The Humbled (The Lost Words: Volume 4) (40 page)

Use them now, then discard them later?
he wondered. That might be a sensible idea. But that was how corruption started. Soon enough, he would be fielding an army of sellswords, and the purity of the conquest would be tarnished by the grayness of their morality. He must not let the two sides mingle. He must not let humanity takes its vile, unpredictable course. He owned the souls of the Naum people, but not their collective human spirit, not their curiosity and their desperate need for empathy. The enemy must remain a blurred, nameless identity.

Which meant his troops would lack good cavalry for much longer, and the winter rain and snow would only make everything more difficult. But it did not matter. Time was irrelevant. Even if this war took another decade, or another century, he would prevail. He would destroy the realms. He would make sure the surviving god died, and that he became one. That was the only thing that really mattered.

Only, with the bloodstaff in the enemy’s hands, everything had changed. Everything.

Making two weapons had been a great mistake, he realized. He should have forged only a single, unique item for himself.
But he had grown desperate toward the end of the war, so he had yielded to foolishness and unleashed another bloodstaff into the world. Now, it was back, to be used against him. That served him right.

Calemore had once read a book, titled
Immortality Is Death
, written by some ancient wizard before the great war. The man had claimed the inflexibility of eternal life made those blessed by it rigid and slow and vulnerable, trapped by their own greatness, their own disregard for time and its quirks, aloof and too self-centered to adapt to changes. Once, long ago, he had considered the wizard’s work to be a beautiful binding of bollocks, stupidity in prosaic form. Now, he fully understood the implications behind the book’s conceited message.

A bucktoothed woman had finally helped him grasp the message.

And her son, Sheldon. The boy showed extraordinary promise.

Through them, he could realize what his own perfection would not let him.

He still did not know what he would do once the war ended, and victory was the only thing he could imagine, because defeat was unthinkable. He still wondered about Nigella, about her affection, her ability to understand him, to respect him, to cherish him. Did he want blind obedience from her? No, he had that in endless amounts, and it left him empty. Terror did not excite him anymore. Total submission was boring. But if not terror, what then? What could she offer that would make him feel grand and whole once again?

This pursuit was becoming more and more of a hardship, emotional, mental. The fear over learning his enemy had the second bloodstaff was the best thing that had happened to him
in a long time. Made him feel alive again. But that would end one day, and what then? He would become a god. What then?

What then, indeed?

Oh, how he envied the silly humans and their insignificant existence.

The short, fierce struggle with a known defeat in the end. And still they fought, bitterly, even with dignity, with laughter and joy, with a sense of completeness that mystified him. If he had ever wondered what Damian had tried to achieve with mankind, it must have been this.

So what would he do with Nigella? What could she offer him after he became a god and made complete his ancient vow? What would her humble, average existence offer him that could scale against the greatness of creation?

Everything, it seemed.

But that would mean what? Make her his equal? She could not be his equal. Make her into a slave? A servant? Was there anything that could make his sense of futility go away? He still did not know. But the answer was there, in that tiny cabin near Marlheim.

I have figured out how to become a god, but I can’t figure out one woman
, he thought. Stupid. Just like Damian. The knowledge was there, a jester cackling, only he was powerless to stop it.

First, I will make sure the bloodstaff is safe
, he swore.
Then I will try to piece my future into a meaningful mosaic. But easy tasks first
.

He left the elders and their boring reports behind and struck south.

CHAPTER 28

T
he throne room burst with activity. Round the table, Archduke Bogomir and Dukes Oleg and Rolan sat and shared the view of the map showing Athesia and the outline of the neighboring realms. The north of the land, facing toward Natasha’s father, was covered in a large piece of white cloth. No one really knew the disposition and the exact numbers of this Naum force, but everyone agreed that it was huge. Huge beyond reckoning.

A letter from one Commander Mali of the Third Independent Battalion of Eracia urged him to accept the dire facts.

Earlier that morning, a weary rider had reached Roalas bearing a message for whoever held the city. An impudent challenge, by all means, and maybe even an insult to his authority, but not since he had met with Gavril and seen his tens of thousands of followers marching to fight this incredible enemy. Now, he treated any sort of rumor, bad news, and oddities with prudence. The fact someone had sent a letter with no clear recipient in mind did not mean they had worded it as a slight; it probably meant the sender was deeply out of touch with current affairs, or the letter had been sent from a great distance, and the information could be quite significant. And so it was. The isolated Eracian contingent shadowing the enemy army
was the best source of knowledge he had on the Naum invaders since first hearing about it. He valued the message dearly and had quickly summoned his lords for a discussion. Those still in Roalas, that was.

They want me to make peace
, he thought.
Well, I am
.

Amalia had accepted his generous offer and bent her knee. Officially, Athesia was now Parusite territory, subject to his law. Adam’s empire was no more. Twenty years after being forged in blood, it had ended in a quiet, somber defeat.

He had probably been too generous, he thought. He allowed the blasphemous name to remain, and he would grant it the same treatment as his other duchies. Amalia would be his vassal, and she would make sure that people prayed and paid money to the crown. He would do his best to forget all the bad things in the past two years. Vlad’s death was no longer meaningless, was it?

Sergei stared at the map.

Well, Athesia was his, for now. Soon, it might not be.

