Exile's Honor

worry, or absent altogether as he Mindspoke with the Heralds relaying a moment-by-moment summary of what was going on with the enemy and with their own forces, was a greater burden than she allowed him to guess. She couldn't lean on him for comfort, for Alberich and Talamir were right; he was already taking on more than he should. She could only thank all the gods that ever were for Caryo; at least she had someone to turn to, even if that someone couldn't actually do any more than she could. It helped, immeasurably, when in the dark of some Waystation, unable to sleep, she could unburden her heart to another who would understand; and in moments when she could steal away a little, with Keren or Ylsa pointedly not looking at her, that she could pretend to groom Caryo and cry into her soft shoulder.

There were times when Selenay wondered if they would ever reach the army, but more times when she hoped they never would. So long as they rode, she could put off the day when everything would change. So long as they rode, she was safe, safe as only a Herald in the company of Heralds could be.

So long as they rode, the army had not yet met the enemy, and she could pretend that they never would.

Nevertheless, the Companions, even her beloved friend, carried them inexorably to that confrontation, and it was almost a relief when that day did come. Almost. The waiting might be over, but now she was here.

She heard the army long before she saw it; the hum of a city many times the size of Haven transported to the rolling hills of the southland. And long before she heard it, there were other signs of it; provisioning wagons going toward it full and away from it empty, messengers pounding up or down the road.

There were other signs; more ominous signs. The countryside was empty. It was empty, because insofar as it was possible to get the people to leave, it had been evacuated. There wasn't a sheep on the hillsides, or a farmer in the fields. The fields that no longer held sheep did hold something else, grazing on the rich, emerald grass, grass that the Tedrels desired for their own herds. The horses, the oxen, the mules of the army grazed there—not the horses of the cavalry, which were kept within the camp, but the horses that drew the carts that supplied the army, the horses that carried messengers when the message was not urgent enough for a Herald. Common horses, but for the most part better by far than any that these hills had seen before.

But when they finally reached the outskirts of the encampment, it was something of an anticlimax, for it looked like nothing more than an ordinary army camp. They topped a hill, and saw the edge of the camp below them, across the slow river that split the valley in half, on the other side of a stone bridge. Sentries guarded the road there, the visible token of the ones Selenay could not see. Beyond the sentries, rows of pale canvas tents, rows of tents that were as even as furrows in the soil, that marched up the other slope and crowned the top of the hill, a strange and martial crop of spears and pikes planted in stands beside them. And yet, it was no larger an encampment than ones she had seen before, on the edge of the city.

She knew abstractly that it wasn't possible to see all of it from any one point, not in these hills. She knew that in her mind, but the emotional impact of so great a force as they had gathered together should leave her breathless, or so she felt. So as the sentries barring the road demanded and received passwords, she felt oddly disappointed.

But then they followed the sentry's directions down the road, with properly arranged ranks of whitewashed canvas tents on either side, each section with a central campfire, each four sections serviced by a larger cook tent. And as they continued to ride forward, the ranks of tents went on, and on, and on until she began to lose count. Over the next hill and down the other side, the tents ranged on before them, interrupted only by trees and hedgerows, the racks of pikes and spears piercing the sky beside them. Then the tents were interrupted by a drill ground, full of Guardsmen at practice, followed by another hill, another little valley, and yet more tents and another drill ground. Then a farmhouse, taken over by officers, full of comings and goings, with the yard crowded with horses, snorting and switching their tails at flies. And when they didn't stop there, at what she had thought was the command post, that was when it hit her; just how big their army was—

Selenay tried to imagine it, and failed. She had seen several hundred people at once many times, even several thousand, crowded into one of the huge public squares in Haven for some speech of her father's, but never more than a fraction of the number that must be assembled here now. And that number didn't include Healers and Heralds either—and there were probably a lot of Bards here, too, for you couldn't keep a Bard away from something like this. Then there were all of the support people, cooks and carters, laundresses and tailors, the servants of anyone highborn—

No wonder her father had put off assembling this huge a force until now. Where would he have housed them? How long could he have kept them fed? The logistics were mind-boggling. She couldn't imagine the amount of coordination it took just to feed this army for a single day, let alone care for it for the past several fortnights. How could it have been organized in the first place? Who was doing the training? Who was keeping the place clean, for the Havens' sake?

No wonder Talamir kept telling her father to delegate more.

Now she knew why Alberich couldn't be jollied into a better humor. He knew this was coming, of course. Well, so had she, but unlike her, Alberich had known very well how large a force the Tedrels had when they decided to commit all of it. For their army was just equal to the one that the Tedrels were fielding, and only just.

Her heart went cold, and she was suddenly, desperately, urgently wanting to run away, to turn Caryo and go so far north that not even the Tedrels would find her. There were places up there—the Forest of Sorrows for one —where you could lose an entire regiment of cavalry and not find them for years. One girl on a single Companion could stay hidden until the rivers ceased to flow.

The truth of it was, she could do that. And no one would blame her if she did. Some people would even applaud her wisdom in giving the Tedrels one less available target. But if she did that, some people would lose heart, and she had no way of knowing how many. It might be enough to make a difference, and she could not take that chance. She could not do much here but this; by her very presence, one slim girl facing down the enemy, daring him to try and take her, she might give heart to those who were actually doing the fighting.