They would know when the silence ended.
“No, General Uric, the offer of your life is nothing to me. What I will take is something very different.”
He took the time to fix each of the twelve with a foreboding stare…
“As we gather to explore what must happen next, my guards are on task to allow us the means to success…
“Your families, your wives and husbands, your children and grandchildren, are being escorted to my compound. Their safety is ensured for as long as your abilities and efforts meet the expectations of an empire under siege. Should you fail me, each of you will feel the fullness of my hatred of failure. I will take each of you, and with the will of my soul you will—one at a time—kill the complete family of a fellow commander while the other watches. When all are dead, I will ensure you live a long time to completely digest the failure you have inflicted upon yourselves.”
Yes, there it was. Their eyes no longer met his; maybe the floor held some greater lure.
Now for the task at hand.
Chapter 25
Nothing Is What It Seems
It was one thing to plan for battle; it was a whole other matter to prepare for a battle with no territory to invade or defend. At least not a territory considered habitable.
They needed the dagger. That meant Lord Wallace dead in order to get it; what happened after that had too many moving parts to postulate any possibilities.
Nor was everyone inside the garrison in agreement on how they should proceed with the assault on Lord Wallace. All understood Wallace’s power, and if there could be no other agreement about what was to come, they had no problem concluding that the hand of Lord Wallace and his army would be swift and without mercy.
Devyn walked the garrison, the moons lighting his way, his two shadows looking to stroll in different directions. It crossed his mind that the message of the shadows echoed his real predicament. No, his shadows were wrong, victims of what the moons made them do, and what the moons could do to the mind.
There was only one way forward.
He might regret the consequences, but he would not regret the decision. His conversations with Brenna regarding responsibility had helped him make the distinction. Not that he had ever assumed all decisions must have good outcomes to be valid, but he had somehow tied the decision of intention to the consequence and not merely the righteousness of the endeavor.
Should the decision involve the possibility of saving two old people now at the end of their time, as opposed to the ability to save one baby with the potential of a full life ahead, the choice would involve a loss no matter which path was taken. The greatest folly with decision-making was to make no choice at all. There were always consequences—intended and unintended.
Turmoil was not at all the proper description of the incidents that were now unfolding. Yes, there was alarms and gatherings to escalate such alarms; there were angry voices that called for peace and compromise, as other angry voices demanded what was so long due Wallace. His people were afraid, and with good reason. Those towns and villages in proximity to his small garrison were especially in fear. Word of what had happened in the defeat of Wallace’s troops had spread.
That made Devyn somewhat of a hero, but when the talk continued and the size and prowess of his force was compared to Wallace’s, the conversations quickly turned to matters of luck—and whispers concluding it could not happen a second time. The surrounding populace now lived with the idea that what came next for Lord Gerrick would also come for them. And it was such that Devyn’s next actions must include something to soothe their fears even as his posturing and focus must be on preparation for battle.
His shadows might do what they were driven to do by the moons, but he would not be guided by such light; he must assemble all resources possible, train his men and women to the best of their ability, and maximize the best possible strategy for success.
Let the light of moons be for lovers.
As a child he’d barely understood how the moons gave forth their light. It was only later that he’d learned it was the greatness of the sun that bestowed such brilliant light on the moons. That greatness of the sun was not lost on him, nor what the sun did to enhance the power and wonder of the moons. People worked the day and often cursed their toil in the heat of the sun. Those same people vowed their love for the light of moons, to the moons themselves, never once giving the sun its due for its continued light upon their world, blaming it for only its heat.
Indeed it was with leadership. Tracker had told him that he had the attributes of a warrior. He never expounded on what those attributes were, but he had insisted that turning a warrior into a leader gave the world a greater person who knew best when to fight and when to follow the path to peace. Good leadership, Tracker had said, came with a skilled propensity to shine a light on those who must enter the darkness and draw the blood; let the leader take resolve from having lent guidance so the darkness did its minimum of carnage.
Tracker further informed him of what he referred to as an old adage: those given greatness should do great things. He had pressed upon Devyn a haunting message that none made it by themselves. True and trusted leaders either rose on the backs of those who came before them, or else they climbed to the top from the efforts of those who aided in their struggle to set the way, most times a combination of the two.
He had not considered himself to be someone who had received great things until now. But he had. Brenna first among them. All his comrades and a growing number of folks were placing their hopes in his abilities.
Tracker, what have you done?
Wallace had perhaps received that message of great people having a responsibility to do great things a little differently. Well, unless one assumed that someone given great power, who’d then used it to feed his own ego, power, and wealth, had achieved a similar outcome. One lesson Wallace had likely learned was that with such great power came the fear of losing it, and so the need to protect it would mean an increase in a need for servitude and control, a lockdown of the masses.
