Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [105]
“Now that’s a splendid thought,” Cadmar said. “How long will it take to find him, though? I know that you people wander with your herds all summer long.”
“That’s true, Your Grace, but in the fall we all move south, and there’s one particular winter camp where Calonderiel always goes, and he always heads down that way early, so people will know where to find him if they have some dispute or suchlike for him to settle. It’ll take some weeks, truly, but the task’s not impossible. And then, once they find him, the company will have to ride here. It’d be two full turnings of the moon, all in all, before they could arrive.”
Cadmar glanced at Jill. She could see he was worried, caught between courtesy and grim realities.
“Well, Dar, the problem’s going to be feeding them,” Jill spoke to spare the gwerbret’s sense of gratitude. “That’s why his grace sent Gwinardd back to his own lands, and why he hasn’t called in all his other alliances yet. Arcodd’s not a very rich place, you know. The hay for all those horses alone would be hard to come by, to say naught of the room to stable them.”
“Oh, of course.” Dar did understand, fortunately, rather than being insulted. “I’d forgotten that. Well, Your Grace, what shall we do, then? Wait till we know the army’s on its way, and then send out the messengers?”
“That would be best, Your Highness.” Cadmar sounded relieved. “We could stand a siege better than we could provision so many men for month after month. I’m sure Jill will be able to give us a few days’ warning, eh?”
“I hope so, Your Grace,” Jill said. “I’m trying my best to scout them out.”
“Let’s just hope that they hold off till the first harvest’s in, and the dun fully provisioned,” Cadmar went on. “It’s likely. They’ll want to see their own winter wheat brought in, no doubt. The bards like to sing about armies living off the country and all that, but hah! it’s a risky business. Never know what you’ll find, or how much, and foraging takes forever, when you need to make a fast march. Besides”— and here he paused for a grin—“if they’re coming from the north and west, it’s cursed few farms they’ll find along their line of march, and some wretchedly sparse provisioning. The only supplies out that way are the fat on the bears,”
Everyone dutifully laughed at the jest, but Carra and Labanna exchanged glances full of anxiety. Even though Jill agreed with the gwerbret’s line of reasoning, she intended to keep up her nightly scrying. Thinking of the scrying did, however, remind her of another grim reality.
“Dar, I do have one rather nasty thought. When our enemies arrive, they’ll have dweomerworkers with them— at least one, maybe more. I’d just as soon they didn’t know your men were on their way. Why don’t you send messengers now to find Calonderiel, tell him the situation, and ask him to gather his company and keep them ready? We can send other men when I see the army approaching, for the final warning, like, but this way the banadar will know our situation.”
“Good thinking,” Dar said. “And he’ll know to march anyway if he never hears any more news. What shall we tell him? We have a festival, Delanimapaladar, to mark the day when the light and the dark are an equal length. What about then?”
“Sounds a good choice;” Cadmar smiled all round. “Jill, you’ve got a good head for war, I must say.”
“I’ve seen more than a few, Your Grace. Too many, truly, far, far too many, all in all.”
“So have I.” Cadmar looked away, suddenly troubled. “Huh. All this waiting’s bad for a man, gets on his nerves. Which reminds me. I wonder why Lord Tren hasn’t sent me a message about that letter I sent him? Sure enough, the priests down at the temple are putting in a claim for his brother’s lands. I sent another man off to Tren with that news just yesterday, so maybe it’ll jog him into some action.”
Everyone nodded, looking back and forth at one another. In her worry over Alshandra, Jill had almost forgotten that there was more than one