webcrawl/APGTE/Book-6/tex/Ch-094.md.tex

\hypertarget{chapter-68-opposition}{%
\section{Chapter 68: Opposition}\label{chapter-68-opposition}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``No matter how long you glare at the sun, it will not blink
first.''}

-- Taghreb saying
\end{quote}

I missed using a shield.

It didn't really fit with my fighting style anymore -- digging in when
you had a bad leg was a good way to trip and stumble into a very stupid
death -- but there'd been something both comforting and satisfying about
having a large slab of metal to put between myself and the enemy. Now I
had to keep my eye on the enemy at all times, to gauge and parry and
manoeuver without rest. Just taking the hit and then smashing my foes
had been both simpler and, honesty compelled me to admit, viscerally
satisfying in a way that all this finesse and calculation wasn't. I knew
a thing or two about pulling strings, these days, but I suspected that
deep down it was the lessons of the Pit that'd always stay engraved in
bones: blood and sinew, the vicious satisfaction of just \emph{decking
someone in the face}.

Still, it felt good to engage sword in hand. I slapped aside the
skeleton's blow -- strong but slow, and so very predictable -- and
smashed its bare skull with the pommel of my sword, a shiver of Night
accompanying the crack of bone breaking. The necromancy keeping it
animate broke and the pile of bones collapsed, leaving me free to cast a
glance around. The enemy had successfully scaled the wall in the centre
stretch after making a ramp out of dead, wet ghouls that fireballs
couldn't touch but the other two attempts at the extremities of the
Boot's `sole' had failed when the Light of House Insurgent incinerated
the attempts in a way that magefire could not.

Now even here, where we'd been taken by surprise, the last of the dead
were being put down as I watched. It'd not been a major setback, all in
all, with perhaps only two hundred skeletons and ghouls making it up
here before they were surrounded and contained, but it'd had the
potential to turn dangerous. If the enemy had kept pouring troops there,
it could have turned into a beachhead. Yet I found, even as my soldiers
began to cheer our temporary victory, that my heart did not lift. My
eyes remained on the silhouettes in the distance, the utterly still
ranks of the dead standing just outside of the range of our ballistas.

Even though this had been a weak foothold, and made in a place where my
army would have rather sharp teeth in its counterattack -- our defences
were geared around holding the peninsula first and foremost, since we'd
known it would likely face the worst of the assaults -- it \emph{had}
been a foothold. The first the enemy had managed to keep since they'd
begun their attacks this morning. Yet the enemy general had not
reinforced his attacking force after sending that first wave of three
thousand or so, leaving the three prongs to fail and be wiped out. Most
of the enemy army had never engaged, and was watching us in silence even
now. Waiting, patient as only the soldiers of the grave could be.

``What are you up to now?'' I murmured, leaning against my staff.

The general I was facing this time was canny in the way that the
intelligence behind the Second Battle of Lauzon's Hollow hadn't been.
That thing with the ghoul ramps? It'd been an adaptation to the fact
that, as long as Archer had unravellers to use as arrows, she was a hard
counter to Keter's usual tactic of using large constructs as siege ramps
and troop transports. The artefacts were too precious to be used on
ghouls, especially when they were being used by the hundreds here. In
fact the only constructs we'd seen used so far had been the great snakes
that'd beached near the fort, and those had stayed under the water until
the very last moment.

\emph{We are being tested}, I thought, eyes watching the rows of the
dead. Three thousand of the most expendable among the undead gathering
to face us as Maillac's Boot had just been tossed at my defences like
scraps off a plate, just to test the strengths and weakness of our
arrangements. \emph{And you sent a handful of a Revenants out}, I then
thought, \emph{to probe what kind of Named there are on our side too.}
It was a good thing, I grimly thought, that I'd always intended to keep
Masego and Akua back as long as possible. Even just the awareness of
their presence might have been enough to forewarn my enemy some.

The cheers washed over me and I painted a smile on my face, raising my
sword in victory to roars of approval, but the joy did not reach my
eyes. I wasn't so sure we'd truly gotten the better out of this round,
not in the way that mattered, and that unsettled me. Still, I could
hardly bemoan about what looked like a win to most of my soldiers. I
went around and gave praise and encouragement where they should go,
limping along the rampart to harden the spine of my soldiers before the
next assault. Time passed and the sun kept rising in the sky, the hour
slowly edging away from Morning Bell and towards Noon Bell, and though
the quiet on the fronts was pleasing to my soldier it had dread slowly
settling in my stomach.

We'd been seen through.

