by Hal Emerson
When they had reached what remained of Roarke – little more than scorched earth and warped stone – they all met in the council tent of the Elders, which had been erected on the very hilltop where he had berated Warryn months ago.
Remember that – you were right; you know your brothers and sisters better than they ever could. Henri Perci may know the ins and outs of the Kindred Forces, but he does not know, and never shall, the inner workings of the Children.
From here on out he would have to trust his instincts. And right now, they were telling him something very definite:
“We’re not moving fast enough,” the Prince said, breaking the silence. They all turned to him, Herni Perci with barely concealed contempt.
“How do you expect us to move faster?” Asked Perci. “Not all of us have the power to kill people and harvest their speed.”
“I don’t know,” responded the Prince, trying to keep himself civil with the man. Whatever their past issues were, even though the man had tried to kill him, circumstances were different now. They needed to work together. There was no time for petty squabbling. He just wished Perci could understand that – the man’s pride rode him mercilessly, and never seemed to let him rest.
“But we should be moving faster nonetheless,” said the Prince.
“Moving faster where exactly?” Asked Oleander, his hazel eyes gleaming oddly. They did that at times, and the man seemed to be feeling his years of late – he often misspoke or moved in strange, arthritic half-motions. It gave the Prince the strangest feeling of déjà vu.
“Look, we’re here,” said the Prince. He pointed to the spot on the top most of the maps that were spread out on the table before them. It was a magnified version of the southern half of the Empire, showing the Roarke Mountains, the city of Roarke itself, a broad expanse of road that led north, and another road that led northwest. That second road led toward his sister Dysuna’s Principality – the Province of Tibour. The land there was bleak and harsh – grassland for miles and miles without end, and, in the center of it a desert, in the middle of which was a single oasis where Dysuna had built her palace. It was a barren land – if they went there, they would not come out, he was sure of it. Dysuna didn’t even need to meet them in open battle – she needed only to wait inside her palace while the Kindred approached, giving the other Children time to gather. No, attacking the Wolf was suicide.
“We have the time and the ability to go around by Lake Chartain and –”
“We must defeat the Prince of Wolves before we move on,” said Oleander. Perci nodded emphatically.
“We cannot let her come up behind us – we’ll be completely hamstrung.”
“But if we go for Tibour, we’ll be sitting, twiddling our thumbs at the gates of Dysuna’s palace while she watches,” the Prince insisted, trying to make them see.
“I thought you weren’t one for strategy?” Spader said lightly with a wry smile, trying to liven the mood.
“I’m not really,” the Prince said, rubbing his eyes. He was so tired … he didn’t think he’d ever be able to rest well again. The weight of too many lives rested on his shoulders. “But tactics are easy for me. The strategy is to invade the Empire, striking northward. As long as you’ve all decided that’s the best path to take, then I can help make it work. And I’m telling you, going for Tibour won’t make it work. We don’t have the man power, the land power, or the strength of numbers. We have the element of surprise – the initiative – that’s all. And if we head for Tibour, we give that up, as surely as if we’d sent missives to the Empire telling them exactly where we would be going.”
“Fine,” Perci said, his nostrils flaring, “then the strategy has changed.”
“What do you mean?”
“The strategy is now to leave you here doing what you want with an honor guard as befitting you station, and for the rest of us to invade the Empire as we’d planned.”
“There was no plan!”
The Prince took a deep breath, taken aback by the venom in his own voice.
“All of you spent months in committee deciding nothing,” he said, still emphatic, but with less volume, hoping that would translate to politeness. “There was no single unifying voice the whole time – you have no leader, you have no plan, you have only vague ideas of attacking the Empire for pure catharsis. But getting all of us killed – wasting the lives of all those men and women out there – is no way to avenge the death of Elder Goldwyn.”
“I will hear no more of this,” said Henri Perci. He stood, and the Prince felt rage flare up in him, but he did nothing and simply let the man walk out. General Oleander followed reluctantly, though perhaps that impression was just because his movements were so awkward and jerky. For the first time in months the Prince wished he were back in the Empire; if anyone had spoken to him like that when he was Prince of Ravens they would have been strung up and hanged by the nearest lamppost.
But he wasn’t in the Empire. He’d gone and rebelled and gotten himself elected leader of the damn Exiled Kindred. If he’d been smart he would have run off into the mountains and become a hermit and lived out his days in peaceful solitude where no one could find him.
And they ask why I’m no good at strategy …
The rest of the council broke up then, though as Ishmael and Spader left the tent they both gave him looks that told him they agreed. This only darkened his mood, however. He was so tired of needing a majority in order to do anything. He was a Prince, not a governor. He’d been brought up to rule, not to lead.
