webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-091.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-65-cross-check}{%
\section{Chapter 65: Cross-Check}\label{chapter-65-cross-check}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Victory lies in understanding the intentions of the enemy.
Therefore, a general with no intentions cannot be beaten.''}

-- Isabella the Mad, Proceran general
\end{quote}

``So what is this place called again?''

``Maillac, my queen.''

I idly glanced at the man who'd replied to my question. Sir Brandon
Talbot, Grandmaster of the Order of Broken Bells, had not been much
changed by the war. I was often surprised by that. His once-long hair
had been cut short but the beard and the strong build remained just the
same as when I'd first met him, sitting in a cell where Juniper had
tossed him. Many of the great officers of the Army of Callow and other
hosts strained under their burden of their position, but on the contrary
Brandon Talbot had taken rather well to this war. It helped, I
suspected, than this was all simpler the kinds of war he'd known before
-- be it the Folly, where he had fought to maintain Praesi rule under my
banner, or the Tenth Crusade when he'd followed a homegrown villain
against invading heroes.

There was no one alive who could bring horrors to bear that would rival
the Dead King's, but for all the madness this was the kind of war that
my people were most comfortable waging: black and white, no truce with
the Enemy. I sometimes envied that he was not in a position to truly
grasp the kind of ugly dealings necessary to keep something like the
Grand Alliance afloat. A great good too often came at the costs of a
hundred petty evils, like a saint standing on a pedestals devils had
paid for.

``Gods, and to think someone believed it a sound notion to build a
village here,'' I said. ``They must have been drunk.''

The dark-haired nobleman -- one of the few of the breed I caught myself
occasionally liking -- let out a small amused noise.

``Some of the land north of Harrow is not so dissimilar, I am told,''
Brandon Talbot said. ``I was taught as a boy that the people there are
usually poor but skilled hunters and fishermen. As bowmen they have a
high reputation in certain parts, though the Deoraithe are a hard shadow
to escape in that art.''

``Not much left to hunt or fish here,'' I replied. ``Usually isn't,
after the Dead King had a go.''

If the Second Army was to make a stand against a wildly larger amount of
enemy soldiers without getting butchered and overwhelmed, picking the
ground it was going to make that stand on was crucial. We'd dug through
maps and records as well as the officers from Hainaut that Princess
Beatrice had leant me before picking the abandoned village of Maillac,
and for all that the place was a hole in the ground for our purposes it
was perfect. See, for all that undead had less trouble with difficult
terrain than living soldiers they didn't actually get to ignore that
terrain. Swamps, bogs, or other combination of mud and scrum water and
crawling things were easier for undead to go through because unlike
people they wouldn't get cold or tired or sick -- or even attacked by
animals, usually.

But in no way did that mean a swamp was something \emph{easy} for undead
soldiers to march through.

The skeletons still wore armour, still weighed heavy, and as a rule
tended to be significantly less deft and agile than living soldiers
besides. Marching through a mire would wreak havoc on their lines and
they'd be damned slow going through mud -- or, if they weren't, would be
so lightly armoured that our priests would scythe through them like
wheat with volleys of Light. It was a comparative advantage the undead
had, not an absolute one. And that meant that a place like Maillac made
for very good grounds to defend: the village had stood on a relatively
large peninsula surrounded by swamplands in every direction but the
southeast, and with few trees in the immediate area that would obscure
line of sight when the dead came from the west.

We wouldn't be able to fit the entire Second Army on the peninsula that
locals apparently called `the Boot' -- seen from a high hill in the
distance it looked vaguely boot-like, I'd been told after asking -- as
ten thousand soldiers would be much too many, but we could fit at least
half and then position the rest on the broader solid grounds behind the
peninsula, which were thankfully rather difficult to access. To the
north and south there were rock formations and deep water, both of which
would screw with enemy advance even worse than the swamps. That meant
that open grounds around the Boot would be the best approach for the
dead, short of circling rather far around.

Which sounded like a good idea for them, at first glance, as it would
allowed them to attack us from solid land an attempt an encirclement of
our army divided between the Boot and the broader shore. I almost hoped
they made the mistake of attempting that, though, as the amount of time
it would take them to both gather large enough forces and circle around
us meant my army would get to delay the dead long enough for Prince
Klaus to get away and then escape ourselves without even giving battle.
While I might have chosen Maillac as a battle site first and foremost, I
wouldn't complain if we got to evacuate it without first having fought
said battle.

