Chapter 20
The Wolves and the Bears
Sevkar Highlands, Adom
The return to Adom from Havilah was more pleasant than the trip there—they were no longer prisoners, after all—, but it was not easy by any means. Queen Bulah insisted on a forced march pace which was quite a bit harder than the usual walking pace of Toma and his companions. Dru got to ride in a carriage and Goldie and Crescenza were given horses due to their rank, but the rest of them had to march along with the common troops.
Because of the haste of their departure, they initially set out with a force of twenty thousand, but their numbers swelled to fifty thousand by the time they reached the border and another fifty was supposed to be on the way. Queen Bulah was committing a full third of her available active duty troops. If needs be, she could recall troops stationed in Ostivar's tributaries and those who were contracted overseas. And that wasn't factoring in the reserves, though they were more of a last resort if the homeland was invaded.
When they reached the border, the main force remained on the Ostivari side while small scout units went forward to neutralize the Zadok border guards. Yes, losing contact with the border patrols would draw Zadok's attention, but not as fast as a direct report. Meanwhile, Toma and his companions went ahead with a company-sized unit to meet up with the Adomite resistance in the place Stepan had designated before they crossed into Ostivar.
The man leading the unit was specifically chosen by Queen Bulah to treat with the Adomites in her stead. The ranking system of the Ostivaris was just numbers, as in the number of people you commanded. This man, Yohan Yakob Rakel, was a rebabah, as in a commander of ten thousand, but apparently he was more of a staff officer, like an adjutant of the Queen's. Like most Ostivaris, he looked like he was cut from a block of granite and had the personality to match.
There was only a handful of people at the meeting place, as Stepan's caravan had to stay on the move. Three riders set out in different directions to go find the caravan and bring them back. That was three days ago.
There wasn't much to do. The Ostivaris mostly laid low, but they would take time to train and drill to keep themselves sharp, and periodically send out scouting parties and message runners. At Marius' insistence, when the Ostivaris were training, Toma and his companions would train as well. While they had occasionally done some training on the road, they were doing it more frequently now because, as Marius put it, the war was coming to them and they needed to be ready for it.
They were paired off to spar with each other. The pairings would vary based on whatever Marius thought he was teaching. The main idea was to get used to facing a variety of fighting styles to better anticipate whatever opponent you might come across. This time it was Crescenza and Goldie, Molly and Shallum, Duran and Schwartz, and Toma was stuck with Marius. Dru was on the sidelines interpreting for Shallum and Molly while Shaya simply watched on. There wasn't much point in trying to teach Shaya in the fighting arts.
Crescenza was fencing with Goldie. Toma didn't know much about it beyond being a sport for the rich. It certainly seemed more like sport than actual fighting. Toma couldn't imagine it being that useful, but Goldie seemed to be handling his sword better than he usually did. Had he ever even drawn it in a fight? Toma couldn't remember. He didn't think so.
"You like this, eh?" Crescenza said. "Reminds you of fancy lad school? Not like the days Marius has you up against the peasants."
"At least there is someone here who knows how to fight civilized, Lady Aloisa," Goldie replied.
Crescenza shook her head and gave him a pitying smile.
"You still don't get it yet, do you, little prince? A real fight is never civilized."
To make her point, she kicked out Goldie's leg to knock him onto his back, then thrust at him while he was down, stopping short of putting a hole in his neck.
Shallum, seeing this, broke off his sparring with Molly to turn his attention to his master. Molly made a thrust at him to get his attention back on the match, but without even looking, he managed to yank the rifle out of her hands, then turned her momentum against her to drop her into the dirt. He promptly planted his foot on her back to keep her on the ground. He then pointed his rifle at Crescenza. It shouldn't have been loaded, but the threat was clear. Regardless, Crescenza was unfazed.
"Drusilla, tell that pup of yours to stand down before I cut his ten years of service short."
Dru hastily intervened to deescalate the situation. Shallum lowered his rifle and Crescenza lifted the point of her sword from Goldie's throat.
"You're putting too much weight on your lead foot," Crescenza told Goldie. "That's why I was able to unbalance you so easily. After everything you've seen, everything you've been though, you should know that fighting's not a game or a dance. There are no rules, only who lives and who dies. You can't always be relying on other people to protect you. You have to be able to protect yourself. Now get up."
Much like Shallum before him, Toma had to dodge a cheap shot from Marius while he was watching this scene unfold. Unlike Shallum, however, it was all he could do just to avoid having his cheek slashed open.
"Where are you looking?" Marius asked. "Your enemy is here."
He didn't know the half of it. Or maybe he did.
"You were really gonna cut me," Toma said.
