No. This wouldn’t do. He had to fix this somehow.
From outside their bedroom door, he heard the main door open and his staff come in, talking to each other in casual tones. Oh good. They were here.
For his wife, he kissed her gently on the forehead and whispered, “I am very happy, Amalah. Tonight, we will have to properly celebrate.”
She nearly bounced on her toes, her excitement uncontainable. “I want to start preparing today.”
“Of course,” he assured her. “I will send Sego out with you as he knows the best shops. But first…,” letting go of her, he walked quickly to the door and yanked it open. “Commanders.”
His staff, half in the study, all stopped and looked at him in surprise. “Sir?” Ramin asked.
“Scratch the plan that we have,” Darius ordered firmly. “We’ll win this in three months.”
They all broke out at once in alarm.
“—Sir?—”
“—Is something wrong?—”
“—Three months?!—”
“—What happened, sir?—”
Amalah caught him by the arm and tugged him around. “Darius! Why are you saying such a thing?”
Ignoring his men for a moment, he turned back to his wife. “What do you mean, ‘why?’ Because I don’t want to leave you alone, heavy with child! Isn’t that obvious?”
Sego timidly cleared his throat. “Ah, a child is expected?”
Sidetracked, Amalah stepped fully out of the bedroom so that she could see him and respond. “The child is due in seven months,” she announced with a particularly radiant smile.
The steward actually looked more relieved by this news than anything. “Congratulations to you both.”
“Thank you,” Amalah said, only to keep repeating herself as every man in the room offered heartfelt congratulations and well wishes. Darius felt his heart warm at the feeling of happiness and anticipation in the room. Truly, if he’d had a choice, he’d not have chosen to have a child now, but…he’d do what he could to keep that smile on his wife’s face.
“So you understand now?” he asked them in an almost rhetorical tone. “I can’t leave her alone for seven months, so we’re going to have to devise a plan to win this in three. Two would be better, really.”
“Again you’re saying that!” Amalah objected, smile fleeing. “You told me that you weren’t sure if even five months would be enough time. You thought it would take seven. That doesn’t change just because we’re expecting a child.”
He turned a frown on her. “Of course it does.”
“It does not!” she retorted.
“My love,” he said with as patience as he could muster, “if you think that I can leave you on your own, with our first child, you are sadly mistaken. I don’t like the fact that I have to leave you for even three months.”
“I will be fine,” she said with a determined lift of the chin, arms crossing around her stomach as if silently saying that they both would be fine.
“Even if you are, I will not be,” he responded, almost snapping out the words as he lost patience with the argument. “I will, in fact, be a nervous wreck the entire time. I am not leaving you on your own, Amalah, not one moment longer than I need to. That is the end of it.”
“It is not.” She pointed a finger to the hovering commanders that were watching this scene with silent unease. “They do not think it can be done in three months. I can see it on their faces.”
“I say it can.”
“You are being rash and impulsive.”
“So it’s wrong for me to want to be with you?”
“When it endangers your life and the lives of all those that depend on you, yes it is!”
He didn’t know who was shocked more that she had actually yelled out those words. The only time he’d seen Amalah raise her voice was when she’d called to him from a distance. It stopped him cold. He’d just sworn to himself that he’d do whatever it took to keep a smile on his wife’s face, and here he’d scared her so badly that she was actually yelling at him.
“Amalah,” he trailed off helplessly, not knowing what to say to reassure her.
Amalah grabbed his arms with both hands, eyes pleading. “Darius, don’t do this. I don’t want to lose my husband. I can survive without you for seven months. It’s the next fifty years without you that I can’t face.”
He raised a shaking hand to cover his eyes. “You’re stronger than me, then.”
“Stick to your original plan,” she urged him. “Use the tactics that you are sure will work. Come back to me alive. That’s all I ask.”
Pulling free from her grip, he walked three steps away and stopped, mind whirling. He didn’t want to leave, not at all, but he knew that she and their child would be in greater danger if he didn’t. That was the only thing that kept him from staying. And she was right—he knew that. Three months would be ludicrous and impossible to pull off. But he didn’t have to like it.
The whole room seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for what he would say next. He blew out a breath, head dropping back so that he stared blankly at the ceiling. Five to seven months. He could very well miss the birth of his first child altogether. He felt like cursing something, but couldn’t decide on a strong enough word.
The inevitability eventually sank in and he bowed to it, as much as he hated it, and turned toward her again. Amalah had both hands clasped tight in front of her, knuckles white, and her eyes took in every nuance of his expression.
“Alright,” he said wearily. “Alright, you win.” Her eyes closed in relief, hands loosening their stranglehold. “But you will keep Sego and Bohme with you at all times,” he added firmly.
“I will be very glad for Sego’s help,” she admitted with a quick smile at the steward. Sego nodded back, accepting the compliment. Licking her bottom lip, Amalah carefully chose her words before saying, “But surely I don’t need a bodyguard. You will be the one in danger, so I think you should take him with you.”
“This is not negotiable, Amalah.” His tone brooked no disagreement. “I’m not going to sleep well as it is. If Bohme and Sego are with you, I know that they can handle any emergency between the two of them. And Bohme has experience with guarding pregnant women. You will keep him with you.”