Yes, he and Brenna had disturbed the beast, and only the act of laying that beast to rest well beyond the sleep of mortals would ever again bring it to halt its merciless onslaught.
Devyn kept moving along the perimeter. He picked up the occasional whisper of the men and women guards as they announced his approach to the other soldiers. He wanted so much to stop and talk awhile, but that was not the job of a leader. A leader did what the sun did to the moons; the moons moved into the darkness as his soldiers must move into war, and the sun gave what light it could to light the way, though the sun was not of the night.
I will be the sun and the moons.
Damn. He was already transforming into what he did not want to become.
The battle, so soon to commence… yes, that had to be his focus. What was about to unfold would not be a stealth action in the dead of night; it would roll across the land like an avalanche down a mountain. Wallace would arrive with all the fury of a thunderstorm, with a day’s wind at its front to announce its arrival and a night’s full of tornados to ensure what was left behind bore no resemblance to what still lived.
This evening there would be no need to worry about surprise. But his guards were preparing for war, so the protocol of guarding was in motion.
He stopped to visit Fury; Amaris was peeking in the stall window. Fury seemed barely concerned with any such attention from a moon, but he welcomed the handful of grain from Devyn.
Devyn continued his inspection of the garrison.
Tomorrow, it would all begin—
Well, well, it appeared necessary to break one of his leadership rules.
The soldier jumped when Devyn tapped him on the shoulder, and Devyn moved back a step. “Sorry to surprise you.”
“My lord… my lord… I didn’t see you coming.”
“Sometimes it’s best to see what’s coming, and it might be your duty to do so.”
“I’m… I’m sorry, sir…
my lord… I didn’t see—”
“A soldier must make the transition from protector to hunter, from sheepdog to hawk. Even though you guard, in war you’re always on the hunt.”
“Lord Gerrick—”
“Say no more. Be the hawk from now on.”
Devyn turned and headed back to Brenna.
A deep sadness entered his soul. Hawks, sheepdogs, what was he doing?
He was doing what had to be done.
*****
He awoke to Brenna in his arms.
He had his boots on before she hit him with the pillow, and tossing the pillow back her way he made his escape; not an escape he wanted, but the day called for an urgency of purpose beyond what the bonds of love might prefer.
Oran, Aleena, and Elian were awaiting his arrival.
Good, the coffee would be brewed and ready. Oran nodded at his entrance. Elian placed four mugs next to the urn holding the ground coffee beans. Oran took the boiling kettle from the fire, filled the urn, placed the top on, and gave it a few shakes. Aleena walked over and poured the four mugs full through the strainer.
“Well, well, my military might! Three of you to prepare coffee? What commander could ask for more?” Devyn grabbed a mug and sat down. “We need to move the garrison.”
Oran was in the process of taking his first sip and all but spit it back into the mug. “Move our garrison? We can’t move our garrison, and where would we move it to?”
“Well, my guess is we can if we have to,” Devyn answered. “As to where, that’ll take some further consideration.”
“Why would we even want to?” Oran asked.
“Ah, that I will and can answer. If we get confronted here by Wallace and his troops, we have nowhere to go but north to the sea or straight through him. Neither direction is to my liking. One, Highrest gets destroyed, and two, that’s not where I need Wallace’s troops to attack.”
“Need?” Aleena interjected.
“Yes, well, need might be a little misuse of the word, but he’ll attack us, and he’ll attack us soon. The best we can do is be where we want to be when he does, and this isn’t the place.”
Elian shook his head. “We have a few other things to put in place before we lay down directions for Lord Wallace to follow… like building an army that might sustain a fight for more than a few swings of the sword. While you were on your journey, we recruited a few more, or perhaps they were vagrants looking for food and a place to rest their heads. Either way, our numbers grew a bit, but I doubt our ferocity as an army has made any monumental progress since your departure.”
“We don’t need to be ferocious; we need to be smarter and better prepared than our opponent,” Oran said. “Yes, numbers count, but what counts more is strategy, cunning, and a well-calculated plan that focuses on winning. Ever watch the hawk prepare for hunting? There’s no posturing, no display of might; in fact, quite the opposite. He sits perched on a branch that gives him cover and a view of the hunting ground. You’ll never see a hawk strutting about his hunting ground, nor will you see him circle low. He circles high in preparation; some hawks dive down to their prey from that position, but the most successful pick a tree branch to land on. No, no matter how fast he might be able to swoop down from the sky, instead he sits, no movement, not a twitch of his neck, and there he waits patiently. He waits for his prey to appear. Even then he moves not a feather. He waits for his prey to divert its eyes to the opposite of where he is perched, and then he strikes: cunning, preparation, and a focus on winning.”
