The Sacred Band

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Mena arrived back at Mein Tahalian partially snow-blind, with the tips of her fingers and toes frozen twigs, yellow patches on her nose and cheeks. Despite the protests of Perrin and the other officers, she did not go to the physician. She slept right there in the relative warmth of the stables, curled against Elya’s exhausted body. Mena let attendants pull off her boots and gloves, and then ordered them to step back. When her hands and feet were free, she pressed them up against her mount’s plumage. She slept like that, the two of them dead to the world and nearly dead outright. It was the best thing she could have done.

When she awoke hours later, she lay for a time without moving, knowing that any motion would stir the interest of the people watching over her. She could tell that life had tingled back into her limbs and facial skin, stimulated by that amazing healing power that Elya’s feathers had. She was whole again. She would still be able to grip a sword, to run into battle. Though she very much wished that she could roll over and return to sleep, she knew she could not. Images of mornings she had lain wrapped in her sheets in the palace rose up to haunt her, as a girl, as a woman, with the heat of Melio’s body just a finger’s breadth away. Days spent stretched naked on her pallet in Vumu, or times she had watched the morning chase the stars from a bedroll in Talay. She hated that those moments were forever in the past. They taunted. They teased her. They would not let her go, but she could not have them back, either. They were moments of peace that seemed impossible luxuries now. Had life ever been so carefree? She did not trust that those moments had ever been as she imagined, but she wanted them so badly for those first few waking moments that she bled tears as her body healed.

And then she rose and called her officers for a briefing in which she explained what she had seen and done instead of flying to the coronation. After that, she sent several letters via messenger bird to Acacia, detailing everything she had learned from her meeting with the Auldek and everything she now planned. She wrote things, in fact, that she had not disclosed to her own captains. She asked-more openly than she ever had, more like a younger sister than ever before-for any guidance Corinn could offer.

That done, she kept moving. She did all the things she had to as she waited for a response, all the tasks and problems and duties that kept her from being too much with herself. She mustered the troops. She sent horsemen riding for all the remote, northern settlements they could safely reach, warning that war was upon them. They should evacuate for the south, if possible, or come to see out the winter in Tahalian, if they could not. With her officers, she went over battle plans and studied charts and calculated the probable toll in human lives. It was not an arithmetic she could live with, though she betrayed no sign of it. Secretly, she met alone with Haleeven and the Scav Kant, talking late into the night.

The work of each day kept her busy. Every minute she hoped to hear back from Corinn. From Aliver, for that matter! Though she could not yet really believe he lived. Part of her clung to a hope that Corinn would find some way to fix it all, a solution only her cunning mind could manage, something that would save the troops Mena had grown to love. She slept little, and when she did she often woke in the pitch-black of the Meinish night, her mind a cacophony of concerns, problems, calculations, doubts. On occasion, she started awake in the hope that Corinn was there in the room with her, or a dream-travel version of her moving in Perrin’s body. But that did not happen. Nothing came back from the south. Nothing at all.

Behind it all, she chastised herself for not having done better when she spoke to the Auldek. She should have found a way to make peace with them. Instead, she had let anxious bravado snap her tongue, puff out her chest like some adolescent boy’s. Because of it, they would have war. Because of it, many would die. That had always been the purpose of her mission-not so much to defeat the Auldek but to blunt their attack so that a second army led by the queen could finish them. What sort of plan was that? A desperate one. A cruel one. One with a cold, calculating efficiency that she did her best to sharpen, even while she did not, secretly, accept it as the only way.

At the last meeting she was to have with her officers before some of them went into the field, she asked them to attend her after all the other business had been concluded. The troops were again gathering inside the Calathrock, to hear their orders as a group one last time within that chamber.

“Before you go to them,” she said, “I have two things to ask of you. I’m sure you have all thought much about why we were sent here. We’ve had even more time since coming here to Tahalian, but things will unfold quickly from now on. I think it best that we are honest about it. We are not marching to defeat the Auldek. I’ve seen them. We can’t do that, not with the troops we have. They control the air, so we cannot surprise them or flank them or any such thing. When we fight them, it will be in the open, our cunning against their might.”

Bledas, the Marah captain, began to tout the training they had put in recently.