Under the excuse of having a drink of water -- the sun was hammering
down hard, and we were all baking in our helmets -- I left the wall and
settled further in, having discreetly sent for General Hune. I stood in
the shadow cast by the ogre, pulling at a canteen, and wiped my mouth as
I nodded back to her greetings.

``They're not attacking,'' I bluntly said.

I wasn't saying anything she or anyone with eyes didn't already know,
but the two of us knew the danger represented by that sentence. We'd
been counting on our enemy hitting us as soon as it could assemble a
wave, trying to grind us down through constant battle, but instead the
opposition had called a halt after a single major assault.

``They must be waiting for the second wave to arrive,'' General Hune
said. ``That complicates matters, Your Majesty.''

It fucking well did. For one, we wouldn't be dealing with twenty
thousand undead and then later that day thirty -- or perhaps even forty
-- thousand more. The opposition was gathering for a single sweep, an
overwhelming wave. That was\ldots{} problematic. It wasn't like we'd not
considered the possibility that the enemy would try to besiege us
instead of battle on our terms, but we'd never meant to actually stay
here long enough for it to be an issue. The plan had been to break the
first two waves and then evacuate before the third could arrive, using
the pharos device to open a large enough amount of gates for it to be
feasible, but this changed things. The moment we actually used the
device, now, \emph{then} the enemy would begin its attack. Whoever the
leading commander on the other side was, they'd clearly grasped the core
weakness of my position: an evacuation through the Twilight Ways when
under assault meant that at least my rearguard was going to get
slaughtered.

Facing fifty thousand dead, though, and all the horrors Keter had to
unleash? Shit, we'd maybe lose a third of the ten thousand soldiers of
the Second Army on our way out.There'd be a point in the battle where
three thousand or so soldiers would be trying to squeeze through the
gates while surrounded on all sides and without the support of the rest
of the army. Juniper had run war games, and when that tipping point was
reached what ensued was\ldots{} grim, to say the least. \emph{Fuck}. If
the dead had been intending on standing there and doing nothing as we
left I would have waved them on my way out and called it a day, but
there was no way they'd be willing to do me that favour.

``Your opinion?'' I asked.

``We must prepare for a fighting retreat into the ways and use the
pharos device the moment our forces are in place,'' General Hune replied
without hesitation. ``Within the hour at most. The second wave will
begin arriving soon, and it will only get worse from there.''

I hummed noncommittally. I got from her words that the ogre general was
seeing this as a choice needing to be made between two fighting
retreats: one begun now, while the enemy was not yet fully gathered, or
one begun later when it had. There would be no extracting ourselves from
this without losing a few fingers. Much as I did not like to consider
it, I honestly wasn't sure she was wrong. We'd made plans for the enemy
showing restraint, so it wasn't like we were going into this blind --
officers had been briefed, we'd even planned out which parts of the
defences should be abandoned first -- but we'd never really considered
that the enemy would just toss three thousand expendables at us and then
just\ldots{} stand there.

Even our worst case had the enemy pulling out after effective losses of
half its number, choosing to bolster the second wave rather than waste
the rest of its numbers on a fruitless assault.

``We could attempt to break out towards the east,'' I finally said.

``I will obey that order if it is given,'' General Hune blandly replied.

I cocked an eyebrow.

``But,'' I said, invitation implicit.

``It is my opinion that we would find ourselves in the same situation as
now in a day, only without the fortifications and retreat plan,'' Hune
said. ``Even going on the offensive and attempting to smash the first
wave before the second arrives would be a superior option, to my eye. We
would incur losses, but should we then retreat to our fortifications our
original plan could then be resumed, if at a disadvantage.''

I grimaced. Taking a swing at the dead in the swamp wasn't really
something I wanted to do unless there was no other option: the undead
would be better at fighting in the muck, and it wasn't like Keter had
even been shy about poisoning water. No, an attack of my infantry into
that mire was a dead end. And yet I had some difficulty resigning myself
to making a decision that would be, in essence, writing off a third of
the Second Army. The thought had me clenching my fingers, even though
the cold thing that lay at the heart of me knew that I'd give the order
if I had to, but I would not bend my neck to this ending before first
attempting otherwise.

``We'll attempt to force them into an attack first,'' I said. ``My
people have been working on a project that might leave them no other
option -- and even if they manage to withstand it, we'll first be able
to thin the herd before retreating.''

General Hune's eyes narrowed.

``Then Your Majesty agrees that a retreat is in order,'' she said.

``I do,'' I admitted. ``And you'll need to inform your officer cadres we
might be headed there. But first I want to see if the dead can be
strong-armed into wasting themselves on our walls.''

