\hypertarget{chapter-15-bereavement}{%
\chapter{Bereavement}\label{chapter-15-bereavement}}



\epigraph{``To two deaths we are born: the first in the flesh, the second in
the memories of those left behind.''}{Sherehazad the Seer, Taghreb poet}



The Lanteria quarter would burn twice, that'd been my decree.

It was a good thing Sarcella was mostly abandoned by now, or it might
have been necessary to expel people from their homes to get our hands on
enough lumber for the pyres. As it was, the Third Army's sappers only
had to tear down empty homes to raise the night's work: heaps of wood
large and tall enough for near six thousand corpses to be consigned to
burning on them. Not all the dead bodies would be legionaries -- not
even most, as the addition of the priests from the House Insurgent had
done much to improve the survivability of our wounded -- but the
soldiers of Levant would share in the farewell. I wasn't leaving a few
thousand corpses lying around when the Dead King was on the loose, no
matter how far from the battlefield he was supposed to be. I watched in
silence, pipe in my mouth, as companies of goblins methodically cleared
out a space in the burn-out quarter and filled it with long rectangular
piles of wood. They looked almost like giants' graves, I thought, though
the bodies would be laid to rest over and not under. There'd been talk
of requisitioning oil and charcoal from the locals to help the blaze
burn hot enough, but I'd put a stop to that.

There was no need for it, when I had Mighty under my command.

It was already night out when the strange procession began. Carts and
stretchers bearing the dead, some covered with the thin bashfulness of a
sheet. Some, but not all: there were too many dead, too few sheets of
cloth. I'd heard a story once, back in Laure, about the elaborate
funeral processions of the Fairfaxes. How the dead kings and queens were
taken through the streets of the capital on a bier of bronze and iron as
the bells rang in unison, until all the people of Laure had seen the
remains with their own eyes. It'd take hours, the heads of the knightly
orders and every other Fairfax walking along the cadaver as the people
threw red carnations before them. The same flowers that grew in long
swaths by the shores of the Silver Lake, though some said it was
tradition as a nod to Selwin Fairfax's death in the Red Flower Vales.
The procession would end where it had begun, at the palace, and the
ruler would be buried in the crypts below. \emph{A Fairfax is dead, a
Fairfax reigns}, the people would say, and the world would go on. No one
threw flowers for my dead soldiers in the distance below, nor the
Levantines so far away from home. Instead they had ash and embers, and
the blackened husk of a district that might have been beautiful before
we came to it.

The burial of kings and queens took the coin of a thousand soldiers',
and so a thousand soldiers were buried without a sound. That'd always
been the way of the world, hadn't it? The small died quiet, the great
with theatre and oration -- as unequal a bargain in death as it had been
in life. It was a morose line of thought, but it paired well with my
mood. The drow that had become my second shadows when shadow claimed the
sky stood half-hidden and still as statues, not even stirring when the
ashen path was stirred by careful footsteps. I'd not summoned General
Abigail, though neither was I surprised she'd come to me. The latest
arrangements I had made would cause most to cock an eyebrow. I didn't
turn to look at her, and repressed my amusement when I heard the
Summerholm girl curse under her breath before climbing up. The two story
house I'd claimed as my perch was now little more than a twisted up
stone floor held up by load-bearing walls that let the wind through, but
there was a path to take if you looked properly. I wouldn't have made it
up without a smudge of Night to chase away the pain in my leg, but with
the coming of darkness miracles had come back to me through the turn of
that astral tide.

There was a dull thump and louder cursing as the general of my army
slipped halfway up and fell down on her ass, so I took pity on her and
called out in Crepuscular. Mighty Miklaya leapt down and picked up the
loudly protesting Callowan by the back of her neck before leaping up to
my side and dropping her like a sack of cabbage. I nodded my thanks to
it, and after a bow it vanished into the dark without a trace.

``They weren't anywhere near that sprightly earlier, the pricks,''
General Abigail muttered.

I turned to look at her and picked up on exactly when she remembered who
she was on her belly in front of, complaining about allies. Abigail
blanched and skittered up with the horrified haste of a cat near a
goblin cookpot, saluting promptly. I wondered if she was aware that her
armour now had tracks of soot all over it.

``General,'' I said. ``Sit.''

My pipe had long run out, though I was now officially out of herbs to
stuff it with anyway. Robber had more important duties than to find me
wakeleaf at the moment, though I'd send him out on the prowl before we
left Sarcella. It was either that or actually trying the dried
underground lake algae that Ivah had suggested, and I wasn't nearly
desperate enough to go for that. I suspected that drow tasted, well,
\emph{tastes} very differently than humans. It was the only reasonable
explanation for some of the things they subjected themselves to eating
and drinking.

