by Ben Blake
*
“I heard,” Reis said in his gravelly voice, “that you were extremely rude to the Margrave. As good as told him he’s a dissolute wastrel who’d rather drink and play with his boyfriend than do any work.”
“That’s more or less true,” Calesh admitted. He allowed himself a little smile. “I rode straight here after I left the Manse, general. Quite how that piece of news outran me I don’t know, but my compliments to whoever’s job it is to keep you informed.”
‘Here’ was a pavilion two miles east of Mayence, in a narrow-throated valley just off the main road that ran down out of the Aiguille towards Parrien. Tents filled the dell in neat rows, enough for maybe two thousand men, though about half of them were mismatched and some were little more than sheets stretched between poles. Close to the stream rough wooden shelters had been built, large enough for thirty or forty men to sleep at a time under their shingle roofs: another two were taking shape from a welter of chopped logs. Horses stood in picket lines downstream of the cook fires, and further down still branches had been woven into screens for the latrine pits. It was a good camp, sited and laid out by men who knew their work. Calesh was glad to see it.
The Guard had begun to gather. Some of the men looked no more than fifteen, recruits whose training was barely begun, while others had too little hair and too few teeth, veterans gathering to the banner when they ought to be warming their bones by a fire. There was nothing to be done about that: every sword was needed. The Hand would be the same.
The pavilion itself was large and well fitted, with a folding bed behind a screen, and a desk and chair by one canvas wall. But it was plainly a working man’s place: the two other seats were a beanbag and half a barrel turned upside down, and two broad planks laid over beer kegs made the table. Just outside, where the folded-out wall of the tent became a roof for shelter from rainstorms, a pair of junior officers worked their steady way through thick sheaves of reports. In short, Reis’s command centre was everything Riyand’s should be, and so patently was not. That was more than a relief. Calesh had begun to worry that Sarténe would muddle its way to oblivion before it truly understood the need to act.
“I like to stay up to date,” Reis said. He was a large man, nearly as tall as Calesh and twenty years older, somewhere near his fiftieth birthday. Grey flecked his brown hair. A lifetime spent out of doors had left his skin tough and weather-beaten, but his brown eyes gleamed with shrewd alertness. “If you’re half the man rumour makes you, you’ll know why.”
“I’m only just starting to realise rumour has made me anything at all,” Calesh said wryly. “Time will tell what sort of man I am.”
“Don’t you listen to gossip?”
Calesh let himself smile again. The question was a trap, and he wasn’t about to plunge into it. “Of course I do. It helps me stay up to date. If I can tell the truth from the lies.”
“Hmph.” Reis went to the table and pulled two small plaster cups from under a pile of jumbled papers. “You’re clever, at least. Half the young officers in the Guard these days have trouble reading their own name. All the educated fellows seem to end up at that Academy in Parrien, learning how to argue that up is down in three different languages.”
“I have a friend who would hate to hear you say that,” Calesh said. “He tells me education is the only way to improve lives.”
“Hasn’t improved mine much,” Reis grumped. He handed Calesh one of the cups. “Is it too early in the day for brandy, do you think?”
“Not for a small one,” Calesh said. He savoured the mild aroma that rose from the cup; he hadn’t tasted good Sarténi brandy for years. “And I believe he means the life to be improved is the student’s, in fact.”
“Now, that makes more sense.” Reis sat on the upturned barrel and propped one boot on top of the other. “Tell me, then. What was it really like, between you and Amalik?”
“There never was any me and Amalik,” Calesh answered. “Our units met each other on the battlefield. I killed him before he could kill me. That’s the start and finish of it.”
“Hmm.” Reis surveyed his guest critically. “I like what I hear about you, Marshal, and I like what I see too. I’m not in the habit of delaying my judgement of men, and we don’t have time for that sort of thing anyway. So here’s what I suggest. You and I will work out how to fight this war together, and tell young Riyand what we’ve decided after it’s agreed. That way we’ll lure the All-Church into our clutches, catch them a good smack when they’re not looking, and all be home in time for harvest.”
