There was so much space, after the confines of the formation. She couldn't believe how much, as she danced and tore her way through three in quick succession, then a fourth who had just begun to question the wisdom of being there at all. Some shieldsmen who might have troubled her now backed up in panic, seeing what she'd done, and she faked one into a defensive block that didn't come, took his sword arm instead, then hit another's shield with such force he fell backward, and ran past him as he screamed and begged for mercy. But the others were running now, as more Steel arrived at a run, and the enemies who had encircled her squad died upon those shields, or ran away. A newly arrived formation ploughed into the main body of gathering militia ahead, and so began the next front.
Sasha's squad again encircled her, one now limping, as defenders ahead resisted with commendable stubbornness, surrounding themselves with shields, arranging spears behind those to stab at the advancing Steel, and at the repeated thrusts of cavalry. The cavalry weren't much use against that tight block of defenders, Sasha saw-their horses were slipping on the pavings, and riding into those spears at speed was suicide. Infantry had better success, fighting inside the spears and coming shoulder-to-shoulder, as the Steel liked best. But still the defenders resisted, backed against the mouth of a road, blocking it like a cork in the neck of a bottle.
Sasha looked about from within her phalanx, seeing the rest of the courtyard apparently under control and wondering who she could redeploy to assist here…and then there were arrows flying out from the Tol'rhen, arcing over her head, and landing amidst the defenders. That rain of arrows increased, no inconsiderable range across the width of the courtyard, but the talmaad were judging it to their usual perfection. Unlike the Steel, these defenders did not have enough shields, nor enough aptitude in their use, to cover themselves entirely. Men began falling with terrible regularity as their formation fell apart like a castle of sand in a rainstorm. The remainder dissolved and ran.
The battle was over, but the clean up went on all day. The surrounds of the Tol'rhen, it became clear, were havens of resistance and friendship to the Remischtuul. The rulers of Ilduur had purchased the Nasi-Keth's support with offers of power and money, and the neighbourhood was as wealthy as any Sasha had seen in Andal. Steel now went house to house, breaking down doors, asking after known men and some women, killing any who resisted with force.
Sasha found it far more awful than the battle. She wanted to retreat to some safe place and hear of events by messenger, as some commanders would. But she forced herself to walk the streets past sobbing women and angry, frightened men, past groups of wailing children ushered away for safekeeping while their parents and elder siblings were questioned, often roughly. She saw men beaten, who gave the Steel harsh words. She saw rooms and entire houses ransacked in search of incriminating evidence and hiding places. She saw one young man draw a blade in fury at a soldier who shoved his mother, only to be impaled by another, and die slowly in his screaming mother's arms.
She recalled the serrin youngster whom she'd seen killed the same way on the Night of the Knives, as it was now called, and how she'd wanted to kill the man who did it, and the one who'd given him orders. Now, that last was her.
Weapons were confiscated-stockpiles of swords and armour uncovered in attics, crossbows bundled in chests beneath piles of winter cloaks. Certainly she had averted an uprising here, of major proportions. She walked the streets from one site to another, being seen by the soldiers, and seeing them in turn. As she stood in one room, observing a new cache, she overheard one of her guards in the corridor outside, talking with another soldier.
“Six, she got. Threw off her shield and charged them down, six in as many heartbeats. Most Nasi-Keth, some of them damn good too. Never seen its like-I wondered if she was as good as the tales, turns out she's better.”
Sasha paused before that man on the way out. “What do you think of my shieldwork?” she asked him with a wry smile. It was the same man who had been guarding her right side in the battle.
“Could improve, ma'am, with practice,” he said diplomatically.
“Fucking stinks,” Sasha summarised, and all the men in the corridor laughed. “If I never have to fight in a shield line ever again, it will be too soon. You stick with yours, and I'll stick with mine.”
“If we could get the Regent's army out of formation and with no shields,” the soldier replied, “I reckon you could end this war on your own.”
Sasha's smile vanished as soon as she left the corridor. About her was the misery of the worst thing that she had ever done. Yet she had secured control, and made certain that the rest of the Steel would not arrive in Andal to find the city risen in revolt against her. That would look awful; those men would not be confident to follow her, finding that she did not have this situation in hand.
These men who had fought with her would mingle with the new arrivals, and tell them what kind of warrior and commander this strange girl from Lenayin was. They would tell them of comfortable victories against difficult odds, of battles that should have been painful being unexpectedly painless. And they would tell of those six kills outside the Tol'rhen to prevent her squad from being surrounded, and likely that number would rise with each telling.
She would bring the Ilduuri Steel to Jahnd, and not beneath some uncooperative commander who wished to do things his own way, but under her command, and hers alone. These men would follow her now. Many of them to their deaths, even if they won. And all of them to their deaths if they lost.
NINETEEN
The lands of eastern Ilduur reminded Sasha of the eastern foothills of her native Valhanan, save that where Valhanan descended in great ridges and valleys into Torovan, Ilduur emerged through even more rugged lands into Saalshen itself. These were sometimes called the buffer lands, the only place where serrin and human lands met without the divide of the Ipshaal River. For centuries, even before the rise and fall of King Leyvaan, humans and serrin in this wild place had intermingled, intermarried, and traded, with no apparent discord. The people here called themselves the saaren saadi, which she gathered meant in Ilduuri the “children of heaven,” and in several days of marching through these lands, she had come to see why.
The foothills were steep, and the road wound along ridgelines and often precariously sheer faces. Everything was green, and even now in late summer it rained every day, sometimes heavily. Little villages perched on grand hilltops, with views of the lands about them that made even a proud Lenay catch her breath. Drifting clouds and mist made these places seem to be floating amongst the clouds, and many hillsides were cultivated into terraces the like of which Sasha had never seen before. They grew rice, she was told, and other crops that required much water. When the sun struck an ascending stack of flooded rice terraces at just the correct angle, the whole hillside would gleam like silver.
The saaren saadi welcomed the Ilduuri Steel with cheers, food, and wine. Camping was difficult, the seventeen thousand-strong army stretched along an entire ridgeline exposed to the elements, but there was simply no flat ground upon which to muster a camp. The men did not seem to mind-a good three-quarters were native to these lands, and many passed through home villages, and embraced family along the way. Sasha was not surprised to see serrin here, and many of the Ilduuri humans seemed more than passingly serrin, a hint of exotic colour to the eyes and hair, a pronounced shape to the cheeks.
She was further intrigued to see temples and pagodas atop many peaks, and an abundance of flags above the terraces that she was told were partly for worship, and partly to keep the birds off. This was a native religion named Taanist, after the man who had begun it many centuries before. Some said he was serrin, others said human, and others still that he was of mixed race. Yet his teachings were of cycles and patterns, and seemed to Sasha like the attempt of a human to structure serrin philosophies into forms more easily comprehensible to humans. Emphasised were peace and meditation, and the great cycles of life. Sasha thought that if only it were not such a long journey, Lenay Goeren-yai would come here on pilgrimage, and learn of these people. In all her time away from home, she had never been in any place that reminded her so much of Lenayin, yet with such striking foreignness.