“Well, the last time I looked, hawks hunt alone, and our little army has more in common with a herd of goats left free to run amok than any hawks,” Aleena said.
“Goats are exactly what I was thinking about,” Devyn said. “Exactly what I was thinking about. I shared with you our time with the sisters and those strange cats that protect the old temple… and we agree that Wallace must not get what is in the old temple, and yet his dagger might be the key to getting into the inner room, retrieving the cup and what else might be there. Yes, it’s insane, but the cats are the key to victory.”
“Strange cats that protect a temple, and I won’t even ask about the goats.” Aleena shook her head as she looked up at the ceiling. “Is that the battle plan you’re asking us to enjoin? Look, Devyn, I followed you because I have a grievance with Lord Wallace, but cats who might or might not exist do not give me reason to risk everything in a strike against him. I need more, or—”
“Slow down, Aleena.”
The room was heating up. He and Brenna had seen the cats. None of the others had. He was asking them to believe the impossible. Would he believe under similar circumstances?
He couldn’t even be sure that he believed himself.
“What I’ve told you is impossible to accept, I know. I’m asking you not to judge the validity of the cats; I’m asking you to trust I’m not completely mad, and that I wouldn’t tell you some silly tale in order to enjoin you to follow me. It’s what I know to be true.
“As for the goats, what I have learned from goats is that what appears to be playfulness is in fact a learned behavior to jump on anything, climb anything, eat anything, attack anything, and run from anything with the confidence of outcome that only a tornado can offer to anything in its path. They get that from their constant explorative nature. We must do the same. Look at everything at our disposal, and no matter how unbelievable, explore it until it becomes impossible, and only then release it.”
Devyn wondered if he had jumped off some cliff. What was he doing making some long speech about goats? Damn. He plowed ahead. “We have no time to build an army the size of Wallace’s. I believe we’ve found something that will work. Goats eat poison ivy without consequences. These cats are watchers and protectors of the old city. They have the power to destroy Wallace. I believe I know how to make those cats work for us.”
Oran rose from his seat. “It would appear Lord Gerrick has not only left his goats behind him but his good sense as well, and—”
“Let me explain further—” Devyn said.
“Further explanation isn’t necessary, my friend,” Oran continued. “What I was about to say was that I agree with you. Well, most of it. Our garrison was fine when we needed to hide. We wouldn’t want to bring a battle here, for the reasons you have outlined, and I could add a few reasons more. My guess is our benefactors would be grateful and, in addition, add a monetary gratitude should we move the battleground well away from them. And yes, the idea of having our enemy follow us to a most unsettling surprise isn’t without merit.”
“Do we at least get to meet the sisters before we engage in battle?” Aleena winked at Oran. “I mean, they at least appear tangible if a tad standoffish. I’ll wait at my leisure for the cats.”
Devyn could not help but smile. “The sisters decide who they meet and who they will not meet. I’ll be sure to pass along your request.”
“On second thought,” Aleena added. “I’m okay with the cats.”
Elian shook his head. “I’m glad you can all see the humor in this situation. Me, I don’t care if it’s cats, sisters, or goats, but I do want a plan that we can all agree on.”
“Levity is often a way to reduce the stress in a situation,” Devyn said. “It’s fair to say that if any situation might need a helping of calm, it might be ours. Move an army even as we recruit and train, prepare for a battle in which we’ll be clearly outnumbered, and lead our enemy to a trap that we have no assurance of securing… Yes, we could use some levity, and that being said, yes, Elian, we need a plan we can all agree on.”
They spent the better part of the day looking at the possibilities. They were few, and each one came with a fair share of misgivings. As the day crossed into evening, they reached a consensus of sorts.
*****
At dawn of a predetermined day, Gerrick’s garrison was on the move. Two days journey and the Steel Mountains receded behind them. A little-used back road on the outskirts of Highrest took them down
toward Cliffden.
Two more days at the pace of troops, wagons, and supplies on a slow march took them to flat, open land, as suitable as they were going to find. They set up camp and let the word be spread as to where Lord Gerrick was preparing for battle.
It would take little time for word to reach Wallace.
Chapter 26
Plans
Devyn had not expected their passage into conflict with Wallace would go without the scrutiny of those who took great interest in such events, no matter their lack of information for what was planned or what might occur.
There were the few who expressed praise for his endeavor, although the most boisterous were the dissenters; they were the prophets of destruction whose only agenda with their preaching was to spread doom and gloom of the great cataclysm to come; in reality, their preoccupation with dark pessimism left them with only the ability to forecast rain should a bright sun and no clouds appear on the horizon.
The Last Prophecy Page 26
