\hypertarget{chapter-50-preparation}{%
\chapter{Preparation}\label{chapter-50-preparation}}



\epigraph{``Doubt is the mother of failure.''}{Dread Emperor Terribilis I, the Lawgiver}



In the end, it took me three days to get eyes on Liesse. Marshal Grem
One-Eye had sent out mages as soon as the city was glimpsed over the
horizon, and my own mage lines kept coordinated with his own until we
had four scrying links covering the major angles of the Diabolist's
lair. What I saw did not bode well. The city had gone up with its walls
largely intact and significant portions of the grounds under it and lost
neither as it went down. The surrounding territory had been worked over
with magic so that Liesse now stood atop a steep hill. Thousands were
digging trenches and traps in the plains around it, working day and
night without pause because they needed none. They were Callowans, but
they were also dead. Without fanfare or a cackle, without a sound at
all, Akua Sahelian had killed more of my people in a night than Black
had throughout the entire Conquest. Men, women and children. The young
and the old -- Still Water drew no difference, and neither had she.

I'd been a viciously dark mood since I'd gotten proof of it, and the
mood had only gone darker when I'd seen what she was up to.
Devil-summoning arrays had been carved on the walls, large siege weapons
like those of the Legions placed onto bastions and additional wards were
made every hour to fortify the city against magical interference.
Hierophant had already confirmed I couldn't open a portal directly
within the walls, not that I'd ever seriously thought there was a chance
of it. The Summer fae would not have dithered attacking her for months
if they'd had that as an available option, and I was still much less
skilled than they at using fairy gates. I disliked wasting time in
Dormer, but Juniper had flatly informed me that after a brutal battle
like the last one the men needed time to recoup and recuperate.

It wasn't just a matter of dealing with the wounded, though there'd been
a great many of those. Our supplies had been running thin, and it was
only Ratface's promised river barges coming through the city harbour
filled with steel and goblin munitions that had the Legions in proper
fighting fit again. Aisha had been a little less blunt in reminding me
I'd had our troops going through forced marches and battles one after
another for months, but no less firm. Even if it gave Akua time to dig
in, the truth was that the Fifteenth simply hadn't been in a state to
take the fight to her right away. As I saw to my house, Ranker and Kegan
saw to theirs. The duchess kept to herself, but I saw almost too much of
the old goblin for my tastes. It was her that suggested we had siege
weapons of our own prepared in Laure and Southpool rather than rely on
only our own, and when she began approaching the problem that way the
Hellhound followed with aplomb.

For one, there were three legions in Holden under her mother that were
sitting ducks unless I intervened. General Istrid had been sent there at
my own order to prevent the Summer court from making a beachhead other
than Dormer, and discharged that duty perfectly. But her twelve thousand
men were now months away from the actual fighting, with a supply line
that was chancy at best. Even if she began marching north immediately,
she wouldn't be able to reach Liesse before the battle was weeks past.
Could I afford to allow twelve thousand veteran legionaries to sit over
a strategically useless position while I fought Akua? No, I could not.
Not if the assault on the city was going to be as brutal as I suspected.

The only question then, was where I would transport them. The gates
allowed me to significantly quicken the logistics of assembling a host
that was spread throughout Callow, but they weren't a perfect solution.
For one, I needed to be with the moving armies. And much more
importantly, I couldn't actually use Arcadia as a staging ground.
Whether the terms of my bargain with the fae court would protect my
soldiers when they weren't actually travelling was irrelevant, since
that wasn't how gates worked from my end: whenever I made an entrance,
there was a corresponding exit. I couldn't actually get out of Arcadia
by another place, as far as I knew, and our previous alternative of
having Hierophant use fae nobles as portal-openers was no longer an
option. Our prisoners had all been rather forcefully released by the
Summer Queen when she still bore that name. And, last of all the
weaknesses, going through Arcadia still took \emph{time}. It as a
shortcut, not fucking teleportation, which as probably for the best.
Even with the mantle of a Duchess on my shoulders I was pretty sure
attempting teleportation of any kind would flat-out kill me.

