Law of the Broken Earth(112)

Mienthe nodded uncertainly.

“You must know him now better than I do.”

Mienthe opened her mouth and shut it again. She said at last, “He’s a great deal like you, I think. Only not so hot-hearted. He loves you and Casmantium, but…”

“But he has learned to love Feierabiand and the Safiad as well,” the Arobern said heavily. “Yes. That is what the Safiad meant to teach him, and better that than…” His voice trailed off. “It is true that I have gathered a small army here. It is also true that I have thought of taking this army of mine through the pass. I would be glad to keep any war on the west side of the mountains, away from my own country. But…”

“You are a king,” Lord Beguchren said quietly. “You will do what you must.”





CHAPTER 13





An hour before dusk, the Arobern and all his people came out of the western mouth of the pass and found themselves slowly descending the lower slopes of the foothills and approaching the soft new green of the spring pastures spread out below.

Beguchren found the long rolling view of Feierabiand’s gentle countryside… troubling. He knew those foothills and pastures, for this was the identical view that had greeted that other Casmantian army six years ago, when the Arobern had come for the first time into Feierabiand. Then, his ambition had been conquest. He had intended to use the griffins as unwilling, ignorant weapons against Feierabiand. The cold mages of Casmantium… Beguchren and all his brethren… had hardly cared whether the king’s plan succeeded. They had intended the ultimate destruction of all the griffins.

If the Arobern had not been so ambitious… if the cold mages of Casmantium had not encouraged him in his ambition… then, very likely, the griffins would have kept, within reason, to their desert isolation. The slow battle between fire and earth would have continued as it had from the beginning of the age: inconclusive and wearying, but never ruinous.

Casmantium would still have its cold mages. Beguchren would not have been required to consign each of his long companions to the cold earth. The Great Wall would have been neither built nor broken.

Beguchren himself would still have his mage-sense and his power.

This was not a new thought. Only the regret and grief had become suddenly more piercing in the face of the green Feierabianden spring, with its soft breeze and gentle warmth.

Beguchren looked for signs of the stark desert the griffins had made here among the gentle hills and farms of Feierabiand. Looking down from this height, those signs were not obvious even to his experienced eye. But below and over to the south, the grasses were different: longer and harsher and strangely wiry. And there was a faint reddish cast to the land underlying those grasses. There were no trees in that area, except someone had apparently planted some young oaks and elms; the saplings stood in rows much too neat for trees that had sprouted naturally. Farther away, almost at the edges of visibility, stood a twisted, jagged tower of stone. The sunlight caught on it oddly, with a bloodred glimmer that turned its sharp edges almost translucent. Beguchren bowed his head, fixing his gaze instead on the mane of his horse, on his own fingers gripping the reins.

“My friend,” said the Arobern, and Beguchren drew a hard breath and looked up again.

The king had drawn up his horse, so that Beguchren had come up beside him. Their eyes met in a perfect understanding of shared guilt and regret. But neither of them would speak of the past, the Arobern because he was determinedly focused on the present and Beguchren because he was far too intensely private a man.

Leaning on his pommel, the Arobern gestured down the slope, west and a little south. “The ford is there, with its good bridge. The bridge is still there, I think. It was repaired when the rebuilding of the town began.”

Beguchren nodded. Of course the king would know for certain about the bridge—he would have had reports from his agents about every bridge and ford that would allow men to cross all the rivers in Feierabiand.

“So,” the Arobern said gravely. Lady Mienthe, her legist companion at her heel, had come up on the king’s other side and was looking at him questioningly; he turned toward her and went on, “We will assume the Wall yet holds. Perhaps it does.” It had been seven days since the griffin mage had brought his warning to Lord Bertaud. Perhaps the Wall held, and if it did not, still there was little they could do other than ride for the Delta and try an unexpected sideways blow against the griffins.

“We will cross the Nejeied,” continued the Arobern. “We will go across the country, straight toward Tiefenauer, at least until we are closer.” He had been practicing, as he managed the difficult Feierabianden names with only a little clumsiness.