by Rob Preece
"I knew you'd get overconfident,” Sullivan growled. He looked leaner than when she'd seen him last, and a fresh scar snaked across his forehead. Maybe she'd gotten closer than she'd known with an arrow.
"Did I?"
He launched a cut at her shoulder without seeming to move. The man was a good swordsman. Better than Sergius. Better than Arnold. Better even than Dafed. Unless she was very lucky, better than she was.
She waited, making him commit before blocking, then slicing her blade down his, aiming for his hand.
Her counter would have worked against a katana with its small guard. Against his broadsword, it was ineffective. They locked and she felt his muscles bunch. She barely managed to jump back before he threw her off.
"How many thousand people did you kill outside of Dinan?” she demanded. She kept up her attack through her conversation, forcing herself to breath normally, as if she wasn't straining for every bit of energy. “Ten thousand? More? Too bad you couldn't do so well against people who fight back."
He stepped back, shrugged, then regained his guard. “They were peasants and it was war. What was I supposed to do? Feed them?"
He attacked again. This time, she tried a stop-thrust, ducking under his blade and thrusting her own sword at him.
The sharp point of her weapon caught him in the lower arm and Sullivan pulled back. “Damn. Guards! To me!"
But he'd waited too long. Outside, the sound of another ninja night attack distracted the guards.
"Looks like it's just us,” Ellie told him.
"For now. Then it'll be just me."
He bore in.
Sullivan was strong and he wasn't losing much blood. But he was angry. And emotion is the enemy of skill.
Ellie played with him, trying to increase his anger and frustration. She controlled her breath, ignoring the urge to gasp for air, let her face relax into a smile, and put on a clinic.
A swordsman can't really lose his skill, even in the heat of anger. Years of training embed it into muscle memory and make it automatic. Ten times, Sullivan's instinctive response saved his life.
"You know you're losing to a woman, don't you?” Ellie gloated. “And you thought you could be king?"
He shouted, then swung wildly.
She reached into her uniform, pulled out a shuriken, and tossed it.
Sullivan batted it to the side, but his block gave her the opening she'd been waiting for. She'd thrown high so she cut low.
Against a fencer, using foil or saber, her blade never would have penetrated. But the heavier weapon of medieval-style swordfighting—or that of the ninja—penetrates through the gentle parry of a fencer. Her blade cut deep into Sullivan's thigh.
He pulled away, grasping his leg with one hand while holding his sword in front of him. “Guards.” His voice cracked in pain but it penetrated. “Guards. A rescue."
Ellie flicked the blood off her weapon and pulled out her blowgun.
The one guard who burst through the tent's entrance caught the poisoned dart on his exposed throat.
He went down hard.
Ellie looked at the prince. “I have a message for Sergius and you're my messenger. Tell him that he can still seek exile. We don't care if he lives or dies. But he isn't welcome in Lubica. He's broken the bonds between himself and the land. The magic has turned on him. Oh, and tell him that if he hurts Ranolf or his daughters, we'll hunt him down like a dog, no matter where he flees."
"You're afraid to take me on.” He forced himself to his feet, brought his sword back into guard.
She hefted the blowgun, then laughed. “Take my message. If you want a rematch afterward, let me know. Because you don't have a chance."
She'd spotted her kantana earlier, resting as a trophy on a camp table in Sullivan's tent. She grasped it and gave Sullivan a mocking salute. “If you don't run, I'll see you when we storm the walls of Moray."
"Bitch."
She laughed. “You know it. Until next time, peasant-killer."
Chapter 23
After Sullivan's futile march, Sergius gave up on attacking for the winter.
By spring, guerillas and bandits controlled most of the country and Sergius and his nobles huddled in the cities and fortresses of Lubica.
Not every city in the nation enjoyed the fortifications of a Moray or a Dinan and Ellie's guerillas had captured several substantial towns. From a military perspective, she'd done more than she had dreamed possible. Mark's messages and strategic advice, added to her own tactical insights, had served her well.
