Sendar stared at him a moment, his brow furrowed, and again Alberich cursed his lack of expertise in Valdemaran. But it would have taken him a quarter-candlemark to work out how to say it clearly, and they didn’t have the time—

The others just stared at him, probably trying to untangle his mangled syntax as well. Selenay, who was far more used to the way he spoke, uttered an oath that would have made one of the muleteers blush.

“They’re moving!” she said—no, shouted—before her father could rebuke her for her language. “Father, the Tedrels, they knew we’d be watching them, they didn’t care until this moment since all we’d see is their troops building, but now they don’t want us to see them because they’re moving!”

Sendar swore, in language even stronger than Selenay’s (and there was no doubt in Alberich’s mind where she’d learned to curse so fluently). But he put up his hand to quell the raised voices around him, stilling an incipient panic with a single gesture.

Alberich hoped that Selenay was taking note. This was the sort of thing a Monarch needed to be able to do by sheer force of personality.

“Even if they could fly—which they cannot—they could not be at our Border before three days have elapsed,” Sendar pointed out. “Since they must move on their feet and those of their horses, it will be longer than that. We have a dual task—to find another way to gain the intelligence that FarSight would have given us, and to prepare the army to meet them. The former is in the hands of Joyeaus and Myste, and if any two Heralds can find what is needed in the past, they can. So, my friends, let us bend our minds to the latter, for it is time to finish our strategies. That is what we can do.”

Alberich withdrew a little, for at the moment he was best as an observer. No battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy, he reminded himself. He’d reminded Myste of that truism often enough as well; with luck, she’d remember it and she and Joyeaus would add several more layers to their plotting.

And if he paid a little more attention to Orthallen than the rest, well, that also was part of his responsibility. It was not only an enemy that could do damage. Sometimes the danger came from within, and the one who brought it could even have all of the best intentions in the world.

* * *