Law of the Broken Earth (41 page)

Tan was staring at her, looking appalled by this idea. “A wise man does not leave be the hart at bay to pursue a glimmering fantasy by moonlight, nor forsake his house of stone to build a palace of sunbeams,” he said, with some force. “I admire your boldness, but you cannot possibly set all your hopes on—”

“I’m not!” exclaimed Mienthe. “If the Arobern sends an army to the Delta, then at least Linularinum will be out of the Delta, which is one thing we want.” She turned back to the Arobern himself. “And if you do that, then you’ll have an army in place to help block the griffins before they can come into Casmantium, which has to be something you want, and if Lord Beguchren is right about that book and about Tan, then we can stop the griffins entirely, and we all want that, don’t we? So why not do everything at once?”

There was a slightly stunned pause.

The Arobern himself broke it, rising to pace several strides away and then turn and come back. He moved with sharp energy, glowering at Mienthe with uncommon ferocity. “I thought of exactly what you say, yes?” he growled. “But you have forgotten: I cannot take men through that pass and march them through Feierabiand, because Iaor Safiad has my son in his court and within
his reach! Do you think he will stop to ask me what I do, when he sees the spears of my soldiers flashing in the sun?”

The Arobern flung himself back down in his chair and scowled around at them all. “I could send that girl back to Iaor Safiad, yes, and ask him politely if he would permit me to bring a few thousand men marching through southern Feierabiand. Except there is no time! Who knows whether the griffins have already come through the high pass and down against Tihannad? Nor will Safiad trust me or what I might do! Later, when he sees I kept faith with him, that will be too late!”

“You have another son now,” Lord Beguchren said very quietly.

“A babe in arms does not replace my first son!”

Mienthe stared at both men, utterly horrified. She exclaimed, “But King Iaor would never harm Erich! I don’t care if—if Erich is supposed to be a hostage against you, it doesn’t matter what you do, he would never touch him!”

“He is a king!” shouted the Arobern, lunging back to his feet. “He will do what he must!”

Mienthe jumped to her feet to face the King of Casmantium and shouted back, “He won’t!” She found she was glaring as fiercely as the Arobern. “Who knows King Iaor better, you or I? He’s spent a month out of every year in the Delta, in my cousin’s house, and every year he’s brought your son with him. He treats him like his own son! When little Anlin fell off her pony last spring and broke her wrist, it was Erich who carried her back to the house and sat up with her all night and told her stories so she wouldn’t cry! He told her about the time he broke his
arm falling off the roof of your palace in Breidechboden, and she made him promise that someday when she visited Casmantium he’d show her just where. He made her promise she wouldn’t climb out and fall from the same place!” Mienthe stopped. Then she finished with dignity, “It doesn’t matter what you think. King Iaor is honorable and kind and he might have taken your son as his hostage, but when it comes to the moment, he won’t touch him.”

The Arobern was gazing at her now with a very strange expression. “My son has stayed in your house for a month out of every year?”

Mienthe nodded uncertainly.

“You must know him now better than I do.”

Mienthe opened her mouth and shut it again. She said at last, “He’s a great deal like you, I think. Only not so hot-hearted. He loves you and Casmantium, but…”

“But he has learned to love Feierabiand and the Safiad as well,” the Arobern said heavily. “Yes. That is what the Safiad meant to teach him, and better that than…” His voice trailed off. “It is true that I have gathered a small army here. It is also true that I have thought of taking this army of mine through the pass. I would be glad to keep any war on the west side of the mountains, away from my own country. But…”

“You are a king,” Lord Beguchren said quietly. “You will do what you must.”

A
n hour before dusk, the Arobern and all his people came out of the western mouth of the pass and found themselves slowly descending the lower slopes of the foothills and approaching the soft new green of the spring pastures spread out below.

Beguchren found the long rolling view of Feierabiand’s gentle countryside… troubling. He knew those foothills and pastures, for this was the identical view that had greeted that other Casmantian army six years ago, when the Arobern had come for the first time into Feierabiand. Then, his ambition had been conquest. He had intended to use the griffins as unwilling, ignorant weapons against Feierabiand. The cold mages of Casmantium… Beguchren and all his brethren… had hardly cared whether the king’s plan succeeded.
They
had intended the ultimate destruction of all the griffins.

If the Arobern had not been so ambitious… if the cold mages of Casmantium had not encouraged him in
his ambition… then, very likely, the griffins would have kept, within reason, to their desert isolation. The slow battle between fire and earth would have continued as it had from the beginning of the age: inconclusive and wearying, but never ruinous.

Casmantium would still have its cold mages. Beguchren would not have been required to consign each of his long companions to the cold earth. The Great Wall would have been neither built nor broken.

Beguchren himself would still have his mage-sense and his power.

This was not a new thought. Only the regret and grief had become suddenly more piercing in the face of the green Feierabianden spring, with its soft breeze and gentle warmth.

Beguchren looked for signs of the stark desert the griffins had made here among the gentle hills and farms of Feierabiand. Looking down from this height, those signs were not obvious even to his experienced eye. But below and over to the south, the grasses were different: longer and harsher and strangely wiry. And there was a faint reddish cast to the land underlying those grasses. There were no trees in that area, except someone had apparently planted some young oaks and elms; the saplings stood in rows much too neat for trees that had sprouted naturally. Farther away, almost at the edges of visibility, stood a twisted, jagged tower of stone. The sunlight caught on it oddly, with a bloodred glimmer that turned its sharp edges almost translucent. Beguchren bowed his head, fixing his gaze instead on the mane of his horse, on his own fingers gripping the reins.