But her most important goal hadn't been military. She'd hoped for a chance to rescue Ranolf and Arnold's sisters. She dreaded going back to Arnold and telling him that she'd failed. But she hadn't been able to get close. Sergius had learned what happened in Harrison and bottled up Moray completely, no matter the inconvenience to merchants and workers.
Throughout the country, mercenaries and aristocrats had spent the winter trying to determine who had the upper hand, where to throw their support. Arnold's message of an oath-breaking king had rung true with a minority of the nobility and more of the merchants. He now had the makings of a small but effective heavy cavalry.
Mark had tried and failed to develop a breech-loading weapon but he had perfected the paper cartridge he'd been working on for Sergius and had added rifling to hundreds of weapon barrels.
Ellie's guerilla successes had swelled the army in Harrison. Still, they were badly outnumbered and undertrained. Using money from taxes, from selling the estates of those he declared traitor, from the church, and from the Rissel, Sergius hired all the bandits and mercenaries he could find from everywhere within a month's sail of Lubica.
Between his own efforts and those of his uncles, he'd rallied most of the nobility as well. And Arnold didn't have a navy at all.
Prudence dictated that Arnold's outnumbered army remain huddled in Harrison, continue the guerilla war that had been so effective during the winter, and let the strong walls of their city defeat any army Sergius sent against them.
But neither Arnold nor Mark were willing to yield to prudence. They left a guard in Harrison in case the Rissel attacked from the north, and marched the army south, joining with Ellie's guerillas in the field.
Ellie left the minimum forces needed to preserve order in the towns and cities that her guerilla army had freed and brought the rest, along with all of her ninja, to the rendezvous. Her ninja weren't suited to a stand-up battle, but they could be skirmishers, scouts, and could harass enemy efforts to forage from the country and disrupt their supply columns.
Assuming Sergius marched against them rather than remaining entrenched in his capital.
Arnold announced a council of war when Ellie and her ninja finally marched into the camp, reuniting with an army she hardly recognized.
She'd lost eighty of the one hundred ninja who'd left with her five months earlier, and she mourned each loss. But she'd multiplied their numbers. She'd left with barely a hundred. She returned with close to two thousand guerilla soldiers and five hundred experienced ninja, not including those she'd left to hold the towns and strong points they needed to deny Sergius his tax collectors.
"I'm glad to see you safe.” Arnold hugged her in his powerful arms.
Arnold had lost weight over the winter and his lean face had picked up a couple of lines that hadn't been there before. He still looked good.
Ellie backed away from him, gave him a martial arts bow, then extended the bow to the other captains and nobles Arnold had gathered around him.
In addition to Mark, Lawgrave, Dafed, and Lart, she recognized about five of their sergeants from Sergius's army and another three from Lart's original bandit band. She'd brought Alys and Micael back with her. The rest of the council, mostly noblemen, she could only guess at.
"Your father and sisters are being guarded inside the great tower of Moray,” she told Arnold. “We were unsuccessful in our attempt at infiltration.” Unsuccessful was a dramatic understatement. She'd lost
two hundred of her best ninja and had barely been able to drag her own injured body from the worst fiasco of the winter war.
"You've done everything humanly possible, Ellie. At least Sergius has kept them alive."
"Are you doing all right, Ellie?” Mark interrupted. “You look like you've lost ten pounds."
Ellie had never had much by way of female curves and she didn't need to be reminded that she'd lost even that. She no longer had to do anything special to pull off her young boy disguise.
"I've been wounded a few times but I've been lucky."
Mark shook his head and muttered something but Arnold cut him off.
"Moray is the key and we're marching on the capital now,” the man they intended to make king said. “We've built barges to haul the heavy cannon we captured in Harrison so we'll have artillery if we need to besiege the capital. But the city will have more cannon and will have the range on us. Obviously we would prefer to draw Sergius out into an open battle."