Not that we'd be so lucky. I'd stripped ten thousand legionaries and my
finest horse from the rest of the army before dangling them like juicy
bait out here in the wilds, the Dead King wasn't going to miss the
opportunity to bloody us a bit. Still, I'd not come this far by leaving
things to chance.

``I can see little use for the Order in the battlefield you have chosen
us, Your Majesty,'' Sir Brandon admitted. ``Yet it is not your habit to
act without purpose, so I must presume there is one.''

``The swamp would be hell on the horses, and you're much too heavy,'' I
agreed. ``But I don't actually intend for you to fight \emph{here},
Talbot.''

Blue eyes brightened with understanding.

``We are to go a'raiding, then,'' the Grandmaster smiled.

``And I with you,'' I agreed. ``We'll be taking the Twilight Ways. Once
the Second Army has begun setting up here, you and I are going to make
such a nuisance out of the Order in these parts that Keter will
\emph{have} to come and give us a fight.''

``To vex the Enemy is always a pleasure,'' the bearded knight said,
sounding pleased. ``Even more so if we confound him into an even greater
defeat.''

I looked at him, for a moment, and glimpsed the part of his kind that my
people had loved for so long. That fearless, hardy breed of nobles
that'd known sword and spear just as well as dances and laughed as the
charged under the banners of the Fairfaxes and the Albans to turn back
the invaders of the east and the west. War wasn't a trade to him, I
thought, not like it was to the Legions and so many in the Army. War was
part of who he was, just as much as his name or his blood. \emph{War
isn't just what we do, Catherine, it's what we are}, Juniper had once
told me. She'd been speaking of her own people, that night, but so often
I found that Praes and Callow were more deeply intertwined than either
care to admit.

``I mean to do more than just vex,'' I said. ``Half the world still sits
up when our war horns are sounded, Talbot. I mean to brand that fear
anew in the legions of the dead.''

His fist struck his breastplate over his heart, the thump pleasantly
solid to the ear.

``We are at your command, Queen Catherine,'' the knight said.

For a few years yet, I thought. It would be enough.

I would \emph{make} it enough.

---

Sapper-General Pickler, whose notion of the decorum due to her rank
usually varied between `sounds like Commander Waffler's problem' and `if
I'm not covered in dust I'm no doing this right', crouched down on the
shore and dipped a crooked green finger in the mud. After taking a long
sniff, she licked it and hummed.

``So?''

``Rich silt,'' Pickler told me. ``Good material. Mind you, mudbricks in
this humid a locale would be foolish. There's clay, though, and we can
use that for fired bricks. The trees in this dump aren't for much of
anything, though. I'll need companies out foraging for decent firewood
if we're going to be cooking bricks.''

It was in moments like this that I was awe at what something like the
War College actually stood for, what it achieved. That little exchange
we'd just had alone was something that'd be impossible to have in most
armies of our age. See, there were engineers in the ranks of Procer and
the Free Cities with knowledge much like Pickler's. Neither goblins nor
Praesi had a monopoly on such things. But none of these had the
\emph{rest}. Pickler had been taught about mages, so she understood that
we couldn't just use spells to make her fired bricks: we'd half-kill our
mages with exhaustion before we were anywhere done. Pickler had been
taught about defensive tactics, so she knew how quickly I'd need the
bricks and that if I didn't get enough making any was a waste of time:
that meant making many fires, and firewood.

Pickler had been taught about limited manpower logistics, too, and so
combining all these teachings in a few moments she'd put together a
proposal. One tailored to the rough amount of people I'd be able to
spare, and how many would be needed to achieve what needed to done in
our current time strictures. In effect, several companies of regulars on
rotation with attached mages for Twilight Ways access.

Most of the contemporary armies of my allies and enemies had all this
knowledge, in practice, but none of them had it concentrated in the same
person. Maybe a few exceptional fantassin captains might have most of
these competences, or rare Helikean generals, but those individuals
would be rare. My father had made the War College into a place that
could make entire companies of those rare individuals \emph{every year}.
There were many who still thought the Conquest had been an outlier, an
anomaly made possible only by the genius of the Black Knight and the
Marshals of Callow. Those people were fools. The Conquest had been won
in stone classrooms a decade before armies lined up on both sides of the
Fields of Streges.

