Warlord

by Jennifer Fallon

  Damin watched him leave, and then turned to Kraig, who was waiting patiently by the door. Lernen seemed to have forgotten his initial fear of the big Denikan by the following morning, so Damin often brought Kraig to Lernen’s tent these days, partly because it enhanced the reputation he was trying to foster and partly because, much to Damin’s delight, Cyrus Eaglespike was almost as intimidated by the Denikan as the High Prince and if he tried to ingratiate his way into Damin’s private daily meetings with his uncle, Kraig’s presence actually scared him off.

  With a sigh, Damin glanced down at the map. “You know, the Harshini have an old saying,” he remarked as he began pinching out the candles Lernen had placed on it to indicate his great plans for a wildfire. “War is the easiest hell to get into and the hardest to escape.”

  “Not an inaccurate assessment,” Kraig agreed.

  Damin glanced at him over his shoulder. “I think the first part of that saying has been lost over the eons. I suspect it used to be: When being led by a fool, war is the easiest hell to get into and the hardest to escape.”

  “I would agree your uncle is not a … military man,” Kraig remarked tactfully.

  “Really?” Damin gasped in amazement. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

  Kraig smiled, which was a rare thing for the Denikan. “You, on the other hand, I sense … have been trained with just such a conflict in mind. And your uncle’s incompetence frustrates you enormously.”

  “Well, all that brilliant training doesn’t do me a whole lot of good with him in charge.”

  The Denikan walked to the map and looked down at it thoughtfully. “There are four things that always affect a battle,” he noted. “They are immutable and, if you understand them, the key to winning any conflict.”

  A little fed up with the Denikan’s insistence that he was an expert in everything, Damin’s first reaction was to ignore his advice. But something Zegarnald had said to him stuck in his mind. I ask nothing of you that you are not capable of, his god had assured him. And I will see you have what assistance you need.

  The Denikan prince spoke with an air of authority Damin had rarely heard from anybody but Almodavar. Perhaps this was the assistant Zegarnald promised. He certainly couldn’t think of any other reason why the gods might have thrown these Denikans across his path.

  “What four things?”

  “The first is how you move your men,” Kraig explained, leaning on the edge of the table to get a closer look. “Your ability to put them where you want them, have them hold as long as you need them, and have them respond to changes as quickly as you need them to.” Kraig studied the map closely as he spoke. “The second is your ability to be flexible. Victory always falls to the leader who can change his strategy when it’s clear the planned one isn’t working.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that.”

  “The third quality is a leader’s ability to innovate. It’s all well and good to study the history of other men’s battles, but the reason you study them is because they were the first to think of a particular manoeuvre or strategy.” He glanced at Damin and added, “Which is usually why they won the battle you end up reading about.”

  Damin nodded in agreement. “And the fourth?”

  “Ah, that is something much less tangible but no less important. You must claim victory over men’s minds before you can take it from their bodies.”

  “Do you mean the army’s morale?”

  Kraig shook his head. “It’s more than that. And it’s not just your own men. Certainly, you need them to believe you can win, but you need your opposition to suspect you can, too.” He shrugged and stood up straighter. “Still, in that, at least, you have the advantage. Men fighting for their own land always have a lot more to lose than the men invading it.”

  “Have you been in many battles?” Damin asked curiously.

  “A few.”

  “Did you win?”

  “In Denika, we don’t take prisoners. I am here discussing the matter with you, your highness. You can, therefore, safely assume I was victorious.”

  Damin smiled, wondering if Kraig was trying to be humorous, or if it was just his intense seriousness that always struck Damin as funny. “So what do you advise, Kraig? If you were fighting this battle for the House of the Rising Moon?”

  Kraig barely even hesitated before pointing to the map. “I would force my enemy to confront me here, at this place you call Farwell.”

  Damin glanced down at the map. “That’s right between the Saltan and Norsell rivers. If they muster there we’re in trouble. There’s no way to get around behind them and no way to cut off their supply lines.”