``Your Majesty,'' General Abigail said. ``I'm not sure that's, uh,
entirely appropriate.''

I glanced at her amusedly. Court etiquette while on campaign? Besides,
field promotion or not holding the title of general put her among the
ten highest military officers in the kingdom. Technically she even
outranked Grandmaster Brandon Talbot, though she wouldn't have the
authority to give him orders in most situations.

``I could make it a royal decree, if you'd prefer,'' I said.

``Please don't,'' she said, then a heartbeat passed. ``\ldots{} Your
Majesty.''

Very warily she sat at the edge of the floor as I had, legs dangling. My
eyes returned to the procession of corpses, noting it had turned from a
flood to a trickle. The preparations would be finished soon enough. I
felt her hesitating at my side, but didn't come to the rescue. If she
was to continue working closely with me she'd have to find it in her to
actually ask me questions without prompting.

``Ma'am, I meant to ask,'' General Abigail said. ``About the
redeployments you ordered\ldots{}''

It was enough of a step forward to deserve reward, I decided.

``You think they leave us vulnerable, now that the prisoners are being
returned,'' I completed.

She cleared her throat.

``I don't mean to impugn the abilities of our allies,'' she said. ``But
there's a lot of Dominion grunts out there, and our captures marched
back with their weapons. If they hit us by surprise when almost the
entire army's at the funeral, three thousand drow won't cut it. They'll
catch us with our trousers down.''

Not an unwarranted assumption, for someone who didn't know the Firstborn
like I did.

``I did extract oaths from both Captain Elvera and the highborn boy that
commands the vanguard,'' I said.

General Abigail began to spit over the edge, before remembering once
more that I was there and hastily stopping. I politely pretended not to
notice the choke and coughing fit that ensued.

``My Da always said anyone that makes more than you do is probably out
to get you,'' Abigail solemnly said. ``Double so for anyone not from
Summerholm, triple if they're Wasteland get.''

There was another pause, followed by an almost physical spike of fear.

``That wouldn't mean you, Your Majesty,'' she hurriedly said. ``You're a
-- I mean, everyone knows -- he's just an old drunk, didn't mean
nothing.''

I pondered that. I didn't get a salary from the Tower anymore -- Malicia
was such a cheapskate, I'd only rebelled and tried to kill her the once
-- so in a sense I \emph{didn't} make more than my general. Unless you
counted taxes and tariffs, or the kingdom's treasury. I doubted telling
her as much would actually help any, though, so I discarded the
diversion.

``Razin Tanja might go back on his oath, even after what he swore it
on,'' I agreed. ``He could be desperate enough he'd roll the dice on a
victory washing his slate clean. Captain Elvera, I'm not so sure. Honour
matters a lot more when it's your own on the line instead of someone
else's.''

``Honour didn't stop them from sneaking in at night and offing our
general staff,'' General Abigail bluntly said. ``Beg your pardon, ma'am,
but what do some Levant muckabouts know about anything like honour? They
were quick enough to roll over for Procer and join up, after all that
hard talk about them being deathly foes.''

``Akua's Folly scared a lot of people,'' I mildly said. ``And honour
doesn't mean abandoning solid tactics.''

And they had been that, regardless of the personal cost to me. The other
Callowan shuffled uncomfortably.

``Aren't they your enemy, Your Majesty?'' she asked.

\emph{Your}, I thought. Interesting choice of words, and more telling
than she probably realized. More so than the unspoken assumption:
\emph{if they're your enemy, why are you defending them?}

``They won't always be our enemy,'' I said. ``And even if they were
sworn to stay one, it serves us nothing to lower them in our eyes. The
moment you dismiss an opponent outright you stop understanding them.
That's dangerous thing, in our position.''

I threw her a bone after the lecture, wondering if Black had once done
the same for me. If so he'd done it skillfully enough I hadn't noticed.

``Most the three thousand drow are decoration,'' I told her. ``Defending
bridges, like they are? I could have sent only two to stand guard with
much the same effect. I just decided to temper the temptation for our
friend Razin.''

General Abigail went still. I was pleased she picked up on the
implications of that so quickly.

``Named?'' she said. ``Or just warlocks?''

``Priests, in a way,'' I mused. ``Though the kind even Lanterns wouldn't
want to meet in a dark alley.''

The other woman breathed out sharply. I doubted she would be the last,
when the scope of what the Might could do became clearer.

``How many of those are there, ma'am?'' she croaked out.

``An empire's worth,'' I said.