And so, sitting with Marshal Ranker and General Juniper, we planned out
our little shell game. Akua had eyes on us, we on her. The side that
would have the advantage when the battle began was the one who'd hide
the knives better. Callow had already been put under martial law long
before I went south, and as things stood I was both vicequeen and
highest-ranked Named remaining of the region. I was also wielding my
authority with the explicit backing of Her Dread Majesty -- there was
not a single in person in my home who had solid ground to stand on in
refusing an order of mine. Would that I could enjoy that power even a
little: I had wanted nothing more than to have it since the age of
thirteen, when I'd made the decision to start saving up for the War
College. I couldn't, not when the first order I gave was for immediate
muster of the city guard in Southpool, Ankou and Vale. There was
immediate pushback, argument from the Callowan governors I'd overseen
the very appointment of that none of those men were trained soldiers.

I ordered for them to come anyway. Southpool was on the weak end of the
scale, with only five thousand, but Ankou's city guard traditionally
served as militia when Procer attacked the Vales and even though the
city was smaller it boasted eight thousand and better equipped. Vale was
the largest of the three, and though it put up only six thousand men I
sent Grandmaster Talbot to squeeze blood out of that rock. Vale had
always been the heart of central Callow, and though no great trade city
as an agricultural one there were few equals to it on Calernia. There
was wealth there, and though second-rate compared to the real wealthy
cities of Callow it had historically been enough to support a great many
soldiers and knights -- some of the earliest chivalric orders had been
founded there, they said. I left Talbot work his patriotic sorcery on
the powerful of the city and another three thousand came out of that,
including about a hundred knights. Gods, it was like those had been
hiding under every rock. It was pleasing, in a way, that the governors
were willing to fight for the people under their care when I would order
those people to the grinder.

A shame I was not in a position to entertain their worries.

The place of muster for the city guards was set a little to the east of
halfway between Southpool and Vale, which meant the Ankouans would have
to pass south of Diabolist's lair and lose at least a week to it.
Wouldn't matter, since I'd be busy ferrying Legions meanwhile. My
options there had been more limited than I would have liked. The legions
under Marshal Grem, for one, weren't going anywhere. I'd approached the
subject of peeling off at least one, but the reports I'd been given in
return were\ldots{} stark. There'd been increasing skirmishes with the
border principalities over the last months and Procer was massing
soldiers in Bayeux. The Marshal's assessment was that if there was any
large troop movement on the Empire's side, the Principate would try an
assault on the Red Flower Vales. Fucking First Prince. It didn't matter
if she was bluffing us or not, since we couldn't afford to chance losing
the narrow valleys that would give us a fighting chance against Proceran
invasion. The Wasteland wasn't going to be any help either. Malicia's
meat-puppet had made it clear the legions in her backyard needed to stay
there, to keep the highborn in line and more importantly keep the
fucking mess Akua's mother had made in Wolof contained.

Much as I would have liked another twelve thousand soldiers, I couldn't
blame the Empress for not pulling them out when the alternative was
devils spilling out in the Wasteland. The only reinforcements from the
Legions at hand were the same I'd sent into Holden, and they were
nothing to sneer at. I'd met all the generals in command there --
Istrid, Sacker and Orim -- and all three had been through the crucible
that was the Conquest, but more importantly the civil war before it.
Almost every one of my highest tier of commanders in this campaign would
be familiar with Praesi war tactics of the kind Diabolist was likely to
pull. That knowledge wasn't as reassuring to have on my side as another
ten thousand soldiers, but it might end up saving more lives. Already I
winced at the notion of sending guards into the kind of madness Akua
would have prepared for them. There was no choice. The usual voice in
the back of my head that insisted there had been and I had made it saw
itself buried. I would allow myself doubt and grief when the wars was
done. Until then, all they would so was slow me down in what had very
clearly become a race of sorts.

Either Akua Sahelian would finish her scheme and break the Empire, or
I'd mass enough strength to put her down.

There was a part of me, the same that had been taught by Black, that
kept to the iron-clad belief that she would fail in the end. That
whatever she was juggling would backfire on her, either because she'd
but off more than she could chew or because I'd break her stride. But as
the days passed, I had to concede it was a possibility I might fail. I
couldn't quite manage to believe I would, but then I doubted any of the
rulers Triumphant had crushed had thought they'd end up a note in the
margins of history either. I knew better than most how dangerous
Diabolist was, and how disparate the forces I was bringing against her
was. There was advantage in that bastard mixture of Deoraithe, Callowans
and Praesi I was leading. But there was weakness too. I failed, Hells
even if I won but died winning\ldots{} Well, I would be leaving behind
me a mess that might be beyond salvaging. In rising to prominence I'd
crossed a lot of lines and ripped open quite a few old wounds. None of
that would be undone in the wake of my death, but I'd no longer be there
to even try to guide the currents.

