As the column took a brief pause along a stream to water the horses, the first trouble broke out. Sasha ran along the forested streamside, dodging about horses and men as they pressed for space between the trees and waterside rushes, several of her vanguard in pursuit. Ahead, she could hear angry yells and threats, at alarming volume, and men along the stream craned their heads to look.
Sasha pushed her way past the last few horses and found two distinct groups of men in confrontation, each gathered behind their respective leaders. Both groups were Goeren-yai, but one was Falcon Guard soldiers and the other was villagers. Each was shouting in a tongue other than Lenay, yet familiar. Blades were not yet drawn, but hands were threatening on the hilts of swords.
Sasha stepped between the loudest, expecting them to stop. The men kept yelling, leaning around the new, inconvenient obstacle, jabbing sharp, accusing fingers. “Shut up!” she yelled at them. The men simply shouted louder, ignoring her. Sasha drew her blade and whistled the edge past one man's nose, then another, sending them stumbling backward. The men of her vanguard half-drew their blades in case of retaliation, but none came, and the shouting paused.
“What's this about?” Sasha demanded into that brief silence. Men on both sides stared at her, and at each other, fuming. “Speak, or I'll banish you from this column and give your damn horses to someone who can ride without fighting his brothers! What's this about?”
She stared hard at a Falcon Guard corporal who seemed prominent in the argument. “I'm Jysu, M'Lady,” the man said, as if that explained everything. “My friends here are Jysu.” Gesturing to his fellow guardsmen. “We ride together in the guard. These men are Karyd.” Pointing at the villagers.
Sasha blinked at him, waiting for the rest of the explanation. Nothing more came. “And?” she demanded. “So what?”
“The clans of Jysu and Karyd have blood-feud!” a villager announced angrily. He was an older man, at least sixty, with wild white hair about his otherwise bald head, yet he had strength. The expression beneath his spirit mask was ferocious. “Just two years ago two brothers from the Jysu headman's family killed a Karyd boy in a manner without honour! We came just now to join the great battle to save the Udalyn, but men of Karyd shall not ride with murderers!”
“The boy declared immediate challenge!” a guardsman retorted. “Our lad was within his rights!”
“And what about the murder of Yuan Arsyn's brother just a year before?” another soldier shouted. A yell came back in the other tongue, and then the shouting and yelling resumed, as loud as before.
They were in eastern Tyree now, Sasha realised, with exasperation. Tyree had clans that united some villages together and thrust others apart. Another of the manifold confusions that were the Goeren-yai, and baffled so many foreigners.
A yell cut them short. Sasha turned and found Jaryd limping to the fore. Beside the obvious pain on his face, his eyes were cold and distant. Only anger gave them animation now, a deadly light that was chilling to behold. Men quietened, watching him. Jaryd stopped between the old villager and his Falcon Guard corporal, and said something, darkly, in another tongue. Everyone watched. There was no reply. Jaryd repeated it.
The corporal replied, shortly, with deference. Jaryd turned his stare on the villager. The villager snarled something in return and Sasha caught the words “qualy kayat,” meaning “many gods” in central tongues. Verenthanes. And not, by the villager's tone of voice, pleasantly meant.
Jaryd hit him, a right fist to the face. The man stumbled and fell, and his comrades drew their blades with a rush of steel. The Falcon Guards did the same. Everyone did, save Jaryd. Jaryd stared at the nearest man's blade and walked straight at him, unarmed, and only one-handed. Walked until the tip of that man's blade pressed directly at his throat. His eyes dared him to thrust. The villager backed away.
Jaryd turned on the other men and advanced, daring them also to kill the unarmed cripple. Those men also refrained. The elder villager watched, now seated on the ground, wiping the blood from his lip. His eyes, however, held a new respect.
Jaryd crouched before the man and repeated his question, quietly. The villager answered, warily. Jaryd drew a dagger from his belt and held the point to his own cheek. He drew the point down, cutting slowly, his expression never changing, his eyes never leaving the elder man's. Blood trickled. Jaryd sheathed the blade and wiped some blood on his fingers. Tasted it. Then wiped some more and held that hand for the villager.
The villager wiped some of Jaryd's blood onto his own fingers, and also tasted it. Sasha watched with heart-thumping amazement. She had not suspected Jaryd would know the ways of the ancient blood bond. Some old Goeren-yai traditions survived amongst Verenthanes in some parts of Lenayin, perhaps this was one such, in Tyree.
Jaryd stood and repeated the bloody tasting with the Falcon Guard corporal. Then he tasted a little more himself and spat upon the ground between the two sides. With a final, cold glare at them both, he limped off. The shouting did not resume. Neither did the two sides cross to embrace each other. Instead, they hung their heads and seemed reluctant to speak or act. The awkward silence lingered for a moment. Then, very quietly, the two sides began to disperse.
“What just happened?” Sasha asked Teriyan as the men on all sides retreated to their horses and prepared for the road ahead.
“When blood speaks, do you listen?” said Teriyan, watching Jaryd's slow departure through narrow, thoughtful eyes.
“Huh?”
Teriyan shook his head. “It's an old phrase…less common in Valhanan, probably why you haven't heard it. That's what Jaryd said. ‘When blood speaks, do you listen?’
“I don't understand.” It pained her to say it. She'd thought she understood the Goeren-yai so well.
