When he helped me back onto my pony, he asked if I was feeling better, and I nodded.
“Are you lying?” he asked me frankly.
Defeated, I nodded again. There was no way to deny that even with the special saddle, my whole body hurt. Every individual sinew seemed to be drawing itself as tight as the strings on a lute. I’d focused so narrowly on getting far enough that I couldn’t be sent back, I hadn’t considered what an impossible position I would be in if I couldn’t keep up.
“The first day is the hardest,” the magus reassured me. Then he flagged down a wagon. He loaded me into it, and to my surprise climbed in after me, tying his horse beside Snap at the tailboard. For the rest of the afternoon he chatted amiably with the blacksmiths squeezed onto the benches with their anvils and their tools. It was a very different side of the acid-tongued man I’d heard flaying opponents in arguments over the council table.
As the sun settled toward the horizon, Sotis came back with dinner in a basket and several bottles of wine. As darkness fell, we pulled into a makeshift camp beside the road. The magus stepped from the wagon to the back of his horse and held out a hand to me to help me onto Snap. I didn’t take it, afraid of falling if he unbalanced me. When he saw how much trouble I had standing, one of the blacksmiths lifted me as easily as another man might lift a lamb and handed me into the magus’s arms.
The magus rode nearly an hour more in the dark, Snap dutifully following behind, passing campfires and tents pitched on either side, finally reaching the spot where the tents of the royal party were pitched beside the even larger council tent. The magus handed me down to Petrus, who was waiting with hot water and his tinctures ready.
Because he was busy with me, it was not Petrus, but Galen who discovered the king was feverish. The king insisted he was not ill, merely overheated by his elaborate clothing. Petrus felt that Galen encroached on his prerogative as the Attolian royal physician. Galen was jealous of his privileges as the healer who had cared for the king since his youth. In the morning, when there was no sign of the fever, Petrus said the king was well enough to travel and Galen disagreed.
The king would have overridden Galen’s concern, but Sounis, to everyone’s surprise, dug in his heels and absolutely refused to ride on until both Galen and Petrus said the king was well enough to continue. As a result, I had that extra day to rest as soldiers marched past the royal pavilions, lowering their voices and casting worried looks at one another.
The next day the king and I were both ready to ride. Galen and Petrus watched the king like a hawk while the magus supervised me no less strictly. I rode for the first few hours, a little more comfortably without the stopping and starting of the first day’s march. When Snap and I had fallen back as far as the blacksmiths, they welcomed us into their wagon, out of the goodness of their hearts, or in expectation of the baskets one of the king’s attendants would deliver later in the day. The magus often joined us, quizzing me with math problems and watching as I tried to mark answers on my slate while the cart bumped over the ruts in the road. Every few miles, he made me do Petrus’s stretching exercises, and he insisted I get down to walk whenever the wagon was stopped. Each day, I rode a little longer, and eventually, I was able to step from the tail of the wagon onto Snap’s back and ride to where the royal tents were being pitched. If it seems unlikely that I could make up my lost distance at the end of the day, one must consider the universal truth of armies. The larger they are, the more slowly they move.
An army moves like a caterpillar thinning itself out over the day, with the guns pulled by teams of twenty and forty horses dropping farther and farther behind, and as the army passes it leaves the road in worse condition for men and wagons that follow. Every ford stops progress for hours. Every cart that gets stuck slows every one behind it. The head must always halt while there is still time in the day to allow the long body to slowly contract again. Sometimes actual caterpillars move faster.
We were already falling behind Pegistus’s best predictions.
Every day after the day’s march, trailed by his attendants and his guards, the king walked through the camp, so that the sight of him might reassure those worried about his health.
“What is it, Gen?” Eddis asked, breaking the silence between them. She and the king had walked more than a mile back along the course of their march, and they’d have to turn back soon.
“I am useless,” said the king, throwing up his hand. “Worse than useless. I could be in the capital, drinking wine and eating cheese. I could do it there as well as here, and I wouldn’t have slowed everything down even further by sweating in that hideous padded jacket.”