"If I really wanted to cut you, I'd cut you," Marius replied, "but if you'd been any slower, I'd give you a little something to remember for it. You're pretty good in a fight, son, but 'pretty good' isn't good enough when it counts. You've had too many close calls. You have to get better."
"What do you care anyway?"
"You don't think a father has an interest in his child's survival?"
"Twenty-eight years and you haven't shown much interest until now."
"Eighteen years," Marius corrected him. "Maybe seventeen. It's not like I wasn't there at all."
Toma certainly didn't have any memories of his father being around, but even if he was there back when Toma was a little kid, that was besides the point.
"Why'd you leave?"
"It's... complicated. I had to support you and Lucia and I couldn't do it if I stayed in LeBlanc."
"Support us?" Toma balked. "We never saw a single cent from you! Do you know how hard she had to work, how hard we both had to work, just to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads!?"
"You don't just support a family with money, son. I was protecting you two."
"Well, you did a pretty shitty job of that too. Mom's dead."
"Do you think me being there would've changed that?"
The mature thing to say would have been something like, "No, it wouldn't have changed anything," but that wasn't how Toma felt. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Tightening his grip on his bayonet, he said in a low voice, "If you'd been there, she wouldn't have died. Not like she did..."
"And what makes you say that?"
It was then that Toma found himself staring at the truth he'd been running from all this time, but rather than face it, he chose to turn tail and keep on running.
"It doesn't matter..."
Marius didn't look convinced in the slightest, but he let it pass, saying, "Well then, come at me."
Toma lunged at Marius, only to have his arm diverted and his body guided right into Marius' knee. Marius hit hard enough to knock the wind out of him, making him drop to his knees.
"That was for half-assing it," Marius said. "You give it your all or you'll get it worse. Now, on your feet."
Only Toma didn't get back up. He couldn't run from the truth any more. He couldn't blame anyone else. It had been gnawing at his insides all this time and now it just came out. It didn't matter that it wasn't something he wanted the others to see. His pride as a man couldn't hold back the tears.
Seeing him break down, Marius said, "I didn't hit you that hard. You're tougher than this. Get up."
Toma couldn't take it. It wasn't like a confession would absolve him of his sins, but there was no stopping the words from spilling out.
"It's my fault... It's my fault she's dead... It's all my fault..."
"What are you talking about? It's not your fault."
"Yes, it is. Dino... My buddy Dino, he snuck out to see what was goin' on. The Aureans had us under curfew. They didn't want us knowin' what they were up to, but Dino saw Dru an' convinced me to tag along. It was stupid. I was stupid. I was so damn stupid... If I hadn't gone out, Mom wouldn't've been lookin' for me... She must've been askin' one of the Aureans when the Dragons came... If it wasn't for me, she'd still be alive..."
Marius crouched down and put his hand on Toma's shoulder. This time, with more conviction, he said, "Toma, it's not your fault. You weren't the one riding that Dragon. You weren't the one who ordered the attack on LeBlanc. It was Zadok. Zadok's to blame."
Toma felt his guts twisting inside him, but Marius' words gave him something to latch on to. Zadok. Yes, Zadok. It was them. It was all them.
"They need to pay for what they did."
"Careful there, boy," Marius warned. "I know that road and I know where it leads. Justice is one thing, but revenge is another."
"What would you know about it?"
"You think about it. What you're going through, I've been there already, back during the war. I've killed my share of those bastards, and, yeah, it feels good... at first, but then you start to realize that it's never enough to fill that hole and you just keep losing more and more. You think you've got nothing to lose, but then the world shows you there's still something somewhere it can take away.
"When Zadok invaded, the army only held out for about a month. The government refused to surrender, though. When Zadok took the Capital, they rounded up what leaders they could find and demanded they sign off on the terms of surrender. They refused, so Zadok had them all shot. Then another group was assembled. They refused too and they were hanged. The third group they threatened to skin alive—after seeing their families get the same treatment—and they signed, but there was still a government-in-exile that set itself up in Aurea, remnants of the army still scattered about, and ordinary folks who didn't have a mind to bow to Zadok, hot-headed young fools like me, your uncle, Benny, Tonino... and your mother."
"Mom?"
"We couldn't afford to be picky. We'd use anyone who was willing to fight. Your mother, like most of the girls, tried to keep her hands clean in the beginning. She started out by playing nursemaid and spying for us—even Zadok didn't pay much mind to women and children going hither and thither—, but things got worse. Turns out your mother was a pretty good shot, one of the best in our group. She put a lot of 'em in the dirt—we all did—, but it was never enough. We'd hit 'em, they'd hit back, 'round and 'round. If the Aureans hadn't stepped in when they did, we would've been wiped out before too long. By the end of it, it was something like one in three of us who survived, and we were lucky compared to most others."
