\hypertarget{chapter-57-betwixt}{%
\chapter{Betwixt}\label{chapter-57-betwixt}}



\epigraph{``Come now, my lords, you started this war knowing what I'm
about.''}{Dread Empress Massacre the First}



It was too large for a pond but much too small for a lake. A reservoir?
Nah, I was pretty sure that implied spadework, which this clearly didn't
have. Pool, maybe. Regardless, it was a source of unsullied freshwater
and it'd been almost a day since we'd run into one of those. Tactically
redeploying in the opposite direction of an incoming army was thirsty
work and the drow weren't nearly as enduring as the rest of us, so it
was probably time for a break. We'd need a bit to refill the skins,
anyway, and if there was some kind of edible creature in there it'd be a
nice change of pace from our increasingly stale rations. Indrani had
taken to pouring brandy on hers, though in all honesty I wasn't sure
whether the taste was the actual reason for that.

``Half hour,'' I called out, withdrawing the finger's I'd been dipping
into the waters. ``Ivah, tell your fellows they're responsible for
rationing their water as well as filling the skins. They're not dipping
in ours a second time no matter how thirsty they get.''

I could make ice and let it melt into drinking water, sure, but at the
moment we were keeping a low profile. I wasn't sure whether the dwarves
had some sort of device that would allow them to sense sorcery, but if
they did I was pretty sure using Winter to any great extent would be
like lighting a brightstick in a dark room. My mantle could do subtle,
theoretically speaking, but it'd never been a specialty of mine and I
wasn't willing to gamble our remaining hidden on it. My guide nodded and
addressed the rest of its kind in an even tone. Ever since the former
Mighty Kodrog had been disciplined and I'd declined to let anyone
harvest its Night and serve as a replacement guide, Ivah had gotten much
more self-assured.

Akua had voiced opinion that since it'd functioned as a lieutenant to a
violent and unpredictable entity for decades, it was falling back on
those habits now that it was under my protection. Bogdan wasn't too
happy about that, but I'd ordered Diabolist to get the broken bones
patched up and nothing more. The message had been received, from the way
it was now behaving much more carefully. I got up from my crouch and
sighed. Our pace was being slowed down by the drow more than I'd like,
but there was little I could do about it and leaving them behind wasn't
on the table. If they weren't in my custody, they'd be in that of the
dwarves. Indrani was at my side a heartbeat later, footsteps so soft I'd
barely heard them.

``They're getting near the end of their rope,'' she observed. ``Might
want to give them a full hour instead, stretch out the last gasps.''

``We're already crawling at a snail's pace,'' I grunted back. ``You've
said it yourself, we're probably a little more than a day ahead of the
dwarven army.''

``Guesswork,'' Indrani reminded me.

``Guesswork based on the messengers you've seen going back and forth,''
I replied. ``We're not swinging in the dark here.''

She opened her mouth, but I raised my hand.

``If what passes your lips is a pun, Archer, I will drown you myself,''
I threatened.

There was a pause.

``Fill my skins,'' she offered, sounding very casual. ``I'll take a look
ahead, see if I can rustle up anything.''

``Ivah says we're nearing the edge of the outer rings,'' I told her.
``If the vanguard is going to dig in and wait for reinforcements, it'll
be soon. The odds of running into the army have significantly
increased.''

``If they dig in, it's our opportunity to go around them,'' Indrani
countered. ``Best we know as soon as possible and plan accordingly.''

I mulled over that. She had a point. Half the reason she wanted to go
for a wander was likely that she was starting to feel like she had a
leash around her neck -- I'd asked her to cut back how far she went on
her exploratory trips -- but she was right on the nose about the
vanguard digging in. My bet, at the moment, was that when they got close
to the first strong drow position they'd set up and wait for proper
assault troops. If we went around them while their eyes were on the
local sigil, there were decent odds we could make it through without
getting noticed.

