Chapter 18: Release

“The trick isn’t to win battles, it’s to let your opponents lose them.”

–Aretha the Raven, Nicaean general

General Sacker came to meet me with a company of a hundred heavies and three lines of mages, the lot of them glittering with at least half a dozen defensive enchantments and shield spells at the tip of their hands. Well, would you look at. The Rebel Legions had grasped the reality that I might be somewhat cross at them. It was almost like they’d taken my coin and supplies for years before turning on me at the first opportunity. I wasn’t going to be forgetting that, or any other of their small slights.

“Hail, Black Queen.”

A mere twenty knight stood fanned out behind me. What need did I have for a larger escort than that?

“Sacker,” I said. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The goblin general had only walked up to the edge of the defensive enchantments and not a step further. I would have been offended by that if I hadn’t seriously considered slaughtering the entire contingent and ripping her plans out of her mind on the ride here. Only the certainty that it would push the rebels to allying with the Black Knight, however temporarily, had stayed my hand.

“You were warned of our march,” General Sacker replied. “We have dealt openly with you.”

“Debatable at best,” I flatly replied. “But let’s pretend I buy that, just for a moment. Keep up that alleged streak and tell me what you lot came here to do.”

“We aim to engage in talks with Marshal Nim,” Sacker said. “We have no intention of fighting you save if you force our hand.”

I snorted. General Mok’s plan to talk the Black Knight into deposing Malicia was still their play, then. They were fools if they thought it would get them anywhere. Nim was in deep with the Tower, she wasn’t going to defect now. Malicia would string them along until she no longer had a use for them, a situation I could only assume was imminent.

“And your stance regarding Sepulchral’s forces?” I asked.

“If arrangement is reached with the Black Knight, there will be either surrender or war,” Sacker said. “If not, the situation remains fluid. Regardless, we will not attack unless first provoked.”

Mhm. Then they weren’t all in on Mok’s plan yet. The vanguard in the northern Moule Hills was being used as threat on the flank of the Loyalist Legions, one they had no intention of removing before a deal was struck with the Black Knight. An alliance with the Rebel Legions wasn’t on the table – wouldn’t be unless Marshal Nim refused their entreaties outright, which she wouldn’t because she wasn’t a fucking idiot – so there was no point in aiming for that. I could, though, aim for a smaller concession.

“Then I’ll ask for your promise to stand aside should I intervene to prevent Marshal Nim wiping out the vanguard,” I said. “If not your help outright, which I would take as a sign of good faith doing much to restore your trustworthiness in my eyes.”

She hesitated.

“They are a rebel force,” General Sacker hedged. “The Black Knight’s duty is clear.”

I met her eyes and let all pleasantness drip down from my face.

“My tolerance has limits,” I said, tone so very mild.

“We are not in your service,” the goblin general snorted.

“No,” I replied, “but so far you have toed the line when it came to being my enemy. You might want to consider the price of crossing it, before you offer me another half-hearted platitude.”

“I am a general of-”

“You were a general,” I coldly interrupted. “Now you’re a vagrant that twice bit the hands feeding you. You’re out of chances, Sacker. With me, with the Tower, with everybody else.”

“Threats will not sway me, girl,” General Sacker said.

I let Night billow in my veins, coming quicker for the anger in my blood.

“A threat?” I laughed. “Do you honestly think your little spells would stop me if I wanted you all dead? If I wanted to rip out every secret from your head and make them dance before my eyes?  It’s not a threat when I warn you, Sacker. You are not strong enough for my words to be hypothetical. If you get in my way, I will fucking step on you.”

I leaned forward.

“So I’m going to ask you again,” I said. “I want your promise to stand aside, should I intervene to prevent the Black Knight from wiping out Sepulchral’s vanguard.”

Still she hesitated, and a ring of red light formed high above me as Night kept coming to me. I ripped it out of the sky without even bothering to look.

“So long as no deal has been struck with the Black Knight, you have our promise,” General Sacker finally said.

“Good,” I harshly smiled.

“You are not making allies with your words, girl,” the goblin said.

“And still I somehow seem to have more than you lot,” I replied.

I cocked my head to the side.

“And Sacker, one last thing?” I added.

She watched me expectantly.

“Call me girl again and I’ll make you eat your own tongue,” I calmly told her.

