Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [159]
The two fronts where they made no progress at all were the signal sticks and magically representing a battle. Garoth Ursuul had been able to see a battlefield and communicate instantly with his generals or men across his kingdom. In war, signal banners could be missed or captured or out of the line of sight. Trumpets’ calls could be lost in the cacophony, and with either of those, the messages passed were both necessarily simple—withdraw, advance, come now—and public. Developing signal sticks would mean giving commanders the ability to hear scouts report from behind enemy lines, rather than hoping that they could cross back over and report hours or days later. It would mean ordering cavalry to reinforce a wavering line and having them move instantly, rather than minutes later. It would mean a general could split his armies and still coordinate their movements, or change their strategy as the situation changed, rather than being committed to meet on a specified day at a certain area and hope nothing kept the other half of your army from getting there.
The failure put Vi in an evil mood, which wasn’t helped when Sister Ariel laughed at her. “Vi,” she said, joining her on the field, “don’t you see what you’ve accomplished?”
Vi grunted. “I’ve made war easier.”
“Well, yes, you have, but you’ve done something more remarkable. Remarkable for any maja, but perhaps doubly so for you.”
“What’s that?” Vi asked, suspicious of any praise from Sister Ariel.
“You’re teaching these women to wage war without trying to be men. The simple fact is, most women aren’t really good at throwing fire or calling down lightning. If you’d insisted on these women becoming war magae as the Chantry thought of war magae, they’d have made little progress before spring. Instead, you’ve let them be who they are.”
“It’s common sense.”
“By the Seraph’s tits, Vi, a magus’s fireball isn’t any good if he can’t cross a bog to get to the battle; his lightning bolt can’t hurt anyone if he starves. We were right about you. It might be common sense, but the weaves you’ve encouraged these women to develop would never have been encouraged by anyone else. You want to know why? Because we all have blind spots, Vi, even you. The good thing is that yours are different from ours. Your commonsense answer violates one of our institutional creeds in place since the Third Alitaeran Accord, which is that the Sisterhood is complete. By abandoning certain areas of study, many would say you imply that men are better at those types of magic. That statement would be enough to paralyze most Sisters from doing the work you’re doing. Even if they agreed it was true, they would spend a lot of energy trying to conceal the fact that they weren’t studying fire and lightning and earthquakes.”
“I’m not making any statements,” Vi said. “I bet I can throw a better fireball than most magi, and I haven’t even worked on it. I’m just trying to save our asses.”
“Oh, just because a crisis threatens to wipe us out, you think we should stop infighting?”
Vi scrunched her eyebrows together. “Is that a real question?”
Sister Ariel laughed. “How are things, ahem, on the conjugal front?”
“What?” Right when Vi thought Sister Ariel was being kind, the woman had to pull out her big words to make Vi feel stupid.
“How are things with your husband?” Sister Ariel asked, after making sure no one was close enough to overhear.
At even the mention of him, Vi felt Kylar, only fifty paces away, training in the basement of their manse with Durzo. He seemed happy despite his many bruises. Vi Healed them secretly from time to time when Kylar was asleep in the mornings.
The last month had been awkward, but not nearly as bad as Vi had feared. Vi had expected to feel malice leaking through the bond at all times, and if Kylar had hated her, there was no way she could be anything but miserable. Mostly, though, he didn’t think about her.