A Shore Too Far

Chapter 9

Eric’s tent and the Kullobrini table had been left standing between our two camps for several days, both sides unsure what it would mean to break them down. I felt it was more than fitting that our talks with the Kullobrini concluded—peaceably or not—where they had started and I rode out that afternoon for the lone tent among the trodden scrub.

I had sent no word to Esmir. I trusted the efficiency of her pickets to keep her informed and her systems of command to help her draw conclusions. I might have to wait a few hours, but the first of the heavier armors had arrived from Abringol and were being distributed among my men. I could do little but get in Gonnaban’s way.

Unfortunately, or again fittingly, our new trebuchets sat beyond Eric’s tent, an earth embankment and trench having been dug to protect the heavy engines—all in full view of Esmir’s seat. From my own seat beneath the tent I could see the Kullobrini dock as another ship unloaded its plundered wood into the hands of our uninvited guests. So long as the loads continued to be short-cut wood I was confident it was firewood for food preparation and heating. Longer timbers would mean the construction of more elaborate defenses, war engines like our trebuchets, or whatever else Kullobrini ingenuity might have brought to our shores.

Perhaps an hour passed before Esmir appeared alone and riding the horse I had given her. She had changed into a simple white smock that contrasted sharply with her black skin, but the single dazzling ring she had worn flashed in my eyes even at the distance of her camp.

Her unflagging good spirit seemed firmly in place, but I was no longer daunted by her implacable nature. Like Eric, I perhaps needed a way through when it came to peace, a means to make a start, and I had that now. I had a reasonable offer to put to them again and again. If the East Guard arrived to find my terms unaccepted I would attack until I left the Kullobrini begging. They had been given a chance and I had proven myself not just capable in blood but willing for peace.

Esmir’s new steed cantered smartly up to the tent and came to a stop. She hopped off merrily.

“You two seem to form quite a pair,” I remarked, rising to greet her.

“Yes—,” Esmir began and then stopped, looking curiously at me.

“Majesty?”

“You—,” she said, studying my face. “There’s something different about you. I don’t know what yet, but there’s something definitely different about you.”

Instinctually, I reached for my face. “Nothing amiss, I—”

“No, no. Quite, hmmm, quite agreeable,” Esmir said.

“Well, then,” I said, a little out of sorts as Esmir continued to beam at my face, “shall we sit?”

As Esmir took her seat, I bent for my saddlebag and produced a bottle of field whiskey that some of the men had cooked up for me on our last campaign.

“I know our talks have been smoothed a good deal by the wines of your land,” I said, pouring us each a splash in small flagons, “but I thought we might try a taste of my life.”

“Why, Kara,” Esmir said, glancing uneasily at the clear liquid, “I believe you’re trying to outdo me.”

“Not a bit of it,” I said and slid her a flagon.

She peeked once more into the cup and then grinned knowingly at me. I just lifted my own flagon in salute and waited until she had raised her own.

In one toss it was over, and the bitter fire that my men were so proud of had done its work to our gullet and insides. To her credit, Esmir winced only a little and then sat fully back in her chair.

“Your men cut the bridge to Brims,” I said, once my voice had shaken free of the fire.

“Yes,” Esmir rasped through her own blazing throat, “and the one north of Kimlott.”

“In case we attempted to deploy directly north of you,” I said, nodding.

Esmir cleared her throat, but gave up, and merely nodded back.

“You have a habit of leaving little room in our hearts for charity, Esmir,” I warned.

“Bridges can be rebuilt, Kara,” Esmir said, her voice fully returned. “I will help you rebuild them.”

“Will you rebuild those ships your fleet seized? Will you release what sailors you captured to keep your arrival secret?” I demanded, hoping to surprise and unseat her at our knowledge.

“You are not speaking to my sons, Kara,” Esmir said simply. “I have no shame for protecting my people. We did seize some ships as we neared your land and we killed those aboard. All of them.”

“I thought so,” I said, leaning back in my chair as I regarded her.

“That’s because you know the cost of what we do,” Esmir said, “and you have paid similar costs. And will do so again.”

“What am I to tell the families of the men you killed?” I asked. “Do I tell them that their murderers are now their neighbors?”

