“I heard infantry friends describing Steel shieldwork to me,” Sasha replied. “They'd never seen such teamwork. No wonder we lost so many.”
Bergen nodded slowly. Sasha clapped him on the arm and walked to the edge of the tree line to welcome Arken and his men.
She led them in amongst the trees for cover. She counted twenty-three; with her, Bergen and Yasmyn they would be twenty-six. Against two hundred? she wondered. If they got it right, they could do it with ten. If they got it wrong, a thousand would be insufficient.
“Two boats,” Arken described their transport. “No Stamentaast on the water.” They were a half-day's walk down the valley, near the opposite end of the long, thin Lake Andal. One of Father Belgride's priests had rowed their own transport back to the temple pier himself, after transporting them here overnight.
The men were all Ilduuri Steel, strong men, most young, a few as old as forty. Their swords were long in the Ilduuri style, and nearly half carried shields on their backs-smaller than Enoran and Rhodaani Steel shields, as Sasha had heard. Considering the heights the Ilduuris had to trek up and down, that was not surprising.
They looked at her now, some with suspicion, others with curiosity, a few more with the wide-eyed intensity of men confronted with a legend come to life. Some Ilduuri, it seemed, did pay attention to events beyond their borders. Particularly the Steel.
“Are you as good as the stories tell?” one asked her.
“That depends on what stories you've been listening to,” said Sasha. “I was the uma to Kessligh Cronenverdt, who is assuredly as good as the stories you've heard. Lately I've become a better swordsman than him, though it did take a crossbow bolt through his leg to do it. He says I would have surpassed him anyway, but I suppose we'll never know.”
Eyes turned to Bergen for confirmation. “She's easily the best swordsman I've ever seen,” said Bergen. “No contest. When we were on opposite sides at Shero Valley, word spread through the lines that she'd commanded Isfayen cavalry to break our flanking lines and destroy a contingent of our artillery. That has rarely happened in all the history of the Enoran Steel. So, yes, she can command, too.”
“Who is senior here?” Sasha asked them.
Men nodded at Arken. “He's formation sergeant,” said one. Sasha was slightly surprised that the older men were not more highly ranked. Perhaps they were ex-Steel rather than active service. Or perhaps they were simply not command material. Promotion in the Rhodaani and Enoran Steel had been based on merit, not age.
“You have no higher ranks who could be trusted?” she pressed.
“A few we might trust,” Arken admitted. “But at this moment, we agreed that might is not qualification enough.”
“The Remischtuul have been playing games with officer promotions for years,” another man said. “There aren't many officers we trust.”
She could win these men. There had been a time when she might have felt unnerved at the prospect. But she had led enough men in battle to know that that time was past. They were good soldiers, as all Steel were good soldiers, but they lacked her experience. They had not seen the battles that lay beyond Ilduur's borders, and they did not know how that fight would go.
She did. She had been taught by the greatest. She knew mountains from her homeland, and lately cities and plains as well. She fought like serrin, but was herself very human. And now, these men who wished desperately to save their land from evils looked around for someone who knew all these things, and could lead, and found only her.
Twenty-three men of the Ilduuri Steel. Was it enough?
If they succeeded here, she reckoned, against vastly superior numbers, and brought down the corrupt and cowardly fools who led Ilduur to such ruin, then twenty-three would be more than enough. It did not take a lot of men to create a legend. The fewer of them there were, the greater would be their glory, a glory that could sweep the Ilduuri Steel all the way to Jahnd.
It was a steep hike from the valley floor, up a zigzagging trail through pine forest and across sheer slopes. A rocky cleft enfolded them as they continued to climb, legs aching on steep steps cut into rock, until they emerged onto a new world of height above the Andal Valley. Here ahead rose more mountains, mostly hidden from the valley floor, yet now dominating the sky. The Andal Valley had looked so large from down inside it-now on top of its flanking walls, Sasha could see how small a space it carved for humans amidst these great, soaring peaks.
“Pretty,” Yasmyn remarked in good cheer, looking about as the trail levelled off to wind its way along a ridge of smaller trees. “Very much like Isfayen. Not as rugged, though.” Yasmyn's legs were in no difficulty on the climb, and her mood seemed positively buoyant the higher they went. Perhaps she would prove useful after all.
The mountain ahead was Dirdaan, the old name of some pagan god no longer worshipped. At a clear spot on the trail, Arken paused and pointed halfway up the mountainside. There, perched upon a rocky shoulder, she could see a building, at too great a distance to make out any detail. How in the world anyone had managed to build it up there, she did not know. It looked impossible.
“The Altene,” said Arken. Sasha repressed a laugh, and shook her head. “What's amusing?”
“We're going to try and attack that with twenty-six men,” Sasha said cheerfully. “What's not amusing?” Men who overheard laughed, and kept walking.
“Odd place to command from,” Yasmyn suggested as they resumed.
“Not a command,” Sasha corrected. “Two days' journey from Andal in good weather won't allow it. It's a retreat, a place in which to hide and be safe, yet close enough to the centre of power for influence. A good place to store a hoard of Meraini talons and its keepers.”
“You speak Lenay?” Arken asked in Saalsi, not understanding a word. Yasmyn, of course, spoke good Lenay and average Torovan, in addition to her native Telochi. That gave her two tongues in common with Sasha, half-a-tongue to meet with Bergen's broken Torovan, and none at all with the Ilduuri men, for whom Torovan was nearly as foreign as Lenay. Yasmyn had picked up a few phrases of Saalsi since she'd come to have serrin as friends, but Sasha had been struggling for fluency with that tongue for much of her life, and was still not entirely there.
“Yes,” said Sasha. “How many of your men speak Saalsi?”
“Ten speak it well enough,” said Arken. “The others all speak some-it's quite common amongst the Steel.”
“Then we'll use it for our attack. I have no Ilduuri, and we've nothing else in common.”
“And what about her?” asked Arken, looking at Yasmyn as the Isfayen girl walked ahead.
“She'll stay with me.”
“Are you talking about me?” Yasmyn called back in Lenay as they walked.
“Aye,” Sasha affirmed. “He wonders what you'll speak in the battle.”
“Tell him the Isfayen need only the language of blood,” said Yasmyn.
“And he's looking at your arse,” Sasha added. Yasmyn threw a look over her shoulder and smirked at Arken.
Arken frowned. “What did you tell her?”
“That you were looking at her arse.”
“It's hard to avoid at this angle.”
“She's the sister of the Great Lord of Isfayen,” Sasha added. “Men have died terrible deaths for less.”
Sasha did not think she could keep up the banter all the way to the Altene. But if this group of foreign men were to trust her enough to follow her orders, some bonding was in order. Men she'd known a long time could overlook the fact of her gender, but for men recently met, it was impossible to ignore. Better to use her gender, and the unique position it gave her, to make amusement with them.
There were a lot of trails through the mountains, and this one crossed several of them. Any in the Altene fearing assault could not guard them all, but Arken was concerned they might post a wandering guard or two, or recruit locals to the task. He sent two men to walk ahead, unarmed and passing for locals, in case the trail was watched.