David Durham - The Sacred Band

“When the league comes bearing gifts, beware.” Melio had said those exact words before. Saying it herself, she heard his voice.

“Too right, Your Highness. The stuff wouldn’t have lasted long in any event. I know this from experience.”

“You trained on the Mein Plateau.”

Perrin nodded. His shoulder-length hair swayed with the motion. “Two years based in Cathgergen. Rather boring, really, considering that there weren’t actually any Meins to be worrying about anymore.”

“Did you see much of the plateau?”

“It’s mostly much of the same. Snow and trees and ice. Snow and trees and ice. Oh, there’s a mountain!” He feigned surprise. “That sort of thing. I went west as far as Scatevith. Wintered for three months in Hardith. Saw Mein Tahalian in the height of summer.”

“What was it like?”

“You’ve never been?”

Mena shook her head.

“In summer it was a misery of mosquitoes and biting flies. Place was deadly with them-we were bitten and the air was so thick with them, we could not help but breathe them in and choke. It wasn’t the winters that made the Meins so cranky. It was the summer wildlife.”

“Is what they say of Haleeven Mein true?”

“That he camps outside Mein Tahalian? Yes. That he is insane from grief and shame? That, too, perhaps. I think I saw him once, but he was so covered in furs that it was impossible to tell for sure. Not much of a life for a man who could have been chieftain of the Mein. I almost feel for him.”

Perrin drew back his legs to let a nervous servant through to the stove. The boy fed the fire with the thin shavings of hardwood. Watching him, the young officer continued, “Tahalian itself I saw only from outside. It was sealed shut by then. It huddled against the ground, pretending to be dead, waiting for you to come too close. Don’t laugh at me, but I used to dream that the Tahalian you could see-the wood beams and buttresses of it-was the headgear of a buried giant. I woke up sweating in my bedroll more than once to the image of the head rising, eyes opening, and the whole thing clawing up from the tundra. Am I embarrassing myself here?”

Just the opposite, Mena thought. He was diverting, pleasant to look at and to listen to. Rare to find a man so at home in his body, so easy with life and able to talk without self-importance or hidden meanings. Knowing well the conspiratorial world of court life on Acacia, Mena found this apparent naivete refreshing.

“Did you ever see the route from Tahalian to Port Grace?” she asked.

“No. It’s a well-established road, though. The ascent from the coast is gradual, wide. A fortnight’s march, if the weather isn’t troublesome.”

Mena glanced at the portholes again, even more rimmed with delicate lacings of frost now. The wind had picked up, gusting and setting up a sporadic clanking from the rigging. “Let me ask you something. Do you think we’ll survive a winter camped here?”

“Many will die, Princess Mena. Not even the Scav stay out here. Not exposed this way. We could travel inland a bit, find a sheltered spot along the pass, but still… it will be along, hard winter. Ice will lock us in. In a month we’ll be trapped here until the spring. And we’ll need every day of that month to prepare. Each day will be shorter, colder; before long there’ll be little daylight at all. We’ll need to divide our labors quickly. Some building the shelters, some bringing the ships to shore, some hunting and fishing. Kant says there are seal beaches just to the north. We should send as many ships as we can, fill them full of the blubber. We’ll need it.”

“You make it sound like the war is with the winter.”

Perrin looked at his wineglass again, studying it as if the act of doing so would be enough to refill it. “It will be. The other officers can think about slaying Auldek. I almost wish the Auldek would hurry up and get here so we could have this fight. Who knows? Maybe they will, but I’d wager we’re in for a wait.” He paused a moment, drained his glass, then rolled the stem between his fingers. “It’s what’s been ordered, though. The queen’s command. So we’ll do it.”

“You don’t think we should?”

“I won’t say a word against the queen’s wishes. I understand completely how the situation would look from Acacia. She’s right, of course. If we could stop the Auldek here… Even if we just weaken them, delay them, the empire could be that much better prepared to meet them if they ever stumble out of the Ice Fields. No, I see the advantage of this move very well. It’s just… we won’t be the ones that reap that benefit.”

Mena dropped her eyes when his met hers. “Good night, Perrin.”

T he next morning Mena met with her officers on the northern ridge along the pass and traversed its spine as it snaked inland. It afforded an even better view of the mountains stretching off to the north and the curve of the coastline as it vanished into the distant mist. Perrin and Edell, the Marah captain Bledas, and the Senivalian Perceven represented the military units at her command. Daley, the captain of Hadin’s Resolve and several others attended on the naval side. Gandrel was there for his knowledge of the Scav.

The princess waited as the men gathered around her, all of them taking in the view, desolate yet strangely beautiful to behold.

“Look,” Perceven said, “a chase.”

On a sloping stretch of rock-strewn tundra below them, two figures moved. They were tiny amid the vastness of the valleys and mountains, but their motion was easy to follow. A white hare leaped in a crazy, jolting, zagging line. Behind it a snow cat bounded.

Mena kept her eyes on the hunt but said loudly enough that all the men could hear, “We will die here.” None disputed it. They looked at her, at one another, then back to the pursuit that held Mena’s gaze. “The Auldek will arrive to find an army of ice sculptures waiting them.”

Gandrel said, “True. Or they’ll find us cut to pieces by the Scav. There are more of them around here, I tell you. Even if they’re hard to spot. I wouldn’t put anything past them. Not even jolly young Kant here.” Kant watched the hunt and made no sign that he heard or understood.

“There are too many ways our deaths here might be for naught,” Mena said. “If I knew what was coming-when and how-that would be one thing. But for all we know the Auldek might arrive six months from now. Or they may take a different route. Or they might never arrive. Considering all this, I cannot have us winter here.”

The snow cat slapped at the hare’s hind leg. For a moment the prey seemed frozen, its body tilted as it floated above the tundra. Then it landed hard. The cat fell upon it and the two rolled into one ball of motion. When they stopped, the cat had its jaws around the hare’s neck, patient now as it suffocated its prey.

Mena looked away, as unsatisfied with the outcome as she had been watching the pursuit. “That’s my decision,” she said.

“But the queen…” Perrin began.

“We leave here immediately,” Mena said. “Sail to Port Grace. From there we march inland to Tahalian. We’ll winter in the fortress and adjust to whatever challenges the thaw brings with it. Go and see to it.”

T he next afternoon Mena sent a ship south to alert the small settlement of Port Grace that they would soon be inundated with a passing army. On it she also sent a note to be flown by messenger bird, once they were far enough south to ensure the bird would know the landmarks. She had spent the previous night composing a long missive to explain the situation in all its complexity. In the morning, she ripped it to pieces. Instead the message she sent was terser.

Queen Corinn,

The plan to meet the enemy in the far north is untenable. I am moving the army to Mein Tahalian. We will winter there, training.