webcrawl/APGTE/Book-7/out/Ch-006.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-5-incursion}{%
\chapter{Incursion}\label{chapter-5-incursion}}



\epigraph{``The Heavens pick the victor, my friends, but the Hells detail
the aftermath. How else can it be explained that when a battle is won we
most commend the general -- that is, the only man in the army that can
be relied on not to have picked up a weapon?''}{Captain Thierry the Acerbic, addressing his company before the Battle
of the Twelve Routs}



It was tempting to just run out sword in hand to find out what was
happening, but I resisted the urge. I'd learned the hard way that
recklessness could have permanent costs -- like half someone's total
supply of eyes, for example. I put up my hair in a loose ponytail and
strapped on my armour, not without fumbling, and only after putting on a
helmet did I finally limp out. Sword at my hip and deadwood staff in
hand, I looked out into the night and found entire swaths to the south
of my camp aflame. Had Sargon played me with the ransom payment? It
shouldn't be. Hierophant had inspected the ingots personally and they
were in a warded pit anyway. It made no sense either, considering I
hadn't even given him back his prisoners yet. I'd kept them overnight as
a precaution against foul play and he had to know I might hang them as
an object lesson if he tried something.

Sargon Sahelian hadn't struck me as the kind of man who pissed away
either gold or lives.

I made my way to the tent closest to mine, where Adjutant had placed a
station of his adjunct secretariat, but there were no phalanges there. I
found a line of regulars hurrying south through the dirt avenue passing
by my tent, however, and wasted no time approaching the lieutenant in
charge. A young Taghreb, no older than twenty and rosy -cheeked.

``Your Majesty,'' he breathed out, before snapping into a more
professional salute.

``Lieutenant,'' I said. ``What's happening? I'm not hearing the alarm
wards.''

``Our wards are down, ma'am,'' he replied. ``All of them. And we're
under attack by giants.''

Our wards were \emph{down}? I felt a shiver of unease. Not even the Dead
King had managed that so easily. The mention of giants, though, had me
skeptical. I seriously doubted the Gigantes had anything to do with
this. Ogres, though, I'd be willing to believe. I had less than a tenth
of ogres left in the entire Army of Callow -- our campaigns had not been
kind, and none lost were ever replaced -- but the Dread Empire would not
be so limited. That would mean a Legion raid, which did nothing to
settle my discomfort. I'd learned enough at the feet of the Legions of
Terror to know how brutally skilled they were at what they did.

``What did they hit?'' I asked.

``I don't know, Your Majesty,'' the lieutenant admitted. ``My orders are
just to head at the southern rally point with my line and await further
orders.''

I smothered my irritation. It wasn't his fault I wasn't aware of what
was going on and taking it out on the kid would help no one.

``Let's go then, lieutenant,'' I evenly said. ``There's no time to
waste.''

I pulled at Night -- and how crisply it came now that dusk had passed,
almost as easily as before the Ruination -- and killed the pain in my
bad leg so I would be able to keep up with the brisk pace of the
legionaries. We passed through a sparsely manned checkpoint, but there
was no way the sergeant in charge would know more than the lieutenant I
was with so I pushed on. At the second checkpoint, I found Adjutant
waiting for me. He was armed and armoured, with an axe in his dead hand
and a broad shield in his steel one.

``Catherine,'' he gravelled. ``Apologies, by the time my phalanges
reached your tent you'd already left.''

I waved it away and didn't bother to ask how he'd known where I would
go. There were lines between us where there once had been none, but he
was still my Adjutant.

``What's happening?'' I bluntly asked.

``The Legions of Terror are hitting us,'' Hakram gravelled. ``Less than
a hundred, nearly all ogres. They gated out of Twilight a foot away from
the outer palisade and smashed through, then used some sort of artefact
that fried our wards. Hierophant and Akua are working on getting them up
again.''

``Fuck,'' I eloquently said. ``Do we know what they're after?''

``They split into two forces,'' Adjutant said. ``The one lighting the
fires is going straight for our supplies and Juniper's mustering men to
drive them out. The other force -- smaller, we think -- is headed
west.''

My eyes narrowed. West had Sargon's soldiers and the rest of the warded
pits we'd dug. Was this a rescue operation? That made little sense. The
High Lord of Wolof had already paid their ransom and they'd be handed
over come morning. Something didn't fit, and that made the second force
the odd hand. The one to watch out for.

