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

people could not sit at the council table, but she was attended by them; and the Tamaerthan yeomanry wasn’t afraid to be heard in any council room. In their mountainous plateau by the sea, the clans did not live as peasants lived among the great lords and bheromen of the west.
    She had a momentary twinge of homesickness. She longed for her high ridges, with the blue sea to the east, stark mountains rising from it to stand deep blue in dusklight and dawn. It would be so easy to go home. She had only to give up this castle to Sarakos and she could return as the wealthiest lady in Tamaerthon—or she could stay, with all her husband’s lands restored. Sarakos would give her that, and the council would approve. She had only to say the words—
    “A hundred lances and two hundred archers are still but five hundred fighting men,” Camithon said. He spoke as if proud of his arithmetic. “Fewer, for not all our knights have squire and man-at-arms. And these walls, though strong, enclose a great area. We have no reserve. Every man is needed at his post. What happens when they tire?”
    Now, she thought. Say it now. But she couldn’t. She had sworn. And how could she host her husband’s murderer in his own home? Receive Chelm as a telast of Sarakos? It was unthinkable.
    Yet—how do else? If the chief captain had no stomach for a fight, there was no chance at all. She fingered her braids restlessly.
    “Yet honor demands that we fight,” Camithon said. He looked down the length of the council table. “Do any dare dispute that?”
    Some may have wanted to, but none spoke.
    “I have never been one to fight merely for honor,” Camithon said. “I prefer to win. But we can do no good elsewhere, so if we fight, we must hold Dravan. We sit astride the only good road south. Until we are taken, Sarakos can take no great force in search of our young Wanax. We buy time for the Protector.”
    “Yatar knows what he’ll do with it,” Bheroman Trakon said. His voice was overly loud, nervous, yet Trakon was a good man who had stood by the old Wanax in his troubles, and had lost much for doing it.
    “Unfair, my lord,” Camithon protested. “The Protector is the greatest soldier of Drantos, and he has won before when all seemed darkest.”
    “And the Dayfather may produce a miracle,” Trakon said. He did not turn to see the red face of Yanulf, Archpriest of Yatar. “Yet what else can we do? I trust Sarakos not at all. Of the bheromen who have gone over to him, more than half have lost all to his favorites.”
    “Which hasn’t stopped dozens more from joining him anyway,” the weavers’ guildmaster muttered. “Half the bheromen—no, three parts of four—have welcomed Sarakos. We fight to no purpose.”
    “Do you counsel surrender?” Camithon demanded.
    The portly guildmaster shrugged. “It would do no good. Sarakos has his own weavers, and they like not our competition. But it’s a forlorn fight all the same.”
    “It is more than forlorn.” Yanulf had stood silent and impassive thus far; now the priest drew himself to full height and spoke with contempt. “Fools. The Time approaches, and you babble of petty dynastic wars.”
    “Legends,” Trakon said.
    Yanulf smiled thinly. “Legends. Is it legend that the Demon grows in the night sky? Is it legend that the waters rise along the shore? That the lamils breed, and the madweed flourishes in your very fields? Is it legend that we sit in council hall with no fire burning, yet we are not cold?”
    “A warm summer,” Trakon said. “No more than that. The Firestealer has been banished from the vault of the sky and stands at zenith each midnight. Of course it is warm.”
    There were murmurs from the yeomanry and guildmasters. Yanulf’s voice rose. “And in the Time of Burning,” he intoned, “then shall the seas smoke and the lands melt as wax. The waters of ocean shall lap the mountains. Woe to them who have not prepared. Woe to the unbeliever.” He laughed. “Woe