I wondered if Black had that same sense of cold fear, when he looked at
the Empire. The ugly realization that a lot of what you'd built was
dependent on you to remain functional, and that if some farmboy with a
magic sword put six inches of steel through your throat it would bring
ruin on hundreds of thousands. Recklessness, for all that it often cost
me, had seen me win one uphill battle after another. Never without some
of my blood spilled on the ground, but I'd forged victory out of being
the only person in a fight willing to cross the line. Whether it was
allowing my own death to get out of a Heaven-mandated defeat or lying my
way to the contraptions of godhood, audacity had allowed me pull through
situations that should have seen me dead or broken. But I could, I was
coming to realize, no longer operate this way. Before all it took was
for one gamble to fail, and the whole house of cards I had built around
myself would come tumbling down. I'd gone out of my way to make myself,
if not essential, then as close as anyone could be in Malicia's empire.
But that cut both ways\emph{. If I get myself killed, everything I bound
to me suffers.}

I'd bound quite a few things to me, by now. Armies and institutions,
even the very hierarchy that now ruled Callow. When you became someone
of consequence, if only followed that your death would have those same
consequences.

I'd never been good with fear. I'd always pushed through it by heading
into the breach repeatedly until I stopped flinching, steeling myself by
taking the weakness as a personal insult. But this\ldots{} this was no
longer dealing with a fear of heights by standing at a rooftop's edge
the way I had when I was a girl. If I slipped and fell, Callow went up
in flames. It wasn't a fear for my own death as much as fear of what it
would mean, and I was finding it much harder to push down. That was the
problem with learning the currents that guided an empire from behind the
scenes -- you could never \emph{unsee} it, after. It was not a pleasant
thing admit I knew no other way to fight. Black had once told me I
needed to start thinking ahead if I did not forever want to be fighting
to the tune of my opponents, and I liked to think I'd learned how. To an
extent. But it was one thing to sit with the Empress and plan the
unmaking of the Summer Court, another to plan the steps of a waltz with
the Diabolist. Fae had rules they could not break. They were, in some
ways, predictable.

All that Akua had binding her was having been raised with all the blind
spots of the old breed of Praesi villainy, and those weaknesses were not
meant for \emph{villains} to exploit. One slip and it was all over. I'd
long become used to gambling with my own life, and once when I had been
younger and more ignorant even gambled with Callow's fate through my
clash against the Lone Swordsman. I was older now, and if not wiser at
least a great deal more aware. If I threw the dice and they came up
wrong, then from Harrow to Dormer my people suffered for it. \emph{If
there is no Named to use to bind Callow to the Empire, they start to use
harsher methods.} I hated the thought, and the hesitation it brought
with it. One of the old monsters who'd held the Tower had once said that
the worst sin a villain could commit was to hesitate. She'd been right.
I had won and kept winning because I had made a blade of temerity and
struck out at my enemies with it. After a year of trying to keep Callow
together in the face of slaughter and invasion, I wasn't certain how
long I could keep doing that.

The thought came, unbidden, that this was not a coincidence. That Her
Dread Majesty had uses for a hunting hound, but only so long as it could
be leashed. And hadn't she done exactly that, by giving me the very same
authority I asked for? I did not allow myself to think if it too much,
not right now. I could spend months trying to discern the intent of the
likes of the Empress and still end up grievously, hilariously wrong in
my conclusions. \emph{But}. I would, one of these days, sit with Hakram
over a bottle and ponder this. Because it would have been arrogant to
believe that the Empress had spent decades trying to suborn Callow with
soft methods but would never try tactics that had proved so effective on
me as well.

The itinerary that was ultimately settled on was simple. I would take
Legate Hune and a detachment of two thousand into Arcadia, taking a
fairy gate to Holden where we'd link up with General Istrid and her
three legions. From there we'd take another gate to the muster point
north of Vale where the guards form the adjoining cities had been
ordered to gather. Then I'd make one last trip south, to hopefully shave
off a few weeks from my host's march to the north to assemble with the
rest. I'd always taken Nauk with me on journeys like this, and the
Gallowborne as well. One was unconscious and more than halfway into the
grave, and there remained only five of the cohort of two hundred that
had once made up the other. Aisha had already suggested I disband them
and assemble another retinue, but I'd refused. They'd died for me, John
and his men. I would not spit on that by replacing them before the moon
had even finished waxing.

