by Morgan Rice
The moment she’d revealed her Ancient One ancestry, it had been as though she’d been in some kind of dream, because things had happened so smoothly. Lord West had sent out messages, and riders had come in response almost too quickly for Ceres to believe. She didn’t know if they had come from hatred for the Empire, loyalty to the lord of the North Coast, or some distant memory of the times when the Ancient Ones had ruled, but they had come in the hundreds.
Then thousands. More than two thousand horsemen now rode at Ceres’s back. An army, and one to be feared thanks to the easy way they sat in the saddle. Some were minor nobles or the sons of old families. Some were their retainers or soldiers who had wanted a better path than joining the Empire’s main army. All were well armed and steel armored. Some had spears, others hunting bows they could fire from the saddle. Ceres had already seen them do it, bringing down rabbits or birds to cook at their campfires.
“We will be at Delos soon, my lady,” Lord West said, riding close to Ceres. It was strange to hear the note of deference in his voice. The older man treated her the way Ceres saw others treat him: with deference and a sense that of course she would know the correct thing to do. He’d rejected any suggestion that he should stay behind, and now sat wearing mail armor reinforced with plates that he didn’t look entirely comfortable with. Even so, he sat comfortably in the saddle, and if his swords sat uncomfortably on his hip, Ceres still had no doubt that he knew how to use them.
Ceres tried to look as confident as he felt. That was one of the strange parts of this. She was as much a symbol as a leader, and she couldn’t afford to show any weakness. She kept riding, keeping pace with the others along forest trails and across open ground. Her horse never seemed to tire, keeping going so that its strides seemed to eat up the ground in front of her.
She and the others rode up a rise, and at the top, Ceres raised her hand to bring the army behind her to a halt. Delos lay ahead in the distance.
How long had it been now since she’d been there? Weeks, at least, possibly longer. So much had changed that it seemed like a lifetime ago. She hadn’t seen her family since her father had sneaked in to visit her in Delos’s castle. They probably didn’t even know if she was alive now, and the thought of that made her feel sick, but she had no idea how best to contact them.
“Tell the men to get whatever rest they can,” Ceres said, while she looked down at the city.
Lord West nodded. “I’ll have them make camp.”
Delos didn’t shine, except around its castle. There were too many slums, too many areas of the city that were barely scraping by, for that. With the wind blowing toward them, Ceres could already make out the stink of the city, of too many people crammed into too small a space. She could see the Stade there, and the castle, the walls that looked like those of a prison holding in the inhabitants.
And she could see the trenches set out on the plain before the city, too.
There was an army there, the uniforms of the Empire a bloody red in the sun. Its men were spread out before the city, obviously there to intercept Ceres’s advancing army. The trenches looked freshly dug, broad and lined with spikes, obviously designed to stop horses.
Ceres sat there looking down at it, watching the way the soldiers moved. She was no expert on battle tactics, but she could see the way the Empire’s army was laid out. The trenches were designed to stop horses, or at least slow them down. Meanwhile, the strongest soldiers would probably be on the edges of the line, there to swing around and crush any force coming into the middle.
If her army did what it was designed to do and charged, it would be carnage. If they could persuade the Empire’s forces to move ahead and try to attack, it would work far better, but Ceres couldn’t imagine them giving up their position like that. What was left? A long, drawn-out game of archery and hitting at the edges? No, because Ceres suspected other Empire forces would be marching this way.
So, what did that leave? Ceres looked down again at the forces below. She could see a figure in golden armor leading them, shining like a beacon among a horde of officers, hangers-on, and toadies.
Even at this distance, she recognized Lucious.
A part of Ceres wanted to charge down regardless of the trenches, just leap across them and cut Lucious down for all he’d done. If she killed him, though, it wouldn’t make things better. It would only remove one fragment of the Empire’s evil, not change things completely.
What if it could though? An idea came to Ceres, one that might get them around the trenches and the armies. That might solve this directly, and give her the revenge she wanted when it came to Lucious.
“Lord West,” she said. “Can you fetch a flag of truce?”
“Truce, my lady?”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t ride all this way to give up,” Ceres assured him. “But I do want to talk to them.”
In the end, Ceres rode down onto the plain before the city with a dozen men. Lord West wasn’t among them, but his nephew was, a white pennant tied to his spear. The others were all volunteers, there to ensure that if this went wrong, Ceres might still get back to the army. They stopped halfway to the Empire’s army, and at Ceres’s signal, Gerant stuck the pennant in the ground.
They waited, and waited. Ceres could feel the tension building amongst the others there. There was no way of knowing how the Empire’s army would react. Only the fact that she knew Lucious let her sit there on horseback with confidence. There were only two ways this would go. Either he would come to talk to them, or he would send his army forward to try to capture them, letting hers charge it once it was beyond the trenches. This was the best move they could make.
Finally, a group of soldiers rode forward from the Empire’s lines. Lucious was at their head. Ceres forced herself to remain in place rather than charging forward to attack him. There would be time for that later. For now, she had a battle to win, and possibly a war, so she settled for glaring at Lucious as he came closer.