Calesh laughed. “Sounds good to me.”
“Sounds damn unlikely to me,” Reis said. “Just one thing, my new friend. Riyand is the Margrave, and you have to treat him as such.”
His smile slid away. “Riyand is a wastrel and a fool, exactly as I described him. He isn’t fit to run a grain store, let alone all Sarténe.”
“He’s been a decent enough leader these past few years,” Reis disagreed. “Most of the time lording is just waving at the crowds and not falling on your face, while the clerks and clerics do all the work. Riyand knows that, and he has sense enough to stay out of the way and let Cavel run the country. But things are different in war, and that’s what’s shown Riyand to be a fool.” He swirled his brandy thoughtfully. “His father was a fine man, Calesh. A fine man. You don’t often get two like him. Riyand is half the man he thinks he is and only quarter the man his father was… but he is the Margrave.”
Calesh hesitated. “You’re sure we can keep him out of things?”
“Certain sure,” Reis said. “I’ve been doing it for years. I promised his father I’d stick with Riyand, you see. I’ve done the best I could.”
“If Riyand has made a decent fist of leadership until now, I’d say you’ve done pretty well,” Calesh said. “All right. I’ll bow my head and smile when he talks, just as meek as you like.”
Reis guffawed, snorting through his nose. “The day you’re meek, I’ll eat my boots with pig turds for seasoning.” He reached out and clinked his cup against Calesh’s. “Deal, then?”
“Deal,” Calesh said. They swigged the brandy back in simultaneous swallows, which was when Calesh discovered the stuff was about three times as potent as the scent had led him to believe. He held it for a moment and then coughed, unable to help himself. Reis chortled once more and slapped him on the back, heedless of Calesh’s armour.
“My own vintage,” he said, “from my estate by the coast. You wouldn’t believe how many people have been fooled by that gentle aroma.” His expression grew mournful. “I can’t spare the men or the time to fetch my stock out before the All-Church gets there. Shame to think of fine brandy wasted on a bunch of thugs like that.”
“Vines can be replanted,” Calesh said, his voice slightly hoarse. “Let’s just make sure there are people to do the planting.”
There was a rap on the officer’s table just outside the entrance, and a moment later a young soldier put his head in. Evidently Reis didn’t stand much on ceremony when in the field. Calesh liked that too. “There’s a band of armed men coming up the east road, sir, with six wagons. I’d say about eighty or ninety of them. They’re not ours.”
Reis stood up. “Did the scouts get a good look at them?”
“I did myself,” the lad answered. “They’re not flying colours, and they don’t look professional to me, general. Some sort of militia, I’d guess. Maybe coming to join us.”
“Interesting,” Reis said. “Are you expecting reinforcements from Parrien, Calesh?”
“I pulled nearly all the Hand’s men out when I came through there last week,” he said. “But I don’t like those wagons. There could be two dozen armed men in each one, all ready to jump us.”
“My thought exactly,” Reis said with a grin that was all teeth. “You know, I think it might be time to see how fast my light cavalry can scramble to a bugle. Shall we find out?”
Ten minutes later they rode out of the narrow throat of the v
alley and turned left along the road, with the westering sun directly behind them. Fifty of the Hand accompanied him, together with a hundred of Reis’s light cavalry, who had turned out to scramble pretty fast. It was enough to deal with eighty-odd men if things turned violent. Even if there were more soldiers in the wagons, the cavalry could cover a retreat with showers of arrows while the party withdrew to the main army. One result of fighting in Tura d’Madai was that almost all the Hand’s men could shoot a bow at least competently. Still, Calesh unbuckled his shield from his pack pony before he left and rode with it hitched to the side of his saddle, covering his leg and hip. Reis saw it and nodded to himself, no doubt thinking just what Calesh was: soldiers don’t get to grow old by being careless.
“There,” the young soldier said as the road ran around the shoulder of a rocky hill. “Just by that stand of trees.”
Reis shaded his eyes and squinted. “Damn, but I wish my eyes were young again. I can’t see any – what’s that thing?”
