For that skewed moment, I saw the Gernians as a nation of folk who sought difficulty and strife for themselves. They built roads to enrich themselves, to be sure, but did they ever enjoy the riches they accrued? No. It appeared suddenly that riches only became the foundation for seeking ever more difficult tasks, and often on the backs of those that life had not favored. I suddenly recalled the road workers, those poor souls forced to labor on the King’s Road both as penance for their crimes in Old Thares and as payment for the land they would receive when they’d worked off their sentences. The Specks, I suddenly knew, regarded them with bottomless pity and horror. This was the only life those poor beings would ever know, and the intruders condemned them to live it in privation and want, knowing only work and discomfort. Viewed like that, what we did was monstrous. The Specks had no way of understanding that we considered it justice that our king punished them for crimes they had committed and a special mercy that he offered them a reward for that labor. A false reward, I thought sourly, remembering Amzil’s tenuous existence.

I came out of that reverie to awareness of myself as Nevare. I felt as if I’d been fished from the depths of a cold dark pond and revived. For a time all I could do was hover behind Soldier’s Boy’s eyes and revel in my own existence. Gradually I found my footing in time and place as well as in my self. Time had passed. I struggled to learn how much.

I was in Lisana’s old lodge, but it had been refurbished with Speck luxury. The rugs underfoot and the hangings on the wall were trade items, as were the gleaming copper pots and heavy china dishes and crystal glasses. The bed in the corner of the room was a welter of thick furs and wool blankets. The garments that Soldier’s Boy wore now had been tailored to his ease, and were all in shades of forest greens and browns. His wrists were heavy with gold bracelets; I felt the weight of earrings dangling from my pierced earlobes. His increased girth and Dasie’s were marks of their standing among the Specks. Their feeders had feeders of their own now. The People held them in high esteem and their lifestyle reflected it.

I felt in vain for the vibration of iron anywhere in the room. If Dasie felt the need to threaten him anymore, it was not with iron. Their postures bespoke two warlords taking counsel together rather than a dictator and her hostage. My mind groped back to the words I had awakened to. The Great Queen of the Specks? I considered her through Soldier’s Boy’s eyes. Yes. And he was her warlord. So they were beginning to consider themselves.

The double irony was not lost on me. To save the Specks, they were becoming a mirror of the intruders they sought to drive away. Dasie with her weapons of iron, and Soldier’s Boy with his army in training. Did they think they could ever step back from those things, once they had used them?

The other prong of irony was as sharp as any iron blade as it stabbed me. Here it was, the golden future I’d been promised as a child. I was living it. I was the leader of a military force, serving a queen, with the wealth appropriate to my station and a lovely woman at my beck and call. Olikea had just come into view. She did not carry the dishes of food, but with her hand gestured to those she wished cleared away and where the fresh ones should be placed. I suspected she had chosen my wardrobe, for her own mirrored it, rich browns and delicate greens. She resembled Firada even more now, for her body had filled out to rounder, gentler curves. The feeder of a Great One reflected his status with her own. My gracious lady, and at her heels, the son of the household: Likari in a green tunic and leggings with soft brown boots on his feet. His glossy hair had been bound back with ties and beads of green, and his smooth cheeks were round with shining health. Soldier’s Boy’s eyes strayed to the boy and I knew his fondness and pride. Then his attention darted back to his conversation with Dasie. She was protesting.

“I listen to my warriors. They are still mine, you know. You train them, but it is to me that they bring their concerns. They are tired of rising early and standing in lines, bored with all these practices at moving together, at the same speed, doing the same thing. How does this help us to defeat the intruders? Will they stand still while we walk in lines across the field to attack them? Are they so stupid? Is that how they fought their wars?”

“Actually,” Soldier’s Boy confirmed for her, “they do. But no, we will not march on Gettys in formation. Eventually, though, when we show ourselves to the Gernians, they must see not a Speck raiding party but the Speck army. I’ve told you this before, Dasie, over and over. We have to become an enemy they can recognize. When the time comes, the warriors must dress alike and move in unison, controlled by one commander. That is power that the intruders will recognize. Only then will they respect us.”

“So you keep saying. But I do not like that we become, every day, more and more like the people we wish to drive away. You say our warriors must run faster, be harder of muscle and keener of eye when they use their bows. My people say to me, ‘we are strong enough, hardened enough to fish, to gather, to hunt. Why does he push us so?’ What am I to answer them?”

“You should answer them that, for now, they must do more. They must be harder and more ready than the warriors we will face. The hunt does not demand as much of a man as standing battle does. During a hunt, a man can rest or he can say, ‘It is too much work for that much meat. I will hunt something smaller,’ and let the prey run away from him. But in battle, the man who turns away becomes the prey. No one can stop because his arms are weary or his legs shake with strain. It stops only when your enemy is dead and you are still alive.

“It is good to say, we are brave and strong, but I have lived among the intruders. And those we will face will be brave and strong and well trained and desperate. I hope to take them by surprise and lay waste to them all before they can react. But I cannot promise you that. Once roused, they will be quick to organize themselves. They will not flee before our advance but will stand firm, for they will know they have nowhere to flee. They will shoot at us in volleys, for the men who are reloading their weapons will trust their comrades to protect them while they do so. That is the strength of an army, that the strength of your comrade’s arm protects his fellow as well as himself. And they are experienced. They will know, when we attack, that if they do not fight back strongly enough we will slaughter them all. They will fight like only the cornered fight—to the death and beyond. Even when they know that victory is irretrievably gone, they will stand and fight.”

“You speak of extremes. The warriors are ready to fight as hard as we must fight to win,” Dasie asserted.

“Are the warriors ready to die to protect their comrades, in the hope that their fellows will win?” Soldier’s Boy asked her quietly.

She was startled. “But you say that our plan is good. That Kinrove’s dance will have demoralized the protectors of Gettys, that we will fall on them when they are full of sleep and confused. You have said we will slaughter them.” She paused, her anger and indignation building. “You promised this!” she accused him.

“And we will.” He replied calmly. “But some of us will die. This we have to admit, going into this battle. Some of us will die.” He paused, waiting for some sign that she accepted this. Her face remained stony. He sighed and went on, “And when a warrior is injured, or when he sees his brother fall, dying, he cannot then decide that the price is too high to pay. Each of them must go into this battle thinking that if he must die for us to win it, then he will. It is the only way. This is what I am trying to teach them. Not just how to quickly be where I tell them to be, not just how to obey an order without conferring with one another or arguing. I must build them into a group that has a focus and a goal, a goal that is more important to each of them than his own life. We will not have more than one chance to do this well. The first time we attack them, we must wipe them out. It is our only hope.”