Sasha (69 page)

Sasha, Captain Akryd and other officers, either from the line companies or appointed from amongst village chiefs, gathered on the field beyond the main gate of Ymoth's wall. Men were leading horses back from the river in great groups as others ran to retrieve them. The air was filled with yells of instruction and question, galloping hooves and the urgent whinnying of horses who knew that something more was afoot. The fields nearby remained littered with dead, mostly Banneryd, as men continued even now to reclaim the bodies of comrades, and check to see if any still lived. Already the grey sky had grown dim with the approach of evening, and Sasha thanked the spirits that it was late summer still and the days remained long.

“The road comes like thus,” Jurellyn was saying, drawing a line with his sword on a patch of bare turf amidst the grass, “upon the other side of the river. It's not far, as you can see. He'll be here by nightfall. My best guess is that he has six thousand in the valley—half cavalry, half infantry. This column seems also half-and-half, cavalry to the front and rear, infantry in the middle. But being stretched so long upon the road, we could not see the column's end, so we have no means of guessing their number.”

“Well,” said Captain Akryd, with a thoughtful glance across the Ymoth wall and the fields about, “these defences will serve us better than they did the Banneryd. Usyn won't have dussieh riding with him, he'll be unable to exploit the gaps in the line. We've received another several hundred men riding over the Shudyn Divide just since the attack commenced. Usyn won't attack at night and we can still sneak riders from the Shudyn through the back woods and into the town. Half the Goeren-yai with horses across central Lenayin are coming to our aid. Most upon the Shudyn will ride through the night, knowing the battle has commenced ahead. By dawn, we could number nearly five thousand, despite our losses. Defender's advantage shall be with us. Usyn may have six thousand, and cavalry of a greater quality, but ours are entirely cavalry, and we have the defence. He shall not overrun us.”

Conversation flowed, terse and urgent. Men discussed possible deployments, weak spots and guard posts from which to observe Usyn's forces through the night. Sasha stared at Jurellyn's lines in the bare turf, thinking furiously. Then stared up, gazing north up the Yumynis River toward the valley mouth looming beneath the darkening sky.

Defender's advantage. Cavalry shock. Such were the established norms of Lenay warfare. Kessligh employed all such terms…and then, in the next breath, disparaged them. It had frustrated her, listening to his lessons. He was always so contradictory. Nothing he'd told her was ever guaranteed, and written in stone. But now…dussieh racing through the narrow folds in the defensive line. Charging through the spaces between sharpened stakes. The Banneryd line, once so impenetrable, had been outflanked. The cavalry, at one moment charging downhill with advantage behind them, the next, blindsided, outnumbered, broken and overwhelmed.

An advantage was not always an advantage. A weakness was not always weak. What had Kessligh told her? She recalled a training session beneath the vertyn tree. She couldn't have been any more than twelve, as the stanch had felt huge in her hands. Kessligh had spent much of the lesson demonstrating to her the variations on the low right-quarter defence. The combinations were seemingly endless, depending on the nature of the attack and what one wished to do next, one, two, three or even more moves into the future. But there were ground rules, basic principles that all combinations had in common. He had drilled her on them, endlessly and, slowly, she'd found her selection and execution improving.

Then he'd asked her to attack him so he could demonstrate how one could improvise when one had mastered the fundamentals. After several exchanges, she'd thought of an attack that was particularly cunning and involved a feint she'd seen Kessligh himself use against men at the Baerlyn training hall. Kessligh had responded with a defence-to-offence combination that had been like nothing he'd previously been demonstrating and had knocked her firmly on her backside. She had protested—not so much at the rough treatment, for at that age she'd still been so utterly in awe of Kessligh's swordwork that even a beating could be a delight—but that he'd just spent all that time with her teaching her exactly why she shouldn't be doing it like
that
.

He'd given her one of his rare, wry yet genuinely amused smiles. “I never thought I'd see the day when you, of all people, would complain of someone
else
not playing by the rules,” he'd told her, yanking her effortlessly to her feet. “That's why I teach you these rules. It's not so you can follow them religiously. It's so that one day, you'll learn when, and how, they can be broken.”

“This land here,” she asked Jurellyn, pointing to an area of road not far north of Ymoth toward the valley. “What is this like?”

“Some fields of ripe grain and some fallow.” Jurellyn was looking at her intently, his eyes narrowed. Jurellyn had known Kessligh from the Great War. Perhaps he guessed at her thoughts. Some of the other men were breaking off their discussions to listen.

“Could we ride on them?” Sasha asked. “A large force, in a charge?”

Jurellyn nodded. “Not easily, the fallow ground is a little rough and the grain fields are near what should be harvest. There are fences nearly hidden. But yes, it's possible.”

“M'Lady, no,” Akryd said firmly, and with some alarm. “We've good defences here and it'll shortly be dark. That's maybe three thousand Hadryn heavy cavalry out there—they like the open ground, each of them is possibly twice the quality of our average cavalryman, they'd just love to meet us away from these walls where they can do what they do best. Absolutely no, we should stay put.”

“We have no archers,” Sasha replied, fixing him with a hard stare. She was not certain where this sudden burst of conviction had come from. But it was there, nonetheless. “A defence without archers is like a feast without ale—utterly pointless. The Hadryn will reach our defences in perfect order and shall do to us what they will. We shall lose all initiative and will become their playthings, free to toy with as they please until my dear brother arrives, whereupon we can all get down on our knees and beg him to save us from this siege.”

