Part 76 (1/2)
Ashtaar laughs, and the laugh is hard and cruel. ”You would have failed long before now. You are neither ruthless enough, nor compa.s.sionate enough.”
Gretslen does not respond.
”Since you will not ask, I will tell you.” The spy-mistress's fingers caress the black agate oval again. ”She will do what must be done, because she has suffered enough, and knows the consequences if she does not.
She suffers because she knows too well how hard her actions fall, and she will struggle to balance them, and she will fail. Yet she will struggle well enough that most of the people she rules will forgive her and .follow her. Those who do not.. .” Ashtaar shrugs. ”They will essay her destruction, and perhaps one will succeed. You have great ability, and you believe that force always succeeds. It does, but not all force is obvious.” She smiles. ”Thank you. You may depart. Please keep me informed.”
”Thank you, Mightiness. We will do our best.” Gretslen's voice is even, and she rises, and bows, then turns and walks gracefully to the door.
109.
DUMARIA, DUMAR.
The Sea-Marshal glances up from the drums as Ehara steps into the small room off the armory. Heavy wrappings cover his arms, and his dark hair is short and frizzled. One of the burns on jerRestin's cheeks oozes a reddish fluid.
”Yet more sorcery?”
”What else would you suggest, Lord Ehara? My own iron quarrels burst into flame. Iron-flaming--- before I could even approach the b.i.t.c.h. Yet she used no sorcery to seek me.”
”She is braver than most lords.” Ehara's voice holds a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt ”She rode into a trap, and turned it on us.
”You and your men did not move quickly enough.”
”Neither did you. Sea-Priest, but you escaped. Most of my men did not, and another score who did drowned in trying to cross the Falche.”
”It took all my sorcery to hold off the sorceress's fires.” JerRestin looks at his arms. ”I was not entirely successful even so. I did lower the waters at the ford.”
”Yes. Not enough.”
'Enough to leave the sorceress on the eastern side. She will not risk the river with such a small body of armsmen.”
”Her twenty-fivescore no longer look so insignificant, and I am confident she will find her way across, if she has not already.” Ehara looks pointedly at the drums. ”You labor at more sorcery?”
”We have lost more than forty fine s.h.i.+ps to the first attack of the sorceress. I have lost over three thousand of the best lancers, dying in agony. A handful of us remain, and I can never return to Sturinn. Not with such disgrace. I can but atone.
Ehara's heavy eyebrows lift.
”The sorceress will die. She has power, but not cunning. She must live to succeed. I must die to succeed.”
”Then you had best die soon, and Well, Sea-Marshal, for my armsmen are few and thin.” Ehara' s booming laugh rings hollow. ”She has foiled you twice. What will be different a third time?”
”She has used her gla.s.ses before attacks. This time, I will be along the line of march, well away from any battle site, in the most innocent of settings. You will be farther westward ”I should retreat... leave Dumaria defenseless, and open to those barbarians of the north?”
”She will not sack a defenseless city. She has never done that. She will pursue you-and me.”
”My Siobion? My heirs?”
”Leave them. She has yet to kill an heir.”
Ehara frowns. ”1 should listen to a man who is already dead?”
”You can listen or not.” The Sea-Marshal binds the last of the drums into the framework. His lips are tight together between words, as though each movement, each word, is agony. ”You cannot defeat Defalk while she lives. After I die, one way or the other, you are no worse off.”
”That is the first true statement from you since you came to Dumar.” Ehara's lips twist.
”Watch how you call upon tnith Lord Ehara. The harmonies have a way with those who would make truth their handmaiden.” The Sea-Marshal's eyes glitter. ”I, above all, have learned that. So will the sorceress.”
110.
Anna glanced up through the rain that continued to fall, and then down at the swollen Falche, as it swirled around and over the piles of rock and masonry that had once been bridge abutments and piers. Despite her jacket, and her sodden felt hat, she was soaked through, and the wind had turned cooler, if not cool enough to chill her-yet.
Downhill from where she sat on the big gelding, Hanfor received another scouting report. Beside her on his mount sat. Jecks, stolid and silent in the late-afternoon damp, silent as he had been since the slaughter in the hills.
Anna turned in the saddle and glanced at the white-haired lord, then turned away.
''Lady Anna?”
She turned back. ”Yes.”
”Perhaps I should return to Falcor... if you find my presence so distasteful.”
”I don't find your presence distasteful. I'm just tired of being judged when I'm the only one doing anything and everyone else is coming up with reasons not to do things.”
”I did not presume-”
”Lord Jecks... you did presume, and you have presumed all along. Not so much as the other lords, but you have judged, and I hate being judged that way.” Anna met his eyes. ”I shouldn't have yelled at you, and I'm sorry I did. But I was tired.” She paused. ”I know you were tired, too. Let's leave it at that. We still have a lot to do.”
”As you wish.”
I don't wish. I just wish you'd stop silently judging me.
Hanfor finished listening to the scout, then turned his mount and rode back up the road to Anna.
”The scouts can find no bridge, not within fifteen deks north or south of Dumaria.” reported Hanfor. ”The river is too high to ford.”
You don't think I see that? ”Then we'll have to make a bridge,” Anna declared.
Jecks glanced at her through the light rain.
”We're going to rest, and eat, and then we're going to build a bridge. I'm not crazy, my dear Lord Jecks.”
Anna gestured downhill at the swirling gray-blue water of the Falche where it lapped at the end of the road and the ruins of the old bridge. ”We're going to lose armsmen if we have to ford that.” And my swimming isn't much better than a dog-paddle for survival.
”We could wait,” suggested Hanfor.
”For what? Rain lasts forever here. Besides, then we'll have to chase Ehara farther. I want to get this mess over. Lord-the harmonies only know what problems have happened in Defalk.” And whose fault is that, with your chasing Ehara?
Anna ignored the self-recrimination, wiped water off the back of her neck, and turned Farinelli back eastward until she covered the dozen or so yards separating her from the players. Fhurgen, Rickel, and Jecks followed.
Liende inclined her bare head as the regent reined up.