``That's the one we'll intercept,'' I decided. ``Where's Archer?''

``She's-''

``Disappointed you didn't hear her coming, is what she is,'' Indrani
drawled.

My hand was halfway to my sword when I recognize her voice, and my
muscles stayed tense until she'd moved out from the tent she'd used as
cover for her approach. There was some alarm as legionaries began to
notice her, but it didn't last long. She was a known quantity for my
soldiers.

``That's what we have you for,'' I retorted. ``Vivienne, Huntress, the
kids?''

``Vivienne is with Juniper,'' Hakram said.

``Alexis went to guard Cocky,'' Indrani said. ``I'm not sure for the
kids.''

For a moment I almost sent Adjutant to look for them -- he had the right
aspect to Find the needle in the haystack -- but I held back. He might
see it as him being sent away from the fight, one which would be hard
enough \emph{without} shedding off a third of our Named before we
started.

``Send one of yours to Vivienne,'' I ordered Hakram. ``I want them kept
from getting into too much trouble.''

Entirely out of trouble was sadly more than could be reasonably asked
for, given that they were Named. Hakram nodded and saw to it, even as I
checked my gear one last time. I made a note to have a bag of goblin
munitions prepared for me and kept in my tent. Now that Scribe's scheme
had paid off and we'd essentially bought out High Lady Wither's stocks
of munitions -- with the blessing of the Matrons, who saw it as
weakening her military strength even if our grain helped her maintain
control in the short term -- I could afford to start using them again.
The moment Adjutant was back we headed out together, moving fast. Since
our wards were down and we had an idea of where our enemies were headed,
we took a shortcut through the Ways to try to intercept. We sidled
through instead of using a gate, since Indrani found us a path in
moments, and it allowed us to skip over all the barricades, checkpoints
and mustering soldiers.

The advantage of fighting people as tall as ogres was that, given the
average height of tents in our camp, we could easily see them from a
distance. Within moments of leaving Twilight I had my eyes on maybe
twenty towering silhouettes, all decked in pitch-black plate engraved
with runes and wielding massive flanged maces. Those were \emph{not}
Legion heavies, not any kind I'd ever seen.

``Archer, go around,'' I said, already pulling at the Night. ``Begin on
my signal.''

``Gotcha,'' she said, pulling down her hood.

She slipped into the shadows, swift-footed even as she began to string
her bow.

``Adjutant,'' I said, shaping the Night, ``I want you to bait them. Take
the front and draw them in.''

``Warlord,'' Hakram replied, flashing his fangs happily.

I finished the last touch on the `eye' of Night I'd made and threw it up
in the air. A shadow on black, it remained unseen to our foes even as I
closed my physical eye and made myself see through that one. It didn't
tell me much more about the enemy force itself, but it \emph{did} give
me a bird's eye view of them moving around the camp. \emph{They're not
headed towards the prisoners}, I realized. They'd walked right past an
avenue that led to their pit, and I doubted it was because of the two
lines of regulars manning the palisade around the prison pit. They were
after something else and moving like they knew they layout. Which they
would, of course, since the Army of Callow pretty much used the Legion
layout with a few modifications. It sunk in a moment later.

The ransom. It was further east in a guarded pit as well, and the group
-- twenty-one ogres and two humans, I counted -- would soon get to an
avenue that'd lead them straight there. But why the Hells would Malicia
care about the gold? The empress still collected taxes from most of
Praes, she was positively rolling around in coin she couldn't spend for
lack of friendly neighbours. I set the question aside for now, as I had
more urgent cats to skin. I checked Adjutant was on the right path to
reach the enemy, which he was, and then prepared to disperse the eye.
There was no point in even trying to find Archer, I knew that from
experience.

Then the night lit up with a flash of sorcery as streaks of flame hit
one of the lead ogres, scarring the black plate, and I caught sight of
two small humans getting in the way of the enemy.

``\emph{Fuck},'' I cursed.

The kids were there and getting in over their heads. These weren't Bones
or a handful of necromantic monsters, they were a well-armed Legion
strike team. I broke into a run without hesitation, knowing that if I
lingered for too long they might be dead by the time I arrived. So much
for springing an ambush. Calling on Night, I formed a rough wedge of
power in front of me and ran straight through the tents in my way. It
was a quick approach but not a subtle one, as was made clear when one of
the ogres grabbed a javelin the size of a small tree and threw it my
way.