  “But if you owned this crossing on the Saltan and that bridge on the Norsell, you could draw the invaders down into the far end of this valley, come in behind them and trap your enemy with the rivers on either side of them and your forces in front and behind them. You would control the battleground.”

  “That’d be useful.”

  “And necessary,” Kraig agreed. “Given the enemy will probably outnumber you significantly. If I was in command, I would play on their assumption of superiority and let them break through the centre of my lines. It would then appear to the attacking forces that they have managed a rout. Even better, I would have my flanks withdraw in as much chaos as I could manage. My enemy would taste the victory, and keep pushing on toward the hills here at Lasting Drift …”

  “Where you’d have the rest of your forces waiting on the other side of the rivers,” Damin finished for him, seeing immediately where the Denikan was going with this. “That might actually work.”

  “You sound surprised.”

  “You want to see surprised? Come talk to me after we’ve won.”

  “Excuse me, your highness.”

  Damin turned to find one of Tejay’s house slaves standing near the entrance to the pavilion, clutching a small folded note. “Yes?”

  “Lady Lionsclaw bade me deliver this, your highness.”

  Damin accepted the note, opening it curiously. It was unlike Tejay to interrupt him when he was meeting with the High Prince and once again, he feared it might mean the worst for Adham, who still teetered on the brink of real danger with his slow-healing belly wound.

  “What is it?” Kraig asked, as Damin read the note.

  “Tell Lady Lionsclaw I’m on my way,” he ordered the slave. As soon as the young man was gone, he turned back to the Denikan prince. “We have to get back to the palace:”

  “Is there a problem with your brother?”

  “Rorin’s back,” Damin told him. “And according to Tejay’s note, he’s come back without Terin.”

  CHAPTER 48

  By the time Damin arrived back at the palace with Kraig, Tejay had heard most of Rorin’s story for herself. She was still trying to decide how she felt about the unexpected news that Terin might be dead.

  A part of her was sorry, a part of her relieved. But mostly she was worried, and not for her own fate. They couldn’t afford another Warlord’s death. Not now. With Cyrus Eaglespike here in Cabradell, the news Terin was missing and probably dead would get back to Alija faster than the speed of gossip and she would immediately move to have her son appointed guardian of Sunrise Province in the name of the Sorcerers’ Collective, and could do it quite legally because Terin’s heir, Valorian, was only five years old.

  Thank the gods, she thought as she paced, it was Rorin Mariner who brought back the news. And that he’d had the sense to share it with nobody else before he could inform Tejay and Damin of this disastrous development.

  “What happened?” Damin asked by way of greeting as soon as he’d closed the door of her husband’s study behind him. Kraig was with him, Tejay was relieved to see. Besides being rather pleasant to look at, she thought irreverently, the big Denikan was a master tactician, which had proved a totally unexpected bonus when she placed him in Damin’s care. Tejay never doubted that Damin had potential, but neither did she forget he hadn’t yet turned twenty-fi
ve. Even the greatest leaders needed to be pointed in the right direction occasionally.

  Rorin stood up wearily. “I’m sorry, Damin. I lost Terin in the Widowmaker.”

  “Lost him?” Damin said. “How do you lose a whole person?”

  “There was an avalanche,” the young sorcerer explained. “He was ahead of me … I barely made it out, and I was using magic. I can’t see how he would have survived.”

  “Isn’t it a bit late in the year for an avalanche?” the prince asked. “I wouldn’t have thought there was that much snow left.”

  “Strictly speaking, it was an explosion, I think. I’m not really sure. One minute we were hiding from Fardohnyan troops, the next thing Lady Elarnymire is warning me to get the hell out of there and it’s raining rocks.”

  “Who is Lady Elarnymire?” Tejay asked in confusion. Rorin hadn’t mentioned anything about having a woman with him in the Widowmaker Pass.

  “She’s a demon,” Rorin explained.

  “You didn’t mention anything about demons the first time you told your tale.”

  The young sorcerer shrugged. “I thought you’d think I was crazy.”

