7 Days Left

Ragnar returned to the war table, though it had been moved to a different room. They were currently in one of the training chambers underneath the Wethorn building. He forced off a shiver as he entered the room. These walls were thicker than the ones around the advancement rooms. One was designed to mitigate the incidental damage from the occasional breakthrough, the other intended to hold through a spar between second-stage tethered.

The breakthrough rooms were rarely ever damaged, only warp tended to do anything but leave a light scratch on the stone and even then they didn’t do anything a fourth- or fifth-year couldn’t fix in five minutes.

Shaking his head, Ragnar limped up to the table. His mind felt addled from lack of sleep. He’d been up all night looking over potential candidates to fill out teacher spots. Though, in reality, he’d been distracting himself from thinking too much about the conflict in the capital. It would only feed into the excitement keeping him from sleep, so he’d chosen a different pastime.

Even on top of that, he could imagine a thousand strategies that Grimar, Sveitha—he was pretty sure it was Sworden’s daughter who were leading their men—and Inga’s commander planned but he could never substitute their actual actions. Whether clever, dumb, or smart assuming the intentions and actions of his opponents almost always ended in a terrible loss for him.

“Let’s start going through the reports for today,” Ragnar said and one of his aides started going through his prepared list shifting troops around on the map. There hadn’t been any real clashes, just small skirmishes closer. Most of the conflict so far went into posturing more than the actual strike of weaponry. They’d reinforced their hold on Virrel Square and gained a foothold on the nearby Ash Well. The tree growing in the center made it difficult to use archers within the area for when the real conflict would breakout.

While Inga had clearly taken her brightest heads with her, she’d held a large contingent of archers and anywhere they would bring havoc, especially in city warfare. Not that he was too worried about her men. It was, after all, clear that she’d taken her brightest heads with her.

Someone knocked on the door, “Selling lirius,” a voice called out followed shortly by a burp and it was thrown open and the messenger was allowed inside. Behind him, at the end of the hallway, Ragnar caught the legs of a loose black and white uniform ascending up the stairs.

He closed his eyes, groaning internally as the messenger began speaking, “Sir, the scouts have spotted Grimar of house Serpent-Vein making his way through the city. It appears he’s trying to meet up with the Sworden army.”

Ragnar sighed and nodded, “What of it?”

“Should we attack him, sir? Try to stop him?”

Ragnar grimaced, “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Master Grimar’s a Mantle. Do you know the toll on life, both military and civilian it would take to fight him? The toll on the city? He’s easily got enough range to tear down a city block. And you wanna send what to fight him? Another master?” Ragnar shook his head, “Let him go. They were always going to find a way to communicate, that he’s a bit more direct doesn’t matter.”

Though it does explain the defensive tactics they’ve employed over the last hour, Ragnar thought. The entire Serpent-Vein army had gone into defensive formations, clearly displaying what districts and areas they were holding. It was the most outright sign of the conflict, two-thousand men drawing a clear designation through a third of the city. They’d maintained their formation even when they could’ve pushed to grab more, Ragnar noted. Grimar doesn’t trust his own commanders, big surprise there, he thought dryly.

Another knock on the door. This one didn’t have the rhythm, just three terse knocks, no password followed either. Ragnar groaned internally and he knew he’d seen correctly when he’d spotted the uniform in the distance. It had been too loose, even for an administrator

“Let me in, Ragnar.”

“Sor—“ The guard at the door started to say, but Ragnar waved him off muttering a curse.

“Open the door,” He spoke after a moment.

“But—“ The guard struggled with himself, fingers clutched tight around the deadbolt and latch.

Ragnar reached out through his Veil to the obsidian attached to corners of all the maps and rolled them up. He spilled figures all over the table as he picked the maps up and stowed them under the table. “You want to talk about collateral? Let him in, soldier.”

The guard finally grunted in displeasure and took off the lock. He slowly pulled it open to reveal the tall, well-muscled figure of Zubair el-Harron, The Glacier of Ankiria, standing with his hands in his pockets.

“Finally,” he muttered with a relaxed grin as he stepped into the room, “took you long enough.”

