Fortress Draconis (49 page)

It seemed as if everyone who was meant to ship north was learning from Scrainwood’s lesson. Soldiers offered theweirun gold and wine, live animals—which soon ceased being live—and any manner of valuable they hoped would make them stand out. In the case of a disaster at sea, they wanted its sovereign to think kindly of them. Alyx had heard countless tales ofweiruns of forest, fields, mountains, and streams helping the lost and innocent, or rewarding the honest and noble. Tagothcha was well known for being capricious and greedy, but as his lust for gold was sated, so was his mischievous nature.

Because Adrogans felt bribes were beneath him, or he just had an abiding fear of the sea, over a thousand men and women set out on horseback, with three horses for each of them. A long wagon train would have also been part of their expedition, but arrangements for fodder and food had been made and supplies had been cached along their route. Every third day they would resupply themselves and have some of their mounts replaced.

Even Alyx had to admit that Adrogans had done a good job planning out that logistical angle of the campaign, though his demands seemed inflated to her. She was willing to allow that he was just planning against delays and the sort of thievery that accompanies the establishment of supply depots. Even so, the materiel he requisitioned would have amply supplied an army half again as large as their force.

This was all part and parcel of the paradox of Adrogans. The man knew enough to make sure his troops had everything they needed to fight, but he used his people poorly. In maneuvering he surrendered speed for strength, which was a dubious proposition at even the most favorable of times. He’d clearly been successful at defending Jerana from Aurolani aggression, but his battle reports suggested luck played a bigger part in his victories than planning.

If his luck runs out before his supplies do, he’s done for.

She shivered and watched the cavalry units head on down the road. Another bit of the paradox struck her as she watched them go by. Her Wolves and the mercenary legion, Matrave’s Horse, were the only light cavalry in the force. They’d been given scouting duties, which made perfect sense. The three heavy cavalry units were well spaced on the road so they would have time to form up and charge if the scouts detected the enemy over the next hill or around a corner. Vilwanese warmages and various officials traveling with them were kept toward the middle of the column where they would be safest, or would do the least harm, depending upon how one chose to look at it.

His deployment of the forces matched what she would have suggested, had her opinion been solicited. That he did not ask for her advice did not surprise her. What did was that, again, he showed an intuitive grasp of tactics in how the column moved, yet that never showed up in any of his battles.

Alyx frowned and reined Valor around. She slipped back into the column behind her Red Caps. She found herself riding beside Crow. He gave her a nod. Droplets of water flicked free of his oilskin cloak’s hood and one hung from the tip of his nose. He blew upward to launch it into the air, then smiled at her.

“Your Wolves have a few more companies here.”

“Black and Silver were added. Gold was made a full company and I have a new squad of bodyguards.” The Wolves had been a reinforced legion with a hundred fifty soldiers in it, but two more companies had been added prior to the expedition’s setting out. Along with extra staff officers this brought her command up to two hundred twenty individuals. Hardly enough of a force to warrant a general in command, but both the unit and the rank had come from King Augustus, so no one complained.

She glanced back along the column. “You ought to be back there with the Norrington.”

“You should call him Will.” Crow shrugged easily. “I prefer riding with scouts. I’m not heavy cavalry, and I’m not well suited to letting others protect me. If you object to my presence, however…”

She started to shake her head no, but hesitated for a moment. Under normal circumstances she’d not have wanted him riding with her, but with Peri having flown ahead to Gyrvirgul, she had no one to talk with. While her cousin Misha was in the Kingsmen, her rank and position made it difficult to speak to him without earning him the ire of his commanding officer.

“No, not at all.” She glanced beyond him as Resolute trotted his horse up and around toward the head of the column. “I suspect it wouldn’t matter to the members of your band where Adrogans or I want them.”

Crow laughed quickly. “Well, not to some, no; but others would obey. I would be among them.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You seem hardly one to take orders, Crow.”

“Only from those whose judgment I respect.”

“I see.” She easily could have taken his words as idle and flirtatious flattery, but she heard sincerity in them. Alyx turned her head and regarded him closely. “Have you formed an opinion of our leader?”

