The Warhunt moved across the battlefield, finishing the dying destriers and helping the wounded fighters. At Nadalforo’s command, the enemy knights who surrendered were disarmed and gathered together, to be guarded by her warriors until Vieliessar could take their fealty oaths. The rest were being executed without ceremony.
Vieliessar glanced toward the tower. The upper windows were lit. Servants still inside. Probably the tower’s commander. They were out of bowshot here unless someone in there had a forester’s bow. She sighed with weariness. If the tower’s defenders would not surrender willingly, the Warhunt could force them out. And any of the tower’s defenders would know its second entrance. Even if that were barred, they could destroy the door and it would be easy enough to repair.
But moments later, when she called upon him to surrender, Lord Karamedheliel gave up Oakstone Tower without further battle.
To become a Warlord—as he had not once, but twice—one studied every aspect of war. A war was a living thing, like a beast, a tree, a child. In Farcarinon, Rithdeliel had owned a library of scrolls that spoke of war—not just the reality of it, but the theory, for the battles the War Princes fought were mere squabbles, as if a child went from babe to toddler over and over, and never became adult. To see the full scope of war, one must turn to
As the middle game of
To retreat across the Mystrals with her army and all the folk who looked to her had been an audacious move, for it cut Vieliessar’s enemy off from its supply lines. Rithdeliel would have welcomed a continuance of the string of victories with which her campaign began, but he knew, as Vieliessar did, that many of those triumphs had been built upon the stones of Vieliessar’s boldness and the High Houses’ inability to see her as a threat. Now they saw, and that advantage was gone. She had frightened her enemy badly enough that its alliance of War Princes was desperate enough to take counsel from one not yet of their rank. One as audacious as Vieliessar, and as brilliant.
That had cost her, and dearly, but one defeat was not the end of the war. Their supply train was captured, but it was intact, and what was stolen once might be stolen twice. Their army was scattered and suffering, but it, too, might well be intact. And if it was not …
Lord Serenthon had fought the High Houses nearly to a stand against odds of a hundred to one. The daughter surpassed the father as the ice-tiger in her glory surpassed the kitten on the hearth. So long as Vieliessar High King lived there was a chance of victory.
It was Rithdeliel’s duty to save her army so she could claim it.
It was day when they began their northward march. It was dusk when they reached the first of the manor farms. The destriers grazed their way through the last of the standing grain, reducing the snow-covered fields to stubble and muck. Both horses and riders were agonizingly thirsty, but the riders kept their mounts from taking more than a few mouthfuls of water at the stream. If the beasts foundered, it was as much a loss as if they died. There were miles yet to go.
To all the Jaeglenhend commonfolk who approached the army and begged to be allowed to travel with and serve the High King and her army, Rithdeliel made certain the same word was given: the army rode to take Jaeglenhend Great Keep, and all who wished to serve the High King were welcome.
“They’ll devour everything we’ve stolen down to dry bones,” Thoromarth said.
“They’ll steal the countryside bare as well,” Rithdeliel replied. “Drive our stolen livestock, incite their kin to flight and mutiny, and give us warning of any foe.”
“Ah, well, that’s all right,” Thoromarth said with a grunt. “For a moment I was worried you hadn’t thought this through.”
Rithdeliel used the halt to pass orders among the commanders. Many of his orders were not orders, precisely: the army’s warriors were commanded by nearly two tailles of War Princes, and most of them were here. But he could
At noon they were seen by the tower watch—which told Rithdeliel the tower watch was not as he would have had it—and there was a distant thunder of drums and baying of horns. Two marks past noon, the battered, weary, and truncated army of Vieliessar High King arrived at Jaeglenhend Great Keep on their exhausted and footsore destriers. They had no bright banners. Their armor was filthy and their surcoats were ragged, and more than half their number still bore some unhealed injury.
None of that mattered. What mattered was that they stood before the gates of Jaeglenhend Great Keep and their knights-herald put their warhorns to their lips and called to Jaeglenhend’s defenders to come and die. The sound of the horns died away into silence, and then the silence lengthened. When it began to seem that they would all simply go on staring at each other forever, Rithdeliel growled and pulled his helm free of its armored collar.
“Do you intend to surrender or not?” he shouted up to the battlements. They were crowded with folk—and if Jaeglenhend had archers upon the walls, its attackers had Lightborn standing ready to cast Shield at the first sight of an arrow in flight. “Don’t make me wait all day!”
There was a whispered conversation that he could not make out because of the distance, then some shifting and scuffling. At last a young woman—a girl, really, if she’d flown her kite in the Flower Moon Festival more than two years hence, it would be a wonder—pushed forward.
“Why should we not wait?” she called. “We are here and you are there! And my father will come back and kill you all!”
Rithdeliel turned to the Lightsister beside him. “Is there anyone here who has gone as envoy to Jaeglenhend? Who is she?”
“I will ask,” she said, and slipped from her saddle to move on foot through the motionless ranks.
“Indeed we are here,” Rithdeliel answered with an assumption of cheer. “And here we remain. Your orchards will feed us well—and give us excellent firewood to roast your sheep and cattle!”
The girl on the battlements opened her mouth to respond, but the man standing beside her—he had the look of someone who’d been Captain of Guards since before Nilkaran’s greatsire was whelped—leaned toward her and began speaking urgently in her ear, sending dark looks in Rithdeliel’s direction.
“She is Princess Telucalmo of Jaeglenhend,” a breathless voice announced at Rithdeliel’s knee. He glanced down; the Lightsister had returned, bringing another Lightborn with her. “I am Taraulard Lightbrother. I was born here.”
“Did you serve at court?” Rithdeliel asked quickly, for the Green Robes saw everything. But the Lightbrother shook his head.
“My lord held a manor in the Tamabeth Hills. He—I—and his household rode to join the High King last spring.”
“Is she Nilkaran’s heir? How old is she?” Rithdeliel demanded.
“No. His heir is Heir-Prince Surieniel. He is six. Princess Telucalmo is ten years older,” Taraulard Lightbrother said quickly. “She is betrothed into Vondaimieriel. She was to have gone to them this Harvest.”
That explained why Princess Telucalmo was here instead of serving as Nilkaran’s squire, or riding in his taille. Finfemeras would consider it a personal insult if Nilkaran got the bride of one of his sons slaughtered before the wedding. And because Nilkaran had ridden out thinking it would be a simple matter of ordering the High King to leave his lands, the highest-ranking lord within his great keep was a prince too young to leave the nursery and the lord who commanded it was a princess who had never fought a battle.
“Princess Telucalmo!” Rithdeliel called up to the battlements. “Come forward! Unless you are too frightened to face me!”
The taunt worked. He’d been certain it would. She pulled away from the man beside her and leaned over the battlements so far he thought she might fall.