“But it takes two bodyguards to keep up with you!” she objected, clearly not scared of him or his increasingly bad mood. “And Bohme said it’s even harder on a battlefield. Do you plan to run Tolk into exhaustion?”
“I’ll be fine and so will Tolk.”
“Darius.”
“I’m not arguing this point, wife.” He stepped toward her, arm flinging out in a westerly direction. “I know you. You’ll be just busy running all around the house and the capital, shopping and preparing for the child. You won’t let Sego have more than a moment’s rest. It takes two people to keep track of you as well. No wife of mine is going to be running around with only one escort. You’re keeping Bohme.”
Her eyebrows slammed together and her mouth set in that mulish way that spoke of trouble brewing. “You are not going into war with only one bodyguard!”
“I will have a whole army to protect me, it’s not the same!”
“I will not be the one that has assassins after me,” she shot back.
Sego cleared his throat, delaying the argument into becoming a full-scaled fight. “Might I suggest simply hiring another bodyguard? You’ll need to do so anyway for when the child is born. He can simply be assigned to your son or daughter at that point.”
Darius rubbed at his throbbing temples. Now why hadn’t that occurred to him? “Amalah, if I hire someone new to take with me, will you stop arguing with me about keeping Bohme?”
She eyed Sego sideways before nodding in consent.
“Good.” He blew out another breath. This morning had had too many ups and downs for a man’s peace of mind.
“I’m taking Sego with me this morning to go hire someone,” she added stubbornly.
Why
did people think that Amalah had a shy and retiring nature? Really, nothing could be further from the truth. She was usually charming about it, but she always got her way. “Fine,” he capitulated. “Take Tolk with you, though. You’ll need him to determine the bodyguard’s skills.”
Happy to have won, she gave him that beautiful smile he loved to see. “I will.”
Shaking his head, he pulled her in for a brief kiss. “You drive a hard bargain, beloved.”
Her eyes were laughing when she responded. “Only when I need to. Now, go work. And don’t take any shortcuts.”
“Yes, ma’am.” As he released her, he caught Sego’s and Tolk’s eyes and let them silently know that if anything happened to her, he would have both of their heads on a platter. They clearly understood the message as they gave him reassuring nods in return. Satisfied, he went into his war room.
His commanders had fled from the outside scene at some point and escaped here, where they had focused on pulling out the maps and reports. Only Navid had the courage to look at him as he entered and offer, “Wish timing were different.”
“You and me both,” he sighed as he plopped into his regular chair. “My mother always claimed that babies came in their own time and never the right time. I believe her now.” Which reminded him, he needed to write a letter home updating them on the news.
Kaveh looked at him cautiously. “So, three or five months, sir?”
“Five,” Darius answered in resignation. “She’s right. I cannot force the enemy to accommodate me and I’ll get a lot of men killed trying to. We’ll stick with our original plans.” That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t take advantage of any opportunity that arose, though, if it meant getting him home a little faster. Shaking his head, he got his mind back on to business. “Alright, where do we stand?”
“Night Raiders have replied and they’ll meet us at Dakan Pass,” Navid assured him.
“Troops will be ready to march in three weeks,” Ramin responded, handing him a report with the exact figures. “I think the supplies might actually be ready before everyone is ready to march.”
Darius turned to Kaveh, who accepted the verbal baton. “My engineers have drawn up plans based on your request and they assure me it will be very easy to do what you want.”
“Good. Kaveh, have you met with General Mihr yet?”
“Yes sir. I actually leave this afternoon so that I can walk him through everything.”
That would take a good six days, but Darius didn’t think to question it. The fortifications on the mountains had to be run correctly or they would be between a wall and a spear point. “Don’t leave the man with any unanswered questions. Ramin? I understand that Delshod had you walk him through the southern end of the barriers as well.”
“Yes, sir. He’s solid, sir.” Ramin reached over the table to tap the area. “I suggested building a few more barriers here, toward the cap, and here, as the ground is more solid there than anywhere else.”
“Actually, construction of more barriers is in progress all along the line,” Kaveh inputted, searching through the reports in front of him until he found the one he wanted and sliding it toward Darius. “They will be ready probably before we can get out of the Pass.”
“Excellent. Alright, with the other generals taking on the rest of the plan, let’s focus on the first stage of it, shall we?” He sat back for a moment, staring sightlessly at the map in front of him. Strange how an hour ago this had looked like the perfect plan. Now he felt almost trapped by it.
Kaveh cleared his throat before offering, “We hope that the enemy makes many careless mistakes, sir.”
Darius shot him a smile. “You and me both, Kaveh.”
Fighting in Niotan changed the usual rules of war. Typically, in areas of the continent that experienced four seasons, the only time for warfare was late spring to early fall. The rest of the time, the soldiers were needed to help plant fields and harvest. The winter months were just impossible to fight in because of heavy snowfalls (if one was in the northern areas) or heavy rainfall (which happened more toward the south). But Niotan, as a desert land, didn’t have any real changes in weather. They had brief rain storms in the end of spring, with higher temperatures in the summer, but the rest of the time the weather stayed more or less the same. Because of that, an army could fight practically all year round.