Eddis hid her smile. So much changed, and so much remained exactly the same. She tipped her head at the men all around who were watching their king as he passed. “They believe in you. They need to see you.”
“We’ve had this conversation before,” said the king. “Last time, I was just getting over being sick in the shrubbery outside the hospital.”
“And I think I told you pull yourself together then, too.”
“I hate being a symbol.”
“I thought you wanted to be a figurehead?”
“That’s entirely different,” he said haughtily, and Eddis dug an elbow into his side.
“It is,” said the king. “I was not raised to be sovereign. You and Irene and even Sophos were. I would have made a fool of myself if I’d tried to seize the reins from Irene. Still would.”
“You’re not an utter failure,” Eddis said, deliberately condescending, and he smiled at the backhanded compliment.
“I cannot prosecute a war, Helen,” he said, his smile quickly gone. “But I can fight in one. It’s because I can that I think I should. If I’m not willing to fight in this war, how is that just?”
“I have lived through too many winters in the mountains, seen too many men willing to fight to the death over a spilled cup of wine, to think dying for a cause makes that cause just,” answered Eddis. “You went again to Hephestia’s temple and the high priestess gave you an answer you didn’t want to hear. Xanthe told me.”
The king grumbled. “I should have asked the goddess privately.”
“You could have been in the hypocausts, Gen, and everyone would have known all about it. You should be used to that by now.”
Seeking a clearer answer to his question, the king had gone back to the temple. Again, he had steered me through the curtains, though this time as I pushed through them, his hand had fallen away. I’d arrived in the treasury alone to find the high priestess waiting. The king did not appear for a long time, and when he did, he seemed deeply shaken. The Oracle had looked him over in smug satisfaction. In that sonorous, resounding voice that sent chills down my back, she’d said something in the archaic language I didn’t understand. In plain language she added, “Do not overreach. That is your answer, Eugenides.”
The king had returned very subdued to the palace.
“The gods’ messages are known for their opacity,” he complained to Eddis. “Except, of course, in hindsight, when it’s too late.”
“Stop whining,” said Eddis. “Go to bed. Do not overreach. That seems clear.”
“The Oracle is Attolian. The only archaic she knows is from temple ceremonies. Peris upus s’tatix. It doesn’t mean ‘Don’t overreach.’”
Eddis reluctantly agreed. “It’s . . . danger in . . . excess?” she translated hesitantly.
“You’re almost as bad. Did you pay no attention to your tutors?”
“Not if I could help it,” she said, unembarrassed. “I was outside chasing your brothers with a stick.”
“Well, rest assured that the gods are not interested in how many pieces of cake I eat. You missed the reflexive. It’s a warning against self-indulgence.”
“I think you’re quibbling.”
“Helen,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t want to go into battle. I am afraid of what I might become. What if I’ve let you and Irene and Sophos tell me I sho
uldn’t fight because that’s what I wanted to hear?”
She had to think about that for a while. “You have to trust yourself,” she said finally.
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then you’ll have to trust us.”
Eddis returned to the council tent.
“Is it his pride?” Attolia asked without looking up from the counters she was sliding across a map.
“No,” said Eddis. Standing beside her to lean over the map, she pointed to an area of high ground. Attolia moved a marker.
“It is only that he doubts himself, as we all do. As we should,” said Eddis.
“I thought he might measure himself against his brothers or his cousins.”
“He has never done that.”
“Do you?” Attolia asked, genuinely curious.
“I did once. I outgrew it, and I understood my cousins better when I did.”
“But you can fight.”
“We both can, Irene. We both will, if we have to.” She laid an arm around Attolia’s shoulder. “But the call of life is as powerful as the call of death, and it is no weakness to answer to it,” she said quietly.
