The groups were set. The eight sellswords who would hide inside the false beds — four in each — wiggled their way in. A flat sheet of wood covered them, on which the promised delivery of weapons and armor was piled. The drivers were chosen based on who best resembled the Ollesean people — at least that was the reason I gave to placate the unrest that broke out amongst those who deeply wanted to have the lead roles. In truth, I had about as much knowledge of the average Ollesean person as I did of naked mole rat hierarchy. Were they all pasty white like those we butchered? Were their women all so slender and shrill? And surely their men couldn’t have been so old and frail. Who knows? Hopefully not the Edenvaile city guard.
I put Pog in charge of the mercenaries who would sneak inside the walls. The man was disgusting, vile and, yes, utter filth, but he seemed like a man who could lead. A man who could get things done, particularly when those things included chopping off heads.
We marched off toward the North, the lot of us, but only for another night. The morning after, the caravan with two wagons continued on, toward the gates of Edenvaile.
The fifty-some sellswords I retained devoured a stew of cabbage and boiled bread heated over a large campfire. After their bellies were full, I rounded them up.
“I paid for your swords,” I said, “but now I need your eyes and ears.”
I unfolded a large map I had taken from the Hole, and I flattened it over the frozen snow. I struck my fist at the eastern border of Rime.
“Edmund Tath’s bannermen will be coming through the Widowed Path, here.” I glanced up and scanned the mercenaries. I pointed at ten of them. “Let’s call you boys and girls… spy group one.”
“That’s a shat name,” one of them remarked. “What about the Eagles?”
“The Eagles?”
“Yeah, yeah. The Eagles. ’Cause eagles fly around all silently, you know? See things that no one else sees, like spies do.”
Some heads turned, most of them cocked to the side.
“The eastern spies,” a woman said.
I snapped my fingers. “There you go, the eastern spies.” I looked at Mr. Bird Brains. “Fucking eagles.”
“Better than fucking spy group one,” he shot back.
“All right,” I said. “So you jolly lads and two ladies will position yourselves here.” I trailed my fingernail just beneath the mouth of the Widowed Path. “Some hills, forests, places to hide about. This is day seventeen — remember that. I need you to return on day twenty-six. Go due west of here till you see an army that looks like a mobile city. You’ll find me there.”
One of the sellswords cleared his throat. “What’re we supposed to do there in the, er, forests and hills and all that?”
A woman turned to him in disbelief. “Are you shtupid? We’re the eastern spies. We’re spying.”
“I want to hear about every soul who passes through the Widowed Path,” I said. “What they’re wearing, carrying and how many of them there are. Watch yourselves for roving bands of soldiers who try to sniff out scouts.”
I organized another ten and ordered them to scout near the Mount Kor, at the far southwest of Rime. Another ten would remain here in the hills on lookout for Ollesean forces and other families who were in debt to the Verdans. Finally, the remaining twenty-some mercenaries would come with me, simply because I had overcompensated and bought too damn many of the sellswords.
The scouting groups took what supplies they needed to survive. I grabbed what I could and abandoned the wagons because lugging them around would slow us down, and they weren’t necessary any longer. And then I fled south. And then east. And then south. Back to the east. A little toward the west, and then south again. It’s bloody annoying traveling across mountainous terrain.
On day nineteen, I made it to the Hole. There, I gathered up the ebon blades that Borgart had crafted, loaded them up into two wagons and left again.
On day twenty-three, I established contact with the armies of the gods. At least it looked that way. Felt it too.
The rolling hills of ugly gray bedrock wavered under the roiling blight that swept over them. Thunder rumbled the rocks and fractured the air, splitting the thick humidity like an ax splits wood, dousing your skin in a cold sweat. It wasn’t the kind of thunder that strikes without warning, the kind that seemingly cleaves your ears in two and then retreats like a yapping dog. No, this thunder was constant. A low, relentless throaty roar that pimpled your skin. It wasn’t a threat, but a promise.
