Turning the Storm

by Naomi Kritzer

  “Hey,” Giovanni said. “Look at this.” He pushed one of Clara's letters across the desk.

  You must believe me, my darling, I am doing the best I can. The Fedeli have come to agree with me that it is vitally necessary to reinforce the troops in the wasteland now. However, the Circle has opposed me at every turn.

  Because magic can't be used in the wasteland, the Circle can't fight there; I can't overstate how frightening this is to them. In addition, my sources tell me that the Circle has begun to fear the army: the army is loyal first to the Emperor, and because of the wasteland, the army is no longer as dependent on the Circle as they were in the past. I believe that the Circle wishes to see the army fail without magical support, and obviously, magical support can't be provided until the Cani leave the wasteland.

  The sacrifice of the keep commanders seems an appalling betrayal to me. I am doing my best to convince the Emperor to send additional troops, even if it means raising an entirely new army. Wish me luck, darling. I pray to the Lady for your safety …

  I looked up. “It's fascinating information,” I admitted. “And certainly explains a lot. But I'm not sure how we can use it.”

  Giovanni's eyes glinted. “There's got to be a way.” He checked the date on the letter. “This is months old. If only we had more recent information. For all we know, Clara convinced the Emperor and fresh troops are on their way. I'll keep the letters. I almost feel sorry for the lady.”

  Lia had been wandering the study and looked up suddenly. “You said that Demetrio killed himself?” “Yes,” Giovanni said.

  “Where is the body?”

  “Right there.” I pointed to the corner, and suddenly felt apologetic. We'd gotten awfully cavalier about bodies lately.

  Lia carefully lifted the corner of the blanket and stared down at the face impassively, then covered it again, standing back up. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but that's not him.”

  “What?” Giovanni dropped everything he was holding. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. This is his second. But I wonder if the second took his commander's place willingly, or if Demetrio killed him and put the knife in his hand?”

  “Lady's tits,” Giovanni said, “I don't believe it. I can't believe I was taken in by such a stupid trick. Michel!” He stomped out the door.

  Lia still stood by the body, her green eyes wide and very slightly amused. “I should've known Demetrio wouldn't just give up like that. It's not his style.”

  Giovanni was back within minutes. “One horse is gone,” he said.

  “From the stables?”

  “No,” Giovanni said. “We secured those, remember? The bastard stole my horse.” I tried—and failed—to cover my laughter with my sleeve. “I'm glad you find this amusing, Eliana. Doesn't it worry you that he might, just possibly, have realized that we had a scout slip into his keep to open the door?”

  “I don't find it amusing,” I said. Well, I did, but only because it was Giovanni's horse. “Figures he took the best horse he could find, doesn't it? You can take his horse from the stables; that seems only fair. You've sent Michel after him, of course?”

  “Of course.”

  “But Stivali was the fastest horse, wasn't he? That's why you wanted him.” Giovanni's vicious glare was confirmation of this. We weren't going to catch Demetrio; he had too much of a head start. Giovanni went back to sorting through the desk, still disgusted with himself and our army; I started on the cabinets along the wall. “Hey,” I said. “Lia!” She looked up. “Demetrio was a man of many talents.”

  There was a lute in the cabinet; I pulled it out to examine it. Demetrio's lute was more decorative than Lia's had been; it was adorned with carved designs of birds and flowers. I doubted that the carvings would improve the sound, but after the months without her lute, I think Lia would have snatched at the chance to play gut strung over a large mixing bowl. The sheet music stored behind it only added to her delight. “It's yours,” I said, and she tucked the music under her arm and took her leave to go play.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Lia came briefly to see me the following morning, to say good-bye. “I won't be coming with you,” she said, “but I'll be serving your army. You'll see.”

  “Are you going to Doratura?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said. “For a while.”

  Lia had no sash to go with her ragged dress, but she had found a red hat somewhere in the keep; it was a bit large for her, and she pushed it back to keep it from slipping into her eyes. “Take care of yourself,” I said.

  “You too,” she said, and gave me a tight hug.

  A few minutes later it was time to go rally the troops. The Chirani gathered by the keep to stare at me from hollow faces with eyes that scorched mine with hope and anger. There were many more women than men in Chira, and there were almost no children.

  “We came here to free you,” I said. “And we have. Your lives are your own; you serve the Circle's cruelty no longer.” At the very back of the crowd I saw Lia, watching my speech with a tiny smile. “You have a choice. We've freed many other camps now, and the prisoners have resettled abandoned villages that are not in the wasteland. They are rebuilding; it will mean work, but not at the threat of the lash or the noose. That's one option. Or you can go wherever you want; return home, head north, head south. You belong only to yourselves.”

  The women stared at me, their faces rigid, their eyes hungry.

  “Or,” I said, and a ripple went through the crowd at my tone, “you can join us. You have the strength in your arms to fight; you have the will in your hearts to free others just as we have freed you. There are three more camps in the wasteland, all enslaved, all building the wall. Three more camps, just like this one.” Lia's eyes were closed, listening; I remembered her doing that, listening to me practice my violin, a lifetime ago.

