\hypertarget{chapter-73-feeder-bands}{%
\section{Chapter 73: Feeder Bands}\label{chapter-73-feeder-bands}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``The rat it bites the rat}

\emph{On the tail, the tail, the tail}

\emph{The rat it does grow fat}

\emph{And swell, and swell, and swell}

\emph{But a rat will bite the rat}

\emph{On the tail, the tail, the tail}

\emph{So we'll sing the chain again.''}

-- ``Growing Horns'', a Lycaonese nursery rhyme
\end{quote}

The first blow struck in the Battle of Great Strycht was an illusion.

Glamour, to be precise, woven by my own will. I'd seen no need to waste
strength by making it too elaborate, so it'd remained a simple streak of
blue light high up in the `sky'. In of itself it did nothing, but it
didn't have to: it was a signal. If my army stepped into the city
uninvited, we were the enemy. The ones everyone would be aiming at, and
even the few sigils who'd struck pacts with us would think twice before
coming out on our side. Whether it was to see if we could match the
opposition or simply to bleed us a little first to have a better
position after the battle didn't matter, since I couldn't afford those
kinds of losses. No, I needed blades to already be out when we struck.
Thankfully, Ivah had provided me with the means to ensure that. The
Rumena Sigil, Gods bless their ambitious souls, had decided that the
barbarians knocking at the gate was the right moment to make a play for
the control of Great Strycht. My Lord of Silent Steps had learned as
much after grabbing one of their lesser Mighty and interrogating it
thoroughly. Not so thoroughly, though, that it had died from my
lieutenant's attentions.

So we'd made the songbird sing a second time, this time in front of the
inner circle of the Jindrich Sigil. They'd been the natural targets for
sowing dissension, and not just because they'd already made a deal with
me. See, the Jindrich were the second most powerful sigil in the city.
They'd opened negotiations because they were under attack by a cabal of
lesser sigils going after their water reserves and agreed to take oaths
under condition of those enemies being humbled, but they weren't bound
to me. Not really. It was an alliance of convenience for them, and those
were not to be relied upon. But this changed things. As the second best,
the Jindrich would have to be annihilated of the Rumena were ever to
fully take over Great Strycht. More than that, we'd hinted that the
sigils attacking them were doing so at the invitation of Mighty Rumena
-- which, for all I knew, could be true. It didn't matter if it was
false, though, because from the perspective of Mighty Jindrich it made
sense and confirmed its worst suspicions. It was not hard to get people
to believe the worst of each other when they'd been feuding cyclically
for a few hundred years.

So my alliance had become a little less shaky, and I'd put it to work.
The Rumena had been the kings of the island for a very long time, and
never been all that nice about it: to the extent that there was
technically a cabal including most everyone else dedicated to keeping
them from devouring the rest of the city. That meant they had a lot of
enemies, and that the Jindrich had\ldots{} well, allies was a bit of a
stretch. Sigils they'd fought with more than against for the sake of
keeping the Rumena in check. Mighty Jindrich had reached out through
envoys and warned them in advance of the plot, which was exactly what
I'd needed. If my people had done that, it would have been taken as
naked plot to incite civil war. Which, dues where they were due, it was.
Coming from Mighty Jindrich, though? It had a reputation as an
implacable berserker, not an intriguer. Put that together with our
songbird, and you had all the necessary ingredients for a discreet
coalition. Once it'd been assembled, the hard sell had been making it
wait. Understandably, the drow preferred being on the offensive if there
was going to be a battle: Mighty were no strangers to collateral damage,
and they'd rather it happen on Rumena territory than theirs.

So Mighty Jindrich had `tricked' me. It had assured its allies that it'd
managed to convince me to send a force into the field to back them up,
small enough the risks of it turning on them afterwards was minimal. But
there was a catch. It'd only managed to wrangle that loan on a specific
day. Namely, the one where the Longstride Cabal was suspected to be
arriving -- not that they knew that. The rest of the coalition had
reluctantly agreed to the delay, weighing that my own people sharing the
losses was worth the risk of discovery implicit to sitting on a plot
like this for a few days. I was pretty sure that when the time came,
Mighty Jidnrich would actually turn its coalition on us if it thought
we'd been weakened enough to be beaten. That was fine, though, because
I'd betrayed it first. Ivah had dug up from the prisoner that the Rumena
had approached ambitious rylleh instead their target sigils and we'd
helped clean up those leaks by providing the names we have. Not of the
exact rylleh, sadly, since we didn't have those -- the prisoner hadn't
been that high up in the Rumena Sigil. But sigil names had been given
and their sigil-holders had picked out the most likely treachery
candidates for killing before they joined battle.

