Lord of Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle, Roland J. Green Page A

and elaborate compliments, but his meaning was clear enough. She heard him out with impatience, then waved to have him led from the room. When he was gone, she looked down the length of the heavy wooden table. “Well, my lords? Wanax Sarakos makes us an offer. Have you advice?”
    There was profound silence. Tylara smiled thinly. The silence was more eloquent than any speech could have been. Her bheromen wanted to accept the offer—or at least bargain with Sarakos while they still had something to bargain with. The yeomen and guildmasters—could they want Sarakos here also? Tylara looked at the impassive faces and read nothing. She knew too little of these people, and they were accustomed to hiding their thoughts from the great ones.
    But if one of the bheromen spoke for accepting Sarakos, others would join. Or would they? These were her husband’s people. Could they be so little like him? The memory of him stabbed at her, and she saw him as he had been: tanned, laughing, coming to her. She thrust the image from her mind before the tears came, for she had had this dream before, and it ended with reality—with Lamil cold and stiff in his bier.
    She keenly felt her youth and inexperience. She was only twelve as they reckoned years here (in Tamaerthon they counted a child a year old at birth and added four more at age nine, so that she would be called seventeen there). She had lived far from these iron hills, and she did not know these people. It said much for her husband—and for the strength of his family—that they obeyed her at all.
    “Captain Camithon,” she said. “It seems no one wishes to speak. Perhaps you will advise me.”
    Camithon had served three generations of Eqetas of Chelm; his beard had greyed in that service, and his body was scarred with wounds. A long scar from a lance that had narrowly missed taking his eye ran diagonally across his cheek, giving him a somewhat ferocious appearance that he sometimes took advantage of in councils of war. He stood hunched over as if his very bones were tired, and as he stood he muttered about his estates which he had not visited in a year. But his voice was steady enough when he spoke. “The usurper marches with two thousand lances and a great train of foot,” he said. “We have but a hundred lances, and we stand in Wanax Sarakos’ way.”
    Tylara nodded gravely as she had seen her father do in clan meetings. Inwardly she wished to shout. Camithon was broadly proclaimed a splendid soldier and perhaps he was, but he could never come to the point until he had reviewed everything a dozen times and more.
    She hid her impatience with good grace and thought no one noticed. She had learned endurance if not patience, and that would have to do.
    “Dravan is strong,” mused Camithon. He brushed his fingers against the scar on his cheek, as if to remind everyone that he had held Dravan in the battle that earned him his distinctive mark. “Our lady has seen to the granaries and magazines, and well done that was, too. This old castle has killed five armies—but it has never before been held with only a hundred lances, and it has never before been so thoroughly cut off from aid.”
    “As if there were any aid to send,” one of the guildmasters muttered.
    Camithon’s sword rested on a map unrolled on the table. He lifted the weapon and used it as a pointer. “The Protector is here, ten days and more to the northwest with our Wanax Ganton. He has no more than a thousand lances, and the Protector cannot allow the young king to be penned up in any castle, no matter how strong. Thus he cannot come to our rescue himself, and I doubt he can spare any great strength.”
    Tylara wanted to shout. I know all that , her mind screamed. Outwardly she smiled and said, “You give us a hundred lances, but you have forgotten my Tamaerthan archers. I hope this usurper Sarakos makes that mistake. He won’t make it twice.”
    There were murmurs of approval from behind her. Tylara’s