“What is it?” she asked. “Did you have another nightmare?” She threw her arms around him and tried to pull him in.
He wrenched away. “You just said the emperor keeps familiars.”
Willow's mouth fell open. “I… that doesn't… I was sound asleep.”
“What do you know, truly? Speak plain, woman.” He drew Reaver from her scabbard.
She held up her hands. “Please…”
“Tell me.”
“Okay. Come sit down. And put away your sword. Please.”
Argus didn't move. He waited until she started talking again. “This is something I should have shared long ago,” she said. “You deserve to know the truth.”
“I never would have gotten it if it weren't for your loose tongue.”
She hid her face in her hands. “I was going to tell you—tell you all—before the battle came.”
He snorted. “Tell us what?”
“That I know him. The emperor. I know him very well.”
“How?”
“Eamon was my kin, my cousin and my betrothed. The one who gave his life to mastering the Five Branches… until he grew too impatient to hold the Cradle afloat.”
Argus's fingers twitched on his sword. She was one wrong word away from losing her head.
“I'm sorry. I should have told you sooner. But once you all agreed to help me—”
“For fool's gold! For promises you'll never fulfill.”
“I can fulfill them. I will.”
“No,” he said. “I won't let that happen. Harun's death was already a forfeit. I won't let the others throw their lives away for some manipulative sorceress with a family grudge.”
“Wait! Please…”
She was weeping openly now. She tugged at the leg of his trousers as he hurried past.
“I can make this right,” she said, on her feet and following close behind.
“I've had enough of your help. Take your promises and kisses elsewhere; I've had my fill.” He could still feel the aftershocks of the night before. Her lips and fingers all over him. It had been sheer pleasure then. Now those memories were parasites—flesh-eating worms that burrowed deep.
“Argus…”
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you. Am I just a pawn to you? Was last night just a ruse to draw me deeper into your web?”
“No. You're a man. A good one, at that—though you don't see it.”
“It matters not. What matters is I'll be a living one after I get the blazes out of Garvahn.”
Willow followed him through the open farmland back toward the mercenary encampment. She apologized with every other step. Recited a litany of excuses. She was old, but naive to the ways of the world. She'd deceived him, yes, but wasn't deceit a regular part of their lives as mercenaries, outlaws, and thieves?
“You may have a point, there,” he said. “But that doesn't mean I have to like you. Much less invite you back into my bed.”
Willow tugged at his arm. “I'm not asking for those things; I don't deserve them. All I ask is one day you try to forgive me—if you can.”
Argus shrugged, stomping faster up the hill.
“There might be something that saves us yet,” Willow said.
“There is no us.”
“The false religion my cousin created to unite the tribes in Calladon espouses self-reliance and the wisdom of man. Any vices are prohibited. The same goes for magic. If he plays his hand too strongly, his soldiers will catch on and mutiny.”
“Great for them. I don't intend to be anywhere near it. And if the rest of our little company is half as wise as I think they are, they won't either.”
“This isn't something you can run away from, Argus. This is only the beginning. If Eamon isn't stopped now, while his forces are weak enough, he'll press on until the entire world is aflame.”
“Maybe so. But I'm a simple man, one who wanted nothing more than enough dragons for a peaceful life in the country and the separation from Reaver to enjoy it. I haven't the slightest inkling for fool's quests or saving the world.”
“You wanted magic too,” she said. “Deny it all you will, but there's a greater stock of man inside you. One you do not see.”
“Pretty words from a pretty mouth. Shame I don't know if they're true.”
They didn't speak again the rest of the way to camp.
Shit…
He'd expected to find a small fire and his friends lazing about, maybe still asleep. But a cacophony of activity engulfed them. Siggi and Brenn buzzed about the camp, fully armored, as Nasira strapped on her quiver of new arrows.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“Where the blazes have you been?” Siggi called when they reached the edge of camp.
Brenn waved them on. “Hurry, you fools! Haven't you heard? The Calladonians are close.”
“There will be a battle today,” said Nasira, “whether we're ready for it or not.”
Argus went into his tent and came back out with all of his supplies, which he stuffed quickly into his pack.
“Hey!” Brenn called. “Didn't you hear us? Where do you think you're going?”
Argus shook his head. “Far away from this place. Anyone who stays to fight this war is damned. You'd serve yourself better if you turned a dagger to your own chest.”
He was just about to tell them what he'd learned from Willow when a voice said, “Well, damned we are, then.”
They turned and found Commander Danielle of the Night Wolves in their encampment. She wore chain mail and a polished broadsword at her hip, and cradled a winged helmet. “Julian told me what happened to the rest of the scouting party.” She lowered her head. “My condolences.”
“Your man was braver than he let on,” Argus said.
Danielle smiled, but it disappeared quickly. “There will be plenty more time for bravery later, I'm afraid. The premiere of defense is gathering all the mercenary units outside the southern gate. I guess you haven't heard: we're completely surrounded.”
“What are you talking about?” Argus glanced at the vista north of Sorbas and found a wide, sweeping row of dark armor. The men who wore it were the size of ants, but soon they'd be larger. “That's exactly what we expected. They're marching slowly too—a snail's pace.”
