her breath until she suddenly let it go in an explosive sigh. “Tell Maggie,” she ordered. “I’ll speak to the captain of the guard.”
Oskan nodded and then, amazingly, smiled. Now that he’d given the last of his clairvoyant warnings, it was as though a darkness had been lifted from his mind and the boy she knew returned to help her. “Do you think he’ll believe me?”
“Of course he will. Our tame master of the rational secretly puts more faith in your powers than anyone … apart from me. Now go.”
As the boy galloped off on his ungainly mule, Thirrin rode on alone, deep in thought. Oskan was certainly right about the type of place she’d choose to make a stand against the Polypontian cavalry. A narrow place in the road, with dense undergrowth beneath the trees to protect the flanks of her housecarls, would be an obvious choice of position. The enemy wouldn’t be able to use their numbers efficiently, however great they were, and her soldiers might be able to stand up to ten deep, depending on exactly how narrow the road was. All she had to do now was keep a sharp lookout for this obvious place and speak to her soldiers.
They reached it an hour later. For some reason known only to the ancient engineers who’d made the highway, it abruptly narrowed as it climbed a low hill, and the trees crowded up to the verge in a particularly dense stand that was thick with low bushes and brambles. No horse could force its way through such an entanglement to take them in the flank, and the crest of the hill would give Thirrin and her housecarls a slight advantage over the enemy.
She tried to shake off the sense of desperation that had been creeping up on her all day. The cavalry of the Polypontian Empire had the reputation of being the finest in the known world, and she had only two hundred foot soldiers to set against it. What hope did they have? They were outnumbered with very little chance of any help or reinforcements arriving before they were wiped out, so there seemed little point in resisting. Why not simply surrender? Allow herself to be captured and beg for mercy for her people?
For a moment she almost convinced herself of this argument. But then she remembered the terrible stories of the massacres and atrocities carried out by the soldiers of the Empire. Of course, she had no way of knowing whether they were true or not. Stories like that always grew in the telling, and they were always told by the losers in the many wars the Empire had fought. And that in itself was natural enough, because the Polypontians had never lost a war yet. People hated the Empire. Of course they did: It took away their freedom and it crushed their individuality, so it was quite natural that negative stories about the way it treated defeated people should be common. Perhaps they really were exaggerated and the population would be well treated. And even if all the stories were true, what could she do? Did she really care if the populations of entire towns were enslaved and moved out to work in the Empire’s mines or factories? Did she really care if those too old to be of use to the Imperial slave masters were slaughtered in a murderous act of efficiency? As long as she was safe and allowed to keep at least the trappings of royalty, why should she continue to struggle against overwhelming odds? With a secret, deeply shocking sense of relief, she imagined handing responsibility for the Icemark over to the Empire. She could become a puppet queen, doing exactly as she was told and being allowed to live in peace and comfort in Frostmarris. And perhaps the people would simply have exchanged one system of government for another.
But then the blood of the Strong-in-the-Arm clan awoke, roaring in her brain, and the fighting spirit of the Hypolitan, her mother’s people, straightened her sagging spine and sent a tingling excitement coursing through her veins. She was heir to the throne of the Icemark and she could never be certain that stories of Polypontian cruelty were untrue. She must defend her land and her people! This was her role and meaning in life. To betray their trust, even in the face of impossible odds, would be the most terrible of treacheries. Above all she was her father’s daughter, and she