Mena quieted him just by touching him with her eyes. “All that aside, Bledas, we don’t march to defeat them. I need us all to acknowledge this. Our task is to die fighting them. To die. To kill as many of them as possible, and to hurt and delay them as much as we can, to fall so that our bodies trip their feet and slow them. That way, they will enter the Known World battered and frozen, weakened. It will then fall upon the next army to destroy them. If we do our work, they’ll be able to, but none of us should think that we will see that victory. I want to ask two things of you. First, I ask you to decide today that you are going to die in this fight. I need each of you to do that. If you cannot, you may leave my service.”

Letting this sit with them, she glanced around the room at each man’s face, offering him the opportunity to respond. Talkative Edell said nothing. Bledas worked his finger into a crack in the old wooden table. Perceven’s Senivalian mouth, narrow and full, pursed, accentuating the two mountain peaks of his upper lip. Mena read thought behind the gesture. Kissing life good-bye. That’s what he was doing. Haleeven was a comfort to look upon. His face was solid, untroubled, as if he welcomed this conversation and thought it right. Perrin watched her with his lover’s eyes. Despite herself, she had often wondered if Melio would mind if she sought solace in the soldier’s arms. She would not do it, but at times she wished to.

“All right,” Mena said. “Now the second thing. I want you to go before me to your troops. Tell them what I have just told you. Make them the same offer.”

“Princess Mena!” Edell started. “We can’t offer them-”

“I have to,” Mena said. “I won’t order soldiers to die. I’ll lead them to it, but not command them. I’ve thought about this a long time, Edell. You will not change my mind. I will command an army only of willing soldiers. That’s what I want for Acacia after this war. If we are to win it, we must start now. So, that’s all. If you wish to leave my service, do so now. If not, go and speak to your soldiers.”

She said this with all the calm resolution she could muster, and then she stood as the men filed out. She wondered that she could manage to show so little emotion on her face, and then she realized it was because she felt so little emotion. She was just saying what was true. What she believed, and had to say and to do.

A nd yet an hour later she could not pretend, as she approached the doors behind which the entire army was gathered in the Calathrock, that her insides weren’t knotted and her palms sweaty and her jaw muscles sore from being locked in a clench she was not even aware of. She was supposed to be returning with a blessing from Aliver reborn. Instead she had returned with a choice of life or death. What would she do if each and every one of them took her up on her offer to leave? She had no plan for that. No speech to change their minds. No heart to keep them against their will.

If it comes to that, she thought, the Auldek will truly witness a sight to laugh at, a lone princess with a sword, come to vanquish the lot of them all by herself.

A soldier pulled the door open for her. She stepped into the underground chamber and knew that she never had anything to fear. Not with soldiers like hers. Not with free hearts like theirs. Men who knew why they fought and did so out of their own convictions. That, she thought, is what Acacia should be. It was what it could be, and it was the reason she would not be standing all by herself before the Auldek. Not by a long shot.

T he next day the first contingents of scouts and supply trains began the march that would prepare the way northeast along the perimeter of the Black Mountains, around them, and north into the Ice Fields, where she intended to meet the invading Auldek. Not one of her soldiers had abandoned her. They playfully shamed her for even thinking any of them might. They joked, Perrin told her, that she had been mistaken if she thought she commanded them against their will. Perhaps in the first few weeks, yes, but after that they were with her because they wanted to be. She was one of them and they would be proud to die with her. Soldier after soldier told her this, each speaking it low like a secret. Like a declaration of love. Morbid as it was, it was good, very good, to hear.

The body of the army left the steaming warmth of Mein Tahalian in a long, narrow column. They traveled mostly on foot, draped in layers of furs and woolens and oil-treated outer skins, hoods pulled tight around their faces, with glass shields to protect their eyes. They carried packs on their backs, necessary, for they did not have enough sleds or dogs to pull all their supplies. It would be slow, tortuous progress, but they had all known that.

The day never fully lightened. Instead, the sun skimmed the rim of the world, sending slanting rays of light over the land for several hours before disappearing. They traveled on in the dark, sighting on fires the scouts had prepared for them.

Mena would have marched right along beside them, but Haleeven convinced her that was a self-indulgent gesture. “The troops know you would suffer beside them, and that means you don’t have to prove it. You mean more to us in the sky, Princess. That’s what the men need to see.”

