blonde girl’s designs on Stragen, Sparhawk could see dozens of artful
little ploys she was using to keep her intended victim’s attention. He
almost felt sorry for Stragen, but he concluded that Melidere would be good
for him. The pair concluded their duet to loud applause. Sparhawk glanced
toward the pavilion and saw Melidere lay one lingering hand almost
caressingly on Stragen’s wrist. Sparhawk knew just how potent those
accidental-seeming contacts were. lilias had explained it to him once, and
lillias had been the world’s champion seductress – as probably half the men
in Jiroch could have sworn to. Then Stragen turned to another traditional
air, and a new voice lifted in song. Kalten dropped the rock he had been
lifting. It fell onto his foot, but he did not even wince. The voice was
that of an angel, high, sweet, and as clear as’ glass. It soared
effortlessly toward the upper reaches of the soprano range. It was a lyric
voice, uncontaminated by the subtle variations of the coloratnra, and it
seemed as untaught as bird-song. It was Ehlana’s maid, Alcan. The doe-eyed
girl, always so quiet and unassuming, stood in the centre of the Pavilion,
her face luminous as she sang. Sparhawk heard Kalten snuffle, and he was
astonished to see great tears streaming down his friend’s face as the blond
Pandion wept unashamed. Perhaps his recent conversation with the Child
Goddess had alerted Sparhawk to the potentials of intuition, and he
suddenly knew, without knowing exactly how he knew, that two campaigns were
in progress – and, moreover, that the one being waged by Baroness Melidere
was the more overt and blatant. He carefully concealed a smile behind his
hand. ‘Lord, that girl’s got a beautiful voice!’ Kalten said in stunned
admiration as Alcan concluded her song. ‘God!’ he said then, doubling over
to clutch at the foot he had unwittingly injured five minutes earlier. The
work progressed until sunset, and then the combined army pulled back behind
the reinforced palisade and waited. Sir Bevier and his Cyrinic Knights
retired to the hilltop, where they completed the construction of their
catapults. Then they amused themselves by lobbing large rocks into the
forest seemingly at random. ‘What are they shooting at, Sparhawk?’ Ehlana
asked after supper. The trees,’ he shrugged. The trees aren’t threatening
us.’
‘No, but there are probably people hiding among them. The boulders falling
out of the sky should make them a little jumpy.’ He smiled. ‘Actually,
Bevier’s men are testing the range of the engines, dear. If our friends in
the forest decide to attack down those avenues we’ve provided for them,
Bevier wants to know exactly when to start shooting.’
‘there’s a great deal more involved in being a soldier than just keeping
your equipment clean, isn’t there?’
‘i’m glad you appreciate that, my Queen.’
‘Shall we go to bed then?’
‘Sorry, Ehlana,’ he replied, ‘but I won’t be sleeping tonight. If our
friend out there makes up his mind and attacks, there are some things I’ll
have to do rather quickly.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Danae?’
‘She and Talen are over there watching Bevier’s people throw rocks at the
trees.’
‘I’ll go get her. You’ll probably want to keep her close to you tonight.’
He crossed the basin to where Bevier was directing the activities of his
knights. ‘Bed-time,’ he told his daughter, lifting her into his arms. She
pouted a little at that, but raised no other objections. When Sparhawk was
about half-way back to his wife’s tent, he slowed. ‘How much of a stickler
are you for formality, Aphrael?’ he asked. ‘A few genuflections are nice,
father,’ she replied, ‘but I can live without them – in an emergency.’
‘Good. If ‘the attack comes tonight, we’re going to need some light to see
them by.’
‘How much light?’
‘Sort of noonish would be good.’
‘I can’t do that, Sparhawk. Do you have any idea of how much trouble I’d
get into if I made the sun rise when it wasn’t supposed to?’
‘I wasn’t really suggesting that. I just want enough light so that people
can’t sneak up on us through the shadows. The spell’s a fairly long one
with a lot of formalities involved and many, many specifics. I may be a
little pressed for time, so would you be terribly offended if I just asked
you for light and left the details up to you?’
