If Rudolfo was as strong as Vlad had made him to be, the war would soon be behind him. The library would be underway. The Order would limp to the shadows and simply die of its wound. His daughter would raise a child that mixed the Gypsy King’s strength with the cunning of the Tam. The light would flickeUht andr but would not go out.
But at what cost?
Vlad Li Tam sighed and sipped his pipe again.
Rudolfo
Rudolfo crouched at the forest line and felt the magicks take him. Twice now the unseemly task fell to him, and as much as he disliked it, it was necessary and practical if he were to accompany his men on the raid.
As if reading his mind, Gregoric shifted uncomfortably beside him, and Rudolfo heard the muffled crunch of pine needles. “I wish you’d reconsider, Rudolfo,” the first captain said, voice muffled with the magicks. He’d dropped the title… something he only did when he was speaking more as friend than soldier.
Rudolfo looked at the patch of night where Gregoric crouched. “You’ve known me for how long, Gregoric?”
“All of my life.”
He nodded. “Then you’ve known what I would do since we crafted the strategy for tonight’s work.”
Rudolfo felt a hand on his shoulder. “Aye,” Gregoric said, “I’ve known it. But the world has changed, and so has your role in it.”
Change is the path life takes, Rudolfo thought, remembering the words of P’Andro Whym. “You suggest that for the benefit of the library, I take less risk?”
“Not just the library,” Gregoric said. “All that’s left of the Androfrancines is in your care and in the care of your Ninefold Forest Houses. You’ve also a wife and a people to think of now.” Gregoric paused, and Rudolfo could read the hesitation in his voice. “If you fall,” the first captain said, “this war will be over for us. If you fall, what’s left of the light may go out.”
Rudolfo loosened the twin scout blades in their sheaths at his belt. He preferred his long, narrow sword, but the magicks were better suited for knife-fighting, especially in the close quarters they allowed. “I will not fall, Gregoric,” he said in a low voice.
Rudolfo heard the thunder now, building in the north, and waited. When the Marsh King’s army appeared, moving fast and low across the plains and bathed in the blue green light of the moon, it looked like a black ocean rolling across the land. They rode silently, even Hanric, bearing down ?theon the Entrolusian advance camps. Rudolfo stood and stretched. He could feel the magicks in his blood now, itching beneath his skin. He could smell the sweat of the horses behind him, mingled with the scent of ash and snow.
The Entrolusians had expected the attack. They’d leaked word to one of the spies they’d turned and had given him time to get that word to Lysias.
The first Entrolusian advance camp moved to third alarm and launched their birds long before the Marsh King’s army poured over them.
Farther west, another camp went into alarm, and Rudolfo smiled. That would be Meirov’s rangers.
“It’s time,” Rudolfo said, drawing his knives and tucking them underneath his arms, blades pointing behind him.
Gregoric whistled, and the squad moved out.
They ran south and east, the magicks muffling their boots as they whispered across the snow. Rudolfo felt his heart pumping, and the darkness melted back to a gray light as his eyes adjusted to the powders. He could hear the fighting now in the front lines and he picked up his pace, watching the open ground vanish between him and the far side of the meadow.
They hit the forest and spread out, adjusting their course to avoid the pockets of infantry racing toward the front lines.
As they ran, they clicked their tongues lightly against the roofs of their mouths from time to time-the slightest of sound, but with the amplification of their hearing, it was enough to get a sense of their loose formation. Rudolfo stayed in the center and made no sound at all.
Two leagues slipped past in the span of minutes, and they widened their circle in order to flank Sethbert’s camp. If Vlad Li Tam’s source in that camp spoke true, the mechanicals were stored in the center, near the tents of the Delta Scouts and not far from Sethbert’s massive canvas palace.
Behind them, the sounds of fighting grew. It was a simple bit of misdirection, Rudolfo realized, that he hoped Lysias would fall for. They had counted on the mechanicals being guarded, but expected the Entrolusian general to shift resources to Sethbert when the bird arrived.
They rallied at the pile of moss-covered boulders Gregoric had picked for them during his reconnaissance. Rudolfo watched the small bird materialize seemingly out of air. It fluttered in invisible hands before Gregoric released it.
They’d captured one of Lysias’s small messengers earlier in the week, and Vlad Li Tam had helped forge the coded message. The urgency of the message, delivered in the midst of an attack on the Entrolusian front lines, should be enough to give them the opening they needed.
Unless, Rudolfo thought, Sethbert had so eroded Lysias’s loyalty that the general refused to intervene. But he counted on Lysias’s academy training for this. No general from that austere school needed loyalty to do his job, and Rudolfo’s strategy relied upon that.
They waited while the bird shot up, then found its mark. The camp was already in the third alarm, bustling with activity as fresh squads of magicked scouts raced north to the fighting and took up positions to reinforce the camp’s perimeter. But Rudolfo’s squad was already inside that perimeter, slipping in through the temporary hole Lord Tam’s man had arranged.
Huddled near the boulders, they waited.
Finally, Gregoric’s hand pressed the small of Rudolfo’s back. He’s taken the bait, his fingers tapped.
Rudolfo twisted and touched Gregoric’s shoulder. Excellent, he answered. Give the whistle when you will.
He could hear Lysias shouting now, and knew that the Overseer’s tent would now be their defensive center. More reinforcements rushed past them into the night, some plain and some with the acrid odor of fresh magicks upon them.
Rudolfo held his breath until they passed.
After they’d gone, Gregoric whistled the first three bars of the First Hymn of the Wandering Army. He whistled it at a pitch Rudolfo’s heightened senses could barely perceive. Then, they were off and running again for the center of camp. Spread out, they rushed in, dodging and weaving in and out of people.
“Scouts in the camp,” a voice cried out. Other voices joined in and Rudolfo heard the snicker of steel through cloth and skin, the rasp of metal on metal as blades slid past blades and into flesh.
They did not stop, they did not even slow. They pressed, and when an obstacle presented itself they cut through it or went over it. As they ran, Gregoric’s sappers spread out into the camp to light their fires.
Gregoric and Rudolfo cut through the back of the mechoservitor tent while the others moved around it and dispatched the distracted guards. Already the shouts spread, and it would only be moments before they realized that the threat against Sethbert had been a Gypsy ruse.
“Mechoservitors arise,” Rudolfo said in a low voice. Scattered throughout the tent, amber eyes fluttered open and gears purred as the room rustled.
“We are the property of the Androfrancine Order,” one of the mechoservitors said, steam hissing from its exhaust grate.
at="re
“I am Lord Rudolfo of the Ninefold Forest Houses, General of the Wandering Army. I am the duly appointed guardian of Windwir, established in accordance with Article Fifteen of the Precepts of Order,” Rudolfo said slowly, reciting the words Petronus had given him. By all the Gods, he hoped they worked. “Section three, item six grants me the authority to redirect Androfrancine personnel and property as needed for the protection of the light.” Outside the tent, the sounds of fighting erupted. It lent urgency to his voice. “You are ordered to return to what remains of the Great Library at top running speed. You are not to stop. You are to disregard further orders until these orders are carried out completely. Do you understand?”