Page 62 of Valdemar

The band had left Haven marks before the royal family even made it down to breakfast, and this morning the royal family all went down in a group. Restil came over from the Herald’s quarters to join them.

“I don’t want to cast a pall on perfectly good food,” he said cautiously. “But . . . shouldn’t we be doing something more about this Adept and her army than just sending out—”

“We are,” Kordas promised him.

Delia tossed a grape at Restil, who caught and ate it. “I leave to catch up with Pebble as soon as breakfast is over. It’s a hidden benefit to being a Herald—sleeping in, because Companions are fast enough to make up the difference.”

“The Lord Martial is shifting some of the Guard from the south, east and west today, sending Heralds with the orders since they can travel so quickly,” Isla told Restil serenely. “And the mages—ah, here’s Sai, he can tell you.”

Sai sat down without waiting for an invitation and helped himself to bread, cheese, and a handful of fruit. “Jonaton, that clever bastard, has opened the smallest of Portals in the air above the Adept’s city. Even smaller than the ones he used to use to help himself to other people’s belongings. About the size of a quail’s egg. He got the location from Laramir’s mind. He said that apparently, the Adept hasn’t bothered to ever look up past the shields she has on the place. We have a bird’s-eye view of the entire city, and we’ll see any troop movements. But I have to tell you . . . I don’t think those troops are going to be moving any time before late fall.” He shook his head. “Their drilling looks . . . well . . . sad. If she is dumping military information into their heads, she’s not doing a particularly good job of it.”

Kordas stopped eating for a moment and stared at him. “Are you sure?” he asked. “But even if she knows nothing about an Imperial-style army, she has Lord—”

And then it hit him, and he had to chuckle. Ardatha picked up what he was thinking, and evidently passed it on to Darshay, Valiance, and Dendalin. There was no mistaking when the Companions passed it in turn to their Chosen, because first Restil, then Isla, then Delia began quietly laughing too.

Sai, Hakkon and Jon stared at them. Sai got a cross look on his face and said, pointedly, “It’s not polite to whisper among yourselves. Are you going to share with the class?”

“I’m sorry,” Kordas apologized. “Lord Legenfall attended the same military theory classes that I did . . . but thought advanced warcraft classes were a waste of his time. What you’ve seen makes perfect sense now. He doesn’t know one end of a pike from the other. He’s never actually trained any fighters, or trained as one himself. Unlike me, he never actually watched any of the Imperial units drilling. His idea of a commander is someone who stands in his tent over a sandtable and pushes counters around. I will admit that he was quite good at that, but he has no idea how quickly a plan can break down when a real enemy is involved. He won’t have an Imperial-sized army, he won’t have Imperial resources, and he’s never actually faced an insurgency-type battle, even on a sand table. He doesn’t actually know the field he’d send troops into—no wonder he hated us so much. Life on the frontier put him amidst conditions people believed he would excel in, based on his bluster.”

Hakkon burst into derogatory laughter that had heads turning in their direction. Sai cast his eyes upwards. Jon snickered.

“We can’t count on this situation lasting,” Sai cautioned them. “But . . . yes. And historically, an Adept is a poor sort of war leader. Their knowledge tends to be very deep, but very narrow. Specialists. They generally leave anything that doesn’t have to do with magic to non-mages. They tend to throw damaging spells and unpleasant creatures at their enemies randomly rather than engage in any sort of tactics or strategy. She may not realize what is lacking at first. Eventually she’ll probably demand Legenfall’s own Lord Martial and use him for her information source, but that buys us yet more time. Yet more, if Legenfall doesn’t actually have a Lord Martial. Don’t worry, we’ll keep our little eye in the sky watching. If training suddenly improves, then we’ll know.”

A troubling thought gnawed at Kordas. If the Adept doesn’t know how to use an army—ignoring supply, camp, recovery, and so forth, thinking numbers are enough—she may very well send the lot of them into a slaughter.

“Well, if I have anything to say about it, Pebble and I will have quite a bit of work done by then,” Delia told them all, getting up from the table. “And the sooner I can get to him, and get him to sculpt some basic defensive positions along the border, the happier I am going to be. That will leave Menalus free to make sure all the settlers thereabouts know where to go and what to do when that army shows up, and organize the general defense in case they don’t try to head straight for Haven.”