“That isn't all,” Danielle said. “My scouts woke me last night and said they'd spotted another regiment due east. Eamon must have split his forces.”
“When those forces meet,” said Brenn. “Smash.” He clapped his hands together so loudly everyone around him jumped.
Danielle sighed. “That's what I'm afraid of. With the coastline only a few leagues to the west, there's nowhere else to go.”
“What about the guilds?” asked Argus. “Those shipwrights have more than enough vessels to carry us south to the sea.”
Nasira shook her head. “They've already begun the assault on the Garvahnish navy. Eamon has ships waiting where the River Cauldron empties into the sea.”
“Guess our only choice is to beat the bastard,” Danielle said. “Either that or die trying. As we mercenaries tend to do. Now come along. It's time to plan for battle.”
Argus went numb as they followed her through the mercenary tents. Row after row of them. Empty. All the soldiers crowding the southern gate. A dazzling display of blue and purple, gray and red. He saw all these things and felt nothing at all.
He'd loved Willow—if for only a moment—and this is how it would end.
It would have gone quicker if I’d just stayed in that dungeon cell…
He'd been on the verge of telling the others what he knew. But now, when they were trapped in this wretched city with no escape? He wrestled with the idea all the way until they reached the mercenary columns.
There were probably a thousand of them. Roughly the same numbers as the invading force. The problem was it wasn't one force but five. Four mercenary companies and a city guard—all with very different ideas of how to proceed.
They stopped in the middle of the colu
mns, which were eerily quiet. All the festivity and drunkenness that accompanied mercenary life were absent.
Danielle grabbed him by the arm. “Come on. The defense guild wants all the commanders up front.”
Argus turned to Willow. This is your war, woman…
“Go on,” she said. “The others trust you.”
“About as far as we can throw him,” said Siggi. “Which, given how strong I am, is a respectable distance. Go on. Get up there, you bastard.”
Argus and Danielle pressed through the columns until they reached the head. About a dozen guild masters with a pair of crossed swords embroidered on their robes stood at the end of the drawbridge, which, for the moment, was still down. The mercenary leaders he'd spoken to before the impromptu scouting mission stood in a semicircle in front of them, hurling their arms and voices.
Everyone except Helen, Argus thought. The Deathmaidens commander was dead, and a brunette stranger had replaced her.
“Here we are!” said Danielle, shoving her way into the circle. “Danielle of the Night Wolves, and Argus for the Legion of the Wind.”
The guild masters looked at them like they were enemy soldiers instead of allies. “Great,” said the man with the gold tassel draped over his shoulders, which marked him as the premiere. “Two more voices to add to the dispute.”
Danielle sneered at him and said, “That's all of us. Every company represented, craven.”
The premiere thrust his head backward as if he'd been struck. “How dare you speak to me like that? Know your place, mercenary!”
“You certainly know yours well enough—tucked away behind those city walls!”
The premiere flushed. “It's the only sensible path,” he said. “Why build walls if we don't plan to use them?”
“That's exactly the problem,” said Reza, the swarthy leader of the Reaper Battalion. “Calladon intends to use those walls against us. With everyone inside—”
“Not that everyone will fit inside,” said the new commander of the Deathmaidens.
“They'll starve us out. All of our scouting reports indicate that they're well-supplied. The emperor spent seven months besieging the city of Ashby until the last independent tribe in Calladon succumbed. Do you want a similar fate?”
The premiere shook his head wildly. “Fool! And I suppose your plan is a better option?” He jerked a thumb north of the city. “Go ahead, charge out and meet Eamon in the open field. It'll be fewer mouths to feed when the siege comes.”
Argus felt like he was going to be sick. Around and around the argument went. Finally they circled back to the major branch that lay before them: go out and strike the enemy first, or cower behind the city walls?
Kieron, the commander of the Silent Company, drew his sword. Out came all the others, and it nearly came to blows.
Argus shoved his way between them and said, “Hold on! Why can't we do both?”
They pointed their weapons at him, scowling.
“The defense guild,” he said, “though they should change their name to the guild of craven…” Laughter erupted from the mercenary units behind him. “The cravens go inside and ready the defenses. See that we're as well-supplied as we can be.”
“And the mercenaries?” asked the premiere.
“We strike tonight. Swoop down on them after they make camp but before they can prepare a siege line. It has to be now. If we tarry too long, Eamon will tighten his noose until none of us can breathe.”
“Say it doesn't work. What then?”
Argus tossed daggers with his eyes. “At the very least it'll catch them off guard and weaken them. If we can't break the line, we'll retreat back to the walls. Then we can come up with a new plan to break the siege.”
The mercenary commanders nodded. Behind them buzzed excited voices, a wave that traveled quickly all the way to the back of the column.
“What say you, oh esteemed guild master?” Argus asked.
“Premiere.” The white-haired man crossed his arms. “Though I suppose that might be feasible…”
“Great. It's settled then.” He clapped Danielle on the shoulder. “Let's go. We have work to do.” They wandered through the columns, which broke apart as the news traveled. When the last mercenary leader left the drawbridge the guild masters were still on it, raving about gods knew what.
