since we’re all dead anyway if the dark elven army breaks down the gates-Saekaj Sovar was an overcrowded mess when I left twenty years ago.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Ryin blinked at her. “You’re talking about the diaspora? When dark elves began to migrate out of the homeland again, twenty years ago?”
“Yes,” Erith said. “It was at capacity, the streets were choked with waste, and the tribunal that ruled in the Sovereign’s absence finally approved the opening of the city. People weren’t exactly starving, but there was heavy rationing. That’s why you saw so many dark elves start cropping up at once-those of us who were more opportunity-minded wanted to get the hell out, take a chance elsewhere, somewhere that you weren’t living twelve people in a room a quarter this size.” She shook her head. “The average citizens were stacked on top of each other, four and five to a straw bed half the size of this table. Ticks were rampant, fleas. The meat we ate was that of the vek’tag and their milk was the drink of choice, and it was old mushrooms baked into bread three times a day most of the time. The noble houses lived fat and had more space, the lower classes scrapped for every damned thing we could lay our hands on.” She shrugged. “It was nice to get out of there, even nicer when I finally got my own room in the Daring’s guildhall. Living here was like a dream.”
“And the point of that wildly veering narrative?” Vaste asked, feigning a yawn.
Erith favored the troll with a sour look. “That Saekaj Sovar is huge. Massive. When I left, the population was easily over two million.” She looked around the table in patient expectation.
Ryin was the first to show his reaction. “Well, then that means … oh. Oh, damn.” His head pivoted to Vaste. “It means-”
“Yes,” Vaste said, “I got it right off. Millions of people means hundreds of thousands of soldiers if need be.”
“Yes,” Erith said, “and keeping in mind that the Sovereignty is a society where you can live a thousand years and not really feel the strain of age until you are over eight hundred-”
“They have a larger population of war-ready men to draw from than any other nation.” Ryin looked at Vaste again.
“I said I understood the first time,” Vaste looked back at the druid intently. “Why do you keep staring at me? I know how dark elves age, probably better than you do.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to look
“No,” she said, finding herself somewhat hoarse. “No, but it is hardly a great surprise now, is it? The dark elves have a big army. The sky is blue, water is wet. They’ve paraded countless number of soldiers through the world, are fighting a war on three fronts and they don’t seem to be suffering greatly for it.” She tried to shrug from indifference, and found that it wasn’t hard to find. “They have us outmatched. Their enemies are not fighting them at present, largely out of fear. They have us surrounded, and they have thrown a hundred and fifty thousand troops at the bothersome fly we have become to keep us from continuing to bind them down here in the plains.” There was a certain hopelessness that came with her pronouncement, but she wasn’t sure she could entirely feel it.
“None of it is good news,” Alaric said finally. “But neither is it the worst. We may be outmatched, but they have yet to find a way to reasonably break through our fortifications.” He smiled. “Take heart, friends. We will protect our foyer as we have, we will keep them held off at the wall, keep them at a distance, and we will remain here until the situation changes.” There was only a hint of hope in Alaric’s tone, but it was there, Vara could hear it. “In a battle against the entire world, I still believe that the Sovereign has bitten off more than he can possibly hope to digest.” Alaric steepled his fingers in front of him. Now, let us hope that the rest of the world discovers that exact same truth … before it becomes too late to take advantage of his misstep.”
Chapter 78
Cyrus
The road to Enrant Monge was longer than he remembered, though they traveled at a brisker pace. They went to the west first, crossing under the leaves of trees that still showed their green, meeting up with the armies of Galbadien’s barons in the town called Callis, which Cyrus could not remember at all from when last he had been there, and they rode on.
“There are not so many of them as I hoped for,” Cyrus said, riding next to Count Ranson under a blue, clear sky, on their way out of Callis.
“We just came out of a war,” Ranson said, “one that was particularly costly to us in terms of lives.” He gestured his head back behind them, where followed some twenty thousand men, half on horseback. “We have a great many dragoons, though, and we lost few enough in the last battle. Some of the men are long-time veterans-”
“Meaning they’ve seen too much combat,” Cyrus added.
“-and some new blood,” Ranson finished with a raised eyebrow.
“Meaning they’ve seen too little.”
Ranson sighed. “Aye. It would have been more convenient if this scourge had come before we had our little war with Syloreas. Instead, they picked the first time in a decade when both of us were well and truly ground down. Our eastern armies will meet us a bit farther on, the ones we moved to the Actaluere border. That will swell our numbers somewhat.”
They rode on. The sun rose and set what felt like a hundred times, but was more probably only thirty. The air turned colder as they hooked north on the road that led past the shores of an enormous lake. Cyrus went to his bedroll with Aisling every night and awoke with her next to him in the morning, putting out of his head all the troubles and worries of the battle ahead. The numbness inside was still there, but he managed it, thinking about it sometimes late at night when she lay against his side, and he listened to her slow, soft breathing.
As the mornings became bitterly cold, the scenery began to change; there came a morning where there was frost on the ground, glittering in the early morning sunrise like diamonds sprinkled in the grasses, and Cyrus could have sworn that he had been there recently. He had, he realized, been this way only months before, with a smaller army at his back.
After so many days of numbing, wearying travel, one arrived where he found himself staring into the distance and staring back at him at the top of a crest was the familiar shape of Enrant Monge. He heard a few whoops from behind him as the men of the Galbadien army let out their pent-up emotion at seeing their destination after a long journey.
“I will not be sorry to be done riding,” J’anda said, his hand rubbing the outside of his robes just below his back. “This is quite enough for a while.”
“I never get tired of riding,” Aisling said with a lascivious smile toward Cyrus.
He glanced back at her. “You haven’t done that in a long time.”
She shrugged, and he thought he caught a hint of disappointment. “Before I was trying to work to entice you. Now, I scarcely have to entice you at all.”
They left the army behind on the flat grounds before the woods, left them to set camp in an open space as Cyrus rode with Longwell and the others into the big, wide gate on the western facing of Enrant Monge. There were Sylorean refugees along every bit of the ride, as there had been for the last few hundred miles of the journey, sunken-eyed beggar folk with weary looks.
“Do you suppose we’ll finally ride through the Unity gate now?” Longwell asked, and Cyrus watched the new King, who maintained an air of guarded skepticism.
“This would be the closest we’ve ever gotten, my King,” Count Ranson answered after a second’s reflection. “Perhaps not as anticipated, in a new Kingdom of Union for all Luukessia, but united in common purpose.”
“Seems more genuine than with a monarch at your head,” Cyrus said, “ruling through fear.”
“The last Kings of all Luukessia were hardly tyrants,” Ranson said, as though delivering a history lesson to an interested student. “The Kings of Old Enrant Monge were good men, fair men, who ruled with strength and honor, and who delegated most of their power to the three Grand Dukes. When the last King died and his only son,
