“What do you think, Sir Quintana?”

“What do I think?” The knight huffed. Compared to everyone else in the camp, the prince included, Sir Quintana looked refreshed. His long career as a soldier meant he was accustomed to sleeping rough and he had the fewest number of responsibilities. He didn’t attend to fight but to protect Dowager and act as his advisor, when allowed.

Beyond that, as a royal knight, he had trained his body to its limits, had those limits extended by the melder that exclusively served the royal knights, and then trained to his new limits. Age slowed him down some but the running back and forth that left Dowager feeling like his limbs were carved from stone at the end of the day could barely make the older man breathe hard.

“I think you need to get over there and speak with this creature.”

“I don’t like it. Why ask for a parley now? If they are afraid of defeat, there is nothing stopping them from retreating.”

“That may not be an option. You’re underestimating the sea, prince. The journey takes weeks, with no convenient towns along the way to resupply. A boat also has a limited amount space. From the numbers we’ve seen, it would be difficult to keep everyone from starving coming here, let alone on a round trip.”

“They can’t retreat but fighting isn’t working so now they want to talk.” Dowager pondered it. If his opponents were human, he wouldn’t have thought twice about the request. But his opponents weren’t human. “No, it doesn’t make sense. The goblins have shown themselves to be nothing but mindless savages.” Creatures with reason and intellect wouldn’t throw themselves at blades after watching hundreds of their compatriots die. “Now, they practice diplomacy? How did they even learn Common?”

“Ah, but we aren’t dealing with goblins, are we? We are dealing with an entirely different creature.”

“Yes. A commander that let its forces kill themselves for weeks. They sound just as brainless as the creatures we’ve been slaughtering.”

The knight scoffed. “You’ve gotten too comfortable in the routine, Dowager. This is war. Things change. If you want to win, you adapt. The goblins want to charge at you recklessly? Great, kill them. A new creature appears to have taken command of them? A complication that you accept and adapt your strategies to. It wants to parley? Good. The fewer lives lost, the better.

“Perhaps we can figure out why they’re on our shores in the first place. I find the explanation given by the marquis hard to swallow, at the very least. Who cares how it learned Common? Thank the saints you can communicate with words rather than drawing pictures in the mud.”

Dowager frowned. Suddenly, he was a boy again, holding a wooden sword in one of the palace’s courtyards while the royal knight lectured him. He mentally shrugged away the feeling. It’d be too embarrassing to make the same mistake so soon. “You’re saying I should focus on the pertinent information and worry about the specifics later.”

“Yeah. Right now, we need to get the men moving. The small groups we have posted throughout the area couldn’t handle the normal greenies if the things weren’t half mad. Now, there’s more of them and they might have leadership. If their patience runs out before we get there, it’ll be a massacre.”

The prince nodded sharply. “You’re right.” He called for the guard outside his tent. “Have the men break down camp. We need to be moving in an hour if we want to get there before nightfall.”

“You should find that messenger who brought you the report,” the knight said after the man ran off. “They’re trained to give the pertinent information as quick as possible, but you should wring him for everything he knows. While the specifics might not matter so much in war, they certainly do in negotiation.”

-

Dowager managed to arrive at the outpost before nightfall. The messenger hadn’t lied. Waiting beyond the reach of normal spells but still close enough to be visible was an army so large, it reminded him of the plains near the capital during spring. Nothing but green as far as the eyes could see.

Dowager had experienced many things during his battle. Mostly frustration. Seeing the enemy he had to face, meandering back and forth but standing in the vague semblance of a formation for the first time, he felt…not fear. Goblins weren’t something to be feared. But something had an uncomfortable grip on his guts.

The outposts had crude walls made of earth magic surrounding them on four sides. It took all his earth casters to maintain them but there wasn’t much else they could do. His caster told him working with the sodden earth was too mana intensive to use in battle.

Dowager watched the enemy army from atop one of them for several minutes, reassuring himself that they weren’t making a move. His people told him that the enemy commander had guaranteed their safety at night and would send another envoy in the morning. It was hard to believe after the suicidal zeal he’d faced for days but they appeared to be keeping their word.

