“This is not selfishness,” Sianh said. “The Royalists still have superior numbers of trained soldiers, not to mention they are still better supplied. Time—building our numbers and training, and draining the Royalists of supplies—will even our odds. The city has time, and we will use that time to weaken the Royalists. Every small fortification we take here, every supply train we dismantle, moves us closer.”
“We don’t have that much time,” Theodor cautioned. “Once they commit to a siege, what do we have—weeks, months?” Theodor shook his head.
Sianh nodded, acknowledging the point. “Then we move more quickly here. I had wanted more time to build our troop strength and train more thoroughly, but if we lack that time, we are ready.”
“Ready?” I said. Foolishly, I hadn’t considered military strategy beyond massing troops in Hazelwhite—but of course they had to be sent to do something, to take territory and hold it against the Royalists.
“Moving toward the Rock River,” Sianh said. “If we can defeat the Royalists at Rock’s Ford, or at least sever their lines, we have a chance at moving on the city. We do not have that chance if they can simply resupply from Rock’s Ford.”
“Bad news for Niko, he’s going to have to hold out,” Kristos said. “But I agree. Taking the south step by step and holding Rock’s Ford, we may actually be able to pull it off.”
“And you’ll send a message back?” Fig said.
“Of course. One of our men will go,” Theodor said.
“He’ll expect me,” Fig argued, his chin jutting out in a portrait of childish defiance.
Theodor glanced at me, and I understood his meaning immediately. Niko may have sent Fig with good reason—if the city fell, the Royalists might not care who was young, who was barely more than a boy, if they wore the red and gray. Even if he didn’t, something maternal flared in me, wanting to protect him even if I didn’t have the power to protect anyone else.
“It will be faster if we send someone on one of the horses,” I suggested. “And, Fig, if you can’t ride, that many miles at once is not a good way to learn.”
He sucked in his lips, unable to debate that very valid point.
“Besides, we could use you here. Perhaps even more than Commander Otni,” I said, forcing my mouth and my mind around the still strange combination of Niko’s name and the title. “If we’re beginning a campaign, we’ll need a seasoned messenger. A sort of an aide-de-camp—that’s the term, isn’t it, Sianh?”
“Yes, that is the term,” he replied curtly, shooting invisible darts at me. “You come with me, vimzalet.”
“Vimzalet?” I asked, wondering what new curse word this might be.
“Little mosquito,” Sianh answered with raised eyebrow. “I have a feeling he shall be just as persistent and just as annoying.”
15
“IF YOU WANT A FLAG,” I SAID AS THEODOR AND I OBSERVED A marching drill on the parade ground, “I am going to need silk.”
“Wool won’t cut it?” Theodor teased. “Linen? That we have in bolts.”
“Linen could work, if we could get it to hold color for more than a month out in the elements. Or if you like brown or blue, those seem to hold up well enough.”
“Let’s avoid blue,” Theodor said. “Damned Royalists have ruined blue for me for quite some time. We’ve established red and gray rather nicely, though. Gray was always a favorite of mine, and red is growing on me.”
“You want a red device on it, it must be silk. Linen will go pink or brown within a few weeks.” I laughed. “Even scarlet doesn’t hold on linen.”
“Well, then, we shall have to make a foray into Hazelwhite to see if there is anything to be had,” Theodor said. “The artillery pieces have started arriving, and Sianh will be starting to establish the artillery units. Necessary, before we can hope to take Rock’s Ford. I’m sure he wouldn’t begrudge me an afternoon’s walk into town.”
Sianh supervised the drill on the parade ground. He was fluid, almost, in his movements through the camp, gliding between mentoring the green officers and berating a unit whose muskets had begun to show rust with seamless transitions.
“You look well,” I said to him.
“If you mean overworked, then yes.”
“You seem to like overwork, then.”
Sianh cocked his head with a conspiratorial smile. “So you have noticed. You, as well. The riding coat suits you.”
“Thank you,” I replied. With some shoddy work on the buttonholes and a few long days with little else to do, I made myself a gray-and-red riding habit to match the uniforms of the Reformist army, down to the unbleached linen waistcoat. I felt a bit too conspicuous, at first, as though I was trying to force myself into a place here.
“We’re going into Hazelwhite to see if the draper or the haberdasher still have any silk on the shelves,” Theodor said.
“Very well,” said Sianh. “Do be back before evening. I need a bit of help working out the artillery officers.” He opened a thick leather-bound notebook full of pen scratches. “And this—another twenty new recruits joined us last night out of the southern coast. Trouble with those fellows is that their accents are so thick the others are unable to understand them half of the time.”
“We’ll make sure to assign a corporal with some facility in both the northern and southern dialects,” Theodor said. “I’ll finagle that when we’re back.”
The distance from the cliffside encampment to Hazelwhite itself was less than a mile, on a hard-packed red dirt road. An early morning shower had settled the dust, and the noon sun was gently warm as we followed the old ruts of oxcarts and hay wagons. The town settled itself onto the plain below a low pair of hills, both covered in broad fields of wheat and rye.
“They still have their market every week,” Theodor said, “but the shops have half shuttered. The draper is still open, but I’ve no guarantee on his wares.”
I nodded. The orderly town center, branching out like spokes from a circular green where a small flock of sheep balefully tore at the grass, was quiet. Several tidy little storefronts had apologetic signs hung in their windows—the proprietors had fled or closed shop due to lack of business. The milliner and the haberdasher were both closed.
“I’m sure no one would fault the local army general for a little breaking and entering, but we’ll try the draper first,” Theodor said.
“I doubt either of those stocked fabric in enough quantity, anyway,” I replied. I looked at the little shops with a sense of loss. Shops like mine, proprietors like I had been, their livelihoods overturned by war. “What will they do, the shopkeepers?”
“Not every townsperson or farmer is in support of our aims, Sophie,” he reminded me gently. “There was a bit of a row here, when we first arrived and began massing. The Pommerlys had been run out by the local Red Cap contingent already, but it wasn’t tenable any longer for anyone with Royalist sympathies, not after we showed up.”
“So they were run out of town,” I said. That was an inevitability of a civil war, but seeing how it played out in a picturesque town that still had sheep grazing on the green sobered me.