``And might you do that?'' the ogre skeptically asked.

``By making it clear it's the least wasteful option left to them,'' I
replied with a hard smile.

It was time to for Masego to come out.

---

``I've not managed to increase the effective range,'' Hierophant
admitted, ``not laterally, at least.''

``Which still leaves vertically,'' I grunted. ``If the Summoner makes a
flying beast and we strap your platform to the back, can you cast?''

He mulled over that for a moment.

``Yes,'' Masego finally said. ``I cannot promise the same degree of
precision that the solid ground would allow for, however.''

``If there's one good thing about our situation, Zeze,'' I said, ``it's
that even if you miss, you'll hit.''

``That sounds like a blatant logical contradiction,'' he noted, ``but I
will take your word for it.''

``Kind of you,'' I drily replied. ``I'll be handling the Summoner, so
ready your affairs and wait for us on the Boot.''

The Summoner's reaction to the order was mixed: on one hand, he had
cowardly tendencies and preferred not to put himself in great danger.
It'd already spread through the ranks that some of the Scourges were
here. On the other hand, I'd made it clear that this was a crucial task
I'd attend to as well and that'd flattered his self-importance. Still,
there was no arguing with a direct order from me when it came to
battlefield affairs. The wyvern-construct still had that unearthly glow,
but it looked much more sharply defined now. I could make out the shift
of muscles when it moved, and there was an animal cunning in its eyes.
It was also smart enough to be terrified of Hierophant, which was plain
good sense.

The Summoner had warned me that it might get unruly when Masego tied a
flat circular stone atop its back, but instead the construct did not
dare move a muscle. It behaved around Hierophant the same way a deer
would around a lion -- frozen and hoping the predator wasn't hungry
today. We took flight without much fanfare, to sparse cheers from my
soldiers. I wove an anchor for my feet on the wyvern's back and added a
transparent bubble to shield me from the winds. The Summoner led us
towards the enemy ranks, as I'd asked him to, but stayed high in the
sky. We'd yet to see buzzards in the area so our flight was not
contested, though I doubted that would last forever.

We circled slowly atop the front ranks of the enemy, Masego wresting
magic from a few spare artifacts so he might steady himself atop the
circular stone. A bubble rather similar to mine formed around him, and I
shouted for the Summoner to halt the construct's flight and make it stay
in place. Long, deft fingers began to trace runes in the air as I risked
a glance downwards. The dead were splayed out for what must have been
the better part of a mile but none were paying attention to us at the
moment. Safety through heights? It \emph{was} true that without buzzards
around Keter would find it hard to contest our presence up here. We were
high up enough that neither arrows nor javelins were a worry, and magic
would be seen long before it became a threat.

``Abyss and firmament,'' the Hierophant said, and though his voice was
quiet it \emph{rippled}. ``I take the shape of the star and the depth of
the pit, borrowing laws high and low.''

Below us, moving as a single entity, seventeen thousand undead heads
turned to gaze up at us.

``That can't be good,'' I muttered.

``I have woven curses into hymn, stuffed a heart with straw,'' the
Hierophant called out, voiced cadenced. ``That which is hollow I have
raised onto the dais, revered as glorious under three skies and revered
by nine corners.''

From below a tide of darkness rose, but I realized after a heartbeat
that it was not a ritual. It was a few thousand curses, thrown at us
together from as many hands. I clenched my staff closely, hoping to the
Hells that Masego was done with that incantation soon.

``Behold,'' the Hierophant said.

I winced, covering my ears at the horrid grind that lay behind the word.
The Sisters murmured uneasily in the back of my mind.

``Behold,'' the Hierophant said, ``all ye with eyes, for I have made a
god of clay and it is an idol of \textbf{wrath}.''

The sky screamed. There was no other word for it. The air wavered and
shrieked and twisted, an alien gleam filling my vision as I pulled down
my hood to shield my eyes. As if a god had breathed out in front of us,
the wyvern banked wildly and had to struggle not to fall -- the Summoner
screamed, voice shrilly -- but after less than a heartbeat the pressure
was all gone. I first glimpsed Masego, panting as he stood surrounded by
fading runes, and only after making sure he was fine did I glance down.
\emph{Gods}, I thought. There was a smoking crater in the swamp, maybe a
hundred feet wide, and though water was streaking back in it looked like
the\ldots{} smite had baked the very mud. How many undead had been
vaporized with that, I wondered. Two, three hundred? Likely more, and a
great wave was going through the swamp that toppled more than a few
soldiers. Of the curses that had been rising to hit us, there was no
trace. Much like, I thought, a child throwing a pebble into the path of
falling mountain would not be able to pick it out afterwards.