The last was aimed at Calesh, who had taken a small brass tube from his saddlebag. He twisted the middle and held it to his eye, sweeping the lens sideways until he found the approaching wagons. They were still two miles away, but with the spyglass he could see them easily. “Just something I picked up in the desert. Here, you try it.”
Reis peered doubtfully at the tube, but held it to his eye and gave a soft gasp of delight. “My heart and eyes! I can see everything!”
“A useful attribute for a general in the field,” Calesh noted. “That’s my best spyglass, but I have another one back with my men. I’ll let you have it. If you want it, that is.”
“Of course I want it,” Reis said. “And thank you. I’ll give you a couple of bottles of my brandy in exchange, if I ever see them again.” He handed the glass back and raised his voice. “There’s a bridge half a mile further on. We’ll wait there for our visitors. I want twenty men to stay back with bows ready in case we have to retreat. Let’s get to it.”
The bridge was simply built, stout wood with a shoulder-high rail on either side, and broad enough for two carts to pass side by side. The span was flat, not arched, which offered no protection to soldiers advancing on entrenched positions, and the wooden rail gave little cover either. Below it all was a V-shaped trench with a trickle of water at the bottom, deep enough to shelter a man from arrows but too steep-sided to let him climb out quickly. Calesh nodded in appreciation. Reis knew his ground well.
“Are your men willing to block the road?” Reis asked. “They’re the best troops we have here.”
“Best in the world,” Calesh said automatically. He nodded for Amand to see to it. “We’ll block it. And I’ll be with them.”
He lifted the eyeglass again, studying the approaching men. At this distance he could pick out faces, but he didn’t recognise any of them. All of them seemed rather young though, twenty summers at most, which seemed unlikely for a mercenary company or a raiding party. The wagons were buttoned down tight and told him nothing at all. He stowed the eyeglass in his saddlebag and walked forward to join his soldiers close to the near end of the bridge. Amand had dismounted them and sent the horses back, out of the way of any stray arrows. For a few moments nobody spoke as men checked their weapons and armour, the practised routine of experienced men, and then they paused and waited for their captain.
“If those men out there are enemies,” Calesh said, “it falls to us to fight the first battle of this war. Remember it, and give the troubadours something to sing about.” He looked up and down the line of them. “Right. Set for standard defence. Do it.”
They assembled around him in three rows, with Calesh front and centre. The first rank locked their kite-shaped shields together and gripped their swords, while behind them the second hefted spears, ready to thrust through gaps or leap to replace fallen comrades. The third held their shields high and angled, as cover against arrows dropping from their long arcs. Calesh breathed deeply, filling his lungs, and drew his sword. His heartbeat slowed, waiting.
Mounted men came around a slight bend in the road, some two hundred yards away. They wore what seemed to be normal clothes, though perhaps more suited to a town than a country road. The nearest pointed to the soldiers arrayed across the bridge and they stopped immediately, waiting while first one wagon and then another lurched into sight behind them. More riders cantered up to join the vanguard, and the wagons came to a halt.
One of the drivers leaned forward as though pulled by the nose. It was hard to make him out, shaded as he was by the canvas bulk behind him, but something about him drew Calesh’s eyes. He couldn’t think what it was. And then the driver leaned further forward yet, so the light fell on tousled sandy hair and glinted oddly in front of his eyes, and Calesh knew.
He laughed out loud. Taking a step forward, he thrust his sword into his scabbard and turned to shout over his men. “These are friends, Reis! You can stand down. They’re friends!”
He turned again, and walked across the bridge alone. At first, anyway; he had managed only four paces when Amand snapped something and the squad hurried to catch up. That didn’t matter. He lengthened his stride, grinning like a fool. A couple of the wagons’ escorts kneed their horses forwards and then stopped, and the wagon driver sprang down from the riding board and strolled up the road. His green robe was heavy with the dust of travel. Those clothes were different; but the easy grace of his movements, the questioning tilt of the head, were the same, just as Calesh remembered them.
