Interlude: Congregation II

“What do you mean, they ‘went around the maze’? Do you have any idea how much it cost us to build that?”
– Dread Empress Malignant I

They weren’t even halfway through Brabant when Hasenbach’s envoys found them. For all that there were rumours of some strange disruption of scrying down south in Iserre, Princess Rozala Malanza noted that the First Prince’s clever mages had no such trouble outside of it – they would not have been so swiftly found otherwise. Not that they’d been trying to hide, but what did that matter when hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees were fleeing south from the armies of the Dead King? Reluctant as the Princess of Aequitan had been to strip so much as a single soldier from the defence of Cleves, there’d been no choice but to ride south with an escort of well-armed horsemen. The sea of people forced away by the advance of the dead were starving and terrified, and Rozala knew well that those with nothing to lose might be willing to take a chance on well-dressed and well-fed travellers. It would have been something of a farce for the three royals heading south to survive the horrors of the war in Cleves only to die to some starveling with frostbite and a hoe. Still, dark as the situation was in Brabant – and no mistake, it was nothing less than grim – it was pleasant dream compared to the war to the north.

Or perhaps it was the other way around, Rozala thought, stirring the contents her goblet with a thin copper rod. Perhaps it was the months she had spent fighting in Cleves that were the nightmare. Gritting her teeth, the dark-haired princess forced her hand to cease shaking and drank the full goblet of brandy tinged with poppy tea. It should calm her enough, she thought, that tonight she would not need to resort to a Hannoven drowse to fall asleep – namely, sleeping with her ear to the floor to be assured she would wake in time if the dead and the damned were digging up from below. The Gods were merciful enough that she had time to begin feeling the effects and put away her affairs before her bodyguard announced Louis. The Prince of Creusens looked as bone-tired as she felt, but he offered her a wan smile and sat by the shutters with her when invited.  His eyes flicked to the half-open scroll left on the small table between them, too polite to be caught staring.

“So it was you they wanted,” Prince Louis Rohanon said.

There was no mistaking the broken seal of the First Prince, but instead of replying Rozala unfolded the scroll a little further and let her comrade glimpse the seal that went unbroken at the bottom of the text. The Highest Assembly’s. In time of war Cordelia Hasenbach’s word was law, in affairs military, but having her order seconded by a motion of the Assembly meant disobeying it would have Rozala legally committing treason. She’d be stripped of her title as Princess of Aequitan as well as her rights in the Highest Assembly without any recourse, the vote considered as having already been taken through the initial motion seconding the order. Louis’ eyes narrowed, and his shoulder twitched. The Prince of Creusens was not cut from warrior’s cloth: he was both shorter than her and thinly muscled, with delicate hands. Dark-haired and soft-cheeked, he looked more scholar than soldier. Yet he was also clever, of good sense, and perhaps one of few decent men wearing a crown she had met. The tragedy of his life had been inheriting a principality ravaged by the Great War and finding that the only man willing to loan him the coin to heal it was Amadis Milenan.

The scope of the debt was reputed to be massive, and Louis had admitted to her in confidence it was unlikely to be fully repaid in his lifetime. Amadis had offered to write off a part of the sum should Louis lead soldiers in his support during the Tenth Crusade, and once the horse had been hitched to the cart it had seen the Prince of Creusens dragged through horrors all the way up to Cleves. And back, now, but it seemed they were to walk into a different sort of danger. Louis’ shoulder twitched again, and he let out a frustrated breath. Giving in, the prince glanced quickly at the door to confirm it was closed and behind him to be certain there was no one between him and the wall. Three heartbeats after looking, his shoulder began twitching again. Rozala could not think less of him him for this – she’d not been in the bastion, when the ghouls had slipped through murder holes and begun slaughtering sleeping soldiers. Prince Louis Rohanon had been, and he was as uncomfortable without his back to the wall as she would be without skin touching the floor. It’d been the breach at Sautefort, for her.

No one had grasped until too late that the dead would not care about tunneling under water.

“I have been named to the supreme command of an army being assembled in Cantal,” Rozala said. “By the shores of Lake Artoise. Forty thousand soldiers, perhaps more.”

