Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [146]
He woke before his Squires; the rangers at the relay station had more food ready, and he drank and ate before they were off again. Kieri thought about the taig, and what the Kuakgan had done the night of the battle. He had “roused the taig,” Paks said, and the Pargunese had been afraid to enter the trees.
Could he do something like that along the river and inland? Make the forest impassable so the Pargunese could not reach it to burn it? Or did they have engines of war able to throw stones—or fire—the distance across the river? They traded all the way to Aarenis—he had not realized that—and so their captains would have seen such engines.
Back in Chaya, he collected his Council at once, adding several of the elves not usually part of it. He outlined the situation.
“They think you sent her to a brothel? Falk’s Hall?”
“He has no conception of a woman choosing to be a soldier, and being one, other than coercion and rape,” Kieri said. “He knows I’ve commanded units with men and women both, which in their terms means the women are being exploited by the men.”
“That’s—obscene.”
“I agree. But he sees our behavior as obscene.”
“But—he sent the girl to you—”
“To kill me. That poisoned knife she gave me, you recall? It was meant for me, on our wedding night.”
“Gods! How can those people live?”
“I don’t know,” Kieri said. “But we must be ready to listen and try to understand if we do not want fires in our land. I’m sending to Halveric to come as soon as he can, house or no. I need whatever trained troops all of you have, as well. Untrained won’t do: the Pargunese army is not a bunch of farm lads with sticks.” He looked at the elves. “You must also help, if it comes to that. He has sworn to burn the forest to the mountains; I do not know enough yet about the taig to prevent it, without your aid.”
“The Lady could convince him,” one of the elves said.
Kieri shook his head. “I don’t think so. His ideas are so fixed—he would believe it was all magery and not listen to her reasons.”
“And you think he will listen to yours?” the elf asked.
“He may not,” Kieri said. “I will do what I can to persuade him … I don’t intend to let him kill me … and I do not know if he will return home if he doesn’t.”
“It seems incredible that he would come alone, in disguise.”
“Yes. I don’t know why he did that, either. Everything they’ve done—sending the old lady, sending Elis without warning, his appearance—makes no sense to me. Yet he is not a stupid man, or insane; we were enemies across a border, and everything he ordered there made sense, inconvenient as it often was.”
“He’s had an illness? He’s had an injury?”
“Not that I could tell. It must be, as with this thing about women soldiers, that he thinks very differently … and he thinks we have the same ideas, just different values.”
It did not escape Kieri’s notice that he felt much more competent preparing for an invasion than he had in planning for peace. He set in order the movement of supplies, of reinforcements, pored over the maps … realizing that for the first time in his life he must trust distant field commanders rather than take the field himself.
Regular couriers brought word of the Pargunese king’s progress toward Chaya. Orlith and other elves wanted more time to teach him more about the taig; he could spare very little. What he wanted was someone who could teach him more about the Pargunese, but Orlith knew little more than he’d said before.
“We left those eastern shores long ago,” he said.
“To come here?”
“No. To Aare, most of those who had been east of the water. We did not like it. Too far from our people here in the west, and too full of rockfolk. Mountains come close to the sea there, north and south both, and they were not pleased if