They stopped only a few feet apart. Calesh reached out to brush the green linen with the back of his hand.
“I’d heard you took the Consolation,” he said. “I’m glad for you, truly. Is it all you hoped it would be?”
“Much more than that,” Luthien Bourrel said. His green eyes crackled with intelligence, just as they always had. It was easy to forget how bright they were, and how they danced. “And what do you think of your home, my friend? Is it all you remembered?”
“Much less than that,” Calesh said. “And it will be less still, if we lose this war the All-Church brings down on us.”
Luthien’s lips quirked. “You never were one for small talk.”
“It wastes time,” Calesh said. He stepped forward and caught his old friend in a hug, pounding him on the back; it was hard not to cry. “My heart and hands and eyes, my blood, it’s good to see you, Luthien!”
The smaller man pounded him in return, and for a moment didn’t speak. Amand rode up with the bridge guards, now returned to their saddles. At a gesture from Luthien the wagons creaked back into motion, and he drew Calesh to one side before they could be run over. They went to the verge and exchanged another long look, and slowly their expressions became sombre.
“First things first,” Luthien said. “Congratulations on your marriage. I hope she knows what a man she’s won.”
“You’ll have to ask her,” Calesh said. “All I know is what a woman I’ve won. That’s enough.”
“Good,” Luthien said, and then, “I am Consoled, and as close to Heaven as I can come in this world. I will not fight, Calesh, not for you or anyone else. Not ever again. It’s over.”
“I know,” he said. He reached out to touch the green robe once more. “It makes sense, you wearing this. I think part of me always knew you’d end up Consoled. I won’t ask you to fight, Luthien.”
The other man stared at him, then pushed his glasses up his nose. “Do you know, I was certain you’d say that? Everyone else keeps trying to persuade me to take up a sword again, but not you.”
“I know what it means to you,” he said. “And I know what oaths mean to you, as well.”
“I’d forgotten how perceptive you are,” Luthien said after a moment. “You always did see deeper than others.”
“Save your praise,” Calesh advised. He found himself embarrassed by the words, which was ridiculous. “I do have a favour to ask. I want the four of us together through this war, so I want you to minister to the Hand until it’s ov
er, Luthien.”
“Gladly,” the other man said at once.
Calesh had thought he might refuse, or at least try to demur. He ought to have known better. Luthien knew exactly how hard it would be for him to stand beside a battlefield, or in its midst, and resist the urge to take part. That made no difference; his friends needed him, and he would be there, even if he could not raise a weapon. There was a courage in that which Calesh found humbling. He had to clear his throat to speak.
“I need to talk with Reis,” he said. “But Baruch and Raigal are at the Preceptory in Mayence. They’ll be as glad to see you as I was, Luthien. I’ll join you later if I can.”
“Two minutes after we meet again, and already you’re moving on to the next thing,” Luthien said quietly. “You’ve always been like that, as well, either immersed in something or not involved at all. You’re right in the heart of the dance; and you know the steps so well, Calesh, from the first trumpet sound to the last blood spilled. Did you ever wonder when it will end?”
“When I die,” Calesh said.
Fifteen
The Zigzag Stairs
This was where bandit chiefs used to hold sway.
Three hundred years ago, before the Jaidi came boiling out of their southern deserts to conquer most of Alinaur, the foothills of the Raima Mountains were a borderland that no nation ruled. Maps might show they were claimed by this king or that Margrave, but the truth was that none of them sent soldiers there, or tried to dislodge the tinpot lordlings and outright brigands who ruled from their precipitous crags. The local strongmen were free to loot and despoil, and to charge outrageous tolls on the caravans and travellers who wanted to walk the passes. It was said there were bandit families in the Raima who could trace their lineage back further than most monarchs.
They even survived the Jaidi conquest, though in much diminished fashion. The desert folk might not be able to conquer the fortresses lodged in their mountain eyries, but they could slaughter the men who ventured out from them, if they went too far. Many did. Some of the outlaw bands simply dwindled away, starved of the bounty they needed to survive. But most clung on, living hand to mouth in the harsh high valleys as best they could.