  “I’m not sure I don’t. What happened to your escort?”

  “We sent them on ahead to the Twin River Valley to do a head count of the troops already through the pass. Only Terin and I tried to slip past Winternest.”

  “So nobody else can verify your account of what happened, can they?”

  “No, my lady.”

  Tejay paced the rug for a moment before turning to Damin. “Is there a chance your friend here is lying?”

  “I trust Rory completely.”

  “Do you believe he speaks to demons?”

  Damin agreed without hesitation. “According to Wrayan, they’re as thick as flies in Sanctuary.”

  “Ah, yes,” Tejay said, unconvinced. “Wrayan Lightfinger. The fellow from the Thieves’ Guild.”

  Damin shrugged, not sure how to explain away either Wrayan or Rorin. “It’s complicated, Tejay.”

  “I can see that. And even if I accept you were just strolling along the Widowmaker, Rorin, when a demon popped up and warned you to get out of there, why didn’t you try to save my husband?”

  “He was too far ahead of me by then, my lady. Elarnymire promised she’d try to help him, but there wasn’t much time. Whoever was working the magic that closed the pass, he wasn’t fooling about.”

  “Hang on a minute,” Damin exclaimed, obviously shocked by Rorin’s casual remark about magic. “What do you mean, ‘whoever was working the magic’? Are you telling me someone destroyed the pass deliberately? Using magic?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Rorin said. “All I know is that I felt someone drawing on the source, someone much more powerful than me or Wrayan, and then the world went mad.”

  “Who could it have been?” Tejay asked, just as stunned by the implications of such an event. “The Harshini are gone …”

  “Actually, they’re only in hiding, my lady,” Rorin corrected. “But if I had to make a guess, the only other person I know of with that sort of power, who isn’t tucked away in Sanctuary, is the Halfbreed.”

  “He’s just a legend,” Tejay reminded them, shaking her head. She crossed her arms and walked to the window. She wondered if these men thought her callous or brave because she wasn’t grieving over her husband’s death.

  “Wrayan’s met the Halfbreed,” Damin informed her, which had Rorin nodding in agreement. “He says he’s real.”

  “Your thief?” She turned and studied the two young men closely. “I’ve heard insanity can be contagious but I didn’t think it happened quite so quickly.”

  “My lady, even in Denika we have heard of Brakandaran the Halfbreed.”

  “Which just proves my point about him being nothing more than a myth, your highness,” she replied.

  Rorin looked at Kraig oddly. “Your highness?”

  Tejay cursed under her breath. She’d forgotten Rorin wasn’t in on the secret about Kraig and his companions. “It’s a long story, Rorin. Get Damin to explain it later.” She turned and looked at the Denikan prince. “You don’t believe this nonsense about mythical magicians and demons, too, do you?”

  “If I believe in the gods, Lady Lionsclaw, it would follow that I must believe in everything that goes with them, including demons, the Harshini and the Halfbreed.”

  Tejay decided arguing theology with a Denikan was probably a very foolish thing to do. “All right then, explain this to me. Why, in the name of all the gods, would the Halfbreed want to destroy the Widowmaker Pass?”

  “He didn’t actually destroy it,” Rorin told them. “He sealed it. It’ll be months before it can be cleared, and even then it’ll take a mammoth effort on both the part of us and the Fardohnyans to reopen it.”

  “Perhaps he’s on our side?” Damin suggested.

  Tejay shook her head, highly suspicious, of the whole bizarre situation. “And I’m the demon child.”

  Damin smiled thinly. “Yes, well … that would account for a few things.”

  “Grow up, Damin.”

  “Sorry.”

  She turned to Rorin, still shaking her head in disbelief. But the Widowmaker wasn’t her concern right now. She had a province to fight for and nobody was going to take it from her if she had anything to say about it. “Do you know for certain that Terin is dead?”

  Rorin shrugged. “Not for certain, my lady. But if he was caught in the rockslide …”

  “Then we don’t need to tell anybody,” she announced.

