by Levi Jacobs
She shook her head, sitting. “Took too long. By the time the Coldferth people realized Tulric was dead, the Titans had the fire under control, and sent more people over. We had to run.”
“So he is dead?”
Aelya snorted. “Hard to be much deader than that. I think he bounced five times before he stopped.”
Lumo stooped through the opening, chamber hardly large enough for the three of them. “Tai! Do not move your head, my friend.”
“Too late,” Tai said. “But it seems to be okay.”
“That is because the Maimer did not pull the knife from your neck.” He pulled out his pipe, began packing sage into it. “If he had…”
“It was bad enough watching you fall,” Aelya said. “Your blood got on half the prison camp, I think.”
Tai grimaced. “Did someone catch me?”
“No, it was weird.” Aelya shook her head. “You stopped yourself, just barely, and then when you landed you were out.”
Tai tried to nod, grimaced again. “How long have I been sleeping?”
Aelya grinned. “Long enough for me to burn two Coldferth ships and steal enough yura to make myself a very rich woman. Three days, maybe? Or four?”
Lumo pulled a coal from his tin, rolled it onto his sage. “Four days.” He drew on it, sage crackling, then returned the coal to its tin. “I kept you out to make sure your flesh was knitting.”
“Thank you,” Tai said, reaching up to feel his neck. Suddenly he felt weak, dizzy.
“Rest,” Lumo said, pushing him back with a finger. “You need food.” He turned and left the room.
When his head stopped spinning, Tai looked to Aelya. “Thought you were supposed to be the one laying here, and me telling you about the rebellion.”
She grinned and pulled up her shirt. “This old thing? Just a badass scar now.”
Tai huffed a laugh, still feeling weak. “Kids doing okay?”
“Better than ever. Curly’s new thing is to try and yuraload. I told him no way in hell, but he insisted on watching while I did it.”
Fear hit him like a second knife. “You yuraloaded?”
Aelya grinned, air suddenly crackling with brawler buzz. “Mecking right I did. This is awesome. Though, the actual loading was a scatfest.”
“Yeah. Well. I’m just glad you didn’t end up screaming nonsense. Don’t know what I’d do if I woke up and you weren’t here.”
She smiled and took his hand. Lumo came back with a bowl of soup and Karhail behind him. “Tai,” the Seinjial man said, a new bandage across his temples. “Not ready to give up the fight?”
Tai huffed. “Nope. Though, I can’t really sit up at the moment.”
“You just need food,” Lumo said, squatting next to him and helping him sit up.
“That was a stupid strike, Tai,” Karhail said. “You could easily have gotten killed, and some of our best fighters too.”
Tai pursed his lips. “Yeah. Well, I killed one person who needed to die. And we have to break the Achuri out of there sooner or later.”
Karhail nodded. “We’ll hit it soon. The Councilate doubled guard after your strike.”
“I’m not surprised. Those people are angry, Karhail. They’re the real rebellion.”
Karhail flexed his neck. “Good. We’re going to need them. We got word from Port Gendrys this morning. The army is coming up the river. A whole legion.”
“Gendrys?” Tai spluttered, spoon to his lips. “That’s four days away!”
The warrior nodded, grim. “We’ve got some work to do before then.”
33
The existence and purpose of the waystones is still a mystery. Though local myths of the Prophet himself erecting them are likely false, still one cannot deny a certain power when standing next to the upright stones.
--Markels, Travels Among the Yati
Tai wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Was it really this far?”
Aelya looked back, a few paces up the beaten track. “Seriously? This is easier than climbing the bluffs.”
“Hey,” Tai panted, breeze carrying the smell of smoke through the trees. “You try sleeping an eighthmoon under dreamleaf, see you how you feel.”
“I did that.” She waved at her wounded hip. “Remember?”
“Oh. Right.”
Aelya laughed. “Don’t go getting all guilty on me. It’s not your fault Tulric’s a shattercock.” She grinned. “Was. How’s your neck, anyway?”