Somehow, I saw, the calm gave her more pause than my anger had.

—

The Rebel Legions did two things the day they blew into our increasingly crowded battlefield. The first was send envoys to both myself and the Black Knight. The second was throw their hat in the ring, so to speak. The Loyalist Legions and my Army of Callow had dug trenches and raised palisades along two thirds of the length of the valley between the hills, all the way to the road, but the deserters sent their sappers downhill the moment they had a camp up and began digging a trench of their own. Facing mine and Nim’s, vertical to our horizontal.

“They’re digging a hundred feet past crossbow range, both ours and the Legions’,” General Zola informed us at council. “Sapper-General Pickler believes their fortifications will end up in a thin crescent facing our lines.”

“We’ll need to raise our own trenches facing theirs,” I sighed. “Or they’ll be able to flank us at will.”

It would turn our fortifications into a straight corner with one side facing the Loyalist Legions and the other the Rebel ones, while the Black Knight’s trench would end up at a much wider angle. Given their more numerous sappers, though, I didn’t anticipate them losing much of a step.

“We’re getting boxed in,” Grandmaster Talbot said. “With all these walls and trenches the Order will be made useless.”

“We can’t prevent them for raising fortifications of their own without forcing a battle,” Aisha said. “One at which we will be at a severe disadvantage, should the Black Knight reinforce them.”

Which she probably would. The deserters were still at a full force, thirteen thousand and fresh. The Army of Callow numbered a little under thirteen thousand, now, and Nim’s legions should be around twenty or twenty-one thousand. That battle would see us outnumbered more than two to one while flanked, which was a recipe for disaster. We couldn’t afford to start that fight.

“We do nothing,” I said, the words bitter against my tongue. “To them, at least. Our sappers need to prepare our flank for the possibility of assault now.”

It was out of my hands, now. All I could hope was that my enemies did not yet band together. The day passed quickly enough, laden with bad news, but the following warning ended up just as darkened. Scribe had requested the war council gather, which was rare enough I did not think twice about granting the request. What she had to say was not long, but it still hit hard.

“It cost me most of my agents within Sepulchral’s main host, but I have found out who plans her campaign for her,” Scribe said.

I laid back into my seat, already sensing this was not pleasant news.

“Instructions are received by letter, which are read out loud over scrying ritual,” Eudokia said. “The physical letters eventually make their way to Sepulchral herself, however, and my people were able to forge a decent copy of one before fleeing camp.”

She set down a letter on the table, which aside from having calligraphy small and cramped did not particularly evoke anything in me. Juniper, though, breathed in sharply.

“This is Grem One-Eye’s handwriting,” Scribe said. “He has been planning Sepulchral’s campaign for her from captivity in Ater.”

I grimaced. Well, fuck. Just what we needed, another marshal in the mix. My fingers clenched, then unclenched. Wrong way to think about this, I decided. Grem wouldn’t have had the pull to do this on his own, someone had to be helping him. Hells, someone had to have asked him to do this because otherwise I couldn’t see him helping Abreha Mirembe. And only two people were in position to do it, Malicia and my father. It didn’t fit Malicia, though, her way of doing things. Even if she’d been helping Sepulchral stay afloat with good advice, she would have cut off the flow now. She could no longer afford game this elaborate.

So it meant I had, at last, found the first trace of what my father was up to in Kala.

That somewhat improved my mood, but it passed quickly. While I’d been lost in thought I’d not been paying attention to the table, which only claimed my attention again when there was a ripple in the assembled council. Juniper had gotten to her feet.

Without a word, she walked out of the tent and did not return.

—

Once more I found the Marshal of Callow standing beneath a sycamore.

The same as last time, a bone-dry skeleton of a tree hollowed out inside. Dead and dying, the limbs having yet to catch up to the emptiness at the heart of it. Juniper’s escort had stayed far, as ordered, and as I limped past them across the dusty ground I found my eye dragged above. Sunset was painting the sky in layers, just like the stones of the hills to the west: the dark blue of night high above, with a distant moon, but then it lightened. Yellowed. Only to deepen once more, orange and red and at last a rich purple. Day died and its death throes shifted across the stone and dust, shade cutting in fluid slices as it swallowed up Creation in a never-sated maw. The Wasteland, for all its many dangers, was capable of eerie beauty at times.

