen only to the rhythmic clip-clop of Evka’s hooves as the mare walked calmly in front of the dovecote. The sound helped distract her and force her mind to stop searching for the man spying on her from behind the stack of barrels ahead.
She needed to know the instant she sensed the alarm, heard the chime. Then, she would signal to Vially, who would tap the man on the shoulder. The idea being he could then tell them what was going on his mind that set the alarm bells to ringing in her head.
“Now,” she said, trying to keep the boredom out of her voice as the warning sounded again. They needed this information, but the monotony chafed. Urging Evka forward, she came to the designated spot and turned the horse. “Ready?” she called out.
Vially motioned for her to wait as a new soldier ran over to stand in the hiding spot. They were on their fifth archer now, a young man with closely cropped blond hair. The others tried but never made any progress, unintentionally giving themselves away almost as soon as Leisha began riding towards them.
“Ready, Your Highness.”
This time, Leisha barely noticed she passed the hiding spot without even a hint of a chime or ringing of a bell coming from the barrels. Zaraki caught Evka’s bridle. “Nothing?”
“No,” she said, turning in the saddle and shaking her head. “Nothing at all.”
From behind the barrels, the towhead young man appeared, grinning.
“What’s your name?” Andelko asked as Leisha rushed to dismount and they all hurried to huddle around him.
The young man flushed and stammered, unused to being the center of so much attention. “Tibor, sir.”
“I can’t believe it. How did you do it?” Leisha asked, sounding excited and pleased.
“I just thought about shooting your horse, Majesty. I stared at her and refused to let my mind wander. That’s the hard part. Then at the last minute, once you passed, I aimed higher.” Tibor looked embarrassed at the simple explanation. “You said it was a matter of not paying attention to you.”
They asked Tibor to repeat it several more times, and each time Evka passed by, Leisha heard nothing.
On the third pass, the young man watched the legs of the mare moving past. Just before the horse reached the king, Tibor stood up from behind the barrels and shifting his gaze, pantomimed shooting his bow. “Between the shoulder blades, Your Highness. If I had a weapon, you’d have died.”
Vially and Fillip looked horrified to hear him speak so casually of killing the queen, but Leisha laughed, pleased with his boldness. She always liked it when people forgot to bow and scrape to her. “Can you teach it to others? I’m afraid I can’t let every marksman we have practice on me.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Tibor said, swallowing his nerves after realizing how badly he overstepped himself.
***
After three weeks spent in the shadow of the Violet Mountains, Andelko ordered the next move. The Deojrin continued their slow advance, but the good thing about a kingdom full of suspicious warmongers was all the towns had strong walls and well-trained soldiers. Each time their enemy stopped to attack another noble, it required them to grind to a halt. Two more major holdings fell, though the guard at Trnava withdrew to join Leisha’s army after most of the citizens fled ahead of the invaders. The ranks of the army swelled.
They would make their way east through the rest of the foothills and then turn south to Zaraki’s holding at Prem. Cheylm Castle stood guarding the pass over the mountains to Lida in the middle of the Tymek Plains. Spies reported the bulk of the Deojrin remaining in Lida had left the city, heading south towards Adrojan and Otokar. Past that, the plains south of Otokar were vast and fertile. Wheat and other grains grew there, animals herds flourished there and so, the region fed Tahaerin lands. Its loss would have long-lasting effects on her kingdom. So it made sense to push further south and consider attacking this smaller army first.
Two pieces of good news reached them. First, Ani’s spies slipping through the mountains reported only a small force remained at Lida. Without the threat of a sizable force marching through the pass to Prem it meant they could stop at Cheylm to regroup. With the space between the two armies and the slow speed of Gerolt’s forces coming around the mountains to the north, Andelko thought they could stay out of reach for at least three months. He guessed about the same amount for the army coming around from the south, but it also raised the specter of the Deojrin surrounding them.
The other interesting news came in from the first few patrols to try out Andelko’s new strategy. Right away, the marksmen put their skills to deadly use, picking off the Cursed before the riders charged in. From the trees, the archers watched as the Deojrin often panicked, seeming unable to deal with the loss of their deadly mind readers. Some of the enemy bands regrouped quickly, but many fell into disarray and were cut down. Returning to Savne, the patrols reported this and Andelko pondered it, wondering what it could mean and how they could use it to their advantage.
First, though, they needed to make it to Cheylm. By now, the servants had become quite proficient at packing up the household. As Leisha stood outside the doors of the castle watching her life being put back into wagons, Andelko caught sight of her and mounted the steps.
“You look pensive, my lady.”
“I’m annoyed. I had message from Levent in the south refusing in the vaguest terms possible to send troops. It seemed after Vaja—” she trailed, silent for a moment. “Andelko, how am I supposed to win this war if the nobles won’t come together to support m
e?”
Her words opened a rare window on her private doubts. Not for the first time in their history together, he wanted to reach across the space between them and soothe away her fears. Of course, it was not appropriate, and she had a husband to do that now.
Instead, he said, “I have a suggestion, but not one you’re going to like. I planned to bring it up later.”
“When have you ever held back from telling me exactly what you think?” she teased.
In his current mood, it hit too close to home, for he held back a great deal. “Mercenaries, my lady. We hire mercenaries. They’ll be plentiful as we near the border with Embriel.”
Her smile fell away now, as she stiffened. She knew he did not mean it as a criticism, but it rankled that he thought she could not raise enough troops on her own. “I shouldn’t have to hire swords to defend my kingdom,” she said hotly. “My lords should honor their commitments to me.”
Together they stood watching servants moving crates of papers and chests full of her dresses. As the silence stretched out, she looked over the mountains, at the lands she inherited from her father, and thought about what it meant to rule as the last in a long line of Tahaerin monarchs.
“Find them, Andelko,” Leisha said, staring into the courtyard. “Find them and arrange meetings. I’ll pay whatever I have to. I won’t lose my kingdom because some of the nobles would cower in their castles while the rest of us wage war.”
***
It took two weeks to arrange, but finally word came a mercenary company wanted to talk terms. Andelko invited their representatives across the border into Tahaerin lands and then sent word the meetings would occur in the queen’s camp.
Early on the appointed morning, a party of men arrived on horseback. Leisha’s maids finished dressing her and piling her hair up in something more formal. She smiled as Zaraki pulled out clothes he rarely wore anymore. Since becoming king, he had largely accepted the need to look the part. Though looking at him now dressed all in leathers and linen, perhaps she thought she should make exceptions. He would accompany her, not as king, but as a bodyguard and spy again.
As Dragons from Sleep (The Tahaerin Chronicles Book 2) Page 12