This is what you should have been trying to learn from Goldwyn, he thought to himself ruthlessly. Not trying to make yourself feel better.
He left the tent too then as a number of Kindred servants came to clean it up – he used the term servants loosely here, as he knew from looking at the camp ledgers that they were all paid nearly ten times what any Imperial servant could hope to earn – and looked into the darkening sky and couldn’t help but feel like this whole journey would be fruitless. And, in the end, it would be his fault. He was the Prince, the leader. He held these men’s lives in his hands, and if they died it would be no consolation whatsoever to them that he had tried to save their lives.
His anger crystallized; hardened and turned inward. He used it as a spur, to prick him onward, forcing himself to go over the battle plans again, looking for a way, some way, any way, to prevent the deaths of the men and women who had placed their trust in him.
His men. His women. Fathers and mothers. Daughters and sons.
He reached out through the Raven Talisman and felt the life all around him, the different swirling colors, the sounds and smells of the camp, the underlying currents of emotion that, when gathered together like this, seemed to swell and ebb together like a tide.
He caught flashes of different lives – the feel of cotton on smooth skin, the blue of a fresh summer sky, the smell of tanning hides – and felt his anger at Perci become all the sharper, cutting all the deeper.
I have to save these people. They’re my people.
He spent the night sleeplessly, and rose the next morning to face the council once more as they continued their journey north and west.
All of this wouldn’t be so bad if he had had Leah and Tomaz to lean on. But Tomaz was often out scouting – as the bearer of the Ox Talisman he was quite invaluable, and as such often recruited for everything from lifting broken wagons to running scouting missions. And Leah … Leah had avoided him ever since the day he’d stood and been named Prince of the Veil. It was as if he had ceased to exist for her. Tomaz was there for him when he could be, as he always had been, but the girl’s absence was keenly felt, so much so that it had even become the subject of speculation among the rest of the camp. After their demonstration at the Midwinter Festival, rumors had begun to fly, and the death of Elder Goldwyn had done little to quell them. But now that Leah would not speak to him, the Prince couldn’t help but feel that at least some of what they said was true: that Leah truly did, desp
ite Tomaz and Davydd’s attempts to change her mind, blame him for her father’s death. Many whispers seemed to think he should speak out against this, and Tomaz himself had tried to convince the Prince to approach Leah and force the conversation.
The problem though, as he had told Davydd, was that he was responsible.
Not directly, no, of course not. But it was because of him and his inaction that the Kindred hadn’t known everything they possibly could about his brothers and sisters. It was because of him and his lack of enthusiasm, his damned stupid basic lack of understanding that it was necessary for him to take on the responsibility required of him. There truly was no one else who could do this, no one else who was fitted for the job as he was. It wasn’t that he was Aemon’s Heir, though he knew that was important to the Kindred and it was one of the reasons the Elders had allowed him to take the office in the first place. It was because of his other heritage: the blood of the Empress. All she had done, and all that his brothers and sisters had done, lay on him. No one could defeat them but him, and no one could save the Kindred but him.
He, no one else, was responsible for what his family had done. For what had been done in the name of the Empress, and in his name.
How far I’ve come, the Prince thought with a weary mental sigh, how much I’ve gone through and how far I have yet to go.
And despite it all, despite the fact he knew he’d let her down, the fact he should stop thinking of her, he still wished he could have Leah by his side once more.
The next meeting of the Council went much the same, culminating in a series of raised voices, this time belonging to Ishmael and Henri Perci, who were once more engaged in argument – Perci with his belligerent, bucolic aggression, and Ishmael with his quiet, sophisticated reserve.
The argument, as all their arguments had been, was pointless. They were a few days north of Roarke now, and they were truly at a crossroads, where they would either make for the northern parts of the Empire, or make a line for Tibour. The Prince knew this Council was important, knew this was his last chance to convince them. And yet, he still felt hopeless. There was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to …
The Prince noticed something different.
A boy was at the entrance to the tent. He had a soldier’s hat on that covered his face, but there was something familiar about him. The others noticed him looking and turned to look as well, though it took Henri Perci a few minutes to come out of his latest tirade and realize no one was listening anymore. The Prince went to the boy and knelt in front of him, pulling off the hat he wore to get a better look at him. Black hair and startling blue eyes – it was Tym, the quiet boy from Vale, the one he’d brought back with Aemon’s Blade.
“Why are you here Tym?” He asked quietly. “Why did your father let you come with us – this is not something for boys.”
Tym screwed up his face and stood at his full, less than impressive height.