Juniper was not leaning against the tree. I saw that first, even as I approached her. I had thought to find here the same hunched and self-loathing creature that’d been wearing the skin of one of my oldest friends for over a sennight, but this was… different. Her back might not be straight, but she was not sagging like withered vine. Instead she stood there with a lost and thoughtful look on her face, looking straight west. I followed her gaze, founding nothing more than the sappers of the Rebel Legions at work digging their own trench and palisade. They were skilled hands, well-drilled for all that they had deserted the Tower’s service. The three generals leading them had kept them disciplined.

I hesitated to break the silence. I’d found what I’d thought I would, and I was not sure I wanted to interrupt… whatever this was. For all the intensity of the Hellhound’s gaze, I had of late seen in her fragility that had me staying my hand. As I wrestled with my doubts, she came to a decision of her own. Her voice was rasping when she spoke. Dry, and she licked her chops before doing it.

“The Scribe, she said that Sacker’s in command among the deserters,” Juniper said. “Is it true?”

I hummed.

“Can’t be sure,” I admitted. “But the Jacks heard the same thing. I think Mok has more pull when it comes to strategic decisions, since he has the biggest army, but that Sacker’s the lead for tactics.”

Her eyes never left the sappers digging to the west. I bit my lip, then cast aside my hesitation. It wasn’t doing me any good.

“They tell me you’ve been here more than two hours,” I said. “Have you been looking at them the whole time?”

The Hellhound laughed. It was a low, rumbling thing. Not quite amused or happy, more like a… release. Vented feeling.

“Yeah, I have,” Juniper said. “Because there’s this…”

She shook her head.

“She was like an aunt to me, Sacker,” the orc said.

I did remember. It felt like a lifetime ago, but I remembered. I’d never seen her as embarrassed as she had been when I’d first seen her meet her mother and almost-aunt fuss over her after she became a legate. It’d been a memorable sight.

“Auntie Sacks,” I idly said.

“She used to tell me stories,” Juniper distantly said. “When I was small, Catherine. To make me go to sleep. That was all back in Summerholm, before I went home to be raised by my father. Goblin stories about gore and raids and little girls that got gobbled up for being too slow or too dim.”

“She seemed close to your mother,” I said.

I’d never grown to know either more than shallowly, but it’s been obvious to be even when I’d been young.

“She was probably Mom’s closest friend in the world,” she replied. “She spent more years of her life with Sacker at her side than she did my own father. It showed. Goblins aren’t usually… good with children. Sacker was making an effort.”

“She seems to have made an impression on you,” I said.

Juniper flashed pale fangs at the deepening night.

“She did,” the Hellhound said. “But not just for the stories. Did you ever hear she was meant to rise to Marshal in Ranker’s place when she retired?”

“There were rumours,” I acknowledged. “You know, back before…”

I gesture vaguely, meaning a great many things but not in particular. She snorted in amusement.

“I looked up to her for that,” Juniper said. “Even more than I did my mother, because my mother was never going to rise higher than she had. It wasn’t like Istrid Knightsbane I wanted to be when I grew up, Catherine. It was like Grem and Ranker and Nim. The Marshals. And Sacker, she had the stuff. The marshals knew it, so the Carrion Lord. If things had turned out different, it could be her serving as the Tower’s greatest captain instead of Nim.”

“A lot of things could have gone differently,” I said.

My hand half-rose to the cloth covering the eye sloppiness had cost me before I forced it down. Some mistakes stayed with you longer than others. I found Juniper’s gaze had moved to me, catching sight of the aborted movement, and I flushed in embarrassment. Those kinds of regrets I preferred kept unseen from even my friends.

“It’s an eye, Catherine,” Juniper said. “Just an eye. You could lose both and still be who you are. And that’s what eats at me. When did you know?”

“Know what?”

Her gaze was alight with something I could not quite name.

“Who you were,” Juniper gravelled. “We’ve hung titles around your neck like necklaces at a summer fair, Warlord. Countess. Squire. Arch-heretic of the East. Black Queen, Queen of Lost and Found, of Winter, of the Hunt. First Under the Night. But before that, when did you know?”