It looked a mountain shifting across the landscape, leaving behind disrepair and toil. There were pikes aimed toward the heavens, spears glinting as the moon and sun played a game of hide-and-seek. Thousands of foot soldiers marched at the head, and behind them archers, and behind the archers trotted the cavalry, the proudest of them all.
My sellswords and I remained on the small hill overlooking the foreboding scene below. We waited for a good hour and finally the horizon of muscular horse flanks and sharp armor abated. Oxen came into view, hauling innumerable wagons of coveted supplies. The logistics of war can boggle the mind. Ensuring you have enough food for twenty thousand men and some five thousand horses is no small matter. Those who plan accordingly can win a war against a much larger force without so much as swinging a sword.
Well, perhaps not if you’re laying siege to a castle which has enough supplies for a good six months. You certainly need to swing a sword in that case.
I waited for night to fall, and when it did, Dercy’s army predictably settled down and set up camp. I led the mercenaries down steep earthen steppes and rode for the middle of the army, just behind the cavalry, where the officers would gather. Thin drops of water fell from the sky now, soaking my hair.
A handful of cavalry met me midway, dressed in royal blue tunics with a Tyrian purple crest of a shark. They demanded my name and intentions. Despite me giving them both, they eyed me suspiciously and informed me I would follow them to Commander Vayle and that if I or my men put a hand on our weapons, they wouldn’t hesitate to strew our entrails across the dirt.
“Well,” I said, “you bunch certainly have more gusto than Glannondil soldiers, don’t you?”
They ignored that and led me through the suffocating walls of their army. One of fog or steam snaked lazily across the ground, rising up slowly around us like we were boiled fish in a covered pot. Judging from the sweat that dripped from my fingers, we may well have been.
Most of the cavalry were resting beside their horses, eating hardened crackers and washing it down with small sips of wine. I’d eaten those crackers before — you bite down too hard, and you’ll be eating a tooth as well.
Slaves in rags had the joyful backbreaking duties of digging latrines and fetching supplies from the wagons far in the back. They weren’t new to this kind of work; their spines were misaligned, their shoulders were permanently slouched, and their knuckles were swollen and busted. Most were likely prisoners serving their punishment.
Finally we came upon a mishmash of purple tents illuminated by hungry torches whose receding fires fought a losing battle against the rain.
The cavalry stopped in front of one of these tents.
“Lord Commander Vayle,” a soldier announced, “there is someone who claims you will see him.”
With her chocolate hair pinned up and a quill in her ear, Vayle emerged from the tent. She had a spry smile on her face, undoubtedly amused. If she really wanted to fuck with me, she’d say, ‘Take him away!’
“That man,” Vayle said, “was chosen as the true lord commander by your king.”
Each of the cavalry straightened themselves.
“I’m sorry, sir,” one of them said. “It was with no ill intention that—”
“Pipe down with that proper ‘sir’ shit,” I said. “Listen, there’ll be two wagons coming into the camp soon. They’re bringing a special delivery for the war effort. Direct them here when they arrive.”
“Yes, si— I mean, yes.”
The cavalry scattere
d.
“Look at you,” I said to Vayle. “Quill in your ear, hair tied up, bags under your eyes. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it looks to me like you just finished interrogating a map.”
Vayle smiled a tired smile — the kind of smile you flash with your eyes closed, while you rock back on your feet, thinking how nice it would be to fall asleep right then and there.
“War planning,” she said with a shake of her head. “I haven’t worked my mind this hard in a long time.” A faint smirk touched her lips, as if she had just dipped her toes into a hot bath.
“It’s like planning an assassination,” I said. “Just on a much larger scale.”
“Much larger,” she said. She pointed her chin at the sellswords. “Who are they?”
“Some of the mercenaries the vault of the Rot paid for.”
“What do you do?” she asked them, immediately stepping back into her commander role.
“We kill!” Ivor said. Then quickly, “If you want us to. We also protect.”
“Which usually involves killing,” I reminded him.
“I understand what a mercenary is,” Vayle said, “but what do you do? Are you cavalry? Foot soldiers? Archers?”