“It’s better.” Tai felt the bandages there, thinner now. “Lumo says I should be fine in a couple of days.”
“Plus a shattermecking scar.”
They came over the ridge, and Tai goggled. “Prophet’s piece.”
The hideout had grown to the edge of the forest, rows of longhouses supplemented with lean-tos and fur tents, wooden palisade now surrounding the training grounds. People swarmed everywhere, and a dozen fires blazed under cookpots and forge fires and whole elk turning on spits. The air was a mix of shouts and cries and the chorused yells of a squad of brawlers drilling inside the open gates of the palisade. “It’s like another city.”
“Yeah,” Aelya said. “And this one is Councilate-free.”
Tai shook his head. It was three times what he remembered it. In five days? The breeze brought a wave of burning cedar, roasting elk, sweat and latrine reek, like the streets of Riverbottom at the height of Tarynsfair. It was overwhelming.
She eyed him. “You’re wondering about Fisher, right?”
“What? Yeah, I guess.” Tai marveled to realize he actually wasn’t, hadn’t thought of her much separately from the other kids since waking up yesterday. “About all of them.”
Soon as I’m gone you forget all about her, huh?
You are gone, he thought back. Hake is anyway. And whatever you are, you should be too. Still, he felt a pang of guilt.
“They’re good,” Aelya was saying. “Though Fishy still ain’t talking too much.”
He nodded. “As long as she’s okay. I’m just glad to have you and the rest of the gang.”
The voice said nothing, but Tai could feel its blame. He rolled his shoulders.
Aelya pulled him past a tent packed with sacks of grain, a roaring forgefire tended by two wounded boys, and a carpenter and assistant trying to fix a cartwheel before coming to the central pond. Ten or twelve people wafted over it, bows in hand.
“Up!” Beal yelled, wafting himself. The wafters bounced up, some far too high. “Back!” They followed—“North, South, down, land, up, nock, shoot!”
The wafters, holding something like a line, released arrows at a pockmarked tree, most arrows finding a home in the dirt.
“No, no!” Beal scowled, glancing at Tai. “Keep ‘em higher, focus on the target.”
Tai cleared his throat. “And think about pushing two directions at once. If you bounce too high when you push up, push down a little bit too. That helps me at least.”
The wafters nodded, a few of them trying it, while Beal’s scowl deepened. “Up!” he shouted, looking away. “Up you dogs!”
Behind them brawlers swung swords and axes in time to a rhythmic shout, Theron leading them, burned face scarred but healed quickly through brawler resonance. In a separate area Weiland slipped in and out of speed as a group of timeslips apparently sparred each other in fast forward. Tai turned to Aelya. “Has no one noticed the place?”
She smirked. “They’ve attacked, actually, a couple of times. First time we think it was one of the Houses, paying some mercenaries. Second time it was definitely the lawkeepers.”
“And?”
She grinned. “And we shattered ‘em. Karhail says we probably have more recruits than all the mercenaries and soldiers in Ayugen put together. And with yuraloading we’ve got twice the power. Some of the mercs are even coming over to our side.”
Tai shook his head, looking around. “All this in an eighthmoon?”
“People can see we’re winning, so they’re joining.”
“Are we?�
��
Aelya shrugged. “If you call burning half of Newgen, destroying House Coldferth, and sinking most of the ships at the docks winning.”
“We destroyed Coldferth?”
“We burned their manse, right?” Aelya started ticking points off on her fingers. “Before I got better, you burned their dockhouse too. We sunk the ships they had in port. And two days ago we stormed the mine entrance, burnt it to the ground, and opened up the gates. Ghosts have been coming out ever since, real ghosts, like that guy,” she pointed at a pale man holding a long-bladed spear.
Tai twisted his back. “So what’s next?”
“That’s actually why Karhail sent me. There’s a strategy meeting today, and he wants you there. He should be in the fort—I’ve got to get the other guys together.”
He found Karhail under a large burlap canopy inside the high wood walls. The big Seinjial was bent over a table with Theron and Lumo, talking over a map of Ayugen. He straightened on seeing Tai. “Tai,” he said, readjusting his sword belt, “welcome back.”
