“How—” he began, and it was the gasp of a drowning man. “How far are they? How many?”
“I’d say between two and four days out,” Darya said, after some quick and uncertain calculation and a glance at Amris. “No real idea how many. Sorry. But we ran across a few of their scouts on our trip back, and it seems like the monster I was hunting was a part of the army.”
Briefly, she described the collar on the cockatrice, then the party of twistedmen and frog-mouthed creatures, and mentioned she and Amris had destroyed the bridge. “That might have done some good. There’s a lot I don’t know. Too much.”
“Thyran was ever a creature of dark impulse,” said Amris, “but he’d never move against us without a fair-sized force.”
Hope crept back into Hallis’s face. “Maybe he’s not doing so. The scouting party could’ve only been his creatures making surewe’reno threat tothem.”
Darya shook her head, though she hated to do it. “They already know that. You have raids here every, what, two, three years? And I was the first person to get as far north as Klaishil since the storms.”
“Besides,” Amris said, “forbearance was never in Thyran’s nature. Neither would he have learned patience in our time outside of time, for it was as if we slept.” He sighed. “No, he’ll be angrier, if anything, and with more of a mind for vengeance. And if one of his underlings woke him, as I believe to be the case… Well, that suggests they wished for his leadership again and have the strength to back him.”
“It could’ve been a lone fanatic,” said Hallis, and shook his own head slowly. “But we can’t count on that. All right. He’ll attack here, then. There’s no other route.” He glanced at the map on the wall, which showed the hourglass-center where Oakford stood between the northern forest and the lands of civilization, with high mountains to the east and the sea on the west. “Not unless he has an army of winged beasts, and then why send out horses? No, he’ll strike us.”
Slowly, showing every year of his age for the first time Darya had seen, Hallis rose from his chair and crossed the room to kneel before a dark chest, which he opened with a silver key that had been hanging around his neck, under his shirt. Darya heard quiet clicks and thumps as Hallis lifted and replaced hard objects, the whisper of cloth, and the fluid ringing of metal.
He came back to the desk with a small box, this one silver and ivory. Inside, nested in green velvet, were three robin-sized birds, each carved from light-blue stone swirled and flecked with white.
To Darya’s surprise, the sight of them made Amris smile—and despite more than a trace of wistfulness about it, despite the circumstances, seeingthatmade her want to smile back.
* * *
The messengers were yet in use. More than that, they were much as Amris remembered them, if obviously rarer from the care with which Captain Hallis had stored his. For Amris himself, they’d been pretty commonplace, first flying to and from his commander’s tent and then, as his career had progressed, bearing messages to him. Some had been nuisance requests for information, or demands for the impossible; others had informed him of reinforcements or alerted him to a change in situation; a few, toward the end, had taken messages to and from his friends.
He and Gerant had sent one back and forth every few nights.
Less pain accompanied that memory than Amris would have expected. He wasn’t certain whether that made him resilient, callous, or just numb from weariness. Nor did he have time to consider the question, for Hallis moved quickly, opening the shutters and then taking the first of the birds in his cupped hands.
“Captain Hallis greets you and requests aid,” he said, carefully pronouncing every word. “Reliable witnesses report return of Thyran and approach of Twisted army to Oakford. All available reinforcements needed.”
Hallis spoke a few more words, even more careful with those than with the message. The bird lit from within, so that the aventurine of its body became transparent and it cast blue-white shapes on the wall behind it. Spreading stone wings, it launched itself from Hallis’s hands into the clear night sky beyond the window.
The next two birds carried the same message and followed the same process. When the third had flown off, Hallis closed the shutters and sat back down, dropping his weight into the chair somewhat more heavily than he’d done before.
“If I might ask,” said Amris, “where do they go?”
“Affiran, which is where we’re likely to get aid from if any comes in time, though they’ll be half a week at best.” Amris nodded, recognizing the capital city of Criwath and glad to hear that it still was a potential source of reinforcements. Hallis went on. “Silane, which will try, but they’re farther away. And Heliodar, which… I’ll not even dream it.”
“Do they care so little?”
“Yes,” said Darya.
Hallis made an equivocating gesture with one hand. “They’re unlikely to believe any story like ours without ten or so witnesses in person, and the ruling families won’t want to risk their soldiers for a possibility.”
“That’s why you get the command post,” said Darya, shaking her head. “You can be a diplomat without spitting afterward.”
Amris suppressed the urge to chuckle. “What are—” He paused. “Forgive me. I’ve no rank here, and no right to question your plans.”
“Plans.” Hallis barked laughter. “The plans that come to mind are drinking ourselves into a stupor, slitting our own throats, and setting the place afire, or first one and then the other. You can’t know how—” He shook his head. “But we must make a stand, and if we’re to do so, I’ll want your thoughts above all, General. You’ve fought him and lived.”
* * *
“He is mortal,” Amris pointed out gently, and then had to amend his own statement. “At least, he’s no god. He can’t see save through his own eyes, his attacks take time and strength, and hecandie.”
“Can he?” It was a serious question Hallis asked—no childish seeking of reassurance, but a military man’s need to know about his enemy.
Still, his fear was real and obvious, and Darya didn’t blame him at all. She’d grown up as a Sentinel-in-training, knowing about timelines and battles. She’d been able on some level to see Thyran as a petty, spiteful man, no different from the tavern wench throwing plates at the head of a faithless lover or the child breaking his toys rather than sharing them. Still she was terrified.
