Storm Warning

'Once that is in place,' Kerowyn continued, 'chances are he will order another push forward, then halt to build, and repeat that pattern until he has the entire country. It's my opinion that he'll hold to that pattern as long as there is little or no organized resistance.'

'What will he do when he reaches the Valdemar border and the Karsite border?' the Guild representative, Lady Cathal, asked in a tone of quiet tension.

Kerowyn shrugged. 'Frankly, he's got a big enough army that if I were in his shoes, I wouldn't stop. I'd keep right on going as long as losses were acceptable. And don't ask me what 'acceptable losses' are for him; the entire population of all our peoples could be less than a regional garrison to them. I don't know what counts as 'acceptable,' because he hasn't yet met with any resistance that's given him any palpable losses at all. I haven't been able to see the conditions that make his commanders pull back. For Ancar, any losses were acceptable as long as he took ground. For us—we're more inclined to retreat than lose lives. He could follow either pattern, but chances are he'll be somewhere in the middle. I can tell you this; 'acceptable losses' will be a percentage of his troops, rather than a hard number. One percent of his strength is a lot more in real numbers of men than one percent of ours.'

'And our land is worn out from the conflict with Ancar,' the Lord Marshal pointed out glumly. 'We could mount some resistance, but how could it be enough to discourage an army like the Eastern Empire can field?'

'Karse is not in much better shape than Valdemar, although we took little direct damage,' Ulrich added. 'Indirectly—we did lose troops to Ancar, and mages that we sent up here to you.'

'And speaking of mages,' Kerowyn put in, taking over the floor again, 'the Empire seems to have mages that do things differently than ours do. Many of you have heard Elspeth describe how the Imperial Ambassador to Hardorn created a Gate without any physical counterpart, and our mages have all reacted to that bit of news with dropped jaws. Maybe these mages are better than ours, and maybe they aren't. It hardly matters; they're different, and that's a problem. Vastly different approaches to mage-craft make it quite likely that they can hit us with something we would never expect in a hundred years.'

'And there are,' Firesong added smoothly, 'many, many more mages in the Empire than the entire Alliance can currently supply. Again, that is a real fact. Herald Captain Kerowyn asked me to look at the section of her intelligence report that deals with magic. It is evident to me that much of Imperial infrastructure depends very heavily on mages. I would judge, from the descriptions in the report, that they use mages for communication, construction, and transportation, making their conventional supply-lines much different from what we would use. In layman's terms, I believe that all of their supplies come from deep within the Empire itself by means of Gates. If they can afford to use mages for tasks where we would use carts, workers, and messengers, what kind of offensive magics can they muster?'

'I'm not sure I want to think about it,' someone muttered grimly, as shocked silence fell around the table.

Kerowyn is a good commander who does not shrink away from the truth, however unpleasant, Karal decided, and wrote exactly that down. She has a talent for stating baldly the things that no one else truly wants to consider.

Finally the Lord Patriarch cleared his throat, making no few of those sitting around the table start. 'Well,' he said, unsteadily, 'What are our options, with such a force levied against us? It begins to look as if the only one we have is to pray!'

The Shin'a'in envoy looked at Firesong, and he nodded, deferring to her. She stood up, took a pointer from a page and went to the great map inlaid on the wall.

'The Shin'a'in and the Tayledras have agreed to establish safeholds in the west, in this line,' she said, pointing out a line that began at the southern rim of Lake Evendim and continued down to the Dhorisha Plains. 'We will hold a safe path of retreat at all times, just as we did during the war with Ancar. We can also receive some of your Hardornen refugees that are willing to take a chance on making new homes in the west, and we hope that this will take some of the strain from the resources of Valdemar.'

She sat down again, and Firesong took up where she had left off. 'I must admit to you all, however, that as reinforcements, both of our peoples are fairly useless. We are equipped to wage very small-scale battles at the best. The Shin'a'in excel as individual warriors, but they have no organization or structure above the Clan hunting party. The Tayledras have better organization among our scouts, but again, we field very small units. We can offer a place of retreat, we can offer some support, but as armies go—' his expression was rueful, '—we can't manage much that is going to be useful to you.'

'What about mages?' The Guild representative called.

'Ah, mages.' Firesong nodded. 'First of all, the Shin'a'in do not have mages. However, the Kaled'a'in—that is an offshoot tribe of both our peoples—do practice magic, and the Star-Eyed has given them leave to use it up here, am I correct?' He glanced back at the gryphon called Treyvan, who chuckled.

'Betterrr sssay that Ssshe hasss given them theirrr marrrching ordersss,' the gryphon said, with a glance over at the fellow who had expressed scorn over Vkandis' implied power. 'Asss sssomeone elssse herrre pointed out, theme arrre sssome of usss who arrre usssed to hearrring dirrrectly from ourrr godsss.'

'So, that's one group—and I have to admit that even I am not certain what these magic-users can and cannot do. They have been separated from us for a very long time, and casually use things that we had long considered