Chapter 12

Night fell.

Darkness fell.

Clouds grew and the rain fell.

The windswept surface of the Menadin Sea boiled, frothing and foaming, churning and swirling.

Hardened pellets of ice pelted the faces of the Mahlners Mountains as sleet and hail, winds driving the frozen projectiles laterally through huddled villages.

Rain fell on foothill, forest and prairie alike; it ran in sheets off tightly thatched rooftops, washed the streets and dirt roads, cascaded down through lofty tree limbs and leaves, rushed across the open plains, swelled streams and rivers, running its course even downward and ever Southward.

Searing bolts of lightning turned the darkness white.

Iosoan sat in his palace, in his private chambers. He listened to the rain, the smooth hiss as it rustled the thatching of the roof several stories above, the gentle sucking as a sheet of water rushed past the open window, the splashing as it hit the ground below. The great lord sat transfixed; he tried to concentrate, to pick out the sound of a single raindrop hitting the soil; the sound escaped him. His eyes were open, fixed but unfocused, staring but unseeing; shoulders hunched and neck growing stiff. In the pale flicker of candlelight, his dark, shadowed form appeared old, weak. He felt tired.

After many minutes of motionlessness, the staring eyes blinked, shifted their gaze to the bed. Iosoan looked at the sleeping form of the servant girl, her nude body curled happily in the bed sheets. He looked at the empty jug of root wine, back to the girl. She had appeared so innocent, so young - less than the age of his own daughter. His daughter! Missing in the forest and probably dead, her body eaten...

The great lord choked back a sob, but the tears could not be stopped. For the first time since he heard the news, he cried.

Lines of moisture sparkled on his face in the candlelight; the bed shook gently. How could it be true? And he, taking the servant girl into his bed... He should be mourning. It could not be true! The tears kept coming.

Wearied and withered, Iosoan looked through red eyes at the girl. He reached out a hand, touched the girl's leg through the sheets, ran his fingers from the small ankle up the calf to the knee; she stirred in her sleep. He studied the youthful, feminine features; the girl was barely more than a quarter his own age! She had been soft and inviting, comforting; her young body had provided him pleasure. But was there something more there? The way she looked at him, the way her eyes shone...

Iosoan found himself wondering what the young servant would do once she knew the news of the princess, what she would say.

And he reminded himself that she was most likely pregnant now - what did that mean?

Only emptiness greeting the cloud of questions in Iosoan's mind. His head swirled; the tears continued to fall, the rain continued to pour. His hand moved up to the girl's thigh, kneading the muscle through the sheet; his eyes once again blurred into sightlessness. His daughter: gone. How could she be gone? How could he be expected to continue living? A violent shudder shook his powerful body, shook the bed. He looked at the sleeping girl, looked at the empty wine jug, longed for another.

It was as if a shovel had been thrust into the great lord's chest, the sharpened edge of the scoop severing muscle from bone, his heart cut from its chamber and ripped forcefully out. The emptiness was overpowering. The dark room looked drearier than it should, the rain outside heavier and more cumbersome than it was; the whole world a mountain and he at its peak, alone, screaming unheard into the wind. A lightning flash outside lit up half his face, the eye still red, the cheek still stained with tears.

Nothing in the room was pleasing. The carved wood furniture - the desk, the chair, the shelves, the burrow - seemed to needlessly consume space. The hung tapestries, intricately woven from the finest grass-fiber by the most skilled artists: nothing more than a waste of time and energy. Small trinkets of silver; ink pens, figurines, ornaments: littered about, covering shelves and tabletops, merely a drain on the senses. Iosoan fingered the silver ring on his finger, studied the rendering of his own House Seal; even the ring turned his stomach as he sat in bitterness.

Then, he looked back at the girl; so many years she had been in his personal service, so long had he seen her as a servant; and now...

From the hallway outside came the muffled sound of voices, coming closer; Iosoan did not turn his head. Then the door burst open and two figures entered the room.

"My lord!" called the boy who entered first. His clothing was soaked and his skin was glistening with rain. Water dripped from his body as he stood in the doorway; a trail of wetness led backwards into the hallway.

"You... cannot... come... in!" said the girl who followed the boy in, tugging angrily but ineffectively at his elbow. To Iosoan she added, "My lord, I'm sorry... I tried..."

"It's alright, Hanna. Thank you," said Iosoan, raising a hand. "Let him give his message."