\emph{And sometimes I fear even that might not be enough, for what's to
come}, I thought.

``You and I -- Callowans -- we were taught to fear the monsters on the
other side of the river,'' I mused. ``The hordes and the sorceries and
the things that go out after dark.''

I clapped her shoulder, ignoring the flinch.

``But not this time, Abigail,'' I said. ``Tonight, you see, we're
looking at the river from the other side.''

I felt my honour guard of drow stir through the Night. People were
approaching us, and not a moment too soon. I dragged myself up after
reaching for my staff, turning to my shivering general.

``Time to go,'' I said. ``The dead have waited long enough.''

---

Once lit, the torches turned the darkened wreckage of Lanteria into a
sea of fireflies.

It'd been some time since I last stood for a vigil. There'd been others
after the one that followed Three Hills, grim heaps of ash made across
Callow wherever my armies fought and died. Marchford, where the grim
necessity of killing everyone touched by Corruption had made it even
uglier business than usual. Liesse and Arcadia, Dormer and the
blood-soaked fields of the Folly. Far north, after the Battle of the
Camps. Had there even been a year, since I first gained command, without
some of mine being given to the flame? Sometimes it felt like I'd been
at war from the moment I had taken up Black's knife, without ever a
moment to catch my breath. But this wasn't about me, not really. I owned
a part of it, but so did every single of the almost eight thousand
legionaries and officers standing in Lanteria. So did the Levantines
across the river, though they might not see it that way. We'd bared our
blades and wrecked all around us, each convinced that we were right,
necessary, that the other side was damned and blind. I almost smiled at
the thought. Had anyone ever gone to war believing they were in the
wrong? I could not help but wonder at the people who'd once lived in
this city, and watched it torn apart by foreign armies engaged in a war
first started by a woman far away in Salia. They should not be forgot,
even if they were my enemy's people and not mine.

They too tread the same grounds that had my leg throbbing, whispering
with every limping step: \emph{do not forget, that this was never a
game. Do not forget, that you make mistakes. Do not forget, that there
must be more than ruin. Do not forget.}

These weren't drow, so the crowd below spoke in murmurs that lapped at
the platform the sappers had raised. I did not stand alone on it, did
not have that gall when I'd come so late to the battle for Sarcella.
General Abigail stood at my right side, cheeks reddened by the old
Callowan remedy for chilly nights. She cut a good figure, in her
polished armour freshly marked with the wings of a general glimmering in
the glow of the magelights surrounding us. Bareheaded, her black locks
brought out the sharp blue of her eyes. Spreading out from her right,
the surviving general staff stood with us as well: the last remaining
legate, a heavyset man by the name of Oakes, her Senior Mage and Staff
Tribune. At my left I kept Robber and Mighty Jindrich, the latter of
which was looking at the proceedings with strangely innocent
fascination. Never before, I thought, must it have seen so many torches.
The purpose of this had been as strange to it as its fascination was to
me: drow did not have funerals the way the people of the surface did,
not since the coming of Sve Noc. Corpses were just rotting meat that
could not be eaten, nothing to be given any particular attention beyond
disposal to avoid diseases. I'd waited long enough, I eventually
decided. All the torches that would be lit already were.

I raised my staff, and a single horn was sounded by an officer below.
The sound echoed across the district, and left silence in its wake. I'd
been offered sorcerous help by the Third Army's mages, but I had no need
of it: the Night coiled in my veins, and when I spoke it was in a voice
that resounded across all of Lanteria quarter.

``The first time I met Nauk of the Waxing Moons clan,'' I said, ``he
called me dead weight and I nearly slugged him in the face.''

The officers standing next to me looked appalled, save for Robber who
was grinning like a gleeful imp, but a ripple went through the crowd.
There were greenskins who'd laughed outright, and many more soldiers who
looked like they were feeling guilty about smiling at a funeral.

``It wasn't even half a year after that the Fifteenth Legion was
raised,'' I continued. ``And by then it didn't even occur to me he
wouldn't be part of it. That was the kind of man he was, long before he
put an arrow in a prince and got another name out of it.''

Grief and guilt, hand in hand. For the friend I was burying, in a way,
for the second time. For what had remained of that friend in my general
and I'd cravenly looked away from. Another regret for the list that
would never, could never, be expiated. It always seemed like there were
more pressing things to see to, didn't it? Until the bells rang and you
realized it'd become too late.

``He was brave,'' I thoughtfully said. ``We always say that, about those
we bury, but he truly was. Kind, to those he owed kindness to, and
always cannier than he let on. But most of all, when I remember him, I
remember that the same night we met he marched most of a mile on a
broken leg without a word of complaint. It's a small thing, but it
stands for more. There was not an ounce of \emph{give} in him.''