``You'll have them,'' I said. ``How much can you fortify in two days?''

``The Boot will be walled up, and we'll have platforms for those of my
ballistas you didn't hand off to your toy general,'' Pickler replied, a
tad peevishly. ``We'll have to use palisades for the part stretching
between the end of the boot and the deep waters to the south. We won't
be able to put up anything else in time.''

I slowly nodded, fixing the picture in my mind's eyes. The peninsula was
where I wanted clay walls the most, since it would be suffering the
brunt of the enemy assault. Palisades to the south would get rough,
given that Keter usually was capable of toppling those by throwing
enough corpses at them -- to say nothing of constructs or Revenants --
but we weren't trying to make an invincible citadel out of this chunk of
swamp. Favourable fighting grounds would have to be enough.

``And the northern grounds?'' I pressed.

The peninsula on which Maillac was built looked like a boot fitted to a
particularly fat foot, but it wasn't jutting out of perfectly straight
dry -- well, dryer anyway -- land. To the south a wavy shoreline
connected to the top edge of the boot kept going for about two hundred
feet before jutting rocks and deep water made the grounds impractical to
pass. As Pickler had said, we'd cover that stretch with palisades. But
from the uppermost top edge of the boot the shoreline instead went
straight for maybe forty feet before jutting upwards for a hundred feet
and curving east into the second mass of rocks and deep water that were
the reason I'd picked Maillac as our battlefield in the first place.

It meant there was a stretch of water between the Boot and the shore,
which to make things even worse wasn't even particularly deep. Skeletons
coming through the mire would use it as a ramp to flood our northern
flank, it was pretty much a given.

``If we had a week I'd sink a stone wall and drain it,'' Pickler replied
with a sigh that rattled through her teeth, ``but we don't. The mud is
too soft there, Catherine, and unlike the Boot or the deeper shore
there's no solid layer to steady a palisade on.''

I grimaced.

``So we make a fort deeper in and dig in for a rough fight,'' I
summarized.

``I can make fortified nests for scorpions, with an eye to firing on
anything that emerges from the water,'' my Sapper-General said. ``But
anything beyond that would take more time and hands than we have to
spare.''

She sounded almost apologetic, which was rare for her.

``These are imperfect grounds,'' I said. ``I didn't expect you to wave a
magic wand and make them into an impenetrable fortress. Already you're
doing wonders, Pickler.''

And I wasn't lying for her benefit there: that in the span of a mere two
days my sappers would be able to turn this defendable stretch of swamp
into a makeshift fortress was beyond impressive. When I'd made the
decision to use only the Second Army and the Order as delaying forces,
I'd been able to make that decision comfortably because I'd known almost
half of the sapper corps remained with me instead of manning the siege
engines that by now General Abigail would be using to reduce the Cigelin
Sisters. I relied on my sappers a great deal, which I knew they took
pride in, but I would not let the burden of unrealistic expectations
crush them.

``I want to do more,'' Pickler admitted, to my surprise. ``There won't
be another war like this in my lifetime, Catherine. This is the one I'll
get to fight, the one I'll get to make my teeth on.''

She clicked her teeth, the flash of needle-like row betraying what had
to be genuine irritation. Goblins were easier to read than humans, in
some ways -- most didn't bother to hide their body language the way a
deceitful human would, since most of my race never learned goblin body
subtext.

``I work with imperfect tools, the way all my predecessors have,''
Pickler said, ``but it\ldots{} irks, that I know we could be better.
That we could match Keter blow for blow, if we had the time and the
coin.''

I hid a fond smile. Leave it to my Sapper-General to be irked by being
on the lesser side in an arms race with the Hidden Horror. Even most
heroes, those chosen few blessed with the belief of promised victory,
usually limited their ambition to survival and eking out a win when it
came to the Original Abomination. Yet Pickler of the High Ridge tribe
had been forged of goblin steel tempered in Wasteland fire, kept sharp
by the whetstone of the Uncivil Wars. When faced with dreadful might,
the Sapper-General of Callow's nature was not to cower but to crave to
surpass it.

``War's not over,'' I said. ``One day it will take us to the gates of
the Crown of the Dead itself, Pickler.''

I offered her a smile.

``On that day, I expect you will find your coffers filled to burst and
few requests beyond acquiescence,'' I said.