Louis’s eyes brightened.

“Reinforcements?” he asked.

“Not to Cleves,” she replied. “I’ve been ordered by Her Most Serene Highness to reinforce the Dominion’s armies and break the foreign armies in Iserre.”

“Praesi,” the Prince of Creusens bit out angrily. “Callowans. That’s not the war, Rozala.”

“The League as well,” the Princess of Aequitan reminded him.

“We should be making peace with all of them,” Louis said.

“I don’t disagree,” Rozala admitted. “But the seals are there, Louis.”

“Let’s see her enforce that, in the middle of the Dead King’s wroth,” he said. “Madness.”

Yet the truth was, Rozala knew, theat neither of them were all that popular at the moment. The attempt by Prince Amadis’ supporters – among which they both numbered – to force the Klaus Papenheim’s armies to chase after the Carrion Lord had been made known to all of Procer. It’d been framed, no doubt by Cordelia Hasenbach herself, as petty intrigue by the lot of them to attack the elected First Prince while she was sending her own kin to fight the Kingdom of the Dead. In the northern half Procer, save for Cleves where many of them had fought, they were not just a figure of mockery but villains outright despised. If they rebelled, and to refuse the First Prince’s order was exactly that, they would not find many allies. More than that, Rozala feared what even the smallest stir of civil war might do to the Principate at the juncture.

“I will go,” the Princess of Aequitan said. “Gods forgive me, but I will go. Adeline and Prince Gaspard should be able to hold for now.”

“Then I go with you,” Louis said.

She inclined her head, too thankful to words to properly convey it. Louis had not fought with his blade, in Cleves, but he had been her steward and seneschal. His ink and orders had been a thousand times more valuable than one more blade would have been.

“We ought to tell Arnaud as well,” the prince added. “Last I saw he was drinking himself into a stupor across the street, but he has an iron liver. Odds are he’s still awake.”

Rozala’s lips thinned. Prince Arnaud of Cantal was a rapist, perhaps worse, and an arrogant fool. There was no hiding from that. But none who’d been to Cleves, none of those who’d fought that endless tide of dead smashing against icy shores, would ever be the same again. And Arnaud Brogloise might be filth, but he was filth that’d held the fort at Langueroche alone with his retinue for three days and three nights. He’d fought on foot at the gates, and held long enough for a town of three thousand to flee south. Arnaud knew the stakes.

“Would you fetch him?” Rozala asked.

Louis nodded, poorly hiding his relief at no longer sitting with an unknown at his back. She’d have the table moved for when the three of them sat, the dark-haired princess decided, so he would not be afflicted again. She closed her eyes, for a moment, and felt like cursing. Fighting the Army of Callow or the Legions was not why the three of them had come south. Once upon a time they might have ridden south to scheme how to unseat Hasenbach, but since Cleves? No, not that. They’d come to exhaust their treasuries raising every company they could, contracting every fantassin and emptying every smithy in their lands before they rode back north. Rozala’s fingers clenched against the chair as she flinched at a sound that was not there. She was weeks away from the onslaught, now, and still she could hear the sounds in every silence.

The desperate screams of the dying as winged abominations spewed out fire and venom. The biting crackle of dark sorceries as they tore through steel and flesh. And that patient, relentless beat: forward, forward, always forward went the armies of the dead. Without pause or respite or the slightest speck of mercy. The levies and fantassins of Prince Gaspard of Cleves had died like flies in the face of the Enemy, even with Chosen holding the line at the capital’s port. When Rozala had arrived with the remains of the army salvaged from the Callowan debacle, she’d found the city of Cleves besieged by a sea of shambling darkness. Yet on the wall, a man had stood with a sword like the coming of dawn.

The White Knight had held the line until reinforcements came, defying all odds.

Three months Princess Rozala had shared command of the defence of Cleves with Prince Gaspard. Three months of an endless span of fresh horrors. Swarms of dead rats scuttling up through the sewers to devour wounded soldiers in their beds, rains of poison and acid, great abominations made from the bones of the thousands serving as moving siege towers that spewed out lesser dead over the walls. Three month of burning your comrades lest they rise again and turn on you, of battles that lasted through entire night and day for the dead simply never tired. But oh, they had taught the monsters the mettle of Procer.

