He did so, and then he committed an unthinkable breach of decorum by speaking while looking the peer squarely in the face. “Majesty, we know how easily our scouts penetrate the Peerdom of Lant. The Lantian scouts only require practice to become as skilled as we are. It would be a rare coup for them to carry the Peer of Easlon to Lant as a prisoner. It would be a disaster for Easlon and the Ten Peerdoms if peer and prince were lost together. You must not travel without a strong escort. You must never travel together. Neither of you should venture so close to the frontier.”
His intensity disconcerted them. They followed in silence when he turned and led them into the building. Plao 3 mornings were chill at that altitude, and a fire crackled in the enormous stone fireplace. The furniture was roughly fashioned—the chief scout of Easlon did not maintain his home as a place of ease— but Inskor made them as comfortable as possible.
When they had seated themselves, Inskor again sank to his knees. “Your bidding, Majesty.”
“My bidding is that you bring a chair and sit with us,” the peer said impatiently. “We need to talk.”
Inskor obediently brought a chair and composed himself to listen. When a peer told a one-namer, “We need to talk,” she usually meant she had much to say to him.
She was deeply disturbed. When, years earlier, she had approved Inskor’s plan for defending Easlon against raids—with the provision about annihilating the invaders if possible—she had been thinking of small parties of scouts, not a raid of a hundred warriors led by notables from the Peer of Lant’s own family, the prince among them.
She was not surprised to learn that Inskor and his scouts had attacked and defeated a vastly superior force. They were expert night fighters. They could choose the time and place of their attack, and they were fighting for their own peerdom in territory where they knew every twig. The enemy had been far from home and fighting blind. She fully expected Inskor to send even such a large raiding force as this one reeling back over the mountains in bloody defeat. It was essential that he do so—essential that the raid be made a cautionary example for the Peer of Lant.
She had not expected him to launch a daytime attack with a mere twenty-five scouts and kill more than a hundred of Lant’s best warriors and all of their officers at the cost of two scouts slightly wounded.
Peer and prince had ridden to the scene of the carnage before they called on Inskor, but they quickly withdrew. The sickening sweet odor of death hung over the river valley, blended with the stench of burning flesh, for Inskor had decreed the complete destruction of the corpses and all of their equipment. One of his scouts was in charge, and a force of no-namers—supervised by lashers—was dealing with the battle’s debris. All of the metal had been hammered into unrecognizable shapes to be hauled away for salvage. Everything else was being burned or pulverized. If a dedicated Lantian scout somehow managed to penetrate that deeply into Easlon, there would be no shred of bone, no splinter of tooth remaining to mutely proclaim the fate of his prince. The captured horses had been taken west to places of concealment. Along the border, Inskor’s scouts were already poised to turn back Lant’s inevitable probes for news of the lost raiding party.
The peer said soberly, “I am sorry the Prince of Lant and her brothers were killed. Couldn’t they have been made prisoners?”
Inskor kept his gaze on an opposite window while he spoke. “In battle, Majesty, it is often difficult to know who is present until it is over.”
“Yes, yes, I understand that. You were only carrying out a plan long agreed upon, but I really didn’t think it possible to totally destroy such a large force. Now I am wondering whether it was necessary and whether it wouldn’t have been wiser to take prisoners.”
“Majesty, our plan was not devised merely to be vindictive. It was based on a sound military premise. In her insolence, the Peer of Lant thought to demonstrate that all the massed might of Easlon was not strong enough to interfere with a mere hundred Lantian warriors. She thought us far weaker than we are. Now that her force has disappeared without a trace, her sleep will be troubled with imaginings about how powerful we are. She may even suspect we use sorcery. Already our scouts have begun planting rumors across the border, and we will harvest a goodly crop from them. The next Lantiff raiding party that comes west will do so reluctantly, and it will be better prepared to flee than to give battle.”
“The Peer of Lant is not one to be influenced by rumors,” the peer said.
Inskor kept his eyes on the window. “Majesty, the Peer of Lant will not require assistance from anyone to see the truth in this matter: What Easlon has done once, it can do again, and unless she learns what befell the first force, a second force may commit the same errors and disappear in the same way. She will send scouts— many scouts. If she is the military genius her victories suggest, she won’t raid Easlon again until it has been successfully scouted, and she won’t send an army until it has been successfully raided. We have bought ourselves something beyond price, Majesty. Time.”
The peer was still troubled. “I know we had to strike as hard as possible. Still—the prince and her brothers would have made valuable hostages.”
“Dangerous hostages, Majesty. The peer would have spared nothing to rescue them.”
“But now she will spare nothing to avenge them,” the peer objected.
“You can’t have it both ways, Majesty,” the prince said impatiently. “They invaded us. They plundered and burned Eas, and if Inskor hadn’t evacuated it, they would have brutalized and murdered our one-namers. If the Peer of Lant sends her children into a neighboring peerdom to loot and kill, the deaths that result are her own doing.”
The peer murmured sadly, “I wish there were a better way.”
“Majesty, all of us wish the Peer of Lant would leave her neighbors in peace,” Inskor said dryly. “That would solve so many problems. But she won’t. If we hadn’t given battle, if we had let the Lantiff raid unopposed, the peer would have taken that as a sign of weakness and followed the raid with her army. If we had merely defeated the raiders and chased them back into Lant, she would have tested our strength by sending a stronger force. Now she will be uneasy. She will suffer many troubled nights when all of her dreams end in unanswered questions. Very soon she will have to accept that her Lantiff have been wiped from the Earth like the vermin they are. She will be enraged, but she is too good a general to rush west with another force that may vanish in the same way. We have bought time, Majesty. How well we use it depends on us.”
The peer sighed. “On us and on the other nine peerdoms— which means it will be used badly. I will do what I can, of course. Inskor, I want you to speak frankly. If the Peer of Lant seeks revenge with her army this year, what chance do we have?”
Inskor smiled. The outlook had been dismal before Egarn’s arrival. Now, for the first time in years, he could look eastward with confidence. He would soon have all of his scouts armed with the miraculous weapon—all except those who ventured into Lant. He could not risk having the weapon recaptured; but for a time, until Lant produced something to counter this astonishing force or managed to overwhelm it with sheer numbers, the scouts defending the border would be invincible. He wished he could tell the peer about that, but of course he could not.
“When the Peer of Lant looks toward Easlon, Majesty, she sees nothing. For sikes, every scout she has sent out has disappeared. If she strikes—with another raiding force or with an army—it will be a blow launched in the dark without knowing what or where the target is. We will fight her at a time and place of our own choosing. We will win the first battle, Majesty, and also the second.”
“Will you defeat her severely?”
Inskor nodded slowly and spoke in measured tones. “We will defeat her horribly. We will fill the valleys with dead Lantiff. If she finally attacks in a blind rage, throws in every reinforcement from her conquered lands, and pursues her revenge to the bitter end, she will outnumber us tens of thousands to one. Only the peer and her generals know how large the armies of Lant really are. In the end, she may crush us with the sheer weight of numbers, but in doing so she will destroy herself. She knows that danger. She is surrounded by defeated enemies who will seek their own revenge the moment she weakens herself. For that reason, she must prepare her moves with care. If we use our bought time well, we will be ready for her. If we don’t, we will be in the position of sitting and waiting until she discovers a sure method of destroying us.”
The peer gestured helplessly. “I know. You have been telling me for sikes that the Ten Peerdoms need an army.”
“If not the Ten Peerdoms, then Easlon. We should have formed our own army long ago.”
“My neighbors would have thought I was plotting against them—as you well know. Perhaps now that Lant