``Can you do that again?'' I asked, tone calm.

``I believe so,'' Masego noted. ``Though not many times.''

``Then do it,'' I ordered with a hard smile.

Power began to gather again, and below us I found exactly what I'd
wanted: advancing as one, the dead were headed towards the Second Army.
\emph{Decisive}, I silently praised the enemy general. The moment they'd
realized that it was possible we'd just stay up here and hammer them
into nothing, they'd abandoned the notion of sieging my army and begun
to close the distance. If the dead were too close to my own troops,
after all, it'd be risky to keep using this. Still, they weren't out of
the woods yet. I wove Night over my ears and dug my feet in, as Masego's
voice swelled in incantation again, wondering how many shots we'd get in
before he was too exhausted to continue.

The answer, as it turned out, was six.

It didn't matter, as by then the enemy was committed to an assault on
all our defences and all that pulling out would accomplish was allow us
to smash the undead army as it retreated. We flew back to the Boot, and
though I was wary the whole way back there was no ambush. Bo buzzards
came out of nowhere, no Revenants were tossed up in the sky. It made
sense, I admitted to myself, since we weren't fighting a field army here
so much as a bunch of warbands and marching columns tossed in our
direction when we popped out. I supposed it was a testament to how
fucking unpleasant of an adversary the Dead King was that even when luck
allowed us to get one over him I still ended up unsure it wasn't a ploy
on his part.

``Your service in this campaign has been exemplary,'' I told the
Summoner after her dismissed his wyvern.

Much as I disliked the man personally, he'd ended up consistently
useful. Being unpleasant didn't mean he shouldn't get praised, just that
it'd irk me to dole it out.

``I am pleased to have my worth recognized by my queen,'' the Summoner
replied, smirking. ``I hope to continue to be of service after these
trifles, of course.''

My eyes narrowed. The little shit had been born and raised and Procer,
as far as I knew, but he had been insisting he was Callowan for some
time. The offer of `continued service' was pretty straightforward,
meaning he wanted to settle in Callow after the war and probably
expected a lordship to be tacked on to sweeten the deal. Considering he
wasn't all that difficult to deal with and his ambitions seemed
relatively limited, I wasn't necessarily opposed to that. So long as it
was a court title with no lands attached. Mind you, that wasn't my
decision alone to make. I wasn't foisting him off on Vivienne without
giving her a say in the matter.

``I look forward to it,'' I mildly said, ``and will pass along your
sentiments to Lady Dartwick.''

``It would be an honour,'' the Summoner said, ``to make her
acquaintance.''

Yeah, that one definitely wanted to settle in Callow after the war. I
wasn't sure I could blame him, considering short of Praes it'd probably
end up one of the nations that least minded villains. So long as he
stayed loyal to crown and country, it was not an inaccurate assessment
for him to figure he'd not only be tolerate but actively protected. If
he was loyal then he would be considered as an asset, and Vivienne was
of a practical bent when it came to protecting Callowan interests. Some
of the decisions I had made she would not ever repeat, but that did not
meant she was naïve -- just that she was not as good as ignoring the
whispers of her conscience.

I escorted Masego to a healer's tent so he might rest, ignoring his
protests, and only then went to join the battle. His exhaustion was not
a threat to his health, but the healers were unlikely to let him out of
a bed in his state and Zeze's fathers had drilled into him the paramount
importance of not ignoring what your healer told you. It'd been with the
addendum that priests were fumbling ignorant cheats and this rule mostly
applied to mage healers, but I liked to think the years had mostly
weaned Masego out of that instilled disdain.

There was no lack of enemies for me to fight anywhere along the
defensive lines, but it was on the Boot that I stayed. Even as swarms of
skeletons and ghouls assaulted the walls and my soldiers stubbornly held
on the walls, retreating only when officers pulled on their whistles and
fresh troops were rotated in, I smothered a smile. This was hard
fighting, but it was also a victory of sorts: the enemy and I had stared
each other down across this swamp, and with Masego's help it had been
the enemy that blinked first. Now it was bleeding away its strength
failing to take our walls, and though it was not without casualties on
our side the advantage was decisively ours.