Darius sat on a boulder near the foot of the Songhor Mountains, eyes absently roving around and taking in the men around him with a commander’s veteran eye. They’d been out here nearly two months now. Darius had spent most of his time in Dakan Pass, overseeing the construction of several nasty traps and helping Mihr drill the men on them so everything went smoothly. He’d only just descended out of the mountains altogether for this last stage of the ambush-on-the-road strategy.
Navid’s archers and the Night Raiders had spent the past two months lurking in the forest that bracketed the Tran Highway. When moving an army of that size, the only road wide enough was Tran—but that meant that Darius had ample time to set his men up in key positions along the road before Brindisi ever got there. The Niotan archers and Night Raiders had a fine time lurking in the forest and shooting any soldiers not wary enough to keep a shield up. The Brindisi force of thirty-five thousand had dwindled down to thirty thousand under this constant erosion.
Now Brindisi was within sight of the mouth of the pass. They’d halted briefly to meet up with the Baiji horsemen, who had taken up position at the front. It only made sense—cavalry always moved faster than foot soldiers and so the best place to put them was the front. The brief rest had also given time for the siege engines being towed along at the very back to catch up. With the slow, cumbersome constructs on wheels, the siege equipment and their engineers inevitably were the last to leave in the morning and the last to arrive at night. They were also perfect to ambush as they usually wound up separated from the main group at some point during the day’s march.
Darius had ordered Navid to leave the siege equipment alone to lull them into a false sense of security. He didn’t want them tightening their guard on the rear. It would limit him on how much he could destroy. He didn’t want one or two pieces—he wanted all of it gone.
And tonight, it would be.
He sat there on his boulder and watched the sun set over the trees. On this side of the Songhor Mountains, there were proper trees. Mostly pine, actually, with branches that started nearly from the ground and going straight up to the top. The archers had set up camp in those trees as it gave them a clear vantage to shoot from. Darius would have thought they would be limited by the small space up there, and that the branches would get in the way, but they apparently had found some way to get around that.
He took in a deep breath. Funny, how night time had its own smell. The day smelled of sunshine and baking rock, but the night smelled of earth and the sweet scent of pine. The shadows under the trees lengthened until he could barely see patches of moonlight flirting with the forest’s floor.
Time to go.
Standing, he motioned to Ramin, Bohme and Tolk, indicating it was time. He didn’t want to move with a larger force than that, as too many men moving in the trees would surely draw the wrong attention. Brindisi’s troops had left caution behind weeks ago and were now downright paranoid. They twitched if they so much as heard a sigh in the trees.
The three men took up their weapons and fell in with him. Ramin led the way, as he knew this forest better than Darius did and had met with Navid often enough to know precisely where the other man was. Bohme and Tolk were right behind Darius. They melted into the shadows of the forest a mere stone’s throw away from the enemy encampment and started the very slow journey of circling around it to reach Navid and his Night Raiders.
As they moved, Darius kept track of the enemy with one ear, and with the other, the men around him. Just to himself, he had to admit that he was glad Amalah had once again put her foot down and insisted he take Bohme with him. They’d only managed to find a new bodygu
ard with the right skills a bare two weeks before he’d had to leave. It made him a little uneasy to take a man he barely knew into battle and then trust that same man to watch his back. She probably knew that, too, hence why she’d kept the new man with her.
Shaking the thought away, he tried to focus. Darius moved quietly through the forest, placing his feet very carefully to make sure to make no sound. This proved to be challenging as the trees in this area of the country had low, whip-like branches that were quite flexible. They would bend easily as he pushed through, and then snap back into place with a crack.
Hardly helpful.
From ahead, Ramin murmured, “Duck.”
Duck? What ducks? He didn’t see any—wham! Darius wheeled, a hand flying instinctively to his nose, where stars of pain were shooting from.
Bohme caught him instantly, supporting him by the shoulders as he found his balance. “Shir?!” he hissed in alarm.
“Fine,” Darius assured him, the sound muffled behind his hand. Owwww. He gingerly moved his nose and found it not to be broken, but it would surely be an interesting color by tomorrow.
Ramin turned back, saw the situation, and retreated as quickly as he dared to Darius’s side. “Sir?” he asked in worry.
“Ramin,” Darius growled in a low tone, “you could have warned me that you were sending a branch flying in my direction.”
His commander gave him a blank look. “I did.”
“Really. All I heard you say was there were ducks—” he cut himself off when Ramin gave him a strange look.
“I told you to duck,” Ramin said slowly.
“What do ducks have to do with branches?” Darius demanded in exasperation.
“No, shir,” Bohme said, voice suspiciously strangled sounding, “when shomeone shaysh ‘Duck’ it meansh there’sh shomething dangeroush coming your direction and you need to dodge it.”
Darius just looked at him for a long moment. The throbbing in his nose tapered off into a dull ache and he lowered his hand before retorting in a scalding tone, “Oh, I see. That makes perfect sense. When I hear the name of waterfowl I of course automatically think ‘danger, look out’!”
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