"But Tarion took almost all of our cavalry, so the plan collapsed. Even hitting and running wasn't in the cards without cavalry. Kammaeman had to do something with the forces he had, or face impeachment when he went home. He decided to conquer Lemodvale instead. He probably thought he could trade it back to Tharg in return for Narshvale.” Edward smiled quizzically. “Does that sound logical?"
"But not practical? Like offering to give Southwest Africa back to the Boche in return for Belgium?"
He grinned. “Something along those lines. Cavalry would be useless in Lemodvale, anyway, which probably convinced him, but Joalia had never conquered Lemodvale before, and that should have warned him. All the vales are different, and Lemod is more different than most. First of all, it's hilly. There's no—I suppose Lemodflat would be the English equivalent."
He paused to think. Alice watched the telegraph wires dip, rise, dip, rise ... Clickety-click, clickety-click...
"Valian languages use prefixes where we have suffixes,” he said vaguely. “Roughly—very roughly—it would go like this. Say Nagvale is the general term, the whole basin. The mountains all around it would be Nagwall, the foothills Nagslope. Roughly. The arable part would be Nagflat, and in most vales it truly is flat. In Nagland itself it's a plain, almost a desert. Everything that's habitable is called Nagland and everything that's not has another name—Nagwaste? The capital would be Nagtown, or just Nag. The political entity would be Nagia, I suppose. They have other terms. You could say that Nagslope is the usable foothills, and the higher bits are Nagmoor or something like that. It's not a bad system. English doesn't make so many distinctions."
"I imagine words like ebb tide would confuse the Nagians just as much as you are confusing me. What has all this to do with the war?"
"Just that Lemodflat isn't. Flat, I mean. It's all cut up by streams. There wouldn't be enough level ground in the whole country for a good ninehole golf course. And the Lemodians don't have farms, they have trees. They're strange looking trees, but all their crops come from trees. Something rather like a breadfruit gives them their basic starch, but they have others that provide stuff like flax—also cotton and fruits and nuts and wine berries and things just like potatoes ... everything. The whole country is one enormous orchard."
"Which isn't too good to fight in?"
"It's great to fight in,” Edward said bitterly, “if you happen to be a guerrilla."
He sighed and turned around to lean on the brass rail across the window. He folded his arms. “I should have seen what was going to happen. I should have guessed. But, damn it all, Alice, I was only eighteen! I was a stranger in their world. I thought they knew what they were doing in their shiny armor and fancy helmets."
She had never known him to make excuses before. “You couldn't have done anything, surely?"
"Surely I could have! I still had the mana I'd collected in Olfaan's temple. It wasn't much by the gods’ standards, of course. I knew it wouldn't build any magic castles, but I thought I might manage a faith healing or something, so I was hoarding it. But even with just my stranger's charisma I could have talked some sense into Kammaeman if I had seen the problem.” He pulled a face. “The only man with any brains was Tarion, who got out while the going was good."
He turned back to the glass and added to his map. “Lemodvale's shaped like a snake, very long and thin. We came in here, at the eastern end. That's where the main passes are. Lemod, the capital, is up here, at the western end. Nobody thought to ask what sort of openings there were thereabouts. It was autumn.” He frowned at the map he had drawn or perhaps at the scenery sliding by outside. The train was slowing for a station, but she thought he wasn't really looking, just reluctant to tell her more.
"You'd think Kammaeman would have studied the geography, wouldn't you?” he growled. “Or at least the history. He wasn't the first Joalian general to die in Lemodvale."
Houses flowed past the window, slower and slower.
"He wasn't the first Joalian general to be murdered by his deputy, either. And when the Chamber learned I was with the army, then we were fighting gods."
26
FOUR DAYS AFTER THE ARMY REACHED LEMODFLAT, GOLBFISH HAD his first experience of battle. The battle itself was not nearly so bad as the getting ready for it.
He hated Lemodvale. All the Nagians hated Lemodvale. Their own land was flat, dry, and treeless, with rarely a day when a man could not see all the way to Nagwall in every direction. At night the stars and the moons roamed overhead like fireflies in infinite space.
Lemodvale was different. Sky and mountains vanished; the world became nothing but trees, with rarely enough space to pitch a tent and no level ground anyway. Lemodflat wasn't even a decent jungle, because the trees were planted in rows, curving around the slopes. Usually there was no undergrowth, but the lowest branches sprouted at shoulder height and men became hunchbacked from creeping under them all the time. There were no open fields and few trails wide enough to let the sun through. Day after day a man saw no farther than twenty yards, and then only in one direction. He could walk for hours and the view never changed. It was like being shut up indoors, in a maze of pillars, with the roof leaking all the time. Some of the Nagians were almost out of their minds.
Rain fell every day, sometimes only a brief shower, often a dawn-to-dusk downpour. Face paint washed off and stained beards like rainbows.
Droppings showed that wildlife or packbeasts grazed the orchards, but they were never seen. The Lemodians themselves had vanished also. When cottages were located, they were always deserted, often burned. The army advanced unopposed—except by cold and constant wet and the ravages of unfamiliar food.
The scouts had finally located a village, name unknown. At last there could be a fight.
Kammaeman Battlemaster had decided to attack at dawn. He had given the Nagians the honor of leading the assault because he thought they could approach more quietly than the armored Joalians, or so he had said. The rain had stopped. Trumb was almost full, his eerie green light filtering dimly through the foliage. It was just possible for a man to see the man in front of him, as long as he stayed close. It was not possible to move without walking into tree trunks and branches. By day the warriors held their shields up until their left arms were ready to fall off, but shields would make too much noise now. So they wore their shields on their backs and felt their way forward with their hands. Golbfish followed Pomuin, and Dogthark followed Golbfish, each trying to keep the other in sight and not ram him with his spear. It was easy to lose track of where those sharp blades were in the dark.
Feet squelched on dead leaves, but otherwise there was no sound. For all Golbfish knew, they might have walked in a circle and returned to camp. His back and neck ached from stooping.
He was shivering, telling himself that the clammy morning air was at fault and knowing it was not. His feet were icy. He did not think he was afraid of dying so much as of exposing himself as a coward in front of these young peasants. What would they think of their future king if he fainted, froze, or just soiled himself with terror when the fighting started? He was probably the oldest Nagian in the army, because only single men had been conscripted and villagers married young.