Mustering an army in a few days is a monumental task, especially when it has to be done under false pretenses and with false aims. Because of the concerns that Vassermark would invade, much of the city’s armed forces had already been called up from reserves. This gave Sir Rodrick a trained force to work with, but the provisions were set for a siege instead of a marching campaign.

His first lie was that the army would go south to act as an escort for the bishop.

This gave him a pretext to sort the army between those that would most likely stick with him and those that would desert. The faint of heart were left to protect the city as a police force. He made every show that it was an honorable task to go out on foot, to sleep beneath flimsy tents and chew on hardtack rations, because it served the church.

This was the hand that distracts, as a stage magician would put it. The night before his coalition of duped soldiers were set to ride south, Sir Rodrick called upon his closest friends. Ten of them all together, in the dead of night and clad in mottled black like the vagabonds they hunted, stalked through the lower city.

The Crown Prince of Giordana, legally speaking, was a known agitator and kept on a short leash by the government of Jeameaux. While he made grand overtures about restoring the beauty of his homeland, the only thing he was actually interested in was the establishment of a private museum of Giordana’s cultural past and present. His name gave authority to more ambitious men beneath him, but the central kingdoms had little to worry about when they were the ones controlling the prince’s vices.

The private fact of Jeameaux was that the prince lived upon a stipend given by the city council after accruing insurmountable debt. They let him speak, but he stalled any real action by his companions. The situation wasn’t perfect, but it meant that when Sir Rodrick sought him out, he knew exactly where the gluttonous lout could be found.

A dozen underpaid courtesans were sent running into the night as they dragged Ismail al-Farouq into a waiting carriage along with three of his friends. The man howled and his gambling friends made legal threats until one of Sir Rodrick’s friends crushed the man’s nose by pinching it.

The paladin felt no remorse for the action. The Giordanan men were a sorry excuse for exiled nobles and as he told them that night, “Your people have need of your services. This is not an option.”

Ismail proved thoroughly weak to coercion and so it was that the next day, he sat upon a draft horse beside Sir Rodrick, waving to men and spreading the word that he was joining the diplomatic contingent. Great things would come, he was sure.

That first night, Sir Rodrick led his army off the river road. He detoured them an hour east with the explanation that they would make camp upon a friendly estate rather than putting out the farmers. This estate proved to be East Cross Abbey, a religious institute of little note except that it had been prepared by Aurum for Sir Rodrick to bloodlessly ransack.

And so, that night, the three heads of the Jeameaux Rebellion came together. Ismail kept up the polite airs exactly until the moment the oaken door shut and sealed the candlelit study with him and Sir Rodrick inside. Then he swelled up with indignation, his ruddy cheeks darkening as he threw his hands at the paladin. “Absurd! Rotten. Horrible! I cannot believe you did this to me. I don’t even know how to ride a horse, you know that? My ass hurts so much I can barely stand. You make a fool out of me! I demand, utterly demand, you explain yourself.”

“In due time,” the paladin said, giving the prince a shove toward the only seat in the study that could support Ismail’s girth. His attention was on the woman already seated in the room. She was sipping wine beside the fire, her booted feet kicked up upon a desk. There was no mistaking her identity, not with the jagged scar across her face, barely covered by a leather eyepatch. “Cyclops.”

“Paladin,” the Aillesterran commander said with a grin that bordered on a sneer. She had shorn off all femininity from her body save the basic gifts of womanhood. Her hair was short cut, barely long enough to tie together behind her head, forming a brunette flower.

“And who’s this?” Ismail demanded.

Cyclops laughed. “You haven’t told him much, have you?”

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Rodrick ignored the offer of wine and sat down across the fire from the Aillesterran. “Ismail, Vasermark is in the process of absorbing half the world. Not just Jeameaux but Giordana too.”

Cyclops said, “And there’s no reason they wouldn’t sweep across Aillesterra, too. They’d have the place almost completely cut off.”

The crown prince had no compunction against drinking, quickly filling himself a goblet as he asked, “So? What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Be a prince, for starters. Your people rally around you, whether you want them to or not.”

