The Blinding Knife

Chapter 95

Gavin walked into Orea’s room to find the generals and their aides gathered around a table on which a number of maps of different scales were laid out. “So you’ve got spies with the Color Prince’s army,” Gavin said.

“More than a dozen,” a bearded, balding Parian general said. Caul Azmith was the Parian satrapah’s younger brother. He was affable, polite, and not terribly bright.

“Projection or actual data?” Gavin asked. He wanted to know if he was staring at the positions the prince’s army had been in eight or ten days ago, or if these were estimates of the current positions.

“Projection, on excellent data,” the Blood Forest general said. He was also bald, though he was a young man, freckled and foolish. A political weasel who had no business leading a hunting expedition, much less an army.

“How old is this?” Gavin asked.

General Azmith said, “Ten days. Takes my handler two days to get to the smuggler who’s carrying the letters. The smuggler had good wind. Earned himself a bonus for getting it here in seven days. It arrived last night.”

“You using that smuggler for the return trip?”

General Azmith shook his head.

Which to Gavin meant that the smuggler had probably lied about how fast he’d made the trip in order to get his bonus. Most of the smugglers on the Atashian coast still used galleys so they couldn’t become becalmed, with the low displacement that allowed the long wide ships to traverse bays that the pirate hunters couldn’t. This time of year, the winds would rarely make it possible for a galley to come from Atash in seven days. Probably more like nine. Maybe ten.

If Gavin had been here, things could have been different. If Gavin were promachos, things still could be. But that was out of reach for now. His father had done that, and his father wasn’t going to give it back for nothing. Gavin’s own personal defiance, his own happiness in marrying Karris, was going to cost men their lives.

But that wasn’t his fault. Gavin wasn’t going to accept the blame for that. He would have, not so long ago. No, these generals had no business being generals, and they’d all been put into position by people who ought to have known better. There were plenty of veterans from the last war who could have been put in charge. Gavin had done the best he could by the people of Garriston. He couldn’t make the right decisions for everyone else.

“How fast is your turnaround?” he asked.

The idiot Blood Forester spoke. “We’re not actually going to start strategizing until your luxlord father arrives. He should be here any minute, Lord Prism.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Gavin said.

“Lord Prism?”

“When you arrive in Ru, I think you’ll find that the army is here.” Gavin pointed to a little town called Voril, two days from Ru. “You’ll find that the corregidor has maybe half the working guns he’s told you, and less than half the powder, because he’s always been more worried about his ego than about defense. So rather than look like a fool to you who are trying to save him, he’ll act like one and lie to you, which you won’t find out until it’s too late. And I’ve marched through this country. If you’re not being harassed and being made to pay for letting your wagons get spread out, this section is easy. I covered it in three weeks, but my brother had saboteurs and raiders who made us paranoid at every step. If they’ve been allowed to just march through here, they’ll be on top of Ru before you know it.

“Your spies have been cataloguing the wrong things. What’s important isn’t the exact number of horsemen or who’s a freed slave versus a volunteer. Those are good to know, but what you needed to know was how many anvils do they have, how many skilled blacksmiths, how much scrap iron? Have veterans from the False Prism’s War been put in positions of leadership, or have those slots gone to the Color Prince’s favorites who don’t know anything? How long are their supply lines, and how much food are they delivering every time? It’s too late for a lot of those questions to be answered now. Too late for you to have raiders intercept the supply wagons, or to destroy the anvils or murder the blacksmiths and sabotage the wagons’ wheels before they hit the Little Sisters’ Pass. You could have bought yourself weeks, and only put a dozen men in danger to do it. The Color Prince hasn’t led an army before either, and it’s not your fault that none of you have-but it is your fault that you haven’t asked the men who marched with me or my brother to advise you. You’re going to ask those men to die, and not for good reason. The fact is, no matter what you do, you won’t save Ru. It’s already over. If you were wise, you’d send messages to tell them to evacuate the city and regroup at the neck of Ruic Head, and to take out of the city whatever supplies the Color Prince’s army needs most. But you won’t do that, because you’re looking to win a battle instead of win a war. I’ve got my own fights, gentlemen. Fights that I can still win, and that will help you in ways you don’t know. So good day, and I’ll see you on the field.”