It was another week or more when one of the queen’s attendants gave the secret away. It was nothing, only a second cushion for the seat she brought for the queen, but the king noticed and Eddis noticed him noticing. As the discussion of the army’s route for the next day went on uninterrupted, Eddis dropped her eyes. She’d suspected earlier, but had said nothing. Sounis was looking from Eddis to Eugenides to Attolia, and he too guessed.
By the end of the meeting, everyone present was desperate to excuse themselves. Most of those in the council, including his father, thought the king’s temper was rising because of frustration with our slow progress. The queen’s attendants knew better. There were apologetic glances cast at the queen and worried ones cast elsewhere. Attolia remained impassive.
After excusing themselves so hastily, the royal councilors lingered outside the tent. The king of Sounis and the queen of Eddis made no bones about the fact that they were eavesdropping.
The king of Attolia was at his most childish.
“Why didn’t you say something before we marched?”
Unusually, Attolia was no more reasonable. “What difference do you think it would have made if I had?” she said snappishly.
“I can’t go into battle, but you can march to war? The king may not risk his life, but the queen can?”
“It isn’t easy for anyone to stand helplessly by while someone invades their country. It is not easier for me because I am a woman. It is not a special burden you alone bear that you cannot fight in this war.”
“You will go back to the capital.”
“I will not,” said Attolia.
“You will. You just said—you cannot fight the Medes.”
“And you, who would not know what to do with a company of pikemen if you found them in a basket—you would lead this army? With your generals who do not know a wain from a wheelbarrow? I should leave you here surrounded by idiots who cannot understand that you must feed your army if you want it to fight? Is that in any way satisfying?” she asked.
We all heard the sounds of inkpots or perhaps map weights or troop counters hitting the canvas walls of the tent. Something larger smacked into the fabric— making an imprint for a moment before it was gone. “No, it is NOT satisfying!” shouted the king.
It was probably a wine bottle. It didn’t break when it landed on the overlapping carpets that covered the ground. The knife that came next protruded six inches—harmlessly, because the tent walls sloped, and no one would be leaning with an ear to just that spot on the canvas. One hoped.
“That was inappropriate,” said Attolia.
“Inappropriate?” shouted the king. “You in your state on your way to war is inappropriate!”
“I did not become inappropriate all by myself!” she shouted back.
“Do you imagine I don’t know that?”
Sounis looked at Eddis, pained.
“His mother and father used to shout at each other,” Eddis said, trying to sound reassuring.
There was a crashing noise. Sounis said, “I don’t understand.”
Eddis said, hesitating as she put her thoughts into words, “I think they have to show their worst selves sometimes in order to be sure that even at their worst they are loved. Irene knows how frightened he is.”
The king didn’t sound frightened.
“Any minute,” said Eddis, “he will realize—” As if her words were magic, silence fell in the tent and Eddis finished in a whisper. “How frightened she is.”
With a gesture and an authority that Sounis could only envy, Eddis waved off those lingering nearby and moved the perimeter of the guards away from the tent, giving the two inside space that might afford the privacy that canvas walls could not.
Chapter Seven
The Medes had made it to the Leonyla Pass and were camped on the inland side of it. No one was surprised when messengers brought the news. It had taken almost twice as long to make the march as Pegistus’s estimates had predicted. Carts had broken down, gun carriages had mired in streambeds, progress through bottlenecks had been slowed by disorganization. Still, a little flame of hope had burned in every heart that if the Peninsula’s armies had moved so slowly, the Mede army, which was so much larger, must be moving even more slowly. Indeed, the camp forming below the pass held only the forward part of the Mede’s forces.
“It grows every day,” said Trokides. “By the time we reach the Leonyla, we may well face the whole of the Mede army on open ground.” He only said what everyone was thinking, but it was hard to have our hope snuffed out.
The ships that the king had seized from the Pents had arrived in Stinos and were offloading the troops they’d ferried from the capital. Yorn Fordad was on one of them and, riding south from Stinos, he brought better news: the Pents had given in. Recognizing the threat the Medes posed, they had ended their delaying tactics and were sailing to secure Cimorene and the Straits of Thegmis. More support, ships, arms, and soldiers were being sent by all the powers of the Continent.
