One of those three things was not like the other. Another was fundamentally not true. I sensed that a pair of holes was about to explode from the back of Hish’s skull due to the power of Miyasa’s glare. Grabbing the drunk oni in front of me, I steered her back toward the group. She giggled and wrestled her way onto my lap as I sat us down with the other officers, but I ignored her for now.
In silence, I raised my cup high into the air. Ilsa and Yasno caught on and followed suit but remained silent. It wasn’t long before a silence fell over the camp. All the soldiers had a hand held over their hearts or a tankard raised in the air. Even Hish realized something was amiss. The oni had seen us do this custom from afar often enough to realize the solemnity.
After I rose to my feet, I spoke using magic to carry my voice across the camp. “May all those who have fallen today and any other day find peace and order within the heart of the Archangel Myrael. Friend, foe, or innocent, we salute your contribution to this world.”
Then I drank. So did the camp.
It didn’t take long before everybody returned to their previous activities. The excitement from before quickly returned, so I didn’t feel too bad for interrupting it. For me, the prayer was one of the most important parts of the battle. Holding it after everybody was passed out drunk was an absurdity.
“Got a question, Bulwark,” Yasno began to say.
“Call me Mykah,” I said. “At least off the battlefield.”
“Got a question, Mykah,” Yasno repeated. “The formations here were a bit of a funny thing. I basically stole the formation you use any time you charge us outside your precious fortresses. Seemed fitting, given we oni always have ranged superiority, so it was new to be on the receiving end.”
Half the oni were ballista-wielding archers, so it went almost without saying that they were used to having superiority at range.
“But what the hell was the formation these idiots were using?” Yasno continued. “Mages standing in front of knights, waiting until the literal last second to retreat? We nearly cut them down while they were defenseless, to say nothing of how unprepared their knights were.”
I blinked. This was a standard Imperial formation. I was pretty sure I’d used it in the past, although with more disciplined soldiers who could switch ranks more effectively. When I glanced at Miyasa, she nodded her agreement with Yasno, looking at me in all seriousness.
“Have I never used such a formation against you?” I asked, confused.
“Why would you?”
I thought back. How many decades had it been since I actually used standard Imperial tactics? The oni weren’t an ordinary foe, and so many of our formations had been formed fighting demons from the eastern badlands or foxes from the Arisian Isles to the west. Was it possible I was so old?
“Yes,” Ilsa said. “Aren’t you almost a century old? By the time pretty much anybody in this camp was born, you had been defending the Bulwark for at least twenty years.”
Time flies.
“Tactics discussion time, then,” I said. “That formation was developed for fighting demons, back when I was… oh, in my late teens. It mitigates losses against infantry-heavy armies, such as ours. Mages at the front, who can hit the front ranks with as much heavy artillery as possible. They pull back and the knights then receive a much-weakened charge from the enemy infantry. With luck, the heavy-hitters will be exhausted or dead. For demons, this was vital, as some greater demons can be virtually impossible for even a few knights to slay in melee, but a mage can incinerate them easily.”
I paused and took a long drink, realizing I was drifting away from the topic at hand. “The idea falls apart against us. Demons don’t have any particular resistance to sorcery and are weak to spiritualism, such as what you oni use, so mages are extremely effective. Knights can shrug off magic, however. Furthermore, the formation predates barrier-marching. I introduced that formation into the Empire after witnessing the oni use it against us.”
Chuckling, Yasno said, “So it’s old news and they didn’t know it. Also, did you say you invented both formations?”
“No, but I was around for the first. I was involved in one of its earliest uses,” I said.
“Geezer,” Hish said, giggling and feeling me up. “This part doesn’t feel like a geezer, though.”
I ignored her. Miyasa didn’t and physically dragged Hish out of my lap.
“Aww,” Hish mumbled before perking right back up. “Speaking of old things, what about that archangel? Do you really think the dead go into his heart? Seems a bit crazy.”