“My friend,” said the Arobern, and Beguchren drew a hard breath and looked up again.

The king had drawn up his horse, so that Beguchren had come up beside him. Their eyes met in a perfect understanding of shared guilt and regret. But neither of them would speak of the past, the Arobern because he was determinedly focused on the present and Beguchren because he was far too intensely private a man.

Leaning on his pommel, the Arobern gestured down the slope, west and a little south. “The ford is there, with its good bridge. The bridge is still there, I think. It was repaired when the rebuilding of the town began.”

Beguchren nodded. Of course the king would know for certain about the bridge—he would have had reports from his agents about every bridge and ford that would allow men to cross all the rivers in Feierabiand.

“So,” the Arobern said gravely. Lady Mienthe, her legist companion at her heel, had come up on the king’s other side and was looking at him questioningly; he turned toward her and went on, “We will assume the Wall yet holds. Perhaps it does.” It had been seven days since the griffin mage had brought his warning to Lord Bertaud. Perhaps the Wall held, and if it did not, still there was little they could do other than ride for the Delta and try an unexpected sideways blow against the griffins.

“We will cross the Nejeied,” continued the Arobern. “We will go across the country, straight toward Tiefenauer, at least until we are closer.” He had been practicing, as he managed the difficult Feierabianden names with only a little clumsiness.

“Yes?” Lady Mienthe said uncertainly.

The Arobern glanced sidelong at Beguchren and said, “If the Wall is broken, then Iaor Safiad will stay in the north. But if it still holds, then he may come south. If he comes, what will be his road? Will he ride down along the Sierhanan, straight for the Delta but always risking that he may find Linularinan soldiers have crossed the river and gotten in front of him? Or that he may find an attack coming from any direction, if Linularinum has crossed in force and laid a trap for him?”

“No,” said Beguchren, as the Arobern clearly wished to have all these tactical considerations laid out for the lady. “If the Safiad moves south, he will come down along the Nejeied this far. His options are wide, once he is here. He could cross west toward the Delta if he finds the Linularinan assault his greatest concern, as I imagine he hopes; or continue down the Nejeied toward Terabiand if for some reason he thought that wise; or if his hopes fail him and he suddenly discovers Linularinum to be the least of his concerns, he might go south along the Sepes River to Talend and have the forest at his back when he faces the griffins. He might even, in extremity, retreat with his men into the pass. I imagine that the griffins would care for that even less than they would like the forest.”

“That is also what I think,” said the Arobern, and paused. From the king’s grim expression, and from the way his gaze rested for a long moment on Lady Mienthe’s face, he was probably trying to imagine what he might say to King Iaor, if they happened to find him on the road down there, on the other side of the bridge.

“We will go down to the bridge,” the Arobern decided. “Lady Mienthe—” He frowned at her, though not
unkindly. “You must speak to the people there and bid them to be calm.”

“They will know they cannot fight us,” Lord Beguchren said, watching her face. The lady was clearly thinking of how frightened her folk would be when they saw thousands of Casmantian spears flashing through the dust raised by thousands of Casmantian boots. He said, “They may scatter up- and downriver, however, with the most disturbing tales of Casmantian invasion. You might persuade them to send a second lot of messengers after the first, in the hope that we may not encounter too much difficulty as we move farther into Feierabiand.”

“We will move too swiftly to encounter difficulty,” the Arobern declared. “If Iaor Safiad comes upon us, we will hope he will listen to us with both his ears. I will send that little courier north today, this very hour, explaining what we are about and asking his pardon for our boldness. Lord Beguchren, I will ask you to stay here, athwart the likely road, so that if the honored courier does not reach the Safiad, you may meet him here.”

Lord Beguchren, unsurprised, inclined his head in acceptance of this command. “I am honored by your trust,” he said quietly, and to Lady Mienthe, who was looking openly surprised, “It is a mage you will need with you in the west.”

“And it’s a smooth tongue the lord king will need here in the east,” said Tan, unexpectedly, for he had rarely spoken to any of them on this ride, and had assiduously avoided both Beguchren and Gereint. His tone now was stiff. But he went on, glancing from one of them to the next and ending with an earnest nod toward the Arobern, “King Iaor may even believe that you deliberately act
together with Mariddeier Kohorrian, and that you have some plan for dealing with the griffins after you’ve finished partitioning Feierabiand between you.”

Beguchren gave the legist a considering nod and agreed, “Indeed. I shall hope that in such exigency, I will be able to clarify matters.”

The Arobern grimaced and then looked keenly at Mienthe. “The Safiad knows you well, hah? Your cousin is his friend as well as his adviser and a lord of his court. Maybe I should leave you here also. Then you would be safe and also you could speak for me to your king. Maybe that would be clever, yes?”

“No—no, it wouldn’t!” said Mienthe, plainly horrified. “I have to go west! I need to be in Tiefenauer! Or,” she amended, “at least, I need to be with Tan.” She said this as she might have said
The sky is blue
or
Water runs downhill
. As though it were a flat statement of such obvious truth that no one could possibly dispute it.

Tan said, a snap of temper in his voice, “I should hate to go west without Mienthe. It isn’t your mage who’s so far turned away three Linularinan attacks against me.”

Lady Mienthe looked at Tan with surprise and pleasure, as though she hadn’t expected his support. But, when the Arobern began stubbornly to speak again of her safety, it was to Beguchren she turned for help. Though Beguchren had to acknowledge, without modesty, that if the young woman was not confident of her ability to carry her own point, she could not have chosen better in looking for one who both could and would argue for her.