I sometimes wondered during those days what my life might have been had not the invasion come. Jago, returning from his mission to Ithkrypt, had sought me out privately and put in my hand an embroidered case less than the length of my palm, made to contain a picture. He told me that my lady begged such of me in return.
Giving him my thanks, I waited until he was gone before I slipped the wooden-backed portrait out into the light and studied the face. I do not know what I expected – save I had hoped, perhaps oddly, that Joisan was no great beauty. A fair face might make her the more unhappy to come to such a one as I was after being flattered and courted. There are certain types of beauty that attract men even against their wills.
What I looked upon now was the countenance of a girl, unmarked as yet, I thought, by any great sorrow or emotion, It was a thin face, with the eyes over-large in it. And those eyes were a shade that was neither green nor blue, but a mixture of both, unless he who had limned that picture had erred.
I believed that he did not, for I think he had not flattered her. She must be here as she was in life. No, she was no beauty, yet the face was one I remembered, even when I did not look upon it. Her hair, like my own, was darker than usual, for the dalesmen tend to be fair and ruddy. It was the brown of certain leaves in autumn, a brown with a red under-note.
Her face was wider at the brow than the chin, coming to a point there, and she had not been painted smiling, but looking outward with sober interest.
So this was Joisan. I think that holding her portrait so and looking upon it made me realize in truth and sharply, for the first time, that here was one to whom my life was bound and from whom I could not escape. Still that seemed an odd way to regard this thin, unsmiling girl – as if in some manner she threatened to curb my freedom. The thought made me a little ashamed, so I hurriedly slipped the picture back into its case and thrust it into my belt-pouch to get it both out of sight and out of mind.
Jago had told me she wished one in return. Her desire was natural. But even if I desired – which somehow I did not – to honor her request, there was no way of doing so. I knew no one in the dale who had the talent for limning. And somehow I did not want to ask any questions to discover such a one. So to my lady’s first asked boon I made no reply. And in the passing days, each with a new burden of learning or peril, I forgot it – because I wanted to, perhaps.
But the picture remained in my pouch. Now and then I would look upon its casing, even start to slide out the picture, yet I never did. It was as if such looking might lead me to action I would later regret.
By all custom Joisan herself should have come to me before the end of the year. But custom was set aside by the rumors of war. And the next season found me fighting in the south.
Fighting – no, I could not claim to so much! My forester training made me no hero of battles, but rather one of those who skulked and sniffed about the enemy’s line of march, picking up scraps of information to be fed back to our own war camp.
The early disasters, when keep after keep along the coast had fallen to the metal monsters of Alizon, had at last battered us into the need of making a firm alliance among ourselves. That came very late. In the first place, the enemy, showing an ability to farsee and outguess us that was almost as superior to ours as their weapons were, had removed through murder several of the great southern lords who had personal popularity enough to serve as rallying points for our soldiers.
There were three remaining who were lucky or cautious enough to have escaped that weeding out. They formed a council of some authority. Thus we were able to present a more united front and we stopped suffering defeat after defeat, but used the country as another weapon, following the way of battle of Waste outlaws who believe in quick strikes and retreats without losing too many of their men.
The Year of the Fire Troll had seen the actual beginning of the invasion. We were well into the Year of the Leopard before we had our first small successes. Yet about those we dared not be proud. We had lost so much more than any gain, save slamming the invaders back into the sea again, would mean. The whole of the southern coast was theirs, and into three ports poured ever-fresh masses of men. It would seem, though, that their supply of such fearsome weapons as they had used in the first assaults – those metal monsters – was limited. Otherwise we could not have withstood them as long as we did, or made our retreat north and west any more than the disorganized scramble of a terrified rabble.
We took prisoners, and from some of those learned that the weapons we had come to fear the most were not truly of Alizon at all, but had been supplied by another people now engaged in war on the eastern continent where Alizon lay. And the reason for the invasion here was to prepare the way in time for these mightier strangers.
The men of Alizon, for all their arrogance, seemed fearful of these others whose weapons they had early used, and they threatened us with some terrible vengeance when the strangers had finished their own present struggle and turned their full attention on us.
But our lords decided that a fear in the future might be forgotten now. It was our duty to defend the dales with all we had, and hope we could indeed drive the invaders back into the waves. Privately I think none of us in those days was sure that we were not living in the last hours of our kind. Still no one spoke of surrender. For their usage of captives was such that death seemed more friendly.
I had returned from one of my scouts when I found a messenger from the battle leader of this portion of the country – Lord Imgry – awaiting me with an urgent summons. Bone-weary and hungry, I took a fresh mount and grabbed a round of dried-out journey bread, without even a lick of cheese to soften it, to gnaw on while I rode.
The messenger informed me that a warning of import had been flashed overland by the torch-and-shield method, and at its coming he had been sent to fetch me.
At least our system of placing men in the heights to use a torch against the bright reflection of a shield to signal had in part speeded up the alerts across country. But how I could be involved in such a message I could not guess. At that moment I was so achingly tired my wits were also sluggish.
Of the lords who comprised our war council, Lord Imgry was the least approachable. He was ever aloof. Still his planning was subtle and clever, and to him we owed most of our small successes. His appearance mirrored what seemed to be his inner nature. His face wore a cold expression. I do not think I ever saw him smile. He used men as tools, but did not waste them, and his care for his followers (as long as they served his purposes) was known. He saw there was food for their bellies and shelter if possible, and he shared any hardships in the field. Yet he had no close tie with anyone in his camp, nor, I believed, with any of the other lords either.
Imgry was respected, feared, and followed willingly by many. That he was ever loved I could not believe.
Now, as I came into his camp, a little dizzy from lack of sleep, long hours of riding, and too little food, I tried not to stagger as I dismounted. It was a point of honor to face Imgry with the same impassive front as he himself always presented under the most harrowing conditions.
He was not as old perhaps as my father, but he was a man one could never conceive of as having been truly young. From his cradle he must have been scheming and planning, if not for his own advancement (which I suspected), then for the advancement of some situation about him. There was a fire in the landsman’s rude cottage where he had his headquarters, and he stood before it, gazing into the flames as if there lay some scroll for his absorbed reading.