Argus found the rest of the Legion of the Wind. As they walked back to camp he asked, “Why the long faces? I assumed you'd be excited for a good battle.”
None of them said a word. They just glowered at Willow until the former Cradlekeeper—the deceiver—said, “They know. I told them.”
“Oh…”
They said nothing more until they got back to camp, where they ate a small meal of sliced turkey and potatoes. When the meal was over they lay on the grass and stared blankly into the sky.
“Great,” said Siggi. “Not a single cloud. The empire's men will be able to see us well under the moonlight.”
“He probably doesn't even need light to see us,” said Nasira. “He's a sorcerer!”
“That isn't a battle you signed us up for,” said Brenn. “It's a suicide mission.” He turned to Willow and flicked his wrist as if swatting a stray bug. “I made it three decades on my strength alone. But what happens the second magic gets involved? It all goes straight to hell.”
“I'm sorry,” she said. “Truly.”
“Am I truly your distant kin? Or was that just another spoon of sugar?”
“You are… and Eamon's kin as well, unfortunately.”
Nasira sat up suddenly. “That wind in the Luskan Pass—that wasn't just bad luck, was it?”
Willow shook her head. “I don't know for certain, but…”
“Damn it all! I'm not a mercenary. I'm a scholar. And I should be a ruler. If I ever get back to the Comet Tail Isles.”
No one spoke for a while. Argus pondered how to get out. There might be a chance they could get their hands on a ship, though the shipwrights guarded them closely. Even if they did, there was the matter of running the blockade…
“I know you despise me,” Willow said. “You probably wish me dead.”
“No,” said Siggi.
“Speak for yourself,” said Argus.
“We don't want you dead,” the Rivannan continued. “Even Argus, though his ego is too bruised to admit it. I haven't seen him look at a woman like that since Janna.”
Argus lowered his head.
“We try to change the past,” said Siggi, “to make it more palatable. But we subsist on lies. Every one of us. And the most inaccurate stories are the ones we tell ourselves.”
“Aye,” said Argus. “The trouble is when lies stack on top of lies and the whole thing comes crashing down. Now here we are…”
“Yes,” Willow said, and wiped away her tears. “Here we are. Yet we don't have to remain here forever. If we can find a way to work together.”
Nasira got up and poked their fire until it rekindled. “I suspected something was wrong last night, from reading in Shanaz's library. The sandshades aren't supposed to be able to cross the Cloudbreaker Mountains. I held my tongue because everyone was so grief-stricken. But I knew.”
“You're right,” Willow said. “The sandshades aren't supposed to cross the Cloudbreakers. Just as the monathus can't step foot outside snow or the dhogosh can't stray from the reefs off the coast of Mael.”
Argus knew the stories well. Those creatures had been demigods themselves once, before they rebelled against the gods who'd made them. In their wrath the gods scattered them to the most inhospitable corners of the world and confined them there for eternity. Over time their rage had made them deformed and cruel.
If Eamon had helped a sandshade cross the Cloudbreakers, he had found a way to defy the gods themselves.
“I'll fight tonight,” Argus said. “And hope it ends on the battlefield.”
“Aye,” said Brenn. “Aye!” He got up and started thumping his chest, filling the camp with his battle cry.
; “Better to die a bloody death than a meek one,” said Siggi. “I won't cower behind those walls and lose this belly scrounging for clean water and rats.”
Nasira shrugged. “I'll do what I can. Though I'm no soldier.”
“We'll make a soldier of you yet,” Argus said. In a way, it was the simplest job in the world. Fight, and die if you have to. Simple… and anything but easy.
Willow shook her head and wept. “I've never seen such courage. Not in all of my life, or in reading of those who came before me in the line, or growing up on the Cradle itself.”
Argus was about to tell her to quit blowing smoke up their arses. But he looked at those green eyes and quivering chin and high cheekbones stretched taut. Impossibly strange. Impossibly beautiful.
He knew she meant what she said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
They spent the afternoon preparing for war.
Brenn bathed, trimmed his beard, and burnt the spare hair. The smell made Argus queasy; it reminded him too much of what was yet to come. But it was the Nalavacian's sacrifice to Setep—and inevitable before every battle.
Siggi disappeared into his tent with a tankard of ale. One hour of meditation, followed by one hour of drinking. He repeated the ritual all afternoon. Order and chaos.
Nasira found a hay bale with a few of the Night Wolves and fired practice arrows until Argus dragged her away for some sword work. “I know how these men fight,” he said. “Nice and close.”
She blanched. “All right… but I'm not sure I can… kill a man that way.”
“You'll do what you need to do. Now draw!” He lunged at her, and Nasira leaped to the side and drew her blade.
A fast learner, Argus thought. Good.
The practice was for him as much as anyone else. The waiting was the worst part. It made him antsy. But everything cleared away the moment he crossed swords with an enemy, and with drilling at least he could pretend.
They fought until midday, when Willow pulled him aside. “It isn't swordplay you need work on.” She hefted a stack of books. “It's these.”
“I don't want anything to do with those. I'm done with the Five Branches.”
She nodded at Argus and said, “Come in your tent with me for a moment. Please?”
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