the fading bonfire, idly toying with a stout stick. It was a most undignified posture for a former Silvanesti general. In the uncertain light, with his ungainly features, the elf resembled an enormous insect.
“So, General, what did you think of my address?” Tol asked him.
“I think we shall all end in nameless graves soon.”
Tol’s lips twitched with amusement. The Silvanesti’s pessimism was curiously refreshing. “I’ve faced worse odds, you know.”
Tylocost rose to his feet in one smooth motion. Such graceful movements reminded Tol his charge was no ordinary fellow. Whatever his looks and high-handed manner suggested, Tylocost was a mature Silvanesti elf, with all the intelligence and subtlety that implied.
“It’s not the nomads I fear, nor even the bakali,” Tylocost said. “You just declared war on the empire, and that, my fortunate foe, is a losing proposition.”
Tol grinned widely. “Perhaps. Can I count on your support?”
“To the death.”
“Good. I intend to give you a command of your own.”
For once the elf had no quick comeback. He stared at his conqueror, then recovered his accustomed poise.
Inclining his head graciously, he said, “Thank you, my lord. I will do my best.”
As Tol retired to his lean-to, Tylocost went for a walk along the fringes of the camp. Hands clasped behind his back, eyes on the trampled grass in front of him, his thoughts were far away.
He’d circumnavigated a quarter of the sprawling camp when he suddenly stopped and pointed the stick he still carried toward the outer darkness.
“Half-breed, why do you shadow me?”
Zala emerged from the night. “You heard me?” she said, impressed.
“You’re only half-stealthy.”
She grimaced. “You never speak to me without flinging mud on my ancestry!”
“The mud is already there. Answer my question.”
Biting back the retort that sprang to her lips, Zala settled on simple truth: “You’re a goodly distance from your bedroll. You might be thinking of running away, to betray us to the nomads.”
His eyes widened. “Twenty years I’ve lived as Lord Tolandruth’s paroled prisoner. I could have escaped any time I wanted, but I pledged to honor my surrender until he released me, and I shall.”
“Silvanesti have no allegiance but to their own kind!” she snapped.
The silence held for a moment, then Tylocost shrugged and tucked the stick under his arm like a cane, turning away and resuming his walk. She fell in step beside him, and they proceeded in silence for a while, circling the sleeping camp from south to north. Cookfires dying to dull embers dotted the scene. Dark mounds of sleeping humans, covered in salvaged blankets, lay in irregular ranks on the dewy ground. Everywhere was the smell of smoke, sweat, and desperation. Zala’s pity for the survivors was obvious. If Tylocost felt anything, he did not show it.
“What do you know of my homeland?” he asked, his low voice just audible over the sound of their footsteps.
“Very little,” she admitted. “My mother was Silvanesti, but she never returned home after she married my father.”
“Foreigners cannot imagine the glory of the Speaker’s realm. Silvanesti worship, above all things, beauty. They have, by art and artifice, made Silvanost the single most beautiful place in all the world.” Zala had heard the same from those few fortunate enough to have seen the capital of the elves. “Imagine how I was regarded in such a place.”
Her footsteps faltered only slightly before she recovered. Zala could indeed imagine. The unsightly gardener must have stood out like a boil on the face of a beautiful girl.
“My paternal ancestors were noble in the extreme. They stood at the right hand of Silvanos himself. My grandfather slew a dragon-the black dragon Tasak’labak’kanak, in the First Dragon War. He rode his war griffin Skyraker up to the monster’s very jaws and drove a silver spear through its eye and into its brain. My father, if he still lives, is high counsel to the Speaker of the Stars.”
“You don’t know whether your father lives?” she asked, and he shook his head. She thought of her own father, the frail, kindly scholar whose life depended on her success. When he died, wherever she was, she would know it.
Tylocost continued. “One day, as the great Silvanos held court in the Tower of the Stars, a comely lady caught my father’s eye. Her name was Iyajaida, an exotic word meaning ‘moth-wing.’ No one knew her. It was said she’d come from the northland. In spite of her unknown lineage, my father pursued and won her, besting several other rivals. Not long after, I was born.”
Tylocost abruptly stopped walking. For an instant Zala thought he’d seen a danger, nomads lurking in the night perhaps, but he only stared straight ahead and said, “The day I was born my mother vanished, never to be seen in Silvanost again. People said she took one look at me and fled in shame.”
In spite of his even tone, Zala knew he was baring soul-deep wounds to her. As diplomatically as she could, she asked him why he was telling her these things.
“Because you will understand,” he replied. “Comely though you are, you’re a half-breed, and despised by elves and most humans, too. I am a full-blood Silvanesti from a fine and noble line, yet all my life I’ve been persecuted for my ugliness. The first time I ever felt wanted was when the Tarsans hired me to lead their army. But the first person who ever showed me true respect was that damned peasant, Tolandruth.”
Males were very strange, Zala decided. Tolandruth, so imposing with his muscles, piercing eyes, and great victories, seemed an overgrown boy, burning with notions of justice and honor. This elf, more arrogant than a cartload of emperors but one of the shrewdest people Zala had ever met, was consumed with loneliness and shame. She began to understand the empress’s devotion to Tol, and Tol’s trust in his former foe.
When Zala returned to the here and now, Tylocost had slipped away. The stick he’d carried stood where he’d been, its end thrust into the sod.
Chapter 8
Dust rose in choking clouds around the Juramona camp, churned up by the feet of hundreds of men. The dust of the Eastern Hundred was infamous, a fine, floury, yellow soil that coated everything once the anchoring grass was stripped away.
The members of Tol’s new army bore weapons salvaged from the town-spears, halberds, or in many cases, merely sharpened wooden stakes-as they practiced moving in unison and deploying to attack or defend. He organized them into squads of ten, with five squads making up a company. Ten per company would have been better, but he didn’t have the manpower. Twenty days after his arrival at Juramona, his effective force comprised a scant thousand men under arms, a single horde of raw infantry. At least that many more had slipped away or begged off joining Tol’s tiny army. He let them go. A man unwilling to fight was no asset anyway.
At Tol’s side stood Wilfik, the former High House guard he’d appointed as chief of his company captains. Less than a handspan taller than Tol himself, Wilfik had proven a capable drillmaster. Perhaps to counter his bald pate, he sported the thickest, blackest beard and brows Tol had ever seen. The eyes beneath those redoubtable brows were an unusual color-pale gray. The combination of light gray eyes and beetling brows gave him an especially fearsome aspect when he was angry. He was angry now. Shouting curses, Wilfik stormed over to a company that had maneuvered clumsily. He grabbed the captain of the wayward group and spun him around.
“Left!” Wilfik roared directly into the fellow’s face. “You purblind donkey! I said ‘counter-march
