“No, Your Highness,” Garius said, without malice. “Realistically, I just don’t think it can happen.”
“When is the last time anyone tried?”
Garius sighed. “You just don’t-”
“Understand?” Isana asked quietly. “No. I don’t. The conflict between the Icemen and Alera has been nothing but a plague on our land. I doubt it’s done anything better for theirs. And given what’s coming at us, we have little choice but to secure some kind of armistice, if not a peace. We need it to survive.”
He gave her a brief, strained smile and a nod. “I sincerely wish you the best of luck, Your Highness.”
Isana nodded. “Thank you, Garius.” She turned to Araris. “Ready?”
Araris, dressed again in his mail, a sword hanging from either hip, nodded. “I’d better go down first,” he said quietly. Then he started down the stairs. Isana and Aria followed.
The Shieldwall, Isana decided, looked a great deal smaller from the air than it did from ground level. The face of the enormous Wall, pitted and pocked by time and weather and war, rose beside her into a massive cliff face as she went down the stairs. Upon reaching the bottom, they found the ground covered in several inches of snow. Araris turned and began slogging through the snow, breaking a path for Isana and Aria.
As she followed Araris, Isana glanced back at the Shieldwall with an irritated frown. How was she to forge a peace amidst such mistrust? Garius might be a good soldier and a good son, but his mind was completely closed with intolerance. Couldn’t the young idiot see that a peace was not merely desirable but crucial to survival?
It was enough to make Isana want to slap him.
Though the hill wasn’t far away, it took them a solid quarter of an hour to reach it through the snow-only to find no one waiting for them. A slow scan around the land beyond the hilltop showed them stands of evergreens clothing increasingly high hills, but no delegation from the Icemen.
Aria frowned, looking around them, and Isana felt a surge of impatience escape the High Lady’s restraint. “Where are they?”
“If Doroga is with them, they’ll be waiting for the sun to rise,” Isana replied.
“Why?”
“The Marat regard the sun as a higher power. They worship it, and conduct all their most important business only under its light.”
“I see,” Aria replied. “I suppose barbarians have many strange customs.”
Isana fought down her own surge of irritation, attempting to rein it in before Aria sensed it. “Doroga is quite urbane, in most senses of the word. Furthermore, he has put himself in harm’s way for the sake of the Realm twice over, and has personally saved the lives of my brother and my son. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from insulting him.”
Aria’s lips compressed, but she only nodded once and turned away to watch for the Iceman negotiators. The cold wind continued to blow from the north, and Isana wrapped her cloak more tightly around herself. She looked back at the Shieldwall behind them, looming black and massive in the dim light. She could see, here and there, the dark form of a
What must it look like, to one of the Icemen, she wondered. Isana had seen more furycraft at work than most, including the raising of siege walls, and even to her the Shieldwall seemed almost unreal in its sheer mass. Did the Icemen still tell stories of the empty hills that were suddenly rived by the great Wall? She had been told that the engineers that built it had raised the Wall in sections about half a mile long-an effort of furycrafting so massive that Isana could hardly imagine how many artisans and Citizens had been required to complete its construction.
If it seemed that way to her, what must it seem like to one of the enemy? Something out of a nightmare, perhaps, a fortress wall that spanned the length of a continent. A wall that resisted any efforts to break it down, a wall that was always watchful, always guarded, always sure to spill forth Aleran
Impossible to say, since no one had asked. Or at least, no one of whom Isana was aware.
Beside her, Araris stood resolutely still, facing to the north, but his eyes were restless, flicking from one group of evergreens to the next. “I don’t like this,” he muttered.
“Relax,” Isana said quietly. “Don’t borrow trouble.”
He nodded once in reply-but he kept his hands near the hilts of his weapons.
Something stirred in one of the nearby stands of trees. Araris stepped in front of Isana and turned toward it at once, his fingers wrapping around the hilts of his swords. Aria, in response, turned in the opposite direction, watching their backs in case the first movement was some sort of distraction from the true assault, and Isana could clearly sense her wariness and tension.
The trees shook and swayed. Snow fell from their needles and branches to the ground. They shook again, and a massive creature plodded into sight from among the trees, shouldering the smaller evergreens aside without detectable effort. The gargant was huge, even for its breed, a great, dark-furred beast, with tusks as thick as Isana’s forearms thrusting up from its lower jaw. The large beast would have outweighed a dozen prize bulls, easily, and Isana was familiar with the sheer, overwhelming physical power of a gargant-and with the rider who rode on the back of this one.
He was a Marat, one of the pale-skinned barbarians who lived to the east of Isanaholt in Calderon. Like the beast he rode, he was large for his kind, nearly as tall as Isana’s brother and even more heavily layered in muscle. His white hair was held back from his face by a band of plaited red cloth, and a sleeveless tunic of the same color, open down the front, barely managed to stretch across his chest and shoulders without splitting. Despite the snow and cold, beyond the tunic and a pair of deer-hide trousers, he wore nothing-neither a cloak, nor shoes, nor a hood, although he did carry a long-handled cudgel in his right hand. He looked perfectly comfortable in the freezing weather and lifted a hand to the Alerans in greeting as his gargant shambled steadily through the snow and up the little hillock.
“The Marat mediator?” Aria asked.
“Doroga,” Isana called.
The Marat lifted a broad hand. “Good morning,” he rumbled in reply. He seized a braided leather cord hanging from the saddle blanket that covered the gargant’s back, and swung down to earth as lightly as a boy coming down from an apple tree. “Isana and Scarred-Face,” he said, nodding to Isana and Araris. He peered at Araris, and said, “Cut your hair. You look different.”
Araris inclined his head. “Somewhat, yes. And not very.”
Doroga nodded judiciously and studied Aria for a moment. “This one I do not know.”
Isana sensed Aria stiffen, as she replied, voice cold, “My elder brother was killed at the First Battle of Calderon. He died defending Gaius Septimus from your kind.”
Isana barely stopped herself from sucking in a surprised and outraged breath through her teeth and half turned toward Aria. “Doroga is a friend-”
Doroga grunted as he held up a hand, casually interrupting Isana. He eyed Aria without excitement. “My father, three brothers, half a dozen cousins, my mother, her two sisters, and my closest friend died there as well,” he answered in a steady voice. “All of us lost the battle at the Field of Fools, lady of the cold voice.”
“So all is forgotten?” Aria spat. “Is that what you mean?”
“There is no use in chewing at old wounds.” He stepped in front of Aria, whose eyes were level with his, and met her gaze. His voice came out a low rumble, calm, steady, and not in the least bit yielding. “That battle ended more than twenty years ago. Today’s battle is fought far to the south, where many good Alerans, your own husband among them, now fight the Vord. In case you have forgotten, our purpose here is to make peace.” Doroga’s eyes flashed, and though his expression never changed, behind him the enormous dark-furred gargant suddenly let out a warning rumble that shook snowflakes from the surface of the snowbound ground around them. “Let it be, Aleran.”
The High Lady of Placida’s eyes narrowed, and Isana could clearly sense her tension and anger. She held her breath, hardly daring to add anything to an already-overstrained situation. She could hardly imagine talks
