Through her exhaustive studies she had accrued a solid knowledge of battle strategies and methods. How engrossing it was, comparing those tactics, seeing how maneuvers and ploys were invented, then adopted by an enemy, forgotten, and resurrected years later.
Yes, it was quite interesting how dead things returned to life.
She found Master Honnis among the statuary and manicured shrubs of an atrium. Overhead the sky was black, pierced by stars and hung with the moon.
Praulth hurried out into the open-air area, sandals slapping stones, nose wrinkling at the scents of flowers and rich earth. She preferred the mustiness of paper. Seeing where Master Honnis was just now wandering out of sight behind a row of carefully pruned greenery, she scurried around to intercept him.
She didn't find him where he should be. She stood confused, the map in hand, until something small and hard glanced off her right temple. She yelped, spun, and saw the old man standing in the center of the court.
She rubbed her temple as she hurried over, not even bothering to complain that he'd thrown the pebble too hard. Such things didn't matter to her. Certainly not now, not with the incredible news she had.
Brandishing the map, she babbled breathlessly, "Here! This! The Felk attack on Callah, the positional maneuvers, see, see, the companies grouped here, here, and here, and the second assault, on Windal,
see how the cavalry and archers—"
"Stop."
She did. She couldn't have gone on at such a frantic pace much longer anyway. Running up and down corridors had already rather winded her. She realized she was acting foolishly, sputtering like a child; very unlike her, she who was always so mentally organized and able to concisely express her ideas.
"State your findings first. Support them with particulars later." Honnis's dark face, set into its habitual glower, was tilted up toward hers. Though she was substantially taller than the small gaunt man, she naturally felt dwarfed in her mentor's presence. She also had the odd feeling that the elder was easily her physical match.
He was waiting. No one in all the generations that had agonized under Master Honnis's stern tutelage had ever profited from making him wait for anything.
Avidly, with all the nervous energy of a roaring river backing up behind a dam of dead wood, she stated her findings. In a single word. In a great overwrought blast that echoed in the atrium, frightening a small yellow bird into flight and flecking her instructor's bald pate with spittle.
The one word was this: "Dardas!"
Honnis stared up at her an inscrutable, excruciating moment. Then with an odd tone of fatalism he said, "Yes." He lifted a skeletal hand. "No, I don't want to hear your supporting facts. I don't need to. I've recognized the same patterns. His stamp ... his character ... it's on this." He nodded to the map in her hand.
Praulth felt a frenzied rush of pride. She'd gotten it right! Not that she had doubted her own findings, but to hear Master Honnis himself say it was hugely gratifying. She tried to keep her excitement from showing.
The small robed man started pacing, indicating with a blunt gesture that she should come along. Flagstoned paths wound through the ornamental shrubbery. He was deep in thought, though most students wouldn't be able to tell this grave contemplative state from his normal, equally austere one.
After a moment he said, "You haven't considered."
"Considered?"
"Think, Thinker Praulth. Yes, the tactics are those of General Dardas, the Northland war commander. Unmistakably. We who have studied wars fought throughout the ages, who've devoted ourselves to anatomizing strategies, to knowing the very temperament and taste and minutiae of war leaders from all periods ... we see. We recognize. We understand."
They turned past a plot of radiant red fronds.
"But General Dardas has been dead for two and a half centuries. How can it be that his tactics are being used by the modern Felk?"
Praulth thought that obvious enough. "Someone is imitating his technique of war."
"Imitating it well, do you think?"
"Flawlessly."
"Yes. These contemporary Felk battles fit seamlessly into the old texts we have of Dardas's military maneuvers. I won't tell you the extreme lengths I've gone to to secure detailed news of this new war. Few here in Febretree care a spit's worth about it, of course. How far away it is. How safe we are from it."
Praulth listened raptly. Honnis was rarely this verbose about anything. In fact, for him, he was nearly rambling.
"Keeping up-to-date on these new war events isn't easy." A hand came out of his robe with another parchment. "I need you to study this as well. I don't want you doing anything else. Not until I say. Study. Bring me your conclusions."
He had stopped walking. So had she. The path had circled back on itself. She looked at the paper. Another battle map. This one, though, showed an advancement by the Felk army that made no sense. It was like they'd leaped forward, suddenly, inexplicably, in a way no army had or ever could move.
"I should tike to know why our General Dardas impersonator has decided to eradicate the city of U'delph," Master Honnis said. "I should like to know as soon as possible. Go now."
Praulth hurried away, unsure why her mentor's last words had just chilled her so.
SHE WOKE WITH a sudden frightful surge. Dream imagery exploded as her eyes went wide. The candle was still lit but just barely, the flame a tiny bead of yellow atop the melted stump. Her back seized up as she rocked violently into a sitting position on her bunk. She had diligently studied the map Master Honnis had given her until she'd fallen asleep here in her tiny student's cell.
The Felk army could move across great distances by magical means. The battle map said so. If it were true— and she had to believe it was—it meant this was a new type of warfare, something literally never recorded before in all the annals she had ever read.
She had dreamt of the Felk. In the dream they were overrunning Febretree, the small township surrounding the University. They were doing as they'd done to U'delph— slaughtering, burning, eradicating. She was hiding, here in this same cell. She was terrified, huddling on this bunk as her door was being hammered. They were coming in, they were coming to get her.
Praulth was unaccustomed to nightmares. Her ordered mind normally forbade such unreasonable mental indulgences, even during sleep. And so, hearing the tap-tap-tap at her cell's door, she didn't know for several instants if it was real or carried over from her dream like an echo.
It stopped. But by now she was sure she'd actually heard it.
Standing was painful. Squinting in the feeble candle-light, she stepped toward her door.
She opened it onto the wing corridor. Most of the students in this annex were third phase or higher, and so these cells were located on a quiet part of the campus grounds, away from the boisterous and uncouth dormitories. She had no fond memories of her own time mere.
Praulth looked left and right. There was a single light source some distance along the row of shut cell doors, but it was enough to see that the corridor was empty. What had caused that tap-tap-tap? Pranksters? Had it simply been the door itself settling against the jamb?
She ached with the need for sleep. How hard could she drive herself? Fiercely dedicated academic or not, she had to sleep sometime. It was a fact that often annoyed her.