rise, but Kallan caught at his sleeve and pulled him down again. “Let her fight her own fight.”
“It is mine, too!”
“Is it?” Kallan asked dryly. “I never saw one better suited for a camp of men—to defend herself, I mean!”
Syresh bit his lip and watched as Lenane walked away, not angry, or flirting, but coldly indifferent. He spoke suddenly. “That ring you wear, hidden under your shirt, how did she know of it?”
“Not as you’re wondering. The string that held it frayed, and it fell, and when I searched for it later, I could not find it. So I guessed rightly and asked her.” Kallan smiled as memories came back to him.
“There is an animal of the northern plains, ‘dunnerat’ they call it, that has an eye to little things, and will steal the dagger from your side while you sleep, or take your rings from your fingers … and one man swore that he woke stripped naked, even his boots pulled from off his feet, because the subtle little things had taken a fancy to his clothing.”
Syresh did not laugh. “She would not steal, once she grew accustomed to having all she needed,” he said confidently.
“If you like to think that, you may, but there’s no harm in having a fondness for a dunnerat, if you know it for what it is.”
Syresh started to answer hotly, but Andiene came toward them, her hair gleaming in the firelight like mirror-polished metal.
“Lord Kallan, I would have a word with you in private. Syresh, speak with the other men, and calm them if they should be afraid.”
Kallan felt a touch of fear, but he followed her obediently out of the ring of firelight, to the darker hillslope that rose above the camp.
She sat down in the long grass, hands clasped around her knees. “Nahil has sent his spies through all this land,” she said. “You know that as well as I. I want them to have news to report that will make their travel worth the time and trouble.”
“What do you mean?”
“I chose you, because you were the oldest, have the longest memories,” she said. “And because you were the least likely to run mad with fear. You have an army within you. Think of the men you have fought beside, the men you have fought against.”
Her fingers wrapped coolly around Kallan’s wrist. When he had first seen her in the safehold, there had been the same tone of power and determination in her voice. But they had traveled many roads together since then. He trusted her.
Memories, bright memories, and where did he begin? He closed his eyes and called up the garrison of Mareja, numbering through the ranks one by one in his mind. Archers, swordsmen, the few arrogant horsemen. He tried to see them clearly, as she desired.
Then he went further back, and along darker ways, thinking of the ones he had seen executed for treason, not as they were dragged to the executioner’s torch, but as they had been before, strong and proud, too many of them, but he numbered them quickly.
The men he had fought against were blurred in his mind, but as he tried to recall them, their faces became clearer, mazed with disbelief as death came to them. There were some he did not dare to think of, a king of Mareja and his sons grown tall and strong, so he turned his mind north, to other kingdoms, Montrubeja, Lareja, Alliseja—men that had served other kings. The young ones, so foolishly young; the old ones grown grim and cruel. It sickened him to think of them. Truly, I must be growing old.
The toll went on, men wearing the mail and colors of the lords of six kingdoms, so many of them dead, so long ago. Kallan was weary beyond all endurance when he opened his eyes and stood up, to see an army standing behind them, an army of ghosts, stretching back and back into the shadows.
They seemed solid. They had no ghost-look about them. Their chests rose and fell gently as though they breathed. They stood as though quietly awaiting orders, but the nearest one, Moranar, Kallan knew. He had died ten years before.
Kallan stretched out his hand, and staggered as he touched not mailed leather, but empty air. And Moranar vanished at the touch, but row after row of silent and patient men stood beyond. Their garments were battle-worn and stained, but they did not bear the marks of their death. Ones who had