“Kara, do not pretend outrage with me,” Esmir returned quietly. “You will tell them nothing. Kingdoms are built on graves. And your kingdom and mine are no different.” She shifted in her chair. “I would hope that at least that mutual understanding can help us become neighbors.”

“Neighbors share information, Majesty, such as the secrets of your shipwrights and fletchers,” I pressed. “Surely you can see that I need something to present in good faith to my father if you are to stay in his kingdom.”

“Kara, this not a cup of flour you are asking for,” Esmir protested. “You are asking for the genius of centuries to be surrendered in days. What bargaining would that leave us with other nations? We’ve left all our trade goods behind and our first few years here must be spent building shelter and raising food. The arts we possess cannot be given freely to others.”

I gestured emphatically to the earthworks that stretched behind and beyond Esmir. “Nothing you give us is free now. You have already taken your payment from us unasked. We will need more than your word of your good intentions and the pleasure of your people’s company to justify your continued existence in our kingdom.”

“You and I have already tacitly agreed that our militaries shall be joined,” Esmir argued. “Is that not enough?”

“It is, in fact, the bare minimum,” I pointed out, “since our security is now your security. Your offer again manages to cost you nothing while we have suffered affront after affront to dignity and sovereignty. What are you willing to lose to gain the benefits of our friendship and a grant of land?”

Esmir gestured behind her to the tent city, row upon row of brightly colored cloth stretching to the horizon. “Haven’t we lost enough? How much weaker do you want us before you will call us friends?”

I look at her in disgust and threw my hands into the air. “Was this how your nation conducted all its diplomacy? Pity and stories of woe? You cannot be so ignorant of history as not to know that nations rise and fall and pity and compassion play no part in it. Nations are carved up like so much meat among the victors, and the loser’s name passes into memory and the scribblings of lore.”

Esmir turned and looked out among her tents, ten thousand by one scout’s estimate, and she took a long breath of the sea air.

“You do not land on a sovereign’s soil and dictate terms to that sovereign, Esmir,” I said. “It is not done.”

She did not turn to face me. “Do you think my people deserve to pass into history?” she asked.

I watched her as she studied the makeshift metropolis that swallowed miles and miles of Eric’s province.

“I think my father’s kingdom is not an apple cart from which one can simply take what one wants and not expect to pay dearly,” I said. “I have exacted payment before and I will do so again.”

Still studying her camp, Esmir nodded slightly and a soft smile grew on her lips.

I turned, too, trying to see what Esmir saw, but what I saw were tents and men and miles of trench. And none of it made me smile.

“In all of your preparation to land here, you did learn about the rulers here, didn’t you?” I asked. “Gonnaban was right.”

Here she glanced at me and then back to whatever so held her attention.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you had hoped to be parlaying with my father now or Eric, right?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“And what outcome did you fear if I was the voice of the kingdom?” I asked.

Esmir turned fully to me, her serenity recharged by whatever she had dwelt on among the tents. Her smile was broad and warm.

“We mean you no harm, Kara, general of generals, princess who is never home, genius of the field,” she said. “Our two people will grow to become great allies, close friends, a family of nations.”

“It is not enough, Esmir. It will never be enough,” I said, suddenly tired. “You will give for what you have taken or we will take it back. Trust is earned, not forced, not cobbled together in a week.”

“Do you doubt my word?” Esmir asked, perhaps a little pained.

I looked at her a long moment, this ebony queen from nowhere, and while her usual cheery demeanor was not fully in place, I still could not see past her expression.

“No,” I admitted.

“Do you think I have so little control over my people that they pose a threat to you independent of me?” she asked.

Again, I could not pierce her countenance.

“No.”

“Then where is the harm in granting us haven?” she concluded. “What do you lose by giving us sanctuary and asking nothing of us in return?”

I looked beyond her to yet another group of soldiers from both sides gambling on just our side of the trench. Men laughed and pointed at the cards as they fell, slapping one another on the back to emphasize some comic turn of luck. I looked back across the table at Esmir.

“And what do you lose in trusting us,” I asked, “particularly after all you’ve put us through? You are very grand in questioning whether you are trusted, but slow to grant that trust in return.”

“And again I tell you that the smaller force must be the more cautious, Kara,” Esmir said, cheery and light. “Surely that is true even in military matters.”

