Chapter Thirteen

Adryngar stepped out of the tent. So the Academy was in the mountains to the north. The scout had pointed its location out on a map with minimal encouragement. Drozgol had beaten her while Vakov sharpened his instruments, and in the end she had told them without the loss of a single body part.

Gazza and Drozgol stepped out with him. Vakov remained inside to clean up.

“She cannot join the other slaves,” Gazza said. “A soldier among them could incite them to rebellion.”

“That soldier, ma’am?” Drozgol said. Adryngar could hear him holding back laughter.

“I agree,” Adryngar said. “Even the world’s most cowardly soldier can be a potent rallying point. And she’ll know things about war, even if she can’t do much herself. Best get rid of her.”

“Actually, I was intending for you to take her,” Gazza said. “It is unseemly that a general should be without servants.”

“Generous, but I think I can do without,” Adryngar said.

“I think it’s a good idea, sir,” Drozgol said unexpectedly. “You’ve got more important things to do than darn your own socks.”

Adryngar glanced at him in surprise. I can understand Gazza, she’s a noble, but why you?

“I insist,” Gazza said. “Your comportment affects my honor as well as yours.”

He looked between the two of them for a moment. “As you wish,” he said. “I’ll tell the slavemasters tomorrow morning. Duchess, please meet me in the command tent in half an hour. I’d like to discuss our next move.”

As he spoke, the sergeant came back with a human in rags. “Sir,” he said with a bow.

“Thank you, sergeant. Zavva, please tell the undergenerals and Djamer to meet the duchess and I in the command tent in half an hour. I’d like you to be there as well.”

The spy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

Adryngar took his leave, heading for the kitchens. Drozgol followed him. “So,” Adryngar said. “Why do you want me to have a slave? I’d have thought you’d be against it.”

Drozgol took off his helmet and hooked it to his belt. “I thought it was pretty obvious.” He grinned. “You need some stress relief, and I know you prefer to do your plowing in private.”

Adryngar sighed. “Very thoughtful of you, I’m sure.”

“Go on, she might be pretty once she’s healed up. Or is it that she’s human? Might be a distant cousin or something.”

No, it’s that she’s a slave, the same as you and I were once, however much we might try to forget it. “If she were a cousin of mine, she’d be much uglier.”

“That’s so. See? Nothing to worry about, then. She’ll be good for you.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot. Whores, those most famous of healers. Will she fix my face as well?”

“No, but she’ll fix that frown,” Drozgol said cheerfully.

They obtained biscuits and stew from a yawning cook at the kitchen tents and headed off to locate a friendly fire. They found one in the scouts’ encampment. A shadowy figure wrapped in a long, ragged fur coat over his black soldier’s clothes nodded at them from his seat by a fire.

“Ryyk,” Adryngar said with a smile. He sat down on a rock.

The scout chief tore at his biscuit with pointed teeth, then sipped from a ceramic pitcher and proffered it. When Adryngar refused, Ryyk tilted his head.

“Strategy meeting in a few minutes,” Adryngar said. “I’ve got to be sharp.”

“I’ll take that,” Drozgol said, and Ryyk passed him the pitcher. “Best be quick about your strategy, or there’ll be none left for you.”

Adryngar shrugged and occupied himself with the stew. There was some sort of root vegetable involved. Potatoes? Whatever it was, it wasn’t bad. The biscuit, on the other hand, was highly questionable. He’d give it to his horse. Bakal would appreciate it.

When he finished, he took his bowl back to the kitchens, stopping on the way to feed Bakal, who gave the biscuit a couple of curious snuffles before crunching it down, spraying Adryngar with crumbs. He gave the horse’s withers a quick scratch and headed for the command tent.

Zavva, Djamer, the duchess, and the undergenerals were all already there, as he had hoped. It was far better to make those beneath him wait a bit than to be seen waiting for them. “Thank you for coming,” he said. He unrolled one of the maps on the table and pointed to the village they had raided today. “Arcshire’s largely burnt to the ground. We were planning to take the place’s harvest, but we were surprised by an unusually quick Alliance response. They seem to have acquired a host of light riders, numbers unknown. We captured one of their scouts, and she seems to think that these riders are Alddran mercenaries called jotyen. Zavva, what do you know?”