But we'd held two names back. Akua had removed them from the head of the
prisoner just to be sure it wouldn't sing an inconvenient song even if
prompted. I'd been inclined to think that even if we did nothing the
enemy would find out, but best to be sure. It was now a certainty the
Rumena knew there was an attack coming, and that meant they'd be
intercepting it on their own chosen grounds. And so an illusory streak
of blue light got the first round of betrayals started even as my army
moved out. It was the signal for the coalition to begin its attack, for
the Rumena to begin their counter-attack and my own plans to begin.

The drow were a fair hand at betrayal, but I had the Fairy Godmother of
Treachery in my service.

My drow set out in warbands, treading the half-dried lakebed quietly.
Soldiers would have moved in formation, according to precise orders, but
I had none. Only warriors, and those couldn't be made into neat
companies with designated officers. They'd move and fight as tribes, led
into battle by the members of my Peerage. I'd studied the grounds for
days and spoken with drow better learned in Everdark warfare than I,
ultimately coming to the conclusion that there would be four different
skirmishes that would dictate the outcome of this battle. Two would take
place to the east, near the islands-turned plateaus of the Jindrich and
the Hushu -- respectively our main allies and the leaders of a cabal of
four mid-tier sigils that'd remained aloof from the intrigues unfolding
across the city. That sector would be the most volatile, since the two
different skirmishes could easily turn into a single broader pitched
battle if we weren't careful. That the Hushu and their allies would get
involved was a given, but on what side they would fall in this was
anyone's guess. Those fronts had been named, respectively, Spear and
Dice.

One would take place to the north, in what had once been a
lake-within-the-lake. The drow called it the Flowing Gardens, as it'd
once been an entire district of small stone islets covered in sculptures
and greenery. A place of leisure for the ancient drow, where pleasure
ships had lazily drifted between enchanted metalwork that sung songs
when touched by the breeze. It'd been centuries since those days,
though, and now the Flowing Gardens were an eagerly fought-over
battleground. The district had both water and food, after all, and the
entire thing had been fed lakewater through a complex system of canals
and sluice gates: holding those was a sign of power among sigils. My
confiscating of Lake Strycht had lowered the waters within until the
majority of the sections had become little more than large scummy ponds
whose dirty waters were still fought over brutally by the minor sigils
occupying the district and its outlying regions. Most members of my
`allied' coalition under Mighty Jindrich were from there, and my
assessment was that the Rumena were going to hit them hard and early to
keep them from assembling. Which would draw opportunists from the
warlike sigils in the region, making it a beautifully chaotic mess. As a
front, it'd been named for what it was going to turn into: a Pit.

The fourth and final front would be in the centre of the city. It would
be the slowest to come into being, and at the start wouldn't even exist.
The Rumena Sigil's territory was to the west, a five large and
comparatively rich islands serving as the heartlands of their tribal
possessions, but the fight would never get that far. The forces going
after Mighty Rumena and its warriors after being freed from other fronts
would pass through the central district of the city, since it was the
quickest and easiest path, which meant that was where the ambush would
be waiting. It was good grounds, I'd been told, for that kind of
fighting. The centre of the city was filled with old temples and
administrative complexes, set on a massive plain of solid rock. Every
single building was separated from the others by deep grooves carved
into the stone, more or less small canals, and the drying of Lake
Strycht had turned the place into a labyrinth of bridges and corridors
on three separate levels. A good spot for the Rumena to await an enemy
force, after they'd devoured the sigils currently occupying it. It'd be
hard to concentrate troops there, and either attacking Mighty would
stick together and risk lesser warriors being casually wiped out or
they'd separate and a hundred small duels would erupt on bridges and
alleys.

We'd called that front the Woods.

I stood on a promontory as my army moved out, beginning the trek to the
battles, and below me stood those that would lead them in battle.
There'd been a fresh addition to my Peerage, a twelfth member. The Agus
Sigil weren't part of Strycht proper but they'd held territory close,
and been half-mad with thirst when Lord Zarkan found them. Mighty Agus
had not been difficult to talk into becoming Lord Agus, though it seemed
uncomfortable with its new role and wary of the rest of the Peerage.
With good reason, I thought. Before oaths were taken, most of those drow
would have wiped out its sigil in an afternoon's work and done so
without batting an eye. It was the weakest of my lords, and knew it. The
others did not share its mood, though. There was the scent of eagerness
in the air, like they were itching for the fight. They probably were, I
admitted to myself. Drow were not the kind of people to leave power
unused after it was gained, and they had gained much from bargaining
with me. I took a moment to gaze down at them in silence, wondering how
many would survive the day.