“Yes,” I said slowly, “but surely you have observed that in the military the trust between two units emanates from trust between leaders. Do you trust me, Esmir? Do you take me at my word?”

Esmir’s buoyancy faltered, a weakness that I could finally read.

“I see,” I said and stood.

She remained seated for a moment and then rose.

“It would seem that your oldest son has done us both an injury,” I said, “though mine the less direct of the two.” I began pulling on my riding gloves. “Here is my word whether you judge it worthy or not: when you pledge your army and navy to the defense of this kingdom and you vouchsafe all of the Kullobrini arts to our scholars, then I will tell my father that you are to be embraced and granted a city and a dukedom on this very ground.” I tightened my belt and adjusted my sword. “But when the East Guard arrives, if I have had no word from you, I shall drive your people back to your ships or hew them down where they stand, though I’ll take no delight in either task.”

Esmir watched me as I rode to the trebuchets and talked to their captain. From the corner of my eye, I could see her looking over our war engines, weighing each cost in her mind.

That night, another Kullobrini ship burned, its fire so close that the men gasped when it rolled into the sea. Esmir’s threat was meaningless now, of course. I had set a much tighter deadline and four or five ships would not matter when the East Guard joined us. We would go to war and the Kullobrini would need less than half their ships.

Through our signals, Pulgatt had been informed of the state of the talks with the Kullobrini and agreed to redeploy to protect our shores from raids that could cut supply lines, though the battle against the Kullobrini should take no more than three days once it began. Some of his ships were so close now that their lanterns could be seen hovering over the waters.

In camp, some soldiers played music until whimsy gave way to laughter and then another tune would pry itself from them and they would start again. Gwey and I sat around a small fire and talked over mulled wine, listening to the musical fragments as they wandered around the corners of the camp.

Gonnaban entered our little ring of firelight carrying a fish some three feet long, a wound in its side.

“A gift from the men, General,” he announced.

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

“It is,” Gwey agreed.

“Broddum, an infantryman, was spear fishing on an outcropping,” Gonnaban said, running the fish through with a long stake. “He said just skewer and cook, so…”

He passed the fish to Gwey and then set up two forked branches to support the skewer over the fire.

“You should join us Gonnaban,” I said. “There’s enough fish here for six.”

Gwey grinned broadly at Gonnaban.

“I’d be honored, ma’am,” Gonnaban said, snatching the fish back from Gwey.

“Gwey, fetch Gonnaban a chair from the tent,” I said.

Gwey glanced at Gonnaban and rose.

Gonnaban placed the skewer across the forks and the seawater dripped into the flames, sizzling and sputtering.

Gwey returned with the chair and made to help Gonnaban seat himself.

The older man slapped Gwey’s hands away and pulled the chair near the fire so he could reach the skewer.

“Are the Kullobrini any closer to seeing sense?” Gonnaban asked.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I left Esmir with an ultimatum, but she’s not one to be pushed.”

“Why fight at all? What have they really done?” Gwey asked.

Gonnaban and I looked in disbelief at Gwey.

“All right, all right!” he said, raising his hands defensively.

The fish had begun to heat and now the sizzling came from more than just seawater.

“It’s a fair trade, any road,” Gonnaban said. “We’ll really be something to be reckoned with if we get our hands on any of that Kullobrini craft.”

“You have two grown sons, don’t you, Gonnaban?” I asked abruptly.

“Aye, ma’am.” he answered, puzzled. “Both farmers in Culling. Both’ve given me grandkids.”

“No wife?” Gwey asked.

“She died some years back,” Gonnaban answered, “though my sons nag me enough for four wives. They’ve been yelling at me to stop this soldiering for some years now.”

“You really should listen,” Gwey said. “You can’t have many more years left.”

Gonnaban glared at Gwey, then turned back to the fish.

“If we had Kullobrini armor, Kullobrini bows, Kullobrini ships,” I said, looking out at the Pulgatt’s lanterns moving on the sea, “we could both retire.”

I glanced at Gonnaban.

Gonnaban looked up from the fish.

“Perhaps one more serious engagement with the Haru, one in which the Kullobrini weapons can be put to use,” I said, holding Gonnaban’s eye, “and maybe they would start to talk to us.”

Gonnaban’s eyes narrowed. “Aye, I suppose that’s a possibility.”