The spy coughed. “Well, jotyen are mercenaries, definitely, but I don’t see that Eldden could have hired them. Eldden’s former king attempted to take over Alddra years ago, and Alddra’s king, Urstad, has never quite forgiven that. He’s building a wall, actually, along his western border, to keep Eldden out for good. I can’t imagine that he’d allow jotyen to join Eldden.”

“How do the jotyen dress?”

“It varies among the clans, the skels, but as a whole, primitively. Furs, iron. Most of them paint themselves.”

“Are there any others in Rune that might fit that description?”

“None who are any more likely to be here.”

“Well then. For now, let’s assume that these are jotyen, and they’re fighting with the Elddener. How many of them are there?”

“Potentially many thousands, but you’d never get more than two or three skels to fight together. They’re also very religious, see, and the skels arose out of their dogmatic differences. Hire the wrong ones, and they’re as likely to fight each other as the enemies they’ve been paid to kill.”

“So how many can we assume that Eldden has obtained?”

Zavva considered. “A thousand. Two at the most.”

“How good are they?” Paervorenth asked.

“It depends how well they’re used. Alone, a jotyen is a fierce warrior and the finest rider in Rune, but most skels think of battle as a form of expression and a form of devotion. They shun coordinated attacks, focus on the individual. They go in for heroics. Used well, they can be nigh unstoppable, but if whoever’s commanding them hasn’t done it before—and anyone from Eldden probably has very little experience with jotyen, due to relations with Alddra—then there’s a high chance that they won’t be used to their fullest potential.”

“At Arcshire, the Alliance didn’t seem to have a commander,” Adryngar said. “They were just throwing themselves against our shields.”

“So we can’t know, is what you’re saying,” Paervorenth said. “Not until we engage them in proper battle.”

“Yes,” Zavva said.

“We don’t need to engage them for now,” Tansul said. “With the ships and the longboats, we can take river and coastal settlements easily. And if we make for the northern coast, it’ll take Eldden weeks to catch up with us.”

“And we will be attacking the coast,” Adryngar said. “The scout we captured told us that the west road into the mountains is blocked, unusable. There’s another road on the eastern side. I want those mages taken as quickly as possible, and we need to make our way into Eldden anyway, so we’re heading north.”

“In what force?” Uskran asked.

“Most of the army. We need a force here in Cuisienne to keep the peace, hold the Bridge secure, but I intend to take the rest of our strength north and capture Eldden’s northwest.”

“Then what was the point of driving east today?” Gazza asked.

“To scare the Elddener, mostly,” Adryngar said. “We learned something of their strength, and we got slaves and loot, but my greatest hope for today is that it will bring the Alliance to dash itself against the Bridge.”

“And weaken themselves against it with little loss on our side,” the duchess said slowly.

“Yes,” Adryngar said. “Uskran, I’d like to leave you overseeing Cuisienne, if you’d be willing.”

The Turok frowned. “Defending peasants? You’d leave me no opportunity for valor.”

“I’d leave you protecting our rear, working to draw the Alliance away from us by harrying them from the Bridge. It may not be glorious, but it’s a necessary task, and you’re a strong and clever defender.”

Uskran shrugged his broad shoulders. “As you will.”

Adryngar nodded. “You’ll have seven thousand of your choice to hold Cuisienne, and slaves to supply them. The rest will go north. Any questions?” When no one answered, he nodded. “All right. We march for Puddlerock tomorrow.”

He took his leave and headed for the interrogation tent to fetch Vakov. Left to his own devices, the private would probably spend all night cleaning up the tent. Adryngar wouldn’t have cared about that if they weren’t marching tomorrow, but they were, and Vakov wasn’t a rider. He knew he shouldn’t, the boy needed to learn, but there was something endearing about how easily Vakov disconnected himself from reality, and he often found himself helping the boy more than he should. Not to mention that Vakov was infinitely more useful as a torturer, diplomat, and medical officer than he was as a proper soldier.

He wondered briefly why Djamer had been so quiet. He was not a talkative man, but to be completely silent during an important strategy meeting was unlike him. Oh well. Mages were mages, and Adryngar had no doubt that if it was important, he would be told. He could count on battlemages for that, at least.

