At camp with Kessligh, Damon, Errollyn, and Rhillian, she sat and ate. For a while they discussed provisions, roads and weather, the drudgery of command that consumed so much time yet was never retold in the grand campfire tales. Then talk turned to the Ipshaal River.
“The Regent will cross opposite Verlin,” said Rhillian. “Several days’ march downriver from Jahnd, there are marshes between him and it. The Verlin tributary, it flows into the Ipshaal at that point and disappears into a bog. It can be skirted, and will delay his arrival further at Jahnd, yet he will not mind so much.”
“Damn,” Sasha murmured. “I had hopes for a riverbank defence.”
Kessligh nodded. If they could cross the Ipshaal first, and then defend the far bank as the Regent tried to follow, it could be a slaughter. But the bog that Rhillian described would prevent Jahnd's defenders from deploying in force on that portion of the riverbank, while all the Regent needed to do was find a single road to bring him onto firmer ground. Rhillian described a firm bank, with marshlands beginning just beyond. Any force defending that riverbank would be unable to make an orderly retreat across or around the marsh.
“Still tempting,” said Damon. “If he lands directly on the marsh bank itself, or on the edge of it to deprive us of defensive footing, we could deploy off to the side on firm ground, and trap him in the bog.”
“Maybe,” said Kessligh. “Or he could build a large force on the marsh bank, form a bridgehead defended by artillery so we can't get our own artillery close enough to use without losing it, and soon we'll get stuck in a nasty, muddy fight we can't retreat from, and even if we kill him at two or three to each one loss of our own, we still lose.”
“It's horrible terrain,” Rhillian agreed gloomily. “Nasty to assault and nasty to defend. He'll not be so considerate as to land within range of our artillery, but manoeuvring there is very difficult; he could build up a large force before we can make any position to attack it, and then not do all that much damage even when we do. The positive side is that he'll take weeks longer to land all his forces, and manoeuvre around the marsh to Jahnd. But winter is far away, he's not short of time.”
“And if we put all our forces on the opposite riverbank,” Kessligh added, “he'll just land a big force somewhere else. Boats are fast, and that part of Saalshen is wild, with forests and mountains alongside the marsh. We can't move fast enough to defend it against all the possible places he might land, and though it will make his movement a nightmare too, as Rhillian says, he has time. He'll build up a bridgehead somewhere, and then we still risk being stuck on the wrong side of the marsh when we have to retreat. I'd rather defend from Jahnd, where the terrain all favours us. Presuming we can actually get across the river ourselves,” he added, with a glance at Rhillian
“We can,” said Rhillian with a faint smile. “Just watch.”
“Oh, and Sasha,” said Kessligh, remembering something. He reached into a pocket, and pulled out something that might have been a bracelet. He tossed it to her. “En eth'athal. You are free.”
Sasha frowned, and looked at the bracelet. It was an emyl, a traditional Lenay bracelet, to be given by father to daughter when she left home with her new husband. Traditionally it marked the coming of womanhood, while still affirming the ties with her old family, helping her to recall where she was from. Some joked that it was a warning, from father to new in-laws, that if they mistreated his daughter, they would still have him to answer to.
Then Sasha recalled what Kessligh had said. About the fireplace, people were smiling. “Oh, come on,” she exclaimed, “you have to make a bigger effort than that! You can't just cut me loose with a bracelet!”
Everyone laughed. “I got it in Tracato,” said Kessligh. “From a trader who didn't really know what it was, only that it looked pretty.”
Sasha pulled it tight around her wrist. It wrapped well and would not flap about, far better for a swordfighter than a necklace that would bounce around. Sasha had never worn jewellery before in her life.
“It is pretty,” she said. It was made of leather strips, three bands like her tri-braid, and steel rings. And an embedded amulet, of obsidian, shaped like the sun. Nothing fancy, but heavy with meaning. It suited her well. “Thank you.”
She got up and embraced him. She was no longer his uma now, and those thirteen and more years of trial had come to an end.
“I should have done it a while ago,” Kessligh admitted, reading her mind. “But there was never a good time.”
“And ‘growing up’ is always relative with Sasha,” Damon added. Sasha scowled at him.
“This is a curious combination of customs,” Rhillian observed. “A Lenay emyl with the uma'lanin.”
Sasha looked at the bracelet as she lay in bed with Errollyn later that night, her bare arm in the air, lit by orange coals. Around them was forest, with only a few other serrin camps. Privacy, for the two of them, on their one and only night together.
Errollyn held up his own arm, with the armguard marks still about his own wrist, where an archer would always wear it. He had other marks too, deep scars. Sasha's scars were more faded, but a few would never fade completely.
“Look,” she murmured. “Some couples have matching jewellery. We have matching scars.”
“I think perhaps what some call ‘character’ is in reality just a collection of scars,” he replied.
Sasha smiled. “In Isfayen, they say, ‘Never trust a man with no enemies’. In Valhanan, they say, ‘Never trust a man with no scars.’”
“The older I get, the more Lenay I become. How disturbing.”
Sasha buried her head against his shoulder, and they lay together beneath blankets, and listened to the night wind in the trees.
The School of Arts and Music was closer to Sofy's idea of heaven than anything scripture had described. She sat in a great recital hall and listened to the most talented musicians she'd ever seen play the most wonderful compositions she'd ever heard. Her retinue sat about, clustered Tracato nobility, some high-ranking red-coats, even a few Ulenshaals from the Tol'rhen, the great Nasi-Keth centre of learning. Jeddie sat at her side, entranced.
Along the walls stood knights of her Larosan personal guard in full armour, and Blackboots of the local Tracatan militia. She had not wished to attract such a crowd, but her tours of the city were all the talk on the streets, and Tracatan society followed her, literally. She'd toured perhaps half of all the grand buildings and institutions of Tracato, and she'd been here three days. So far, the School of Arts and Music was her favourite.
“What a wonderful concept!” she exclaimed to the Tracatan Premier Chiron, who walked at her side as she reluctantly took her leave. “I had never thought to make a central place for talent in an art such as music.”
“And how is music practised in Lenayin?” Chiron asked politely.
“Well, as a part of life. Music is everywhere in Lenayin, at weddings and dinners and celebrations of all sorts, but it is something passed on from father to son in villages all over Lenayin, not in the one central place.”
Her mind was alive with possibilities. Imagine starting such a school in Lenayin. She should suggest it to Koenyg, he was the one who'd insisted that this war would bring civilisation back to Lenayin. Well, perhaps that civilisation could start here.
Premier Chiron walked with her to the grand entrance. He was a small man, polite, serious and dour. Sofy thought he had good reason to be dour, given his position. Tracatans still called him “premier”; as head of the Rhodaani Council he had occupied a position equivalent to king, or at least to Lord of Rhodaan. But now Prince Dafed brought word from his brother Balthaar that no councils would be recognised, and all such institutions were disbanded effective immediately.