They’d fought on rocky slopes and crawled through freezing mud, they’d sallied out in the howling winds and challenged the Dead King for every scrap of stone and snow. The White Knight and the Witch broke an entire fortress driving back a pack of dead Chosen, until their shore of the Tomb flew only the pennants of Procer. Thousands and thousands had perished for that, clawing at the dark in choking despair, but now along the shores of Cleves forts were being raised by the hands of bloodied veterans and smithies burned through the night to forge the swords that would be bared when the next wave came.

And the front in Cleves, Rozala well knew, had been the easiest.

At Twilight’s Pass the hosts of the Lycaonese had fought three battles in two days against the horde trying to force its way out of Hannoven. The same evening, soldiers said, had seen the coronation of three of the Reitzenberg: Prince Manfred of Bremen died of a poisoned arrow leading an assault to take back the furthest fortress of the pass, passing his crown to his eldest daughter and telling her to continue the charge unflinching before drenching himself in oil and taking up a torch. She’d passed it to her younger sister after losing half her torso to sorcery, and that sister in turn passed it to now-prince Otto Reitzenberg when she took a spear in the belly scaling the wall and fell thirty feet in armour.

The youngest of Manfred Reitzenberg’s children carried the charge to the end with that blood-soaked iron crown on his head, took back the fortress and held it for half a day before a dead Chosen brought down the walls and forced him to retreat further into the pass. This, Princess Rozala had been told, was the closest thing the Lycaonese had seen to a victory since they’d begun the fight. And still their people headed to Twilight’s Pass, streams and rivers of soldiers wearing old mail and iron-tipped spears. Through the ice and the winds they went to make the same old stand in that same old pass, as they had for centuries. The Princess of Aequitan had mocked these people for their brutishness and lack of manners, once upon a time, for their rough linens and bare-bone homes.

The shame of that remembrance burned her like acid.

In Hainaut, Princess Julienne Volignac lost the entire coast to the dead before the Iron Prince arrived to relieve her. Too long a coast, too few men to defend it and the craggy hills of northern Hainaut made it difficult to march large forces – or defend against many small forces, as the Dead King had sent. When Klaus Papenheim took command he fortified the outskirts of the crags and began clawing them back from the Enemy, battle by battle, but with the shores of the Tomb in enemy hands there was no end to the undead that could cross the lake. The city of Hainaut itself fell to a sudden offensive that broke through the defence lines two months in, and the Iron Prince was said to have taken a wound at the battle.

Princess Julienne herself died charging the dead with her personal guard of three thousand horsemen to buy the time for her people to flee the horde. Her sister Beatrice claimed the crown over the dead princess’ too-young sons and swore oath before the entire army that as long as single Volignac remained the Dead King would get nothing of Hainaut but ash and steel. The fight had soon turned desperate after the dead reached the flatlands, for they were harder to defend, but Prince Etienne of Brabant bankrupted himself arming every soul of fighting age in his principality and marched them north to ward off the collapse.

The north of the Principate was fighting for its right to exist with every bitter dawn, and she would not fail it. So Princess Rozala Malanza would hurry south and win the war they shouldn’t be fighting, so they could have a chance at winning the one they had no choice to fight.

—

If even one other royal requested a private meeting with Princess Rozala Malanza only to reveal they’d been secretly corresponding with the Tyrant of Helike, she was going to send the head of everyone who had back to Salia in a basket. When she’d arrived to the sprawling camp by the shores of Lake Artoise, what the dark-haired princess had found there was enough to make her blood boil. The more than forty thousand soldiers, half levies and the rest principality troops, she much approved of. It was the royalty coming with the finer soldiers that had her furious. The First Prince, evidently, has tossed every single prince and princess she could find at the army in order to accrue the largest host possible.

The result was a labyrinth of intrigue and petty bickering: including Rozala herself and her two princely comrades from Cleves, there were no less than seven anointed rulers assembled in the camp. Hasenbach’s orders had preceded her so there was no contest of her command of the army, but what she encountered was much worse: one at a time, three fools sought her out to proudly inform her of their foolishness. Princess Leonor of Valencis, Princess Bertille of Lange, Prince Rodrigo of Orense. All of which had been trading information with Kairos Theodosian of Helike.