I twisted the Night into a different working, catching the weapon in
flight and turning it around before tossing it back. A miss, I saw, but
hopefully it'd discourage a repeat. I formed another wedge and
immediately another ogre threw a javelin at me. I cursed, resorting to
the same trick and this time scoring a glancing blow against an ogre's
breastplate. They weren't trying to kill me, I grasped, they were
slowing me down. The bastards weren't even intending to fight us, were
they? They'd just do what they'd come for and then retreat.

Gods but I hated fighting against well-trained soldiers.

Thankfully, I could fall back onto the sage lessons of my childhood: if
the other guy had a better plan, you just had to sock them in the face
real hard until they forgot it. I abandoned the idea of the relatively
harmless wedge and instead of drew deep on the Night, waves of heat
emanating from me as I formed a massive ball of blackflame and tossed it
in a straight line in front of me. It burned through tents and
barricades, clearing me a straight path and smashing into one of the
ogres. Even as I ran, my brow knotted when the flames cleared and I saw
my working hadn't actually broken the ogre's plate. It'd blackened it
further, half-melted it, but the fire had only gone through the armour's
visor. It was still enough to have the soldier screaming and clawing at
his face.

Archer put an arrow between the hands and straight into the skull a
moment later, dropping the ogre.

I unsheathed my sword as I crossed the last of the distance separating
me from the melee, the flash of flames flickering at the edge of my
sight and bathing the silhouette of the closest ogre in light. The great
flanged mace rose, and Night or not there would be no \emph{parrying}
that. I struck out with my staff, black flames boiling out of the top as
I aimed for the visor again, but I was forced to abandon the working
when another ogre used drove a javelin like a spear into my flank. I
hastily backpedalled out of range, almost eating the mace blow from the
first as I did. Redirecting the black flame into striking the side of
the mace's head got me out of it, but the ground shook as the flanged
head tore into the earth besides me. Worse yet, more and more of the
ogres were converging on me.

A few I could handle, but ten? That was going to get tricky.

Then Adjutant came out swinging from their left flank a heartbeat later,
proving once more that splendid timing was written into his very Role.
The surprise earned me a moment to shape Nigh,t in between ducking away
from a wild mace swing, and I threw up another eye so that I could see
through it and grasp the lay of the entire melee. It was only the
beginning. Power coursed richly through my veins even as I saw one of
the ogres draw back his arm to throw a javelin, but I grit my teeth and
kept weaving my miracle. My eye in the sky stayed focused on my enemy's
arm, spellbound. \emph{Almost there}, I thought, watching as the
plate-covered arm flexed and the tree-sized javelin went flying. I
breathed in and out, listening to the instincts trained into my body by
years of war.

A half-step to the side, the movement precise enough I felt the steel
head of the javelin brush against my side, but I'd done it. I was
finished.

``Bang,'' I grinned, staff coming down against the floor in a strike.

I kept the eye for just a second, long enough to place the ten orbs I
was capable of handling at one time. Night formed out of thin air in
front of ten visored faces, looking like spinning orbs for half a
heartbeat before they burst and air was sucked in. I'd first used the
air explosion trick against demons at the Arsenal, but I'd improved it
in the months since. This time, at the heart of the `orb' there was a
seed of blackflame. The air getting sucked in pulled in the ten ogres,
just in time for the blackflame to grow unstable and explode in their
faces along with the sharp burst of air. The result was a brutal blow of
physical strength and fire that dented the visors before delivering the
blackflame through the opening. Most of the ten died instantly and those
that didn't began to scream in pain.

From the corner I saw Adjutant take a blow on his shield, aspect pulsing
as he withstood the strength as if it were a breeze. He struck with
perfect timing as the ogre withdrew, toppling his foe down into an
already-trampled tent. He had that under control, I decided. I could
push through to the kids.

I ran past a slowly falling ogre, clutching at her broken and burning
face, and as she struck the ground behind me like a small earthquake I
found myself frowning. There had been two humans earlier, mages
presumably, but I couldn't see them in the melee at the moment. Where --
the only warning I got was the feeling of the air being moved, and I
wasn't quite quick enough. My staff was struck as I got pushed away, the
silhouette of an ogre coming into sight for a flickering second as I was
blown of my feet and my staff went clattering in the distance.
\emph{Fuck}, I thought, rolling away as I felt the air move again and
the ground was hammered in front of me. One of the mages was using
illusionary enchantments. I rose back to my feet lurching about,
grasping a handful of Night and throwing it blindly ahead.

