The Magelands Origins: The Trials of Daphne Holdfast by Christopher Mitchell

Author:Christopher Mitchell [Mitchell, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912879144
Publisher: Brigdomin Books Ltd
Published: 2020-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

They stayed indoors for the rest of the evening, sickening themselves with tobacco, until the common room was a fug of smoke. They had missed sword practice, and were bored and listless.

Daphne was thinking of going to bed early, when Echtang and Gadang arrived. They looked cheerful, and their breaths were tinged with alcohol as they panted, following their clamber up the rope from the kitchen.

Echtang coughed. ‘Such smoke,’ he said in the Holdings tongue. ‘Give me one.’

He held out his hand to Chane. She looked at him.

‘Please,’ he stammered, remembering the Holding customs, which he found foolish.

‘Of course,’ Chane smiled, passing him a cigarette.

‘We’ve been drinking with the chiefs,’ Gadang said. He sat, stretching his legs out. ‘We heard the whole story from the front.’

‘Yes?’ Daphne said, her attention fixing on the young men.

‘The Sanang have won a great victory,’ Gadang said. ‘Our warriors surged through the gap in the enemy lines and attacked a big supply base, before the Holdings had withdrawn, and caught them by surprise. There was a battle, and the Sanang captured the base, and drove off the Holdings soldiers, killing and capturing many. The chiefs said that the Holdings were in full retreat, running back to their wall.’

‘One supply base?’ Mink muttered. ‘Doesn’t sound like much.’

Echtang looked at him with contempt. ‘The chiefs said that more swords and armour were captured, than there was in the whole Sanang army. Uncle Agang’s reward is that every one of his warriors, all sixteen hundred, will get his own sword.’ He beamed with pride.

‘And over two thousand slaves were taken,’ Gadang added. ‘As many as were killed.’

‘The Holdings lost four thousand?’ Daphne said.

‘Yes. And Uncle Agang is getting much of the credit, after his victory at your outpost. On Autumn’s Day, the chiefs will announce that he will be commanding the Sanang armies next year, and if the Holdings do come back, they’ll get a big surprise.’

Daphne blinked. This was the first usable piece of information that the nephews had supplied, something that she could take back to the Holdings, to warn them, if somehow she could get out.

‘It certainly was a great victory at the outpost,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Echtang said. ‘Everyone in Sanang is drinking to uncle’s name.’

‘I’m sure,’ she continued, while Weir raised a surreptitious eyebrow at her. ‘Tactically, it was genius. Were you there at the planning?’

‘We were,’ Echtang said. ‘Uncle showed us the plans the night before he left.’

She nodded along.

‘He told us where his warriors would be,’ Echtang continued, gesturing, ‘and all about the main attack on the gate, and how two hundred of his best would sneak around the side to climb a tower, and about how no reinforcements could reach you in time, because all of the other Holdings soldiers had already retreated.’

‘How clever of Agang to have known that,’ she said, her heart racing.

‘It wasn’t his cleverness, well, not that bit,’ Echtang said. ‘The young war god told him.’

‘Really?’ she said. She knew a little of the Sanang religion. They had an ancient trinity of old deities, and a new, younger warlike god.

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