``Do it,'' I finally said, taking the mostly empty water skin in her
hands. ``As usual-''

``Tread lightly, steel stays in the sheath,'' she finished, rolling her
eyes. ``At this rate you're going to get that tattooed on my arse.''

``I assumed something deeply tasteless was already taking up the
space,'' I replied without missing a beat.

``Hey, my arse is extremely tasteful,'' she protested.

``You're confusing words again,'' I airily said. ``What you're looking
for is \emph{tawdry}.''

She flipped me off, I mimed drowning her in the pool and with the
traditional rites complete we parted ways. I watched her saunter away,
though with the leather coat on there wasn't much to look at, and
absent-mindedly tossed up the skin before snatching it out of the air.
The drow were going about their business visibly exhausted, and to my
quiet amusement Mighty Bogdan seemed to have no earthly idea how to fill
up a skin. I was too entertained by its struggles to seriously consider
offering help. Akua was kneeling by the pool as well, though her skin --
which she didn't need, or use -- was full. She was staring at the far
wall, unmoving. A few steps took me to her side, and in a blatant abused
of my queenly prerogatives I threw Archer's skin at her shoulder.

``There,'' I said. ``Since you seem in need of something to keep your
hands busy.''

The shade picked up the leathery folds between two fingers, somehow
managing a full monologue's worth of disdain without speaking a word.

``It smells like aragh,'' she said.

``So does Archer, half the time,'' I shrugged. ``What deep thoughts did
I take you away from, Diabolist?''

``I was pondering,'' she said, ``the nature of this invasion.''

``The term is usually pretty self-explanatory,'' I noted, only
half-serious.

``Context, Catherine,'' she chided. ``This was a significant investment
of resources, even for the Kingdom Under. The kind that would have to be
prepared over the span of decades, requiring specialized labour
otherwise in high demand and significant preparations of logistics.''

``And you're wondering why they'd bother, given that the Everdark is a
mess of collapsing tunnels filled with violent lunatics,'' I said. ``I
mean, there's the obvious answer. Drow don't mine much, as far as we can
tell. Lots of wealth to claim once they take over the place.''

``Over time, the investment made could be recovered tenfold,'' Akua
agreed. ``Yet we both know that kind of long term planning in the
highest reaches of a nation is a rarity. The expense would have to be
justified in the face of more immediate uses for that coin giving more
obvious benefit.''

``It's rare on the surface,'' I said. ``Where sinking that much of your
treasury into anything makes you weak elsewhere and your rivals will
take advantage of it. What rivals do they have left, down here? They can
afford to take the long view. Hells, they \emph{live} longer than humans
too. This could just be the life's work of some highly influential
dwarf.''

How long dwarves actually lived remained a matter of bitter and divisive
scholarly debate, a matter not helped by the fact that their kind lied
profusely about the matter whenever they ventured to the surface.
Theories ranged from a few hundred years to a couple thousand, though
most scholars agreed it was under five hundred. Considering people
weren't even sure how dwarves reproduced, lifespan uncertainty was no
surprise.

``And yet the invasion only takes place now,'' Diabolist said.

I could have replied that there was precedent for the Kingdom Under
evicting other underground nations to the surface largely out of
principle -- the goblins were testament to that -- but that would rather
be missing the point, wouldn't it? Dates for the goblin exodus were
vague, since the Tribes rarely gave straight answers to anything unless
there was a blade at their throat, but it was a fact it preceded the
Miezan occupation of Praes. Which meant at least a millennium and a half
ago. If the entire point of this was to remove a rival power, however
comparatively weak that rival was, then they'd taken quite a while to
get around to finishing the work.

``Might be it was just that one tedious chore they never got around to
doing,'' I mused. ``They polished off the rest of the list over the
centuries, now they're out of excuses not to massacre the neighbours.''

``Overdue spring cleaning,'' Akua mildly said. ``This is your theory for
what drives the fate of two nations?''