The looks on Yasno’s and Miyasa’s faces were one step away from pure horror. I chuckled and their expressions changed to confusion.
“They don’t really go into his heart. Myrael is both a physical and conceptual being, as an archangel,” I explained, then stopped. Given the amount of alcohol around and the looks on everybody’s faces, explaining magical theory seemed like a poor idea.
I decided to stick to history. “Myrael disappeared a few hundred years ago, about the time the badlands appeared. Obviously not a coincidence. We say that all those who die go to his heart because we believe that he is still protecting us from whatever nearly ended all life and brought forth the demons. Anything capable of wiping out such a large amount of the continent could have been so much worse.”
“The Archangel Myrael… All we have left of him now is the Talab Bastion, right? The ancient fortress in the Nahaum Mountains,” Ilsa said, shifting the topic with a deep frown. “I’ve been thinking about a place near there, after what Miyasa said about the battle.”
Ah, the battle. The very thing I’d been trying hard not to think about.
I tried a little harder. “Yes, Talab Bastion is full of angelic runes. I did my thesis there while helping repel the regular demonic invasions from the badlands.”
Not buying into it, despite the interest in a thesis from the oni around her, Ilsa pushed again. “We won this battle, but we actually didn’t, did we? Not truly.”
A hush fell over the officers, and I held back a sigh. This was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to discuss during a celebration.
“No, we didn’t. A victory would have meant doing something about those dragons. Lyria won’t have many, but she’ll have enough that if we can’t handle them, any of my plans about crushing the Empire are impossible,” I said, bitterness leaking into my voice.
Miyasa stood up, drink spilling from her tankard and over her clothes. “I can help you defeat them. More time and a good shot would be more than enough.”
The look Ilsa gave me suggested she wanted to say something more. Something made her hold back.
“It shouldn’t be about time and a good shot. There are ways to slay dragons. It’s not as though they are invulnerable,” I said.
“I saw,” Hish piped up. “The one you fought was bleeding. You cut her good.”
“More like scratched her. I thought it was deep enough to scar, but I suspect she’ll be able to regenerate it with magic,” I said. As I shook my head, Yasno refilled my tankard. “Ilsa, it sounds like you know what I mean. Miyasa, sit down.”
As Miyasa sat down, looking attentive, we listened to Ilsa explain her strategy.
“There’s one particularly famous city in the Empire, not far from Talab Bastion,” Ilsa explained. “Talepolis, the… former capital of the Aghram Princedom, now the vampiric province of Aghram. It’s a foundry city, a joint project between the dwarves of the north and the Empire. I remember seeing smelters the size of keeps, with production lines that could supply an entire army in a month and still have spare capacity.”
“Is it capacity we need?” I probed, knowing that Ilsa already had the answer. It seemed she had the sharp mind I had wanted, as she had an answer before I even asked for it.
“No, but we could use it if we’re going to overthrow the entire Empire,” she replied with a small smile almost hidden by her tankard. “Talepolis can produce weapons capable of harming dragons. They have specializ
ed magical forges for dealing with phantasmal beasts and demons. My father once mentioned that the ballista ammo he used to penetrate the force barriers of the mystic foxes came from Talepolis. If we want to slay Lyria’s dragon elites, we need to take Talepolis.”
Chatter immediately followed her pronouncement. We had just been given a new objective, but it hadn’t been from me. The oni looked a little confused, like they were going to fight this. I had to shut this down before it got any further, as what Ilsa had said was right.
“Taking Talepolis won’t be easy,” I said quickly, cutting through the chatter. “It’s as far south as the capital, which means we’ll need weeks, if not months, to establish supply lines in preparation for a siege. Delaying Lyria for that long won’t be easy.”
“What about the demons over the mountains?” Ilsa added, having looked troubled since I interrupted. True, they were a threat. Talepolis was built into the western edges of the Nahaum Mountains, having expanded into it since the mountain range was magically erected. The demons were essentially a stone’s throw away.
