“That’s all I need to know.” Vlora turned to Burt, her heart racing. The moment she’d been waiting for – where she could see the next path she needed to take – was finally here. “You told us that you had made plans to take the stone north of the Ironhook Mountains if you could find it. Can you still do that?”
The question seemed to catch everyone off guard, including Burt. Taniel stepped forward before Burt could respond. “Are you sure about this?” he asked quietly.
Vlora ignored him. “Can you?” she asked again.
Burt eyeballed the pieces. “What do you need me to do?”
“I want you to take the two pieces of the main trunk and take them over the passes. As soon as you’re north of the mountains, separate the two pieces. Send them to the farthest reaches of your territory, or beyond. I don’t really care who ends up with them, as long as they are in two very different places.”
“This is madness,” Prime interjected. “We can’t trust northern savages with even a fragment of the stone, let alone two-thirds.”
Burt narrowed his eyes at the word “savages.” “Then come with us, old man. You want to study them so badly, then we’ll take you north with the pieces and you can make sure they’re disposed of or hidden.”
It was Vlora’s turn to be surprised. “I thought you don’t allow Kressians north of the Ironhook?”
“Like I told you before, the Dynize have changed everything, and we need to make decisions quickly. Besides, I have the feeling I know what your plan is, and I want insurance.”
“What do you mean by insurance?” Taniel asked.
Burt pointed at Prime. “This one can hide the presence of the godstones. If he continues to do that, it’ll give my people plenty of time to pull the two big pieces into the passes and dynamite them behind us. We’ll be long gone before the Dynize Privileged can figure out something is up.”
Olem, who had remained silent for this entire time, suddenly spoke up, fixing Vlora with a pained expression. “We’re going to take the capstone, aren’t we?”
“And lead the Dynize on a merry chase,” Vlora confirmed, locking eyes with Taniel. “We take the capstone to the coast, put it on a ship, and we drop it into the deepest part of the ocean. And even if the Dynize happen to catch up with us, they’ll wind up with just a fraction of what they need and no idea where the rest has been taken.”
Olem considered the idea for a moment, and Vlora could see in his eyes that he thought it was going to get them all killed. He stared at the godstone, looking older than Vlora remembered him, and drawing out a pang of worry from her. “All right,” he said. “But the Dynize are almost upon us. I’ll have our engineers up here in half an hour and we’ll be rumbling out of the town in two. We need to get as far away as we can before nightfall.”
Chapter 59
Styke crested a hill and tugged gently on his reins, bringing Amrec – and the entire column behind them – to a stop in the middle of the road. He eyed the distant towers of New Starlight for a few moments, then swept his gaze across the rolling hills between his own party and the city-fortress before bringing his looking glass to his eye to get a better look.
“That’s a lot more crowded than when we passed here five days ago,” Ibana commented. She sat beside Styke, her comments no doubt directed at the army now camped at the base of the curtain wall that cut New Starlight off from the mainland. At a glance, and without a glass, any seasoned campaigner would put the army at fifty thousand men or more. “That’s going to be a problem,” Ibana added. “We can’t break an entire field army, not by ourselves.”
Styke kept the glass to his eyes, frowning toward the city and sweeping his gaze back and forth across the army camping outside it to make sure that his head wasn’t playing tricks on him. “We may not have to.” He handed Ibana the looking glass and sat back in the saddle, fiddling with his big lancers’ ring.
Slowly, Ibana’s mouth fell open. “Those are Fatrastan flags.”
“Above the army and the city,” Styke confirmed. “I’m not mad, am I?”
“Not about this.” Ibana handed the looking glass back. “It’s been five days since we passed here, and we very clearly saw Dynize soldiers manning the wall. Where did that army come from, and how the pit did they take New Starlight without a siege?”
Styke took off his ring, spat upon it, and polished it against his jacket before returning it to his finger. “I think that’s Dvory and the Third.”
“I knew we hadn’t seen the last of him,” Ibana grunted.
“Is this going to make our job easier or harder?” Styke asked, though he thought he already knew the answer.
“Harder,” Ibana said. She swore, then continued. “If there is a fleet at harbor, Dvory isn’t going to give it to us. But …” She trailed off.
“But,” Styke picked up, “I’d damn well like to know how he got here so fast. And how he took New Starlight.”
“Right. Do you want me to send Jackal?”
Styke felt uneasy. He felt that way a lot these days, dealing with Ka-poel and renegade cuirassiers and assassin dragonmen. But this … this felt different to him and he couldn’t figure out why. The army was flying the flags of the Third. It was a whole field army, with Dvory at the head. He ignored Ibana’s question and asked his own. “You think he sold himself to the Dynize?”
“Dvory?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s a slimy piece of shit, but there’s no way he turned an entire field army. I know dozens of good, loyal soldiers in the Third.”
Styke chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Get me Jackal. We’re going to take a closer look.”
Styke and Jackal approached the pickets of the army camped outside of New Starlight and were waved through with only a lingering glance and a curious whisper. They were soon among the tents, riding down the main road that led to the curtain wall and the city-fortress beyond it. Styke kept his eyes and ears open, keeping Amrec at a walk, trying to shake the uneasiness that plagued his thoughts.
The army was camped at leisure, sprawled and disorganized like an army resting in the spoils of a great victory – though it was clear that there had been no battle to take the city. Soldiers played cards by the cookfires, set up ball fields out by the pickets, and stripped the area of firewood and edibles.
“Are the spirits telling you anything about this?” Styke asked Jackal out of the corner of his mouth.
Jackal looked just as suspicious as Styke, if not more so, and he answered without taking his eyes off the camp. “The spirits are fickle right now. Most of them have fled from Ka-poel’s sorcery, and the ones who haven’t speak in riddles. They’re … not helpful.”
“What do you make of this?”
“I don’t like it.”
Jackal seemed to have nothing else to add, so Styke let him be. Truth be told, he couldn’t add any more himself. The circumstances of the Third Army’s arrival seemed suspicious at best, sinister at worst, yet there was nothing about the camp that spoke to him of sedition or treachery.
As they neared the curtain wall, he saw a small group of men gathered playing dice on a plank. One of them glanced up, did a double take, then sprang to his feet and jogged toward Styke. He was a thin, dark-skinned Deliv. He looked like he was in his forties, with a touch of gray at his temples and a distinctive scar along his left cheek. “Colonel Ben Styke?” he asked, falling in beside Amrec.
“That’s me.”
“Colonel Willen,” the man introduced himself. “I saw you at a distance back near Belltower but I never got the chance to meet you. I’m with the Seventy-Fourth Rifles. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Styke.”