army did or tried to do was no concern of theirs.
These were the invading hordes that came riding up the narrow valleys that pointed toward the Ten Peerdoms. The terrain forced them into awkward formations—long, narrow columns of mounted warriors with patches of woods to contend with—and Inskor, delighted that he could attack fingers rather than a clenched fist, was spreading his own army as thin as he dared in an effort to convert each of those valleys into a death trap.
The partly trained army of the Ten Peerdoms now numbered almost five thousand lashers with another two thousand no-namers organized into labor platoons. It was by far the largest army the Ten Peerdoms had ever assembled. Arne’s personal force of one-namers, the one that had defeated the wild lashers, had been expanded to more than five hundred men and women, and one-namers who had been hurriedly trained as scouts added five hundred more. There were another five hundred regular scouts from Weslon. The total seemed astonishing to Arne, who had to find a way to feed this swollen force, but it paled to insignificance beside the massed armies of Lant.
Arne’s original plan had had been to garrison these troops at strategic points along the southern frontiers. Now he would march them to war instead. He summoned his scattered one-namers, telling them to overtake him as quickly as possible; took a poignant leave of the prince; and set out. He left Deline to make arrangements with all of the Ten Peerdoms for the supplies that must be kept moving after them.
The army of Lant was moving north at its own deliberate pace. Surprise had never been a Lantian tactic— the peer had long-since learned that the more warning a victim had, the longer it had to wait, the more frightened it became. Many of Lant’s victories were no more than triumphant marches in the wake of a fleeing enemy.
Arne’s fear was that the Lantiff would arrive before he joined his force with Inskor’s. He left a squad of scouts, a small company of lashers, and a platoon of no-namers in each valley with instructions to build a series of barriers of upright logs, using them to link wooded areas or natural obstacles. When the Lantiff came, the lashers would feign a defense of each barrier, fleeing in pretended terror from one to another to entice the Lantiff to follow them. When the Lantiff were deeply committed to this trap, one-namers hidden on the wooded hillsides would cut them to pieces with Egarn’s weapon.
They moved east, and Arne’s army shrank dramatically as he left behind one defense force after another. He was becoming extremely worried that he would run out of troops when finally he made contact with Inskor and his Easlon defenders, who were extending westward.
Inskor greeted him warmly, listened with delight to what Arne had accomplished, and then told him to take the remainder of his force west again, along with a reserve of Easlon lashers and one-namers that had not yet been committed, and extend the defenses as far as possible.
“The Lantiff will keep moving west,” he said. “When we defeat them in one place, we will have to withdraw as much strength as we can and hurry it westward to meet their next attack.”
Arne obediently turned back with the Ten Peerdoms’ uncommitted strength. The next day he met a lone rider. He had heard nothing from Midlow Court since he left, and he had been waiting for a peer’s messenger.
But this rider brought no messages. It was Deline.
“I have come to fight,” she said.
Arne said sternly, “Your job is to keep food moving south. That is more important than any fighting you could do.”
“I have already arranged for that,” she said. “There will be plenty of food. Hutter will look after it.” She added smugly, “I have the peer’s consent. I told her I wanted my horse so I could fight for Midlow. I am not going to sit in a safe place and rot while my one-name friends are dying for the peerdom. Anyway, you need an assistant here more than you did at Midd Village, and that is what I am—your assistant. The peer herself appointed me.”
“When you asked the peer, what did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything. It is painful for her to talk. She nodded, and the land warden gave me my horse.”
Arne extended his army as far west as possible, sent scouts far into the wilds to detect any encircling movement, and turned east again. Along the way he conducted training sessions with each valley’s defense unit, and this introduced Deline to something she had never seen before or even imagined: Egarn’s weapon.
She was astonished. Then, as she began to understand the destructive power of the small tubes, she was elated. “I thought we here helpless against the might of Lant,” she said wonderingly. “It is the Lantiff who will be helpless. Does the peer know about this?”
“No peerager knows,” Arne said shortly. “Peeragers would use the weapon on each other.”
Deline was silent for a time. “You are right,” she said finally. “No peerager should know. I’m glad I didn’t know. I would have been worse than the others.”
When they passed south of the Peerdom of Chang, Deline volunteered to persuade peer and prince—former friends of hers—to furnish more lashers and no-namers so Arne and Inskor could hold a few units in reserve. Chang gave her everything that could be spared, and she trained this force on the march. It arrived in fine fettle and eager to fight the Lantiff.
So was she. The Prince of Chang had presented her with a uniform designed for the prince’s private guard—the same she had modeled her own guard’s uniforms on—and she arrived resplendent in black and white. She looked magnificent. Unfortunately, this was the wrong war for the heroics that went with her costume, and Arne quietly pointed out to her how a conspicuous dress could give away a battle plan.
“I didn’t come here to hide,” she said. “I’m going to fight.”
The long, narrow columns of Lantiff continued to seep northward. Finally one of them encountered the defenses Arne had planned so carefully and erected with so much labor. A barricade of upright logs completely spanned the valley. At intervals there were other barricades where Arne’s lashers waited.
The Lantiff paused while their officers rode forward a few yards to study these obstacles. Then they aimed their weapons, the weapons of Lant. The logs of each barricade were sent flying. Huge gaps opened up, Arne’s lashers fled, and the Lantiff pressed forward, still moving in leisurely fashion.
A defense that Inskor had devised proved more effective. A wide stripe of burnooze, a black substance found in the mountains where severe land upheaval had taken place, had been laid down across the valley. When ignited, it burned furiously, and it could be touched off from a distance with Egarn’s weapon. When the Lantiff’s vanguard was almost upon one of these strips, the ground at their horses’ feet erupted in flame. The head of column halted; the Lantiff behind continued to press forward until the valley was crammed with them. Then a scout on the hillside touched off another wall of flame behind them, and Egarn’s weapon systematically cut the Lantiff to pieces. The valley was piled thickly with corpses and with pathetically screaming wounded men and horses, but still the Lantiff tried to surge forward.
It was Arne’s first close view of the Lantiff. Squat, muscular, with dark faces and misshapen eyes, their appearance was completely different from that of the Ten Peerdoms lashers. They had no conception of defeat, and their attacks ceased only when there were no more of them to be killed. Fire might stop them momentarily, but when the leaders shouted their shrill commands, they charged through the wall of flames. The crashing lightning of Egarn’s weapon gave them pause, but the next command sent them blindly forward, crushing their own dead under foot, and they kept charging until they were annihilated. Inskor had expected them to flee in panic the moment the crashing beams of Egarn’s weapon stabbed among them, but they were superbly disciplined—or too stupid to understand what was happening.
Day after day Arne’s forces decimated the Lantiff in battle after battle in westward succeeding valleys. Finally the Lantiff happened onto a valley that was broader than the others, and their commanders mounted a massive attack. This time they kept charging until Egarn’s weapons exhausted their stored energy. The weapons recharged automatically, but they had to be rested for a short time, and while they were silent, the Lantiff suddenly spurred their horses forward and burst through the last of the defenses into gently rolling terrain where there was little cover for Inskor’s scouts.
Suddenly a lone rider appeared in their path, a rider clothed in black and white who galloped directly toward the menacing line of lances and swords. The Lantiff reined in their horses and watched this apparent suicide attempt with puzzlement. As the rider drew nearer, it proved to be a woman with blonde hair flying, which magnified their confusion.