It stuck, as I'd hoped, and a blotch of darkness appeared on what looked
like the side of the mace trying to smash me to bits. It'd do. Slicing
behind me with my blade, I opened a gate into the Ways and stepped
through. I glimpsed greenery and felt gentle wind before crossing back
into a warm Wasteland night, coming out on the side of the mace I'd
tagged and spinning out chords of Night. I hooked them around the mace,
forcing it and the ogre back into flickering visibility, and then
wrapped the chords around the shoulders and helmet of the ogre. Hands
tight on the bonds I twisted, Night obeying my will as the ogre
struggled to keep the mace away from their helmeted head and I tightened
the noose. I was cheating, of course. It wasn't strength I was using to
tighten the chords but willpower, weaving Night, and the limits on my
will were lesser than those on the soldiers' body.

With a third twist of the wrist I tightened the chords into a vise and
the side of the mace went through the helmet with a loud crunch. I
wasn't sure how far it'd gone into the skull beneath it, but the ogre
was out of the fight regardless. That freed me to go forward, where I
saw Arthur Foundling being battered down with brutal efficiency by an
ogre. His shield was already a crumpled ruin and one of his shoulders
obviously broken. The Apprentice was shooting darts of fire and spears
of lightning at the ogre, but all it did was slow them some. Not even a
mark was left on the armour, which had me staring. Even enchanted plate
would have marks after that, and my heartbeat quickened when I saw the
ogre kick Squire in the stomach when Arthur tried to slide behind them.

He'd been moving with Name quickness, unnaturally swift, but his
opponent had begun moving the exact moment he did. No one was that fast
without a Name, I knew, without leaning on that set of reflexes that
came with a martial Role. From the corner of my eye I saw an arrow hit a
man in the throat, the spell he'd been halfway through -- aimed at
Adjutant's back -- dying with him, but I looked past the corpse and
found that four ogres were covering the last mage's hasty retreat. I
moved to the side, climbing over an ogre corpse to get a better vantage,
and cursed. The pit where we'd left the ransom gold was now empty.
They'd brought a caster that could use High Arcana and shoved all the
ingots into a pocket dimension, the tricky fuckers.

As if I'd allow that. I drew on Night.

I heard Arthur Foundling scream as he was smashed into a barricade by a
blow, and for a heartbeat I weighed the choice. The gold might keep a
lot of my people alive, keep them fed and armed for the war on Keter,
and the Squire was still a potential threat to Vivienne in the coming
years. If I pursued the last mage instead now\ldots{} The thought was
ugly, but ugly wasn't enough to stay my hand anymore. I needed better
than that -- \emph{Name}, I thought, mind racing. He was in a fight of
Named, one he'd stumbled into through heroic providence. That could be a
potent tool, used right. Eye tearing away from the fleeing mage, I broke
into a run. Ribbons of lightning struck at the back of the tall ogre
with impotent fury, making the enchanted steel glow but little more as I
shaped Night into thick tendrils.

The looming ogre raised their mace as the Squire rolled to the side,
grasping for his sword. He'd be too slow. The flanged mace came down and
the boy's face paled but his fingers closed around the handle of his
blade anyway. He'd die trying. Or not die at all, preferably. I struck
out, tendrils of shadows layered over my arm like some sort of skeletal
armature, and the strength of it was just enough to slap aside the mace
before it could crush the boy's skull. I stood between the two of them,
Night wafting off me like smoke as I prepared another trick, and cocked
an eyebrow.

``So Malicia's picked up a Named,'' I said. ``Which one are you, I
wonder?''

Our foe -- a woman, I glimpsed through the visor -- did not answer. She
raised her mace again, drawing back to make space for a swing, but I
clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth.

``Not Warlock,'' I mused, ``or you would have seen \emph{that} coming.''

The Night-smoke I'd had trailing along the ground solidified around her
feet as shackles, so when she finished the movement of striking the
imbalance tripped her. I stepped to the side as she began to topple
forward, tapping the side of my sword against Arthur's flank tell him he
should follow suit. An arrow whistled, aimed straight at the gap in the
plate between the neck and the helmet, but with unnatural deftness the
massive mace swept up to bat the killing blow away just before the
ogress hit the ground face first.

``Martial, and not a transitional Name if you have control that fine,''
I noted.