So she had taken to the sky. On Elya, Mena soared above them, riding down the long column from end to end, marveling both at how small it was on the landscape and at how much it filled her with pride. The first week out, she flew back from the marching column to Tahalian as often as she could, knowing that any correspondence from Acacia would not easily get beyond the fortress. No bird could be trained to seek out a moving army in a hostile landscape, and any messenger sent after them from Tahalian would have to travel slowly, in pursuit of a target that was moving away from them.

Eventually, she had to give up hope of receiving any correspondence. She did not even have a bird left to send with a final message. She did write two missives, though, and left them with the villagers gathered to shelter in the fortress. When a bird did reach them from the south, they would forward her letters for her. One addressed to her sister and brother. One to her husband.

And then she left. She circled above Tahalian for a time, looking down at the scruffy, snow-covered wildness of it for what she thought was likely her last time. Strange how a place that she had once thought of as an enemy’s lair had come to feel so quickly like a second home. Is all the world like that? she wondered. Perhaps, if we take the time and give our enemies a chance.

O ne morning a week later, Gandrel requested Mena join him on a glacier-scoured hillside. As Perrin was briefing her for the day, he went as well. The hillside afforded a view of the passing army and well out toward the terrain ahead of them. The Black Mountains gnawed at the sky off to the west, but they were no obstacle to them. It was the jumble of frozen debris out on the northern horizon that was. Mena had seen it from above yesterday, but had planned on getting a better look today. The low light made the shapes mysterious, hard to make sense of. All shadow and highlight, the stuff seemed to change shape and color even as she stared at it.

“Those are slabs of sea ice,” Gandrel said. He handed her his spyglass. “Beautiful stuff to look at, like green and blue glass when the light hits it right. But it’s treacherous. It’s been getting pushed up against the shore since Elenet threw the Giver’s world into chaos. Crossing it will be miserable. Rife with fissures, crevices, and weak spots. It’s always moving, see, breathing as the season changes-believe it or not. It’ll be a few days of all-out scrambling, I’d say. Feet and hands, ropes, hauling and praying to the Giver. It’ll be hard to camp in there. Might need to divide up at night to find decent spots. We’ll lose some men. Animals, too. Only good news is that beyond it, once we’re well out away from where the ice buckles against the shore, it goes smooth. Good place to have a battle, I’d say.”

“There’s no other way?” Perrin asked. “I never came this far north, so I don’t know, but are you sure there isn’t some alternative?”

“No, there’s no other way. From what the Scav told me and from where Mena met them, the Auldek will come this way. Take Elya out and scout just in case, Princess, but I’m as sure as I can be.”

“I don’t doubt you,” Mena said, lowering the spyglass.

“We could wait for them here,” Perrin said. “Let them do the work of crossing the stuff.”

Gandrel pursed his thick lips. Released them. “Won’t be the obstacle for them that it is for us, not if they’ve come this far already.”

Mena thought for a while. “No, we can’t sit here waiting for them. We’d lose more than we’d gain. The Auldek wouldn’t do it. If we do, they’ll see it as a sign of cowardice. Plus they have many flying creatures to our one. Those alone could make life miserable for us.” And, she thought, our men might start to think they can flee south if things go bad. I don’t want them thinking that. Not yet, at least. It was an uncharitable thought, out of keeping with the brave mood of the men. She could not help having it, but she did not choose to voice it. “I’d rather we meet them boldly, all at once.”

Both men seemed to accept this. Gandrel moved on. “I called you because I wanted to show you something else. Here.” He motioned for her to lift the spyglass again, waited for her to squint an eye and pressed the open one against it. He adjusted its direction. “A little way before the ice begins. Just west of due north. Do you see them?”

She would not have unless he had directed her to them. And still it took a moment to see the moving figures, antlike even within the warped view of the glass. A line of people worked their way toward the ice slabs. They were not numerous.

“Who are they?” Perrin asked. “Those aren’t Auldek soldiers. And they’re not ours.”

“No,” Gandrel agreed. “They’re Scav.”

“What are they doing here? They want to join us? If so, somebody should tell them to wait.”

“Not join us, no. That’s not the Scav way.” He squinted out toward them, though Mena could not imagine he could see them with his naked eye. “They’ve got something planned, though.”

