THE SEA WAS AT THEIR BACK, AT THE END OF A LONG goatherds track that wound down the slope to the sands just south of where theyd beached the ships and e ashore. About two miles north of them the walls of Senzio rose up, and from this height Dia-nora could see the gleaming of the temple domes and the ramparts of the castle. The sun, rising over the pine forests to the east, was bronze in a close, deep blue sky. It was warm already this early in the day; it would be very hot by mid-m.
By which time the fighting would have begun.
Brandin was ferring with dEymon and Rhamanus and his captains, three of them neointed from the provinces. From Corte and Asoli and Chiara itself. Not from Lower Corte, of course, though there were a number of men from her provin the army below them in the valley. She had wondered briefly, lying awake one night in the flagship off Farsaro, if Baerd was one of them. She knew he wouldhough. Just as Brandin could not ge in this, her could her brother. It went on.
However much might alter, this sihing would go on until the last geion that kigana died.
And she? Sihe Dive, since rising from the sea, she had been trying hard not to think at all.
Simply to move with the events she had set in motion. To accept the shining fact of Brandins love for her and the terrible uainties of this war. She no longer saw the riselkas path in her minds eye. She had some sense of what that meant, but she made an effort not to dwell upon it during the day. Nights were different; dreams were always different. She was owner and captive, both, of a bitterly divided heart.
With her two guards just behind her she moved forward on the of the hill and looked out over the wide east-west running valley. The dense green pine woods were beyond, with olive trees growing on steeper ridges to the south and a plateau north leading to Senzio town.
Down below the two armies were just stirring, men emerging from their tents and sleeping-rolls, horses being saddled and harnessed, swords ed, bs fitted and readied. Metal glinted in the young sun all along the valley. The sound of voices carried easily up to her in the clear bright air. There was just enough breeze to take the banners and lift them to be seen. Their own device was new: a golden image of the Palm itself, picked out against a background of deep blue for the sea. The meaning of Brandins chosen image was as clear as he could make it—they were fighting in the name of the Western Palm, but the truer claim was to everything. To a united peninsula with Barbadior driven away. It was a good symbol, Dianora knew. It was also the proper, the necessary step for this peninsula. But it was being taken by the man who had been King of Ygrath.
There were even Senzians in Brandins army, besides the men of the four western provinces. Several hundred had joihem from the city iwo days siheyd landed in the southern part of the bay.
With the Governor dead and a squabble for meaningless poing on in the castle, the official policy of Senziarality was in tatters. Helped, no one doubted, by Albericos decision to torch the lands through which he had e, ialiation for Barbadiahs iy. Had the Barbadians moved faster Rhamanus might have had trouble landing the fleet in the face of opposition, but the winds had been with them, and they reached the city a full day before Alber-ico. Which let Brandin choose the obvious hill from which to overlook the valley, and to align hi