“M'Lady…” Akryd began in exasperation, but Sasha cut him off.

“Furthermore, their infantry is strong and well drilled, and they
can
mount an infantry assault through the wooded foothills, although slowly, as we could not do with cavalry. We would be forced to divert large numbers of soldiers away from our forward defences, leaving them pitifully thin, and we just saw what happens here when the flanks are stretched so badly.” There were some thoughtful nods from some men at that. She could see them thinking, picturing. Others looked unconvinced. “An attack in the open is not what Usyn expects…”

“With good reason!” Akryd retorted, with no little sarcasm.

“…but he is all strung out upon the road and he has no formation.” Sasha finished, determinedly. Some of the thoughtful looks had become intent. She had those with her, at least. “We'll spring the trap, and he won't have time to form up his flanks! What's more, he's an arrogant little snot, he believes in the tales of the Hadryn cavalry's invincibility just as much as some others do…” with a pointed stare at Akryd, who was now beginning to look angry, “and I'm convinced the Udalyn have not yet fallen or he would have been here already. Some of his forces will have remained behind to keep the Udalyn trapped behind their wall so that he can return to finish them later. I'm betting he won't even be at full strength. After all, we're just a pagan, or pagan-loving, rabble of limp-wristed southerners led by a girl. What threat could we possibly be?”

That got a grim laugh from some. “He'd not have needed to leave many behind,” said one of those, “he's only guarding one gate in the Udalyn wall.”

Sasha shrugged. “Aye. Maybe a few hundred horse and some archers, that would block one gate, given the Udalyn only have dussieh and aren't much renowned for cavalry anyway. The Udalyn might overwhelm them with a full-scale breakout, but I'll bet they've guessed what's happened, now they've seen Usyn turn tail and leave, and will wait for the result. They'll hope that Usyn will lose men in this fight, leaving him unable to breach the wall. Better yet, if we win and drive him back into the valley, he's stuck with a wall at his back and a huge mob of angry Udalyn behind it.”

Some of the men were nodding now, openly. “It's what Kessligh would have done,” Jurellyn opined. “Don't give them a break, keep it moving all the time.”

“He could retreat east if beaten,” another said doubtfully. “Rather than into the valley.”

“That land's impossible,” Jurellyn answered. “These ridges run down from the Nyfaal Range here that forms the valley's eastern ridge…” he demonstrated with his sword, more lines in the dirt, “all the way out to here. To escape the valley with any kind of a force, one must follow the river. The key to the river is Ymoth, and we hold it.”

“M'Lady,” Akryd tried one last time, “we've no time to plan an ambush. Usyn is nearly upon us, and…”

Sasha jabbed at a spot upon the line that marked the riverbank. “Here,” she said. “Jurellyn, this bank is wooded, yes?”

“Aye, M'Lady. Mostly broadleaf, nearest the river. Plenty of undergrowth, not good for riding warhorses, certainly not in numbers. But dussieh could ride there. I have. You could put…oh, hundreds there. Maybe a thousand. Wouldn't see them from the road.”

“We'll do that,” she said with certainty. “Every dussieh in the ranks. They'll cut the line in half, we'll smash them head-on. Agreed?” Looking about the group. Some voiced their assent, loudly. Others murmured it, reluctantly. Several remained silent. Akryd was one. “Agreed?” Sasha repeated, looking at him firmly.

“Aye,” Akryd sighed, with the air of a man doomed to an unpleasant fate. “Aye, M'Lady. We will at that.”

S
ASHA SAT ASTRIDE HER HORSE
in the middle of the road that wound along the right bank of the Yumynis River. The sky was dull with early twilight, yet somewhere beyond the western mountains, there seemed to be a break in the clouds. Beyond Ymoth, peaks glowed yellow on their far sides, as if silhouetted with light. Low-angled rays fell upon the mouth of the Udalyn Valley ahead, and those craggy slopes seemed to glow.

To either side of the road lay vast fields of grain with pale green stalks and golden heads. They rippled in the light wind, moving swathes of colour in the glow from the further mountains. To her left, the Yumynis flowed wide and gentle, rugged forests encroaching upon its rocky left bank where the foothills came directly down to the river. Poplar and willow continued to line the banks and Sasha wondered if they had been planted long ago by human hand and maintained all this time.

Ahead, majestic upon the riverbank, was an exquisite pagoda of beautiful arches, apparently well maintained. Talleryn symbols climbed the supporting posts, a foreign, strange script whose shapes seemed to repeat through the form of the structure itself. This was a culture enlightened, yet almost lost. This, surely, was worth fighting for.

Behind her, across the fields of grain, stretched the forward rank of an army. Warhorses waited now more calmly than before, greatly tired from the day's exertions. Many nibbled at the grain as they waited. Soon, much of these unharvested fields would be destroyed. A necessary sacrifice, she hoped. To the rear, a new reserve was gathered, and once again Sofy was with them. Sasha had considered leaving her at Ymoth…but again, Ymoth was badly exposed to raids from Hadryn villagers to the east, its garrison held by fewer than a hundred men. Thankfully, Usyn's forces had brought with them plenty of chain and manacles, enough to bind most of the Banneryd who had surrendered. Two new men protected Sofy in the reserve. Where Jaryd was, no one knew.

Peg shifted tiredly beneath her and tossed his head, with somewhat less than his usual vigour. Those men tasked with caring for the horses had managed to get him a drink, some feed, and a very basic wash to remove the dried froth and sweat, but nothing more. She leaned forward now and rubbed his neck.