"If he stays in Moray, he'll rot,” Lart muttered.
"We may rot first,” Lawgrave observed. “According to the spies we have in the city, he's got enough food to keep his army going for years. And the Rissel are giving him the money he needs to keep the soldiers paid."
"Maybe we can draw him out with a feint.” Mark pulled out his trusty map. “If we march north, against the Rissel, he may see an opportunity to recapture Harrison while it is undergarrisoned. It's by far the biggest city under our control and the core of our armaments industry. If we lost it, we'd be back to a bandit rabble in no time."
"Not rabble,” Lart growled. In his mind, at least, the bandit army he'd headed had become mythical: the kernel of the revolution.
"Using the word in the best possible sense, of course."
"The Rissel have been quiet lately,” Dafed reminded them. “Are we certain we want to beard that lion in his den?"
Ellie nodded. “Dafed is right. We don't want to get bogged down in an offensive against the Rissel now. For one thing, it's the wrong direction. Our supply lines would stretch through the mountains to the north and the Rissel navy could keep us from getting anything by ship. Sergius would only have to wait until we were deep in enemy territory and then strike before we could make it back. Even if we didn't get trapped by the Rissel."
Mark glared at his map. “Maybe."
"Suppose, though, that we put an army here.” Ellie touched the tip of her katana to a spot midway between Dinan and Moray. “We'd block Sergius from getting any more supplies from his allies and make him feel like we could strike at Dinan, Moray, or Sullivan City. Between my guerillas in the south, your forces here, and the blocking force to the west, Sergius would be surrounded. And he wouldn't want to lose either Dinan or Sullivan City."
"The only roads from here to Dinan go through Moray,” Dafed said. “We couldn't bring our artillery."
"True."
"And Sergius could attack the holding force while a garrison held Moray."
Mark nodded. “It's a risk, but I think Ellie's right. We'll send the artillery and the main army down the rivers. And we'll send the riflemen, a couple of hundred ninja, and Arnold's cavalry to block the road to Dinan and demonstrate against the Dukedom of Sullivan."
"You're dividing your forces,” one of the noblemen argued. “You must concentrate your armies and attack the enemy's strength."
It wasn't horrible advice, but it wasn't the best military strategy either. What it did was guarantee maximum casualties. Too often, those casualties would be inflicted on the soldiers following the advice rather than their enemies.
"Lord Anselman has a point, General,” Arnold mused. “What would prevent Sergius from defeating us in detail?"
Ellie nearly fell off her feet. The Arnold she'd met would have been champing at the bit for a chance at individual glory. Concern for defeat in detail, or even an understanding of the concept, had been alien to him a year before. He'd obviously been paying attention.
"He'll have to leave a strong garrison in Moray or we'll capture it by storm so he'd have to divide his forces as well whichever of our forces he chooses to attack,” Mark answered. “But the short answer is, we can't. We can't afford to lose our cannon so we have to guard them. But if we want Sergius to march out and attack us, we have to make sure he thinks he has an advantage. If we put too much of the army to the west, he'll go after the artillery and Harrison. The way I see it, if we don't want to spend time in a siege, we need him to come out."
"If he captures our artillery, we're in trouble,” Dafed said. “We've pretty well stripped Harrison. Wherever we put it has to be defensible."
"Right.” Mark studied the map for a moment. “How about Varna? It's a minor walled city about forty miles outside of Moray. We'll take it by storm, make it a strong point for our forces, and leave the artillery and most of the infantry there. It should be able to hold off anything Sergius throws at it for long enough for the rest of the army to come back and break the siege if we have to."
Nobody really liked the plan, but nobody had anything better to offer. At least putting a force southwest of Moray had the advantage of indirect approach, allowing them to strike at multiple strategic locations and putting Sergius in a difficult position.
As Mark reminded them, even a bad plan can work, with the right implementation. Ellie was only slightly encouraged.