“Clan conflicts are driven by blood,” Teriyan explained. “Blood between the warriors and the victims, and blood between the victims and their killers. One creates bonds, the other needs revenge. These men were fighting over someone else's kin, killed years ago. Jaryd lost his little brother, just yesterday. His claim to blood is superior. He shamed them. To continue their lesser squabble would dishonour Tarryn's spirit and bring bad luck upon them all.”
“I wonder how he knew that saying?” Sasha wondered aloud. “Have you heard of Verenthanes saying it?”
Teriyan shook his head, with the intense thoughtfulness he always wore on matters of importance to Goeren-yai. “No,” he said. “Not that I know. It's a puzzle.”
More villagers arrived once the column recommenced, offering food, good wishes, seven more warriors and the assurance that neither they nor their neighbouring woodsmen had seen any northern forces passing near. There were many narrow horsetrails, however, that a smaller force could utilise if it wished. Sasha herself began to wish they could move onto a smaller trail themselves, where their passage would not be so obvious. But most such trails became churned after the fiftieth horse had passed over, to say nothing of the two thousand, five hundred and fiftieth (as one corporal had ridden up to inform her they had now become, much to her astonishment). And if it began raining, many of the routes up steep inclines would turn to impassable mudslides by midcolumn…No. One kept to the roads with a large force, Kessligh had always told her. And one went cross-country through Lenay forests only at the direst necessity, and only then for short distances.
Nearing evening, as they rode a flatter, rolling stretch of land, there came cries and yells from back in the column. Horses wheeled as weapons came out, Sasha holding Peg steady with difficulty with her own blade in hand, staring back over the confused, milling column behind. The vanguard closed about in tight, protective formation. Sasha could see soldiers spurring their mounts to leave the road, seeking paths to doubleback through the trees and bypass the chaotic blockage of jammed horses. Above the crashing hooves, shouting men and whinnying animals, she could hear the distant yells and clashing steel of battle. But it was too far back amidst the trees for her to see.
“Best you stay put, M'Lady,” Tyrun advised, reading her expression all too easily. “By the time you get there it'll be gone, and the longer you're away from the head of the column, the longer it'll take to reform behind you once more. Command means relying on others to be your eyes. You can't see everything yourself.”
And so Sasha sat where she was, listening to the battle, watching what she could see of men manoeuvring across the road whilst those nearest maintained their protective circle. Tyrun merely sat, grimly twitching his moustache. Sofy looked pale and wide-eyed with the children alongside…and Jaryd, Sasha saw thankfully, stood his horse nearby, ready to grab the rein should some panic strike. Of Teriyan, or Andreyis, she saw no sign.
The battle sounds faded as quickly as they had begun and soon a longhaired Falcon Guard corporal came thundering up the road at speed, several men at his rear. “Captain, M'Lady!” he announced as he reined to a halt. “Perhaps twenty horse, Ranash men, we think. They flee, and there is some pursuit, but we must not be delayed. We have four dead, three wounded…of theirs, I am ashamed to report two and one. We are dishonoured.”
“It was always going to be thus,” Tyrun said bluntly. “They have the advantage in such attacks and numbers count for nothing. Have the wounded head for the last village if they can, with a minimal escort. Have them try to keep off the road, if they can find a trail…the northerners wish to delay us, they cannot waste time on stragglers.”
The corporal nodded. “I feel the wounded shall reject the escort, sir. They do not wish to drain our force of strength before the valley.”
“As they will.”
“And the wounded Ranash prisoner?” asked the corporal.
“If he cooperates, treat him with honour and send him with our wounded. If he does not, kill him.”
“Aye, Captain.” The corporal saluted, wheeled about and galloped back the way he'd come.
Sofy stared at the captain, with wide-eyed astonishment. “It is dishonourable for a wartime captive not to cooperate,” Jaryd answered her unasked question, flatly. “Should he not cooperate, he forgoes honour, and thus deserves none from us.”
Sofy bit her lip and said nothing. Sasha knew exactly what her sister would think of such logic, yet admired her for holding her tongue. Despite the pale face, in fact, she had handled the whole situation far better than Sasha would have expected.
“If I were in their position,” Sasha said to Tyrun, “I'd try again, perhaps just after we've reformed. Keep us offbalance and slow.”
“Aye,” Tyrun agreed, surveying the surrounding forest. “But they may not have a choice. They rode hard to make that position and now the terrain works against them—they have to ride twice as hard to make a new position, while we travel in a much straighter line.”
“Even so,” Sasha replied, “if that was just twenty…and we might have three hundred immediately chasing? We could guess that there are many groups of ambushers. They've broken us up, chased us off the road…if we suffer six or seven of these a day, it will delay us considerably. And they can afford to exhaust their horses—their goals are near term, simply to buy time for the Hadryn in the valley. We have to retain enough strength to fight once we get there.”
“Aye,” Tyrun agreed once more, sombrely. “We shall have a three-quarter moon tonight at least, which we did not see last night since we began so late. I'd recommend we use some of it before making camp.”
“We'd best make it a short camp,” Sasha agreed, biting her lip.
Tyrun shrugged. “As you say, M'Lady, we're no good to the Udalyn if we arrive staggering like the walking dead. Horses especially. We'll ride for several spans of the moon, then camp until dawn. Horses are less resilient than men—if strained greatly, they can break.”