``Senior Mage Kilian will have to remain with the Fifteenth,'' Juniper
said, ``but her second should go with you. I want our own mages on the
ground, to keep scrying in our house.''

``We have to assume Diabolist can listen in on all of those,'' I
grunted. ``The Empress certainly can.''

``Ratface made his own codes that differ from Legion protocols,'' Aisha
said. ``I would think that our conversations, at least, will be hard for
her people to decipher.''

``She'll still be expecting most our troop movements,'' I said. ``The
Callowans I ordered to muster were warned she might make a sortie, but
that only takes us so far.''

``I am not certain she will,'' Juniper growled. ``There would be obvious
benefits to hitting our forces before they're gathered, but the heart of
her strategy remains to defend Liesse until she can deploy her ritual.
She might not want to take the risk, considering you can pop out of
Arcadia at any time to hit the city.''

``Assuming she can't track me when I leave Creation,'' I said. ``We
don't know that she can't.''

``I would not plan strategy around the assumption,'' the Hellhound
conceded. ``But overestimating an opponent is just as dangerous as the
opposite. If we are too careful to guard against means she does not
have, we uselessly limit ourselves.''

I sighed.

``Yeah, true enough,'' I said. ``Pinpointing exactly what she can do has
proved to be something a problem, but at the end of the day it doesn't
matter that much. If we're too slow we're fucked anyway.''

Juniper rasped out a laugh.

``Won't be the first time we fight against the hours as well as the
enemy,'' she said. ``I doubt it will be the last. You leave with dawn?''

``That's the plan,'' I said, and turned to Hune. ``Your people will be
ready?''

``Orders were already given,'' the ogre replied.

I looked away quickly, knowing if I kept staring anger would well up
again. I had axes to grind with Hune, though I'd forced myself to keep
my mouth shut about it. She'd done nothing that was against regulations,
or outside her authority. Didn't make me any happier about it.

``Dismissed, then,'' Juniper grunted. ``Catherine, a word?''

This hadn't been an official staff meeting, and so there were only four
of us in the command tent. Aisha gave my general a warning look before
following the ogre out.

``I'm listening,'' I told the orc.

``What the fuck is your problem?'' she bluntly said. ``You've been
treating Hune like she ate your horse ever since Dormer. If you have
something to say, say it. I'm her commanding officer.''

My eyes hardened.

``You don't want to knock on this door, Hellhound,'' I warned.

``I just did, Foundling,'' she growled. ``Out with it.''

I'd gained enough control that the wood under my fingers did not freeze,
but not enough it didn't fog as the temperature cooled.

``We had two trump cards to play, when taking a swing at the upper
city,'' I said flatly. ``The Watch and the knights. She sent both to the
flanks against the Immortals instead bolstering my own push.''

Juniper eyed me in silence.

``I get one,'' I said. ``The Immortals were taking their tool. But if
the knights had backed me, Nauk would be awake right now.''

The Hellhound's lips curled into a snarl.

``If you were an orc, you'd be on the floor bleeding from the mouth
right now,'' Juniper said, tone eerily calm. ``And if you say anything
like that ever again, I'll resign my commission.''

My fingers clenched.

``Explain,'' I said through gritted teeth.

``She made a call,'' the Hellhound said. ``As commander on the field.
She did not do it lightly, or with unsound reasons. Just because you're
angry Nauk got wounded does not give you the right to treat her this
way. She isn't your friend, Catherine. She is \emph{an officer in the
Legions of Terror}.''

``I took four hundred men when I advanced,'' I said. ``You know how many
came back.''

``And she saved twice that many by sending our heaviest hitters against
the Immortals,'' Juniper barked. ``She made a tactical decision. It was
the \emph{right} decision, and I would have made the same. You had four
Named with you, one way or another you were getting through. The others
were expendable.''

Juniper rose to her feet and paused when she passed me by, laying a hand
on my shoulder.

``It's good,'' she said gruffly. ``That you care. The Empress wouldn't.
But you need the harden the fuck up, Catherine. We'll both have a lot of
dead friends before this is over.''

She left me to ponder that in the silent tent, eyes closed. Callowans
had a lot of songs about the glory and righteousness of sacrificing
yourself for the kingdom. I knew quite a few. None of them spoke of
sacrificing those you loved though.

As always, the songs were thin gilding over the ugly truths of what I'd
have to do.