``Today,'' I stated, ``we take Great Strycht.''

There were hard smiles at that, but no cheers. That was not the drow
way.

``I won't waste your time with a speech,'' I said. ``You all know what
I'm about -- we'll be dancing on the edge until the last beat.''

I had their attention, though not because of any eloquence on my part.
What came next was what they'd waited for all this while.

``And now what you actually want to know,'' I smiled. ``Lords Nodoi,
Losle and Zarkan: yours is the Dice front.''

Zarkan was hard to read, because it hated my guts and that was usually
the main thing to be found rather than anything more nuanced, but the
others were easier. Relief. They knew their job would be mainly
containment.

``Lords Slaus, Vasyl and Sagas, yours will be the Spear front.''

Nods, poorly-hidden surprise. Given that Mighty Jindrich would be there,
the expectation had been that either Soln or Ivah would take the lead
there. They were, after all, the two most powerful of my Peerage. And
those I trusted the most, though that was not a hard hill to climb. I
had other plans for those two, though.

``Lords Soln, Lovre, Vadimyr and Agus, you will be serving as our
strategic reserve,'' I said. ``You'll be hanging back for the initial
stretch of the battle.''

Disappointment from Lovre and Vadimyr, I found. They'd been the most
recent additions until Agus, and were eager to prove themselves in a
battle that wasn't waged against my own army. Agus was pleased,
unsurprisingly. Soln, though? Soln understood. It knew I wasn't finished
speaking.

``For the duration of the fight, the three of you will be under the
command of Lord Soln,'' I said. ``To be deployed as it judges necessary
depending on how the fronts unfold. Unless I give an order otherwise,
Soln's words are good as mine.''

That they liked a lot less, save for Soln, since it was the closest I'd
ever come to raising one of them above the others. They'd have to get
used to it, I thought. This was not the last large-scale battle we'd
fight, and some order would have to be forced onto our manner of
warfare.

``Honour was given, Losara Queen,'' the Lord of Shallow Graves smiled.

``You know my intent,'' I simply said. ``See it done.''

It wasn't a coincidence I'd picked those four. Soln had the closest
thing to battlefield acumen there was to be found in my pack of warlords
while Lovre and Vadimry had led raiding sigils. Their Mighty were the
most battle-hardened I had at my disposal, and the most used to fighting
in a group. Agus would be a weak link wherever it was sent, but putting
it on the roster would allow Soln to send warm bodies into a growing
mess without committing my best troops.

``Lord Ivah,'' I finally said.

``My queen,'' the Lord of Silent Steps replied, inclining its head.

``You'll be with Archer and myself,'' I said. ``We're taking the Pit
front.''

``By your will,'' Ivah smoothly replied.

I gave them a last look.

``They'll remember today,'' I said. ``What part of that story you end up
being is up to you, my lords.''

They bowed, and to war we went.

---

They army marched together most of the way before splitting up front by
front, sneaking through mud and reeds. We stayed out of sight, as much
as could be done on largely open grounds, and my own sigil was the last
to part with the reserve under Lord Soln. I came out of that journey
pleasantly surprised. I'd never considered drow to be proper soldiery,
but this kind of business was well suited to their skills and I'd
underestimated them in some ways. Oh, I still winced at the idea of them
in a shield wall. But the march we'd just done in an hour would have
taken half a day for legionaries. Even dzulu could keep up a pace that
would exhaust humans and orcs for hours without tiring, and they'd
walked across mud like it was solid stone. Never a step missed, or a
boot stuck in a mire. More interestingly, they'd done this so quietly I
could hardly believe they were an army on the march. My Peerage would be
a threat on the battlefield, but I was beginning to grasp how dangerous
lesser Mighty and dzulu could be out of it. They climbed up slopes like
spiders, leapt from stone to stone with the grace and easy of hunting
cats.

How hard would they find it to climb a wall in the dead of night?