Then the All-Church called Crusade against the Jaidi. It might not have been possible if the desert’s proud sons had remained united, but by then they had broken into a melange of bickering states they called the Taifa, and they were vulnerable. The Hierarch in the Basilica had his own problems, too many landless sons fighting for land in Gallene and Rheven and elsewhere, men whose energy needed to be harnessed for something better – at least as the All-Church saw it. The military Orders were formed. Soldiers poured into Sarténe from a dozen countries, and none of them were willing to pay transit fares to a collection of bone-chewing thugs in the hills. The Faithful, too, had more experience of sieges than the Jaidi, and one by one the outlaw towers were taken, until finally the Knights of the Glorification of Heaven came searching up the higher valleys of the Aiguille, and there on a crag they found Adour.
A summer later they went away again, defeated by the thick walls, while the outlaws jeered and hooted and threw offal at their banners.
Some time afterwards the Hand of the Lord came. They didn’t try to capture the castle, but instead sat down outside and waited. And waited. It was almost three years before the bandit chieftain asked to negotiate. The Hand might not be able to take the fortress, but they could stop the brigands from raiding, and apparently they meant to. The end of it was that those outlaws who wanted to leave could do so. The rest, Dualists to a man, were invited to join the Hand. Nine did. The others departed, and the Hand of the Lord took the bastion.
Studying it as she climbed up the only trail, Farajalla could see why it had beaten the Glorified. It was only a small redoubt, but she had to tip her head back to see it from the track, its walls looming thick and high atop the shoulders of the steep-sided hill above her. The slope was strewn with stones scattered over uneven, tilting rock. A river splashed down to the hill and divided to run around it in twin streams of foam. Beyond that the sides of the narrow valley clambered steeply up in a welter of small cliffs and treacherous scree in which almost nothing grew but lichen. A besieger would have no room to place catapults or trebuchets, and even if he cut space into the rock, the valley’s shape was such that the stones flung at Adour would overshoot it. There was no weakness, no place an attacker might probe or from where he could try to draw the defence, before launching a sudden strike. There was only the wall, smooth and sheer, and a single gate flanked by square-cut towers.
From the far wall something climbed even higher, but the angle was such that Farajalla couldn’t see what it was. She decided not to ask. All her breath was needed for the climb.
Twenty soldiers held the fortress for the Hand of the Lord. It was enough: there was no lord for miles around with the strength to take it by force. Some of the men must have seen the little party approaching, for slowly and with much screeching of anguished metal the main gates began to swing open. They were halfway back when one of them stuck. Two figures emerged to scowl and scratch their heads. One of them gave the door a kick.
“Rest for a moment,” Gaudin said. He and the soldiers from the Hidden House were leading the horses, and the pack ponies with their belongings. The brass-bound chest was among them, tied to a girth strap with a canvas sack on top. It had struck Farajalla as foolishness to enter the pass with so few, but nobody had appeared to threaten them. They hadn’t even seen another human for two days. “You can sit on that rock, Lady.”
Ailiss glared at him, and then the rock he indicated too. “I don’t need to rest. I’m perfectly able to finish this climb.”
Farajalla, who wasn’t convinced she could make it herself, didn’t speak.
“I’m sure you are,” Gaudin said equably. “But the air here is just thin enough to fool you. Better to sit and rest now, than press on and spend tomorrow abed with a throbbing head.”
“You nurse me like an old maid,” Ailiss grumbled.
“Someone should,” Gaudin answered. “Please, Lady?”
She muttered something and went over to the makeshift chair, arranging her skirts as though she was in a lord’s mansion preparing for a dance. Farajalla found a perch not far away and leaned her hands on her knees. It had been a long climb from the pass through the mountains, following the river up an ever-narrowing valley from which vegetation gradually disappeared. At times the track was faint and rough: at others it vanished completely under loose stones and stubborn, spiny plants. There were not many travellers up here. Farajalla couldn’t imagine why. Her thighs ached and her calves were fire. She would be happy to make camp here and sleep, and leave the last three hundred yards until tomorrow.