Realizing he had people to keep eyes on the enemy’s movements, Dowager descended from the wall and made his way to the command tent. Even with magic, they couldn’t build temporary barricades to house all the men. As the commander, and as the prince, it made sense for him to be in the most defensible location. There wasn’t much space but the men had made some anyway.

Waiting inside his tent was Sir Quintana, the messenger, and the captain in charge of the outpost. They stopped their conversation as he entered. The captain bowed his head respectfully and the messenger was quick to follow with widened eyes. No doubt remembering his lack of etiquette during their previous conversation.

“There’s no need for that,” Dowager said. “We have things to discuss. Captain, I want to hear about your meeting with this new creature.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” The man raised his head with a frown. “It came to us when the sun was high. Normally, we would never let an unknown approach our position, but its gait was deliberate and it purposely made itself visible. When it got within our range, it held up its hands and we could see it had no weapons. It stopped far from the walls and shouted its message.”

“And the message? As close to the literal words as possible.”

“It said that enough blood had been shed. That it wanted the fighting to stop before blood became a grudge. It said that the next battle would not be a grinder but a proper fight, where both sides would lose blood. If we want to avoid that, then our leader should speak with theirs to speak of peace.”

“Peace? These things invade our kingdom and want to speak of peace?”

The captain nodded, his expression reflecting Dowager’s disgust. “There is no need to negotiate with these creatures. Even if they move together, the goblins are hardly a threat. I was concerned about them slipping past our perimeter, but a child armed with a strong stick could take them down. But…these new creatures. We don’t know what they can do. Given the level of the goblins, I doubt we’re fighting master casters—"

“But you could be,” Sir Quintana interjected. “Any assumption can be dangerous in war. What are our new enemies like?”

“The one that approached us was a female.”

“How do you know that?”

The captain raised a brow. “It was rather obvious, sir.”

“I see. Continue.”

“Like I said, a female. Same basic shape as a human. By that, I mean she had a head, two arms, and two legs. Built like a soldier.” He eyed the knight. “Which I knew because she approached without any armor, only a chest wrap and a fur skirt.

“Her skin was speckled, a mix of greens, browns, and yellows that looked like natural camouflage. If it was paint, it was very intricate. She had a large brow, a snout-like nose, and two large teeth poking out of its mouth. It had hair but was bald along the sides of its head. Had real prominent ears too. To be honest sirs, the first thing I thought when I saw the creature was that it looked like a boar had bred with a woman.”

Dowager scowled at the image the words brought to mind. “This boar woman. How was her Common? Was it rough and broken? Smooth?”

“Smooth. I was quite surprised. There are men in my unit that can’t speak so well.” The captain looked between the prince and the knights whose expressions had darkened. “Does that mean something?”

“It does.” Sir Quintana sighed. “You can learn a language from a book but no matter how detailed it is or how smart the person, the language is always rough…unless you have someone to guide you or hang around someone who speaks it fluently long enough.”

“What that means,” Dowager continued, “is that these creatures didn’t learn by chancing upon a book or scroll by chance. They had to be taught by someone who speaks it. Since Common is the child of all the ancient languages spoken by the founders, there are only two groups that could have taught them.”

“Two?” Sir Quintana asked. “I can only think of the Guiness.”

“The second is the elves. You know the Tome girl.”

The knight winced. “The one my disciple got involved with, yeah.”

“Her…wife is an elf.” The prince shook his head. Even after several months, he still didn’t quite understand that situation. “From what little they shared of their encounter, we know Lourianne Tome didn’t teach her Common. That means at least some of their number know the language and could have taught it to those savages.”

“If another race is involved in this…”

“You don’t have to say any more, captain.” Dowager knew better than anyone in the tent what it would mean for the kingdom if the elves were plotting against them. Kierra Atainna was nothing like the little monsters pushing through the mud to throw themselves to their deaths. If the elven soldiers were half as strong as she was, they were outclassed. They could also have pure affinities. If Harvest went to war with an elven nation, it would not be pretty. Especially if they weren’t prepared.

“It seems there’s a reason to talk to this creature after all.”