Kushiel’s Dart

"Would that I could tell you aught of d’Aiglemort," Marc de Trevalion said, shaking his head. "But he’s sealed his forces up within the foothills of the Camaelines, and no one knows where. As well beard a badger in his den as track him there." He pointed to the map. "There’s your likeliest retreat. I’ve one piece of advice for you," he added, glancing at Ghislain. "Take out Selig. If their information is good," he continued, nodding at Joscelin and me, "and I’ve no reason to believe it isn’t, Waldemar Selig is the key. If he falls, the Skaldi are leaderless."

The Skaldi believed Selig was proof against arms. I wished I could believe otherwise; but I remembered that night, when I would have killed him, and was unsure.

"We’ll try," Ghislain de Somerville murmured. "You may be sure of that."

"My lord de Trevalion," I asked, "what befell Melisande Shahrizai?"

Marc de Trevalion’s face hardened; he’d issues of his own with Melisande, whose machinations had brought his House down. But he shook his head again. "The last I knew, the Cassiline Brotherhood was looking for the Shahrizai, to bring them in for questioning. But I never heard they found them."

Nor likely to, I thought; Melisande would see a Cassiline coming at five hundred paces. Well, no mind. I touched the diamond at my throat. Wherever she was, it was not on the battlefield.

In the morning, we rode to war.

I will not detail the provisioning of the army, the considerable difficulties entailed in transmitting a plan of such scale to a vast force, with language ever a barrier. Suffice it to say that all was done in the end, though my voice was ragged from serving as translator.

It is much to Ghislain de Somerville’s credit that we proceeded as smoothly as we did. Despite his initial discomfort, he dealt evenly with our unlikely force, and found a common bond with Drustan mab Necthana, who was not too proud to appreciate another’s skill.

Much credit also goes to Eamonn of the Dalriada, who had an exacting mind for detail. If we were well provisioned and the dispersal of arms and mounts went without difficulty, much of it was Eamonn’s doing. As much as the Twins baited each other, I saw, in that exodus, why Grainne stood by him. They were a formidable team.

We marched southward, swinging wide to the east, into Camlach, to avoid detection by Selig’s forces. It is a dire thing, being part of an army on the move. I would not wish it on anyone. But we gained, in time, the rolling hills of river-wrought Namarre and a vantage point from which to spy on the siege.

Several Skaldi met their death in that effort. Waldemar Selig, no fool, had posted scouts along the perimeter of the land he held. But he had not reckoned on the Cruithne, whose woodcraft surpassed aught that I had seen. Drustan appointed an advance party, and they did their job excellently, emerging silent and deadly from the very landscape to dispatch the Skaldi watchers in our route.

Thus did we come to a place in the hills, overlooking the plain on which Selig’s army was encamped.

"So many," Drustan breathed in Cruithne, lying on his belly like the rest of us to gaze down at the scene.

I had known; I had counted the numbers at the Allthing, I had seen them in the Master of the Straits' bronze mirror, and I had heard them from Ghislain de Somerville. Nothing had prepared me for the sight. From where we lay, the Skaldi army teemed around the fortified bulwarks surrounding Troyes-le-Mont like ants around an anthill. Swarms of tiny figures bustled over the plain, gathering here and there in strategic points to attack the bulwark. We could see how thin defenses were spread inside the wall, the weakening points vulnerable to attack.

It wouldn’t be long before the Skaldi won through, forcing the defenders into the fortress itself. Percy de Somerville had chosen Troyes-le-Mont because it was defensible-and because it wasn’t surrounded by a city filled with innocent, unarmed D’Angelines-but Selig had studied Tiberian tacticians.

They were building siege towers.

"That’s the best place to strike," Ghislain said practically, jutting his chin at a tower under construction on the outer edge of the encampment. "They’re well out of bow range, so they’ll not be on the lookout for attack, and their attention’s fixed on the tower. Do you agree?"

I translated for Drustan, who nodded in agreement.

"Good." Ghislain stared hard at the besieged fortress, thinking, no doubt, of his father, then drew back cautiously. "We’ll plan our retreat in stages," he said, gazing at the hills behind us with all the thoughtfulness of a farmer plotting his orchard. "We need to be able to make a clean break of it."

If anyone had doubted that he’d inherited his father’s gift for military tactics, they didn’t after that day. The course of our retreat stretched for miles into the foothills, leading Skaldi pursuers through a deadly series of setbacks, and at last into a narrow gorge which could be blocked, forcing the Skaldi to retreat.