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Being the "king" of the Shin was like juggling live coals.
Not for the first time, he felt sorrow for the loss of his daughter Pedi, and not just the natural grief of a father whose daughter had gone to the Fire. She'd been headstrong and stubborn as the mountains, but if he'd sent her to Nopet Nujam to be his eyes and ears, she would have returned with a concise and correct report. He really didn't have anyone else he could trust to do that; they all "embellished." And not one in a hundred of them could read. It was like pulling teeth to get them to study anything but raiding and hunting.
He felt a stronger pang of grief—and guilt—as another thought crossed his mind. Grief that he had lost her ... and guilt that he wished he had lost Thertik instead.
He raised the binoculars once more, using them to hide his eyes from Nygard lest they reveal too much, but he could not hide the truth from himself. Much as the Gastan loved all of his children, it was ... unfortunate that only Thertik and Pedi survived out of their litter and that Thertik was male. Perhaps even worse, his eldest son was the perfect model of a Shin warrior. Fearless in battle. Skilled with every weapon. Able to drink the most hardheaded of his fellow tribesmen under the table.
And utterly devoid of any trace of imagination. If only Pedi had been his heir! Or if only Thertik had been a weakling he could have convinced the clan to set aside in favor of Pedi or a consort carefully chosen for her. But she hadn't been, and Thertik wasn't. And so at a time when the very existence of the Shin hung from a thread, he dared not trust his own heir's discretion sufficiently to tell him about the clans' one, slim chance for survival.
But he could have told Pedi. If she'd been his heir. Or if he had been willing to betray Thertik by trusting his daughter with information he dared not entrust to his son.
I should have told her anyway, he thought. Not that it would have made any difference in the end.
"So Shesul Pass might be under attack," he said aloud, letting no trace of his thoughts shadow his voice. "Or may be fallen. Any word who the enemy was? Aside from 'demons,' of course!" he added with a grunt of laughter.
"No, Gastan," Nygard said. "The messenger from Queicuf didn't know."
"Who could have penetrated to the Shesul?" the chieftain mused. "None of the raiders that I know of could scratch those walls." He thought about that statement for a moment. It was true enough, as far as it went, because he didn't know of any 'raiders' who might have taken the pass. And if he could think of anyone else who it might have been, this was not the time or the place to share that thought with Nygard.
"Enough," he said instead, with a gesture of resignation, "I have too many other problems to worry about to consider this one in depth."
He straightened and took a sniff of the air, heavy with the scent of brimstone, wafting down from the Fire Lands to the north. It was one of the Vales' many products. Brimstone for gunpowder, ores, hides, gems, and raw nuggets of gold—all of them flowed out of the Vales and through Mudh Hemh. And everyone wanted it. The other Shin, yes, but especially the Krath. Mudh Hemh was the most populous Vale, since the fall of Uthomof, and it was also the richest, acting as a conduit for trade with the entire eastern half of the Shin Range. Which was why it was the Vale above all Vales the Krath wished to seize.
They had tried at least a dozen times, from as many directions, to invade the Shin Range and wipe out the Shin once and for all. The destruction of Uthomof had been the result of one such war, and he could smell a change in the air, a danger as faint and sharp as the hint of sulfur on the wind, but just as real ... and growing stronger. War was coming; he could feel it in his bones.
But until it did, he had heads to crack and disputes to settle. It generally came down to the same thing.
* * *
Roger swung up onto the turom cart and waved at the valley spread out before them.
"Tell me what I'm seeing, Pedi."
It was obvious that the Vale of Mudh Hemh was a pretty complicated place, geologically, as well as politically. The valley was at least partially an upland glacial cirque, with some evidence of blown volcanic caldera. The various geological catastrophes had created a sort of paisley shape, broken by regular hills and surrounded by rearing volcanic mountains. The Shin River cut across the valley almost due east and west, and its course was flanked on both sides by a mixture of fields and fortifications.
To the east, on the nearer side of the river, two massive fortresses faced each other across a large, torn sward. Each was easily as large as the main temple in Kirsti, and each sealed off the entire width of its respective vale from mountain to river. The fields in between them were large—it was at least ten kilometers from the nearer fortress to the further one—and they'd clearly been cultivated until fairly recently. At the moment, however, they were occupied by an army.
The nearer fortress had a new, raw look to it, as if it had been thrown up in haste, but it was holding its own against the force spread out before its walls. The army (it could only be the Krath regular forces) spread across the fields, filling the vale from side to side. A tent city to the rear was laid out in widely spaced blocks, while massive squares of infantry closer to the fortress awaited their orders to assault the Shin walls. They were moving forward against the nearer fortress in regular waves, but reinforcements for what Roger assumed were Shin defenders could be seen crossing a covered causeway behind the fighting and moving down side roads in the protected lee of the fortress.
Both fortresses had companion forts on the far side of the river, or perhaps they could more accurately have been considered overly large outer works, protecting the farther shore. There was no open ground on that side, just a broken mass of rubble, fallen basalt, and flood ravaged shore. But neither side seemed to consider it uncrossable.
To the west, behind the fighting but on the nearer side of the river, lay the ruins of what had once been a fair sized city. It might not have been much compared to Kirsti or K'Vaern's Cove, but it had been larger than Voitan. Now it was a tumbled ruin, clearly being mined for the stone of its buildings.
On the far side of the river there was a large embayment, or secondary valley, with a walled town built into the side of an ash cone. The ash cone, in turn, was the outrider of a large area of geothermal activity. A small stream, tinged bright blue with minerals, flowed down from the ash cones, geysers, and fumaroles.
A massive bridge, wide enough for four turom carts abreast, crossed from the town to the ruined city. Obviously, it was the conduit for the majority of supplies and reinforcements for the newer fortress.
"The two main forts are Nopet Nujam and Queicuf," Pedi told him. "The area between them is usually a trade city, Nesru, full of Krath and Shin traders. The far forts are Nopet Vusof and Muphjiv."
Roger nodded. He still didn't know why her father might have concealed any contact he had with the human at port from her. Which was fair enough, since she hadn't been able to think of any reason, either. Although it was probable that O'Casey was right about the reasons the Gastan felt impelled to keep it a secret, but why conceal it even from Pedi? She might be stubborn, impulsive, and personally reckless, but Roger and the rest of the Basik's Own had seen more than enough of her to realize that she was also highly intelligent and possessed of an iron sense of honor. Her father should have trusted her with his secret.
Then again, Mother should have trusted me instead of finding trumped-up excuses to send me away from court, he thought. Not that I'd ever given her the sort of proof that she could trust me that Pedi must have given her father.