“Good luck, Delia,” Kordas told her. “Safe journey.”

She sketched a little salute, and headed for the door.

Maybe I should have gone along too.Second thoughts, third thoughts, should have, would have, could have. He never seemed to be able to free himself of them. Even though, in the next instant, he was scolding himself for not trusting the people he had previously determined were the right people to handle a job. I can’t be everywhere. I can’t do everything, he reminded himself. Again. As he always did.

:And so you always will. It is in your nature to analyze everything, and want to be in direct control of it all. But Kordas, when have any of the people you trusted to perform a task ever failed you because of incompetence?:Ardatha asked, as he and Isla got up, followed by Restil, and headed for the Council Chamber for the first meeting of the day.

He mulled that over. :Not often. Maybe never. When they fail, and it’s rare, it’s because of something completely unforeseen. And most of the time, they back up and find a new solution.: Admitting that made him take a deep breath and relax.

The morning Council meeting was often a short one. This morning, all that they needed to handle were the updates. The mages were raising stout supports out of the river—using something akin to what the Mother did, but with magic rather than organically. They had two of a planned total of ten to the point where the tops had just broken the surface of the water. Projections for the midsummer harvests were good, and the protections against pests were holding. The schools across Valdemar had very good attendance; not a hundred percent, but close enough that this generation of Valdemarans high and low was going to be literate, which could not have been said of the same people back in the Duchy. The Empire was not fond of literacy, although it was not forbidden. Literate people asked questions, and were inclined to think for themselves, things that the Emperor discouraged.

And in general, if only they had not had that looming concern about the Adept and her “army”—this would have been shaping up to be a good year.

Ardatha remained mostly silent during the meeting, but Kordas felt him listening and watching with interest. It was anything but an uncomfortable feeling. In fact, it felt rather like having a friend at your back.

“Well,” Kordas said, when most of the business had been concluded. “Here is the dangerous question. Should we warn everyone of this impending danger? I think we should. In fact, I think we should make sure every farmstead and population center is armed.”

“They already are,” the Lord Martial told him, with a wry look. “Mostly bows, arrows, and pikes, but they are. When things stabilized, I made plans for that, made sure there was at least one weapons maker in every population center that was a village or larger, and made sure to keep the prices low with subsidies from my budget. And for the last four years I’ve made it mandatory that everyone old enough to handle a weapon safely practice together for half a day or so once a sennight. But I agree, we should send out a warning. Nothing that will terrify people, but something they take seriously.”

:Send your remaining Heralds,:Ardatha said, speaking up for the first time. :Confer with the Lord Martial, write up a decree, and send them out. This is one of the things they should be doing from now on.:

“You and I will confer this afternoon after dinner and write up a decree. I’ll send our Heralds out with it,” Kordas said smoothly.

He looked around the Council table, saw no dissent, and dismissed the meeting.

The business of running a Kingdom, or a Duchy for that matter, never stopped. Right after the morning Council meeting were Kordas’s and Isla’s Courts. They each held one; the Seneschal generally decided whose petitions or grievances were best addressed by the King or the Queen. And those petitions or grievances were not going to vanish just because there might be an invasion at some point soon. It did irritate him a little that because of tradition, if common folk had a problem, they had to first address it with their local “authority”—village headman, local squire, or local lord—and only if they found no redress, could they first bring it to an official judge in Haven, and then come to the Palace and place their petition with the Seneschal. This was a long and complicated process that the highborn could bypass entirely, so most of what he and Isla saw were “highborn problems” that could have been addressed with a mediator or a judge. But tradition was tradition, and even the Empire had followed this one. This morning, however, he got mostly genuine problems that needed sorting out. Isla tended to handle familial disputes, he tended to handle monetary disputes, and that was by design. In a familial, emotional dispute, people seemed to take bad news better if Isla delivered it.

It was a short Court. Two breaches of contract, three inheritance disputes, and a fairly contentious situation with two of his highborn lords that threatened to break out into a feud if he didn’t settle it decisively. The latter took a lot of negotiation, and in the end, neither lord was entirely happy, but both had the impression that the other lord had received the worse end of the decision.

The essence of a good negotiation is that both sides agree to being equally disappointed.