It was a great relief to know that we would not fight alone against the Medes. The aid, though, would not come without cost. The countries of the Lesser Peninsula would pay for it in treaties and trade concessions and loss of their independence. They would be occupied by the troops from foreign nations and might not see them gone again for a lifetime.
In grim meetings, Attolia and Eddis remade their strategy yet again. They knew the Medes would march on Stinos first. They could not move south and leave a fort behind them in enemy hands.
“We must slow the Medes’ approach to Stinos, delaying them, if we can, until the Continent’s forces arrive to relieve us,” said Attolia. “Failing that, we garrison Stinos and retreat with the bulk of our forces. If the Braelings and Gants arrive in time to lift the siege, the Medes will be caught between our army to the south and the incoming forces of the Continent.”
And if the Braelings’ ships did not arrive before the tiny garrison was overcome, the Continental ships would reach Stinos only to find it held by the Medes. Stinos was the lone port north of the mountains that ran down Attolia’s eastern coast and south of the Leonyla. With it in Mede hands, the Continent would be unable to land their troops and would be forced to withdraw. Without the Continent’s assistance, the Peninsular armies would be ground to pieces as the Medes moved south.
There was an alternative left undiscussed, its existence hinted at by averted eyes and pursed lips: Eddis and Sounis could abandon Attolia, turn, and ride for the mountains. In Eddis, they could hold out for years, leaving the lowlands to fall to the Medes. The allies from the Continent would eventually drive the Medes back again, and a puppet government would be installed in Attolia, but Eddis and perhaps even Sounis might remain free. Attolia would be lost either way, and her generals knew it. They looked at their Eddisian and Sounisian counterparts with weary resi
gnation.
“Sounis will not run,” said her king.
“Nor Eddis,” said her queen.
“Then we address ourselves to moving faster,” said Attolia crisply. “To meet the Medes as soon as possible and slow their advance.”
They abandoned the artillery and most of the baggage train, leaving them to catch up when possible. I might have been left behind too, but by then I’d grown accustomed to riding for hours at a time, so I was there when we camped on the ridge above the Leonyla Valley. I saw with my own eyes the Medes waiting for us.
Confident of their ability to advance whenever they chose, the Medes had made no effort to extend their base camp. They were leisurely waiting for all their forces to come through the narrow pass behind them. When we attacked, it was only against their vanguard, and we fought for the next three days. Each day a hundred years long.
Lamion was killed the second day. He had asked permission to fight with his father and his brothers and cousins. The king had released him. Drusis had petitioned to be released as well, leaving his brother, Motis, to attend the king. It was a difficult decision all the attendants had to make. So long as the king did not go into battle, neither did they. They would have to desert his service or risk their reputations by appearing to be hiding behind his skirts. When Philologos’s father came to talk privately with the king, Philologos had stormed into the council tent saying he would not abandon his responsibilities to the king, not even for the glory of war. Even Xikos said that must have taken its own kind of courage, and no one so much as hinted that his father might have come to ask the king not to release Philologos—to keep his only son and heir safe.
A hospital was set up in Lartius, a small town well south of the battleground and inland. Most of Attolia’s attendants and Eddis’s were there. Attolia had selected Chloe to stay with her, and Eddis had chosen Selene. The king had attempted to order Attolia back to Lartius as well, without success.
The waters of the Pinosh River are a mesh of meandering streams that finally join together just before they drop into the narrow chasm that cuts through the hills to the coast. The valley above the pass was broad enough for a battleground, but not so wide that the Mede army could encircle us. When we met the enemy, we had the rising ground behind us. As we retreated farther and farther, we would cross the ridge that was the watershed between the Leonyla and the long, sloping plain down to Stinos. The Medes would have a wider and wider front on which to attack.
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