Van glanced over at Sang. She slowly nodded to him. It was time for the second part of the plan. Now that a clear dissenter was recognized, all it would take was a little bit of persuasion to get them to follow after Van’s ruse.
“If you think for a moment—” The wizard was interrupted as Sang broke free of her shackles and rushed toward Clara with a small knife.
“Die!” Sang shouted. “For Capello!” She leapt forward and slash her blade across Clara’s face.
“Ah! Restrain her!” Clara shouted as she shoved Sang off of her. Blood began to fall from her cheek, but the wound was superficial at best. “Are you kidding me?” she muttered as she wiped the blood off of her face. “You really think that you can kill me?”
“I think I can poison you,” Sang said with a smirk.
“Ah, crap!” Clara shouted once she realized that her health was rapidly dropping. “I need an antidote, quickly!”
“See this?” Thornton shouted, throwing his arms wide. “She can’t even keep her prisoners under control! If anyone wants to take care of this army before they obliterate us, follow me! If you’re interested in just waiting for them to kill us in the heat of battle, I suggest you stick around with her.”
Much to Van’s surprise, the entire group of soldiers began to rapidly mount up. He had underestimated how bored they would be with hanging around. His plan had been risky, but it was working beautifully. He couldn’t believe his luck.
“I’m dying here!” Clara said. “Don’t any of you guys have potions?”
“I can heal it,” Bidane said. Clara shot a look over at her. “If we walk.”
“Are you kidding me?” Clara hissed. She turned to see that most of the camp was rapidly moving out. No one was paying her any mind, instead listening to Thornton’s orders.
“Walk us out of here and you get a healing spell,” Bidane said.
“Damn you all!” Clara hissed as she rushed over and forced the rest of the party to their feet. “You had this planned, didn’t you? Did Thornton put you up to this? I doubt there’s anyone over there.”
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” Van said once his own arms were free.
“There, you’re all free. I held up my end of the bargain, which by the way I was going to do anyway. If you get a reputation for being a liar to prisoners, you lose all interrogation credibility,” Clara said.
“I think you’ll want to work on your reputation for being a leader,” Kylian said. This elicited a chuckle from the group.
“Laugh all you want, but that mouthy upstart’s just friends with the king, that’s all. He’s terrible at this game.”
“Yet, he seems to be the one in charge,” Sahara said.
Clara growled, but did nothing other than cross her arms.
Bidane waved her hands as she cast a cure spell that rid the woman of her poison.
“Hey, you jerks are with a mercenary company, right?” Clara asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“You guys recruiting? I’m sick and tired of getting passed over for favoritism,” Clara replied as she watched the last of the soldiers move out of view. “I know you were lying to me. It all makes too much sense. You get yourselves captured, you hope that someone will believe your story, and then you kill me so it causes panic. Not a bad grift.”
“What are you talking about?” Van asked as he turned to his team. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Come on!” Clara said. “I’m pretty good at this game. I’m a warrior, and I’ve got great sword skills.”
“Always could use an extra sword hand,” Kylian mumbled to Van.
“I get you, but can we trust her?” Van asked. “What if she betrays us?”
“She’d have to leave the kingdom in order to join, meaning that she’s forfeiting her war bonus and her rank,” Kylian said. “Would be a pretty crappy trade-off to get revenge on a couple of nobodies.”
Van nodded. “Alright, if you want to join, come to our camp at midnight after the fight. If you haven’t deleted your allegiance by then, we won’t accept you.”
“And how will I know if this isn’t some prank?” Clara responded.
“Trust, I guess,” Van said.
“No reason to join us if you don’t trust us,” Kylian replied.
“I’ll think about it,” Clara said as the team walked away from her. Off in the distance, Van could hear the bleating of horns and the calls of runners who were rushing back to the now barren campsite where the army had once been.
“Nice work, Van,” Kylian said as they hurried back to the cart where Kenwar was waiting for them. Much to Van’s relief, Kenwar was still sitting there.
“Thanks—I’m honestly surprised that it worked as well as it did,” Van replied.
“I’m surprised that only one of us died, and that it was Capello,” Sahara said.
“I was positive they’d stab me,” Sang said. “But I guess they were too busy thinking about fighting our nonexistent army.”
“I still think the plan was a terrible idea,” Bidane grumbled.
“Terrible or not, it worked,” Van said. “Edwardson’s not the kind of guy who’s prone to giving people resources and hints. It seems that he likes to give people impossible tasks and then trusts them to find a solution. Even if we’d all died in that plan, if we’d achieved our goal, we would have found the best solution.”
“I understand,” Bidane said, “but I don’t get why we needed to risk everyone.”
“If we weren’t all there,” Sang said, “it would have made our escape far harder.”
“You can’t realistically expect us to have escaped from that size of an army?” Bidane asked.
Van groaned. The real reason he’d wanted everyone with him was so that no one would be alone with Kenwar. He was growing far more suspicious of the man with each passing hour, and he didn’t want any of the party associating with him more than necessary.
“Quit your whining,” Kylian said. “We won, and that’s all that mattered. The reinforcements are gonna spend forever trying to chase some nonexistent army and, without relief, the Kyrissian forces are going to be wrecked. Don’t be a crybaby.”
“I’m not being a crybaby—I’m just trying to understand a tactical decision,” Bidane said as they all climbed into the back of the wagon. Kenwar didn’t say a word; he merely cracked his whip, causing the horses to move back toward the home base.
Tension continued to build as they rode. Bidane didn’t say another word, but her furrowed brow and frustrated expression were all that Van needed to know that she was feeling agitated with the entire situation. She normally wasn’t that big of a fighter when it came to making decisions, but something was bothering her. If he didn’t handle it now, it would probably come back to bite him in the long run.
Van slid over to where she was sitting and just looked out at the plains. Neither of them spoke. The creaking of the wagon wheels continued for some time until finally she looked over at him.
“I don’t feel like either you or Kylian respect me,” she said. “Don’t think that I don’t know you two have been talking behind my back.”
Van nodded. “We have been talking, discussing other business about his nephew, but he’s definitely not in charge of any kind of decision making if that’s what you’re thinking, and we haven’t been talking about you.”
“Alright. But you always look to him for advice,” she said as she faced toward the plains again. “I’m starting to wonder if you’re really as fair a leader as I think.”
“Look, we took a vote when it came to this adventure. It came up five to three,” Van said. “Everyone has an equal say here.”
“Do they?” Bidane shot back. “Because when I see everyone vote, I know for a fact that Sang is going to vote with you, Kenwar is going to vote with you, and Kylian also always votes in your favor. So how fair is that? I don’t know what kind of favoritism or sweetheart deals you have with these guys, but it’s clearly stacking the deck.”