Ismail scoffed. “I’m nobody, you know that.”

“Two thousand fighting men, plus followers, are marching north as we speak,” Cyclops said. She took her boots off the table and rose. Through a combination of her own height and Ismail’s lacking stature, she just managed to loom over him. “One third of their number are your countrymen that just maybe can be stolen off of the Gambling Lion if it’s you standing across from them.”

“The butcher of Rackvidd?”

Rodrick snorted. “That rebellion was no butchery, and it was what the mountain folk deserved.”

Cyclops stepped back. “Are you a religious man?”

“As much as any other,” Ismail answered, dancing around the fact that he hadn’t seen the inside of a temple in years.

“Would you like to meet one of the Shepherd’s angels? They’ve ensorceled one of them into serving them.”

“That’s impossible!” Ismail quailed.

Rodrick frowned. “The world is filled with sleeping angels, forgotten beasts. They’re dangerous. And any that would try to command such creatures are both crazed and dangerous. Dealing with that threat is the holy task we’ve been given.”

“By whom?”

“Aurum himself,” Rodrick answered.

“Relax,” Cyclops said, leaning on his shoulder with a smirk. “All you have to do is peel off some of their army. The paladin here will have to do the real work.”

Rodrick grunted. “And what will you be doing? I didn’t see any army waiting to join us.”

“I brought a half dozen of my best men. Trust me, they’ll be the most valuable men in your entire army, dear paladin. Their stigmata are unmatched. It’s the wizard Amurabi that should concern you. Tell me, if I said you had to kill Aurum, how would you do it?”

“Blasphemy.”

She sneered. “It’s a hypothetical. Come on now, put your mind to it. Do you think stabbing him with a sword would be enough?”

“If I got to his true body, perhaps. I wouldn’t expect to reach it, however. That would be like charging at the sun. I’d be destroyed.”

Cyclops drank her wine and nodded. “An apt comparison. At least on the question of his true body we don’t have to worry. The man walks around like any other. You make a good point, however. You would be killed before even getting close enough to threaten him, much less injure him. That’s why we’ll need another.”

“Who?”

She laughed. “Patience, patience. That question doesn’t even matter so long as he has an entire army around him. The Gambling Lion will march north. We’ll escape east. They’ll plant the cute little bishop back on her throne and although she’ll ostensibly side with Vassermark, there are only so many resources that can be given to a foreign army. That is the time we have to prepare, to make sure we can force him into a conflict on our terms. We’ll have to hit the westerners where it hurts.”

“Yes, I was thinking about that on the ride. It wouldn’t do much if we simply became a group of bandits. The army would collapse. Sieging the city is also no good. They’d just retreat to the old city walls. We must draw them out, and there’s only one good way I could think of.”

“And that would be?”

“The grain,” he said. “It’s the whole reason they’re invading. If they don’t secure our harvest, there won’t be enough food for their people come winter. They’d be too vulnerable to Skaldheim. We take the grain, and they must deal with us.”

Ismail had retreated to the window, clutching his drink. “Wouldn't they try to barter first? Diplomacy always comes before war.”

“So what if they do?” Cyclops responded as she returned to her seat. “We can just reject their diplomacy. The point is to force a fight, isn’t it?”

Rodrick stroked his chin, eyes to the floor. “It will slow us down, make it hard to maneuver. I don’t suppose one of your stigmatas could help with that?”

“Sorry, pally. I didn’t bring that kind of help.”

Ismail scoffed. “Then how are we supposed to fight a war?”

“Carefully and proactively. Now, Cyclops, tell us. How are we supposed to kill this wizard? Who is it that we need?”

Cyclops grinned and entwined her fingers beneath her chin. “Come now, you can guess, can’t you? You would get killed before you could get close enough so we just need somebody that can’t get killed. The man we need to turn against Amurabi is none other than the Gambling Lion himself?”

“Impossible.”

“Not impossible. It’s just a matter of incentives, offering him something the wizard can’t, and then turning the two against each other. You just worry about the war and I’ll worry about that, okay?”