Alberich withdrew a little, for at the moment he was best as an observer. No battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, he reminded himself. He'd reminded Myste of that truism often enough as well; with luck, she'd remember it and she and Joyeaus would add several more layers to their plotting.
And if he paid a little more attention to Orthallen than the rest, well, that also was part of his responsibility. It was not only an enemy that could do damage. Sometimes the danger came from within, and the one who brought it could even have all of the best intentions in the world.
«»
It was a very small tent—more like a pavilion, actually, showing old and much-faded colors on its canvas—pitched among the slightly untidy cluster of those belonging to Heralds assigned to the King and his officers. No two of these tents were alike, taken as they were from whatever was available after the Guard, the officers, the King and his servants were done picking over the available canvas, but this one stood out for both its inconvenient size and its shabby state. As the sun dropped toward the horizon, Alberich looked at it askance. Surely not.
"My home away from home," Myste said, gesturing at the canvas square with its peaked top. She held the flap open to let him in.
"This must be the oddest campaign tent I have ever seen," Alberich remarked, as he squeezed himself into the tent that Myste had taken, ducking his head to avoid the low crossbeams. "It's certainly the smallest—"
Myste shrugged. "That's probably why no one else was particularly eager to take it. I think it must have been cut down after the canvas around the bottom started to rot and stitched together with replacements, because the floor is newer than the sides and top."
He had expected something entirely different, a tent that was more a semi-portable library. Well, there were books, but nowhere near as many as he'd expected. His glance at the neat packing case that served as a bookcase as soon as the cover was unstrapped made her smile. "I brought copies of War Chronicles, and some odd bits, and nothing more than would fit in that case," she said. "Only copies. If the army retreats and I have to flee with nothing more than the uniform on my back, may the Tedrels have joy of them."
He didn't tell her what he thought the Tedrels would use the paper for, he just folded his legs under him and sat on the canvas floor. "And this is interesting—"
He pointed at the arrangement where anyone else would have had a cot or a bedroll. He thought there might be a cot under there, but one third was propped up to serve as a chair back and the opposite end dropped down, and the rest had a strange tray raised over it on some sort of folding legs, with everything needed for writing arranged atop it; a brazier no bigger than the palm of his hand, stacks of very cheap wood-pulp paper, graphite sticks, and pen and ink, and a lantern she could hang on the tent pole overhead. Which she did at that very moment, raising the chimney after it was hung to light it with a coal from the tiny brazier. And a moment later, she sprinkled the coal with a powder that sent up a haze of insect-repelling incense.
She grinned as she saw what he was looking so closely at. "That's my invention. Bed, chair, and table in one, and it all comes apart and fits together. It even makes part of its own case. My clothes and bits are packed in the back half under the cot, and the desk is the top. And since we've got messengers going to Haven twice a day anyway, they take what I've written with them whenever they go. No matter what happens, we won't lose more than half a day's rough notes from meetings and anything else I know about, and if everything goes pear-shaped, Elcarth will at least have a record of what led up to it." She swung the "desk" away on a pivoting arm, and sat down.
He hoped that losing a half-day's rough draft would remain her only concern.
For all that the bed thing was amazingly compact, there wasn't much room left in her tent. He'd seen her rooms at the Collegium. She was a woman addicted to clutter and a collector of things. This sparse minimalism was totally unlike the Myste he knew. She gave him a side glance as if she guessed what he was thinking, and a half smile, which swiftly sobered. "Joy and I have had our little conference and we have some plans, and you were right, there have been times when Gifts have been blocked, and—oh, do hold back your surprised look—by Karsites. But there are things we can do, and they have never managed to block Mindspeech on our side of the Border. Or battle line, whichever came first. Another point of interest, if you will, is that since Lavan Firestorm's time, apparently they have been unable to coax those night-stalking things you were talking about anywhere near the Border because they haven't appeared at all over here. Now, can I count on that continuing, do you think?"
Alberich chewed on his lower lip and considered what he knew. He had only heard the things in the distance, and had never asked any Sunpriest about them. But then, one didn't ask them. Interest in what they sent out might cause them to suspect guilt, or worse, heresy. But it did occur to him that although he had never heard them too near the Border, the reason for that was probably less than arcane. The Sunpriests would not risk themselves anywhere near the Border, and they probably had to be within a certain proximity to their charges to control them.
And if the Tedrels were providing a screen of bodies, they wouldn't hesitate to follow.
However, the situation at the moment suggested that the Sunpriests had a great deal more to concern themselves over than their ancient enemies.
"I think—I think perhaps that even if the Sunpriests could send their servants across the Border, at this point they wouldn't. I believe that they hold them back in reserve to make certain the Tedrels, after conquering Valdemar, do not turn on them as well." He raised an eyebrow. "Consider, if you will, the troops we know are flanking the Tedrels, the ones my spies said are not to cross the Border. No, I think the Night-demons will stay within Karse."
"That is a distinct relief." She made a note amid the rest on the desk at her side. Then closed her eyes for a moment. She looked tired, and he wondered how long she had been here, for he hadn't noticed her among the Heralds around the King.
"It is one small blessing," he replied. "Another is that our troops have limited choice of ground, given where we think they must come. And a greater blessing is that our troops will be fresh."
"All they have to do is stop overnight, their troops will be just as fresh as ours," she pointed out. "They know we won't cross the Border. But frankly, all I know about battles and war is what I've read, and everything I've read just makes me want it all to go away."
"Unless he is a madman," Alberich said soberly, "I believe you will find that even the great generals feel the same."
She looked down at her hands. "May I ask you a horrible favor?"
He was going to say, "It depends on the favor," but something about the way she had asked that question made him answer, unequivocally, "Yes" instead.