Iosoan studied the boy, his face, his eyes. The conditioning was obvious; the boy had a message to give, and he was driven to give it; he would not stop, not rest until the words had been told. The last messenger - the one who bore the news of the princess - had tried to fight the conditioning, tried to avoid delivering such terrible news, tried and failed. It happened sometimes with ill tidings - a messenger struggling with the conditioning - but the conditioning always prevailed, and the message was always delivered. This boy, however, showed no signs of fighting; his face showed fear, anxiety and terror, but no desire to hold back. This one brought word of a terrible thing, but a thing that must be told; the boy was almost pained by holding the message inside, waiting for permission to speak the words.

The great lord considered this, said to the boy: "What news to you bring?" Beside him on the bed, the girl Sara stirred, sat up. She made no attempt to cover her nakedness.

"My lord," the boy began, bowing. His face showed lines of worry and urgency as he spoke. "I bring you word from the prince.

He was still conducting his search for the princess in the forest this very morning, when he found..."

The room fell silent and all four pairs of eyes turned as another messenger, also dripping wet, rushed into the room.

"My lord," the new boy began, but stopped when Iosoan made a gesture.

"Wait," said the great lord. To the first boy, he said, "Continue."

"The prince," said the first boy, "found an army in the forest. An enemy army! It is the prince Duain of the Hai Krun with a host of two thousand, even now marching this way. The prince Iordan surprised and ambushed the army this morning, and his search party is continuing to make retreating attacks as the army presses forward. The prince estimates that a force of about fifteen hundred will reach Iordantan in four days. He requests the rest of our army be called up and sent as reinforcements into the forest in two days. Four days at the most."

The silence was static.

"My God," said Iosoan, his face drawn, eyes wide. When the second messenger cleared his throat, Iosoan nodded to him to speak.

The second boy glanced at the first with grim understanding. He showed no signs of the messenger conditioning, but still seemed bursting with the weight of the message he bore. Then he spoke: "My lord, I bring you similar news. From the... ah... village Abita..." He trembled.

"Wait," said Iosoan, stopping him. "You're not a message runner, are you?"

The boy shook his head.

"You need to relax. Breath. You can't tell me a message if you can't stop shaking. I don't have messengers shot for bringing me bad news; if I did there would already be two dead today. So just tell me what it is you came to tell."

"Yes," the boy began again. "The village Abita was sacked this morning. Invaded by an army of three thousand from the Hai Krun." He took a breath, continued: "They came without warning, surrounded us, they killed some of the other boys. Then the one in charge took out a club of some kind with poisoned teeth at the end, and he used it against four of the grown-ups after they had already surrendered - they were paralyzed or something, and they died from the poison. Then the man grabbed me and told me to run here to tell you. He said he would wait there for our army to come to him."

Iosoan's head spun; he looked from one to the other. Two armies? "It's really happening," he said, dazed. He shook his head to clear out the last effects of wine, sleep and sorrow. Then he began to think aloud: "Two armies, one discovered hiding in the forest, and the other which announces itself and waits for my reply. The host at Abita intends to draw me out while the host in the forest was meant to take my unprotected capitol. A clever plan. And it will work even though I wasn't supposed to know about the second army. And no word from Orman..."

In the pale flicker of the candles, the great lord's back straightened, his shoulders relaxed, his head lifted, jaw set in a new sense of determination. The time had come for him to be strong, to forget his sadness. And here was a chance for him to forget his lost daughter for a time. Before the watching eyes, the old, hunched man became young and powerful again. He took a breath.

"So Darrak sets the trap, and I walk willingly in." To the naked girl beside him, he said, "Get dressed, Sara. I'll need your help now as well." To the two boys, he said, "One of you, go and wake my court. They have chambers on the first floor of the East building. The other run and fetch captains Burto and Hayaln. Have them all report to my council chamber at once."

He continued, "Hanna, go and wake the palace. Get everyone ready for a night's work. Sara, I need you to run down to the messengers' chambers. I am calling up the army, have them send the word. The assembly will be at noon tomorrow."

The servants bowed, turned to obey; Iosoan planted a kiss on Sara's lips before she left. Alone in his chamber, the great lord stood and dressed. His mind still reeled at the latest revelations, but he overpowered his emotions, suppressed his reactions. The burden had been placed on his shoulders, and now he would bear it. With cool eyes and a level head, he saw the end of peacetime upon him. The numbers of his enemy were too great - how had Darrak amassed such a force in secret? He would fight and he would lose; the Hai Krun would sweep into the Hai Lei, Darrak would claim it as his own. Iosoan thought vaguely of the Consul Hai, of their reaction to an invasion of this manner; the thought was not comforting.

All around, the palace came to life. Amid the darkness and the rain, a bustle of activity sprang forth as sleepy people scurried about, trying to shrug off their tiredness. Some rumors floated; some of them knew what was happening, most did not.

