Blood of Empire

Chapter 51

Vlora was more than a little surprised to get a visit from Delia Snowbound in the middle of the afternoon. It was the third day since they had arrived at the Hadshaw River and crushed the Dynize there, and Vlora was hiding from the worst of the afternoon heat in her tent by the river. Tamas’s journal lay open beside her, forgotten in a flurry of reports and her own strategic planning. Norrine announced Delia, and Vlora, startled by the suddenness of it, forgot to pretend that she wasn’t around.

Delia swept the tent flap aside and stepped in, turning her head quickly to take in Vlora’s residence as if inspecting the lair of some great beast. She gave Vlora a brisk nod and clasped her hands behind her back, standing formally just inside the flap.

Vlora blinked at her, pulling her own thoughts out of her plans and then clearing away several of her maps and notes from her spare chair. “Lady Snowbound. This is unexpected. Please have a seat.”

Delia glanced at the chair as if it were a scorpion. She gave Vlora a grimace that was probably supposed to be a smile, then crossed the tent in a few overly brisk steps and sank into the offered seat. She put her hands on her knees, raised her chin, and looked around at everything except at Vlora herself.

Vlora took a deep breath. “What can I do for you?”

“Lady Flint. I wanted to let you know how the negotiations are going.”

“Oh?” Vlora had last gotten an update from Sabastenien yesterday morning. Unless she was mistaken, Delia had more meetings this morning and she expected to hear Sabastenien’s opinion of them later tonight. She didn’t bother to cut Delia off, though. It would be interesting to hear her version of events.

“You’ve put me in quite the pickle.”

Vlora pursed her lips and braced herself for a lecture.

Delia continued. “We have three armies bearing down on us, and they have finally received orders from Landfall on how to deal with us. While they do have room to negotiate, it seems the three generals are in agreement that they don’t actually need to negotiate. They feel their armies are more than enough to deal with our one. They’d rather try their luck at a battle than give up anything.”

“That does sound like the Dynize I’ve gotten used to dealing with.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Delia took a deep breath, looking around nervously again before finally seeming to relax into her seat with a frustrated sigh. “We need to talk strategy. Whatever hate exists between us needs to be set aside so we can discuss our situation frankly.”

“I’m not the one with all the hate.” The words slipped out before Vlora could rethink them.

“Because it wasn’t your family who was slaughtered,” Delia snapped. She visibly wrestled control of herself and her tone returned to normal. “Yes, I hate you. I hate your family. I hate everyone who helped Tamas in his bloody coup. But I’m not a fool. We are in a dire situation and I need your help resolving it.”

Vlora didn’t let herself rise to the bait. Tamas is dead, she wanted to say. Besides, your parents were a part of the old system that had to die. Instead, she plastered a neutral expression on her face. “Go on.”

“As I said, the Dynize do not believe they need to negotiate. I have given them generous terms and reminded them that furthering this conflict increases the chances of the Nine getting involved. They don’t seem to be all that worried about the latter – it would take the better part of a year for anyone to raise an army and then sail it here, after all, and the Dynize seem to think all of this will be wrapped up by then.”

“What do you think?” Vlora asked.

“I think they’re mad. Whatever crimes were committed by the general staff and Magus Borbador to get us involved… well, those will be dealt with later. And whatever I think about the Adran Army’s role in the coup, you are still the best in the world. They should be treading lightly around us. Instead they are preparing to attack.”

Vlora stiffened. Her last report put all three of the Dynize armies holding about five miles away from the river, arrayed in a semicircle. She had a few companies down to their south to keep the Dynize from fording the river for a flanking action, but otherwise there’d been no conflict. “You’re sure?”

“I’m dealing with generals right now instead of politicians, and they are not good at concealing their intentions. If they wanted a deal, they’d be negotiating more aggressively. But they aren’t.”

“What, exactly, are they asking for?”

Delia pursed her lips. “They want your head, for starters.”

“I see.” Vlora sighed. This again. Sedial’s petty idiocy.

“As much as I’d enjoy handing it over, I have neither the authority to do such a thing nor, in the end, would I. You are an Adran citizen.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job.” Delia tapped one finger against her knee. “They’re also asking for complete disarmament. They want us to hand over everything more dangerous than a bread knife, march straight back to our fleet, and depart for Adro without looking back. Personally, I think we’re in a better position than that. The fleet still commands the waters on this side of Fatrasta and despite our numerical inferiority, we are the Adran Army.”

It amused Vlora to hear Delia express so much confidence in her soldiers, and Vlora found a tiny part of her warming to the woman. She quashed that warmth. Always be on the lookout for a trap from a person like this. “Your assessment goes along the same lines as mine,” Vlora said slowly.

“I thought as much. But even so, I need to ask you directly: If we are beset upon by these three armies, do we have any hope of winning?”

Direct and to the point. Vlora leaned back in her chair, puffing out her cheeks and letting out a long, thoughtful breath. She looked around at her mess of a tent. Notes and maps everywhere, a dozen different plans of battle sketched out as well as a dozen contingencies for each of them. So much preparation time was a luxury she hadn’t had for months, but the Dynize were treating her carefully now and taking the time to make their own plans. She grimaced.