That Rodrigo Trastanes would number among them she’d took a personal insult, for the man was a political ally. He too was one of Amadis Milenan’s pack of open supporters, having turned on his benefactor the First Prince last year. The three who’d been dropped on the head enough to make a bargain with the Tyrant of Helike and approach her with the secret she’d stripped of command and sent Louis to keep an eye on, as her appointed second in the army. Rozala would not trust anyone who’d thought it clever to trade information on the location of the Dominion armies in exchange for the same on the Army of Callow and the allied Legions. Not with a command, not with a seat at her council, not with a fucking chamber pot.

That still left Princess Sophie of Lyonis, who the First Prince had quite openly sent there to ensure that Rozala did not take the army and march on Salia to depose her. The ruler of Lyonis was the First Prince’s creature body and soul, having murdered her own brother at the Battle of Aisne when he’d tried to betray Hasenbach. For that she’d been rewarded with the crown of Lyonis over her three elder siblings, and remained viciously loyal to the First Prince ever since. The sole comfort of this was that the woman was not incompetent, or a stranger to war. Rozala had no true choice about having Princess Sophie in her council, but she was proving of some use as the mouthpiece of Hasenbach and so recipient of the First Prince’s answers.

As in, for example, why it had become so difficult to obtain weaponry and armour in Procer these days.

“You’re certain the dwarves won’t sell even if we triple the standing price?” Princess Rozala pressed.

The fair-haired Princess of Lyonis shook her head.

“They won’t entertain any offer, regardless of the contents,” Princess Sophie said. “The First Prince has confirmed it. It was made understood to her that further insistence would be not be taken well.”

Rozala almost cursed. The unfortunate truth was that, beyond equipping their own personal troops and keeping an armory that’d provide for perhaps the same amount of armed levies, few Proceran royalty bothered to accumulate armaments. What point was there, when it was possible to hire already-armed fantassin companies instead? If the situation was truly dire for a princess, an order of armaments to the Kingdom Under would provide what was needed as promptly as it could be brought by road from the closest dwarven gate. The Great War had lasted decades and seen a prodigious amount of cheap steel floating around the Principate, to be sure, but much of it had ended up in the hands of already-fighting fantassin companies or since been lost on foreign fields – Callow or the Free Cities. Smiths could not work without metal to work with, and it’d gotten bad enough in some parts of the Principate that the Prince of Orense had privately admitted to her he now had more silver than steel left in his principality. The existing mines simply could not keep up with the rising demand.

“We can fight two, maybe three battles before our levies are left to wave sticks and shout imprecations,” Princess Rozala grimly said. “Gods, do the dwarves want us to break in front of the Dead King?”

The Princess of Lyonis eyed her thoughfully from the other side of the table. If it’d been more than the two of them in the tent, Rozala thought, the conversation would have ended there. But it was only them and maps and mostly-untouched cups of wine, so Princess Sophie broke her silence.

“Her Highness believes it might the work of the Black Queen,” she said. “To make our war effort unsustainable.”

The Princess of Aequitan felt her fingers clench into fists. She breathed out only after a moment, forcing herself to approach it with cold eye.

“She’s a monster,” Rozala said. “But not one without reason. She’ll want us crippled by Keter, not outright devoured.”

“That is the First Prince’s opinion as well,” Princess Sophie agreed. “Yet there is a possibility we must contemplate: that she struck the bargain with the dwarves blindly, and that she may not return from her journey for months yet. If ever.”

Rozala winced. That would be disastrous. It wasn’t that the Principate wouldn’t be able to wean itself from reliance on the dwarves eventually. It was that it would take years for the mines and foundries to be raised to what was needed, as well as cost a fortune. Procer had neither the years nor the coin required for such an ambitious undertaking on hand.

“Then we make truce with Callow,” Princess Rozala said. “I’ve made my peace with fighting the League, Princess Sophie. The Tyrant has been meddling in our affairs so extensively the Free Cities are out to either take most the south or feed us to Keter. But Callow? We cannot afford that fight, not with the vultures already circling us.”