Candles and torches lighted the dark hallways as Iosoan strode from his private chambers to the council chamber; he turned corners and descended carved staircases, each step taken with surety and purpose. So his fate was to be the conquered? Then he would go to his fate proudly.

And throughout the land of the Hai Lei, the chains of war began to rattle.

Meanwhile, to the South, the prince Iordan crouched in the forked trunk of a massive yew-tree. The yews always grew with exceptionally rough, pitted bark, making them the easiest of climbing trees. Children of the forest were often found among the limbs of the yews, some of them so young that they had not yet taken their first steps on the ground. Even slicked by the rain, the yew's bark offered easy purchase to the bared hands and feet of an experienced climber; those who comprised the prince's search party found no difficulty in secreting themselves among the sturdy branches.

Lightning flashed, lighting up the trees, revealing the shapes of men; to an untrained eye the shapes were no more than odd knobs and bumps on the branches themselves. Rain fell, wind blew. The men waited; cloaks thrown casually about their shoulders and over their bodies, their searching eyes never left the ground below.

The retreating attacks had persisted throughout the day; the men of the search party would lie in wait, spring the ambush, kill and wound as many as possible, and then melt into the trees to repeat the process farther on. And the men of the Hai Lei could move in the forest like part of the forest itself when they so needed, blending perfectly and invisibly with the surrounding vegetation.

And the soldiers of the Hai Krun were no better at spotting their hidden attackers than they had been at the day's beginning.

They had grown more cautious in their movements, always ready for an attack, keeping their bows and spears at the ready. But again and again a group of Hai Krun soldiers had fired arrows into a suspicious set of trees only to be set upon by Hai Lei soldiers hidden in a completely different set of trees. Their growing frustration had led to carelessness, kept in check only by the steadiness of the prince Duain.

Twice during the day, luck had favored the Hai Krun. In the early afternoon a group of forty soldiers had walked into an ambush; somehow thirty of them survived the initial attack, and managed to kill all twenty of their attackers. Then, as afternoon turned to evening, fifteen gray-clad men had been attacked by ten green-clad men; those fifteen had all died from the first barrage of arrows, but another group of forty in gray had been near enough to catch and kill the ten in green.

Aside from those two modest victories, the Hai Krun had been able to do little else but pick off the Hai Lei soldiers one or two at a time. Even so, and even in the face of their growing frustration, the slaying of those two entire ambush parties had served to boost the invaders' morale ever so slightly.

And so the pursuit and retreat continued into night.

As Iordan scanned the ground for sign of movement, he shifted his weight to stretch his legs without betraying his hiding place. He stole a glance at the men in the tree limbs around him; it had been an unusually long wait - over an hour with no sign of the advancing Hai Krun party. There had been no word from nearby groups either, no mimicked bird's cry to signal a new position or location. Nothing. Only the wind and rain.

Then, when the stillness seemed never to end, there came a call. A sparrow's voice warned that a messenger was approaching.

Startled but very much interested, the prince made the appropriate acknowledgement.

With little more than a soft rustling, inaudible from the ground, the boy came; a soft swing from one limb and a gentle leap from another landed his feet surely and lightly on the small branch just below the fork where Iordan sat. With excited eyes, he whispered, his voice blending with the pattering rain.

"My lord."

The prince nodded.

"Sergeant Hale sent me," he continued.

"He's scouting close to the line?" asked the prince.

"Yes. After a long period with no activity from the enemy, he sent scouts through the trees to find out what was happening.

My lord, they have stopped!"

"What do you mean stopped? They're not turning back."

"No, unfortunately. I mean that they have made a camp. They set up rain shelters and posted guards, and most of them are sleeping!"

"Sleeping! Wonderful. Can you tell me anything about the guards?"

"Nothing useful, my lord. Sergeant Hale merely sent me to inform you, that you should come see for yourself."

With a smile hidden in the darkness, the prince said, "Thank you, I will." To the men in the tree around him, he said, "Come on, lets get going." And he made the bird call which would tell other groups to do the same.

Beneath the dripping canopy, the trees came alive with movement. Men leaped from branch to branch with a sureness that came only from a lifetime in the forest. Iordan's four hundred and fifty remaining men crept quickly and silently through the limbs toward the encamped Hai Krun army. And sure enough, they found it. Guards had indeed been posted, positioned as precisely the right places to prevent any assault from the ground. But even after an entire day being ambushed from above, they had ignored the trees as a possible point of attack. The remainder of the original two thousand lay sleeping under their rain shelters, completely open and vulnerable.