Sasha could smell it as she approached the kitchen, fresh bread and cooking meats. Within the kitchen, she found mixed human and serrin staff, mostly women, preparing meals that were certainly not an army's standard ration. Soldiers queued though the night grew late, thinking a delicacy-perhaps a final delicacy-to be well worth the effort.
Directing it all, Sasha found Aisha, of course, moving amidst the cooks while suggesting spices and tasting sauces. She saw Sasha and smiled, her eyes a little red. Sasha hugged her, and Aisha seemed to collapse for a moment in her arms.
They'd found Daish's horse during the Rhodaani Steel's retreat, dead in a charred circle of hellfire. His body they'd not identified, though someone had thought it significant that a messenger had died, and reported the loss. It seemed that a Rhodaani cavalry commander had sent him to carry an order to the main formation that trumpets could not deliver-no one knew what, for the commander was now dead too, like so many Rhodaanis. But Daish had galloped forward when the Rhodaani cavalry had been retreating, and given that his horse was reported as being little more than charred meat, death would have been instantaneous. Sasha hoped.
Aisha released herself, wiping her eyes. They did not need to speak of it.
“Did you hear also Bergen?” Sasha asked gently.
Aisha nodded. “In the first engagement with Lenay cavalry, I was told. And three dear friends in the talmaad, serrin you have not met.”
“Where's Rhillian?” Sasha asked.
“Hunting,” said Aisha. In the dark, with a serrin's eyes. Many serrin would sleep little tonight. “I thought I could make a better use of my time here. I always cook when unhappy. And there's nothing like a war to remind people to appreciate the sweet things in life.”
“Just don't make it too sweet or they'll not want to fight at all.” Aisha smiled. “I'm looking for Kessligh-have you seen him?”
She found Kessligh up at Liri, the small town overlooking the western wall from the southern junction of where the Ilmerhill Valley joined the Dhemerhill. He sat on the balcony of a house filled with officers, discussing the day's battle just passed, and how it might be improved upon tomorrow.
Sasha drew up a chair and sat beside him. The night was cloudy, and there was no visible moon. Across the junction of valleys and rivers, the campsites of the defending armies sparkled with thousands of fires. Upon the far side of the Ilmerhill Valley, Jahnd itself was alive with lantern and torchlight, with great fires burning bright atop its defensive wall. Across the valley floor, the city's outer sprawl was lit with less magnificence, yet here above could be heard the unceasing hammering of the workshops.
“How's Koenyg?” Kessligh asked, with faint irony.
“Didn't take my bait,” said Sasha, putting her feet up on another chair. Kessligh poured her some water. He did not like to drink anything stronger in battle. Sasha accepted her cup, and drank. “Nearly, though. I made him pretty angry.”
“You have that gift with quieter tempers than Koenyg's. Would you have killed him, had he accepted immediate challenge?”
“Yes,” said Sasha. “You?”
Kessligh shrugged. “In Lenayin a man does not speak of killing another man whose sibling is present. Family deals with family.”
“Don't worry,” said Sasha. “If I can, I will.” She sipped again. “Sofy was wonderful. But her appeals are wasted on the Army of Northern Lenayin, I think. Koenyg is only more convinced that we pagan-friendly royals are a cancer to be cut from the body of Lenayin. Myklas is troubled. I should be sad to kill Myklas.”
The words nearly caught in her throat. She coughed with annoyance, and covered it with another drink.
“He is a naive, misled boy,” Kessligh said quietly. “But a good lad. We always wondered when he would find something meaningful in his life-the last-born son always struggles for purpose. Unfortunately he has found his meaning with the Hadryn.” Kessligh paused. “You think to use Sofy against the Regent himself? Request a truce flag and have her speak to the Bacosh lords?”
“I'm thinking on it,” said Sasha, “but I don't know what she could say. Few of them have any sympathy for her. Her defection only convinces them that the allegiance with Lenayin was a mistake. It certainly makes Koenyg's position with the Regent precarious, but only after this battle is over, which doesn't help us at all.”
Kessligh agreed. “They tell themselves they fight for a future of peace and unity, but if they win it will be back to the old feudal squabbling and a new war for every season, just like the old days. But no, however weak the Archbishop's and the Elissians' defiance in trying to kill Sofy makes Balthaar look, it doesn't help us now. They'll postpone that argument until after we're all dead.”
“We had a good day today,” said Sasha, “all things considered. Tomorrow will be much worse: we've lost our best position.”
“I was speaking with the Ilduuris,” said Kessligh. “That defence of the ridge was one of the best demonstrations of battlefield command they've seen. Your senior sergeants are the ones holding the formation together, and always the hardest to please-I've spoken to several this evening who would happily die for you. That says everything.”
“And after today,” said Sasha, “I for them. I was not impressed with Ilduur when I first arrived there. But after today, a part of my heart shall be forever Ilduuri.” She smiled at him. “Coming from one as blindly in love with Lenayin as I, that says everything.”
Kessligh sat forward in his chair and indicated the valley before them, lit with campfires. “I wanted to ask you then,” he said. “From one who has just forced the largest army in history to pay a far bloodier price for a bit of high ground than they'd wanted to, look at the valleys before us, and tell me what you see.”
“Armies,” said Sasha, tiredly. Kessligh had done this to her often, when she was his uma. Asked questions in the form of a lecture. She'd thought she was a little beyond that now. “Darkness. Walls.”
“Exactly,” said Kessligh. He wasn't looking at her. He was staring into the night, as though seeing something that other eyes could not, in the way that Errollyn might see something in the night that was to her invisible. “A great commander sees it. Armies. Darkness. Walls. What do they remind you of, put together?”
Sasha did not think too hard. She thought she knew what Kessligh was striving at. “Prison,” she said. “Dungeons beneath Tracato. Pain.” Alythia's severed head lying at her feet in a cell. She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Confinement,” said Kessligh. Sasha opened her eyes once more, and stared at him. “We have been looking at this space before us all wrong. We have been trying to defend it, to keep them out, to make them pay for every part they capture. We expect to lose it eventually, and to retreat to Jahnd for a final defence. And then they'll have it. And it's a big space, well large enough for the Regent's entire army even before he began to take casualties. We've thought of how he might hold it, and how he might manoeuvre within it.”
“He'll ring us,” said Sasha, also leaning forward. “We'll be trapped in Jahnd. Koenyg will break through from the other side, we'll have to leave the valley or be overrun from two directions at once, and hide in Jahnd for protection.”
“Because we'll have the stationary position and they'll be closing down on us. In daylight.”
Sasha's breath caught. She opened her mouth to speak again, then closed it. And shot him a hard look.
“No,” she said. “No, we couldn't manage that. It's too hard, combining serrin and human forces, and with the additional losses we'll have taken all through tomorrow…”