Sasha’s own letter strengthened the view held by the Eracian officer, gave color and flesh to Gavril’s omens. The enemy was there, a giant sprawl of people, aligned halfway across the Barrin estate in Eracia all the way to Pain Mave. They didn’t want to negotiate. They did not care about making contact with the people of the realms. Their only intent was destruction. Unstoppable, even with all of the might of Parus arrayed against it.

Then why had the enemy halted its advance?

Waiting for the nations of the realms to gather? So it could crush them more easily? Baiting? Teasing? Gloating? Something else, much more sinister?

Normally, his lords would be quick to make suggestions. They all had decent military experience, and they loved nothing
better than to move colored pieces of wood and tin on a stretch of canvas, making monumental decisions of life and death with crude miniatures. Today, though, they just stared, bored their eyes into the layout of the terrain, wondering.

“Maybe we should try to flank the enemy?” Duke Rolan said at last. He was the father of Vlad’s widow, and he had not yet reconciled the loss of his son-in-law. His arrival was a surprise, because the Parusite law exempted him from sending troops. Still, he had marched north with half his household, under the impression he would be given a chance to avenge his family and honor.

He would be denied that opportunity, but at least he had a new foe to contend with.

“That will not be advisable,” Sergei remarked. “If we march west, we cross into Eracia, and they will surely not like our troops trampling through what little land they still have left, in between this Naum invasion and the Kataji menace. Moreover, I did promise not to interfere, so any transgression would be a breach of my word as well as a clear declaration of war. If we march east, we must cross half of Caytor, and we do not know what to expect there. The High Council will not love me for making peace with Amalia, and they will love our troops on their soil even less. Not after the Oth Danesh fiasco.”

Duke Rolan was tapping his upper lip fervently, thinking hard. He was a very temperamental person, and he did not like dallying, apologizing, or compromising. “Then, we just head north?”

That seemed to be the only real course of action. “North.”

“Head-to-head with an enemy that outnumbers us three or four to one?” Duke Oleg retorted. “But we have the faith on our side, and gods and goddesses will surely guide us to victory.”

Sergei looked at his vassal wearily.
No pious blathering, please
, he thought. He could not understand how anyone could still maintain their belief after hearing all these stories about ancient enemies and magical weapons. It went against everything the patriarchs and matriarchs had taught the nation for generations, and it all had turned out to be untrue.

Archduke Bogomir was silent, probably cautious ever since departing Athesia in disgrace last year. Well, if some humility would make his war counsel smarter, Sergei did not object to a moody, protracted silence.

If one stared hard at the land’s drawing before him, Sergei mused, one might not notice the crowd of advisers, adjutants, and clerks hovering nearby. Whatever he and his lords decided today would transpire into battle orders.

I may have bought myself a favorable chapter in the history books by forging peace with Amalia
, he thought,
but the future generations will judge me harshly if I make a poor work of this northern menace
. He looked up from the map.
Or rather, not at all
. That was a relief. If he lost to this White Witch, there would be no history books to exonerate him or blame him.

Sometime later, once the war was over, there would be time to contemplate magic and ancient tales, he knew. Now, he must focus on being a fierce army leader as much as a king. Rather like the man who had left him this sorry inheritance.

“Brute force, yes,” he admitted at last. “But cunning, too. We should focus the bulk of our units as far north as we can, which would be the town of Ecol. This will convince our enemy that we are focused on a direct confrontation. However, we need to find a way to get some behind the enemy lines, like Colonels Finley”—he consulted the letter again—“and Alan and this Commander Mali.”

Now, he needed a female’s touch. Lady Lisa. Maybe even his sister. Women were good at thinking obliquely, even when they held the upper hand. He was wondering what the best way of defeating a superior enemy really was, and all his ideas and tactics came up bloody all too quickly. He was smart enough to acknowledge that much. Adam’s widow would surely know. But he could not invite her here.

She was still his hostage, maybe even more so than before. Amalia would regain her rule of the city and the region, in his name, but that did not mean he could just free her mother. Lady Lisa would remain his honored guest for years to come, until he could build some trust with his new vassal. He did not doubt Amalia’s surrender was one of dire necessity, maybe propelled by the Naum threat. But if they won, she might begin nourishing resentment and bitterness all of a sudden. He did not expect Adam’s offspring to just forgive and forget.

Strange how the human mind worked. When faced with this colossal threat, it was almost too easy to disregard all other affairs, to neglect the future, to focus solely on the enemy and fight it to the bitter end. And on the same note, the brain kept scheming and plotting, twining and threading scenarios and ideas that whorled decades ahead into uncertainty. So maybe Amalia was preoccupied with the white armies at her northern border, but given a chance, she would start thinking all about her honor, her survival, and her vengeance.

He needed Lady Lisa to balance the sorrow in his heart. He needed her perspective on reign and power and the price one might have to pay to gain those. But he could not have her in the same chamber as his lords, because they would not understand.

He could tell some of them were displeased with his meek treatment of the foe, with his seemingly dishonorable
resolution of the war. But they didn’t dare say anything, because they carried a heavy burden of their own. So they somewhat trusted him, and they feared him, and he would have to work hard to justify his decision. Parusite kings never settled for anything, and he seemed to have been the first.

Or they had and then had their smart scribes write it down the way people liked. He glanced at Genrik.

“Gennadiy.” He called his third squire. “Summon Sergeant Daria.”

Sasha had left the woman in charge of her Red Caps garrison. She was a capable and experienced officer, and she might have some suggestions. Because he could not see a stealthy way past the white wall of the ancient myth threatening the realms.