``You got anything better?'' I said.

``Let us assume,'' the shade said, ``that the Everdark's continued
sovereignty is the result of dwarven \emph{incapacity} instead of
\emph{unwillingness}.''

``Which is a wild guess on your part,'' I said.

``One that aligns with other facts,'' Diabolist said. ``Regardless, it
is fact that there was a dwarven contingent on the surface during the
Liesse Rebellion.''

``Mercenaries,'' I said. ``That's not exactly unheard of. They also took
the first bribe offered to leave.''

``Because their purpose was not to make war, but to assess the
situation,'' Akua suggested.

``They already do that through Mercantis, supposedly,'' I said.
``Everyone sells information about everyone else in exchange for crumbs
about what's happening down here. Why send soldiers?''

``A host of dwarven infantry would represent a significant force,'' she
said. ``One which would be worthy of courting by surface powers, as the
Carrion Lord did. As the Callowan rebels did, and the First Prince
behind them.''

My eyes narrowed.

``So you think the point was to gauge how invested all the players were
in the rebellion and the wars that would follow it,'' I said. ``They
shouldn't \emph{need} to go that far, Akua. Who the Hells would be
stupid enough to pick a fight with the Kingdom Under? They'll be selling
cheap weapons to at least half the nations involved in any scuffle.
There's a reason the Principate can throw massed levies at us without
going bankrupt.''

``Dread Empress Triumphant, may she never return-''

``Forced them to pay tribute, sure,'' I interrupted, rolling my eyes.
``Once, after she flooded a few of their tunnels with demons. Didn't
stop them from funding and arming a continent's worth of rebellions
against her a few years later, did it? They just threw gold at her so
she'd fuck off and then paid for other humans to actually put her down.
Let's not pretend it was more than a headache for them.''

``That is still precedent for a surface power proving troublesome to
dwarven interests,'' Akua insisted. ``A cautious assessment of the
situation was therefore made, yielding the answer that the largest
surface powers were preparing for large scale and long term warfare.''

``After which they did nothing,'' I said. ``That was years ago, and
they're only moving now. I doubt it would take them that long to
mobilize.''

``Indeed,'' the shade agreed in a murmur. ``They acted only after a much
more recent development.''

It wasn't the Tenth Crusade. There had, after all, been nine
predecessors to it. But if her argument was about a power on the move
that usually remained put\ldots{}

``How would they know about the Dead King?'' I frowned. ``It's not like
he sent them a letter. \emph{We} don't even known how he'll go about
participating in the war, and we were guests in Keter not that long
ago.''

``The Kingdom Under has borders with the Kingdom of the Dead,'' Akua
said.

``Which are, famously, tunnels they drowned in lava and molten metal
until there was nothing left moving,'' I said.

``Your argument is that the preeminent power on Calernia has no way to
observe the going-ons at its most dangerous border,'' Akua mildly said.

I grimaced. Yeah, fair point.

``So they see him pull back his undead for a push on the surface,'' I
mused, following the thread. ``And take that as an open invitation to
march on the Everdark. Why? That's still thin, Akua. If they're that
worried about the Dead King, why take the risk at all? It's not like the
drow are a threat to them.''

``So I wondered,'' Diabolist admitted. ``If neither wealth nor pride are
the reason, then why? It cannot be room for expansion, they could simply
layer deeper. Such a large undertaking could hardly be made without
sanction from the highest powerbrokers of dwarven authority. That
implies, to me, a strategic motive.''

``Hard to guess at those when no one knows their exact borders,'' I
said.

She nodded in agreement. I narrowed my eyes at her.

``But you have a theory anyway,'' I said.

``After your distant kin settled in what is now the Duchy of Daoine,''
she said, ``the largest threat to them was greenskin raids. Yet they did
not strike directly at the clans, instead raising the Wall. Why?''