“Will that satisfy you?” Ailiss asked Gaudin, after what seemed like half a minute. He only gave her a smile, utterly unfazed by her manner. The old woman rose, and with a groan Farajalla pushed herself to her feet.
They resumed climbing. Farajalla went slowly because that was all she could do, and also because she wanted to make sure her foot was planted securely before she put weight on it. Sometimes footing that looked solid slid away when she shifted fully onto it, once so quickly that she’d had to grab hold of a rock to avoid being dumped down the slope that ran down to the white-foamed river. One of the six soldiers hadn’t been as lucky, weighted down as he was with armour and weapons. He held onto the harness of a pack pony as he walked now and still limped, favouring the ankle he had twisted learning to be wary.
The track swung sharply left to skirt a huge boulder, ran obliquely up the angle of the slope, and then abruptly switched back again. Farajalla’s knees popped. A hand took her elbow and she looked around to find Gaudin smiling encouragingly down at her. It was a surprise; usually he strayed no more than ten feet from Ailiss, however she grumped at him and flapped her hands. The climb didn’t seem to have affected him at all.
Yours is the face I have seen, Ailiss had told her
at the Hidden House. I will teach you the things you must know, before my time is done.
They had been travelling since, and there had been neither the time nor the energy for teaching. But Farajalla had seen the books, the three great tomes that lay at the centre of the Dualism, and the lore of which the Lady was the keeper. The Unfurling of Spirit, a foot tall and three inches thick, patterned all over with gold leaf. The Opening of the Ways, smaller and more slender, criss-crossed with delicate filigrees in silver and gold. And the Book of Breathing, brass-bound leather so old it seemed to cling to a touching finger as though thirsting for the moisture of skin. The book her husband had been set to find.
She wished Calesh were here. His work had always taken him away from her at need, and she had long been reconciled to that if not exactly happy with it. But this was different. It was the first time she hadn’t known when he would be back, even if all went well, and that was an uncomfortable feeling. Even worse was the knowledge that Calesh was involved in a war of annihilation, with nowhere to flee to if he failed and no haven that might take them in. Because the danger was greater, the risks he was likely to take grew too. That was just how he was: he would do what he needed to do to win, just as he’d done when leading the counter-charge against Cammar a Amalik and the Nazir. On the face of it that had been a mad gamble, laughing in the face of the odds, but Calesh had calculated in that instinctive way he had that it offered the best chance of victory. So he had done it, and it had paid off. There was no guarantee that the next risk would work as well.
She couldn’t bear to lose him now.
Sometimes she would realise she had laid a hand on the flat of her belly, unconsciously trying to feel the life that Ailiss assured her was quickening there. Farajalla couldn’t feel it, though old crones in Harenc had told her that a woman always knew. She wouldn’t quite believe it was true until she did, until the babe kicked perhaps, or there was some other incontrovertible sign. Except that part of her did believe it, and Calesh didn’t know it yet, and so she could not bear to lose him now.
At last the track ran into the shadow cast by those monolithic walls, and then of a sudden they were at the gates. The one on the right was still stubbornly stuck halfway open, but the two men worrying at the lower hinge with a can of grease abandoned the effort and turned to the new arrivals with smiles.
“Welcome to Adour,” the nearest said. He was stocky and thick around the middle, with a fringe of iron-grey hair that clung around his ears and ran away into wisps at the back. “I hope it was worth the climb. We always say that,” he confided. He dry-washed his hands as he looked at Ailiss, nervousness and joy warring across his lined face, and then his expression cleared and he smiled. “Welcome, Lady. Oh, be welcome to Adour, truly.”
“The greeting makes it worth the climb,” Ailiss said graciously. “But you forgot to give us your name.”
“I’m Rissaun, Lady. And this,” he jerked a thumb at the second man, “this is Seran. He doesn’t talk very much.”