Perrin motioned for the spyglass. Looking through it, he asked, “How do we know it’s not treachery against us?”

“To aid the Auldek?” Gandrel scoffed. “No chance. They hate them with every stringy muscle in their bodies. And they’re not hiding. Even at this distance, they’ll know exactly where we are. The Scav want us to know they’re with us, but I don’t imagine they’ll want any official welcome. When they want to become invisible, they do. If I know them, we’ll not see much of them. However, if they’re going to help us, they’ll follow no one’s orders but their own.”

Smiling, Mena said, “They sound like trouble.”

“For the Auldek, let’s hope. Wave to them, and wish them well, I say.”

Mena happily did so.

T hey crossed the edge of the ice fields as soon as the light allowed the next morning. From ground level it was hard to measure what faced them. From above Mena could see the width of the jumble, but it was still hard to make sense of the shifting colors and shadows, the glasslike shadings and hidden crevices. It was not a territory meant for humans, a landscape that in no way acknowledged the possibility of people traversing it. Elya despised the place. She did not even like landing among it. When Mena forced her to touch down, her feet slid, skittish and unwilling to settle, her wings flapping. Mena had to resign herself to shouting her encouragement from the air.

Throughout her flights, Mena saw no sign of the Scav group at all, but on one flight north she spotted the coming army, rolling and marching, torches burning against the coming night. Their flying beasts saw her as well. Several of the winged creatures flew toward her. In response she and Elya rose high, circled away in a manner just leisurely enough to show no fear.

Of course, Mena did feel fear. For the first time in weeks she realized she had not thought of protecting Elya from all this. Hadn’t she always said Elya would never see war? What happened to the resolve with which she had spoken to Corinn? She had meant it, but instead of staying true to it, she had taken Elya into danger, far from Acacia, a world away from the Talayan grassland on which Mena had found her. What right did she have to do that?

The worst of it was that she had taken Elya away from her children. She did not even know what Elya thought of that. If she thought anything of them, she kept it hidden, no trace of what emotion she might feel in her mind. That, more than anything, made Mena believe that Elya was hiding her thoughts from her selfish mistress, she who was too afraid to face death alone. Mena thought all these things, but she did nothing to change it. This is how we are with the ones we love, she thought. Too afraid to set them free.

She hovered at the edge of the flat ice, waiting for her army to join her, watching the enemy emerge into reality. They rose out of the ice on feet and hooves and wheels, leaping into the air, winged. She whispered a prayer to the Giver, hoping that the plan she had come up with might work, might even save some of her soldiers’ lives.

That evening, once the army was through the ice maze and settling in to camp, Mena called her officers to council. Inside a tent flapping and loud from the wind that had kicked up, she said this: “I thought it necessary that each soldier come here of his own free will, and that each of them face death as a foregone conclusion. I will never be able to explain how proud I am of every one of our soldiers.”

“You don’t have to explain it,” Perrin said. “We feel it, too.”

“Then you won’t be surprised that I am not willing to send them all to their deaths.” She let that sink in. Her eyes drifted from one face to the next. The candlelight they huddled around made them look like somber participants at some arcane ritual. It will not, she thought, be a blood sacrifice. “I’ve been trying hard to find a way that some of them might live while also doing what we can to hurt the Auldek. I think I have such a plan. It will require treachery, deceit. It will not be entirely honorable, certainly not in keeping with the Old Codes.”

“I’m liking the sound of this,” Gandrel said. His creviced face was one of the most frightening in the light, no less because he was smiling. “Never had much use for the Codes anyway, and treachery and deceit are underrated.” The others laughed.

“It will also require you to trust the Scav,” Mena said. This was not met with quite the same joviality. “Haleeven, explain to them what we’ve worked out with Kant and his people.”

As the old warrior began to speak, Mena withdrew to watch the unsteady light play across the men’s faces. It was a lot to ask of them, she knew. To hear the scheme from the mouth of one of the empire’s recent enemies and to learn that it involved depending on a ragged people that scrounged a living out of frozen waste so far to the edge of the world that they lived on unmapped terrain. Strange, indeed, but it felt right, necessary. If they were to win this war, they would have to remake how their society worked in the process.

That might as well begin here, she thought, with us.