Exile's Honor

PART TWO

THE TEDREL WARS

8

ALBERICH heard a sound that once would have prompted curiosity, and now only brought a dull, aching despair. Wagons were coming up the road to the Palace Gates, enough of them that the rumbling noise was audible even from the practice ground outside the salle. He knew what that meant. These days, there were no more fetes and celebrations at the Court that needed fancy foods, wines, and decorations. The burdens these wagons bore were grimmer by far. More grievously wounded folk, soldiers and civilians alike, coming from the battlefields to the south, where the forces of Karse grappled with those of Valdemar. People too badly hurt for their own Healers to tend, who had been sent here, in hopes that the masters at Healer's Collegium could make them whole—or, at least, mend as much as could be mended.

All the fault of the Tedrels... the Tedrels, who had been set against Valdemar after all. It had been no rumor that Karse was hiring them, and once the lands lost to the Menmellith Province of Rethwellan were retaken, to be used as the Tedrel base, it had been Valdemar's turn to face them, face Karsite troops and Karsite Sunpriests backing the most ruthless mercenaries this world had ever seen.

All of Valdemar—except himself—was of a single heart and mind in this situation. Everything must be done to defeat Karse. And had the enemy been anyone other than Karse, no doubt he would be feeling the same.

But it was Karse, and he was torn, heart and soul, ripped in half between honor and desire. He wanted to go to the front lines himself, to put his considerable skill and knowledge to serve Valdemar. But there was a chance if he did, he would be fighting and killing his own people, and he wouldn't know it until it was too late. The Tedrels had no livery except among their own blood; it could be anyone in the front lines. He would not have cared, if only it had been the Sunpriests and the generals that served them that he slaughtered, but it wouldn't be, would it? They would be safe in the rear, or far, far away, and he could not depend on anything except that it would not be only Tedrels he helped to kill. No, mixed in among the Tedrels, and certainly serving them in their camps, would be ordinary people, simple people, who had no quarrel with Valdemar and would have been happy if they had been left in peace. His people, the ones he had pledged himself to serve.

And besides, even if he found a way to help without facing his own folk across the edge of a sword, he wouldn't be allowed to go. If he set foot outside of Haven, there were powerful people who would be certain that he was doing so to betray Valdemar. And having deserted Karse, how could he blame them for that assumption? When a man turned his coat once, it took no great stretch of the imagination to think he might do so again.

Whenever his mind wasn't otherwise occupied, it was thoughts like these that came flooding in, and with them, a tide of guilt and depression. People who had become his friends, his brothers and sisters, were going south into danger—and here he was, safe in the sunshine of high summer in Haven.

He was glad that at least he had a task, something he could do honorably. Now he knew, only too well, some of the pain that Aksel must have felt when he remained training the cadets, while his trained cadets went off to do the fighting. And he knew the agony of being torn between desiring the best for his land, and knowing he could not support what the leaders of his land had joined hands with. Aksel himself must be feeling that same agony, for Aksel had given Valdemar's spies some of the information that warned them that the rumors of the Tedrels' hiring was true. It must have been by Vkandis' will, surely, for the information had come well before the first attack on the border of Valdemar, with enough time to prepare for that attack and those that followed.

These were not battles, these were wars—where the Tedrels moved into land opposite the Border, fortified it, then launched campaign after scorched-earth campaign from spring through autumn and then vanished, only to pick and fortify a new spot during the winter from which to pillage a new territory. Each time they did this, they effectively halted all farming, all commerce in that area, decimating it and leaving it barren and trying to recover. It was a diabolical plan, and there was nothing that Valdemar could do to thwart it without crossing the Border into Karse themselves, which Sendar (wisely) would not allow.

And damn-all use my Foresight is against them. The magic that the Heralds called Gifts and that Karse called 'witch-powers,' Alberich found less useful than the exaggerated tales had led him to expect. Oh, he had Mindspeech, and very powerful, but it was of use only with other Heralds with Mindspeech and with Companions—and in setting the Truth Spell, which he seldom used. He probably could reach across the length or breadth of the country with it, but he never left the city of Haven; he was never allowed to leave. And he had ForeSight, that ability to glimpse what was to come—but it didn't stretch ahead more than a mark or two. It was a Gift that might be invaluable on a battlefield, except that he wasn't allowed near the battlefields. Of course, it was also an erratic Gift, which manifested irregularly and unpredictably, certainly not one he controlled... certainly nothing he could use from here to help in the Tedrel Wars. It seemed to work only in cases where something he could do, immediately, would change what was to come.

The Tedrel Wars; everyone called these seasonal blights by that name now. Little wars, leeching wars, stretching now into the fourth year. Every spring, a new little war, more deaths, more fresh-faced youngsters going out to face the foe, and Alberich wondering—as surely Dethor wondered—had he trained them well enough, prepared them well enough? Could he? Could anyone? It wasn't only Heralds he trained, it was young Guard officers, those Healers that would accept training in the use of weapons, and even some of the highborn youths who volunteered, out of a sense of duty and with dreams of glory in their hearts. He trained them, and he sent them out, and he never knew if any of them would return.

Valdemar bled from a wound that was not allowed to heal, that weakened her steadily. Alberich knew this, knew that when the Tedrel commanders judged the land weakened sufficiently, they would turn a little war into an all-out campaign. And there was nothing he could do about it. If it hadn't been for Kantor, he would never be able to sleep at night—but Kantor had his own ideas about what was good for his Chosen, and when Alberich was prepared to spend another sleepless night staring at the ceiling, his gut