"This is a very cunning piece of politics," Dante said. "Are you sure you thought of it?"
"I haven't even finished. He's also got Twill's plans to extend the irrigation canals across the basin and into Parth. If he does that, trade will explode."
"Say no more. I'm ready to declare the Collenese golden age."
"And all we have to do first is thwart the giant empire that's controlled this place since the days when the gods were still learning to wipe themselves."
After getting the enthusiastic agreement of Cord, Ked, and the Keeper, they dispatched a messenger to the Twill residence outside of Dog's Paw. Knowing it would be four days until Boggs or his refusal returned to the city, Dante sat down with Cord and Blays to hash out the initial military strategy.
The first order of business was to establish a scout network along the border, along with sweeps of the interior to ensure that no Mallish forces were hiding out in the vast, empty spaces between the settlements. Lookouts would be established along the king's road from Mallon and across the hills fronting the western border, with instructions to light a signal fire at the first sign of invasion.
Next came the summoning of recruits from the basin's six major towns. Bound by their Code of the Wasp to support each other in times of war, their troops would provide a critical supplement to the city's battered army.
The defense strategy itself was rather straightforward: hole up in Collen. There was only a single road up to the top of the plateau, making it eminently defensible. Starting tomorrow, Dante would open most of a tunnel down to the plains. If the city was in danger of being overrun, he could complete the tunnel with a few minutes' work, providing the Colleners with an escape route.
Unless Mallon's next force was small enough to meet in the open field, they would have to abandon the outlying towns. The Small Senates weren't going to be happy about that. The best Dante could do was suggest they make plans to withdraw their families, livestock, and valuables to the foothills of the eastern mountains, or into the deserts of Parth, with a free-roaming regiment comprised of recruits from the six towns assigned to kill any Mallish scouts who came too close.
A couple of hours before dawn, Dante found himself falling asleep at the table. He excused himself to go to bed. Blays did the same, walking with him toward the manor that was becoming their makeshift command station.
"Still think this is a good idea?" Blays said.
"I think I'd like to be sitting on the roof of the Citadel watching the bay in the company of a large beverage."
"There's nothing keeping us here, you know. This isn't our land. These aren't our people. If you wanted, you could kill a few crows, reanimate them, tie their feet to a harness, and fly us back to Narashtovik."
"You want to walk away? Careful, you're starting to sound like the old you."
Blays shrugged. "Never hurts to remind yourself about your options."
Dante detoured around an overturned wagon. "I think we can do this. But if things turn south, we need a plan to get out of here."
"I'll get some packs of provisions. And map out a route. One that doesn't involve the road into Mallon."
Dante slept heavily, waking to a lake of aches and pains that had swamped his body overnight. He was tempted to sweep them away with a brush of nether, but he didn't like the idea of pretending he wasn't susceptible to pain and exhaustion. That felt like a good way to breed delusions in himself. When an entire city was singing his praises to the sky, the last thing he needed was more grist for his ego.
The Keeper called on him while he was in the middle of a breakfast of toast and honey. "The Mallish emptied the granaries." Her face was stony, her voice harder yet. "There isn't enough left to feed the city for more than a few days."
Dante swore. "What can we expect from the six towns? The farmlands?"
"Most of the crops were burned or pillaged. Gladdic didn't come to occupy. He came to exterminate."
"Send riders out anyway. Bring back anything the towns can spare. In the meantime, get somebody to show me to one of the fields. Potatoes would be best."
She gave him a curious look, then left the manor. Feeling a slight twinge of guilt, Dante wolfed down the rest of his food. The Keeper returned with a dusty youngster dressed in the plain, baggy clothing of Collenese farmers. Under other circumstances, the farmer likely would have appeared of man's age, but as he stared wordlessly at Dante, blinking repeatedly, he came off as about twelve years old.
Dante scowled, catching on: the man believed he was looking at a divine being. "Remember your business."
The young man nodded once, by instinct, then again, understanding. He led Dante to the plaza at the top of the road up the side of the butte. The day before, it had been the site of a pitched battle of ethermancers, infantry, and demons. Today, the bodies and much of the debris had been hauled off, but blood stained the paving setts, the color turning rusty as it aged.
They headed down the switchbacks. Life had returned to the town at the bottom of the plateau. Soldiers sat beneath awnings sharpening their blades, casting occasional glances at the lookouts posted on the road up the side of the butte.
The farmer took a dirt trail out of town, then stopped, looking mortified. "We don't got horses. Should I get some? Lord?"
"By the time you find them, and bring them back here, and we ride out, will we have gotten there sooner than if we'd simply walked?"
Panic flashed in the boy's eyes. "It's less than a mile. But I thought—"
"That I'm too delicate to use my own legs?"
The boy nodded hard and took up a brisk walk. Dante glared at the back of his head. Counterintuitively, it was much harder to get simple things done when the people serving you were terrified of being smote.
It was a beautiful morning, though, making it difficult to stay mad: some warmth in the air, though not unpleasantly so, with the sunlight so plentiful and yellow it felt like you could scoop it up with a knife and spread it on toast. Birds twittered from the sagebrush.