``Gobbler grant me breath until then,'' Pickler of the High Ridge tribe
grinned, all teeth and malice, and offered a quick bow. ``I'll get
started on the work, Your Majesty.''

I nodded back, mind already moving. The Order of Broken Bells was
already mustering for the raids, picking out targets with General Hune
and Hakram, and now my Sapper-General had assignments and hands to see
it through. It was time, then, to see to the\ldots{} irregulars.

---

I'd begun with Masego because I'd figured it would be less unsettling to
look at than whatever it was that Akua wanted the Rapacious Troubadour
for, but alas it seemed that hubris had come around to bite me in the
tit. That Hierophant would be standing atop a flat floating stone was
sadly not unexpected, nor were the smaller rocks circling around him
with visibly shifting runes carved into them. That the Grey Pilgrim
would be stand with him there, though, head cocked to the side as if he
were listening to someone talking as he \emph{corrected} some of the
runework, very much was.

``- being very helpful,'' I heard Zeze say, tone appreciative. ``I could
talk to Catherine about remuneration, if you'd like, or draw from
Arsenal discretionary funds.''

Well, that was nice of him.

``A kind thought,'' Tariq drily replied, ``but the Ophanim require no
compensation for their help.''

Wait, had he been talking about paying the Choir of Mercy? Godsdamnit,
Masego, we \emph{definitely} didn't have room for that in the budget. I
cleared my throat as I got closer, as it seemed both of them were too
involved with their work to be paying attention to their surroundings.

``Catherine,'' Hierophant greeted me. ``Come to have a look?''

``You might say that,'' I replied. ``Pilgrim, always a pleasure to see
you.''

I did not bother to specify that I'd not actually expected to see him,
though, as it was pretty much implied by his mere presence here.

``And you,'' the old man said, sounding amused. ``We have been lending a
hand to the Lord Hierophant, you see, as his work has proved to
have\ldots{} surprising provenances.''

``I figured out how angels smite people,'' Zeze said, sounding very
pleased with himself. ``More or less. When the Ophanim tried to kill us
all at Lyonceau I got a good look.''

``That was not their intent at all,'' Tariq sighed. ``The death of the
Tyrant of Helike -- a necessity, I'm sure you'll agree -- was all that
was sought.''

``By smiting,'' Masego helpfully specified. ``Which I am now
reproducing, only without the angels.''

``Are you now,'' I faintly said. ``How lovely.''

I looked to the Pilgrim, expecting an elaboration but receiving only a
blithe shrug.

``It's not an inaccurate description,'' Tariq said. ``They're very
interested in seeing if it works.''

``Are they now,'' I said, tone grown even fainter. ``That's nice.''

``Now,'' Masego said, ``I know what you're thinking.''

He tried to lean against a rotating stone but mistimed it and almost
stumbled off the floating stone, the Pilgrim discreetly pulling at his
robes so he wouldn't.

``I doubt that,'' I noted, ``but go on.''

``If a Choir does not power the smiting, what \emph{does}?'' Hierophant
enthusiastically asked.

``The bone-deep existential dread of all who witness your works?'' I
suggested.

``Too narrow, but you're along the right path,'' Masego encouraged me.

I glanced at Tariq.

``I thought you Light-wielding types had objections to blasphemy,'' I
said.

And this felt, like, maybe two or three steps past simple blasphemy. I'd
say we were uncovering fresh new heretical horizons, but that was always
a hard claim to make for anyone remotely familiar with Praesi history.

``Smiting is being used as a purely technical term here, with no
religious connotations,'' the Grey Pilgrim serenely replied.

\emph{Tariq, you shit}, I uncharitably thought.

``Besides, if this endeavour succeeds it may be possible to reproduce it
purely using Light,'' the old man airily continued.

Meaning that Zeze's brain was being utterly terrifying, as usual, but
that in this particular case it might lead to a skill usable for heroes
down the line -- and Crows, wasn't \emph{that} particular prospect worth
a fucking shiver or two? -- so he was willing to not only refrain from
objecting but actively help. I narrowed my eyes at the smiling old man,
knowing Goods might just be getting the better bargain here. There was
no guaranteed that Hierophant would ever be able to pass this down to
anyone else on my side, so the knowledge might very well die out. The
Choir of Mercy, though, would not forget a damned thing.