“An offer of truce was extended by the Lady-Regent Dartwick,” the other princess said. “Including withdrawal of the Army of Callow through the northern pass.”

Rozala leaned forward eagerly.

“And?” she said.

“It comes at the cost of allowing the Legions of Terror to retreat with them,” Princess Sophie admitted. “The overture was declined.”

“You can’t be serious,” the Princess of Aequitan hissed. “I don’t care if they butchered half of the heartlands, send the bastards out.”

“We’ve confirmed that if the offer is accepted, there will be rebellion within the month,” Sophie said. “It is a certainty.”

Rozala almost cursed her out for speaking in absolutes where there could be none, but stilled her tongue at the last moment. Hasenbach, for all her flaws, would not lightly abandon her own native Rhenia to the dead – and that was what she was doing, so long as armies remained fighting south. Which meant she was certain, and there was only one way that could be true.

“The Augur?” Rozala asked.

The other princess nodded.

“You are not to speak of this to anyone,” she warned.

The ruler of Aequitan almost rolled her eyes. That Sophie had not been meant for the throne of Lyonis was sometimes quite evident. It was quite gauche in such a situation to speak the words. They were simply understood, between well-bred women.

“How bad?” Rozala asked, morbidly curious.

“Most of the eastern principalities beneath Brabant,” the Princess of Lyonis said.

Which would collapse half the Principate, the dark-haired princess thought. Those lands were the most-populated and some of the wealthiest in Procer. Or they had been, before the Black Knight led his legionaries to take them to the torch and the sword. If a peasant revolt sparked there the situation would spiral out of control swiftly. Especially if some prince or princess saw an opportunity to seize the throne while any force that could stop them was stuck fighting up north.

“You’ve never fought the Army of Callow,” Rozala finally said. “So you might not understand exactly what it is you’re asking of me. I cannot crush their host without massive losses, Sophie. They’re hardened disciplined killers that believe in their cause.”

“That has been understood,” the Princess of Lyonis said. “Which is why your true instructions were not put to writing.”

Rozala Malanza leaned back, brows raising, and waited.

“Win a battle, Princess Rozala,” the other woman said. “And if the Callowans and the Praesi should manage to escape in good order towards the passage, afterwards? It is unfortunate, but the League’s presence would not allow you to pursue.”

So, Rozala was to clasp hands with the Dominion to give the enemy a black eye before letting them slink away. It sat ill with her to toss away the lives of soldiers – badly needed soldiers – for a play in the Ebb and the Flow, but if the alternative was rebellion then she’d swallow her tongue and do what needed to be done. However many died there, it would be a drop in the ocean compared to what would take place if the heartlands broke behind the defensive lines to the north. She drained the rest of her cup, and set to the business of getting her soldiers fed and marching.

—

In peace time it would have been against the laws of the Principate for an army to be mustered in the lands of a prince at the orders of the First Prince without the right being first granted by said prince in front of the Highest Assembly, but these were not peaceful times. Besides, it was in Cantal they were camped and the prince of this land was among her commanders. Prince Arnaud did not balk at providing what supplies he could. It was not as much as Rozala would have liked, but that was understandable given the damage done by the Legions of Terror. More surprisingly, he did so without any of the complaining the Princess of Aequitan had expected. Out of gratitude she began extending him invitation to the war councils that had previously been restricted to Princess Sophie and Louis. To her further surprise, aside from the occasional bout of arrogant bragging he proved to be rather useful. The prince knew his own lands well, and did not balk at emptying his own purse or armouries to strengthen the army. Rozala only understood exactly what was taking place when Prince Louis approached her as she rode ahead of the columns, a mere week away from the Iserran border.

“Rozala,” he greeted her calmly, dipping his head.

The Princess of Aequitan slowed her horse – he was not as skilled a rider, and might struggle to keep to her pace – and returned the courtesy.

“Louis,” she fondly replied. “I see you’ve settled the fools well enough to be able to afford a speck of freedom.”

“A prince’s labour is never done,” he drily replied.