“The Empire crushes the demons regularly. The oni do it as well,” I said with a shrug.
“Indeed. Marauding demons have never been a match for the oni, and we could never breach the Arium Bulwark. How could they be a match for the Empire’s defensive lines along the badlands?” Miyasa declared, somehow feeling pride for my feats.
Ilsa nodded, seemingly satisfied. Then opposition came from an unexpected source.
“We make weapons, sure, but weapons for whom?” Yasno asked, looking into his tankard with a complex expression. Doubt? Frustration? I had never seen him look anything besides dour, so this was new to me.
More than that, it was a damn good question. I had my own runic sword. I could craft a new one for dragon-slaying. What about the others? Could they even fight a dragon? Was it right for me to ask them to do such a thing? In the past, I had never expected those under me to battle the greatest of the oni, such as the herald or some of the more terrifying swordmasters I had fought in my earlier days. Holding off a dragon was one thing, but Miyasa’s remains could have easily filled those scars etched into the battlefield.
Dragons were terrifyingly powerful beings. The most dangerous of the mortal races. The legendary dragons were seen by humans in the same way as Archangel Myrael, who had once cut an entire city in half with a single sword swing and created the Chasm of Faith. Asking my subordinates to battle them, even with dragon-slaying weapons, was sending them to their deaths.
Everyone was looking at me. Or so it felt like for a moment. Truthfully, it was only the officers. Except Hish, who had fallen asleep.
“I will fight them,” Miyasa declared, not standing this time but instead staring resolutely into my eyes. No alcohol talking here.
“Very well. Lyria has more than one dragon, after all, and armies beyond that,” I said. “We’ll make the weapons, then slay them one by one.”
I raised my cup and we all let out a cheer. Hish startled awake at the noise. Ilsa stared at me afterward, not joining in the chatter. I let her be. She was ruminating on something, and the whole point of having her as a strategist was to let her provide me with advice. I felt that I needed that now.
“Say, what’s this Marshal Lyria like, anyway?” Yasno asked.
An old, bad memory.
Chapter 11
“Here to see us off, sir?” Terry asked me. “I expected you to head south weeks ago.”
“Somebody has to do the paperwork,” I said, looking over the companies lined up in the outer courtyard behind Terry. “Not everybody can take part in the fun all the time.”
Some two hundred soldiers were standing at attention in neat lines, oni and humans mixed together and in full uniform. Most of their armor was packed away in the supply train, given it would be a long march to the front lines with little resistance, but the packs on their backs were large enough that I felt for them. Endurance was an issue, even for the oni. Their magic reserves would run dry, their superhuman strength would dwindle, and they’d find themselves as exhausted as everybody else if they weren’t careful.
“Fun like leaping across a battlefield to get on top of a dragon, eh?” Terry said, ribbing the air between us with an elbow and a wink. “How many forms do you have to fill out for doing that without prior approval from the higher-ups?”
None, because I’m the damn boss and set the rules. “How many would it take to stop you thinking it’s worth it?”
“Sir, if I had the magical ability to leap into the air, stab a dragon, and ride it like you can, no amount of paperwork would stop me,” he responded, voice suddenly dead serious as he looked me in the eyes. “You could give me a stack of paperwork as tall as Archangel Tower in the capital and I would still do it.”
I tried not to smile. Tried.
Giving me a smile in return, Terry raised his fist over his chest in salute. More fists clattered on breastplates as the companies behind him followed suit. I returned the salute.
It was different now, I told myself as I watched Terry and the soldiers march out through the gates of Tornfrost Watch. They weren’t marching north to a pitched battle with an oni horde. Nor was this a farewell, as it had been so many times. I didn’t think Terry realized it himself, but I had played out that very scene many times in the past and for countless hundreds of officers I would never see again.