Half a dozen answers, some flippant and others rote, came to the tip of my tongue. I could not get any of them out, not meeting her eyes with my last remaining one. Seeing the cast of her face in the last gaps of the day, the despair and the hunger that burned in her eyes. I did love her, Juniper. My own Hellhound. As deeply as I did the Woe. I’d loved her as the hard-eyed foe I had to overcome to prove myself worthy of my father’s tutelage, when we’d both been children, and I loved her now as the woman who’d built a kingdom and an army with me. So I stayed silent, for a long moment, and told her the truth.

“In the Everdark,” I quietly said. “There was…”

I swallowed. I’d never spoken of this to anyone, not even Hakram. The words did not come easy. Was there a way in any language ever made that I could truly explain what they had been, the last moments of the battle in Great Strycht?

“I lost,” I finally said, tone quiet. “They carved me open, Juniper, and all the power and the death and the madness I’d gorged myself on came pouring back out.”

I looked down and found my hand was shaking a bit. I had come to understand the Sisters, and they me, but that had been after. After.

“It was like blinders went off my eyes,” I murmured. “And Gods, but I had done so many horrible things. More of them were all I could see ahead, and I was just so fucking tired. So I went down.”

I closed my fingers into a fist, to kill the tremors.

“And I stayed down, waiting to choke in the snow.”

I heard the sharp intake of breath.

“But I didn’t,” I murmured. “It took too long, you see. Snow melted enough I could breathe. And I still wanted to stay down, to sleep, but I just…”

I laughed, as mirthlessly as she had.

“It was a choice,” I said. “And there was nothing weighing the balance either way. So I ask myself, why not?”

I tightened my cloak around my shoulders, shivering.

“And then?” Juniper quietly asked.

“And then I got up,” I softly smiled. “And I think that’s what stayed with me, Juniper. The even balance and the question and the choice I made. And it’s gone to shit since, you know. Death and doom and the age falling down on our heads. And every day the same choice is there waiting to be made: lie down…”

“Or stand up,” the Hellhound finished.

I nodded.

“I’ve stayed on my feet,” I said. “I will, until I am either victorious or I die. I think that’s what left of me, when you whittle away the rest.”

Juniper looked away.

“I thought it’d be victory,” the Hellhound admitted.

“It’s never the victories that stay with you,” I tiredly said.

Large fingers laid against the dead wood.

“No,” the Marshal of Callow said, “I guess not.”

A moment passed.

“You’re looking west again.”

“Ranker’s dead,” Juniper quietly said. “But Sacker’s here. Nim is here. And Grem uses Sepulchral’s army. Everyone who is or could be a Marshal of Praes.”

I studied her, but her expression was hard to make out and her eyes stayed west.

“There’s this thing I see, Catherine,” she confessed. “The lay of it. Two hours I’ve watched the sappers, how quick they work. How quick the work will be done. And I know how quickly Nim’s will work, and ours and…”

“And what?” I quietly asked.

“And there is a box,” the Marshal of Callow said. “Where the battle will happen. I see it. It’s where it’ll all happen and we can shape it.”

I could smell it the air, now. Victory. Yet Creation did not shiver, fate did not ripple like a lake in the wind, because this was not the writ of any Gods. It was just Juniper of the Red Shields, looking at a dusty field in the middle of nowhere and being the woman I’d glimpsed in her at seventeen.

“You want to fight,” I said.

It was not a question.

“Sacker hasn’t seen it,” Juniper said, sounding disbelieving. “She can’t have, not if she’s raising those walls. Sacker hasn’t seen it, and she could have been a Marshal.”

Large fingers clawed at the thin bark of the dying sycamore. She turned to me.

“I could be wrong,” she told me, tone anguished. “I could be just seeing what’s not there. I’ve… these have not been good days, Catherine, and I did not stand up in the face of them. I need you to know that I could be wrong.”

I would have answered, but she was not done. The words were spilling out of her like broken barrel.

“I feel like my entire life I’ve been drawing a bow,” Juniper said. “And ever since I’ve been your marshal, I’ve just… stood there. And my hand’s been trembling. But this? This place, this box, these foes?”

The hand left the tree and she pushed away, straightening her back.

“I can release the arrow,” Juniper of the Red Shields said, pleaded. “I can win this. Please.”