Because only an idiot would try to take the Steppes. The Miezans had
done it, sure, but they'd had a whole arsenal of advantages no one on
Calernia could boast of having and there'd actually been orc cities to
target back then. Which wa no longer the case: even after the Reforms,
the Clans had remained nomadic. Rulers of Daoine could and had cleared
out belligerent clans near the Greenskin Marches but there'd never been
a serious effort to conquer the Steppes. The orcs would just retreat
deeper in and the Deoraithe armies would have to settle in for winter in
hip-deep snow with nothing to live off of and a \emph{lot} of angry orcs
on the prowl. \emph{Which}, I thought\emph{, is Akua's point}.

``Containment,'' I slowly said. ``Ratlings don't lair deep, so they'd
have a free hand under the Chain of Hunger. You think they know they
can't take the Dead King, so they're trying to bottle him up instead.
And for the encirclement to be complete the drow need to go.''

``Should any significant drow presence remain in the region, the
fortresses maintaining that encirclement would suffer sporadic
assault,'' Akua said. ``To make the sealing easily sustainable-''

``They need the drow gone,'' I quietly said. ``Dead or far, far away.''

We filled our skins in silence, after that. It was a fragile house of
cards that she'd built one sentence at a time, and all it'd take for it
to crumple was a single assumption proved false. But it sounded like a
distinct possibility. That was always the problem, with Akua. She was a
skilled speaker, one that could spin a decent story out of nearly
anything given long enough\emph{. But if she's right\ldots{}} Either the
drow drove back the dwarves -- and reckless as I was, I wouldn't t put
gold on that -- or there'd be a an entire race of vagrants needing
greener pastures to move to.

That, I thought, sounded like an opportunity to me.

---

Archer had returned without any fanfare, before the hour of rest she'd
talked me into was even over. We stood to the side of the others,
speaking quietly in tongues they would not know.

``This place is about to be a war zone, Cat.'' Indrani said.

``You found the dwarven vanguard, then,'' I guessed.

She brushed back her hair, lashes fluttering over hazelnut eyes as she
did. Her longcoat was open, revealing the silvery mail beneath, but she
wore the metal as nonchalantly as if it were cloth.

``Part of it, anyway,'' she confirmed. ``If there used to be three
forces of five thousand like you guessed, that's no longer the case.
There were at least eight thousand preparing to give battle.''

``That's too large a force of a single cavern,'' I said.

``Not if it's a huge godsdamned cavern,'' Indrani snorted. ``It's at
least the size of Laure. There were a bunch of lichen and mushroom farms
down there, I think it might have been some kind of food centre. Water
too, the largest body we've come across so far.''

``I was under the impression we were still a few days away from the
closest city,'' I said.

``''Dunno about a city, but there were a pack of drow there for sure,''
she said. ``Cavern's a drop from our current height -- the dwarves found
another way down, I must have missed it -- and near the back there's
some sort of massive stalagmite melding into the wall that the locals
carved into.''

``Walls?'' I asked.

``Nah, nothing like that,'' Indrani replied, shaking her head. ``It's
like some sort of spiral ramp going up. Pretty sure it's flat at the
top, but my vantage points was sloppy. The whole thing might be hollow,
for all I know. There were tents going all the way to the top.''

``That's defensible against even heavy infantry,'' I said. ``If the
ramps are narrow enough.''

``Our short friends were setting up a bunch of weird siege engines,''
she said. ``Infantry's not all the drow are up against.''

Eight thousand, huh. That was more than half of what I currently
believed the dwarven vanguard to number, which was promising but still
meant seven thousand should be traipsing around the tunnels unaccounted
for. Fighting underground like this would be different from the kind of
wars I was familiar with. With tunnels it would be much easier to defend
than attack, as a rule, particularly if the defender had powerful
champions capable of holding a narrow area against superior numbers. On
the other hand, without an open field flanking operations became a very
different kind of enterprise. No plains down here, no way to see an
enemy detachment until they were right on top of you. If I were the
dwarves, I'd station hardened troops on the flanks to keep an eye out
while I was moving against a fortified drow position. Assuming
high-ranking Mighty were as dangerous as even just green Named bent
towards combat, a single one slipping through defensive lines was enough
to make a costly mess. I chewed on my lip thoughtfully.

