Pelner disagreed strongly. Sasha suspected him, like many of the Enorans and Rhodaanis, of being in a state of shock. The Steel had been defeated and was in retreat. Their lands were falling, their civilisation ending before their eyes. With the shock came frantic haste and panic. She feared Rhillian might succumb to the same, for the loss was similar for serrin as for human, and all knew Saalshen would be next. But Rhillian, in making the final decision, sided with Sasha.
“Jahnd's defences are strong,” she said. “The Army of the Bacosh will not cross the Ipshaal quickly. Four periods of moderate gallop per day, no more. We save the horses a little for the high passes, and make more time there.”
Sasha spent much time riding with Aisha, learning of the lands they rode through. On the promontory of a high hilltop, the walls of an old fort overlooked the surrounding sweep of land.
“Do you know these lands well?” Sasha asked.
“You know, strangely I don't,” Aisha admitted. “My nearest town of Charleren is well west, near the Larosan border. Those lands I know like the back of my hand, but I joined the talmaad young, and my travels took me back to Saalshen, then to Rhodaan and Ilduur and Petrodor…I've spent more time travelling in foreign lands than in my own.”
“Where did you learn to speak Lenay?” They were speaking Lenay now, as Aisha knew Sasha liked to whenever she had the chance.
“Vayha,” said Aisha. “Enora has some wonderful Tol'rhen, some certainly better than in Saalshen. But I had to go all the way to Vayha in Saalshen to learn Lenay.”
“I suppose Enora never had cause to learn it before.”
“Our mistake.”
Sasha smiled. “Weren't you telling me before that you met Rhillian in Vayha?”
Aisha nodded. “We're nearly the same age. She was seventeen, I was sixteen. She had an important uma, much ra'shi.”
“She told me of him.”
“Even then, people knew she was different. Not du'jannah like Errollyn, but not like most serrin either. Not bound so tightly by the vel'ennar that she could not think and act outside of it. Her Ulenshaals saw the potential of that, and were grooming her for big things.
“But her languages were not very good.” Aisha smiled, remembering. “I was appointed to help her. We studied together, and shared quarters. She helped me with my svaalverd. I was better at that than she was with languages.”
Ahead of them, Rhillian broke off her conversation with Yasmyn to turn in her saddle and fix Aisha with a look of amused reprimand.
“Just barely,” she said. “I recall teaching you to defend the high overhead, and you needed a box for your little legs to stand upon.”
“I want a sword.” Yasmyn interrupted Aisha's good-humoured retort. “I will learn to fight with the svaalverd.”
Sasha raised an eyebrow at Rhillian. It was not the first time Yasmyn had asked. “We don't have a spare sword,” said Rhillian. “And I do not think this is the best time to be learning….”
“I will have a sword,” Yasmyn said shortly. “I will take one from an enemy.”
“Don't be a silly goat, Yasmyn,” Sasha told her. “Men's swords are too big, I've told you before.”
“I can lift one.”
“Me too, but the balance is wrong-even men can't fight svaalverd with a heavy blade. Besides which, you're sixteen and svaalverd is best taught from six, or earlier. Why not learn archery instead?”
“I know knife fighting,” Yasmyn said stubbornly. “I have the footwork. I can learn swords.”
Her problem, Sasha knew well, was that she had never before been in the company of this many women, and been the least feared of them all. She did not like it.
Yasmyn had come because it was her best chance for glory. She had achieved her arganyar, which was a great glory in itself, particularly as she was sister to the Great Lord of Isfayen. All the Isfayen had cheered her, and told stories of how Family Izlar was so formidable that even its women were more than a match for “great” Bacosh knights. But now, the armies of Lenayin, Rhodaan, and Enora marched to Jahnd, to make a final great defence. That fighting promised to be men's work, and though women of the serrin talmaad won great glory as light cavalry, Yasmyn did not have those skills either. And so she rode for Ilduur, an emissary of the Lenay peoples, and one not unskilled in the darker arts of politics and intrigue. Sasha was not about to let her lead any negotiations, but she would be comfortable to have Yasmyn watching her back once they arrived.
They came to the crest of the hill, and the party resumed their canter. The speed was too fast for conversation, and Sasha watched the passing countryside instead, and held a careful spacing between herself and her friends. Of the twenty-six-strong party, twelve were serrin and the rest a mix of Enorans, a few Rhodaanis, and two Lenays-Sasha and Yasmyn. One of the Rhodaanis was Daish, Sasha's young friend from the Tracato Tol'rhen, and the only Nasi-Keth besides Sasha herself.
That evening they made a little distance by torchlight after nightfall, before finally halting at a small village in a forested valley. The biggest stables were at the temple, and the priests took them all in with much hustle and shouting, gathering fodder for tired horses and meals for tired riders.
Sasha washed in the stream by the temple. Donning a cleaner pair of clothes, she returned to the temple's sleeping chambers by passing first through the temple proper. It was small, with wooden crossbeams holding up the ceiling atop stone walls. In that humble silence, she found Kiel standing before the altar. He was gazing at some point of fascination-a statue, half the size of a man, atop a similarly sized plinth beside the altar.
Sasha walked to his side and looked at the statue. On its head was a garland, which Sasha knew was often used by artists to denote a Verenthane saint. Yet this woman held a book under one arm, inscribed with the words tul'tiah ran, or “the common law.” A Justice? A practitioner of laws? Suddenly Sasha realised why the woman looked familiar.
“It's Maldereld,” she said, astonished.
Kiel nodded. “It does appear to be. Not a figure regularly worshipped in Verenthane temples.”
The bringer of laws to Rhodaan, Enora, and Ilduur. These lands had once been ruled by lords and priests, and Maldereld was the most well-remembered face of those who had destroyed that old reign, and replaced it with the new.
“Aisha always told me that Enora is different,” said Sasha. “The most well integrated, the friendliest to serrin. The least nostalgic for the old ways.”
“They worship her,” said Kiel, “as a saint.” His tone was faintly mocking.
“What's wrong with that?” Sasha retorted. “Would you rather the alternative?”
“I merely wonder why with humans it must be either one extreme or the other. Maldereld was a great serrin warrior and scholar. I have read many of her writings and I know that she had no love of human religion at all.”
“And yet she did not ban it, as some had encouraged her to do. She saw the purpose it served. And here she is, immortalised in stone, continuing that purpose still.”
Kiel looked at her. His grey eyes were unlike any of the more typical bright colours of serrin. Those were penetrating, but these were unreadable. Sasha found his stare more unnerving than that of any other serrin she knew.
Kiel had tried to kill her, on a ship in Petrodor Harbour. She had been helping Errollyn to escape at the time, after Rhillian had decided it necessary to keep Errollyn detained. Errollyn had taken that arrow in the shoulder instead, and Kiel had nearly become the first serrin in more years than all serrin history recorded to purposely kill another…though even that was disputable, as he'd been aiming at her. Sasha supposed it was possible he'd been aiming at her shoulder too. Somehow, she doubted it.