The Lich Without a Soul Vessel

The scouts had the full picture within the hour. Two columns, advancing from different angles, ten-odd li between them — close enough to support each other, far enough apart that striking one wouldn't prevent the other from responding. Count Normandy had decided to end this.

The camp moved with the practiced efficiency of people who had done this before. Wagons were being loaded before the meeting in the command house had finished starting. Robin had the map spread on the table with the relevant people around it, and Evan was one of them.

"Normandy and Bonarpan commanding, ten bronze field cannon, a musket company," Robin said. "We can't fight this head-on. The question is how we draw them off or slow them down enough for a clean withdrawal." He looked around the table. "Ideas?"

Everyone had something to say. Evan listened and looked at the map.

When Robin finally turned to him, Evan had been staring at a single point on the map for a while. "You've laid it out well," he said.

It was clearly not what he was thinking. Andrea made a noise. Cecilia's expression tightened. Robin sighed.

"Say what you're actually thinking," Andrea said.

Evan felt the justice of this and dropped the deflection. "We can't win playing defense. We should attack something they care about."

He stood and moved to the map. "Lion's Roar Fortress. Two hundred li southeast. There's a market town here, Laiwater, maybe five hundred people. About ten li west of the fortress."

"You want to attack Lion's Roar?" Sam said. "With everything we have, the odds of taking it are under ten percent. The casualties would be crippling."

"I don't want to take it. I want to look like I might. If they think we're threatening the fortress, Normandy has to redirect forces to respond."

The room brightened. Robin asked how many soldiers he'd need and who would lead it.

Multiple people volunteered. Robin looked at Evan.

"Two hundred," Evan said. "All cavalry, at least a quarter archers. Some enchanted arrows and throwing spears. I'll lead it — it was my idea."

"Two hundred seems light."

"More would slow us down and reduce our chances of looking like something we're not. The surprise matters more than the numbers." He paused. "Two hundred cavalry can look like considerably more, with the right approach."

Robin nodded. "I'll give you eighty archers — twenty of them magical archers."

"Then we go now."

"Wait." Andrea was already standing. "I'm going."

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"You should stay with Robin."

"I have a magical sword and the weapons you just made me and I am a knight even if I haven't formed sword-aura yet and I am going." She said it the way a wall is a wall.

Robin and Cecilia exchanged a look. Cecilia gave the smallest nod.

"Take her with you," Robin said. "She's not weak."

Evan looked at both of them. He understood what was happening. She likes you, so you'll have a reason to come back. He had been planning to leave after the operation. He was still planning to leave after the operation. He smiled anyway. "She follows orders."

"Always," Andrea said, in a tone that meant the opposite.

At the door, Evan turned back to Robin. "The Taemir border troops could make some movement. Just enough to add pressure on Normandy's eastern flank."

Robin smiled. "I think they'll figure that out without being asked."

That night Evan briefed his five squad leaders — forty riders each — in his tent with the map between them.

"We'll reach Laiwater by midday tomorrow. When we get there, I want everyone in the town brought to the central square. All five hundred and however many more. No one leaves."

That produced immediate objections. The squad leaders were fighters, not without conscience about what fighting was supposed to be for.

"We're soldiers," one of them said. "We don't take civilians."

Andrea, apparently representing the room's conscience: "What do you need them for? They can't fight. Are you using them as hostages? The fortress garrison's families are inside the fortress, not the town."

"I need them to make two hundred cavalry look like a thousand."

Silence. Then: "You want them in the center of the formation."

"Yes. They carry their own supplies, they walk between our riders, and from a distance we look like a full assault force with support units. We don't need them to fight. We need them to be visible."

The squad leaders exchanged looks. "Understood. We'll carry out the order."

They were not fully happy with it. Evan didn't need them happy. He needed them compliant.

After they left, Andrea said: "You really are commanding. That was almost interesting to watch."

"Get some sleep."

At midday the following day, they entered Laiwater.

The operation was not clean. Operations involving five hundred unwilling people never were. A former mercenary named Tom came out of his house with a greatsword when two riders announced the roundup. He managed to make his displeasure felt before a sword cut ended the argument. Several buildings caught fire, more through excitement than strategy. Evan rode slowly through the noise and smoke with Andrea beside him and received the report: five hundred twenty-three people, all assembled in the square, all carrying food as ordered. Three soldiers lightly wounded. Seven resistors, dealt with.

He didn't ask for details on the seven.

"Move them out," he said. "Full column, three li from the fortress before dark."

The column that assembled was slow and uneven — a hundred cavalry at the front and rear, three hundred townspeople in the middle carrying packs and children and whatever they'd had time to bring. Smoke from the two burning buildings was still visible behind them. In the late afternoon light, moving through the open country toward Lion's Roar Fortress, they were visible from a long distance.

Lion's Roar sat at the southern approaches to the Duchy of Purei, guarding a natural passage through the terrain. High walls, military design, defensive magical arrays in the stonework that sat dormant in peacetime. It had fallen once in its history and the builders of subsequent centuries had been motivated by that memory. Normandy had stripped much of the nearby garrison when he marched on Robin's camp, which was the point.

The evening sky burned red behind the column as it approached. Against the failing light, two hundred cavalry at the column's edges looked like more than they were, the armor catching the color of the sunset. At three li out they stopped and the riders spread, the standard movement of a force establishing a siege perimeter, and two groups of cavalry broke from the flanks and came forward at speed, angling toward the fortress walls.