And the Ophanim were not, in my experience, shy about handing out this
sort of knowledge to their favourites.

``How fortunate,'' I replied with a grunt. ``What is it you're using,
Masego?''

``I had thought to use Night, at first,'' the dark-skinned mage idly
said, ``but Sve Noc did not seem willing. So instead we will draw on
Arcadia for power and use runework to give the power shape.''

I blinked.

``And that'll work?'' I asked

``Should it not, I expect the result will be a large explosion followed
by temporary instability in the weave of Creation on a local level,''
Tariq noted.

``We can use that too,'' Masego happily told me. ``So there's really no
downside.''

I closed my eyes and breathed out. Well, he wasn't exactly \emph{wrong}.
Mind you, Zeze tended to be very reasonable even when suggesting utter
lunacy so that wouldn't be a first. And this seemed like a functioning
weapon, if an unstable and dangerous one. I opened my eyes.

``This won't hurt our own?'' I asked.

``No,'' Masego replied, tone serious. ``Precautions were taken. It will
not kill your soldiers.''

``Then all hail the mighty smiters,'' I drily said. ``Have fun, you two,
and try not to bring down Arcadia Resplendent on our heads.''

Which might have been a tad hypocritical of me to say, I mentally
acknowledged as I limped at and left them to their work, since \emph{I}
was the one who kept stealing lakes from there.

---

I caught a few bits of the song on the wind before I saw either of them,
the almost mournful tone of the Troubadour's voice matching the sad
strums of his cithern. The tent was wide open, leaving the song to take
to the sky unhindered.

\emph{``- we of steel,}

\emph{Forged in the east}

\emph{As turns the wheel}

\emph{And carrion feast.''}

I knew precious few Praesi songs, unless you counted Legion ones, but
this one I'd heard of before. \emph{The Tyranny of the Sun}, it was
called, an old war song from the days of the Sixty Years War. It'd been
banned since, but banning a song only rarely succeeded at stamping it
out. Making it forbidden tended to raise interest, if anything. The few
Praesi tunes I'd heard -- \emph{Count the Nights}, \emph{Upon All the
World} and \emph{Burning Kiss} -- tended towards the boastful or the
romantic, not the almost wistful beat of this one. It was, I suddenly
recalled, a favourite of my father's. Given that this had to be a
request if Akua's, I almost smiled at the thoughts.

Neither of them would be particularly pleased to hear they had something
in common, even something as small as a liking for a song.

I found the both of them seated inside. The Rapacious Troubadour was
sprawled indolently in a chair, long crooked fingers dancing across his
cithern as he smiled. Dark-haired and pale, the man would have been
handsome if nor for the too-red lips and insincere eyes. Though he wore
armour when battle was at hand, he rarely bothered without immediate
danger to move him: his tunic and cloak were of tasteful cut and good
make, in shades of purple, while both trousers and boots were leather.
He'd been looking at Akua with something like hunger in his gaze when I
entered, though he immediately averted his eyes. \emph{Ah, but is it the
looks or the soul that draw your attention?}

The shade herself had claimed a small table and a folding chair, leaning
forward with quill and parchment in hand -- which bared an interesting
expanse of smooth skin, given the generous neckline of her red dress
patterned with what looked like peacock feathers in blue. I'd seen
enough of Akua actively trying to appeal to suspect she wasn't even
trying to be enticing at the moment. She was just good-looking enough
that even at work it looked like she was posing for a painting.

``Dearest,'' the devil in question said, raising her head to smile at
me. ``How kind of you to visit.''

The Troubadour eased into an interruption of the song, the notes fading
naturally, and then offered me a short bow.

``Your Majesty,'' Lucien greeted me. ``Ever a pleasure.''

``Is it now?'' I mused. ``Good to know.''

``Do not bully my singer,'' Akua chided me. ``He has been singing the
loveliest songs.''

``The Tyranny of the Sun?'' I asked, cocking an eyebrow.

``Somewhat maudlin, I know,'' she smiled, ``but it has such a pleasant
melody.''

I smiled at her, knowing something she did not and amused by the secret.

``Got anything out of it?'' I asked, glancing at her parchment.