  “Not tell anybody?” Damin gasped. “How can we not tell anybody the Warlord of Sunrise is missing, Tejay? We’re in his province, for the gods’ sake! This is his damned palace! We’re going to war with his troops making up a significant part of our forces, in case you’d forgotten. We can’t just pretend he’s not here. Who’s going to lead his men?”

  “In Denika, if a husband falls, it is the wife’s duty to take his place,” Kraig informed them.

  “Unfortunately, this isn’t Denika,” Damin snapped. “And I’ve got enough trouble with Lernen trying to be a general, Narvell trying to get himself killed by Stefan Warhaft every time he glances at Kendra, I’m hiding the damned heir to the Denikan throne disguised as a slave and trying very hard to keep a lid on all of this, so that Cyrus Eaglespike doesn’t even get a whisper there’s anything amiss. And now you want to pretend Terin’s still alive? Great plan, Tejay. Even if it had a glimmer of hope, you’d never be able to stop that Karien worm, Renulus, from exposing you the moment he got wind of his beloved lord’s highly suspicious fate.”

  “I can take care of Renulus,” Rorin volunteered. “It’d be no trouble. Really.”

  “Fine! Take care of him! It doesn’t alter the fact that putting a woman in charge of a province—or that province’s army—is out of the question.”

  Tejay could see he was unhappy with the situation, but that didn’t alleviate the pain she felt to hear Damin, of all people, scorn her gender so bluntly.

  “Don’t you dare stand there and tell me I don’t know how to lead or manage this province just because I’m a woman, Damin Wolfblade. I can do it better than Terin. I can probably do it better than you, and what hurts the most is that you know it, yet you’re still going to adhere to a tradition that’s likely to hand everything I have over to the Sorcerers’ Collective, rather than entertain any idea that might dent the legendary male pride of Hythria.”

  Damin seemed surprised that she had taken his rejection so personally. “I don’t think you’re incapable, Tejay. I think you’re one of the smartest people I know. And one of the best fighters, too. It’s just that putting a woman in charge of a province … it’s … well, it’s against the law.”

  “You don’t have any trouble changing other laws that don’t suit you,” she pointed out.

  “Trying to change the age of majority is different,” he objected. “That was—still is, actually—a necessity to protect the Convocat
ion of Warlords from majority control by the Sorcerers’ Collective.”

  “And how is this situation any different?”

  “She has a point, your highness,” Kraig remarked, throwing his weight behind Tejay’s argument, which might not actually help her cause, she lamented, if Damin thought they were ganging up on him.

  “Thanks,” Damin replied sourly, “but when I want to hear from the Master of Absolutely Everything, I’ll let you know.”

  “Damin!” Tejay scolded, shocked at the insult. “That was uncalled for.”

  He sighed heavily. “I know. I’m sorry, Kraig, I didn’t mean to malign you, or the House of the Rising Moon. But we can’t do this, Tejay. We have to find someone else.”

  “There is no one else,” she said. “Nobody you can trust, at any rate.”

  “There is no way the other Warlords will agree to any woman taking charge of a province, even temporarily, Tejay. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Then don’t tell them,” Rorin suggested.

  “We just had this discussion.”

  “No, we didn’t,” the sorcerer corrected. “Tejay suggested it and you dismissed her out of hand. That’s not actually a discussion, Damin.”

  “Then, by all means, let’s discuss it,” he said. “I’m all ears. Explain to me how you intend to make everyone believe the Warlord of Sunrise is still here and in command of his province, and not buried under a few hundred tons of rock in the Widowmaker Pass. And when you’ve finished with that miracle, we can talk about how the whole ‘leading his troops into battle’ illusion is going to work.”

  “The first part is easy,” Tejay said, more than a little annoyed with Damin’s intransigence. “We just get rid of Renulus and appoint someone else as Terin’s seneschal and use him to relay Terin’s orders. My husband often ruled by decree, rather than in person, particularly when he thought the whole world just wanted to mock his low birth. It will barely raise an eyebrow if he’s heard from but not seen.”