Chapter 486: Dance of The Decoys (End)
Josephine’s cavalry thundered past that same moment, hooves drumming a cadence that set tent ropes thrumming. She rode at their head, hips loose, one hand up in a swirling gesture almost decorative—except every swirl spaced her riders exactly where drifting dust would billow most. She wanted plumes that could be seen from the fort’s watch-towers, plumes that shouted a thousand men idle here. A junior knight reined close, concern furrowing his brow. "Ma’am, the horses are winded." Josephine flashed him a grin bright enough to shame sunrise. "Then let them breathe fire instead of steam—scatter more sand, make the dust do the galloping." She wheeled away, her laughter trailing like a red ribbon on the wind.
Alicia stood in the throat of the northern sally path, fingers flicking delicate runes into air thick with smoke and pine resins. Each sigil hung for a heartbeat—opalescent, trembling—then drifted downward to settle over a straw-filled cuirass. Under her whispered command the dummy’s shoulders rose and fell in the slightest imitation of breath, laces creaking just enough to fool the ear. Sweat carved silver tracks down her temples, but she kept weaving, voice a steady mantra. A sapper paused to watch, awe widening his eyes. "Looks...alive." Alicia didn’t glance up, only answered in a whisper grown hoarse, "That’s the point. Now fetch more straw—heavy on the chest, they slump if the hay’s damp."
Xena and Ravia ghosted through the outer tree line with thirty scouts, each woman a silent fulcrum about which the others pivoted. Xena’s bow never dipped below half-draw; whenever moonlight threatened to glint on its polished limbs she smeared a smear of river-sludge across the curve. Ravia marked trunks with chalk notches—one for clear, two for snares, three where creeping ivy disguised punji pits the Varzadians had hidden seasons ago. Every so often they paused, trading brief hand-signs: a swept thumb for cleared trail, two stiff fingers for distant torch-glow. Then they vanished deeper, leaving only the breathy tremor of leaves rebounding where bodies had brushed past.
Belle worked the interior lanes of camp like a conductor of ghosts. She mapped three separate egress routes to the capital, marking each with knotted ribbons on low branches—a language only her scouts would recognize. Whenever she found a dead angle, she pressed small bundles of dry tinder under wagon axles, a reserve of flame to be kindled at the retreat signal. She paused by one supply cart, knelt to study the wheel rut: depth, moisture, direction. Her gloved fingertip brushed the mud, then she nodded to herself. When she rose, her cloak swept out, catching torch-glow so it seemed a green wave breaking.
Throughout all this Lyan prowled—never hurried yet somehow everywhere at once. He checked the decoy ranks first, tugging at shoulder-knots, repositioning straw arms so spears angled skyward instead of drooping. One dummy’s helm sat too low; he lifted it with gloved fingertips, adjusting until the moon highlighted the steel just so. Satisfied, he strode on, cloak whispering across canvas.
He paused beside the torch crews to verify flame pots were spaced irregularly—real armies didn’t line their fires like parade lamps. "Break that pattern," he advised, tapping the ground where shadows pooled. "And scatter embers there; let the sentries think our cookfires starve for oxygen." His voice was calm, but his eyes darted, taking notes no one else saw: a drag-mark that looked too neat—scuff it; a barrel ringed by prints facing the wrong way—rotate it; a guard dummy whose silhouette would betray straw stuffing when backlit—double its cloak.
Approaching the siege-yard he paused under the massive arm of a half-dismantled trebuchet, looking up into the gearwork where black grease still glistened. A whistle’s melancholy trill drifted from the plank walk above—an engineer atop the frame twisting a spanner free. The sound reminded Lyan to glance toward the horizon; clouds slugged by, bellies silver. "Rain before dawn," he muttered. (Better damp hay than aflame dummies.) He ordered extra oilcloth thrown over the straw soldiers, but only lower half—enough to shed water while still allowing flicker-shadow.
By twilight the deception came alive. Dozens of fake sentries lined ramparts; from a distance their subtle Alicia-woven sways mimicked the bored shifting of night-watch. Fires blazed inside three empty barracks while real soldiers slept under tarp lean-tos fifty paces away. The smell of roasting jerky wafted where no cooks stood, thanks to Belle’s caches of seasoned fat smoldering on iron trivets. To any Varzadian eye the fort thrummed with life.
As final checks ended Lyan trudged the inner walkway one last time, glaive butt clacking softly on flagstones. The moon—a thin sickle—hung above like a watchful scythe. He paused near the supply stacks to adjust a lantern shutter—and there, on the wood lip of a crate, glittered something small and segmented. Not a beetle, too metallic; the leg joints gleamed brass in lamplight.