His tone wasn’t exactly warm. “Thanks. You’ve been busy.”
“It’s only a matter of time now, Tai. The people are coming to us.” His eyes shone.
“With a little help from yours truly,” Ilrick put in.
“Will it be enough?”
“To stop a whole legion?” Karhail flexed his neck. “I don’t think so. Not yet. We need more training—you’ve seen the recruits.”
Tai nodded. A scream sounded somewhere—yuraloads. He had intentionally avoided looking at the graves, to count how many were new. “Are we still forcing recruits to yuraload?”
“We have to,” Karhail grunted. Theron and Eyna looked displeased at this, but Aelya arrived with Weiland and Beal, cutting off any discussion. “Aelya. Watch the perimeter, make sure no one comes within earshot.”
Tai watched her go. “I’ve known her for years, Karhail. She’s trustworthy.”
The Seinjial flexed his neck. “Too many new faces around here to let them in on something like this.”
“What he means,” Ilrick drawled, “is someone tried to off him yesterday.”
“What?”
“I killed him.” Karhail turned. “Now, the way I see it, we have two options. One, we keep going with the war we’ve been fighting, hitting the Houses until they’ve got nothing left to protect in Ayugen. Coldferth is already basically done, Theron liberated Alsthen’s mine complex last night—” Theron grunted at this, “and the other Houses wouldn’t take much, with their ships gone and dockhouses burned.”
“The army will want us anyway,” Beal said, popping his fingers. “Doesn’t matter how weakened the houses are, if there are any of them left they’ll be clamoring for revenge.”
“And we can’t stand against the army,” Lumo rumbled, looking at the large rock placed on the map to represent the Councilate force, partway up the Genga.
“That’s not certain,” Theron said. “We—“
“It’s certain,” Karhail interrupted. “It would be three, maybe four hundred decently trained troops against two thousand disciplined soldiers, maybe even a squad of Titans.”
“But the power we have!” Theron shook his head. “Titans aside, the rest will be relying on yura. Our soldiers have deeper resonances, and they can use their abilities all day, if they keep their uai up!”
“The numbers would win, Theron. Granferth’s Law.”
“So we retreat,” Lumo rumbled. “We go back to the hills, may be we even go to the ice sheet, or toward the mountains. We train our people, come back when we are ready to face them.”
“And the army has a stranglehold on the city and the mines.” Karhail shook his head. “We’d lose all we’ve gained.”
“And have no way to feed our people meanwhile,” Beal put in.
“Option number two,” Karhail said. “We sack Newgen.”
“What?” several people cried at once. “That’s insane!”
“Too risky,” Lumo rumbled.
“Think about it,” Karhail overrode them. “It’s the most defensible place in the city, and it’s well-stocked with goods. A group our size could hold it for weeks, months, while we train up to defeating the army.”
“It’s the most defensible place,” Tai agreed,” but they hold it, not us. There’s no way.”
“Most defensible place,” Karhail grinned, “but not well-defended. You’ve been out a while, Tai—the Councilate’s low on fighters. We’ve killed plenty, the Houses are hiring mercs away from the government, and your strike on the prison camp has them focusing fighters there. Lawkeepers are few, and probably pulling double watches as it is. We’re well-rested and run without yura. So we overwhelm them, run the whitecoats out, and take Newgen for our own.”
“But then we’re stuck in a siege,” Weiland said. “What do we do when the Councilate sends another legion? A platoon of Titans? We can’t handle that many.”
“That’s why we meet them at the docks and crush them!” Theron slammed a fist on the table. “Send a message to Worldsmouth that they’re not wanted, that we’ll push back anything they send, and they leave us alone.”
Karhail scowled. “You crush a battalion with seven hundred fighters? Schustel’s law, Theron. It doesn’t add up.”
“Schustel’s law?” Tai asked.
Theron grimaced. “Low ground takes high with twice the numbers. They taught us it in Teyensfelen.”