He drew his horse to a halt, looking every inch the noble prince as he sat there in his golden armor. Only the collection of rough-looking thugs he rode with belied it.
“It seems a long way to come just to surrender,” Lucious said with a laughing gesture at their flag.
“Maybe I’m offering you a chance to surrender,” Ceres countered. “Yield now, and I’ll see that you get a fair trial for the things you’ve done, Lucious.”
She saw Lucious sneer. “I’d say I’d missed you, Ceres, but I try not to think about peasants. You should have known when to stay dead. Did you want something, or are we just here to exchange pleasantries?”
Ceres gestured to the horsemen behind her. “You can see I didn’t come back alone,” she said. “Step aside. Remove your army from the field. There doesn’t have to be bloodshed. We both know that you’re too much of a coward to want to risk your skin.”
“Watch your mouth, girl,” Lucious snapped back. “The only skin at risk is yours when we catch you. Maybe I’ll have it removed bit by bit and hung up in one of the galleries as a warning.”
“You’d have to have it done,” Ceres said. “You certainly don’t have the fighting skills to ever best me.”
“Still challenging your betters?” Lucious retorted. “I could cut you down any time I chose.”
Maybe he actually believed it. Certainly, Ceres knew, Lucious would never admit to anything else. In fact, she’d been counting on it.
“Then why don’t you prove it?” Ceres said. “Let’s settle this one to one. No armies, just single combat. If I win, your army moves out of the way and lets us take Delos.”
“And when I cut you down?” Lucious asked.
“Mine turns around and goes home,” Ceres said. “You get to be the prince who saved Delos without bloodshed.”
Lucious looked as though he was looking for a way out then. He was good at making threats, but he had to know by now that Ceres was the better fighter. She’d bested him before, after all.
“If you refuse,” Cer
es said, “I’ll have men shout the same challenge loud enough that your whole army can hear it. They’ll know they’re fighting for a coward. What do you think that will do for their morale?”
She saw Lucious flush then, but she still doubted that he would do more than storm off. This wasn’t about that. This was about riling him. She wanted to anger him, and taunt him. Anything to get his army to move out of its defensive position to attack hers.
To her surprise, though, Lucious nodded curtly.
“Very well,” he said. “Sundown. Single combat. The loser’s army to disband. Though I make no promises about what will happen after that. If I can hunt your rabble down, I will.”
“You have to beat me first,” Ceres said. “I’ll see you at sundown.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“It’s a lot of people to bring in at once,” Anka said, as she walked the corridors of the rebellion’s current hideout. She was trying her best to keep her anger in check, and to get Yeralt to see her point of view, but so far, the argument wasn’t going well.
“You wanted more people,” Yeralt countered, “so I found more people.”
“You hired them, you mean?” Anka shot back. “You threw Thanos’s gold around and let in anyone who showed up?”
Anka guessed that the merchant’s son probably wouldn’t see the difference. There was no doubting his commitment to overthrowing the Empire, but he often didn’t seem to understand how things really were for the poorest of Delos.
“If you want people who know how to fight, you have to pay for them,” Yeralt said, as if it were obvious.
Anka saw Sartes ahead in the press of bodies that now filled the underground hideaway. The sight of him calmed her a little. In spite of his age, he seemed to understand the realities of life better than some of the others there. Maybe it was because of the time he’d spent as a conscript. Certainly, his idea to attack the Stade had been a good one. The combatlords were already teaching the others there more about fighting than they could ever have learned otherwise.
“Sartes,” Anka said in exasperation. “Explain to Yeralt why it’s a bad idea to simply hire in all the fighters we need.”
“Where did you get them?” Sartes asked, walking up to the pair.
It was the right question. The sensible question. One that the merchant’s son didn’t seem to have asked, and that Anka should have.
“My father has people he hires when he wants caravans protected,” Yeralt replied, “and I know where to look to find fighting men.”
“So they’re mercenaries?” Sartes said.
“Or tavern grade thugs,” Anka put in.
“Does it matter what they are if they’ll fight?” Yeralt said. Anka could hear the annoyance there now. “We give them gold, they fight the Empire. It’s easy.”
“Until someone comes along with more gold,” Anka tried to explain.
She saw the merchant’s son shake his head. “You worry too much, Anka. We’ve grown more in the last few days than in the year before it. Edrin says that the raid on the warehouse went well. Oreth will find us ships. Hannah has been talking to whole networks of informants we didn’t know about, now that we have the gold to spend loosening tongues.”
“Discreetly, I hope,” Anka said.
Yeralt sighed, and Anka knew she’d gone too far. “Of course discreetly. Look, Anka, the others think this is a good idea. We’re sick of waiting and being cautious. When a business doesn’t expand, it stagnates, or worse, it collapses.”
“A lot more’s at stake than coin here,” Anka said. She tried to be a little more conciliatory, but it was probably too late for that. “I’m not saying we sit and do nothing. I’m saying that we have to do this right.”