“Unsurprisingly,” Ragnar countered, “we’re not keen on allowing our enemies to see our tactics.”

“Enemy? Ragnar, I’m not your enemy. You said it best, it’s not my job to deal with what’s happening in your captial. I’m here to report on your ability to run the academy and the likelihood of you keeping it running smoothly. Of course, I’ll have to put these riots, what are they your second or third? Anyway, I will have to add them to my report, then the United Alliance will decide if you have the longevity and stability we need to keep the academy running and have our soldiers fight off the flesh-torn horde.”

Ragnar frowned looking the older man in the eye. He wasn’t sure how the triplet master had slowed his aging, but he’d surely managed it somehow. Zubair hadn’t officially been a triplet master for more than a decade and a half, but Ragnar had credible sources noting of Zubair’s abilities nearly forty years ago.

There were other stories about triplet masters that didn’t add up. Men and women being pulled from the front lines ‘too old’ to continue fighting only to be spotted decades later in supposed retirement.

“So you’re not going to report this to anyone else?” Ragnar asked skeptically, “You’re just going to stay in the room and observe us… for fun? To keep you entertained?”

“Of course not, I’m going to see how capable you are of maintaining your hold on the capital and see what happens when your enemies move on you. These things will all fit nicely into my report on your skills.”

“I’m sure it will,” Ragnar replied dryly. Instinct told him to stop all planning and retreat. Find another place to setup and avoid the ankirian before him. But anywhere Ragnar went he would eventually find Zubair. There was nothing he could do. Hiding from another master was incredibly difficult and he’d only ever seen a handful of tethered do it, even then they hadn’t managed it for long. And Zubair wasn’t just any master, either.

With a reluctant grunt, Ragnar pulled the maps out and spread them on the table again. Soon all the figures were setup as they should and he could survey the area. Throwing out a handful of obsidian dust, Ragnar noticed with satisfaction how Zubes tensed. Moving the dust around, he mimicked figures as he worked out some potential tactics in his head.

“This might be risky but,” Ragnar said after a few minutes of ordering his thoughts and playing out various scenarios. “If we move a section over here,” he indicated Virrel Square with the obsidian dust, “and over here,” this time at The Ash Well, two squares that held some strategic value, but really they mostly served to keep the northern district of the capital, which included the palace, out of enemy hands. “Then we can stretch a line into the Sunrise Pavilion and completely cut off the three armies from each other.”

His other commanders gathered to look over his idea, before one of them frowned. “But sir, wouldn’t the line to the Sunrise Pavilion be too weak to hold? Inga’s men would be able to push through into Grimar’s territory and combine forces?”

Ragnar stifled a grin, “They might but that would require weakening their positions around the Ash Well, leaving us room to move further towards the city center. With many of the streets in the southern district too muddy or blocked to easily travel through, that would allow us to pick on Sworden’s army relatively safely.”

“Until Inga breaks through and joins with Serpent-Vein, then we’ll be on the end of a shit-stick,” the commander muttered. “All Sworden would have to do was maintain a defensive line and the others could smash us in any sort of open conflict. We would have to resort to hit-and-run tactics. We could lose huge swathes of the city.”

Zubair stirred from where he was observing their planning, shifting his weight. It wasn’t huge tell, but Ragnar could feel the low burn of Heart with weight of the ancient northern glaciers. Zubair could’ve remained at a completely standstill for hours or potentially days without any degree of physical discomfort.

“I think you’re overestimating their efficiency,” Ragnar said, keeping his attention of Zubair hidden as best he could. “They won’t work together like a normal army because they haven’t trained together. They won’t trust each other like a squad. The commanders aren’t going to immediately see eye-to-eye. We’ll have more time to act than you think.”

The commander looked at him for a long moment, “I trust you, sir.”

Ragnar nodded, “Any other objections?”

“Yes, actually,” Zubair said.

“Too bad,” Ragnar growled and shooed him away with a dismissive wave. “If there are no other issues with this strategy then I say we wait to see what Grimar figures out with Sworden, then we can move forward from there,” Ragnar nodded to the commanders in the room. “Now, I’ve got an overly eager young man to interview about a potential teaching position. Until we meet again.”

“Until we meet again.”