“One more really great battle against their unnumbered masses,” I said to Gonnaban, “and maybe it would be over and the rest would be deciding lines on a map, terms of a peace.”

“Aye,” Gonnaban said softly, “if we can just get Esmir to listen.”

“Aye,” I said and looked into the fire.

Gonnaban turned the fish.

Gwey looked back and forth between Gonnaban and me. “Neither of you think Queen Esmir will take the offer, do you?”

“She’ll fight,” Gonnaban said, standing to stretch.

Gwey faced me.

I nodded. “Since she knew what bridges to cut to slow the East Guard and she now knows that she faces an ultimatum, she might attack at first light to destroy us before the East Guard arrives.”

“What?” Gwey asked, uncomprehending.

“You should go to Abringol after we eat, Gwey,” I said gently.

“She’s right, Gwey,” Gonnaban added.

Gwey eye’s again shifted back and forth between us. “You’re both pulling my leg.”

“No,” I said. “We’ll have to retreat if they attack to consolidate our forces at Abringol or perhaps a few miles north of there. We don’t have the numbers to stop them.”

Gwey flopped back in his chair and stared dumbly into the fire.

Gonnaban made to sit but stopped as a healer approached with a soldier. The healer was an older woman, heavy and doddering with her hair in long braids. Gonnaban met them at the edge of our camp and they spoke in low voices.

When Gonnaban turned back to us, his face brought Gwey and me to our feet.

“Gonnaban?” I asked.

“Ma’am,” he began gravely, “that illness? It wasn’t what we thought.”

“All right, then,” I said. “What is it?”

Gonnaban turned back to the healer, who nodded her head insistently.

“It’s the plague, ma’am.”

The night was gone in a flash of orders and healers and messengers and prayers. To control the spread of the disease, we divided our camp into four quadrants with broad lanes running between them. Once you crossed a lane toward greater infection without permission, you were doomed to remain there. The worst quadrant was my own, the northeast, with more than sixty cases and the first death just as the sun crested the hills.

Riders were sent to Abringol and to the East Guard, the former to request aid and the latter to tell them to stay away. We were at the mercy of both the disease and the Kullobrini now and no number of reinforcements would help until the first was defeated.

A local flower, the ediseil, could ward off infection if worn on the breast and the morning sun found much of the army so adorned. Those unlucky enough not to find the tiny white blossom spent their hours searching the ground for any sign of salvation. With each searcher’s head bent and their shuffling gait, it was as though the camp housed madmen enraptured by their own boots or the sound of the grass.

Throughout the night, we had received reports that the number of Kullobrini guards had declined, a sure sign of troops being consolidated for an attack. We could no longer retreat as it would spread the plague, so I rode out that morning to speak directly with Esmir, both to assess her plans and warn her of the disease. I stopped my horse on the road several hundred yards from the Kullobrini camp and waited, a little fearful that sleep would overtake me after our hard night.

The Kullobrini line was sparser yet and I found myself looking across the scrub that lay between us. The battle would be here and on the land behind, spilling around the hill and dense pockets of woods if the Kullobrini chose to attack. But if they failed to seize the initiative and instead remained obstinately defensive behind their fortifications, we would face a hail of keen Kullobrini arrows biting through our armor, thicker though it may be, and then the trench and embankment.

I let my mind work, let it move the shape of the land, the resources at hand, the strengths of the men about until something would fall into place, something would tell me we could take the day.

A Kullobrini horseman rode out to meet me, but still I worked, staring at the would-be battlefield. He was near now, and though only in my periphery, I knew he was neither Eglanna nor Eldrazz. My eyes narrowed and were drawn east of the Kullobrini camp near slightly thicker woods.

The horseman cleared his throat politely and remained motionless on his horse while my mind focused on that scrub wood to the east of his people. Sharper and sharper now, I could feel it; it was there. And I finally I had it. The Kullobrini could be destroyed. At a fraction of the cost we feared. We did not need the East Guard; we did not need better armor. We needed only time.

“Where is Queen Esmir, soldier?” I asked, my eyes still fixed to the east.

“She regrets that she cannot speak to you at present due to matters of state,” the horseman began.

“Go on,” I said, turning to look into the camp for any sign that they were amassing rank and file.

“She would like to speak with you this afternoon if at all possible,” he said.

