Joel Shepherd - Sasha

Damon caught snatches of conversation as he rode past, some angry, some exasperated, some forlorn. There was not a Goeren-yai man to be seen. At Damon's side, Myklas rode with a bewildered expression. Myklas had never found the bickering of lords interesting before. A sixteen-year-old prince in Baen-Tar, Damon knew all too well, could lead a sheltered life, safe within the illusion that all Lenays shared the same values, paid homage to their superiors and would die for the same causes, if needs be. Damon had been eased from that illusion slowly, one small step into the freezing water at a time. Myklas had been thrown for a headlong plunge and his eyes now registered the chilling shock.

In a field beside the road, a group of soldiers gathered about a morning campfire. Damon recognised the flag atop a near tent-a battlehorn on a scarlet background, the Fyden Silver Horns. Damon called ahead to his Royal Guard escort and rode into the field. Morose, unshaven faces looked up as he approached.

Damon and Myklas dismounted and handed reins to the guardsmen. "Highness," said a Fyden sergeant, with no real enthusiasm. Of the six men present, this man was the senior ranked.

"What happened?" Damon asked. It was a question he'd asked numerous soldiers this morning. It was plenty clear what had happened. It was not a simple description of events he was seeking.

The sergeant shrugged. "Damn mess, Your Highness," he said, in a guttural western accent. "They leave, all my Goeren-yai. Many friends. Damn mess." His Lenay was not good… it rarely was, in the west. Nearby, an officer was shouting, trying to rally scattered men.

"How many of the Silver Horns contingent remain?"

The sergeant made a face. "Half. Maybe less. Some Verenthanes go. Lieutenant Byron go. Maybe I should have go too."

"Highness…" a man-at-arms ventured, cautiously, "we go… go chase? Chase our men?"

"They're traitors," Damon said flatly. Koenyg had been most insistent on that point. Insistent, loud and angry.

The westerners looked most unhappy at that. "Not traitors, Highness," said another. "Good men."

Another man said something in a western tongue, which got an angry retort from his comrade. Voices were raised, back and forth. Evidently the issue was not universally agreed.

Damon was not surprised. He glanced up at the Royal Guardsman astride his horse-a Goeren-yai man, one of the few Royal Guard Goeren-yai who'd remained. The man's face was impassive. Despite Koenyg's attempts to dismiss a number of Goeren-yai Royal Guards, Damon had insisted as many remain as possible. Koenyg had already had a list compiled, it seemed, and had spent half the dark hours summoning, ordering and shouting, trying to sort out the loyal from the disloyal. Even when it became apparent that some Verenthanes, too, had abandoned their posts, he only dismissed Goeren-yai guardsmen.

Then had come news that some other Goeren-yai guardsmen, infuriated by the dismissals, had taken leave to ride hard after the traitors and more were joining them. Some northern cavalrymen had intercepted them, with sporadic battles erupting by torchlight across the fields and into the forest below. That tally was twenty dead from both sides, with rumours spreading fast of how the Banneryd cavalry had executed several wounded guardsmen, not helping matters at all. The desertions had only ended after a furious row between Captain Myles of the Royal Guard and Koenyg, during which (it was said) Koenyg had threatened to dismiss Captain Myles as well, to which Myles had countered that all the Royal Guard would desert if he did so.

It had been a long, exhausting, bloody, rumour-filled night, and the day did not promise any better. Already there were reports of murders amongst the few Goeren-yai of Baen-Tar town, the finger of suspicion pointed immediately at the northern soldiers accommodating there. The rest of the Goerenyai community were sheltering in the houses of Verenthane friends, fearing for their lives. The only positive Damon could see was that the soldiers themselves, with the predictable exception of the northerners, had not been killing each other. From the look of this lot, he reckoned that Koenyg would have his work cut out for him if he expected them to go tearing off in pursuit of their friends any time soon.

"Not bad men," the Fyden sergeant insisted now. "Good men. Verenthanes…° he shrugged, helplessly. "Verenthanes kill Lord Krayliss, kill Taneryn men, go Sashandra Lenayin to dungeon, now attack Udalyn." Another helpless shrug. "If I Goeren-yai, maybe I traitor too."

"Why don't you go and fight with them then?" Myklas said with irritation. "If you feel so sorry for them."

"Maybe I do," said the sergeant, with a dark glower at the youngest prince. "Maybe I start now. Boy."

Damon put a hand on Myklas's shoulder, pulling him back. "Thank you, Sergeant," he said, keeping his voice even. "You have every right to be angry. None of us like this situation."

"Aye," the sergeant muttered. He spat into the fire. "Aye, Prince Damon."

"You just back down to him?" Myklas said incredulously as they rode back along the road between paddock walls. "Who's the prince here, you or him?"

"Every Lenay man is a prince," Damon said darkly, casting his gaze across the desolate scene. "We don't rule by divine right, Myk, we rule on tolerance. They tolerate us, not the other way around. It's always been this way."

"Yeah, well, maybe it's time it changed," Myklas said angrily.

"Don't be a stupid little shit," Damon said coldly. "If you'd kept spitting in that sergeant's eye, he'd have cut your fucking head off, Prince Myklas, and devils take the consequences. In the last hundred years we nobles have begun to forget this fact and now we're paying for it."

"You're defending them?" Myklas said incredulously. "You're defending what they've done? What Sasha's done?"

"I'll tell you this, little brother," Damon said starkly, "thank the gods Sasha's leading this. The reason we aren't knee-deep in blood right now is Sasha. I've been reading a lot of history lately, the kinds of things our wonderful holy scholars never taught us and don't want us to read. Pagan history, before the Liberation. We've forgotten what honourable Lenays do when they've become sick of being kicked in the balls. So long as that column has Sasha at its head, she might keep it from becoming a bloody nightmare across the whole kingdom. But if something happens to her, it could be the end of Lenayin as a single kingdom, and sure as hells the end of Lenayin as a Verenthane kingdom. If it truly ever was."

Across an open stretch of lower slope, past isolated trees and water catchments that shone the dull silver of the overcast morning, rode the king. There were royal banners of purple and green, and a horde of Royal Guards astride some of the finest horses of any Lenay stable. The king wore black, tall and straight in the saddle astride a fine dappled grey. Soldiers across the slope stared as he passed and some cheered. Behind him, a host of nobility also rode, several hundred in number. The colours of their clothes seemed incongruous, a sea of courtly reds, blues, greens and golds across the dark green fields. Most, Damon suspected, had not changed from the previous day's finery. Last night, no one had slept.

"Look at them," Damon muttered, reining to a halt on the rise, with a good view over the royal procession along the lower slope. "Too scared to venture amongst their own soldiers except in force. They're more keen to lick the king's heels than they are to question their own men."

"Still, it's good to see Father out on a horse," Myklas said uncertainly. "It's been a long time." He paused. "In fact, I can't think of the last time."

Some of the nobles were riding amongst their own soldiers, whatever Damon's disdain. A small group of them came galloping across a near field, a flash of green Tyree colours amidst white canvas tents.