Storm Rising

token of her dual duties as Priest and Herald. Another nicely balanced gesture.

Talia blushed, as Selenay chuckled very softly, and relaxed the tiniest bit. Karal relaxed a great deal more than that; finally letting out the breath he had been holding. They like each other! Oh, thank you, Vkandis! Solaris was never that frank except with people she liked and trusted. She would never lie, but she was a past master at partial truth and dissimulation. She had to be, after all; she could not have gotten as far as she had if she was not.

Then again, although he could not speak from personal experience, Selenay was probably just as clever.

Solaris moved forward the remaining few paces and held out her hand. Selenay took it immediately, clasping it heartily.

'Now, Holiness,' the Queen of Valdemar said, turning adroitly so that she now stood side-by-side with the Son of the Sun, 'if I may begin the introductions. Talia you know—and this is my husband and consort, Prince Daren....'

Karal took a discreet step to the rear, placing himself in a modest position behind his ruler; at last laying all the intolerable burden of authority on the proper shoulders to bear it.

Seven

Dear gods, it's a frozen wasteland out there. Commander Tremane—who no longer thought of himself as a Grand Duke, nor in any other context than as the commander of his men—gazed out at the now-empty courtyard of his stronghold. It was buried beneath snow that reached to the knee, and the weather- wizard from the town said that more was coming. Even though the old wreck couldn't change the weather anymore, he could still predict it, and he thought he could teach one or two of Tremane's mages the trick. Snow. I haven't had to deal with this much snow since the years I spent on my estate. In the Imperial capital, of course, all snow was neatly steered away from the city itself, except for a dusting that looked ornamental and could easily be swept from the streets.

Winter had arrived, bypassing most of fall altogether. But with the help of his men, the locals had gotten their crops in, the foraging parties had brought in bales of hay, baskets of wheat and root crops, pecks of nuts and fruits, and even some livestock that had not gone altogether feral. The armed parties had brought back some of the livestock that had gone feral, in the form of carcasses now hanging frozen in a locked warehouse in the city. Ownership of those carcasses was not a matter of dispute; Tremane owned them, traded one-for-one for Tremane's half of the living animals collected. The fresh meat would be a welcome change from the preserved and salted meat in the Imperial warehouses—having it so far from camp, while it increased the chances of pilferage, ensured that the cooks would do as he had ordered, and plan meals that alternated fresh meat with preserved. He didn't want the fresh meat used up all at once, leaving only preserved. The men would complain, and rightfully, if meal after meal was nothing but the salty stews and other dishes that were all that could be made with preserved meat. It was a little thing, but in winter, and under the conditions that the men were now living in, little things could amount to great problems of morale.

It could be worse. Snow is not the worst thing that could happen to us. He was happy enough with snow, actually, because two days ago what had come down out of the sky was an ice-storm. Snow was infinitely preferable to ice that made walking between buildings into an ordeal. There were two men down with broken legs, five with broken arms, and a half dozen with broken collarbones, according to the roster.

Such injuries were not the calamity they would have been a few weeks ago, when he had needed every able-bodied person. The walls were completed; so were the new barracks. The builders had arrived at a clever and elegant solution to the heating problem—or, rather, one that made the best use of limited fuel and equally limited time for building. It was a variation on the idea of a furnace that one of his own men had concocted.

The barracks were still being finished inside, but that could be done while the men were living in them. As long as there was room to put down bedrolls, that was what mattered. They were similar in design to the plan of the earth sheltered buildings he had looked at earlier, but instead of making the entirety of one wall into a chimney, these plans arranged for the warm air to run under the floor to the opposite wall, and there were additional chimneys built into the support posts. Directly above the furnace were brick ovens for baking and depressions shaped exactly like the huge army kettles for heating water and making soups and stews.

That meant there were no windows, so all light came from candles and lanterns. What the barracks lacked in light, they made up for in warmth. Tremane reflected that if a vote had been taken, the men would probably have voted against windows in favor of heat in any case.

Of course, since they had not been consulted, the men called the new barracks 'the holes,' or 'the caves,' and although they were not happy about living in such dank and poorly-lighted places, a fair majority of them admitted that the barracks were far, far preferable to not having solid shelter.

They had still been in their tents when the first ice-storm hit. They had been a great deal less happy about that, as fully half the tents had collapsed beneath the weight of the ice that had built up on them. It was amazing how quickly the last bit of building went up after that.

There was a faint but persistent smoky animal odor about the places, caused by the dung bricks and peat blocks they were burning instead of wood in the furnaces. It wasn't too unpleasant, though the men complained about that too, claiming it got into the bread and the soup. He had given orders that strong herbs be added to both to cover the scent and taste.

There were plenty of complaints; the rumor mill was positively acidic these days, but the complaints and rumors were all of the sort that appeared when people had an excess of time and energy, and none were the kind