“And we are,” Yeralt said. “We know how to do this, and we’ve decided. Now, I have to get back before I’m missed. I’m going to try to find another route into the city for supplies. There are too many to funnel through my father’s caravans.”
Anka watched the merchant’s son go, trying to contain her frustration. There was a point past which she couldn’t afford to be angry. She had to hold things together. Bizarrely, her time in the slaver’s pen had helped her with that. It had taught her not to show what she felt. It had taught her that there were worse things than any petty issues that might come. It had shown her what was at stake.
“He doesn’t get it,” Anka said, when Yeralt was gone. “For all his businesses, he doesn’t understand. Please tell me you do, Sartes.”
Sartes nodded. “There are too many people to be sure who they all are. Mostly, they’ll all be people who want to help the rebellion. Maybe people who always wanted to but weren’t sure of the best way to do it.”
“But some of them won’t be,” Anka said, grateful that someone else got the danger. “When the rebellion was still fairly small, I could know who everybody was. If I didn’t know, at least one of the people I knew would. Now, people walk past me and I just have to accept that they’re with us. That they aren’t spies or criminals or worse.”
Sartes shrugged. “Part of what makes the rebellion great is that it does accept anybody. We don’t turn people away because of their past. This only works if we make it a movement for everyone, until one day the Emperor wakes up and he’s the only one not in the rebellion.”
Anka smiled at that. “I like that idea, although I’m not going to let Lucious into the rebellion.”
“No one’s asking you to,” Sartes said. “I don’t think he’s the joining type.”
“But plenty of others are,” Anka said. “Come with me, would you? I want to see what we’re getting for Thanos’s gold.”
She led the way up through the tunnels, out of an exit that led into a tenement building. There were people waiting there, training with weapons or simply sitting around with nowhere else to go. There was a bench in one corner, where men and women were lining up to receive weapons and gold.
Anka walked across, regarding the man who stood at the front of the line coolly. He had the scars of a man who’d been in a lot of fights, and the slightly ruddy skin of a man who drank too much. There was something about him that set Anka’s teeth on edge.
“What’s your name?” Anka asked.
“What’s it matter to you?” the prospective recruit countered.
“It matters because I’m trying to decide if I want you in my rebellion,” Anka said. “I’m Anka. You ask around here, and you’ll find out who I am. I want to know who you are so I can ask about you.”
“I’m Hern, out of the fifteenth regiment. I deserted and came back to the city, joined one of the gangs. That what you want to know about me, girl?”
Anka tried not to match the tone of hostility there. “You say you were in a gang? What were you? A thief? A murderer?”
“What I am is willing to fight the Empire,” he replied. “I used to be an enforcer for the Second Streets. Is that good enough for you?”
Anka wanted to say no, but instead, she just gestured him forward to the table. She walked away with Sartes at her side.
“Where do we draw the line, Sartes?” she asked. “We know we wouldn’t let the likes of Lucious in, so there are some people we won’t tolerate, but who? Criminals? We’re all criminals by the Empire’s definition. Soldiers? You’re a former soldier, and so are all the conscripts who joined us. Yeralt’s right, we need all the people we can get, but mercenaries and thugs? We can’t trust them.”
“So don’t trust them,” Sartes said, and he made it sound so obvious. “You can’t question everyone who wants to join personally, but you can ask someone to vouch for them before they join. You can make sure that only the people who need to know things are told them.”
“You’re too young to have so little trust in people,” Anka said.
Sartes shrugged. “There are plenty of people I trust. I trust you.”
“It seems as though a lot of people are trusting me these days,” Anka said. “I have to make the right decisions, or it could mean people’s
lives.”
“You’ve been making the right calls so far,” Sartes said. “You organized the ambush in the burial ground and the freeing of the combatlords. We have the army’s weapons and Thanos’s gold.”
“You played a pretty big role in those too,” Anka said. “How’s the weapon sorting going?”
Sartes shook his head. “My father says that the Empire needs to employ better smiths. He also said I might be able to help you more here.”
Anka smiled. “He’s probably right. It looks as though I could use all the help I can get.”
She stood there, and Sartes could hear something left unsaid in the silence.
“What is it?” Sartes asked. “I mean, if you can tell me.”
“I’ll always be able to tell you things,” Anka said. “If there’s one person in the rebellion I don’t have to worry about being a spy, it’s you. It’s not that.”
“Then what?” Sartes asked.
“Sartes, I have news.” Anka stood there, uncertain for a moment, standing next to a window and looking out on the city. Should she say this now? “You were talking about things people need to know. Well, I don’t know if I should tell you this, because it’s just a rumor, and I didn’t even believe it when I heard it.”
“What is it?” Sartes asked. “Is it about the army?”
“In a way,” Anka said. There were enough rumors about the army outside the city that Sartes must have heard some of them. “I’ve spent the morning listening to what’s happening out there, piecing things together. The army formed up in front of the city yesterday, because it had heard that there was a force coming under Lord West.”