“More than one, Highness.”

“Call me Alyx.”

“Not if it were your dying command, Highness.” The man stared at her from within the shadowed depths of his hood. “I know very well my place in the world. No, wait, I’m not saying what you think I am. Your willingness to permit me familiarity is something I cherish. As per our conversation before, I would be more than willing to share a cup with you here in the field, and count myself fortunate in doing so. My point is not that I am of common stock and therefore unworthy of such familiarity. While it’s true, the simple fact of the matter is that while our missions are united right now, there could come a point in this war with Chytrine where our purposes will differ. What I have to do may well anger General Adrogans, or King Augustus, or any number of people you need to succeed in liberating Okrannel. So you will not be tainted by your association with me, we should maintain at least the appearance of formality.”

Alyx frowned for a moment. “I was raised among the Gyrkyme. Save for wings and down, and a veneer of manners from tutors, I am Gyrkyme. They do without all these games, so I have a hard time seeing them.”

Crow nodded. “As did I, until events forced me to open my eyes to them. And, even at that, I barely avoided blinding.”

“I understand what you said, Crow, but I will take issue with a point.”

“Please, Highness.”

“You suggested my purpose was to liberate Okrannel. This is true, but only halfway true. My goal is to keep it free. The only way to do that is for Chytrine to be destroyed. Our purposes, then, are more tightly interwoven than you seem to think.”

The older man pursed his lips for a moment, then nodded. “You’re right, Highness, thank you for correcting me.”

“Something that will be rare, I have no doubt.” She smiled at him. “So, you were saying you had developed many opinions of General Adrogans?”

Crow glanced back down the column to where the Jeranese Horse Guards rode. Their oilskins had been dyed a rich brown, with a white crouching panther on their left breasts. Their lances stabbed defiantly toward the sky, as if threatening to rip the clouds open in retribution for the rain. They surrounded Adrogans, warding him within the forest of lances.

“At the reception I decided he was arrogant, but that was not a difficult opinion to reach. After that I had a chance to observe some of his people—not his officers, but his troopers. He has them well trained. They care diligently for their horses. They do drink but not to excess, and I saw no witless bragging or brawling. Mild provocation earned harsh stares before fast fists.”

“You see, then, the paradox I do.”

“The difficulty is in judging which image is correct. If he is truly the sort of leader who can inspire men and instill such discipline in them, well, this explains his victories. If, on the other hand, he is incompetent and arrogant, well, pride in their unit could inspire his soldiers to make more of themselves than their leader demands.”

“That second case does not bode well for our campaign.”

“Hardly the worst thing we have to worry about.” Crow leaned forward on his saddlehorn, then twisted his shoulders to the left and right to loosen his back. “The Gyrkyme who will join us will be very useful, but the elven infantry being shipped over from Loquellyn will refuse to work with them. The Nalisk infantry will have something to prove because thesullanciri leading the Aurolani comes from Naliserro. The Okrans Kingsmen and Volunteers likewise will feel a need for heroics, which will make yet more difficult leading a force with so many elements of differing sizes and skills.”

She nodded in agreement. “Then there is the whole matter of the size of the force we will be opposing. The reports we have are vague and old, so Chytrine could be reinforcing the country, or could just let us fragment ourselves and then send more troops in to sweep us up piecemeal.”

“Possible, but unlikely.”

“Why?”

Crow shrugged. “The last thing she wants is to have the world truly united against her. Driving her forces back in Okrannel would give people the taste of blood. It would tell them she was vulnerable. That she counterattacked and smashed them could be dismissed as desperation on her part, and bad luck on ours. She would have shown herself to be vulnerable, which would mean we’d keep coming. What she needs is to snap our spine in Okrannel, then crush Fortress Draconis. If she does those things, the resolve to oppose her will evaporate, and she will be able to negotiate truces with nations so she can eat up their neighbors.”

Alyx flicked a drop from her nose with her finger. “You’ve thought a lot about her motives.”

“I’ve had a long time to think about them. A generation ago she warned us she would be coming. Why?” He sighed. “So we would panic and be on alert, then tire and become complacent and then forget how to fight and why we wanted to fight. She comes again and we panic, which is never a good way to enter a fight.”