He ducked into the interrogation tent and was surprised to find the Alliance scout still in there. Vakov was stitching up a deep cut on her badly bruised face, and she was frozen in terror.

Vakov turned to look at him. “My lord.”

“We’re moving out tomorrow,” Adryngar said. “We’ll march to Puddlerock and take ships east to Eldden’s north coast.”

Vakov nodded. “Thank you, my lord. I will prepare.” He tied off a stitch in the scout’s face and rose to put away his instruments.

Adryngar looked at the scout. He hadn’t paid much attention to what she looked like while he talked to her. He had been focused on her voice and expressions, not that either of those two had been particularly telling. Now he took her in, curious to see what humans looked like across the sea. Beneath the blood, dirt, and bruises, her skin was a light brown, like an almond, or the darker feathers on an owl. Her face was long and sharp, contorted in terror and pain, and softened by a mop of black hair that reached to a jaw that could chop wood. She was different, certainly. Humans in Vloss had paler skin and rounder features, though they usually had the same cowed bearing.

“You work for me now,” he told her. “The duchess made me a gift of you.”

She looked up. Her dark eyes were wide and frightened.

“Can you sew?”

She nodded slowly.

“Good. I’ll need you to repair my clothing, understand?”

She nodded again. Adryngar untied her hands from behind the post, tied them again in front of her, and pulled her to her feet. She stood hunched over, her eyes screwed shut, her hands on her stomach.

He sighed. “Vakov, I’ll meet you by Ryyk’s tent in a bit.”

The private inclined his head. “My lord.”

Adryngar led the scout to his tent. It was bigger than the two-man tents that most of the army used, and he was the only occupant, giving him space for a lantern, stool, and wash basin—well, it was a bucket—in addition to his bedroll and kit. He folded the stool, emptied the water from the bucket, and shoved them both into a corner, leaving sufficient space for her to sleep with enough room between them to ensure that, should she suddenly grow a spine, she couldn’t reach him quickly. Just in case, he put his kit between them and tied her ankle to one of the tent poles with a length of rope.

She just sat there, staring at the ground.

He unbuckled his armor, a lengthy process, and pulled off his gambeson. He fished around in his kit bag for his sewing kit and handed it to her. “See if you can’t get this fixed by tomorrow.”

She took the kit wordlessly, looked at it for a moment, and threaded a needle.

Drozgol, Ryyk, and Vakov were all at the fire when he returned. Vakov was sipping primly at a bowl of soup, and Droz and Ryyk were engaged in arm wrestling. Adryngar sat on a rock and watched. Most would bet on the Turok, given that Drozgol weighed about twice as much, but Adryngar had seen Ryyk sling a stone hard enough to drive in through an eye and out the back of a skull. The Ienian had strength, certainly.

It went on for long enough that other soldiers stopped to watch, commenting and making bets. They had no money, and it would do them no good in Rune anyway, so they bet with food or favors. Adryngar heard a man promise that if the captain lost, he would clean a cavalryman’s tack from top to bottom, a tall order in muddy Cuisienne. Another offered two days’ worth of biscuits, and was promptly laughed down. Most of the bets were of a more ribald nature.

In the end, Ryyk forced Drozgol’s fist down, to laughter and groans from the crowd. Ryyk stood and gave a small bow. Drozgol clapped him on the shoulder, and they sat back down and shared a drink while the others dispersed.

Adryngar headed back to his tent shortly afterward. He knew that he should probably check on the slavemasters and make sure that they had catalogued and stored their charges properly, but he figured that they could handle themselves for one night. It was their job, after all.

The scout was still sewing when he ducked into his tent. She glanced quickly at him and redoubled her efforts. She had patched several holes already.

“Finish that one up and go to sleep,” he said. He suddenly realized that he had never asked her name. “What are you called?”

“Shalla,” she mumbled, never looking up, wincing as she spoke. Her face had to be hurting her.

He nodded and lay down on his bedroll. He pulled a blanket over himself and waited for the light to go out, feeling mildly guilty that he had nothing to give her to stay warm. She fought with the enemy. She deserves it.

His thoughts turned to speculation, wondering where the Academy was, how many free mages it might hold, how it might be defended. He couldn’t know, not without more information, so it was a futile line of thought, but it gave him something to do until Shalla packed up the sewing kit and blew out the lantern.