A magical formula, by the looks of it. I could recognize certain parts
of it from our lessons -- wait, no, this was a ritual but it was meant
to be used with Night. It just looked like sorcery because she was
basing its workings on Trismegistan principles. I leaned in, frowning as
I took a closer look. The scale of the power used would be large, since
she was using the notations that meant every number mean should be
multiplied by a thousand, but the duration would be\ldots{} short? Maybe
just a few breaths. And I wasn't recognizing the end of her formula at
all, there wasn't even a boundary strength or an allowed variance.

Mind you, for all my lessons I was still essentially a drunken monkey
trying to decipher the works of one of the greats of our age so my
incomprehension should not be a surprise.

``I believe so,'' Akua smiled. ``It occurred to me, my heart, that the
strengths of Night lie in its flexibility. Yet this comes at the price
of a weakness, namely that it is only ever second best in all the many
things it can accomplish.''

\emph{If even that}, I thought. I called it the power of a thief for a
reason. She wasn't wrong, though, and if anything she was underselling
it: given equal Night and Light on both sides of a struggle, Light would
win ten times out of ten. Entities wielding Light and Night weren't
necessarily bound to that outcome, mind you, but in a straight fight it
had to be said that Light always won. Considering that the prevailing
theory was that Light had been made by the Gods Above when Creation was
first built and that Night was only indirectly the work of the Gods
Below, that made a great deal of sense to me.

``Let's say I agree,'' I replied. ``What follows?''

``A great deal of power that could benefit from a\ldots{} more defined
method of channeling,'' Akua said. ``One more deeply aligned with
Creation.''

I studied her for a moment, then discreetly flicked my eyes towards the
Rapacious Troubadour. Her smile widened.

``Huh,'' I said. ``Is that\ldots{} wise?''

She read between the lines, catching on to my very delicate question of
`are you \emph{sure} using the soul-eating villain as a Night-channel
isn't going to fuck us over?'.

``It is my ritual,'' she easily replied. ``It remains in my hands from
beginning to end.''

Meaning that the Rapacious Troubadour would be a ritual component more
than an active participant. Ah, I was already slightly more comfortable
with this. Still not exactly eager, but damned few of the tricks we
needed to win this war were anything that could reasonably be called
safe.

``And you're sure you'll get results,'' I said.

``I have proved the underlying principles,'' Akua said, and leaned back
as if to offer me a closer look at her notes.

Yeah, that would serve no real purpose. I had an almost decent handle on
basic Trismegistan spell formulas these days -- might not be able to
\emph{make} one, but was reliably able to pick out which part did what
-- but taking a gander at the kind of work that lay behind crafting an
entirely new ritual, one working and Night and somehow involving a
Named, would be absurd. I did not have the knowledge to parse the
knowledge necessary to grasp the principles behind the basics of what
was involved there.

``I'll take you to your word,'' I easily said. ``But what is it your
ritual will do, exactly?''

She gestured for me to come closer and whispered the answer in my ear. I
drew back with a startled look.

``You're sure?'' I asked.

``The effects could be inferior to my expectations, but there will be
effects,'' Akua calmly said. ``Of that there can be no doubt.''

I let out a low whistle.

``Well, here's hoping it takes fully,'' I said. ``It would make a real
difference, and not just in the coming battle.''

``I expect Trismegistus will mend the weakness eventually,'' the shade
shrugged. ``Yet for now we have the element of surprise, so a success
can be reasonably hoped for.''

Mhm. She'd not used that name as a coincidence: it was a veiled reminder
that there was a reason Praesi magic was called \emph{Trismegistan}
sorcery. We were using his own methods against him, which meant our
advantage was likely to be quite temporary.

``I'll dare hope for it, then,'' I said. ``Did I glimpse correctly that
you'll be using a song?''

``Indeed,'' Akua said, sounding pleased. ``Do you have a particular
preference? Lucien has proved to have a remarkable repertoire at his
disposal.''

I glanced at the smiling man in question. Yeah I figured he would, what
with all the godsdamned souls he'd eaten.

``It's your ritual,'' I said. ``Let it be your song as well.''

``You do me honour,'' the golden-eyed beauty said. ``As it happens, I
did have a thought.''

``Oh?''

``\emph{Stars From the Sky},'' Akua said in Mtethwa. ``It is ancient,
but remains sung for good reason.''

``Never heard of it,'' I replied, ``but I'll look forward to mending
that.''

She inclined her head.

``I will endeavour,'' Akua Sahelian smiled, ``not to disappoint.''