Joel Shepherd - Haven

“Koenyg,” he said. “And our father's memory. His spirit. This was his war….”

“It was Koenyg's,” Sasha snorted. “Father believed that the fates would show him the way, and the gods watch over us. All the actual decision making he left to Koenyg.”

“The purpose of this war was to unite all of Lenayin within a common cause,” Damon said stubbornly. “We've fought each other for all history, this is the first time we've fought all together, on a foreign campaign….”

“Aye, for the glory of a faith less than half the population shares,” Sasha interrupted. “Damon, you're arguing like Sofy-she always thinks it's better to make peace and bring people together. What about the men who murdered those children? Would you like to make peace with them? Forge a common destiny? Me, I say any common destiny with people like that is a destiny not worth having. I'd rather see their heads on pikes.”

“Or yours on one,” Damon warned.

“Yes,” Sasha agreed, adamantly. “Better that, too.”

“And what of the great Verenthane alliance that would sustain Lenayin for centuries to come?”

“What of it?” Sasha asked. “When did either of us believe in that? That Lenayin needed civilising, needed to become more like the lowlands? Those were always the dreams of men who never liked Lenayin, those whose greatest hope for their homeland was that we should become like someone else.

“Damon, the great hope of lowlands alliance is not the Verenthane faith. It's the serrin, it always was…. This…this land we invade, it's not perfect, but there is so much here that they got right. This is what we should be copying-education, tolerance, the abolition of the special rights of nobility, equal laws for all, the creation of wealth and trade….”

“Wait, wait.” Damon looked at her grimly. “These are the people who tortured you and murdered Alythia, and…”

“Some of them,” Sasha agreed. “Not all.”

“And even little Tomli was abandoned by his mother,” Damon persisted. “Are things so perfect here that…”

“Not perfect, no! But that's the point, Damon, the starting point is that we all must accept that humanity is not perfect, and never will be.”

“Any civilisation inspired by the serrin will never make an empire,” Damon said with certainty. “And only empires are any use to us, in allegiance. We're too far away, otherwise. This war is only worth the price for Lenayin if we gain in trade, or materials, or treaties of common interest. Grand treaties with hermit kingdoms do us naught, we'd do better to invade them ourselves and gain their benefits directly.”

“We'll see,” said Sasha. “If the Saalshen Bacosh survives this, they'll have had an awful shock. They never thought they'd lose, and for two centuries they were right. Kessligh has argued for a long time that they should have expanded, instead of simply ceding ground and time upon which their enemies can grow stronger. If they see the other side of this, they may well see Kessligh proven right.”

Damon thumped his head back upon Sasha's improvised pillow. “It's all fantasy talk anyhow,” he murmured. “If, when and maybe. We're just two people, dreaming at the stars.”

“From such beginnings do civilisations spring,” said Sasha.

Damon looked at her for a moment. “You really are Nasi-Keth, aren't you?”

“I think I may be,” Sasha said quietly.

A moment later, Damon got up and left, leaving Sasha to gaze at the stars.

“They will not attack tonight,” said Tomli, a small, Saalsi voice at Sasha's side.

Sasha rolled over and looked at him. “Who will not attack?”

“The serrin.” Tomli gazed into the night, his emerald eyes distant. It seemed to Sasha that he was listening to something that only he could hear. “They know you have an en'vel'ennar with you.”

“One with vel'ennar ,” that meant. It was the serrin collective “we.” A consciousness shared by all serrin, and unknown to humans. When Sasha had first learned of it, she had assumed the meaning was figurative or poetic. Serrin were frequently poetic, as was the Saalsi tongue. But experience had taught her to doubt whether the vel'ennar was quite that simple.

“Tomli,” she murmured. “Can you hear them?”

Tomli shook his head. “I feel them. They are sad.”

“Because you are sad?” Sasha asked. Tomli nodded.

“And because so many of us are tuan'sli .” There was no direct translation in any tongue Sasha knew. “ Tuani ,” Saalsi for “phrase.” Or “words,” but more than words. Elided to “esli,” meaning “to move beyond,” but not physically. To move as thoughts moved. Or as conversations shifted, from one topic to another.

Tuan'sli …to move beyond words? To shift from the realm of the living to dreams unknown? Serrin had more euphemisms for death, and indeed most things, than Sasha knew in all other tongues.

“They'll have found the graves,” Sasha murmured, mostly to herself. Serrin finding those graves would know what had happened. Though Sasha suspected that somehow, through Tomli, they'd have known anyhow.

It was a mixed formation that plunged toward the Bacosh camp, Rhodaani cavalry in the middle, with serrin talmaad on the flanks. Errollyn found little joy in the ride down the wild hillside toward the pocket of wood below, and the camp nestled within. His attention was fixed solely upon the further ridge, where the land rose up above the Bacosh camp.

Errollyn cast a glance across to the head of the formation, where Kessligh crouched low before a charging mass of Rhodaani cavalry. There were nearly a hundred and fifty in all, much to the displeasure of General Geralin, who remained furious at Kessligh for using so much of their precious strength on “needless diversions.” Kessligh's stare seemed also focused upon the far ridge. Kessligh had fought and won entire campaigns in the highlands of Lenayin, and if anyone could judge mountainous terrain, he could.

Below, the pocket of trees grew closer. Errollyn glimpsed tents amidst the trees, and moving horses, and steel. He waved his left arm out, indicating the line he wished the talmaad to establish to that side.

With perhaps five hundred human paces to go, horses began crashing through the trees of the camp below. They came pouring out, in their tens and twenties, heavily armoured and in the full colours of armoured house cavalry.

An ambush. The trees had hidden far more men than the camp at first appeared to hold. Kessligh swung away to the right, the formation following him, as though startled. Errollyn followed, his left flank trailing behind, now forming a line-astern, archers firing left across their bodies as they raked across the advancing Bacosh line. Arrows streaked downhill, aiming mainly for horses. Animals fell, and men with them, but the mass was now turning to follow-slower, and hindered by the slope, but determined and furious, yelling and waving swords.

Kessligh's formation rounded the woods and smashed through some riders who had emerged on the far side. Bacosh men were cut tumbling from their horses, whilst others reined back downslope, and more sensibly awaited the strength of their pursuing friends.

Only now, with a new roar, there emerged atop the far ridge a new mass of Bacosh riders, plunging down the boulder-strewn slope to the right. Not merely an ambush, but a trap.

Had Kessligh been right about that slope? Errollyn stared above the heads of the racing Rhodaanis, and watched the descending wall of Bacosh cavalry. Too many rocks, had been Kessligh's opinion.

The Rhodaanis thought now only of speed, and hurtled across the bottom of the valley with the talmaad at their rear, determined to pass the base of the rocky slope before the descending Bacosh cavalry did. Behind, Errollyn's talmaad spread out, turning to loose arrows at the first pursuing group, making more horses tumble. Errollyn galloped past the foot of the slope just as the cavalry reached the bottom on his right, and made sharp turns to follow them. The first group of pursuers wove across the valley floor to avoid them, and then there was a great, galloping wall of riders behind. They fell back a little in the face of deadly accurate archery from the talmaad ahead, but not too far.