“Teyensfelen?” Tai asked, eyes widening. “You—“
“We’re Titans,” Theron said. “Were, at least.”
“We’re nothing,” Karhail growled. “Deserters. Washouts. We’re not Titans, and we won’t beat them without more trained soldiers, no matter what the ground.”
Prophet’s piece—Titans were the Councilate’s most elite soldiers. Training from youth in the high mountains above Seinjial. No wonder Karhail and Theron knew so much of military tactics. No wonder they held such a grudge against the capital.
There was a silence then, sage crackling in Lumo’s pipe, shouts of new recruits in the distance. No wonder the two thought only of killing as well. Taking Newgen seemed like a good idea, but they would want to kill everyone inside, secure the perimeter. Just like the Councilate would. But the people weren’t the problem—it was the ideas, to use Ella’s words. They needed a different idea. A better idea.
Something came to him. “Maybe there’s another way.”
Karhail’s eyes flicked over. “What?”
“We take Newgen, but we don’t hold a siege in it. We hold it hostage.”
“What do you mean?” Beal narrowed his eyes.
“I mean our strategy this whole time has been to make it too expensive for the Houses to continue. It’s how life works on the streets, too. You want someone out, you make it too risky for them to stay.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So we don’t run the Councilates out. We keep them in.”
“And we hold them hostage to the army,” Weiland breathed. “A whole city.”
Tai grinned. “Most of the major Houses are represented in Ayugen—that means every one of those families has at least a person or two on the ground. In Newgen, now, because no place else is safe. If we can take the walls fast enough—“
“—no one will have time to escape,” Karhail finished for him. “And when the army comes, we threaten their nobility with death, unless they leave again.”
“We trade ‘em,” Ilrick said. “They take their own, we take their city. Our city.”
“We probably keep a few,” Karhail said, a smile cracking his face. “As insurance.”
“And no one has to die,” Lumo said. “Or less people. Instead of a war, we have a small battle. It’s great.”
“Except we have to take Newgen,” Beal said.
“Right,” Karhail said. “But that’s possible, for the same reason we can hold it when we’re done. A compound that built up, you only need enough fighters to man the walls, and you can hold it against a hos
t twice the size. We get our wafters to lift men up there, overwhelm the gate and the walls, and the city’s ours.”
“Except they expect that now,” Weiland said. “Last few strikes, they’ve been airlifting men just like us, dropping brawlers and slips right in the middle of us.”
“So we need a diversion,” Tai said. “Something to draw them out of the city. Like a fire, or—“
“Or another dam,” Lumo rumbled. “We burned half their manses just because they had no water to fight it. They will be afraid of that again. Newgen’s walls are stone, but its houses are wood.”
“So we do another dam,” Karhail said, “or at least pretend to long enough to draw them out, then shut the gates behind them.”
“Maybe the lawkeepers,” Theron said, “but the army will stay in the city. They’re too disciplined to get drawn out.”
“And we don’t want to fight them inside the walls while we’re keeping other people from trying to get in,” Weiland said.
“So we create a second diversion,” Tai said. “Ilrick.”
The mosstongue started. “Me? What can I do?”
“You go in. You and another mosstongue get in early, get close to someone high up in the army’s chain. Then when the attack starts, you influence them to order the men out.”
Ilrick’s eyes darted away. “Yeah. I guess I could do that.”
“Perfect,” Karhail said. “And as soon as the army’s out, we airlift in fighters, close the gate and take the walls.”
“Gonna be dangerous for the dam group,” Weiland said. “You saw how their wafters worked at the Coldferth manse. They’ll ring us and shoot us down.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Tai said. “Weiland, arrows move slow enough when you’re in slip that you can catch them, yeah? I saw you do it in the Coldferth strike.”
He nodded.
“So what we need is a few slips to run archer control. Catch the arrows before they hit, or worst case get people out of the way.”
“No,” Karhail said. “We’re going to need them on the wall.”
“Then we’re sacrificing whoever does the diversion. There’s no way they’ll get away in time.”