Toma couldn't believe it. Then he remembered what Duran had told Schwartz after they escaped Campo di Malo, about what he did during the war. Now that Toma knew who Duran really was, it was all lining up. Then he started to think about how his mother would occasionally show signs of knowing more about war and the military than the average woman would, how she refused to talk about what happened back then.
"Mom never said anything about it," Toma said. "All I ever knew was that you were in the war. That was it."
"Of course," Marius replied. "That wasn't who she was. She did what she had to do and then she put it behind her. Not everyone could do that."
The way he said it, it wasn't hard for Toma to connect the dots.
"That's the real reason why you left."
Marius gave him a sad sort of smile and ruffled his hair, saying, "You sure have to take after Lucia in the most inconvenient way possible. She always could see right through me."
For the longest time, Toma held on to comments from people who compared him to the father he never knew, but this time, hearing that he resembled his mother meant more to him than all that.
"It may be easier said than done," Marius continued, "but you need to stop blaming yourself for what happened. Stop thinking about revenge too while you're at it. Think about justice."
"What's the difference?"
"Revenge is all about you. It's selfish and self-destructive. Justice is about something bigger. It's a helluva lot harder to get, but it's a lot more satisfying and it tends to stick longer too."
"And how do we get justice?"
"We're already on it. We turn Zadok's two biggest rivals against it, incite the tributaries to rise up against them, then watch their empire crumble around them."
Toma looked down at his bayonet and said, "I guess I can do more that way than with this."
Marius grinned.
"They're gonna know that they fucked with the wrong people."
Toma liked the sound of that.
* * *
A few days later, Stepan's caravan arrived at the meeting place. He had gathered several other leaders of the Adomite resistance to meet with the Ostivari representatives. Dru, Crescenza and Goldie were included as parties to the alliance, for appearance's sake if nothing else. At least Dru could also act as an interpreter.
Speaking of interpreters, Marius was sitting in as well. The only one in the tent who served no real purpose was Toma. Everyone else in the group had to wait outside, even Shallum, who insisted it was his duty to remain at Goldie's side. Marius said that Toma could learn something by observing the meeting and for whatever reason, neither the Adomites nor the Ostivaris objected to him being there. Because neither Goldie nor Crescenza could follow along in Adomite or Ostivari, it wasn't like Dru was just interpreting for him, so that was something.
Including Stepan, there were six representatives of Adom and three for Ostivar, though the two other officers with Rebabah Yohan never said anything. Once they were done negotiating the basic terms of the alliance, they started to talk about strategy. The Adomites had prepared a map with border posts and garrisons marked, along with the major supply routes. Although the final decision rested with Queen Bulah, Rebabah Yohan had the authority to discuss their strategic options. There were variations in the plan, but the general idea was to cut off the supply routes and crush the garrisons one by one. The goal wasn't to occupy territory, so they wouldn't be sacrificing their numbers to hold on to the forts that they took. If reinforcements from Zadok wanted to waste manpower retaking those strongholds, that would be their problem.
This had been going on for about an hour and, to be honest, Toma was getting bored, but then Dru managed to get his attention.
"Oh."
"What is it?" Toma asked.
"Mr. Arkadian has said there is a squadron of Zadok Dragon Riders who have been following the rumors about us."
"You don't think..."
"It would be like Zadok to make them take responsibility for losing us. Remember that when we were captured in Greland, the Ilyrians said something about a Dragon woman. She's probably the same one who led the attack on your town, Toma. There aren't many women in the army, after all, especially not in the Dragoons. They're probably the ones who attacked the Ribisi estate as well. To think that they've been chasing us all this time..."
"Colonel Cray," Marius said.
"What?"
"There's only one female squadron leader in the entire Air Dragoon Corps, a woman called Cray. If there's a 'Dragon woman' who's been after you, she's the only one it could be."
Thinking on this while stroking his beard, Marius then said, "This could be a good test of our new alliance."
"What do you mean, Mr. Marius?" Dru asked.
"The Dragon Riders are among Zadok's most prized troops. Taking out a squadron wouldn't put much of a dent in their overall combat power, but it'll be quite a blow to their morale."
"But, Mr. Marius, these are Dragon Riders," Dru said. "They boast that one Dragon is worth a hundred men."
"That's only if you don't fight them with a plan," Marius replied, "but I've got one."
He tapped a point on the map. Dru looked at the map and seemed to realize what he had in mind.
"They'll never fall for it," she said.
"They will if you have the right bait and we've got exactly what they want."