My voice turned rueful.

``But then I speak to nothing you don't already know, do I? Everything
Nauk Princekiller had to give, you have made a part of you.''

My lips quirked, because this was a fool's war but how could I not be
proud of how they had fought it?

``The Third Army marched across the span of Iserre, pursued by fourfold
its number and ambushed by Helike's finest,'' I said. ``Yet when I found
Sarcella, your banner flew. They rode you down, they burned you out,
they stormed every single wall you raised -- and the Third Army did not
break.''

The last part rung louder like a rest, almost deserving of echo. There
was a sea of faces splayed out below me: old and young, Praesi and
Callowans and greenskins. Old Legion veterans come under fresh banner to
ply the same harsh trade, youths who'd put on the armour with that
burning need to do something that would \emph{matter}. Some had joined
for coin, some for purpose, some for having nowhere else to go. Some had
put on the mail for their country, and among those there were hard-eyed
Soninke and Taghreb who I thought might yet \emph{make} that country
after they went home with a blade in hand. Once you'd drunk from the cup
of defiance the taste was not easily forgot, and they had all drunk
deep. How many of them had sung on the march to Dormer, I wondered,
joined their voices to that chilling song Nauk had penned? I had taken
the armies of the east and told them they were owed better, that they
could \emph{do} better, and they had believed me.

Since that day they had been sharpened on bloody fields every bit the
match of the Conquest's, marched victorious through a gauntlet of
horrors. And they'd done it without High Lords, without Dukes and
Baronesses, without any of the old banners above their heads. One day
those soldiers would go home, and those who would be their masters would
not find them so easily bent to the old order. \emph{I've borrowed the
strength of an empire and the godhead behind it, bared it at my foes
like a blade}, I thought, \emph{and some fools will tremble at that
alone. But you, all of you.} \emph{Oh, how they would tremble if they
could look at you now. What you are and might yet do.} In the golden
glow of the torches they all seemed tinted by the same dye, as if they
had shared some strange rite that left the same mark on all of them.
Maybe they had, this lone column in the snow surrounded by foes. I saw
all that and one thing more, a reflection of what I felt in my bones
when looking at them: pride\emph{.}

``I could praise you,'' I said. ``But what could I possibly speak that
would ring louder than your record? Instead, I will say there are faces
here that I recognize.''

It was true. More greenskins and Praesi than Callowans, who had come
later to my campaigns, but more than a few of those as well. Legionaries
and officers both, some who'd been under Nauk as far back as Three
Hills.

``From the two thousand that charged Summer, at Five Armies and One,'' I
said. ``From the first into the breach, at Dormer. From those who took
the hellgate at the Doom of Liesse. From the Battle of the Camps,
holding against three to one and hero's wroth.''

I laughed.

``Have you ever fought a battle where you were not meant to lose?''

Laughter answered, harsh and grim and heartbreakingly proud.

``In the crucible of the Conquest,'' I said, ``names were granted to
honour the greatest deeds of Legions. \emph{Cognomen}, they are called.
You have gone through crucible harsher still, and so this honour is long
overdue.''

My voice rose.

``You are the Third Army of the Kingdom of Callow,'' I proclaimed. ``You
have been the vanguard of our every victory, never once flinching nor
breaking -- and for that I name you \emph{dauntless}.''

For a moment there was only silence, and my stomach dropped, but then
roar drowned out everything. Thousands of throats screaming out into the
night, a chorus of stomping feet and blades striking shields. Dauntless,
I thought, letting the sea of noise wash over me. That had been impulse,
but I did not regret it. I would see it put to the rolls, and I would
see Nauk's name written as the first general to command it. It was the
only kind of grave marker he would have cared for, I suspected. The
Third Army howled its approval, long and loud, and when the sound
thinned General Abigail's own tribune approached me with a torch,
passing it to my hand. For the pyre, I knew. It was my right, as Queen
of Callow, to throw the first one.

``We'll all put friends to the flame tonight,'' I said. ``And there will
be others, on other fields. So weep for the lost, but know that I can
promise you this: in the end, they will \emph{remember} us.''

I wanted to throw the torch. For the friend I'd loved, the memories I
would still clutch now that he was gone. But this wasn't about me, not
really. I owned a part of it, but so did every single one of them. So
instead I limped to Abigail and passed her the torch.

``Send them home, General,'' I said.

Blue eyes met mine, unreadable, and slowly she nodded.

The torch flew, and the sea of fireflies followed.
