The entire barricade erupted in chaos.
56
“I have good news and bad news.”
Demir jerked awake, flailing about himself for a weapon before remembering where he was. He lay on the floor of his tent, his uniform jacket pulled over him for warmth, surrounded by missives and spy reports. The last thing he remembered was giving out a handful of orders to tired messengers in the middle of the night. He rolled over, searching for his pocket watch before giving up and finally turning his attention to Uncle Tadeas sitting on the crate next to his head.
“I like good news,” he mumbled.
“The good news is your ruse with the National Guard worked. They moved into Grent yesterday afternoon, and we just got word that the Grent encirclement of Harbortown is broken. They’re moving south as quickly as they can.”
Demir sat up, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “Have you roused the camp? I want the cavalry ready within the hour. If we’re going to hit them on the move, we can’t waste a single moment.”
“You might want to hear the bad news first.”
“Shit.” Demir stared bleary-eyed at his uncle. “What is it?”
“Kerite’s Drakes didn’t go with them. They’re coming right toward us.”
It took a few moments for that to sink into Demir’s addled thoughts, and when it did he scrambled for his clothes. He was running out the tent flap a moment later, shouting at the line of messengers that tried to keep up. “You, tell the Third and the Eighth that we’re switching to plan C. You, get me Halfwing. I need her artillery up and ready to fire. You, tell Coordinator-Lieutenant Prosotsi that I want all support staff to pull back two miles. Tad, how long do we have?”
Tadeas pushed a messenger out of his way to keep stride with Demir. “If she comes straight at us the way she did in the Copper Hills, three hours. But there’s no telling what she’s going to do. What’s plan C?”
“You didn’t read my orders?”
“You gave me sixty pages of orders to read at four in the morning. I didn’t get past plan B.”
“I hope the rest of our officers are more dedicated to winning this glassdamned battle. Plan C is we fall into a battle formation and present ourselves exactly like General Stavri did in the Copper Hills.”
“I really hope that’s a trap, and you’re not just planning to do the same damned thing over again.”
“Of course it’s a trap.” He stopped, swinging to grab Tadeas by the front of his uniform. For the first time in years his mind felt clear. Plans within plans within plans spread out across his mind’s eye, and he wasn’t even using witglass to access them. “Remember what I said the other day? About playing the Grent?”
“Yeah, you said you can play the Grent, but you can’t play Kerite. We may outnumber her right now, but she’s coming at us like a warhorse. She’s got better troops, better godglass, and a record of never losing a battle.”
“It’s her legend. She’s good, no doubt, maybe even the best, but it’s her legend that keeps her going. It gets inside your head.” He made a motion with one finger, like a drill going into his skull. “She’s been studying me. She knows my record. She knows that I’m a broken genius, and she’s going to expect damned grand things. What’s the one thing she doesn’t know?”
“That you’ve gone completely mad?” Tadeas asked lightly.
“She doesn’t know what I’ve been doing for the last nine years. I can do this. I was the best grifter in the provinces, and what’s a general but a glassdamned gambler trying to fix the fight?”
“Gambling with people’s lives,” Tadeas reminded him.
“Yeah, I know.” Demir began to walk again. “She’s going to come over that hill over there” – he pointed to the western horizon a couple of miles away – “and she’s going to see us in exactly the same formation as she fought at the Copper Hills.”
Understanding dawned on Tadeas’s face. “And she’ll think you’re still broken. That you caved to the pressure of having to save Ossa, and the most creative thing you can think of is using our superior numbers against her rather than actual strategy. She’ll think you’re no better than General Stavri.”
Demir nodded. “I don’t want to spend the next four days dancing with her. I want her to come right for my throat so that I can punch her in the face with knuckle-dusters. I’ve already informed our officer corps that you’re my second-in-command, Tadeas.”
“I’m just a major.”
“You’re a blasted Grappo, Uncle, that has refused promotions on seven different occasions because you enjoy crawling through ditches with the Ironhorns more than taking command of large battles. Now find Halfwing. I need our artillery prepped and ready. I have three hours to make sure plan C is actually going to work on this terrain.”
In Demir’s mind’s eye, the formation of the Foreign Legion looked like an overelaborate rat trap. Seventeen battalions of infantry – almost nine thousand troops – lay spread out in loose rows across the farmland. There were few hills to use as cover, but his lone artillery battery squatted behind a stand of trees to his left, while two thousand dragoons and cuirassiers held back behind the low rise far to the right. It felt obvious, but most good traps did to whoever set them up. What mattered was what the enemy saw.
The entire army waited with bated breath. Nobody talked. The only movement came from a steady stream of messengers and short-range scouts, riding to and from the old barrow upon which Demir had planted the purple flag waving the Grappo silic sigil. Just below him, Tadeas kept up a constant dialog with those scouts and messengers. Demir watched the distant storm clouds over the Forge. He wondered if Thessa’s test would work, and hoped the storm passed north of the battle.
Out across the countryside, difficult to see because of the wooded windbreaks between farms, Demir caught his first sight of the Drakes. First, a flag with three blue dragons on a field of green. Within minutes he could see columns of infantry marching in lockstep, sweeping down from the distant hill like a wave rolling lazily toward him. He snapped his fingers at the closest messenger.
“Signal to our cavalry to move to position number two.”
Flag signals were exchanged, and he could hear – but not see – the rumble of cavalry as they shifted from their first hiding spot to their second.
The Drakes continued to approach, and Demir raised his looking glass to watch. They were an impressive lot. Their step was perfect, their uniforms were immaculate, their shouldered muskets with bayonets already fixed. Their very presence oozed confidence. A single line of cavalry moved along their left flank. Demir counted in his head, tallying estimates at a glance.
“Signal our wings,” he ordered, “tell them we’re missing about eight hundred dragoons.”
Tadeas finished with one of the scouts and climbed the barrow to stand beside Demir, gazing at the approaching army. “You really think she’s going to come straight at us?”
Demir bit back a thousand little doubts. “If I say of course will I look like more of a genius if I succeed?”
“And more of a fool if you fail,” his uncle responded.
“Yeah, but we’ll all be dead. So it won’t matter.”
“Fair enough.”
“Looks like she has two more battalions than our scouts reported,” Demir said.
“A thousand infantry is a lot of firepower. Should we shift back our grenadiers?”
Demir glanced to his left and right. He’d placed a battalion of grenadiers – heavy infantry, with cuirassier-like breastplates and sword-bayonets on reinforced muskets – on his two flanks. “No. In fact let’s signal for them to spread out just a little more. I want to look loose. Too loose.”