  “We are the Lupi, the wolves, because we hunt as a pack; because we fell on the sheep who called themselves our captors and tore them to pieces. We will fall on those other camps, one by one. We will march in like the tide, and no one will stop us. We will sweep in like fire, and nothing will be left in our path.” I was breathless, pacing, as the crowd of half-starved women watched me in total silence.

  “Are you with me?” I demanded.

  “Yes,” the women whispered, the hiss rippling through the crowd.

  “You are wolves. Find your voices. You don't need to whisper now because you are free,” I shouted. “Are you with me?”

  “Yes. Yes. YES!”

  “We march at noon,” I said. “Meet on the north hill in two hours.”

  The crowd started to disperse, and I turned to regroup my own people. I should have asked Lia who to put in charge of the Chirani; I had no doubt that most of them would be coming with us. I saw Felice watching me quietly from the shadows by the keep. “The young lady with the lute said she wanted me to give this to you,” he said, looking slightly puzzled. “It's sealed.”

  Lia must have lifted the heavy parchment from Demetrio's office, along with a pen and the seal. I broke the seal and read the page quickly. It was not a letter; it took me a moment to realize it was musical notation. One of the songs we'd found in the cabinet? No. Lady's tits, I thought, reading it over.

  The tune was fairly close to one of the folk songs I'd played with Mira, but the words were different—and very catchy, I had to admit, humming it over to myself. It was the ballad of one Eliana, who had discovered the Circle's deadly secret and now sought to keep them from destroying all of Verdia, whatever the cost.

  In the name of the Mother, Her Son, and the Light, We are fire and water and God's open hand. I have freed you and now I will lead you to glory. I'll trade my own blood for the life of the land.

  At the bottom of the last page, Lia had written neatly, more to come.

  Lady's tits, I thought, how embarrassing, and went looking for Giovanni. I found him saddling Demetrio's horse, and held out the sheet with a bit of trepidation.

 
“What's this?” Giovanni stepped away from the horse and took the parchment, looking it over. I saw a glint of annoyance cross over his face, and then he shook himself and laughed mockingly. “The heroine of ballads! I hope you'll still stoop to sharing a tent with the rest of us.”

  “What do you think of it?” I asked, not willing to ask the real question: Does it bother you that this is about me, and not about you?

  “It's not bad. It's better than ‘The Wicked Stepmother.’” I must have looked puzzled because he laughed again and said, “You know. ‘I've brought a gift of honey, bright as sun and sweet as wine.’ The reformers wrote that.”

  “That was you? One of my friends spent hours in the library looking up references to honey in old ballads, trying to figure out what that damn song meant.”

  “Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'd tell you that I argued for a more transparent meaning, but I don't want you thinking I'm just trying to get in good with the heroine of the ballads.” He gave me back the parchment with a little mocking flourish, and mounted his horse. “See you back at camp.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  To some I bring a sword; to some I bring a lamp. There are many ways to face the darkness.

  —The Journey of Gèsu, chapter 12, verse 25.

  You're wrong,” Giovanni said. “Dangerously wrong.”

  I threw down the map Felice had carefully drawn out. “Dangerously wrong would be dividing our forces!”

  “Isabella agrees with me.”

  “Isabella also thinks she could run the Lupi better than I could. It's no wonder she likes the idea of her own little army.”

  “Look.” Giovanni nearly grabbed my shoulders, then thought better of it. “If you don't trust Isabella to get her men up to Cuore without you, why did you make her a commander?”

  I ignored the question. “It's a stupid strategy.”

  “What would you know about it? You know nothing about strategy. You know nothing about tactics. I do. So why won't you listen to me?” He glanced past me. “Lucia. Talk some sense into her. Maybe she'll listen to you.”

  Lucia shook her head. “I am not a strategist.”

  “Neither is she,” he said.

  “We're not dividing the Lupi,” I said. “Discussion ended.”

  Giovanni looked past Lucia at Felice, who was sitting quietly in the corner of the tent. “You. You're supposed to know something about strategy. If this were a mock battle with your tutor, what would you do?”

  “I'd keep the Lupi together when we left the wasteland,” Felice said. “Like Eliana is doing.”

  I nodded, satisfied, and Giovanni shot Felice a venomous look. “Remember,” he muttered as he stomped out. “He only won nineteen out of twenty-five.”

  He returned moments later. “The scouts are back,” he said, and held the tent flap open for Camilla.

  It was far too soon for the scouts to have returned— had something gone terribly wrong?—but Camilla was grinning broadly. “They're gone,” she said. “The soldiers pulled out of the camp; it's just the prisoners.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. We ended up going into camp and talking to some of the prisoners. The soldiers packed up the day before yesterday and headed out of the wasteland.”

  “Then let's head in,” I said. If we waited much longer, the prisoners would disperse. Camilla saluted, and I sent Vitale to get my horse.