“My – my father is dead, Prince Raven, he got very sick. So I don’t have any parents anymore, which means I’m not a boy, I’m a grown-up. And I’m here to help you. I’m a helper. Mr. Davydd always said so.”
The Prince’s face fell, though he tried to conceal his emotions from the boy. Tym looked like he was ready to cry, but he was holding it in. The Prince reached out and felt the boy’s life again, the smell of old books and dusty pages, now coupled with a sense of loss, and the image of a tree split in half by lightning.
“Do you have a message?” Asked the Prince. The boy’s eyes widened, and the sudden way he held his body spoke of fear.
“We got blocked,” Tym said, his eyes shifting uncomfortably from the Prince to the gathered generals, back to the Prince, to the Prince’s boots, to other objects, in no discernable order.
“Blocked?” Asked the Prince.
“By a Daemon,” said the boy, barely above a whisper.
The silence in the tent following these simple words was profound.
“Which road?”
“The road north Prince Raven,” Tym said, still unable to keep his eyes focused on any one thing or person. He was fidgeting with his shirt as well, with a hole in the hem.
A Daemon blocking the road north, forcing them toward Dysuna and the deadly grasslands and desert of Tibour.
“Fortuitous,” Henri Perci said immediately. “That ends our debate – we head for Tibour.”
The General turned to Tym.
“You know that it is a crime to lie about military matters? This is not a game boy, you must tell us all the truth or men could die.”
“I do not lie,” Tym said, voice very quiet but proud. “I swear the Daemon is there.”
“Good – and it is contained for now?” He asked, his contempt for the quiet, reserved boy clear on his face. The boy, seeing the contempt, nodded almost too quickly, and stayed silent.
“Well, how?” Perci continued, taking a step forward. The boy almost ran out of the tent then, but the Prince leaned forward and held out a calming, supplicating hand.
“Wait,” he said. “Please Tym, how are we containing the Daemon?”
For a long moment the boy still looked like he would run, but then he quickly crossed to the Prince and whispered into his ear.
“It isn’t moving,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “Ranger Davydd said that he thinks it’s bound to the mountains we’re trying to pass between. There are soldiers there too … they’re Defenders, I could tell by their shirts. Mr. Davydd said to tell you that, and also that he doesn’t see any Bloodmages.”
The Prince nodded. It made sense – such things were certainly possible. It was difficult, and it took a full circle of thirteen Bloodmages to maintain such a thing, but no doubt the Empire had Bloodmages to spare for defenses like this. The Defenders were no doubt there to relay messages of an approaching force – like the Kindred army.
They know we’re headed north, they set a trap for us. They’ll expect us to turn aside and make for Tibour. But this is just the first wave of defense, not an attack; someone is trying to divert us, likely buying time to mobilize.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said to Tym. He then stood and turned to face Henri Perci, reminding himself to keep calm.
“The Daemon is holding steady between the mountains we were trying to cross between. It is forcing us toward the grasslands of Tibour.”
“Like I said, good,” repeated Perci dismissively. “Our forces will have an easier time moving through the lowlands in any case – we can leave the Imperial Road and make straight for the Wolf without any further ado.”
He motioned to one of the runners waiting nearby that would carry messages to the rest of the camp.
“Tell the men to pack up, the time has come to –”
“You will carry no such message.”
Henri Perci turned slowly to the Prince.
“Did I just hear you contradict me?”
“Yes,” said the Prince simply. “Unless your ears are as useless as what’s between them.”
The whole tent went deadly quiet. Spader perked up and shifted position as if getting a better view at the start of a prizefight, but the rest of the Generals had frozen, and were looking between the two men, unsure of where their allegiances lay.
“You are a figurehead,” said Perci, “and you will do as I say.”
“I am your Prince, chosen by the people. And you will do as I say.”
“I command the majority of these men,” said Perci, staring daggers at the Prince, “and will not let them be led by some Imperial outcast. Do not make the mistake of raising your hand against me – you will lose.”
“You have forced my hand,” said the Prince, feeling a level of contempt for the man the likes of which he hadn’t felt for anyone in his life. “You are leading a majority of these men to death! You have no idea what it is you’re up against. All of you, you fight and squabble with each other, trying to turn this into some kind of rule by common consent. You – will – lose – this – war. We a
re going north, we have to! If we go to Dysuna, then we are dead before anything has begun. This is an obvious trap, the first of the Empire’s defenses, how can you not see that?”
“You have no place among us – you have no say in our councils!”
“DAMN your councils!”
They were all staring wide-eyed, wavering between the two men.