“This is not a fight I want,” Vlora said.

“You can’t win?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said that I don’t want to fight it,” Vlora said. “We can win. We’ve beaten worse odds before.”

“Against the Kez, who didn’t have blood sorcerers.”

“Blood sorcerers die just as easily as Privileged, and I still have my powder mages,” Vlora said. “The bone-eyes don’t concern me. The numbers do, but we have our backs to the river and several hundred keelboats that allow us to ferry men quickly. We control the only bridge for tens of miles. Our guns are now on the hillside behind us, putting them out of enemy reach but in position to blast their own artillery to pit should they attempt to bring it forward. And at the end of the day, both our infantry and our cavalry are better than theirs.”

Delia sat in silence, absorbing the information. After a few moments, she said, “You didn’t mention Nila and Bo.”

“They’ll have their hands full of the enemy Privileged for the beginning of the battle. But once my powder mages have neutralized them…”

“Nila’s fire.”

“Nila’s fire,” Vlora confirmed. “The Dynize still haven’t figured out just how big of a gap there is between their combat abilities and our own. Powder mages are too powerful a trump card, and they don’t want to accept that.” She paused, considering General Etepali. The old woman had shown more freethinking and wiliness than her allies, but she had yet to live up to the reputation she’d claimed upon their first meeting. Either she had exaggerated her own abilities or she still had tricks up her sleeve. Vlora wasn’t looking forward to finding out.

“But you said you don’t want to fight,” Delia said.

“I did. Because whatever happens, I will lose a great many soldiers. I care about my soldiers.”

“You think the losses will be worth the victory?”

Vlora clenched her teeth. This conversation had revealed something, and she suddenly put her finger on it. Delia was still negotiating as if this were a regular war. She didn’t understand the severity of what they were fighting for. “Any losses are worth it, Lady Snowbound. If the Dynize are able to create a new god, they won’t just win this war. They will reign supreme over the entire hemisphere. They will cause upheaval that reaches the Nine and beyond.”

Delia gazed back at Vlora, and it was in this gaze that Vlora began to suspect that Delia wasn’t ignorant of this – she simply didn’t believe it. Vlora opened her mouth to continue, but shut it again. Delia hadn’t met Kresimir. She hadn’t experienced the beginning of this current war. She had no context to put this in except for simple politics. Vlora found herself suddenly terrified.

She didn’t want a dogmatic believer. Those tended to be dangerous in their own right. But she did want someone who would take her at her word, and Delia’s silence told her that she thought Vlora was a fool. A healthy dose of helplessness joined her terror. She resisted the urge to argue. She didn’t have the time or the energy. All she could do was attempt to steer Delia using her own methods.

“Are you going to attack them?” Delia asked suddenly.

Vlora hesitated. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Delia, but Vlora didn’t want her to know all of her plans. “I’m going to play this defensively. If I do, we can win. I agree with you that the Dynize terms are unacceptable.”

“Good.” The word was clipped, final. Delia stood up and gave Vlora that same grimace-like smile. “That is what I needed to know. I will suspend negotiations until after the battle. If we can defeat them when outnumbered three against one, I suspect they will be on the verge of giving us anything we want.”

Vlora waited until Delia was gone to let out a scoff of disbelief. This was pure, sharklike politics. Nothing more, nothing less. A tiny part of Vlora could respect that. Envy it, even. But there wasn’t room here for playing politics. If she won this coming fight, she’d give Delia the ammunition to end the war on whatever terms she wanted. And if she didn’t win… well, they’d all be dead anyway.

Vlora waited about ten minutes before she left her tent and headed across the river to the pedestal. She found Prime, Nila, and Bo with their heads close together, huddled on the far side of the keelboat, examining a bit of writing. “Anything?” she asked.

Bo waved her off without looking up. “We’re working on it,” he said with a strong note of irritation. “We’ll let you know as soon as we find out.”

Vlora left the keelboat and paced on shore, feeling a sudden desperate need to do something. Her first instinct was to plan an attack – to launch something bold against one of the three armies hemming them in, in an effort to even the playing field. She resisted that urge – it was a trick she dare not attempt again with Etepali present – and instead headed back to her tent, to where her plans and contingencies were. She needed to prepare for anything.

She paused just outside her tent, one of those contingencies floating at the corner of her mind. “Davd,” she asked her shadowing mage, “any news on those keelboats?”

“We’ve got around three hundred of them,” Davd said.

The keelboats were packed into the river behind them, hidden by a sorcerous fog, courtesy of Bo. The enemy knew she had them, of course, but she didn’t want the enemy to know how many were there. They factored into several different contingencies and might prove to be the crux of a coming battle. “Still two hundred short,” she muttered. “Tell me if we find any more,” she said, heading into her tent.

That talk with Delia should have calmed her nerves. Instead she found herself trembling with excitement and trepidation.