on the leading edge of the refugee line had even begun, Yatol Mado Wadon understood the implications.
De Hamman's province had been overrun by the combined forces of Bardoh and Peridan. Now there remained nothing between that joined army and the walls of Jacintha.
The refugees poured in all through the day and night, in a line that showed no signs of ending. Finally, Yatol Wadon ordered the gates closed.
But still they came, wandering to Jacintha because they had nowhere else in all the world to go. Thousands milled about the brown fields beyond the city and the shanties beyond Jacintha's strong walls. They were desperate people with little to eat and drink, and with no hope left in their dull eyes.
On the second night after the grim procession began, scouts returned to the city with word that there was a distinctive and bright glow in the sky to the south, and Mado Wadon understood that Avrou Das was burning.
Soon after, one of the refugees was brought to see the Yatol of Jacintha, and so battered and dirty was the man that Yatol Mado Wadon at first did not recognize him - not until he spoke.
"I expected the loyalty of Jacintha," he said, his voice heavy with grief and pain and simple weariness.
"Yatol De Hamman," Mado Wadon said, and he moved near to the man and reached up and placed his hand on De Hamman's dirty cheek. "We did not know."
"You knew that Tohen Bardoh had assembled a great force, and knew that he had turned south," De Hamman argued.
"But to what purpose?"
"Is that not obvious?" De Hamman countered. "My land is in ruin, my cities burning. So many of my warriors were already weary from their long struggle with Peridan, and so many more were siphoned off from Avrou Das to aid in Chezru Douan's foolish war in the west."
"But I had no way of knowing Tohen Bardoh's plans," Yatol Wadon protested. "He could have just as easily thrown in with De Hamman as with Peridan." If not an outright lie, the Yatol's reasoning was certainly porous and suspect - and obviously so to everyone in the room. Yatol Bardoh had made his designs on Jacintha quite public from the beginning of the insurrection, and given that, turning his forces southward would have obviously prompted an alliance with Peridan, who was fighting Jacintha- backed De Hamman.
Still, for whatever reason, the desperate Yatol De Hamman did not press the point any further.
"We could not resist them," the defeated man remarked. "They arrived unexpectedly on the field south of Paerith, and with the reinforcements of Yatol Bardoh, Yatol Peridan's line was five times that of my warriors.
Many broke ranks and fled, and those who remained were slaughtered to a man. Paerith was in flames that same day. I tried to organize some defense of Avrou Das, but..." He just shook his head helplessly, then closed his eyes and cried, his shoulders bobbing.
"We will stop them," Yatol Wadon promised. "We will turn them back and pay them back for this atrocity committed against you and your flock. And I will help you to rebuild your cities, my old friend. On my word!"
That seemed to comfort Yatol De Hamman somewhat. He sniffled away the tears, looked at Mado Wadon, and offered a hopeful nod.
The Yatol of Jacintha motioned to his attendants then, to take Yatol De Hamman to a private room where he might clean up and find some rest. Then Wadon himself went to his bedroom, followed by images of battle and Jacintha burning.
He slept not at all.
And the next morning, when the scouts returned with a better assessment of the disaster just south of the city, Yatol Wadon realized that he might not be sleeping well for a long, long time.
"Avrou Eesa, Pruda, Alzuth, Teramen," Rabia Awou recited, the list of towns - nearly all of the major cities of western Behren - that had thrown in with Yatol Bardoh in his march against Jacintha.
Yatol Wadon closed his eyes as the recital continued, including the southeastern stretches of the kingdom, Yatol Peridan's domain of Cosinnida. Given the source of this information, Rabia Awou, Wadon couldn't dismiss it at all. Rabia Awou was the best scout of Jacintha, a man of disguise and intelligence, who could transform not only his appearance, but his demeanor, as well, and infiltrate the most secretive of societies. Once long ago, Chezru Douan had used him to infiltrate a ring of thieves working the docks of Jacintha, and the