And I could have taken her by the arm, brought her close and told her that she did not need to win back my trust because she’d never lost it. But I knew, sure as dawn, that it was not what she wanted. Needed. And I was my father’s daughter, so I offered her the very same grace I was once offered. My wrist snapped out and metal slapped against my palm.

I handed her a knife, pommel first.

“If you mean the words,” I replied, “commit. Carve them.”

Incomprehension, first, but I saw her eyes clear as she matched my gaze. I did not mean the plea, or the apology that came unspoken with it. Those were between us. What I wanted from her was conviction. The Hellhound leaned close to the tree, reaching inside, and carved. The strokes shook, at first, but grew certain. Her hand did not tremble. And when she withdrew, deep in the hollow of a dead tree waited these words: Marshal Juniper wins here. I smiled, startled.

“Here?” I asked, amused. “Exactly?”

“This tree is where we win,” the Marshal of Callow said, tone even, “and everyone else loses.”

She offered me back the knife, pommel first. I took it.

“Let’s go home,” I said. “It’s getting late.”

“Yeah,” Juniper said, eyes red. “Let’s go home, Catherine.”

We’d left alone. We came back together.

—

“First, we shape the box,” the Marshal of Callow said.

It was a surprisingly simple thing, when it came down do it. We had our palisade and trench from Kala Hills to the half-road, so the only way to go was south. The assumption in my head had been that it’d turn into a right angle facing the Rebel Legion line, but Juniper had seen otherwise. Sacker and her fellows had been clever in putting themselves between two forces that did not want to fight them, forcing them to dig in and confirm their position of kingmaker of this battlefield. The downside, though, was that the sappers of the Rebel Legions needed to dig their trench in both directions simultaneously. So we took advantage of that.

We began building westwards instead of south, a sloping line of defence headed towards Moule Hills. Immediately the Rebel Legions began trying to force us back by cutting through our path, keeping at the same distance neither of us had yet dared to break, but when they focused their efforts south the Loyalist Legions began pushing at them instead. Nim wasn’t any more interested in giving them leverage than we were, after all.

“The slopes grow steeper further south of Moule Hills,” the Hellhound said. “That leaves only a narrow passage through which they can move troops into the valley, if they attack. That will shape where they attack.”

“Which we don’t want them to,” I pointed out.

“Indeed. So while we raise our works we have to delay,” the Marshal of Callow said. “We must maintain the stalemate until Sepulchral’s main host arrives.”

She had notions as how that should be done, of course. The first was to put the Loyalist Legions on the backfoot by poisoning the source of water they’d been using since we cut them off from their supply lines: Nioqe Lake.

“We don’t have anything that can poison a lake that large,” I pragmatically said.

I’d pretty much kill the town of Risas as well, but I was less broken up about that when they’d been providing guides to Legion skirmishers. I’d offer them safe passage south through the territory I controlled, but I wasn’t going to weep about them being driven out if we did it. Which I wasn’t sure we could.

“We do,” Juniper grunted, “for the same reason that we had to use that lake for water. Arcadian water can’t be safely drunk.”

A hundred knights, Masego and myself went for a ride. We tore through Akua’s attempts to stop us and I opened a gate in the sky, making Nioqe Lake a third larger and entirely unusable for water supplies.

“Then slow the deserters,” the Marshal of Callow said. “The moment their walls are up they can afford to start provoking us and strongarm the Black Knight.”

She spent half a day with Pickler out in the field, studying the eastern slopes of Moule Hills, before asking me for Archer and the Huntress. Ballistas were moved, and then fired at the hillside exactly five times with the Named as spotters. The ensuing landslide didn’t kill anyone that we saw, but it did drop down a least of tone of rock right in the middle of the way of the Rebel Legions. They’d have to clear them out before they could get back to work.

“So we hit the Loyalists, after that,” I guessed.

“It’s necessary and they had to be last,” the Hellhound said. “By now they’ve used all their sudes to match our wall and the deserters’. But we don’t want them to be able to keep fortifying over the next few days, they would encircle Sepulchral’s camp with walls entirely. Thankfully, their wood reserves were used to make the ring of forts around the Aksum camp, so they are now entirely dependent on the wood cut down in Kala Hills.”

“So what do we do, drive them out?” I asked.