For every soldier we lost they lost four, and our wounded weren't left
to die -- they were pulled back, brought to the healer tents. I moved
along the wall, sticking to wherever the fight was hardest, and through
thrice the enemy earned a foothold atop the wall thrice that foothold
was clawed back. As the time passed, though, the lack of Revenants
entering the fray began to weigh on me. The opposing general was keeping
its trump cards away from us, unwilling to risk them before what was
likely to be the decisive stretch: the assault of the second wave.
Still, this round went well for us. When it became undeniable than any
more lingering would lead to a complete wipeout the enemy broke away,
limping back into the swamps under the fire of our mages and the House
Insurgent.

I headed towards my general's tent when the last of the dead walked out
of range, intent on hearing casualty reports. Though the official
reports were still incomplete, Hune already had estimates when I found
her: at least five hundred dead and seven hundred wounded. Even for a
well-prepared defensive action, I found the numbers astonishing and told
her as much. Her general staff preened, but she was unmoved.

``It is only initial reports, Your Majesty,'' General Hune said. ``We
will see if the real figures remain so flattering.''

``I expect they will,'' I said. ``The Second Army had yet to fail a
single expectation I set out for it.''

Not that I'd set out many, but a little praise could go a long way.
Officers gossiped with officers, and that gossip had a way of trickling
down to the ranks. After that, though, I headed to my own tent. I'd been
fighting sporadically since early morning and drawing on Night
regularly, so I was damn exhausted. Since Archer was keeping an eye out
for necromantic constructs, still on her perch, it was one of the
phalanges that helped me out of my armour. It was now almost an hour
past Noon Bell, I learned, and I recalled that we believed the second
wave would begin arriving slightly before Afternoon Bell. That still
left me at least an hour and change to nap, which I hoped would refresh
me when the next round of fighting came.

Gods knew that my leg ached like a bloody wound, at the moment, and
staying on my feet would only make it worse. I crawled into bed with
strict instructions to wake me if there was another assault, but
otherwise leave me to my slumber for at least an hour. Clutching a
blanket, I spent the first few moments wondering what my enemy's plan
were and if I would find sleep at all, but before I knew it exhaustion
had triumphed over worry: I fell into a deep, dark slumber.

---

I woke up tasting my sweat against the roof of my mouth, likely stinking
all the way up to the Heavens. Most of my affairs were already packed,
in deference to the rapidly approaching need to evacuate this place, but
there was still a bowl of water for me to rinse myself up a little. It
was hardly a wash, but what would be the point? I was headed back into
the thick of it anyway, and the afternoon soon would be no more kind
than the morning one had been. I'd woken before any of the phalanges
could wake me, and found a pair of them standing guard outside my tent.

``I'll need one of you to help me back into my armour,'' I said. ``And
reports, meanwhile.''

As it turned out, during my hour of sleep I'd missed little. The enemy
had pulled back even further than before, and while General Hune
believed that the vanguard of the second wave might have begun to arrive
early there'd been no way to be sure. Sending scouts into that swamp,
even our nimblest goblins, would just be throwing away lives. I decided
to speak with Hune before returning to the fronts, to get a read on when
she believed we should pull the trigger on the pharos device, and
inquired as to her whereabouts as I fastened the Mantle of Woe over my
armour.

``She is in her tent, Your Majesty,'' the young phalange told me.
``Speaking with her staff tribune, I believe.''

Good, at least I knew the way. Though my limp was not quick it was
steady, and with my sword back on my belt I made my way to the tent. I
was a mere thirty feet away from it when a splash of red in the sky to
the south caught my attention. A signal spell, I thought. An attack on
the palisade? An assault would have been seen coming, though, and I
would have heard of it. Unless it was a strike by Revenants, I thought,
but it seemed a bold and unnecessary gambled on the enemy general's
part. Perhaps a force had been snuck out under an obfuscation spell.
Regardless, with the Grey Pilgrim there and reinforcements no doubt
already on their way I had little to worry about.

Two guards were standing outside of Hune's tent, but their stances were
natural. It wasn't that that gave it away. It was the \emph{scent}. I'd
known enough battlefields that I would recognize the scent of fresh
blood anywhere. Stomach dropping I hurried forward, tapping one of the
guards gently with my staff only to see the armoured orc topple --
already dead, just propped up to look as if still alive. The scent of
blood was even thicker inside the tent, I smelled as I forced open the
flap, but it was my ears that I was relying on and it saved my life. I
heard the spin of the throwing knife that should have buried itself in
my left eye and hastily ducked down, just in time to see a grey-cloaked
figure turn away from me.

The Varlet. I'd recognize the cloak anywhere.

And just as I drew on Night, spinning up a work, I saw the Varlet dance
around a blow of the tall, roaring Hune -- made silent by some aspect,
for all her shouting -- and flicker forward to carve open my general's
throat.