Ten minutes later, the boy brought him to a field next to a small branch of the canal system. The gray soil was so churned up it looked ready to sow, but dying plants lay everywhere, most yanked up by the roots, others trampled. Seeing them, the boy's eyes curdled with a hollow sickness.
"Here they are." His voice wasn't much more than a whisper. "Or what's left of them."
Dante closed his eyes and reached into the soil. Most of the potatoes had been dug up and stolen by the Mallish pillagers, but others remained, along with the broken tendrils of their roots. He got out his favorite knife, the handle made of antler carved by a norren of unsurpassed skill, and cut the back of his left arm.
Nether shot from beneath the flattened leaves. Black motes swirled around his blood with unusual agitation. Stirred up by all the deaths the day before? Or had the presence of the Andrac given them a kick?
He plunged the shadows into the disturbed earth. The technique was still new to him, but it took little effort to convince the nether to soak into the remaining tubers and roots. Unseen, they sprouted and expanded. Within moments, small green shoots broke the surface.
"Ahh!" The boy stumbled back, tripping over his own heels to land in a plume of dust. He swiveled his head between the plants and Dante. "It's you that did that?"
"We have a problem: your people are about to starve. It's a little selfish of them, wanting to eat food and everything, but I thought I would solve their problem by making some."
He drew more and more shadows to him, channeling them into the ground and harvesting the field into an abundance of potatoes. By the time his strength flagged, the ground was carpeted with low green leaves, foretelling enough plants to feed thousands.
Dante closed the flow of nether. "Get some workers out here. Tell them to leave one-tenth of the plants unharvested—and to be ready to pick new ones every morning."
~
The next day, in addition to potatoes, he grew a patch of wheat, which was the Colleners' main st
aple. This grew tall and green, stalks wavering in the unsteady wind.
"This is quite a trick, making them bigger like that," Blays said from beside him. "If you could do the same for the male anatomy, you'd be the richest man in the world."
Dante frowned. Could the technique be used on animals as well as plants? The Kandeans hadn't seemed to know how to apply it to beasts or people, but the fact a Harvester could grow a seed into a sapling and a sapling into a tree raised the question of whether you could do something similar with flesh. Sometime, he would have to try.
Dante let go of the nether. "The city lost nearly all of its stores and most of its crops. If I do this every day, and the towns have some to spare, that gets us closer. But to get through the winter, we'll rely on hunters bringing in deer, fishermen working the canals and the river, and foragers scooping up anything else that can be chewed by human teeth."
"None of these activities being things we can do in the middle of a Mallish siege."
"Not unless we start building mile-long fishing poles."
"So what's the solution? Start eating each other? May I nominate we start with the old and the weak?"
"We'll have to hope we can buy grain from Parth. Or fish from the Strip."
"The Strip?"
"The coast south of Averoy. Several small cities, all of them independent. They'll sell to us." He grimaced up at the butte. "Although we might have to ask for a loan. The granaries weren't the only thing the Mallish looted."
He trudged uphill. As he entered the plaza at the top of the road, a girl of about fifteen years ran up to him, tugging a younger boy along behind her. He was smiling, but the girl looked like she was staring down from the edge of a cliff she knew she had to jump.
"Mr. Galand. Your lordship." She made a curtsey.
Deciding it would be rude to walk around her, he came to a stop. "Can I help you?"
"Well, that's the thing. My brother Earl, he's slow. In the head. I was hoping that maybe you could fix him."
"He was hurt during the fighting?"
"No, sir. Born like this." She dropped Earl's hand, cheeks reddening. "My parents used to take care of him. But we lost them. I can't do my work and look after him."
Dante grunted. "Why would you think I can change him?"
"I heard about the miracle, sir."
"The miracle."
"You regrew the crops the soldiers destroyed. I thought if you could do that, you could help my brother, too."
His heart sagged in his chest. He wished he'd followed his instinct to walk past her. "If he was born like this, there's probably nothing I can do. But I'll try."
She smiled, a fragile thing, and stepped to the side. Earl was still grinning, meeting Dante's eyes before dropping his gaze to Dante's shoulder. Dante moved his mind into the shadows, following them to the matter within the boy's skull. He'd examined plenty of brains, attached to both the living and the dead, and though he believed they were the seat of consciousness—perhaps where the trace resided, or the ether that comprised the soul—he had learned no more about them than any other organ.
If it were diseased or hurt, he could mend its damage, grow new blood vessels throughout it, drive away the sickness. But as he moved through Earl's tissue, he saw nothing out of place. At first, he was disappointed, but he quickly grew irritated at his lack of ability to solve the puzzle, pulling himself closer and closer to the nether until each fold of brain filled his vision.
He finished his search. He tried again, forcing himself to go slow. At the end, he withdrew, head aching.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't see anything wrong."
The girl lowered her face, voice as soft as washed linens. "Thank you for trying."
She took Earl's hand and walked away. Blays swore under his breath, then called after the girl. "What's your name?"
She glanced over her shoulder. "Nika."
"Well, Nika, the first thing to learn about gods like my friend here is they don't often listen to you. Even when they do, they usually can't do anything for you."
