It comes to a head at Underhill.
There have been small clashes, and losses relatively light for all they're sore; the Highland rangers and the Plains warriors in concert make for an army more lightfooted than Pepperidge would have believed possible, even for elves. They have danced through the mountains, splitting and meeting and being, as much as possible, simply not wherever the Fürsten have swung their crushing might.
There is a growing feeling that every step they take is winding a cord into an ever-tighter twist, and that sooner or later fingers must slip, and the force released will be the end. The only question, that nobody dare frame: the end of what.
When spies and scouts bring the whisper that the Fürsten lords themselves ride at the head of an army, and that they are set on the field of Underhill, it is obvious that for all their nimble reeling, their next steps have been narrowed to two possibilities: meet the lords steel to steel, or flee.
Everyone understands that they are seen, and known, and that it is too late to vanish once more into the crags and forests. If they run, the Fürsten will run them down, even if they need run ten thousand of their own to death to do it; and will find force to spare at the end of it to hack down enough Plainsmen for the stars to see the bloodstain on the face of the world.
"About time," Allister Iron-Hands grunts. "All this skulking in bushes, ye can't do it for ever; an army's nerves don't last."
"The details are never one's own to pick," Avren the Sparrow says, behind their ever-present mask. "I'd not have picked all these, but I'd not have spurned them all, either."
"Ye takes the sword ye have, and ye swings toward whatever neck is fool enough to jump," Allister says. "Aye, Bannerlass?"
This last he throws in Pepperidge's direction.
She had raised, at some point or other, a doubt that she was offering aught to the Termist army's war meetings, and had it waved away with a vague, cheery assurance that her presence was poetic.
("What, exactly, does that mean?"
("Oh, well," Taelin had beamed, making a positive show of being evasive. "Poetry, you know.")
"I'm sorry?" she says now. "Banner?" She skewers Taelin, now, with the glare she'd forborne then.
"Ah, I neglected to mention." He winces a little. "Your pardon, Professor, you can hold a sword, but...."
"There are things to do that perhaps I'm suited better for, such as staying from underfoot of people who can use one well. This I know." She plants her hands on her hips. "Banner, Taelin. Explain banner to me."
"Oh, armies have them!" he starts, and stops again at the look on her face.
"I swear I understand better every day why she throws things at your head," Pepperidge tells him.
"...You're to carry a banner for us on the field," he owns up.
"And so Bannerlass. I thank you, Iron-Hands." She nods gravely to the big warrior. "Taelin. I've never carried a battle standard in my life; is it wise to surprise me thus without the time to accustom myself?"
The elves exchange looks around her.
"You've borne up under far worse," Taelin says, in an embarrassed way. "And I know, Professor, I know it's not ideal, but — poetry."
"I am but a humble fool without any. You may have to explain."
"Swive me, man," Allister mumbles. "I had a wife who took that tone wi' me once. Took a butcher knife to me later, when I slept."
"How is Grana?" the Sparrow murmurs back at him.
"Oh, fine, fine. An urge for the sea took upon her and she sails with the alfar-zee this last while. Visited last, oh, maybe eighty summers? Brought a chestful of seashells for the many-great grandweans." The big man's smile glitters. "Still a damn fine girl to play 'Pirate queen demands yer booty' with — "
"Taelin," she prompts, lest they succeed in waylaying the topic.
"Stories," he sighs. "There's power in stories, aye? All kinds of power, on one's own mind, and on an army, a croft, a people."
Poetry. And she sees it. "Ah," she says, dry and gimlet-eyed. "The Professor, she bests an elder, honest combat over skulduggery! The Professor, she sits in counsel with generals and sorcerors! So it must be good when she marches with us today, dangling off our banner like a lucky rabbit's foot — "
"Don't eat anything that woman cooks," Allister hisses toward Taelin.
"Mercy, if you want him to cook for himself, you've more ire for him than I," Pepperidge says.
"Professor," the Sparrow says, voice full of laughter. "You wrong yersel'. I won't lie, yes, we've woven your tale into our own ends; but you come to us bearing the Heart. Stories had a use for you long before you walked beside us, and they don't pick wrong. Pick vile, sometimes, weak, or tragic; but black my eyes if I ever breathe any of those by way of your name. We take what the world sends, aye? As Iron-Hands says."
Pepperidge sighs, weary, as much from the constant sense that she needs things explained to her that an elven babe in arms grasps without a thought. "And so the Heart-Bearer marches with us," she says. "And the Heart, terrible as it is, is a force of power, is a force of change, and change is what we march for. We fight, we may die, but we cannot lose, because the Heart's story has become woven with our own."
"Well, there's nuance," the Sparrow says. "But you appreciate it's hard to convey across our cultures, aye?"
Which is, she notices — in a very elven way — neither a yea nor a no to her own assertion.
"And why not tell me sooner?" she says tiredly. Of course she'll do it; that's not at all in question.
"Spies," says the charter-sorceror — Harald — in one of his rare contributions. "Stories can bend people toward the what-will-be, Professor, aye? But we're not the only ones telling stories that say we'll win because we can't lose. There's power there, and like all power, it's best applied where it'll do most, not run straight into a wall of rock."
The foolish vortex of unearned reputation that she's fallen into is a known quantity, to the Fürsten; but still, she sees, exactly when and how the Termists choose to field it can make a weapon of surprise.
"Well, you're forgiven, then," she tells Taelin, no less dry. "Although I do not love surprises, and if my mood makes your cousin fling one thing at you, I'll not take any blame."
"My poor head," Taelin mourns.
"You've borne up," she tells him, "under worse."