Michael Stackpole - When Dragons Rage

“Yes, but have you lain with him?”

Tatyana’s question shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. The nights on the road had brought her into physical contact with Crow. It hadn’t been the sort of intimacy her question asked after, but it had been more than casual. Comfortable described it in part, but insufficiently. Her inability to name it frustrated her as much as her missing it now did.

The princess put her frustration into a snort. “Would you inspect my loins, Grand Duchess?”

The old woman flicked a finger and one of the guards started forward until Peri’s furious shriek split the air. “Touch my sister and the witch will be opened throat to belly.” The Gyrkyme held her left hand out, wickedly hooked talons ready to strike.

“Peri, hold.” Alexia glared at the guard, backing him into his place. “You have forgotten one thing, Grand Duchess . You may lead the Crown Circle, you may have the ear of your brother, but I am the crown princess . Nowhere amid your edicts or pronouncements do you have the right to touch my person. You forgot that once and paid a small price for it. Neither you nor your agents will get off so lightly this time.”

Tatyana clutched her hands back to her breast and rubbed the fingers that Alexia had bitten at their first meeting, when Tatyana had pried her mouth open to inspect her teeth. “And have you forgotten, Crown Princess Alexia, that while you have been off being trained to win our nation back, I have held it together? The debts owed to our house are owed to me . Arrogance and disregard for me and my wishes will cost you terribly.”

The old woman stood and reached back for the cloak that was quickly draped over her shoulders. “But go on and play your little game to save this Crow. Just remember, in your dreams, you never had a husband. Consider carefully which way you influence the future. So much rests on your shoulders. I would not have you ruin things on a whim.”

“Not a whim, Aunt Tatyana, but for a friend and a man who will much annoy the enemy.”

Tatyana raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. Then, perhaps, he will be worth a look, this Crow. I hope for your sake he is, else he will be a distraction and all shall fall to ashes for your folly.”

General Markus Adrogans, leader of the Jeranese Horse Guards and commander of the Southlands expedition liberating Okrannel, stood on a windswept hill to the north of the city of Guraskya. He granted that it was a city, for it was the capital of the Guranin Highlands, but compared to the sophisticated cities to the south and east—cities of stone and soaring towers—it seemed little more than a village grown beyond all proportion.

Though the Guranin highlanders did pay allegiance to the Okrans crown, having long ago been conquered, they did hold themselves as a people apart. Younger sons and daughters of the Okrans conquerors had married into the highland clans and instead of bringing city sophistication to their new home, the Okrans nobility were seduced by the strength of highland bloodlines and custom. For generations, lesser nobles fled to the highlands when cities could not contain their dreams and rebellious spirits, and the Guranin welcomed them openly.

Guraskya had been laid out in highland fashion, which meant it really had not been planned at all. Rectangular longhouses of wood, with thatched roofs and smoke holes, provided shelter. The buildings did not rise above a single story, nor were wings built onto them when a clan grew beyond that single structure. Other buildings would be raised, some nearby, some far, none connecting and all canted at angles that made them look like debris left from tossed jackstraw.

From the hilltop Adrogans could see two or three marketplaces, but from their size and location he assumed they had sprung up over what had been a longhouse that had burned down. Stockyards dotted the settlements south, west, and east, with barns and warehouses nearby. To the north a “foreign quarter” had been created, but until the arrival of his troops, it had consisted of two inns and a single tavern, since visitors were rare and accommodations were not meant to encourage long stays.

That foreign quarter had expanded rather quickly in the last month. He and the Alcidese general, Turpus Caro, had stationed their troops in Guraskya, along with a fifth of the Svoin refugees. Other units had trekked further to the north and west, stationing refugees in villages and hamlets, small towns and clan centers. The highland clans, while normally having nothing but contempt for lowlanders, showed incredible compassion for the wretched people who sought sanctuary in their land. The clans had vied to house the people, and Adrogans’ early days in Guraskya had been spent listening to clan leaders explain all they had to offer.

In accord with their sizes and wealth, Adrogans had scattered his charges. The vast majority, a thousand of the sickest and most malnourished, had remained in Guraskya. The Tsuvo, Bravonyn, and Arzensk Clans shared the city and had been more than generous in dealing with the refugees. While they had not opened their longhouses to the foreign troops, they went to great pains to sort through genealogies to pair refugees with families that might share even a drop of blood, and he’d been assured that a lot of common links had been discovered in a very short time—much to everyone’s satisfaction.

Snow blanketed the city, but still people moved about. The troop staging areas, which ringed the hill on which he stood, showed the most activity. It might have seemed an illusion because the round tents housing troops fluttered and twitched in breezes, though the snow built up around the sides did help insulate those within. The troopers had plenty to do, however, drilling, organizing woodcutting expeditions, and scouting the various approaches the Aurolani might take to attack.

Adrogans stroked his chin with a mittened hand. On the plains before Svoin he had met with Nefrai-kesh, the sullanciri who had been Kenwick Norrington and who, in Chytrine’s name, commanded the Aurolani garrison in Svarskya. Chytrine’s general had promised Adrogans that he would not attack until spring, but the Jeranese leader knew better than to take the sullanciri at his word. If Nefrai-kesh needed an excuse to cover a treacherous attack, he could hide behind the fact that he’d been referring to a campaign against Svoin, not against Adrogans’ troops.

As a Gyrkyme might fly, less than a hundred miles separated Guraskya from the Okrans capital, so the threat of attack remained almost constant. While the approaches to the highlands were few and easily guarded, Okrans troops without the benefit of Chytrine’s magicks and dragonels had been victorious centuries before. Lack of an active threat from the highlands before this had saved them from any concerted Aurolani effort to conquer them, but Adrogans refused to repay the highlanders’ kindness by permitting an Aurolani invasion.

Ideas and strategies rolled through Adrogans’ mind, but two things distracted him from studying them too closely. The first was the slow filtering of people onto a training field down to his left, on the east side of the encampment. He counted a hundred and a half—a task made easy as they organized themselves into companies of thirty. A week previous, a quarter of that number had been on the field. The people, men and women alike, still had a skeletal thinness to them, but in their eyes he saw the lean hunger of human wolves.

He was not at all certain how many of the thousand who remained in Guraskya would train and join the Svoin Infantry. The people below were the strongest of his refugees and, in many ways, it surprised him that a legion and a half were able to take the field. While putting food in a man’s belly can make him content, there is no easy way to put fire in his soul. Those below were mostly bent on revenge, for the Aurolani rape of Svoin had cost everyone at least a relative, friend, or lover.