“This is no war like any we have ever fought,” Sendar continued. “The Tedrels have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If they are defeated by us here, they will have lost their last, best chance at the homeland that is their only goal. They have nowhere to retreat to. After the way they have treated their allies in Karse, the Sunsguard will fall on them and destroy them if they lose. That, so Alberich tells me, is the message implied in the two flanking forces along the Border. The Sunsguard will not only prevent us from engaging the Tedrels in a pincer movement across the Karsite Border, it will prevent them from coming back into Karse. And never believe that they do not know this. They are probably counting on it to keep their own mercenary shock troops in line and under control.”

Oh. Selenay repressed a shiver. Never corner an enemy who has nothing to lose. How many times had Alberich drummed that into her head? And now the enemy had been put into a corner. A bad situation had just gotten infinitely worse.

Sendar paused to let all that sink in. No one moved. No one spoke.

“But we have everything to gain by defeating them, and not just for ourselves. When this war is over, and we have defeated the enemy, no one will ever face a single Tedrel Company again, much less the entire nation,” Sendar said, into the waiting silence. “They will be finished, for all time. And we will defeat them!” His voice took on a strength and a surety that suddenly made even Selenay’s spirits rise. “We will defeat them, for although they call themselves, and think of themselves as, a nation, they are not. They have a body, with no heart. They think that the land is the nation. We know better. We know that Valdemar is not the land—and it is not just the people. Valdemar is a spirit, a community of spirit that binds a hundred disparate peoples with a hundred different religions and ways of life into a company and a greater whole. It is not a unity, for that would be denying our diversity, and in our diversity and our tolerance is our strength. Even if this enemy succeeded in driving us from this land—which he will not—Valdemar would live on. If he slew all of us—which he will not—Valdemar would live on. That spirit is what you fight for, and will live for, Heralds of Valdemar, for you are at the heart of that spirit—a spirit of tolerance, compassion, understanding, and care—all things that our enemy cannot and will never understand. And in the name of that spirit—we ride!”