Ilsa was waiting for me back in the keep’s mage tower, which was simply a tower that we strategized in. It was filled with maps, markers, and more unvoiced thoughts than I felt comfortable dealing with. She was focused on comparing notes against the manpower markers on the map, no doubt checking that we had the correct number of soldiers in the right locations.
The soldiers who had left were visible from up here. The enormous road, built long ago to support the battalions necessary to defend the Bulwark, made two hundred men and women look insignificant by comparison. Most of the veterans of the Bulwark and Deridh Clan had already been sent south or west. They now made up the markers that Ilsa was checking against the reports. I wasn’t entirely joking when I said that I was remaining behind to handle paperwork.
We were in the eye of the storm of a two-front war. Luck had prevented this from exploding so far. Or at least I hoped it was luck. I worried away at creeping thoughts that Lyria might be intentionally holding back since our last battle.
“How are our numbers? I’d think the oni are shoring them up nicely,” I said, feeling the need to break this uncomfortable silence.
Ilsa brushed her hair to one side, and I noticed that it wasn’t up in a ponytail today. How long had it been since she had last put it up in one?
I came back to my senses and caught what I thought was a withheld sigh from Ilsa. Then she spoke. “They are shoring them up. Miyasa is out west at the edges of your former duchy with almost nothing but oni. Her and Vasi, the full-blooded oni we met originally, are in command, and the Deridh Clan has come out in force to defend their newly claimed territory.”
A spark of worry filled my head. “What about the soldiers of the duchy?”
“Do we need them at the front lines?” Ilsa asked. I wondered if she was actually asking.
Clicking my tongue, I pointed at the markers. “Ilsa, run through the western front for me.”
She did so, and it was as I suspected. Oni filled out the entire border facing Lyria. As we got to Tornfrost Watch and began to shift toward Aghram and our target of Talepolis, humans finally came into the mix. I didn’t have all the numbers, as I was letting Aaron and Ilsa handle them, but it definitely felt like there was a divide.
“Am I right in saying that you’ve shifted the soldiers from the duchy south to support forming the supply line?” I asked, keeping my voice neutral. It was pretty obvious why she had done so, and I was smacking myself internally for not thinking of it, but I needed her to take the extra step. I didn’t like that things were happening without my involvement, particularly since Ilsa felt comfortable taking
action but did not want to talk to me about it.
“That’s…” Ilsa faltered. There was a long pause.
“Take a breath and the time you need,” I said. I double-checked my body language. Hands behind my back, relaxed posture—I hadn’t done anything amateur here. I could still remember scaring a few people in the past by pushing them with crossed arms or by leaning over the table. An excellent way to make somebody defensive when she was uncertain if she had done the right thing and feel confronted.
Eventually, Ilsa calmed down. “You’re right. That’s what Aaron and I have done.” Another pause, but I didn’t need to fill this one before she continued. “I reviewed what Yasno told me about the battle with Lyria’s troops and your own comments on formations that night. How the oni demolished her elites. There’s a significant gap between inexperienced human soldiers and the battle-hardened, magically empowered oni.
“The oni are our hammer in this war, and most of our human soldiers are the handle. We need people to keep the peace, win hearts and minds, and remind people that the oni aren’t chasing them out as we establish a supply line, which the human soldiers are best at. Our veterans and the oni can then win the hard battles.”
I mentally chewed on the metaphor. It felt like it was missing something. Hammerhead and handle?
“What about the chisel?”
Ilsa made a face like I had jumped her from the bushes. “You… and Miyasa are the warriors we need to act as a chisel when dangerous foes like the dragons are present. Most work just needs a hammer, but that stubborn piece of rust will need a chisel. Hence why you’re back here until we really need you.”
That fog of unvoiced thoughts was filling the air again. As confidently as Ilsa had presented all of this, I felt like she had stepped back from something. Still, it all added up, and she was proving herself to be the strategist I needed. More than that, she was proactively providing the advice and taking the steps she knew were necessary to achieve my goals.
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