“You’re here now. So you can stay in this shit, or you can climb out, too. And I’m sorry to say it, but I don’t have a rope to throw you or a key to offer. Climbing out will be tougher than it would be to tell yourself what a noble martyr you are and live half a life, cuddled up with your misery. But you’re making a choice, like it or not. This isn’t happening to you. You can choose to love him and have his babies—and, yeah, probably die in childbirth. Or you can choose to love him and not have babies, or adopt—plenty of war orphans already, and there’ll be more before we’re done. Or choose to move on. Or choose to sink into self-pity and self-loathing. I even respect a couple of those. But whatever you choose, I expect you to make yourself useful in the meantime. If he kills himself in there in the next few minutes, you get to clean up the blood and the shit, and you get to bury him. You brought this mess on us when you brought him back. If he can’t find the guts to use the knife or to live, then you get to be the hangman. None of these other men and women deserve to have that on them. Last, as we both hope, if he comes out, choosing to live, you get to clean him up. Maybe it’ll be a good chance to tell him what you are choosing for your life.
“Regardless,” Kip said, “report for duty first thing tomorrow morning; I want you to brief me on the lands you’ve scouted. Oh, and Captain Siofra? Never fucking leave your post without permission again.”
Chapter 10
“To work,” Kip said to the Mighty gathered around the table with him once more. “Strategy first. The banking meeting will come next. Big Leo, Ferk, you’re in on that one. Tactics we’ll save for when General Antonius and the trainers can be here. Ferkudi, I’ll need you to lead a logistics meeting later. Bring your ledgers. I know you don’t need ’em, but everyone else does. Ben-hadad, you’re in that one, too. I know you are each doing the work of two or three people, so let’s be quick. Now the big question: what do we have to do to win?”
“Define ‘win,’ ” Winsen said.
“Winsen, shut up,” Cruxer said.
“No, I’m serious. I’m not being a jackass.” He shrugged. “This time.”
Big Leo said, “We win once we kill the White King and all his leadership. That’s winning. Nothing short of that.”
Ben-hadad took off his flip-down spectacles. “What if, by that definition, we can’t win?”
“You think we can’t win?” Ferkudi asked.
“Worse,” Ben-hadad said. “Breaker doesn’t.”
They all looked at Kip. “I never said that,” he said.
But they all knew him.
“Focus on the problem,” Cruxer said. “We have to lift the siege on Green Haven or we’ll lose the satrapy. If we lose the capital, we lose Blood Forest. We do that and the other satrapies fall eventually. Maybe we can’t beat him alone, but we’re not alone. Winning is stopping him here, showing he can be defeated and trusting the rest of the empire to do their part, too, albeit later than we’d like.”
“No, we have to do more than that,” Ben-hadad said. “The White King has multiple paths to victory. Big Leo was right. We have to kill him. Even if he loses here, he can go on and win elsewhere, drawing strength from everything he’s already conquered, and then come back. With the land he holds and the revenues he commands, the longer this war goes on, the more certain our defeat.”
Cruxer said, “To lift the siege, we either have to leave right away or we’ll get besieged ourselves here. Even if the bandits can’t keep us under siege for more than a few weeks, that’ll be long enough for Green Haven to fall. But if we leave, we leave Dúnbheo defenseless.”
“I kind of like the idea of those old bastards on the Council of Divines being led away in chains. They deserve it for all their lies,” Winsen said.
“But everyone else here doesn’t,” Cruxer said.
“Dúnbheo was under siege,” Ben-hadad said. “Of course they lied to us. What were they gonna do? Tell us they’re not worth saving? Admit they didn’t have any food or supplies to share? They’re corrupt idiots, but not stupid idiots.”
Cruxer said, “Dúnbheo has ceremonial and symbolic power. History. The whole satrapy is taking heart as they get news of our victory over the next days and weeks. The Divines might have convinced themselves the city still has strategic value as well.”
“Aw, Cruxer, always trying to see the best in everyone except yourself,” Winsen said. “It’s cute.”
“Shut up, Win,” Big Leo rumbled.
“The thing is,” Kip said, feeling like he was groping around the foot of a really big idea, “Koios knew it didn’t. If he’d already seized Loch Lána and had a plan in motion to strangle the Great River, why try to take Dúnbheo?”
“The symbolic value,” Ben-hadad said. “This city is still Blood Forest’s pagan heart—and there’s still that huge throne in that audience chamber. A throne unpolished by a king’s waxing moons in four centuries. If the White King sits there, he becomes a king in truth—the first king since Lucidonius.”
“But if that was it,” Kip said, “why wouldn’t he have come here himself, to make sure the city fell?”
“A general has to delegate,” Ben-hadad said. “If you see a general fighting on the front lines, you’re seeing a damned foo—” He cut off as he realized something. He looked at Kip and cringed. “Uh, I mean, usually, you’re seeing a man choosing glory over victory.”
“Breaker fights on the front lines,” Ferkudi said.
“Thanks, guys,” Kip said.
“I did say ‘usually,’ ” Ben-hadad grumbled.
Kip had moved fast, trying to cut the White King’s lines of supply and reinforcement while getting supplies and reinforcements of his own—the word of Kip’s victory saving Dúnbheo should have given the Spectrum a good reason to bet fully on him. Instead, the White King had beaten him to the exact same strategy.
Kip had been doing everything right to make allies. At great cost, he’d done all he could to make friends, and here he was, alone and unsupported.
Again.
No, no, that wasn’t true. He and his people were alone and unsupported. He wasn’t poor Kip Delauria of Rekton anymore. He was Kip Guile of Blood Forest. And if the fights felt the same—the isolation, the self-doubt—maybe all those earlier fights had been readying him for this one.
“Maybe there are other forces Koios is worried about threatening his siege,” Ben-hadad said. “The pygmies, maybe? Or maybe the Chromeria’s finally decided to stop sitting on its thumbs and is attacking from Atash? Or maybe he’s so certain of victory, he’s in no rush.”
“He’s attacked aggressively everywhere else, from Garriston to Idoss to Ru to Ox Ford,” Kip said. “Now he changes?”
“If we leave Dúnbheo, he can paint us as abandoning them to die. If we don’t leave, he can paint us as cowards abandoning Green Haven to die. That’s worth a few weeks for him, isn’t it?” Ben-hadad said.
Big Leo said, “Does it give us enough time to call back the Night Mares?”