bad luck in and around boats, so they rebuffed her.
Draven might have been company of a sort – though Yen Olass had to admit she was a little afraid of him – but Lord Alagrace had requisitioned him almost immediately, providing him with quarters elsewhere, and women and wine as well.
Draven drew maps and charts from memory, described 136
wind tides and beaches, inspected ships, advised on rigging, and, once he had mastered sufficient Ordhar to command men in his own right, trained soldiers to be sailors. Lord Alagrace then had to intervene to protect Draven from the wrath of the text-masters, who caught him mixing foreign words with his Ordhar commands; this was unavoidable, as Ordhar lacked the vocabulary for dealing with shipboard life.
Lord Alagrace was desperately short of the equipment and expertise needed to get an army across the Pale. The navy was almost nonexistent: the empire could scarcely protect its newly conquered lands from pirate raids. Shipyards were labouring on new vessels, while agents acquired others in Ashmolea and the Ravlish Lands, but the manpower shortage had to be remedied, for the most part, by training people from scratch. It is not the easiest thing in the world to turn a soldier into a sailor. Lord Alagrace, in fact, thought it an offence against nature – but it was necessary, so he got it done.
So Lord Alagrace kept Draven, and never found time to spare so much as a thought for Yen Olass. However, when she wanted something done, she commanded it using the formula 'Lord Alagrace had decreed'. In this way, she got shipwrights to build her a nordigin in which she could keep her Casting Board and her Indicators, she got her chimney swept and she got her front door replaced. Now that she had a door at last, she was not going to settle for second-best.
Her situation was anomalous. For the moment, Central Supply treated her as an oracle attached to the army. But what would happen when the army moved on? The emperor had named her 'Khmar's own Sisterhood in the south'. But, in legal terms, what did that actually mean? When the army moved on, would anyone have a duty to feed her?
Yen Olass began to hoard food. She requisitioned an extra daily ration from Central Supply, for 'entertainment'; nobody questioned it. But, as her supply began to mount,
she grew slightly guilty, and started to set aside half her extra ration for feeding beggars. At dawn and dusk she distributed a little bread and barley-meal griddle-cakes to half a dozen human scarecrows who came to her door.
Sometimes, Yen Olass thought she would rather have fed birds – or cats – but there were none to be had in Favanosin. The conquering army ate reasonably well, buying up the entire fishing catch and importing food as well, but the local population was starving. The average life expectancy for any stray animal bigger than a cockroach was now only half a day – and even cockroaches found life dangerous.
This monotonous existence ended at midwinter when Lord Alagrace, his transportation and supply problems shaping up nicely, turned his attention to minor matters such as the question of translators. Here the text-masters had failed him badly. Khmar had authorised Alagrace to take text-masters south of Tameran. However, although many were trained in the languages of Argan – including the High Speech of wizards – none was eager to chance the perilous expedition south. Demands sent to Gendormargensis brought back only excuses, most of which were of a medical nature, impossible to verify or dispute at a distance. Those text-masters who had accompanied the troops to Favanosin, and had interfered ever since, zealously defending the purity of Ordhar, discreetly disappeared when in danger of being ordered south.
Lord Alagrace, as always, did not despair, but im-provized. His agents had acquired, from the Ravlish Lands, two men who spoke the Galish Trading Tongue, the lingua franca for much of Argan. He would use these to teach others. Among those he requisitioned for his new cadre of translators was Yen Olass Ampadara.
Veteran soldiers are skilled foragers, with a habit of converting any portable item to their own use. Yen Olass was a natural target for Lord Alagrace's recruitment drive. She, for her part, had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, she hated the thought of having to give up her house. On the other hand, the army would feed, clothe and shelter her, and in Argan she would be safe from the Sisterhood, from Celadric, and from the Ondrask of Noth.
Overall, she was glad to be going south.
That winter, three ships were lost to the waters of the Pale, but others voyaged to Argan and returned safely. From the intelligence reports brought back by these ships, Lord Alagrace found it would be easy to take his first objective, Trest, a realm with negligible defences. However, his army would then have to cross a swamp to reach the land of Estar, which he had to secure to get a port on the west coast of Argan. Consequently, Lord Alagrace arranged for the supply of vast quantities of sprite bamboo, so his army could make a corduroy road across the swamps.
Toward spring, small, elite cavalry squads were shipped across the Pale. Their tasks included further intelligence gathering, a little raiding, and the destruction of the temple of Estar, known to be able to call on occult powers for the protection of the land. Argan, that strange and dangerous territory lying beyond the Pale, harboured many minor gods and demons, as well as wizards and other masters of power, dragons, monsters, and ancient strongholds of surpassing strength.
Shortly before the fleet sailed, a letter from the Lord Emperor Khmar told Lord Alagrace the identity of a spy who had been sent to Argan in the autumn.
'He was given the task of securing full knowledge of the defences of the nearest useful port on the western coast of Argan, or, in the event of that port being undefended, details of the defences of the ruling city or castle of the land.’
Lord Alagrace wondered who had drafted this smoothly worded communication for the emperor. How many other people knew the facts? In particular, did General Chonjara know that his enemy, Volaine Persaga Haveros, was now in Estar? Did the Princess Quenerain know? Those three must inevitably meet, and the consequences were potentially disastrous. Was Khmar deliberately putting them to a test of destruction?
(And having thought of that, Lord Alagrace had to consider this: was Khmar deliberately testing his erstwhile Lawmaker by sending him south with Chonjara as his leading subordinate? Did Khmar anticipate a clash of wills, a struggle for supremacy? And did Chonjara?)
Whatever Chonjara knew, thought or felt, he played the perfect professional soldier, dedicating his days to the training of his troops. By the time the invasion fleet was ready to sail, Lord Alagrace knew that everything possible had been done in the way of preparation. The night before they set sail, he went to bed with a good conscience – but dreamed of glowering warriors, of towering hill forts, wizards, lethal magic and dragons breathing fire.
Just before the invasion fleet sailed, Karahaj Nan Nulador found Yen Olass on the waterfront. He waved a letter which had come from Gendormargensis. Nan Nulador was illiterate, but someone had read him the letter, which he had committed to memory. He gave Yen Olass his rendition of the despatch.
'Is that what it says?' said Nan Nulador. 'Is it true?’
Yen Olass read the letter.
'It's true,' said Yen Olass.
And Karahaj Nan Nulador allowed himself to rejoice. 'A son! I have a son! You must give a reading for his destiny.’
So Yen Olass did. This was pure fortune telling, but she had no scruples about that. For the son she predicted life with honour, fame, children, wealth, and death on the field of battle.
'Death with honour?' asked Nan Nulador, anxiously.
'With honour,' said Yen Olass, nodding.
And Nan Nulador was satisfied.
When Yen Olass boarded her ship – all the translators were travelling together, so their taskmasters could keep them grinding away at their lessons – she thought of the child born far away in Gendormargensis. In a very real way, it was her creation: without her help, the mother would have been stoned to death as a dralkosh, and the baby would have been dead before conception.
As the ship trudged away from the coast of Tameran, a raft of sprite bamboo lubbering in its wake, Yen Olass wondered if she would ever see that child: and wished it was hers.
