Belatedly, he recalled Quenten’s orders, and realized the impossibility of not thinking anything. Make it simple. Dear gods, it’s going to let go—and I don’t know what to tell it—

Make it simple.

Put everything back the way it was!

The wave broke. He swayed, and started to fall, when his aide caught him. And suddenly, there was noise out on the battlefield.

The sound of several thousand enraged, half-mad men, turning on their officers and tearing them to pieces.

Twenty-four

Twenty-four

Bodies pressed in on all sides of her. Gods. Blessed Agnira. I got them into this. They trust me to get them out of it. How do I tell them that I can’t? The camp was unusually silent; somewhere on the Valdemar side, Selenay, too, was breaking the bad news to her troops. The regulars, that is; the Heralds already knew about it, of course. Kero wanted to look away from all those eyes staring at her with perfect confidence, to gaze up at the sky or down at the ground—anywhere but back at them. They depended on me, and I fouled up. Now what do I say? “I’m sorry?”

Instead, she gazed directly back at them all, trying to meet each pair of eyes before she spoke to them. “I haven’t got any good news,” she told them, finally. “Ancar’s fighters have managed to force us east enough for his southernmost troops to divide and get in west of us. They’re doing that now, and we haven’t been able to stop them. He’s had cavalry to the east in his own lands that has probably moved in north as well. We’ve been bracketed, and now we’re surrounded.”

She waited for a moment for that to sink in, then continued, rubbing the back of her neck. “They outnumber us by a goodly amount. Selenay’s troops tried this morning to prevent the southern forces from coming west, but there were too many for them, and the farmers just aren’t a match for trained fighters, not in pitched battles. It looks like the big confrontation is coming tomorrow; he has us right where he wants us, and no getting around it.”

She listened to them breathe for a moment. “Where’s Lord Daren?” asked a voice from the rear. Kero looked up, above the heads of those nearest her, and attempted to find the questioner.

“We lost track of him about the time he was going to cross over into the Valdemar side of the Comb, somewhere in the mountains. We don’t know what happened to him. There’s been no word of him coming up through Valdemar like he was supposed to. He could be on the way. He could have been turned back. He could have been defeated by Ancar down in the mountains. We just don’t know, so we can’t count on him being here.”