“Very well. Give her my thanks and tell her I accept.”

The soldier nodded smartly and rode back toward his people.

I turned back to those woods east of the Kullobrini and again my mind began refining the plan, delighting in each nuance, each deadly detail. As the plan sharpened, I thought of the Killain, a strange secretive people to the east of Kollus’s provinces. More and more, we had received reports that the Killain were withdrawing into their own cities and towns, into their own narrow-windowed homes of gray stone. Their solitude, their isolation had changed them, had become their own companion and altered how they saw the world. It would not be long now, we were warned, before their borders were shut.

Perhaps then I had dwelt too long in the house of war, had seen the world through its narrow windows and now the world seemed strange without a struggle of arms. I was home when I was amid the din of men and the rhythm of the march, comfortable in an environment of force and violence that took more than it gave.

The concealing cloth city of the Kullobrini shielded any sign of their cavalry from me and I swung my horse about. In the distance, I could make out riders from the south carrying Eric’s banner. Healers’ wagons lumbered behind and I spurred my horse toward them.

I was surprised to see Eric among the riders and he smiled when he saw me and moved to meet me on the road. As I neared, I could see that Eric’s usually well-trimmed beard was untidy and frazzled.

“War and pestilence, General,” Eric said. “You do nothing in a small way.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

Eric laughed to himself and shook his head. “I’ll not let this illness beat me—it’s almost emptied my northern lands, though I am sick of fighting this plague, sister. This will make four years in the fight. We’ve even burned whole villages hoping to end it.”

“Eric, you can’t stay here,” I warned. “The Kullobrini have been pulling troops from their sentries. They might be readying an attack.”

“Your message said nothing—”

“It began long after my message was sent. You should leave, Eric.”

Eric looked about the camp, the men wearing flowers, the healers moving from tent to tent. “No, I’ll stay. If this beast gets any further among the men, we’ll never contain it. You’ll be left with nothing to fight with, no matter what the Kullobrini decide.”

I looked at him for a long moment and finally nodded. “If that’s what you think is best, then of course.”

“With your permission then, I’ll take charge of the sick and the healers,” Eric suggested. “Of all the battles before us, this one at least I have more experience in than you.”

A soldier’s wracking cough cut through the air, and Eric’s horse jumped at the sound.

Again, I nodded.

“Don’t worry, sister. We’ll beat them both,” he said and turned back to his men as they unloaded poultices and hanging bundles of herbs.

By noon, Eric had transformed the camp. Each quadrant now had two great cauldrons of boiling water going at all times for broths and herbal mixtures. The tents of the sick were treated, as well as their blankets. Even the sanctifying charms of the Indinni people who lived in the mountains to the north were hung around the necks of the sick.

My quadrant remained the worst hit with eighty-four cases and three deaths, but it had spread to the southeast quadrant as well, though only twelve cases. The other quadrants remained mercifully clear, but we knew that could change at any time.

The Kullobrini kept to themselves, at least, leaving us only a single battle to fight. Their ships continued to bring firewood and fish regularly, but one shipment was different: assorted plants, the purpose of which we could not determine.

“Tired of fish?” Gonnaban had wondered. “Seasonings?”

“They’re a methodical people, Gonnaban, as you have pointed out,” I said. “They would already know what spice herbs and edible plants are available locally and have been gathering them from the start. It is not for their dinner table.”

“Poison then?” Gonnaban asked. “Readying for that attack we’re fearing? I’m afraid I don’t know much about the poisonous plants in these parts.”

“Neither do I,” I said, watching the bound clumps of vegetation as they were carried off the ship.

“That’s all we need,” grumped Gonnaban, “poisoned Kullobrini arrows fired out of those hellish bows…”

“Don’t wish more trouble on us, Master-at-Arms,” I warned.

Perhaps an hour later, one of our cavalrymen returned with news of the ongoing search for the Kullobrini spies and saboteurs. Four Kullobrini men, their armor and weapons bundled on the back of the horse, walked before my mounted soldier. Coming from the eastern road to Kimlott, my horseman passed by the Kullobrini camp before reaching our lookouts. Due to the plague, the lookouts stopped our cavalryman well before our camp and sent word to me.

I met the cavalryman and his prisoners beyond the lookout hill and kept a wide distance between us. I glanced over the captives and then at my rider. “Report.”