‘It’s highly irregular, Sparhawk,’ she chided him primly. ‘I know, but
just this once maybe? ‘Oh, I guess so, but let’s not make a habit of it. I
do have a reputation to maintain, after all.’
‘I love you,’ he laughed. ‘Oh, if that’s the case, it’s perfectly all
right then. We can bend all sorts of rules for people who really love us.
Just ask for light, Sparhawk. I’ll see to it that you get lots and lots of
light.’
The attack came shortly before midnight. It began with a rain of arrows
lofting in out of the darkness, followed quickly by attacks on the Atan
pickets. That last proved to be what might best be described as a tactical
blunder. The Atans were the finest foot-soldiers in the world, and they
welcomed hand-to-hand combat. Sparhawk could not clearly see the attacking
force from his vantage-point on the hilltop, but he firmly controlled his
curiosity and held off on illuminating the battlefield until such time as
the opposing force was more fully engaged. As they had anticipated, their
enemies used the cover of these first probing moves to attack the log-jams
designed to impede their progress through the belts of trees set off by Sir
Ulath’s avenues radiating out from the base of the hill like the spokes of
a huge wheel. As it turned out, Bevier’s Cyrinics had not been lobbing
rocks out into the forest entirely for the fun of it. They had rather
precisely pin-pointed the range of those jumbles of fallen trees with their
catapults, and they hurled basketfuls of fist-sized rocks into the air to
rain down on the men attempting to tear down the barricades or to widen the
narrow gaps which had been deliberately left to permit the Peloi to ride
out in Search of entertainment. A two-pound rock falling out of the sky
will not crush a man, but it will break his bones, and after ten minutes or
so, the men out in the woods withdrew. ‘I confess it to you,
Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa said gravely, ‘I had thought your elaborate
preparations a bit silly. Atans do not fight so. Your approach does have
certain advantages, though.’
‘Our societies are different, Atan Engessa. Your people live and fight in
the wilderness where enemies are encountered singly or in small groups. Our
wildermess has been tamed, so our enemies come at us in large numbers. We
build forts to live in, and over the centuries we’ve devised many means to
defend those forts.’
‘When will you make the light come?’
‘At a time when it’s most inconvenient for our enemy. I want him to commit
a large part of his force and to have them fully engaged before I sweep
away the darkmess. He won’t expect that, and it takes time to get orders
through to men who are already fighting. We should be able to eliminate a
sizeable part of his army before he can pull them back. Defensive warfare
has certain advantages if you make the proper preparations.’
‘Ulath-Knight does not like it.’
‘Ulath doesn’t have the patience for it. Bevier’s the expert on defence.
He’d be perfectly willing to wait for ten years if need be for the enemy to
come to him on’ his terms.’
‘What will the enemy do next? We Atans are not accustomed to interrupted
fights.’
‘He’ll draw back and shoot arrows at us while he thinks things over. Then
he’ll probably try a direct assault down one of those avenues.’
‘Why only one? Why not attack from all directions at once?’
‘Because he doesn’t know how much we can hurt him yet. He’ll have to find
that out first. He’ll learn in time, but it’s going to cost him a great
deal to get his education. After we’ve killed about half of his soldiers,
he’ll do one of two things. He’ll either go away, or he’ll throw everything
he’s got at us from all sides at once.’
‘And then?’
‘Then we’ll kill the rest of his soldiers and be on our way,’ Sparhawk
shrugged. ‘Assuming that everything goes the way we’ve planned, of course.’
At two hundred paces and with only starlight to see by, the figures were
hardly more than shadows. They marched out into the centre of one of
Ulath’s corridors and halted while others filed out to join them and to
form up into a kind of massed formation. ‘I can’t believe that!’ Kalten
exclaimed, gaping at the shadowy soldiers at the end of the corridor. ‘is
something wrong, Sir Kalten?’ Emban’s voice was a little shrill. ‘Not in