That glint of amusement in his russet eyes Rozala would admit, if only to herself, made him attractive in a mischievous sort of way. It was not a thought she could allow herself to entertain. He might be a widower, and she unmarried, but the interests of their principalities were often opposed. To dally without any deeper commitment would cause dangerous scandal, and there could be no true privacy in a war camp.

“Ours certainly is not,” the Princess of Aequitan sighed. “I had counted myself fortunate, that we might never fight the Army of Callow again.”

“Ours are not fortunate years,” Louis said, tone dark, but shook his head afterwards. “Still, we do what we can. It to speak of that I have come.”

Rozala cocked her head to the side, silently inviting him to speak. After so many hours shared they had become more than passing familiar with each other’s mannerisms.

“When do you intend to begin inviting the Prince of Orense to the expanded council?” he asked frankly. “Any longer and the slight will grow too deep, he will become much harder to budge.”

Her brow rose.

“I had not meant to invite him at all,” Rozala admitted. “His dealings with the Tyrant make me wary of his judgement and reluctant to hear any advice from his lips.”

“You don’t need to actually take the advice,” Louis patiently said. “When did Amadis ever take ours? It’s simply a matter of binding him to you. You cannot afford to throw Segovia away if you are to cleanly take the reins. The blunder should make him eager to redeem himself, if anything.”

The Princess of Aequitan almost informed him she had no need of Rodrigo of Orense to run a brothel, much less an army, before she grasped what he actually meant. It was not the army she was leading that Louis was speaking of. He was under the impression that, in Amadis Milenan’s absence, she was usurping leadership of the alliance the Prince of Iserre had assembled. Through those eyes, Rozala thought, the sudden solicitude of Prince Arnaud took a much different meaning. He was currying her favour, much as he had once done Milenan’s. For a moment she thought of telling Louis this was not her meaning at all, but her tongue did not move. If she was perceived to have faltered halfway through a coup, her ‘supporters’ would turn on her without hesitation. And had she not only aligned herself with the Prince of Iserre for lack of other allies in the first place? More than that the man had not gone north, fought in Cleves or Hainaut or Twilight’s Pass. If the Callowans released him, would he truly understand? And if they don’t release him at all, her mind whispered, who would you trust to take the place of primacy in your stead?

“I am not Amadis Milenan,” she finally said, meeting Louis’ eyes. “I intend to take good advice, when it is given.”

“Then invite Prince Rodrigo to council tonight,” the Prince of Creusens said. “And I will begin to approach the other two who disgraced themselves.”

“Amadis never convinced them to back him,” Rozala said.

Leonor of Valencis had been friendly, but firm in her refusal of closer ties. Valencis and her own Aequitan had warred frequently, over the centuries, but just as often struck  close alliances. Princess Leonor was, if she remembered correctly, a cousin in the fourth degree of blood. The ruler of Valencis had been a tacit supporter of Rozala’s mother when she’d made a bid for the throne during the Great War, though after the defeat at Aisne distance had been made between their courts to avoid incurring Cordelia Hasenbach’s ire. Princess Bertille of Lange was dependent on Salia for much of her principality’s trade – and therefore at the mercy of the First Prince’s displeasure – but she’d never outright entered the fold of the First Prince’s loyalists. She had a reputation for being cold-blooded and of mercenary nature even by Alamans standards. Amadis had simply never found a price that moved her, Rozala had often thought.

“But you are not Amadis Milenan,” Louis Rohanon replied, lips quirking. “I will see you at council, Princess Rozala.”

He dipped his head again, slightly lower than the first time, and left her to her thoughts.

—

Eight days later, headed into Iserre, the army began to hear fanciful rumours from refugees. Most of them about an army of dark ghosts that left no tracks and spoke no words.

Five days after that, the army began to hear rather less fanciful rumours about a clash between the Army of Callow and a Dominion army. The Callowans and the Wasteland allies fled south, refugees said.

Three days after that, Rozala Malanza found forty thousand Levantine camped on the snowy plains and waiting for her. She rode ahead to meet with their commander, the Lord of Alava, and begin planning the shared offensive.

The moment she truly knew it all had gone to the Hells was when she found the Grey Pilgrim waiting alongside him.