Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html Eyes burning, the Circle comes threshing with longswords To cut through the rot, and so Arko will fall. Alas, oh, alas, for the Empire, and Kurkas, Whose death-knell has tolled after so many years The world's heart will bleed as the City falls crashing So loud our lamenting, so soulful our tears… The bard struck the chord with one hand, and with the other pulled out a large handkerchief of a scarlet color strikingly similar to Arkan warships' sail-cloth, to dab his cheek with a loud sniffle. Pity the day when the Eagle of Arko First cast its eye on Yeola-e's plains. When the battle is finished twixt Eagle and Circle. The world will count up the losses and gains. Koru. Megan put her tankard down. No news had ever sobered her so quickly. Not only had they made it to the border, they'd decided to cross: Yeolis, who had a custom, held for centuries, against being the aggressor. This hot king with all his alliances and mercenaries was marching on Arko. "Sheepshit," Shkai'ra was yelling, "Sh'ourchance!" Megan calculated. They had maybe forty thousand, by Ivahn's last estimate, and the song's. The Arkans claimed they could field arejin ofrejins , a million. But she remembered a night at a river-port, Sarngeld speaking with some Aenir, a mercenary by his words. "There hasn't been a rejin of rejins for a good hundred years. The story just sticks in people's heads. The Aans, Kurkas no less than his forebears, let things go, so now there's maybe five hundred rejins, spread out all over." Five hundred thousand. How many were locked up fighting the Srians, the Kurkanians, guarding the northern border and patrolling the Mitvald, fighting the Lakans ontheir border, since King Astalaz of Laka had broken his peace-treaty with Arko, to ally with Yeola-e? There had been no word from Kurkania for a good two years, a good sign Arko was losing there.Say forty thousand against, at most, one hundred thousand, she thought. A little better, but… Wait, I'm not counting those huge losses in the winter. Say forty thousand against sixty. And the forty thousand might not even be right anymore; Ivahn gave me that number a while back, and winning invading armies don't shrink, but grow . It was a chance. The eagle could be stung to death by the wasp, if the wasp flew quickly enough. If they had good generalling,damn good generalling, which supposedly they did. Joyful stamping shook the floor. The bard had been lucky to be the first here with this; people were throwing him copper Claws. Everyone seemed nappy except the Arkans, who looked like their dearest wish would be invisibility. One, a middle-aged fellow in Arkan issue armor that was obviously repainted, ground his face into the table in a most un-Arkan way. People pelted the bard with questions as well as money. "What happened in the last battle?" "It was a rout, what else?" "How many did the Arkans lose?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html "Thousands. The rest scattered, or got thumbed." "Had their sword-hand thumbs cut off," Megan explained to Shkai'ra. "A quaint Yeoli custom." "What about Kranaj and Astalaz?" said someone else. "Are they going to invade too?" "I haven't heard." "So how big armies are they going to send?" "I just told you, sparrow-brain, I haven't heard!" "Kranazzh and Aztalazzh?" Shkai'ra hissed over the din. "Kings of Laka and Tor Ench, respectively," Megan stage-whispered back. "Are they still hiring mercenaries?" About ten people asked that, all at once, along with the rate of pay. "Apply at the embassy," the bard said. "You d have to move it to catch up with the army from here, though. This news is a few days old now, and with Chevenga, fast-march is fast-march."That army's grown by about ten just here, tonight , Megan thought. "Zhv'nghkua," said Shkai'ra. "That's the hot Yeoli king, hmm?" "Dah. Fourth Shchevenga." Ivahn's letters had mentioned the name, with the formal number tacked on front and the impossible-to-remember-let-alone-pronounce surname and titles behind, but Megan's eyes had skimmed over it. Now it snagged her memory. "Wait a moment!" That name… it had been in older news that had come up the river. "He'sdead ." Fourth Chevenga was the Yeoli king who got captured by the Arkans, made to fight in their arena, and given some kind of circus execution, she thought.Yes, dammit, I'm not remembering wrong, it was Fourth,Fourth Chevenga . Fifty thousand people had witnessed his death. "Fuckin' lively corpse," Shkai'ra said drily. The Benai Saekrberk always made Megan feel calmer. Nobody ran or shouted or pushed her against the wall; theFraousra , the monks, all looked as if they had something to do that made them, if not happy, at least at peace. There were more guard-monks down by the dock, though, five new galleys in the slipways, and she and Shkai'ra got an armed escort up to the hill. TheFraousra pruning the vines on the slopes stopped and waved; when they passed close, Megan heard them saying her name to each other, and pulled the floppy hat further down over her ears. The wind was from inland, full of marsh and plowed earth smells from the fields on the other side of the Benaiat, and a little salt from the Svartzee. Ivahn's secretary, Stevahn, white-haired but young, and her attendants came out to meet them at the gate. Their robes were crimson against the blue walls of the abbey, with the white domes above. A small image of the Divine Bear hung at Stevahn's waist, clicking against the writing case next to it on her belt.
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Shadow's Son by Shirley Meier, S.M. Stirling and Karen Wehrstein ...

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