“Anything but archers,” Ivor said.
Vayle wiped the dripping rain from her brows. “Join the men on foot up front. Leave your horses here.”
After they were gone, Vayle invited me inside her personal tent. We walked to a table where a few candles flicked a mellow orange into the room. There was also a map on top of a map on top of about ten other maps.
“Does someone have a cartography fetish?” I asked.
Vayle leaned over the table. “I marked up the other ones too much.”
She picked the quill from her ear and laid it in the inkwell, then she rubbed her face and stared at the map, clicking her tongue.
There were ink lines… everywhere. It looked like someone had stabbed the night sky and then squeezed out every ounce of black blood it had to offer.
“I’ll be honest,” I said. “I’ve no idea what I’m looking at.”
Vayle sighed. She bent down, grabbed another map from beneath the table and unfurled it on top of the others.
“Dercy and I have been working on this since we landed in Watchmen’s Bay. I think I’ve finally broken through with something.”
“Er, where is Dercy?”
“Sleeping,” Vayle answered. “He hasn’t slept in three days. And I haven’t slept in two.” Her eyes slanted upwards toward mine. “It’s my turn tomorrow.” Revisiting the map, she drummed her nail on Edenvaile. “Northern castles are nightmares to lay siege to. All the mountains and hills act as walls. The reinforcements hide behind them. When the wounded and the dead pile up in the castle and in the field, the reinforcements pour out like ants, and they resupply. Anywhere else, where the terrain isn’t as fierce, the entire army often gathers within the castle. If you can manage a good rush at the wall and send soldiers over, you create chaos. There’s no time to issue orders or catch the attackers by surprise.
“But the North — they’ll time it perfectly. They’ll wait until your men are over, and then they’ll send in an overwhelming force to flush you out. It’s a battle of attrition, and that never favors the attacker.”
Vayle looked at me with an inclining brow and crossed her arms.
I cleared my throat. “Ah, yes. The ever-clever resupply tactic of the North. One that you always have to prepare for, hmm?”
She chuckled. “Dercy admitted that he gave you — and then me — the title of lord commander as nothing more than a reward for our help in rescuing him. It would give us little influence over the war. It wasn’t until I offered better strategies than all of his officers and held better sway with his men that the title gave me the power the name represented. And I think my newest scheme will justify that decision. Do you remember Grimm, a lord at the border of Nane and Rime?”
“Grimm… Grimm…” I searched my mind for the name. “Ah, the sheep fucker? No, no, that was someone else. Grimm…”
“You, me and Big Gruff assassinated his wife and her three secret lovers.”
I snapped my fingers in recognition. “Oh, that was a good one. Funny bastard, that one. Had a good sense of humor to him. Well, after we brought him the head of his wife and the cocks of her lovers.”
“I wrote him a letter recently, requesting any help he could spare. Unsurprisingly, he could promise no soldiers.”
“He could if he really wanted to,” I said. “But his liege — who is it, Lord… I can’t remember his name — probably wouldn’t appreciate it.”
Vayle opened a fresh skin of wine and threw it back for a good three seconds. She smacked her lips and sighed refreshingly. “Probably not. But he does have something else waiting for us in his village. A battering ram.”
“What the fuck is a little village vassal doing with a battering ram?”
Vayle laughed and drank more. “Claims he has had it for twenty years. During a weeklong bender, he drew up plans to invade his liege’s stronghold. He bought the ram and ladders, then sobered up. It’s been sitting in his armory ever since.”
“Dercy didn’t think to bring a battering ram or other siege equipment? Seems like a necessity when you’re laying siege.”
“Six hundred miles is a long way to carry siege equipment. It would not make it.”
I snatched the skin of wine from her table and gulped some. “Before you inform me of your grand plan that involves this ram, allow me to divulge my plan. It’s much simpler. There will be mercenaries inside Edenvaile. When I give the word, they will butcher as many archers as they can.”
“Excellent,” Vayle said. “That means I don’t need to waste as many footmen as fodder.” She removed the wet quill from its well and began drawing circles and lines and arrows.
