settled in for the duration, polishing swords and keeping bow-strings dry.
Lleyn’s ships had to wait in the mouth of the Faolain for a break in the weather. It was a long time coming, ten days before the fleet commander considered it safe to put out to sea again. Rohan and Chay watched the sails rise and fill with brisk wind, and knew that with the ships went any possibility of escape back across the river. They were in Syr for good or ill. Whatever the outcome of the battle, whenever it was fought, Rohan was oddly pleased to have his actions forced this way. Diminishing choices diminished interior conflict.
He and Chay and Davvi formulated endless plans, fighting battles on maps to explore tactics, arguing placement and timing. It was all they could do until their scouts reported back, and when they did, the news was bad. In the brief two-day stretch of sun that had allowed the ships to set sail, Roelstra’s army had moved back yet again and in doing so seemed to have multiplied twofold.
The morning brought a freezing mist as the trio rode out with their squires and captains to investigate for themselves. Rohan shivered beneath a heavy cloak, cursing the clouds that hung rain-heavy in the north. But what he saw from the top of a hill chilled him more thoroughly than the wind.
The whole of the pastureland that had lately been the High Prince’s camp was awash in thigh-deep water. Trenches had been dug from tributaries of the Faolain. When added to the already saturated earth, the river water had turned a two-measure-wide plain into a lake. Crossing was impossible; the bottom was thick, viscous mud like that around the lake’s edges. Drainage ditches and a whole summer’s heat would be required to bake the land dry again. But there was something more, something only Roelstra in his cunning would have thought of, something that had ruined this rich land forever.
“Do you smell it?” Rohan asked softly. “Salt.” He heard Davvi’s despairing curse, Chay’s sharp intake of breath. Rohan breathed deeply of the distinctive bite on the wind. “I suppose the trees were too wet for burning, or he would have done that, too,” he commented. Then he turned Pashta and rode back to his tent, and did not admit anyone until nightfall.
When Chay was at last told that Prince Rohan wished to speak with him, he entered the tent in the liveliest apprehension of what he would find. Rohan sat on his cot, round-shouldered, an empty bottle overturned on the carpet and a half-empty one between his boots. There was a goblet in his hands and he turned it around and around in some private ritual before each swallow, five times before drinking. Chay watched this for a while, wondering if the remedy of liquor applied to Rohan’s wounds would dull them for at least a little while. But when the blue eyes finally lifted to his, he knew the pain was as piercing as ever.
“Sit down,” Rohan said, and it was not an invitation. “This time I have to talk. And this time you’ll listen to me.”
Chay sat. He was not offered a cup and would not have accepted one. Rohan stared at him for the time it took to rotate the goblet again, five times before taking another sip. His voice and his eyes were stone cold sober.
“I’ve told myself I’m clever and civilized. I’ve said that my goal is the rule of law, not that of the sword. And look what I’ve done. I was raised a prince to protect and nurture the land and my people.” Another sip, sensitive fingers turning the goblet round and round. “I’m no better than any man who’s gone before me. I’ve told myself I’m only doing what I have to do. But I’ve got a real talent for this, Chay. I’m proficient in all the barbarian arts—war, rape—”
Rohan drank and leaned over to refill the goblet with alarmingly steady hands. “Azhrei. They’ve never called anyone that before, not even my father. Eltanin is going to leave the wall in rubble—and do you know why? He thinks the walls I’ll build to protect the Desert will be better than any stone. I’m not worthy of that kind of trust. I’m not worthy of anything except to die with a sword in my guts, the way I’ve killed others. The way I’ll kill again.”
Not analytical by nature, still Chay could discern the vast difference between these