Her eyes darted to Dante. "I…"
"Fortunately," Blays continued, "not every problem requires a miracle to solve it. Is your brother otherwise intact? Capable of physical labor?"
"And strong, too. He never gets tired."
"Good news. Because those idiots from Mallon seem to think that buildings are for smashing down rather than for living in. There's rubble everywhere. And all of it needs to be picked up from where it is and set down somewhere else."
He led the siblings away. Dante went to meet with Cord and the Keeper to discuss the food situation. As they went over options for rations, including dire scenarios where there was only enough for soldiers and their vital support, he pictured Earl smiling at the sky as he was marched off into the wastelands. If a siege came, would they have the heart—or lack of it—to do what was necessary to survive?
Four days after the messenger had left Collen, he returned with Boggs Twill. Boggs had the face of a man who spent most of his time outdoors in the low desert. That day, he looked even ruddier than usual. Dante hoped their news of his sister's death hadn't sent him on a drinking binge.
Dante and the Keeper laid out the situation. Boggs listened, face craggily unreadable.
"Administrator of the Collen Basin." He made a noise that might have been a laugh. "Not very fair, is it? I did nothin' to earn this."
"Then you'll fit right in with the Mallish nobility," Blays said.
"There's got to be somebody with more experience."
"You have more than you think," Dante said. "You've run your family's trade for years. Seeing to the basin won't be so much different."
Boggs rubbed his stubbled neck, then shook his head. "Maybe so and maybe not. Either way, I ain't earned this. Someone else deserves it more."
"In a just world, power is handed to those who've earned it, and only when they're ready to wield it. Do you think this is a just world?"
"If it was, would my sister be dead?"
Dante met his stare. "Nothing prepares you for leadership of a people. None of us are ready. All you can do is trust yourself to learn your role as you go. To accept that you might not be the perfect choice, but you are the best choice."
"Right," Blays said. "And to understand that if you can't take on the responsibility, someone worse will."
"How about Gladdic? He dead yet?"
Dante grimaced. "He fled the city. But that's because he knew we'd learned how to kill him. As soon as Collen is secured, we're going after him."
"In other words," Blays said, "the sooner you help us get this place sorted out, the sooner we'll be able to present you Gladdic's head as a drinking goblet."
Boggs swore. "You two should have been barristers. Hand over the damn crown and tell me what you need me to do."
Their first move was to dispatch official letters to Parth and the towns of the Strip of Alebolgia. It was likely the other realms had already heard of the Mallish occupation, or would soon, so Collen's newly-forged council of five decided to make mention of that in their request for trade. Revealing that information might weaken their bargaining position, but if it looked like they were trying to hide the fact they were in conflict with Mallon, it might scare off their potential partners altogether.
Once the letters were drafted, Dante leaned back in his chair. "How much can we reasonably expect them to sell us?"
"Parth's always got more wheat and mutton than they need," Boggs said. "And the Strip's got as much fish as you can stomach. Between them, they could have us covered."
"But how much can we afford?"
"Not enough. Until recent events, Mallon's given us more freedom than normal, but they ain't stupid. They've been taxing us into the ground to make sure we can't take advantage of that freedom. What little coin we had left went into keeping our soldiers trained."
A glum silence fell over the table. The Keeper shifted her robes. "What if Narashtovik were to loan us the funds?"
; Dante bristled. Funding his lands was his most hated duty. He'd always been able to save more than Narashtovik spent, but the surplus could be wiped out by a single famine or conflict. No matter how reasonable the expense, whenever an advisor or Council member brought him a bill, all he could think about was how much further it put them from financial freedom.
"Not possible," he said. "The Council's already unhappy with how long I've been away. If I tried to convince them to invest in a foreign war, their first order of business would be to build a new tower, and then lock me up in it."
She nodded, but she didn't look convinced. "Then we will have to hope our neighbors are both reasonable and merciful."
When they finished, Dante returned to his private chambers and got out his loon. He'd let Olivander know about the outcome of the battle, but the last time they'd spoken, Dante had been operating under the assumption that he and Blays would be leaving Collen within days.
He clipped the bone earring to his ear and pulsed the connection.
"Dante?" Olivander's baritone voice was halfway out of breath. Around him, hoofbeats thundered. "Is this vital?"
"Decide for yourself. We think Mallon's going to make another attack on Collen. We're going to stay here and stop it."
Olivander sighed heavily. He called out to his men, excusing himself; the hoofbeats diminished. "Can I ask why?"
"Because we don't want to see everyone in the basin put to the sword?"
"The world's a big place. At some point, someone or another is always being put to the sword. What business is it of ours if it's Collen's turn?"
"Collen's on the brink of independence. If they fall, Mallon's going to set their sights on us, both as punishment for intervening, and to get us back for the war that Samarand made on them years ago. You might remember that one, since you were on her Council. But if Collen breaks loose, Mallon won't dare come for us with Collen right there on their flank."
"So you want to battle them in Collen so we don't have to battle them in Narashtovik. That's an interesting idea. But it's built on the assumption that we have to fight them at all."
The Cycle of Galand Box Set Page 92