“Every foot soldier will be here, all fifteen thousand of them. One-third of the cavalry will remain behind, here, and an equal amount of archers will idle on the sides, here. In the middle of the infantry is the ram.” She drew three long lines toward Edenvaile. “The infantry will march toward the gate, shields over their heads, protecting themselves and the ram carriers, who will be marching with them. When the cavalry and footmen pour from Edenvaile, we deploy our cavalry to the wings, meeting them. The ram will hammer at the gate and—”
“Vayle,” I said.
“And hopefully with your sellswords cutting down the archers from above and all the panic on the field—”
“Vayle…”
She frantically tapped her finger on the map. “The ram will level the gate. From there, we—”
“Vayle…”
Barely taking a breath, she continued. “We swarm the castle, flood it with everybody we have, push back, dismember and kill every northernman we come across, create chaos, force the reinforcements to retreat, and then we gather on the walls, fortify the rear gate and we hold the castle. We take it. We become the defenders. Maybe we can kill or capture Vileoux, Sybil, Chachant, Mydia, someone. We can turn the tide. We can—”
I slammed my hands on the table. “Vayle! For fuck’s sake, breathe.”
My commander’s uncharacteristic excitement abated as she regathered herself and took a drink. “I’ve been at this for three weeks now. It’s testing my sanity.”
“All I hear is the northernmen this, the northernmen that. What about the conjurers, Vayle? You can outwit and outsmart and outduel the northernmen, I trust that. I don’t know if it will be enough to compensate for the two-to-one disadvantage we have in available men, but I’ll share your positivity and say it can. But none of this accounts for the sway the conjurers will bring to this war. You haven’t seen the will of a conjurer buckle the earth and make it quake, but I have. You haven’t seen a conjurer compel the wind to come alive and thrash about like a wicked sea, but I have. You haven’t heard their voice rape your mind, silence your thoughts and instill their desires inside your soul. But I have. How do you account for that? How do
you defeat something like that?”
Vayle folded her hands on the table. “In the past, there were only a few who could control the elements.”
“All it takes is a few.”
She played a grating melody with her gnashing teeth, and then pushed herself away from the table. “I know that,” she said, the optimism from her voice falling away like cheese from a grater.
“It’s not as if we can’t give courage and hope a try,” I said, feeling somewhat shameful that I’d once again driven my commander into those awful pits of dismay. Not a good place to be in, and it feels even worse when someone leads you there. She was a very intelligent woman who undoubtedly knew her plan had no regard for the conjurers. She likely didn’t need me to throw in that bit of information.
“It’s a question I have no answers to,” she said, her back still turned. “How do you account for an enemy you’ve seen in only small skirmishes, whose tactics are not written in books, whose weaknesses are as invisible to you as the land they hail from?” She hung her head.
“This isn’t a war we can win. I understand. But it feels wasteful, Astul. It feels wasteful to ignore the good life I still have and not prepare for the battle ahead like I would if victory was kneeling inside those walls, waiting for me. It feels wasteful not to mount an assault that will eliminate as many of those who make us hurt as possible, if only in the name of justice.
“I know that justice means little to you. But it is the only pursuit that has fully governed my life, and if I must die pursuing it, then… it must be a good death, yes?”
Her words were faint and shallow, dripping out of her mouth like water from a thawing cube of ice. I sidestepped the table and snuck up behind her, taking her softly by the shoulders.
“Most agree that I’m not a good man much of the time. But you are a great woman, Vayle. The world will surely miss you more than it misses me. If we both must bid this place goodbye in the coming days, I could take no greater pleasure in death than standing beside you as the Reaper comes swinging his scythe. You are my friend, Vayle. My partner in this dark world. It’s not love that binds us, and I’m glad. Because love is wild and unpredictable, here one moment and gone the next, so rarely sustained for eternity. No, it’s respect that brought us together. Unbreakable respect, like rock forged in deep, abandoned caves where the pressure and heat of long-forgotten molten lava had molded mountains and walls, invulnerable and immortal.”
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