8.

 

He watched the sprawling Leeran Army stop from his perch on the back of the cart:

It began in hand signals, the general lifting his right fist after the afternoon’s sun had peaked. Two young boys and one girl began running back through the lines from beside him. As they did, others in position raised their hands and silently the army ground to a halt. It left the saboteur with a strange feeling in his stomach not estranged from awe, watching as picket lines were struck, horses and cattle watered and rubbed down, tents and camps unrolled. He had never seen an army of its size move with such synchronization, such cohesion.

He had not been spoken to after Waalstan left him, neither by the general or others, but he had been fed twice as his cell warmed. Warm water and cold food, both delivered by silent soldiers, neither of them offering him conversation. That did not bother him, but he knew it would in time. Samuel Orlan would have reached Dark and, while Bueralan believed that they would find him and sight him from a distance before they agreed to go anywhere with him, he knew that they would eventually agree to his plan. The old cartographer held the key that would unlock his cage, allow him to step out of it.

At least, that was what he would tell Zean and the others.

Bueralan had to free himself, and right now it looked impossible. There was no weak link in the guards, no immediate chink in their armor that he could exploit, but patience would be a virtue in relation to that. However, the longer he remained in the cage, the less likely he would be to keep his patience. That, he knew, was his immediate danger.

As the afternoon’s sun sank behind the dense treetops and the humidity began to recede, poles were erected around an empty patch of muddy grass. They were lit, but differently to the fires that had begun to emerge through the camp, the fire burning brighter, cleaner, fueled by oil rather than wood, Bueralan assumed. As they burned, soldiers approached the cart that he was in and, stepping past him, lifted the podium out. He watched them wordlessly position it in the middle of the grass.

Later, a shadow emerged beside him, pushing a plate of food through the bottom of the cage. “You look like a man with urges to stand upright, saboteur.”

Bueralan took the plate. “Let me out for a walk, Lieutenant?”

“I don’t have a leash.” Dural, still in his leather and chain, pulled himself onto the back of the cart and eased himself down before the map table, his legs stretched out. “If I let you out now, I would just have to kill you.”

The old leather boots were within reach. “We couldn’t have that,” he said, picking a piece of barely cooked meat from the plate. “I don’t suppose this is one of your men?”

Dural’s smile twisted one side of his face. “One of our cattle, freshly slaughtered for tonight. The general wants your strength to remain.”

“So kind of him.” Beneath the meat there was mashed potato, awash with blood and fat. “How does he plan to talk to the entire army from here?”

“Patience, saboteur. All will be revealed soon enough. When he speaks, you will be the first foreigner to hear him. I hope you appreciate that.”

Bueralan scooped a piece of meat through the mash. “That why you’re here?”

“Everyone must be attentive.”

The saboteur smiled and shook his head. Both he and Dural knew that he would not interrupt the speech, just as both knew that the presence of the soldier had nothing to do with security and everything to do with gauging his response. Dural lifted a canteen of water and took a drink, his feet crossing before the cage.

The lieutenant was a career soldier, a man Bueralan suspected had volunteered at a young age, leaving the farm, or the son of five children with no family future available to him. His unassuming, easy bearing, the chain mail old but well cared for and the speech with its slight roughness told the saboteur that he was not a man who had purchased his position. In Bueralan’s experience, Dural as he was now was a soldier who would not want to progress further, a man who believed he had enough responsibility one step up from sergeant, and did not seek to add to his burdens with rank and privilege.

Soon, a silence fell over the camp, amplifying the snap of fire and the movement of animals around him as the general stepped up to his podium.

At first, Bueralan did not recognize Waalstan. Whereas before he had appeared as an affluent man with a sword purchased by or gifted to him, he now appeared in a heavy suit of ceremonial plate armor. Polished until it shone, the steel verged on being liquid white beneath the fires that surrounded him, while the fine sword he had worn earlier hung at his side by a clean, but well-worn leather strap that held both the weight of it and the bright, heavy gauntlet hands that rested upon its hilt.

“My friends.” His voice was clear, carried easily. “My friends, we are drawing closer to our destination, to the start of our crusade.

“I have said before that when you look beside you, when you look at the brother and sister who stands beside you, who will fight with you, that you must cherish them now. There is a sad truth about war, whether it be for the noblest of intentions such as ours, or the basest, and that truth is that no man or woman is safe from death. When we are done, your brothers, your sisters, your family, could very well be gone.”

The audience was attentive, solemn. In the back of his throat, the greasy taste of the bloody meat grew, but when Bueralan spat to the ground, his spittle was clean.

“It is a risk we take. We are faithful. The Faithful. That is how we will be known soon, not as Leeran, not as men and women who worked this land, who toiled, who struggled, no. We will be known as those who have faith. Those who do not enter battles to take, or to steal, but to bring a truth. To bring the truth.

“Tomorrow, we will cross the border and march on the trails that lead to Mireea, to the city beneath which Ger lies entombed, a city of capital and greed. Tomorrow, we will leave our homeland. Our true tests will begin there—for we will be tempted, first by our own fear, by the threat of battle, and then by our bodies as we endure what has been asked of us, as we embark on making not just an empire but on saving the divine and freeing it from the shackles about it.

“Our enemy anticipates us. They have sent spies into our forces. One, as no doubt you have heard, is kept in a cage beside me.” Uncomfortably, Bueralan lowered his plate as the gaze of all those around him turned. Infamy as a symbol, as a representation of what they fought, a grounding for the new recruits. The saboteur had a grudging admiration for Waalstan. “He is a man who works for money, whose loyalty is bought, who can be your friend one day, your enemy another. He is a symbol of those that you must be vigilant against, brothers and sisters. Do not underestimate him and do not mistake him for the men and women you march against. Yes, he is hired by those who perch above us, but as we approach their majestic wall, know that at their core they are not purchased men and women.

“They are people who have made their homes on the back of a god and that god will soon die. Without us, without our faith, all of him will be lost. The people on that mountain will allow that to happen. They will continue in this world that we find ourselves, never truly aware of what has been lost.

“But we will know what has been lost.

“We are the Faithful.”

Behind General Waalstan, a white stallion emerged. It was drawn out of the shadows by a soldier, but the animal moved slowly and majestically, as if it knew that every eye had turned to it, that it was now the center of all attention.

The taste of blood in the back of Bueralan’s mouth grew as Waalstan drew his sword.

“Brothers and sisters, we make a sacrifice now, on the eve of our war. It is a sacrifice not to her, not to She who has given us so much, but a sacrifice to us from Her. We make it with the eight stallions that she sent with us, that she blessed for this moment, that she gave, to reinforce the faith that moves us.”

With one swift move, he drove his sword into the neck of the horse.

Bueralan expected it to cry out, but it was silent, even when the Faithful’s general withdrew his sword and drove it into the ground. Even then, the horse did not fall. The killing blow bled profusely and, after a moment, the greasy taste of blood in Bueralan’s mouth grew stronger, as if his own blood threatened to spill out of his mouth. Yet he knew immediately that what he was not tasting was either the meat, or his own blood, but the magic in the air, the display of power that was unlike anything the saboteur had ever felt. Raw, and without finesse, it washed over him, over the camp around him, and over the entire army as General Ekar Waalstan sank to his knees before the still standing horse.

There, he cupped his hands, and drank.

As all the Faithful did.