I raised my sword, calling Night to it even as the ogre grunted with
effort and burst through my shackles with brute strength. And yet I was
not worried in the slightest. I knew, somehow I just \emph{knew}, that
the timing would work out perfectly. I could see it as if it were
written in the air, as if it were inevitable. As if some grinning devils
down Below had put their coin on me and their fingers on the scale to
match.

I was following my Role, and so the tide of Creation was on my side.

``None of that,'' I chided my foe, bringing my blade down on her back as
she tried to raise.

The Night struck out from the point of my sword like a needle,
shattering the backplate, and then like cracks of ice my power went
skittering in every direction and shattered the enchanted steel. The
ogre was smashed back down into the ground. I heard bones break and
froze in surprise. I'd not hit her that hard, not for a Named, and that
was the moment if fell into place. My limbs grown strong with the touch
of my growing Name, I moved forward and flipped over the gasping ogre.
She did not resist, broken. I stripped off her helmet and a single look
at those dark eyes was enough to confirm my suspicion: the power in
there was fading. Not because I'd killed its wielder, but because I'd
damaged the \emph{vessel} too badly.

``Black Knight,'' I greeted. ``So what's the aspect you're using, I
wonder -- something like Deputize, Mandate?''

I wrinkled my nose.

``No, you're clearly Legion,'' I said. ``You're using mostly ogres, too,
so I'd guess you're Marshal Nim. `Commission', maybe?''

It clearly wasn't her full strength she'd put in the body, else the kids
would be dead twice over. The ogress hacked out a cough, dying, and I
sighed. Wouldn't get anything out of her. I sheathed my sword, but
halfway through the gesture the almost-corpse suddenly lunged. A single
massive hand reached over my shoulder, grasping the Squire's throat
behind me, and she began to \emph{squeeze} -- I felt horror swell, I
wouldn't be quick enough with the Night I was reaching for -- she went
still. It was not luck that did it, but the eerily silent arrow Archer
had loosed that went through her eye. I roughly dragged Arthur away by
the scruff of his neck as the body dropped, the boy moaning in pain. As
well he should, he was basically a mass of bruises and bloody wounds. He
sagged against the ground.

``Thank you, Your Majesty,'' he got out. ``I owe you-''

``Nothing,'' I cut in, tone sharper than I meant it to be.

I refused to feel guilty. I was long past the luxury of clean choices,
and just because today I'd chosen to keep him alive didn't meant that
tomorrow would see me make the same decision. The boy looked like I'd
slapped him and I sighed again.

``Consider this a wake-up call,'' I said. ``This is what fighting with
real Named and not Revenant puppets feels like. The Black Knight on the
other side used a single aspect, not even in her real body, and she
still nearly pulped you.''

``You're not going to tell me it was foolish to fight?'' the boy asked.

``It wasn't a foolish fight, you just fought foolishly,'' I corrected.
``You likely saved a lot of soldiers' lives by stepping in, the part
that needs work is the one where you almost died doing it. You won't be
helping anyone when you're in a grave, maybe keep that in mind.''

``Nothing we did got through her defences,'' Arthur admitted. ``Even at
our best we were simply holding on.''

And in that sentence, in the anger -- the unspoken urge to do better
next time, the certainty that there would be a next time -- I saw an
opportunity. A tool. And I was enough of a monster to make use of it,
even when I was using a boy barely more than a child.

``So prepare yourself,'' I challenged. ``Train. Make tactics.''

He was silent for a moment, exhausted and in pain, but eventually his
blue eyes went steely. He nodded, brushing back a black lock stained
with sweat and blood.

``I won't lose, next time,'' Arthur Foundling swore.

And with those words I'd invited, with the weight of them spoken by his
lips, I knew I had made myself a sword. Because unless I was wrong, a
Squire and a Black Knight had just fought. And the Squire had begun that
fledgling, fragile pattern with a defeat.

If I stoked those embers just right, that story would end with my
enemy's blood on the floor.

---

In the wee hours of the morning, I sat with Vivienne and Juniper to go
over the butcher's bill. The good news was that, as far as dead bodies
went, our losses were light.

``Ninety-three dead,'' the Hellhound said. ``Most of them regulars. We
can thin some cohorts to make up for it, we still have the numbers to
absorb that.''

``And we inflicted eighty-two casualties ourselves,'' Vivienne noted.
``Considering it was a surprise attack fielding almost entirely ogres,
we made off decently in that regard.''

