mounts an attack. He's given up on assassins for a while, or they've given up on him. Hard to hire people who know the last half-dozen wound up very dead.' She smiled grimly.
'That's good,' Elspeth said fervently. 'That's very good! What kind of troop strength has he got?'
Kero grimaced. 'That's the bad news. It's formidable, and he outnumbers us about three to two. He has a lot of regular troops as well as a lot of mages. You managed to relay that the barrier at the Border was coming down, so we've been acting as if it wasn't there for about a week or so, though he hasn't tried anything yet. I take it that it is down?'
'Probably,' Firesong said, tossing his hair back over his shoulder. 'Since one of the signs of that barrier was an inability to work unhindered magic, and both Elspeth and I have been able to do so almost from the moment we arrived, I think we can assume Van - the old spells have been banished.'
Kero licked her lips thoughtfully. 'Right. Well, those mages run test attacks against our Border outposts on a fairly regular basis, so if he doesn't know the barrier is gone now, he will soon. I think we can probably take it as read that he knows now. He's learned more caution after getting thrown back twice; he won't rush into an attack right away, I don't think, even after his usual feints and pokes. The abdication and the appearance of Elspeth as a mage, as well as tales that she brought more mages with her, might give him a little more pause. Every day we make him hesitate, is one more day we have to prepare for his next try at us, and if there's one thing I know will happen, it's that he's going to make a try for us.'
All of them nodded as Kero finished. 'So whatever we can do to confuse him at the moment is going to be of use,' Darkwind replied. 'Are we waiting for something, ourselves?'
'We are,' Kero told him. 'When you said you were coming home, I assumed you were going to find some way to get rid of whatever it was that drove Quenten and my other mages off when the Skybolts came north. So I sent some urgent messages asking him to send me as many mages as he could. There are Heralds down in Rethwellan right now, bringing up as many of his White Winds Journeymen and teachers as care to come.'
'White Winds is a good, solid school,' Firesong spoke up. 'It was founded by a hertasi mage. We can work with White Winds mages, and I am relieved to learn we will not be the only teachers of Mage-Gifted Heralds.'
'Not by a long shot,' Kero assured him. 'Quenten's White Winds mages will be right up in the front lines, too. They know we're going to have a fight on our hands, and we won't take anyone who isn't willing to work combat- magic. I've got more mages coming, though - and these, I am afraid, are not going to be as easy to work with. Alberich isn't here because he's down south, too. He's bringing back a load of mage-trained Sun-priestesses from Karse.'
'He's what?' Elspeth gasped. She stared at Kero, wondering for a single wild moment if her teacher had snapped under the strain and had gone quite mad. She had heard about the alliance, of course, but she had assumed all that meant was that Karse was going to present a united front against Hardorn. She had never dreamed that Karse would provide more than that!
'He's bringing back a group of mage-trained Priestesses of Vkandis from Karse,' Kero repeated patiently. 'I know it sounds crazy, but in case you didn't get all of it from Rolan, this is what happened. There's been a kind of religious upheaval down there, and the Son of the Sun is now a woman, Solaris. Hellfires, that's been going on since before I became the Skybolts' Captain, but it seems that just after you left, this lady organized every priestess and a lot of the Sunsguard, and made her revolt stick. She has been watching the situation between us and Hardorn for some time, ever since she was a junior priestess. By my reckoning, that would have been about the time that Ancar usurped the throne. Evidently Solaris decided that Ancar's a snake, old feuds are not worth dying over, and that if the two female rulers of the lands facing his don't drop their differences and decide we're all girls together, Ancar is eventually going to have both for lunch.' Kera shrugged. 'Sounds like the kind of lady I can get along with. So, that's contingent one and two, both on the way. Contingent three is just now getting organized; Daren got in touch with his brother, and the King of Rethwellan is deciding how many of his court mages he can spare, and how many can be trusted to be of real help. He asked us if we wanted him to recruit, but Daren turned that idea down, since there'd be too good a chance a lot of them would be plants from Ancar.'
'That's all very good news,' Darkwind observed.
But Elspeth frowned. 'It is good news, so why are you worried?' she asked Kero.
The Herald-Captain sighed. 'Because even with all that help, we're still outnumbered head-to-head, both in mages and in troops, and that's just the troops we know about.'
Elspeth thought back to the last conflict, and the mage-controlled troops Valdemar had faced.
'He can take the peasants right out of the fields and throw them into the front lines,' she said slowly, her heart sinking.
Kerowyn nodded grimly. 'That's right. Ancar doesn't care if his country falls to pieces, so he can conscript as many men to fight as he wants to. He doesn't care if they're decent fighters or not; they're fodder, and he can keep throwing them at our lines until they wear us down.'
'You are sssaying that he will rissk ssstarrving hissss own people that he may win hisss warrr?' Hydona said, astonished.
All Elspeth and Kero could do was nod.
But Kero wasn't finished with the bad news. 'Last of all, he's got some new mage with him; this one just