* * * *
Varna turned out not to be much of a battle. Sergius had left it enough soldiers to defend against Ellie's guerillas, but he'd learned the lessons of concentration of force. Everyone beyond the minimum, he'd pulled back into the capital.
The Varna garrison commander had dreams of holding on until Sergius could mount a relief operation, but Ellie's ninja captured his message riders and the mages kept a magical barrier around the city. After that, it was going through the motions.
The guards repulsed their first attack then sent out a negotiating party.
In exchange for giving what was left of the garrison safe passage to Moray, the town was theirs.
Mark, Arnold, and Ellie had to face down the rest of Arnold's council to get their forces on the road immediately. The others wanted to take a couple of days to regroup after their minor losses.
But Ellie had a strange sense of urgency. As if they needed to achieve victory quickly before things spun completely out of control. With Arnold and Mark backing her up, the rest of the council eventually came around.
Four thousand soldiers and ninja, slightly less than half of their combined army, cut across the farmlands and forests, heading toward Dinan at dawn the next morning.
* * * *
The march was ugly.
This close to the capital, all roads led to Moray. Going around it was painful. Under a slow spring drizzle, the dirt tracks they followed quickly turned into a quagmire of mud, discarded and broken equipment, and human, mule, horse, and oxen waste.
Even on horseback, Ellie was quickly covered in filth. The infantry looked to be mud figures rather than humans after only an hour of marching.
By noon, they'd only traveled eight miles.
"Pretty good.” Arnold looked up from a mug of wine as Ellie collapsed off her horse. “In this weather, I wondered if we'd get ten miles all day. If things don't get worse, we should be able to make camp here.” He pointed to a small village on the map.
Ellie's ski-based guerilla army had regularly covered forty or more miles in a single day. But this was different. The army's speed was dictated not by its average member, but by its slowest. And the mule carts that carried food and the barrels of gunpowder needed to resupply their forces barely crawled on these mucky roads.
"Want me to send the ninja to secure the town?"
Arnold shook his head. “Already taken care of. The knights needed a chance to blow off some steam."
Ellie suspected the villagers would welcome her ninja more than they did a bunch of aristocratic hoodlums, but no one had asked her. Which raised a suspicious thought. “You are go
ing to keep your promise, Arnold. About democracy and human rights? Because I'm tired of killing. I'd just as soon not have to lead another guerilla movement."
"You may have to,” he said.
She hadn't realized she'd put her hand on her sword until several of Arnold's guards stiffened.
He held out a hand to stop her. “I mean, against the Rissel. Because as long as they occupy half the country and their king maintains a claim to the whole nation, we'll be at risk."
"That I can worry about later. But I notice you didn't answer my question. Are you going to keep your promise?"
He nodded slowly. “I may be a young fool and occasionally an idiot. But I'm not an oathbreaker, Ellie. I don't understand why you want all of the laws and rules you're insisting on and some of them go against everything my father taught me. But I trust you. You are the returned princess, and you have seen another world. From what Mark tells me, it's a better world."
Ellie wasn't sure the Earth she'd grown up on was better than Arnold's, but it did have a lot of positives. She hoped she'd be able to find some compromise, some way of avoiding the worst of both. She knew that was what her parents would have demanded.
"Okay. So, do you have anything else to eat or did you finish it all before I got here?"
* * * *
It took them five days to travel the forty miles to the spot Ellie had picked on the map. Or rather, what would have been forty miles if it had been on the main road. In all, their army marched closer to sixty miles, mostly through muck and mud.
They set up camp in the fields of a local baron—a baron who had seen their army appear at the front door of his chateau and quickly vanished out the back door.
Arnold's cavalry gave half-hearted chase but let him get away. They wanted word to get back to Sergius, after all. He couldn't exactly march against them if he didn't know they were there.
Ellie put her ninja to work on something a little more practical. The road between Dinan and Moray was Sergius's major supply route. Which had to mean caravans, money and weapons.
