Merse gazed blankly and silently, merely a vessel at the moment waiting for more words to be poured into him. Praulth's fists bunched.
"So, there's to be no Battle of Torran Flats."
"No, Premier," Praulth said, struggling to keep her voice from choking. The trap had failed. She had failed. But this wasn't over yet. "We'll have to fight another battle."
In her mind she imagined the fearsome Petgradite premier astride his horse, officers from dozens of disparate states looking to him for victory, troops by the thousands trusting that they were in the capable military hands of the Alliance's leader. She imagined the night winds blowing, the stark moon overhead, the torches flickering and the arms and armored bodies creaking and clanging. An army waiting to act. And Cultat there at its heart.
He wouldn't despair, though. He wouldn't succumb to fear. Cultat was fierce, and he was a visionary. Without him no Alliance would ever have been assembled in the first place. And Praulth would not have the opportunity she now had, to engage Dardas in final decisive combat.
"Praulth..." Merse said; then, tone shifting, added, "General Praulth, I rely on you."
She looked away from Merse, down at the maps. With the speedy and meticulous intelligence she was receiving, she could keep abreast of this battle moment to moment. She could relay tactics to Cultat. She could fight the war from this very room, engage Dardas blow for blow. Her talent as a war scholar and, much more, her ability to apply that trenchant knowledge actively and effectively would determine victory or defeat for the Alliance, for the Isthmus.
Praulth didn't now pause to consider how this would affect her and her lofty future place in history. At the moment nothing seemed less important.
"Premier, mobilize your third and seventh companies. Fortify your weak strength unit in the forward rank. Bring up your cavalry on the eastward line. It's time for the Felk to meet their enemy."
A night battlefield. She knew this, knew the armies would be engaging by torchlight, by star and moonlight. The images came to her, sidling in upon the cold and clear war logic that gripped her mind. She glimpsed the liquid spill of firelight over the armored bodies. She saw the melange of Alliance troops, their varying uniforms, assembled unlike the Felk for a cause of defense. Hold these lands against the sweeping invaders from the north. That was the unifying motive. And it had thrown together peoples who had, until very recently, been traditional antagonists. This Alliance... such a hodgepodge. How could it function?
Cultat was there. Na Niroki Cultat. Premier of Petgrad. He would hold the miscellany together. He would make them work as one. Praulth would be strategizing, yes; Praulth would be deciphering the enemy's movements and concocting the countering maneuvers. But Cultat would execute the reality of this battle, and without him, all her intellectual and tactical talent would be meaningless.
If she ever saw the premier alive again, she would tell this to him. She would say it quite humbly and sincerely.
Merse's hands were busy with a number of different trinkets, items well-handled and thereby impressed by whichever Far Speak operator he was currently linked to. Actually it seemed he was communicating with several at once, a feat that had to require some effort and skill. He remained on the dais with Praulth.
"Lateral move," Merse said. Sweat stood out on his forehead. "East... here. This company, this." He was stabbing at a map with his finger, indicating a specific Felk unit.
Praulth noted it. The maneuver resonated. It had many possible meanings—feint, supporting posture, outright assault. It was idiosyncratic of Dardas. This was how he fought. He put his forces into play and moved them about in unexpected patterns. He worked deep, weaving tactics inside tactics, confusing his opponents.
But Praulth's answering movement was clear to her. A unit of Alliance archers was nearby. They were to take positions. Whatever Dardas meant to do, the Felk company would be covered.
She told this to Merse. He relayed it.
The first actual combative contact between the armies had come. The Felk had made a thrust, a foray with a unit of infantry. It wasn't meant to break the Alliance lines. It was, to Praulth's eyes, the signal that this fight wouldn't wait for the daylight. Dardas was eager. Dardas had recognized the canny trap within the trap that had been laid, and he expressly wanted it known that he could not be fooled.
Such was how Praulth interpreted the gambit. The Felk infantry had been met. The clash was quick, casualties had resulted, and the Felk thrust was withdrawn. Blood was on the ground now. It wasn't going to be the last spilled tonight.
Those deaths weren't remote to her. They weren't as the lives lost in ancient battles that she read about, times so distantly past that whole generations had died off since.
Yet she didn't allow the thought of that newly shed blood to paralyze her. Soldiers would die tonight, members of this hastily amassed Alliance, and they would die in engagements that she had devised. But they had come together to fight off the Felk. They would supply whatever sacrifices needed to be made in this cause. Praulth owed them her best efforts, her keenest wits.
"Movement," Merse said. Xink had brought him a seat, and he had fallen heavily into it. He was presently clutching a small silver medallion looped with a thong of old leather. Praulth couldn't see what it was. "Middle ranks. A company is moving forward, toward the front."
Praulth noted the place on a map. Dardas was moving a unit forward from the rear. Cavalry? Infantry?
Wizards.
Merse's weathered features were tightened across the bones of his face. Abruptly he lurched to his feet, the movement violent. The chair clattered off the dais behind him. His hand opened, and the medallion bounced off the table and rolled out of sight.
His eyes widened and shot through Praulth. "My boy," he said, voice hoarse and slight. "He's gone."
A scout lost. A valuable Far Speak scout. But the pale and sudden loss on Merse's face was something else. This was the loss of one of his children, his son. How incalculable a loss was that?
"How did it happen?" Praulth asked. She reached a hand across the table, took Merse's wrist. She meant it to be forceful, to wrench him back from his shock, to delay it until there was time for it. Instead, her touch was gentle. She held him to comfort him.
Merse's jaw moved, tiny muscles bunching below the ear. Finally he said, "Fire."
"Fire?"
"His last word."
"Wizards," Praulth said.
Merse nodded solemnly.
The Felk fire magic had been used minimally during the war so far. The Felk had until now only been overrunning villages and invading cities. These were places they meant to occupy, and they wanted these sites left relatively undamaged. Surely fire magic had played a part in U'delph's razing, but here, on this battlefield, there was nothing to hold them back from full use of this offensive magic.
"Find out the range," she said, and now her fingers did tighten around Merse's wrist.
He wasn't drifting away entirely into the shock and sorrow that was his due. He straightened up and snatched an article from his pocket, gripping it fiercely, with an air of determination. He gave her a last sharp look before the link was established and said, "I won't fail you."
Praulth knew that he wouldn't.
He relayed the information to her. Apparently the fire producing magicians could only use their talents within a fairly limited range and at a finite intensity. They couldn't, for instance, hurl great clouds of fire across the prairie at the Alliance ranks. They seemed—Praulth assimilated the rapidly incoming reports—to be able to cause combustion only among the Alliance's most advanced units. Among these had been the one that included the Far Speak scout.