“Rissaun is one of God’s chatterers,” the other man put in. His voice was reedy, probably because of the squashed blob that had once been his nose. Farajalla dreaded to think how often it must have been broken to become like that. “Everyone else, as a consequence, has to be content with listening.”
“I’m sure I’ll be delighted to hear you talk,” Ailiss told the stocky man. His uncertain grin showed he didn’t quite know how to take that. “I will introduce my companions inside, if I may. That was a long climb, worth it or not, and we could all use some hot tea and a bite to eat.”
Rissaun was instantly all solicitation, ushering them through the unlit tunnel that ran to a second gate twenty feet away, this one standing open. It wasn’t usually closed, he told them, simply because there was no need. They did oil it every spring though, just to be sure it wouldn’t stick. He was still talking as they emerged into the courtyard, forty yards across and almost all in shadow, and Farajalla saw what it was that climbed higher than the far wall.
There was a thumb of rock there, jutting almost sheer-sided out of the crag on which Adour was built. A pinnacle atop a peak, Farajalla thought as she craned her head back to see. Stairs zigzagged up the vertiginous flank, most of them tilting crazily one way or the other, as though a giant had picked them up and let them tumble down any old how. At the top stood a narrow temple, little more than a round tower with tiny windows, from which a needle-thin spire poked a few yards towards the sky. The main walls of Adour ran into the butte, using it to make a corner for the fortress. The sides of the spire were at least as sheer as the walls, smooth granite that looked to have been polished until it shone. Not even a spider would be able to climb up, except by the canted stairs.
“I don’t believe that people actually worship in there,” she said.
“Yes, we do,” Rissaun said brightly. “Twice a week. We don’t often have an Elite here, so most of the time we take turns to give the sermon. Until last summer we used to race each other to the top in pairs, though we had to stop that when Othaer slipped and broke his leg. He tumbled most of the way down before we could reach him.”
They all looked at him, and after a moment Rissaun shifted his feet. “It can get boring if you’re here too long.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Farajalla said dryly.
Around them other soldiers had begun to emerge from side doors set into the thick walls. They stopped just within view, eager to see the Lady of the Hidden House but too nervous to approach her yet. None wore armour or uniform. Several had obviously been working, and now wiped their hands on rags or leaned on pitchforks as they watched. All of them looked to be over forty, and most were the wrong side of fifty. She thought this was a place where ageing soldiers were sent when they were too old for fighting, but had been in the Hand of the Lord so long that any other life was unthinkable.
It made sense, but Farajalla found it somewhat unsettling. Baruch might have ended here, if he had remained in the Hand as he so obviously meant to do. Or worse, Calesh could have come, if he hadn’t chanced to lead the patrol that rode into Harenc that summer’s day.
“Lady,” Rissaun began, and broke off. Farajalla already had some idea of how rare it was for him to hesitate, and even now it only lasted a moment. “Lady, would you lead us in prayer, before you go?”
“I would be glad to,” Ailiss said. “But for now, what I want is hot tea. And something to eat. Off you go now.”
Farajalla thought he would never have gone, if Ailiss hadn’t told him directly. He did though, calling something to one of the other men as he went. The little group from the Hidden House stood in a cluster in the middle of the courtyard and looked around themselves. There were doors on all sides, no doubt leading to sleeping chambers and kitchens, store rooms and a barracks, all of them set into the wall itself. A long opening in the north wall was clearly a stable, though it seemed empty at the moment. Most impressively there was a well, a steady trickle of water that fed a stone basin two feet across, what in Tura d’Madai would have been called a tank. The defenders of Adour would not go thirsty.
Farajalla thought of the walls, twenty feet thick and standing atop a steep hill strewn with rocks.
“You could hold this place against an army until the world grows old,” she said at last. “Until the All-Church falls, and its name is forgotten.”
“Perhaps not quite so long as that,” Gaudin said, unsmiling.
“No,” Ailiss agreed. She went to a stone bench and sat down, pushing her feet out in front of her. “Perhaps not so long. But we could try.”