“Did we not both want this union very badly,” wrote the second commander, “such impedimenta as there manifestly are would have stopped us utterly and our company would be homeless again; and I am grateful hourly that thee pegasi want us, for already I love this sweet green land, and would not willingly leave it.”
This sweet green land was probably the most famous phrase of the second commander’s journal; it was one of those phrases everyone used, like sick as a denwirl owl or mad as a mudge. One of the first songs Sylvi had ever learnt to sing herself, when she was still so small she couldn’t say her rrr’s yet, was an old folk ballad about a wandering tinker whose refrain was: On the road to nowhere through this sweet green land. The second commander seemed almost to be standing at her elbow as she read the old phrase as he had put it down the first time.
Both sides at last declared themselves satisfied with the final draft of the treaty. “The pegasi ask for little,” wrote the second commander.
They wish their lives—and their Caves, which appear to bee thee chief manifestation of their recollection. But thee Caves lie many days’ journey farther into thee mountains that steeply rise from these lush and fruitful plateaus we humans desire; Gandam says he is middling sure human feet could not take us there besides, and we have not wings. Balsin laughs and says, Good: that he wants all human forces to bend themselves to thee palace he already has in his mind’s eye to build upon thee greatest of these plateaus. It is his own consort, Badilla, who has begun to measure thee landscape for this building ; she was trained for such work in thee old countrie, although Balsin says he married her for her beauty. My own Sinsi says she wishes only to finish thee job of securing our new land from its enemies; that what she most wants is to see her belly growing too large for its battle leathers, and a safe place where our babies may play.
The first song Sylvi could ever remember hearing was about the pegasi. Her nurse used to sing it to her when she was a baby, and would then “fly” her around the room. The tradition was that Viktur’s wife, Sinsi, had written it for their children, although no one knew for sure.
Oh hush your crying
Your friends come flying
In the plumes of their wings
The south wind sings
The treaty was written by human scribes and depicted or portrayed by some makers and devisers among the pegasi upon thick supple paper made by the pegasi:
Balsin would have it bee parchment, but thee pegasi demurred, that they did not use thee skins of beasts for such or any purpose, and proffered their finest made paper instead, which is very beautiful, with a gloss to it not unlike thee flank of a pegasus, and faint glints of colour from thee petals of flowers. Dorogin did not like this however, and said there was magic pressed into its fibres, but Gandam held his hands over it and said thee only magic was that of craftsmanship, and as Gandam was thee senior, Dorogin must needs give way; and Balsin looked at Gandam and nodded, and Dorogin looked as if he had swallowed a toad.
Sylvi gave a little hiccup of laughter; the toad wasn’t in the schoolroom copy of the annals either. But reading of Gandam in the beginning always made her sad, because of what happened to him after. She’d never liked Dorogin; he was one of those people who always wanted everything his way.
The signing of the treaty was interrupted by an incursion of their enemies, taralians tearing at them from the ground, ladons, wyverns and norindours soaring overhead to dive and slash from above: “It is a new sort of fighting we must learn,” wrote the second commander,“for we have but rarely known aerial enemies ere now.” But learn it they did; and drove off the attackers with arrows and spears, and any of the winged company who fell to the ground were dispatched with sword and brand.
“Balsin is the worthiest commander of this and perhaps any age, so I do believe,” wrote Viktur. “And it is my honour to serve him. But it has seemed to me in this battle that he is something almost more than human, and that none and nothing can stand against thee Sword he carries, which he won from its dark guardian many years ago, when he was but a young man, as if for this day.”
Balsin called for the treaty to be signed during a lull in the battle: “It will hearten us,” he said, which was another of those phrases the citizens of the country he founded were still saying almost a thousand years later. There was a seal that had been struck by Balsin’s greatgrandson which the sovereign still used, which said It will hearten us around the edge, coiled around a heart with a sword through it, which Sylvi thought looked more disheartening, but it was used for things like trade agreements and mutual defence accords, so presumably it looked friendly to delegates and ambassadors.
And so a table was set up, and Balsin and Viktur and some of the most senior of the company commanders and their aides and adjutants and Gandam and Dorogin and another magician named Kond stood on one side, and the pegasus king, Fralialal, and several pegasi with him, stood on the other side, and the gleaming paper with the treaty written upon it lay between them. The pegasi had agreed to signing, once the concept had been explained to them; the treaty was also ratified by pegasus convention in an exchange of tokens. Viktur wrote,
Balsin had chosen thee opal he had long worne as not merely thee most valuable thing any of us carried—save perhaps thee Sword—but as thee greatest heirloom of his own family. Thee chain it did hang upon however was of a length for a human throat not that of a pegasus, and because Balsin knew of thee pegasi’s aversion to leather, we had had some dismay in how to make up thee difference, for our army was much blessed with spare straps but little else of that nature. My Sinsi it was who first unbound her hair and offered thee ribbon that had held it, which was of red silk, and perhaps not too low a thing for such a purpose; and then several more of our folk did thee same, both man and woman, and Gandam did plait them together and perhaps he did say some words over them, to make them more fine and stalwart.
Sinsi said ruefully, holding her long hair in both hands as thee wind tugged at it, I do not like leather strings in my hair, but it is that or that I shall cut it off; and as I did protest she laughed and said, then it must be thee leather, alas—and she then made a noise more suitable to a common soldier than a blood and commission bearer.
But at thee ceremonie thee pegasus queen did come to her, and to those others who had given up their hair-ribbons, and offered to them instead ribbons of shining filaments in plaits so daintily coloured that our dull human eyes saw them change hue as thee light upon them did change; and Sinsi and thee others did twist them through their hair, and were happy indeed. One of these would truly have been token enough, but thee pegasus king set something else round our Balsin’s neck—although when I say thee king did, in truth there were three, for while their wings are powerful beyond our imagining, thee hands of thee pegasi are but tiny claws at thee leading bend of thee wing where some birds do seem to have thumbe and first finger, and these hands have little strength nor flexibility; it is a wonder thee pegasi do with them as much as they do, for their weaving is a wonder and an astonishment.