She nodded. “Is entering battle behind Adrogans going to be a good way?”

“I don’t know. At least he’s been fighting for a long time.” Crow smiled slowly. “He may have his own reasons forwhy he’s fighting her, but at least he knowshow. As omens go, that has a lot to recommend itself.”

Will certainly found himself enjoying his second trip west much more than the first. Resolute’s apparent uneasiness with large groups of people meant he stayed away from Will, especially when Will elected to ride with the Horse Guards or the Kingsmen. Even the Savarese Knights—men who resembled Dranae in coloration and build, though slightly smaller—let their stern demeanor slip a bit when he rode among them. They seemed to like havingthe Norrington in their midst, and the chores that Resolute would have made him do were often taken up as part of some soldier’s duties.

Aside from Resolute, only two other members of the expedition gave Will any cause for concern. One was Lombo. The Panqui, while apparently having seen Will’s abandonment of Kerrigan to a street gang as the right thing to do, still watched him and studied him. It wasn’t anything as unnerving as having his footsteps dogged per se, but every so often he’d find the Panqui squatting beside a line of his footprints, probing them “with a finger, or lowering his muzzle to sniff at them.

Will didn’t feel he was so much being stalked as it was that Lombo was measuring him as a threat. The thief did notice Lombo doing that to some other folks, or at least seeming to, but not with the frequency Will saw in regards to himself. It also annoyed him a little that Lombo seemed to function like a body servant for Kerrigan. After all, Kerrigan was nothing compared tothe Norrington, but did Will have one person seeing to his needs?

The thief shrugged. It was probably just as well that Kerrigan did have the beast caring for him, since he seemed incompetent otherwise. There were hundreds of things that Will knew how to do that Kerrigan couldn’t. It did not slip Will’s mind that most of these things were skills Resolute had forced on him in the first western trip, but he conveniently let that fact drift into the back of his mind. The little bits of friction between Orla and Lombo over how Kerrigan should be handled also pleased Will.

Qwc and Dranae seemed to be weathering the trip well. Because of his size, and the requisite size of the mounts needed to carry him, Dranae spent a lot of time with the men of the heavy cavalry units. The mercenary Matrave had one heavy cavalry company in his legion and even offered Dranae a job. When the column camped and contests of strength became the night’s entertainment, Dranae became a prohibitive favorite, especially in wrestling matches.

Qwc became a favorite as well, but for entirely different reasons. The green Spritha flitted about almost constantly, marveling at things that were quite ordinary. Troopers caught on very swiftly that his innocence could be used. When riding through an orchard, one might bet Qwc a feather that the Spritha couldn’t possibly fetch an apple from the top of the tree. Qwc would dart to the goal, harvest the prize, and win his feather, or button, or whatever other bit of trash the soldiers proffered.

On top of that, everything Qwc did seemed to have added consequences. More than once he returned from some sojourn through a field with a buttercup-blossom helm planted firmly on his head. Half the time he didn’t seem to notice or know how the flowers had gotten there, but when it was called to his attention, he set it at a jaunty angle and soared through tight spirals that made him dizzy.

Whenever Will saw him, he couldn’t help but smile, and often laugh. Even Resolute’s normally vile mood lightened in the Spritha’s presence, which Will marked as a victory right up there with defeating Chytrine. When Qwc would win his bets, he’d bring his loot to Will for evaluation and storage, announcing, “Trusts you, Will, Qwc trusts you. Safe treasure now.”

Even that statement, delivered sincerely, earned laughter since everyone knew Will was a thief by trade. Still, it was the soldiers who were swindling Qwc who were having it pointed out to them that the Spritha trusted Will. That had a gradual and good effect on the soldiers. After the first few days on the road, fewer and fewer of them eyed Will suspiciously as he wandered through the camp at night.

Not that their precautions could have stopped me from taking whatever I wanted.Will smiled. They knew their trade, and he knew his. Will wasn’t certain how what he knew what to do would defeat Chytrine, but he was content to figure it out as things went along.