I grunted in agreement. The attacked had escaped, but not without taking
losses equivalent to about eight out of ten.

``We'll see if Masego can crack the enchantments on the armours,'' I
said. ``It's unlikely there will be enough of those to equip more than a
handful of elite units, but that would be troublesome enough on its
own.''

I got grimaces of agreement. Ogres were bloody difficult to kill, unless
you had either magic or munitions to deploy against them. It was a
clever decision for Marshal Nim to focus on stripping the sorcery option
from us, considering the Army of Callow had been in chronic munition
deficit for essentially its entire existence.

``Losses in supplies were not as grave as they could have been,''
Juniper continued. ``We changed the layout of the supply depots compared
to standard Legion camp templates-''

\emph{She} had, actually, making a point of it before we began marching,
but my marshal wasn't the boasting type.

``-so our current tallies have the losses mostly in dried meat and
grain, about a third of our total stock,'' she continued. ``If our
numbers stay roughly the same, Catherine, we're now down to roughly four
months of food.''

From six to four, huh. Four months for an army that could use the Ways
was a very different beast than for an army that couldn't, but this had
still been uncomfortably costly. A lot of food had gone up in flame
tonight.

``If you had to guess,'' I said, ``were they able to figure out what our
total amount of supplies would be?''

She flicked her fangs uneasily.

``It's likely,'' Juniper admitted. ``They might be slightly off, but the
quantities were roughly even between depots and there are only so many
places in a camp to put those.''

Which meant that by morning High Lord Sargon would know that we couldn't
afford to siege Wolof if we were going to do anything else this campaign
season. There just wasn't enough food in our possession to spend months
besieging him and then war elsewhere. In other words, our negotiating
position with him had just been dealt a severe blow.

``We'll hit Wolof tomorrow, then,'' I said. ``There's no more time to
waste. The moment the Concocter is done with the powder I'll set out.''

``It'd be for the best,'' Juniper agreed.

``Sargon's unlikely to ask for talks when he has the advantage, so in a
way this lends us an additional dose of discretion,'' Vivienne noted.
``Yet that brings me to the last of our outstanding issues: the
prisoners for Wolof.''

``They've been ransomed,'' I said, though my tone was neutral.

It wasn't a commitment so much as a statement. The High Lord of Wolof
had paid the gold I'd asked for, and promptly too.

``We don't have that ransom anymore,'' Juniper said, ``and it was taken
by his empress. That's on him too.''

It was, I wouldn't disagree with that.

``You want to keep them?'' I asked.

``That or hang them,'' Juniper bluntly said. ``We've been taken for a
ride, Catherine. Maybe a point needs to be made.''

``I don't think Sargon actually has anything to do with this,'' I
admitted. ``This has all the telltale marks of a Legion operation and he
would have no pull there. This seems like an attack by Marshal Nim on
our supplies that got a secondary objective tacked on.''

``Malicia \emph{would} gain from our going back on our word here,''
Vivienne said. ``It would make Praesi lords warier of striking bargains
with us.''

My eyes narrowed as I followed the threads.

``She wins if we give them over too,'' I spoke through gritted teeth.
``Rubies to piglets that ransom gold is going straight back to Sargon's
coffers, and very publicly. She'd be proving she can score victories
against us \emph{and} that she's still protecting her vassals.''

Hells, the way it neatly landed her a win no matter what we did had me
more convinced this was a Malicia ploy than anything else I'd heard
tonight. It was \emph{exactly} the kind of plot she liked use. I passed
a hand through my hair tiredly.

``We release them come dawn, as I promised,'' I finally said. ``I'd
rather let her flash her feathers than risk burning bridges we'll need
to cross when treaties are made.''

For all that I'd come here with an army, it wasn't conquest I was after.
And if I started letting Malicia bait me into hanging prisoners, she'd
keep doing that until Praesi considered me not worth negotiating with.
\emph{Or I'll have to let things ago after taking a hard stance the
first time and changing tacks will make me look witless.} Fucking
Malicia. She really was a devil to deal with, when she had a good
general to play off of. I could only imagine how much worse it would be
if she still had Black under her. Angry as I was at how we'd been had, I
mastered myself. Fine, she'd stuck a knife in us and it had stung. This
was the kind of game she most excelled at and we were in her own
backyard.

Tomorrow, we'd do things \emph{my} way.