But those, I told myself, were thoughts for another day. Ivah guiding
our warriors, we circled around the eastern fronts to get to ours
unannounced. Going through the territories of sigils would have been
quicker, but also risked skirmish. I did not want to start spending
lives before we even got to the Flowing Gardens. The war had begun
without us, it was plain to hear. The sounds of fighting carried across
the void and echoed, making it hard to tell who was winning -- if anyone
at all -- but it was too early in the day for anyone to be trying for
knockout blows. For now the sigils would tentatively send out their
lower ranks to probe the waters, hesitant to commit their most powerful
Mighty until they had a better idea of what the opposition had brought.
The main force of the Rumena should be busy taking over the central
district, too, with only traitors and hunting bands out on most the
other fronts. Save, I had guessed, the very front I was headed towards.
Here they would want to break the core of the coalition early, before
wind could touch its sails and they got a real battle on their hands.
Still, with a little luck the fighting here would be limited between the
two sides while the undecided local sigils watched on.

As it turned out, I was not going to get lucky.

My sigil crept through the mud quietly until we reached what now looked
like a stone wall but must have once been the edge of a constructed
island. Ivah had been ordered to lead us to the outermost edge of the
district, close to one of the smaller sluice gates, and it had
delivered. Its days spent marauding in the dark had given it a good
notion of Great Strycht's layout. I left my warriors at the bottom of
the wall, going ahead with Archer and Ivah. The masonry here was fine
and the stones polished by centuries of water, but I would have been
able to climb this without too much trouble even before I'd become the
Squire. We went up without a sound, Indrani disdaining my offer of a
palm to jump off of in favour of a running leap. The top of the wall was
a long rock pier, flanked by a structure where the sluice gate could be
raised or closed, but it wasn't either of those that drew our attention.
The sound here hadn't carried well, I decided, probably because all the
sectioned parts and the ponds had broken it up. But now that we were up
here, we had a decent look at the battle unfolding in the Flowing
Gardens and it was a fucking mess.

``I'm counting at least eight sides,'' Indrani murmured, kneeling behind
a large stone cleat.

``More,'' Ivah said. ``Some sigils have yet to intervene. You can see
their lookouts lurking at the edges of the fighting.''

It discretely pointed a finger and I followed the direction. Yeah, it
was right. I could make out the silhouettes hiding within giant glowing
ferns. I hesitated, just for a moment, because the place was a bloody
nightmare. It was hard to tell where sigils began and where they ended:
every islet was a melee, most fought between several sigils. There were
two pairs of warbands going at each other with what \emph{had} to be
rylleh that I knew for a fact weren't part of the coalition. They'd
just\ldots{} seen an opportunity, I supposed. The Rumena I could make
out from the rest, mostly because they were slightly organized and
winning most their fights. Either they'd come with some of their finest,
I thought, or their lower ranks of Mighty were heads and shoulders above
everyone else's. It took me a few moments to figure out who was leading
their expedition, since their forces were split. But near the southern
edge of the Flowing Gardens there was a warband of maybe two hundred
drow everyone was avoiding like the plague, and a triumvirate of Mighty
positively reeking of Night that stood atop an islet while overlooking
the mess. I got confirmation of my suspicions when one of them faced
down and spoke at one of its warriors, a runner leaving immediately
towards one of the detached Rumena warbands.

These were their officers, then.

``Archer,'' I said. ``Find a perch.''

``Gotcha,'' she shrugged. ``At will?''

``Try to draw in the bystanders,'' I said. ``Clip their lookouts, see if
that gets them moving. After that\ldots{}''

``Yes ma'am your queenliness,'' she grinned.

She legged it, already stringing her bow as she went.

``Ivah, reach out to our beloved allies,'' I said. ``I don't want to get
in a brawling match with the people we're supposed to be propping up.''

``As you say, Losara Queen,'' the Lord of Silent Steps murmured. ``And
after?''

``Return to the sigil,'' I said. ``I'll be busy making friends.''

That got a hard grin out of it, all teeth and malice. \emph{You learned
that from us}, I thought, and it almost troubled me. We were not
teaching the drow kind lessons, and one that there would be a reckoning
for that. It vanished into thin air, the glamour fine enough even I lost
track of it, and slowly I rose to my feet. I looked down at my awaiting
warriors, still at the foot of the wall.

``Over the top,'' I ordered. ``Forward, Losara Sigil.''

Even as they began to climb behind me, I cast an eye at the Rumena
officers. Good, they hadn't noticed me yet. Time to make my entrance. I
let Winter loose and smiled, inhaling deep of the smell of blood and
fear wafting from the battlefield.