  This was the last camp. Though we'd feared it would get harder and harder to liberate them, after Chira it had gotten easier: the camp commanders were demoralized and understaffed. Apparently Clara's attempts to arrange for reinforcements were having little effect.

  We had no need to be covert, so in the last light of the afternoon, we massed on the hill overlooking the camp. Below us, people were pointing and shouting; some were waving red banners. I looked at Giovanni and nodded, and we rode in slow procession down to the camp, the rest of the Lupi following.

  The refugees surrounded us as we entered the camp. Men and women reached up to clasp our hands, pressing in so tightly that Forza began to sidle nervously. A small girl, maybe six years old, saluted us from her father's shoulders; other children had scrambled onto the roof of the vacant stables to get a better view.

  Someone shouted a welcome, and this cheer was taken up, raggedly, by the refugees. I shouted a greeting back, then wheeled my horse to speak. “We came here expecting a fight,” I said. “I guess we can't complain too much that the soldiers didn't have the stomach to face us.”

  The Lupi cheered that; the refugees joined in, but feebly. Their eyes were desperate, hungry, like the eyes of the refugees at Chira, like the eyes of everyone I'd seen in every camp we'd liberated. “From here, we ride north,” I said. “The soldiers were our keepers, but it was the Circle who enslaved us—who created the wasteland, killed our families, imprisoned us here. We are going to sweep in on the Circle as we swept into the wasteland camps—like fire, like the tide, like the incoming storm. If you would join us, be ready to march at dawn tomorrow!”

  Smoke still rose from the stone hulk of the keep. The retreating camp soldiers had loaded up what they could carry, and torched everything else. Including all the food. The refugees had stayed where they were in part because they were too weak to flee the wasteland and they hoped that the Lupi would bring them something to eat. After inspecting the ruins of the keep, I sent for Rafi to arrange for a meal for both the Lupi and the refugees.

  Giovanni rode up next to me. “No grain,” he said. “That's not good.”

  “It means that wintering in the wasteland is definitely not an option,” I said.

  Giovanni opened his mouth, as if he were going to restart the argument over our next course of action, but he thought the better of it. “We can't leave before tomorrow. Let's talk about it after we eat.”

  Felice was helping to serve the food when I arrived for my portion. He almost looked like one of the Lupi now—he was dirty, at least. He saluted and then served me some porridge. “Council meeting later,” I said. “Be there. I want someone on my side.” He smiled and nodded.

  Giovanni also spent his time before the meeting marshalling allies. When I stepped into the tent, not only Felice but Isabella, Giovanni, and Rafi waited for me. Lucia followed a moment later. I sent for tea for all of us and sat down, waiting for the onslaught.

  It started with Rafi. “I think you should disband the Lupi,” he said.

  This wasn't what Giovanni had expected him to say, either—that was obvious. “What?” Giovanni said. “What would be the point of that, exactly?”

  “You don't know how to fight magefire,” Rafi said. “Neither do I. Neither does Eliana. That's why you've been arguing for the last month over what to do next.”

  “So you think we should just give up?” I said.

  “What would be the purpose in riding out of the wasteland, just so that we could all be killed?”

  During the war with Vesuvia, opposing mages stood at either end of the battlefield, hurling lethal fire back and forth. The armies were mainly there to keep the other side's swordsmen from walking up and skewering the mages. Of course, some skirmishes were fought without magical support, but on those occasions when one side had mages and the other side did not, the battles were typically over very quickly. We had no mages in our army—and for obvious reasons, we were not likely to get any. But just giving up and going home— not that most of us had homes—was absurd. “We're not disbanding, Rafi.”

  “So how do you plan to face the Circle?” Rafi asked.

  “Use the land for protection,” I said. “Strike from under shelter, preferably from behind. The Circle won't move against us all at once. If we draw them out a handful at a time, I think we'll have a chance.”

  “How many mages destroyed your village?” Rafi asked.

  I felt a flush rise to my cheeks, and a lump rise to my throat. “I don't know.”

  “It wasn't many, though.”

  “Probably not. But Doratura was not an army; they
were not prepared.”

  Rafi spread his hands. “Granted. So how do you propose to draw out the Circle?”

  “I think we should take some tempting targets,” I said. “Pluma, for one. We could fortify the town …”

  “Pluma is a stupid target,” Giovanni said.

  “It's walled,” I said.

  “Walls don't stop magefire! If we're going to draw out the Circle, which I still think is a stupid idea, we should send one of the units to fortify a hilltop. An uninhabited hilltop.”

  “In other words, you want to set up some of our people as decoys?”

  “Why is this a problem? All armies do this. What kind of generale are you?”

  “The kind who stands by her people,” I said, “and doesn't set them up to get slaughtered.”

  “You could make it a small unit,” he said. “You could even ask for volunteers.”

  “No,” I said, “and that's the end of it.”

  Isabella leaned forward. “Giovanni may be an arrogant twit, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take advantage of his strategic ability. And in this case he happens to be right.”

  “What if it was your unit I sent to be the decoy?” I asked.