“That would be too costly,” Juniper replied. “There is another way. It hasn’t rained in days. All you have to do, Catherine, is live up to your reputation.”

We set fire to the damned hills. Masego and I with large columns of blackflame, but it wasn’t only us. Indrani and Alexis shot fire arrows, a raiding party with Squire and Apprentice started a swath with torches and fire spells. The blaze got out of control when the wind turned, burnt a chunk of the hills under our control as well, but for the better part of the day the wind had blown north. The Legions weren’t going to get anything but ash out of those hills.

“The Black Knight will dismantle Ogarin for spare parts,” the Marshal of Callow noted, “but that will take time and the townsfolk will resist. It should buy us long enough.”

—

It did.

Sepulchral had been six days as well, and we kept the stalemate going just long enough. Our wall was anchored on the slopes of Moule Hills, facing that of the Rebel Legions, while to the north the Black Knight had hemmed them in as well. Envoys had gone back and forth between those camps, but no alliance against the Army of Callow had emerged. We’d kept them on the backfoot until Sepulchral arrived from the west with the rest of her twenty-thousand strong army. The Loyalist Legions had not finished their encirclement of the camp up in Moule Hills, and so they were forced to evacuate the sole fort in the way of Sepulchral linking her forces together late in the sixth day.

And so, at least, everyone was here.

“My agents in the Rebel Legion camp tell me that the talks with Marshal Nim are souring,” Scribe told me the same day, in my tent.

“She’s still not budging?” I asked.

“She has promised to extract of Malicia promises to make suborning officers of the Legions of Terror with mind control spells,” Scribe said, “but she still refuses to turn on the Tower in any significant manner. Now there is division among their generals. Sacker is pushing for their force to declare in favour of Amadeus as Dread Emperor, but Mok is strongly opposed. He instead argues that if further concessions are extracted from Malicia, safeguarding the sanctity of the Legions, their reasons for breaking with the Tower no longer exist.”

“Jaiyana Seket?” I asked.

“Hedging,” Scribe grimaced. “There’s not telling which way she’ll end up leaning.”

I breathed out. General Mok was arguing to rejoin Malicia’s cause, essentially. And he’d never bothered to pretend he was anything but hostile to my presence in Praes, or indeed the Grand Alliance’s concerns about the Dread Empire. I’d warned them that my tolerance had limits.

“Have assassin kill Mok,” I said. “Frame Sepulchral for it if you can.”

“That should be-” Scribe began, but she was interrupted when Vivienne blew into my tent.

I cocked an eyebrow at my successor, who was looking rather harried.

“Viv?”

“Trouble,” she said. “I have a fresh word from the Jacks. General Mok was killed an hour ago.”

I glanced at Scribe, but she shook her head. I supposed not even the Webweaver worked that fast.

“Where’s the trouble?” I asked.

“General Seket got killed as well and they caught the people who supposedly killed both,” Vivienne said.

I swore furiously.

“They caught Jacks, didn’t they?” I asked.

She nodded.

“It’s… bad, Catherine,” she said. “There’s been brawls in their camp, people are saying this is a coup by Sacker done with our backing. That she’s planning to sell out Praes to the Grand Alliance.”

I swore again.

“If I may hazard a guess,” Scribe mildly said, “the figurehead of this belief will be the senior legate for either Mok or Jaiyana Seket?”

Vivienne looked startled.

“Mok,” she confirmed.

I leaned back into my seat, closing my eyes and rubbing the bridge of my nose. Well, that was a particularly convenient turn for the Tower wasn’t it?

“Fuck,” I said. “Malicia played us.”

She’d whipped the deserters into a frenzy against us just before a battle was to erupt and the seniormost officer with a clean reputation was most likely in her pocket. Maybe if there were a few days or a week for things to calm down this could be straightened out, but we wouldn’t get that long. Ten to one odds she had something nasty cooked up for Sepulchral’s army too, I thought.

“Tomorrow we have a battle on our hands,” I plainly said. “We need to pull off your plan tonight, Vivienne. Can it be done?”

She grimaced.

“I would have liked a day or two longer, to make contact with the right people,” she admitted. “But it is not impossible.”

“Then go get your cloak, we move with nightfall,” I said. “I’ll need you to inform Juniper, Scribe, because come dawn the blades will finally come out.”