David Coe - The Horsemen's Gambit

There was little in the village itself to mark it as being Mettai. The houses and lanes looked much like those in other settlements. The homes might have been a bit smaller here, a bit more ragged in appearance. But Tirnya saw nothing that told her definitively that this was a Mettai village. Still, she knew it immediately, and so, it seemed, did her father.

They'd passed by all the towns they'd seen previously; this time they stopped a short distance from the settlement. Jenoe surveyed the village and then the surrounding woodlands, as if searching for signs of a trap.

"Have your men remain here," he told his captains. "Tirnya, Enly, and I will ride in and speak with the leaders."

Tirnya and the other captains rode back to inform their lead riders of what they were doing. Then Enly and Tirnya rejoined the marshal and the three of them steered their mounts toward the village.

Black-haired children playing in the lanes and yards stopped to stare at the riders as they went past. Their eyes were wide and dark, their skin still brown from the Growing sun. Men and women appeared in doorways or stepped around from in back of houses to look at the strangers.

"They certainly look like Mettai," Jenoe said quietly. "Every Mettai I've ever seen was dark like these people."

They came to a small marketplace and halted, wondering where to seek out the village's leaders. They needn't have wondered. After only a moment or two, a woman approached them. Her hair was white and her face bore deep lines, but she stood straight and she regarded them with shining black eyes that seemed to have surrendered nothing to age.

"Who are you?" she asked in a gravelly voice. "What is this army that you've brought to my village?"

Jenoe dismounted and nodded once to Tirnya and Enly, indicating that they should do the same.

"My name is Jenoe Onjaef, good woman," the marshal said. "This is my daughter, Tirnya, and with us is Enly Tolm, lord heir of Qalsyn."

The woman glanced at the younger riders, appearing unimpressed. Then she faced Jenoe again. "All right," she said. "That's who you are. What about the rest of it? Why are you here?"

Jenoe favored her with his most disarming smile. "May I ask where we are, gentle woman? What is the name of his village?"

She frowned, and for a moment Tirnya wondered if she would answer. "This is Shaldir," she finally said. "You're near the Companion Lakes. Or did you know that already?"

Tirnya's father chuckled. "Yes, that much we knew. And your name?" Again the woman hesitated, clearly not pleased by the way he was evading her questions. "I'm Kenitha. I'm eldest of this village."

"And you're Mettai, aren't you, Eldest?"

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, her voice rising.

"Are you Mettai?"

She pressed her lips in a thin line, but then held up her left hand so that they could see the back of it. Her brown skin was scored with dozens of thin white scars and several more cuts that were darker, fresher. "Now, answer me. What do you want with us? We've done nothing that would displease the lord governor."

"No, you haven't," Jenoe said. "Please forgive us if our presence here has unnerved you or the people of your village." He glanced around. "Is there somewhere we might speak to you in private?"

Her expression darkening even more, Kenitha stared at them briefly before turning on her heel and walking away. Jenoe glanced at Tirnya, an eyebrow raised. Then he followed the woman, as did Tirnya and Enly.

She led them to a small house just south of the marketplace, but she didn't take them inside. Instead, she sat on the steps outside the door.

"Now, for the last time, what are you doing here?"

Jenoe looked around. There was no one else in sight. This was as much privacy as they were likely to get.

"Have you heard talk of the pestilence recently?" the marshal asked.

Clearly Kenitha hadn't been expecting this. "Yes, I have. The outbreaks have been west of here, in the Y'Qatt villages on the Silverwater, and on the Central Plain."

Jenoe nodded. "That's right. Apparently this is a peculiar strain of the disease. It only strikes at Qirsi. As far as we know, not a single Eandi village has seen an outbreak."

The woman frowned again. "That I hadn't heard, but now that you say it, I think you're right. All the villages that have been struck have been west of the Silverwater." She shook her head. "But what does this have to do with your army being here?"

"You know the history of the Central Plain, don't you?" Jenoe said. "That it was once held by the Eandi. The Horn, Silvralna, Deraqor-all of it was ours." He indicated Tirnya with an open hand. "And my family-mine and Tirnya's-once ruled in Deraqor."

"Onjaef," she whispered, comprehension lighting her eyes. "I knew I'd heard the name."

Jenoe smiled. "Yes."

"You're marching to war," Kenitha said. "That's why you've come this way. It's not enough that the white-hairs are dying from the pestilence; you want to slaughter them on a battlefield as well."

Tirnya felt as though she'd been slapped. "That's not-!"

Her father held up a hand, silencing her. "You're right. That's essentially what we're doing. But you have to understand that they took our ancestral lands from us. We've been exiles for more than a century. And now we have an opportunity to take back those lands."

"The Blood Wars have been over for a long time," the woman said, a gust of wind making her hair dance around her face. "And yet the tales of them that my grandfather told me-tales his grandfather told him-are still enough to keep me awake on a cold, dark night. You're stepping back into horrors you don't even understand."

Jenoe cast another quick look at Tirnya, his expression bleak. Clearly this wasn't going to work, at least not with these Mettai. But her father made the effort anyway.

"I'm sorry to hear you say that," he told the eldest. "We came here hoping that you and your people might join us in our fight. We could offer you land on the Central Plain, or perhaps even in the Horn. You wouldn't have to take up arms, but your magic…"

He trailed off. The woman was laughing and shaking her head.

"Remarkable," she said. "You actually came here hoping to lure us into this folly. The Mettai have been ignored by your kind for centuries. On those few occasions when you do take notice of us, it's to push us off our land or something of the sort. And now, suddenly, you want us to be allies in your war? You must be joking."

Jenoe straightened. "I assure you, Eldest, we're utterly serious about this."

"Well, you'll have to get your magic elsewhere," she said, standing, and starting up the stairs toward the door. "Because we want nothing to do with you or your battles." She entered the house and shut the door behind her, leaving the three of them standing there.

Jenoe clicked his tongue once and started to lead his horse away from the house, back to where the army was waiting. Tirnya followed, leading Thirus, her sorrel, and Enly fell in step beside her. After a moment, Jenoe slowed down, allowing them to catch up with him.

"So what do we do now?" the lord heir asked.

"This isn't the only Mettai village around here," Tirnya said quickly.

"No," her father agreed, "it's not. But I'm afraid that Kenitha's attitude may be more typical than you'd like to believe."

"I'm not ready to give up yet," Tirnya said, looking at both men in turn, as if challenging them to argue the point.

"Neither am I." Her father kept his tone mild, no doubt as determined to avoid a fight as she was to keep trying. "I'm just saying that we may run out of villages before long."

Tirnya felt certain that Enly was thinking much the same thing, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

They rejoined the army a short time later and turned northward once more. The following day they came to a second settlement, this one somewhat larger than the first. As before, Tirnya, Jenoe, and Enly rode into the village to speak with the leaders there.