“We surprised a camp of ten men several miles east of Kimlott, General,” the cavalryman began. “We killed two and took these four. They had made good maps of the area, too.”

I looked into the eyes of the captives, but they did not look away. They were proud, accomplished, honorable. The only hesitation, I knew, came from the fact that they had failed.

“Remain here,” I ordered.

I walked nearer to camp and called for my horse and in a few minutes I was mounted and returning to the five men beyond the lookout.

“Give them back their weapons and equipment,” I said, holding each prisoner’s gaze.

A little incredulous, the cavalryman was slow to obey, but soon the bundle of armor and weapons fell to the ground.

“You’ve heard we have sickness in camp,” I said to my rider. “Return to your unit. You’ve done well.”

The rider nodded and turned away, looking behind him before spurring his horse into a canter.

I looked back to the Kullobrini captives.

“I know you can understand me,” I said. “You were selected for your mission because you have been taught our language. Reclaim your goods. Re-equip yourselves as you are accustomed. I am returning you to your people, but you are to tell Queen Esmir that General Kara Asgrand cannot wait for our scheduled meeting. I must speak with her immediately.”

The men stared dumbly up at me, unsure how much or how long to feign ignorance or whether this was some trick the pale foreigners had put on in range of their inadequate archers. Only my unyielding stare finally drove them to begin sifting through the gear, pushing a helmet to a comrade, or taking up a breastplate.

Beyond us, a few of my men still moved in the space between the two camps searching for the tiny white flower that could protect against the deadly sickness visiting us. One would stop and lift some tangle of brush and then let it drop disgusted. Another finally fell to his knees and combed through the low bramble and brush with his fingers like a child searching a rug, stroke after stroke, tender and desperate.

That afternoon I was left waiting at the tent between the two forces for hours with neither sign nor word from Esmir. As the sun just touched the sea, Gonnaban finally ended my waiting—and did so with over a hundred cavalry behind him.

“Are you anticipating an attack, Master-at-Arms?” I asked him as he and his horde rode up.

“Aren’t you, ma’am?” Gonnaban asked. “We’ve been fearing this for a while and now she’s leaving you high and dry and exposed out here.”

“If you took this long to organize an attack with trained men, Gonnaban, I’d have you flogged,” I said. “No, they’re too well trained and too well organized to need more than half a day to set upon us. Something else is afoot.”

“Well, your safety is still a priority,” Gonnaban responded. “Will you return with us?”

I looked out to the Kullobrini tents and strained my ears to hear what there was to hear. The sounds of the sea, the whicker of our own horses, a snatch of conversation perhaps, but nothing else. The sense of secrecy those tents represented had never really waned and here was another oddity for us to worry over.

“There are no children,” I said.

“Among the Kullobrini?” Gonnaban asked turning to follow my gaze.

“Sounds of them, I mean. Sounds of them playing, laughing.”

“Maybe—,” Gonnaban began.

“Maybe they forgot to laugh today? Maybe they forgot to run screaming and delighted through the tents?” I asked. “Esmir’s missed our appointment and the children are silent.”

Gonnaban shook violently and he hugged himself to ease his chill. “By the Nine Fathers, you don’t have to say it like that.” He rubbed his arms. “Something’ll turn up. We’ll figure it out.”

I kept my eyes on the tents as I walked to my horse. The beast lowered its head and nuzzled my hair. Unthinkingly, I cupped its face and stroked it.

“Are you worried that she’s not attacking?” Gonnaban asked as I swung onto my horse. “We’ve been awful short of luck this week past.”

“I’m—,” I began, but stopped. “I would have attacked. I would have swung my cavalry to the east and slammed my infantry into us from the north. I would have destroyed us to the man. The East Guard would have found bones and fat crows,” I said. “I’m worried that something stopped her and we can’t see what.”

We sat upon our horses, the sun setting upon the sea, the light splashing against the western cloth of the tents, a handful of sentries standing guard on a hollow trench.

“Take us back to camp, Gonnaban,” I said, “smartly.”

Gonnaban turned and led us into a trot. Then, he leaned down to his old mare and whispered, “Give her fire, girl. Give her what the wind knows.”

His mare whinnied in answer and we galloped away from the eerie silence of the tent city.