The Lovers

In the unsettling light of her scrying pool Rachel searched for their deliverance. She knew the people of the villages better than their own families, and had long made good use of them. Whether they would serve her purposes was not in question. All that remained was to decide which of them would serve best. There was a girl: no matter what the men in both castles and hovels believed, fates most often hinged on girls. Lila was her name. Her parents were torturously poor and had sold her, in effect, to the butcher of nearby Durmhall. A man of means, if not charm, or passion. She was a good daughter and had married him two years ago as her parents commanded. Since then she had borne no children for the slovenly older man. It was becoming a subject of much contention within their marital bed.

But it was not Lila alone that she would glorify. There was a boy, also. It was through the folly of boys that history was made. The butcher Jordan had lands of his own and farm hands to work them. Among the ranks of broken and hopeless men and women who bound themselves to the butcher was a boy, Fenn, only three years older than the butcher's wife. Just old enough to seem mature to the girl of twenty, but young enough to be virile, and far preferable than the brute who wanted children by her. Fenn was as dutiful as Lila. He never dared to think of raising himself up into a position higher than he had. It was an irritating lack of drive, but Rachel knew ways to account for it.

They two were all that she needed. Cador thought that the war could only be won by attrition. His two months were two long months of waiting, when the knights would pray that disease wouldn't slip into their camp, or that their food stocks would not run out. When they were on their last legs those lordly men would find Cador looming over them with his great sword in hand.

Two months meant something else to Rachel. In two months two people could find one another and find love. That love could grow into a strong-stemmed rose. The thorns of that rose could pierce, narrow enough to break skin with no effort at all, and make blood flow like a river. Two months was long enough for the rose to die, and for its corpse to fertilize the ground so that something else might grow. It was more than enough time for Rachel to win a war without raising a sword at all.

She smiled.