The cart thundered past, leaving angry Valhanans pondering the prospect of another cold dinner. The hard men of Lenayin were in some ways a pampered lot, Jaryd reflected with a sigh. Food in Lenayin was good and plentiful, and bad seasons rare. Already the column ranks were filled with complaints from men accustomed to going their own way, providing for themselves, and unfamiliar with orders and discipline. Figure that into any long, lowlands campaign. He wondered if the king and Prince Koenyg truly had.
Then he heard more hooves thundering and raised his head. Here along the column came a small figure on a galloping dussieh, skirts flying. Skirts. He got up, staring. Behind her came another girl in a loose red dress over slim, brown legs, black hair streaming like a banner. About them (and largely behind, to the apparent chagrin of a corporal whose expression Jaryd could observe) raced a contingent of eight Royal Guards.
A great cheer rose from the ranks, following the Princess Sofy and her entourage down the line. Jaryd stared in disbelief, as his Baerlyn comrades stood and roared with the rest. What happened next was obscured from view, but after a time of impatient waiting, trying to see over the heads of the risen column, the firewood cart reappeared, this time with a Royal Guard escort. Princess Sofy and her Isfayen companion (handmaiden seemed an inappropriate term, for a daughter of bloodwarriors) rode ahead, grinning and waving to the men along the way. The men on the cart unloaded firewood to those who wanted it, with dark expressions. Some of Jaryd’s friends seemed to think it the funniest thing they’d seen in months, and had difficulty cheering through tears of laughter. Northern Verenthanes humiliated by a horse-riding girl. Again. Spirits be good.
As she came close, Jaryd fancied that the princess’s wave faltered a little, her eyes seeking someone in the crowd. She knew this was the Valhanan contingent, surely. And probably she knew that Baerlyn, being eastern Valhanan, marched in the middle of the last third of the Valhanan column. Jaryd’s heart began thumping, to see her come near. Then, somehow, her eyes met his despite the distance and commotion. And locked.
A pretty girl. “Beautiful,” perhaps, was a word best suited to the likes of her elder sister Alythia, of full breasts and ruby lips. The Princess Sofy had now nineteen summers, and was slim and delicate to behold…although not quite as much as in Jaryd’s memory. She wore a plain yet well-made dress over riding pants and boots, her long dark hair fell loose down her back, and her features were fine. Like a little girl, perhaps, all save for her eyes, which were large, dark and lovely. They fixed upon him now, wide and intent, her waving hand frozen in midair. Jaryd’s heart seemed to stop, and his knees weakened.
And then she was past, smiling and waving to other men in the column. Had she just been staring at him? Had it been his imagination? Or had she merely imagined she’d seen him, in the spot in the column where she’d been told he would be?
Teriyan slapped him on the arm, grinning broadly as he watched her go. “She’s got Sasha’s blood in her, for sure. She’s a good girl, that one.”
“Aye,” Jaryd agreed, faintly. Recalling a wild escape on horseback, her slim body pressed to his as they rode close on the saddle. Recalling warm lips against his own, and slim, clutching hands and hungry eyes. A night’s camp all alone on a deserted trail somewhere on the border of Tyree and Valhanan, a blanket on a bed of pine needles. Bare white skin, and red nipples, and smooth, lovely hips. Intoxication, and desperate arousal, her cries and gasps in his ear.
“Aye,” he murmured, watching her leave to the cheers of adoring men. “She’s a good girl, for sure.”
Andreyis was one reason to march to war. So was honour. But neither was the only reason he’d come.
Three
I N HER CORNER OF THE TRAINING COURTYARD, Sasha had attracted a crowd. Tol’rhen students clustered about her as she faced a country lad named Daish, who was fancied one of the better swordsman trainees of the institution. Wooden blades flashed and cracked, and Sasha caught him on the arm guard. Exclamations came from those surrounding. Daish shook his arm, grinning, and circled about, his feet dancing. He was only a little taller than Sasha, and had a boyish, freckled face.
He attacked again, in clever combination, which Sasha deflected, and refrained from the high overhead that would have split his head, dancing back.
“She just took your head off!” Reynold Hein called out, greatly impressed.
“She did not!” Daish retorted.
“Did too!” called several others. Sasha was pleased they’d noticed. The Tol’rhen bred good swordsmen-from the sidelines they could see even the openings she rejected.
“Watch your brace step,” she advised Daish. “You put too much weight on your second step; you shouldn’t anchor your balance on one leg.”
Daish tried again. A few times he came close, but never quite did he lay a blade on her. Each time, save one where she again refused to swing at his head, Sasha gave him a thump on his pads or guards.
The session bell clanged and, across the courtyard, sparring ceased. Sasha shook hands with Daish-he was somewhat more sweaty and tired than she. From the onlookers, there was enthusiastic applause for both their efforts. Sasha began taking off her padded banda as students gathered around and fired questions at her.
She was finding their enthusiasm infectious. All through the Tol’rhen, there was a love of learning, whether the martial arts, or languages, or the many disciplines that Sasha could barely get her head around. She was disappointed that, as in Petrodor, there were so few women interested in the svaalverd, but pleased that the lads all treated her as one of their own. Of the hundred or so students in the courtyard this early morning, Sasha could only count three young women.
Walking back to the main building, Reynold Hein joined her and put his arm about her shoulders. Sasha did not mind-it was nothing that the young men would not do with each other, in the spirit of comradeship. Reynold was simply indicating that he considered her one of the lads.
“Sasha, we have a Civid Sein meeting in the forecourt,” he said. “It would be grand if you could attend, maybe say a few words.”
“I was going to go and see Errollyn at the Mahl’rhen,” Sasha said apologetically. Not that she felt particularly apologetic, but it was a good excuse all the same.
Reynold just smiled. “Oh well, I don’t suppose even the Civid Sein can compete with Errollyn.”
Viewed from the courtyard, the Tol’rhen looked magnificent. It was the largest building Sasha had ever seen, as high as a grand temple, and far longer and wider. It had beautiful arching doors and windows, and columns that fanned out from the sides like an animal’s ribs. Its great dome towered above surrounding rooftops. Sasha had been told that it had taken nearly twenty years to build, even after the rest of the Tol’rhen had been completed, engaging the best human and serrin minds of the time.
Ulenshaal Sevarien cornered her at breakfast.
“Ah, Sashandra!” he boomed, as he heaved his wide, black-robed bulk onto the bench. “I hope you’re beating some manners into these little rascals!”
“Some of those bruises are mine,” Sasha admitted, indicating the young men. “I don’t know that bruises make for better manners though, it never worked on me.”
“A worthy experiment all the same!” Sevarien exclaimed.
“Ulenshaal Sevarien would administer beatings himself,” said Daish from Sasha’s side, “but the last time he broke a sweat was in the year 850.” The other boys laughed.
“Quiet boy!” Sevarien barked, but his eyes sparkled. Sevarien was as large as his voice, and had no discernible chin. He had been a butcher in his younger years, self-educated on books lent to him by a wealthy customer. That knowledge had impressed a visiting Tol’rhen recruiter enough to gain him a place as a student, from where he had risen to become one of the institution’s most accomplished scholars.