``I don't suppose you took a look at the adjacent tunnels?'' I asked.

``Not in depth,'' Indrani said. ``Glanced down a few, though, and I got
the impression most of them curve towards the large cavern.''

A chokepoint? It'd explain while the dwarves were willing to slow their
advance to take it. Ivah's knowledge of the region was sadly limited, as
it'd only crossed it the once and under the understanding it was to move
towards the Gloom as quickly as possible. I wouldn't be surprised if the
Kingdom Under had maps, though, and good ones. It was tempting to try to
get my hands on one even with the risks inherent to crossing
dwarvenkind.

``They're going to have the flanking tunnels under guard,'' I finally
said. ``So far they've been careful to allow no runners. They'll have
the entire place sealed up.''

``That's my guess,'' Indrani agreed. ``So what's the plan, Your
Queenlyness? We trying to shimmy through while they're busy under a
touch of the ol' glamour?''

``We still don't know if they can pick up on my using Winter,'' I said.

``We \emph{do} know they have eyes, Cat,'' she replied. ``I'm not
fancying our chances of sneaking through a dwarven blockade without a
little fae juice to help things along, and you know we can't wait this
out. The real army's not far behind.''

I hummed, not disagreeing or agreeing.

``So we have to place a bet,'' I said. ``If you were a dwarf and you had
devices that could pick up on sneaks -- a pretty basic precaution, given
who you're invading -- where would you put them? With the main force, or
the flankers?''

``If I were a dwarf, I'd be massively rich and drunk all the time with a
city's worth of naked servants catering to my every twisted need,''
Indrani mused.

``If you were a dwarf, but not a complete waste of a person,'' I tried.
``I know you don't have a lot of experience with that, but use your
imagination.''

She half-heartedly gestured for me to go hang myself.

``Would make sense for the shortstacks to keep the trinkets on the
sides,'' she finally said. ``The stalagmite's pretty fucking surrounded.
But that's assuming they don't have enough devices to have them
everywhere. And that they have those at all.''

``If they do have them everywhere, we're screwed anyway,'' I noted.
``Best we can do is play the odds assuming they don't.''

``So you want to take a stroll through an active battlefield,'' Indrani
snorted. ``With a pack of unruly drow, a self-absorbed spectre and yours
truly. That's not one of our better plans, Cat, and that should not be a
hard hill to climb given how we got into Skade.''

``Worked, didn't it?'' I said. ``We played to our strengths-''

``Blatant lies,'' she helpfully provided.

``- and their weaknesses,'' I finished.

``Expecting sense of us?'' she suggested.

``Unorthodox approaches,'' I righteously corrected. ``It'll be
dangerous, I don't deny that, but then so is every other option on the
table. I think this is the least stupid risk we can take. Unless you
happen to have a better idea?''

``Aside from digging our own way through, not really,'' Indrani mused.
``And we'd need Winter for that anyway. Shovels alone wouldn't cut it,
and since Vivi left we don't even have those anymore.''

I sighed and passed a hand through my hair.

``Well, let's get moving then,'' I said. ``If this was a mistake, best
to know it today.''

``Hey, look on the bright side,'' she smiled. ``If this is a horrible
blunder that's going to get all of us killed, then at least I won't
survive to give you shit about it.''

There was a silver lining, I mused. Shame it was on a cloud raining fire
and brimstone, but that was life for you wasn't it? Sometimes you just
had to put on your good boots, bring out your sword and kill your way to
the top of the flying fortress before you got to see daylight.

The last few years of my existence would have been a lot more pleasant
if that were actually a metaphor.
