Two regular moons in a row. She’d definitely not been training hard enough.
It also meant that finding a quick lay was out of the question. She would be super fertile right now. She had enough problems without adding any of that.
Right, because me and ‘casual sex partner’ usually go so well together.
The mission, T. Think about the mission.
Halfcock was one of the oldest Blackguards, a tall withered whip of a man who was an artist with dual short spears, but not well liked. Apparently, for a long time, he’d loved to regale everyone—regardless of their disinterest—with how he’d gotten that Blackguard name. He also loved to give definitive proof that it was not for the reason most would guess first—especially to women. The Archers were no strangers to seeing their brother Blackguards naked, nor were they moral paragons above gossiping about those whose physiques they found particularly praiseworthy or risible. Prohibitions on having sex with each other mostly held in the Blackguard, but no one could stop young athletic warriors in constant close proximity from admiring one another.
What Halfcock did was different. He looked for any excuse to pull it out, either to intimidate or to impress.
Once, Samite had shared a night guard posting with him alone. She said he’d done it again, and that when she made her total lack of admiration clear, he’d prodded her with it.
So Samite broke his jaw.
Unfortunately, then he’d thrashed her, despite the jaw.
He’d always been a hell of a fighter, and still was, despite his age.
No one else had witnessed the fight, and their stories of what had happened seemed to bear no relation to each other’s, so he hadn’t been drummed out of the Blackguard. Instead they’d both been punished for fighting each other while on duty.
That had been before Commander Ironfist’s time, and since then, Halfcock hadn’t given him enough reason to kick him out.
But everyone had believed Samite. Quietly, both the men and the women of the Blackguard made sure Halfcock never shared duty alone with an Archer ever again. The men took turns as his partner, like it was a burden no one should have to bear for too long. He was never promoted from the lowest ranks, and the watch captains gave him all the worst postings.
After Ironfist became the commander, he’d told Halfcock he would be allowed to retire early but with full benefits.
He refused to quit. Early retirement, normal retirement, late retirement—he refused each in turn. He was just a tough, stubborn son of a bitch all the way through.
There was nothing wrong with his skills, though. Sometimes at training, Teia would think he was mentally undressing her, so unrelenting and awkward was his gaze. Then he’d correct the position of her heel and tell her to turn her hips a fraction this way for a kick, and she’d feel the difference in the power instantly.
It had almost made her reappraise her own inherited hatred of him. But then, when she did it right the next time, he’d say, ‘Better. But you’re small and weak. You’ll always be one of the worst Blackguards.’
With shooting muskets and drafting he was similarly skilled. He almost made a great trainer even as his own physical skills declined with age.
If he could have been trusted, he’d be exactly the type of person the Blackguard needed more of. Older warriors gave them continuity, which they desperately lacked. They’d seen it all, and done half of it, and knew how to fix what was wrong. People like that kept young Blackguards alive; they sharpened them and instilled tradition and pride in the whole corps.
Teia had fully absorbed the Archers’ institutional disgust for Half-cock, but she wasn’t certain that he deserved to die.
Him being an Order traitor would make sense of why he’d never retired, though. It had to be very difficult for the Order to get a man inside the Blackguard. Once they did, they wouldn’t want him to retire. No, they would demand he draft as little as possible so that he could live and be in place as long as possible.
It made sense. It all pointed to Halfcock being in the Order. But a death sentence required a little more than suspicion.
It doesn’t have to, T. You can kill anyone you want. You can kill anyone you want and get away with it. That’s what makes you scary. Call yourself a ghost or a fox or whatever you want. Your powers are the wet dream of anyone who hates.
Orholam’s fear-shrunken stonesack, that—now, that was a pep talk.
The door opened. It was him.
Chapter 45
“We’ve new reasons to fear our enemies,” Kip announced to his assembled thousands. His voice was carried with magic, but he still had to shout, and thus, keep it short. “But we’ve also new reasons to hope. I want you to know why we’re doing what we’re doing this morning.”
The units had been arrayed so that they could be disentangled as quickly as possible without tipping Kip’s hand that he was splitting his army. Word of any vast change would inevitably get out, and Kip wanted his men to have a chance to outrun the rumors of their coming.
Kip’s goal this morning was simple: he had to tell his people that he was unexpectedly abandoning them, without them feeling like he was abandoning them. This army had come together largely because of him, and now he was leaving them, and he needed to do so without destroying their morale.
“We’ve had good news and bad,” Kip said. “The bad news? The Wight Who Calls Himself King has collected bane from all over the world. Maybe all of them. The bane immobilize drafters. Whoever faces him will do so without their drafters. The good news? Neither the Wight King nor his best soldiers will be at Green Haven. You won’t be facing them.”
He could see relief wash over some faces. None of the drafters wanted to face a bane—something that could turn their own magic against them—that made their bowels turn to water. By the same token, none of the soldiers wanted to face wights and Blood Robe drafters without their own drafters.
“So you might ask, ‘If they aren’t going to be at Green Haven, where will they be?’ ” Kip said. “What could be more important to them?” Kip let that sink in. He glanced at Ambassador Red Leaf, who shared the stage with him, and was maintaining a pleasantly interested expression, betrayed only by a worried tightness around his eyes: why was Kip going on about this?
Kip continued, “They’re taking their best troops and all the bane to the Chromeria. The Chromeria only has a few fighters, and many drafters to protect themselves. And they don’t know what’s coming. You have fought against some of the Wight King’s best. Now imagine barely trained tower guards fighting wights and drafters, without any drafters of their own. Imagine what happens on the Jaspers when Koios wins over those he hates most.”
Many of the men and women here had seen slaughters, had heard of neighboring villages completely wiped out. There were those here who cared little for the empire. It hadn’t done much to defend them, after all. Others felt they’d been let down, but still had great affection for Gavin Guile, who’d ended the Blood Wars and brought two decades of peace. But no one in this passionate people could think of another Blood Robe massacre of innocents as some abstraction.
Cries went up, angry denials that they couldn’t let this happen. Curses.
Few had gotten as far as thinking of what it might mean for them.